Heather Graham - 03 Bride of the Night by Heather Graham

Author:Heather Graham
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2014-09-30T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TEN

PETE STOOD WITH FINN high upon the wall. From that vantage point, they could see below to the yard, onward to the town and south to the sea.

Finn pointed to the inner yard, and the level of rooms up a short flight of steps. “You must rest assured that Tara is well. They are offering her no discomfort. Calloway is not a bad man. Most men cannot be convinced that such an unearthly danger exists, especially men who have fought the years he has. So many of the captains and commanders are old warhorses from the Mexican War, and the enemies they know are guns or cannons, or they’ve seen men die of yellow fever and dysentery and other horrible diseases. Death is all too final for them. They can’t imagine a disease that causes the once-dead to ravage and murder with heedless delight.”

“Except for Tremblay,” Pete said, looking at him.

Finn nodded.

“Tara saved his life.”

“Yes.”

“You let her.”

Finn nodded. “Tara is still…learning. It was her choice, Pete.”

“She is like my child.”

“I know.”

Finn was surprised to realize that he was feeling like an errant suitor; he didn’t have to explain himself. And yet, he felt that he should. “There was not really a choice, but what there was, Tara made it.” He inhaled. “I would do whatever it took to save her, Pete.”

The Indian turned away. He was a strong man; in the dim lights from the fort and the sky, his face seemed etched in character. Finn found himself touched by emotions he hadn’t felt in years. He wondered what Tara’s young life had been like, and he was glad that she’d had such a man to watch over her—even if her own strength far excelled his by the very nature of the being he tried so hard to protect.

“I swear, I would never harm her,” he added, and he heard the tremor and the passion in his own voice.

One night…

Just one night. And it was changing him. He had to take care, because he needed the single-mindedness he had maintained throughout the war, and he needed to remember that his quest was greater than either of them.

But even as he looked at Pete, he felt an odd shift in the air.

Pete, somehow attuned to things that other men refused to see, looked at Finn. “There’s a change in the wind,” he said.

Tara.

TARA HAD GONE THROUGH her life knowing what she was. She knew human ways more than anything, however. She had not imagined the truth of what she might have been, or what her father might have been.

This man—newly turned, she thought—had a ravenous, crazed hunger in his eyes. He spoke, he moved, but he was…off. Finn said that some survived and learned to be crafty, to take care and live and move in the world. But not this one. Someone was behind everything that was happening here, someone so adept at what he had become that he didn’t look anything like one, with fangs visible, saliva dripping, eyes burning with insanity.

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