Salvation

  A Cerridwen Press Publication

  www.cerridwenpress.com

  After Sundown: Salvation

  ISBN #1-4199-0831-6

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

  After Sundown: Salvation Copyright© 2006 Eden Robins

  Edited by Ann Leveille.

  Cover art by Syneca.

  Electronic book Publication: December 2006

  With the exception of quotes used in reviews, this book may not be reproduced or used in whole or in part by any means existing without written permission from the publisher, Cerridwen Press, 1056 Home Avenue, Akron, OH 44310-3502.

  This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events or locales is purely coincidental. The characters are productions of the authors’ imagination and used fictitiously.

  Cerridwen Press is an imprint of Ellora’s Cave Publishing, Inc.®

  After Sundown:

  Salvation

  Eden Robins

  Dedication

  This story is dedicated to all the authentic women in the world. You know who you are. Queens who bravely explore this journey called life with brilliant minds, open hearts and strength of spirit that even dragons envy.

  Trademarks Acknowledgment

  The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of the following wordmarks mentioned in this work of fiction:

  Hyatt Resort: Hyatt Corporation

  Stouthearted stood that war prince

  With his shield upraised,

  Waited in his war-gear.

  The dragon coiled together,

  Went forth burning,

  Gliding toward his fate.

  —From Beowulf

  Chapter One

  Death’s hand reached out to her. It was so close Sabrina Reyes could almost feel it squeezing the last breath from her body. It couldn’t end this way, could it? After everything she had endured. After all the battles she’d fought and still had to fight, it just couldn’t. She had too much to do, too much to learn and too much to show the world about herself and her kind.

  Due to the late hour, she and her attacker stood facing each other in the middle of an almost empty Arizona State University campus parking lot. They were engaged in some sort of macabre dance. His hands were wrapped tightly around her neck, while she jerked wildly and clawed desperately at his wrists. The world closed in around her and her knees started to give way. She fought the sense of falling at first, struggling to stand, then realized her mistake.

  Energy suddenly filled her and adrenaline pumped through her body as she realized this was her last chance for survival. Summoning the strength that was so familiar to her, she prepared herself. Her body quivered with the effort it took to control the power filling her. The beast inside roared her need. She wanted release. She wanted to be free to claim her power once more. Joy and fear filled Sabrina simultaneously as she thought about what was to come. She could already feel the beast’s strength, pride and magic just below the surface, ready to overflow, ready to take over and transform Sabrina into her true form. It was always like this, so overwhelming and somewhat scary, but at the same time exhilarating and freeing.

  That was all suddenly shut off the minute her attacker tightened his hold on her neck and spoke.

  “Your power is my power, your will is mine.”

  His dark words were simple enough, yet in combination with his tightened grip on her air supply they completely overpowered her. The energy that had filled her was suddenly leashed and that part of her that yearned to get free was caged.

  What the hell was happening? Sabrina panicked. If she couldn’t summon her power, if she couldn’t use that, what would she do?

  The man chuckled low in his throat. The sound of it was evil, sending tremors of dread down her spine.

  “You are mine now. To do with as I wish.”

  Her attacker’s fingers tightened around her neck. She started to see stars.

  No! She wouldn’t let this happen. Not now, not ever! Tamping down her fear, Sabrina struggled to recall her self-defense training. She remembered how she should use the unexpected to her advantage. She let herself go limp. Her own weight brought her down to just where she needed to be. Her knees hit the pavement and her attacker’s hold around her neck loosened somewhat. She took her opportunity. Releasing his wrist, she curled her fingers into a fist and punched the man between the legs as hard as she could.

  He groaned and his fingers slipped from her neck. She took that moment to knock his hands from her and roll sideways. Jumping up, she didn’t look back as she ran for her life. The anthropology building was the closest, and since that was where her office was located, she ran directly there. Locking herself in, she called security. They said they would be right over. Each minute she waited, huddled behind her desk, seemed like hours as she pictured her attacker pounding on her door, or worse, breaking it down and finishing what he had started.

  The sound of approaching sirens left her flooded with relief. She would be okay. Help had arrived.

  Eric Drache couldn’t believe what he was hearing.

  He stared incredulously at his boss, Vlad Maksimovitch.

  “You’re kidding, right?” he asked.

  “No, I’m completely serious. Here’s her file. Look it over and go see her tomorrow. I have every confidence that you’ll be able to handle this case with complete professionalism and competency, just as you always have in the past.”

  Vlad looked calm and collected like he always did, and Eric wondered briefly if the man ever showed any sort of emotion. It was almost like he was dead or something. Eric winced as he remembered that his boss, the founder of Sundown Security Agency, really was dead, or rather undead. He was a vampire. And other than the close-mouthed underground paranormal community, very few people knew that. Just as only a handful of mortals were aware that paranormals actually existed. The agency’s security specialists consisted of a ragtag group of preternatural creatures who were assigned to guard clients based on what kind of security they needed, or rather, who or what they needed to be protected from. And nine times out of ten, the client went away happy and blissfully unaware that their bodyguard had been so much more than human. Sundown was well known around the valley for the excellent personal security it provided, but few realized that much of that success had to do with the fact that each specialist had paranormal powers and, more often than not, immortality on their side. Hell, Eric was one of them, just one of the many freaks that Vlad had hired over the years. He was a dragon slayer, immortal, except at the hands of another slayer, and destined to spend eternity hunting down and killing dragons. You couldn’t get much weirder than that.

  There was a short knock on his office door before it opened and his buddy Malcolm walked in. Okay, so maybe it could get weirder. Malcolm was a fairy, a real life, magical dust, paranormal powers, wings and all kind of fairy, who also happened to work as a security specialist for Vlad.

  “What’s up, guys? Is this a private party or am I invited?”

  “You’re more than welcome to stay, Malcolm. Eric and I are done with our discussion. I was just leaving,” Vlad said, getting up from the chair he was sitting in. “Are we clear on everything, Eric?”

  “Crystal, Vlad,” he replied, barely holding back a snarl.

  And that was that. Eric understood one thing as he watched his boss walk out of his office. He had just been given one of the worst cases he could have been assigned. And on some level he knew he was going to regret ever agreeing to do it.

  “What was that all about?” Malcolm asked.

  “It seems Ms. Sabrina Reyes and I are about to get reacquainted,” Eric explained with a grimace.

  “No frickin’ way,” Malcolm said, his eyes widening in disbelief.<
br />
  “Yes frickin’ way,” Eric said, running his fingers through his hair in frustration.

  “I don’t envy you that, my friend. How are you going to handle it?” Malcolm asked. He knew all about Sabrina and Eric’s past together.

  Eric shrugged.

  “Like I always have. She’s a client, I’m her bodyguard. Period. End of story.”

  “You actually believe that bull you’re spewing?” Malcolm asked with a taunting grin.

  Eric gritted his teeth and glowered at his friend.

  “I don’t have much of a choice, now do I? You know how Vlad is. He picks each of us to handle cases based on his perception of who would do the best job. He’s very particular about this and usually right on the money with it, but this time I’m really wondering about his sanity. He knows about Sabrina and me. He knows we met a couple years back, during the Gonzales cover-up case out at ASU. Vlad also knows we had a relationship that began soon after we finished up that case. And he’s very aware of how it ended.”

  Eric was also wondering about his own sanity. How was he going to handle seeing Sabrina again? Would he lose it or be able to maintain control? When it came to her, he was never sure.

  The knife twisted cruelly into Sabrina’s heart. Shards of pain shot throughout her body. Her legs felt like rubber, her stomach burned, and her head pounded from a thousand hammers beating at it. The ability to breathe suddenly became a mystery to her, yet the staccato rhythm of her thumping heart was a telltale sign that she was still very much alive.

  Sorrow like she had felt only one time before filled her heart. It squeezed it until she thought her legs would give way beneath her. It was the kind of ache she never wanted to feel again. Once upon a time that grief had jerked and shoved her around like a puppet on a string, unable to focus, function or rationalize. She had vowed to herself that she would never get hurt like that again. Never.

  Yet it was all back in a flash.

  Because of him.

  All because of him.

  The man standing in her office was the cause of her intense agony. Eric Drache had always been the cause of it. Old feelings crashed into her in one fell swoop. Maybe if their reunion had been gradual, through e-mail, text messaging or even a phone call, she would have been able to handle it better. But it hadn’t been. He was right here, right now, in the flesh, without warning.

  And as he closed the door and strode toward her, she wondered how it was possible that he could still make her feel this way. How he could so easily turn her sunny, carefree day into a cold, gray storm of pain just by his presence. She didn’t like the fact that this man, who was in fact only a man, could have that kind of dark power over her.

  He wasn’t ugly. No, he was anything but that. As his long legs ate up the distance between them, her gaze was helplessly drawn to him. Devouring him with her eyes, she noticed that he looked exactly the same. Two years apart had done little to alter that. Tall, long-legged, lean and muscular with broad shoulders and narrow waist, he had the body of a football quarterback.

  His dark brown hair was spiky and tousled, topping a face that could send any woman’s heart spiraling into a pool of lust. It was his contradictions that made him so appealing, both inside and out. His face was a perfect example. His hard, square jaw ended in a dimpled chin, lips full and sensual underlined a strong nose. Yet these features were interrupted in an arresting way by a long scar that ran from the corner of one eye to the top of his mouth.

  That scar would have given him an almost wicked appearance if not for his lushly full eyelashes that any woman would envy. They surrounded beautiful eyes the color of gold. And not just golden-brown or greenish-gold, but pure metallic reflect-in-the-night kind of gold.

  Eric had the most unusual eyes she had ever seen. From the beginning, that’s what had drawn her to him. When they first met, their gazes had connected and she had gotten lost in those amazing gold irises. Everything else had faded away. There was only he and she. That had been all that had mattered then—not the fact that they were meeting about a case he was involved with in an office full of her colleagues and Vlad, nor the fact that they had never met before.

  In those moments, looking into the fathomless depths of his golden stare, there had been nothing else. Sabrina couldn’t have broken their gaze even if she had wanted to. It wasn’t until he had looked away that she came back to herself.

  From that day forward, her life had changed.

  Yanked back to the present as Eric drew closer, she folded her arms across her chest in an unconscious act of defense. She would never be vulnerable to him again. She would never leave herself open to the kind of torture he had put her through. Only a fool would allow someone like him back into her heart. And if nothing else, she was no fool.

  Stopping a few feet from her, he smiled.

  “Hello, Sabrina.”

  Shivers ran up and down her body. His voice was just as she remembered it, like honey pouring over satin. It brought to mind the nights they’d shared. The intimate moments they had spent in each other’s arms. Though they had never actually made love, the time they spent together had been incredibly intense and overwhelmingly sensual.

  They had connected on so many levels back then. But what had engaged her most of all had been his mind. She had cherished the many hours they spent talking, debating and laughing together. She would never forget the nights when they just held each other and whispered in the dark.

  But that was over now. It was the past. She had moved on.

  Raising her chin defiantly, she gazed warily at the man who had so thoroughly broken her heart two years ago.

  “What do you want, Eric?”

  His smile spread into a wide grin.

  “You always were one to get to the point, weren’t you, Sabrina? Unabashedly open and honest. That was one of the many things I enjoyed about you.”

  What was he thinking by smiling at her in that sexy way of his after everything he had put her through? Sabrina wanted to stomp her foot in frustration and yell at the top of her lungs, but she wouldn’t give the bastard the satisfaction of seeing that.

  “I’m so glad I’m here for your enjoyment, Eric,” she said with a saccharine smile. “But you still haven’t answered my question. What the hell do you want?”

  Eric wanted to kiss her.

  He wanted to gather Sabrina in his arms and kiss her so thoroughly that the fake smile was wiped from her mouth and she had no breath left to speak. He craved to feel her breath on his cheek as she whispered his name with a longing they both shared. Just thinking about the nights they had spent in each other’s arms made his body spring to life, hardening with an intensity that was almost painful. He struggled to stop it but knew it was a futile effort. Where she was concerned, he had little say in the matter. It shook him to know that she still held that power over him. No one had wielded that kind of control over him, ever.

  But Sabrina was different. She had always been different. She was like no woman he had ever met. Their connection had been almost instantaneous. Like a rock hitting flint, their first contact had started a fire that roared with a life of its own. And if his body were any indicator, the two years they had been apart had done little to put out that flame.

  He remembered how they had connected in so many ways. In the past he had met many beautiful women, but she had been so much more than that. She was tall, with long legs and a body that was lush and curved in all the ways a woman should be. Some men would call her plump, or more than a handful, but he found her soft roundness to be just to his liking. And he appreciated the dark, exotic beauty that her Latina heritage lent her—shiny ebony waves of hair that rolled down her back, a smooth olive complexion and large moss-green eyes that slanted slightly upward at the corners, giving her an almost feline appearance.

  Well-defined cheekbones and a narrow, pert nose sat above lips that were full and pouty. Their deep red color was natural and brought to mind some juicy, sweet fruit that had to be nibbled and sa
vored. And when she smiled it made him think of rainbows and summer days that never ended.

  But Sabrina had engaged him in so many other ways. Her mind intrigued him. Her intelligence stimulated him, and he remembered how much he’d liked to just sit and talk to her, about anything. Her honest, open nature was refreshing. And she had a dry, sharp sense of humor that often left him laughing with surprise and delight. He liked being with her. It was as simple as that.

  He’d never expected to see her again. That had been the plan.

  His plan.

  Funny how plans change. And now he had no other option but to stay by her side. He knew it wouldn’t be an easy task. Among all the traits Sabrina possessed, stubbornness was right at the top of the list.

  He ran his fingers through his hair in frustration. “I think you already know why I’m here, gatita.”

  Sabrina bristled and stiffened her spine.

  Narrowing her eyes, she met his gaze head-on. “Don’t call me that. I asked you to never call me that again.”

  Eric sighed.

  This wasn’t going well. His nickname for her had slipped out of his mouth without thought. Two years apart hadn’t made a difference. That was how he saw her. As his gatita, his little cat. Sabrina had taught him that word while they strolled hand in hand through the mall one day. She had stopped at a pet store to look at some kittens in the window.

  “Hello, gatito,” she had said in a soft, tender voice, running her fingers over the glass. One kitten looked up at her, meowed then rubbed itself enthusiastically against the barrier.

  As Eric had watched the encounter, he couldn’t help but think of the way Sabrina was so like that cat. Her feline eyes bespoke the curiosity and enthusiasm she had for life. And the way the kitten craved her petting reminded him of how hungry Sabrina always was for his touch. She responded to him like no other woman ever had. As if she couldn’t get enough of him. It was both intoxicating and overwhelming. And as he’d watched her, his body had responded to each stroke of her fingers over the glass, imagining the way she often stroked him.