Scorched Ice (Fire and Ice #3)(76)

He almost jerked his hand away from Quinn when she took hold of it. He didn’t want her to have any kind of connection to this woman, no matter how remote it was. Her fingers clenched around his, refusing to relinquish him.

“All the remaining members of The Commission and their followers are here, secure in their belief we’d never be able to get to them. Now it’s a matter of making sure none of them escape here as she split off from two others while inside,” Julian informed the group. “Take her into the woods and kill her.”

“Wait!” the woman cried. “I can tell you what we discovered! I can let you know our findings!”

“We don’t care about any of that,” Julian replied. “If we did, I would continue to pull your memories from you. Take her.”

“No! Wait! Wait!” the woman screamed as two vampires slid their hands under her armpits and dragged her into the woods.

Julian stared at where they’d gone until her screams abruptly silenced and the scent of blood permeated the air. His gaze drifted back to the building. The eruption of flames blasting out the top of it had died down to a normal fire again. In the woods across the way, the flames were spreading rapidly through the trees.

“We need to find the other two who were with her, and we have to find Luther,” he said to everyone. “We’ll split up and search throughout the woods until the sun is starting to rise, or until someone arrives to put out the fires. Stay safe and alert for any danger.”





CHAPTER 27


Relief flooded Quinn when they found Luther making his way back down the hill with Dani at his side and the vampires trailing behind. They all did a double take when they spotted her new hairless look.

“What happened?” Dani blurted.

Quinn found herself unable to reveal what she’d endured. The trauma of it was still too much for her. She could feel their stares on her as Julian told them what had occurred, but she kept her gaze focused on what she could see of the fire spreading through the woods. Fanned by the wind, the flames were whipping down from the mountains toward them. The first tendrils of smoke wafted by her while they stood there.

“Her ability fed her life even as she was dying,” Luther said, unable to keep the awe from his voice. “An immortal immortal.”

Quinn ran her hands up and down her arms when his words caused an icy chill to run over her skin. Many may have found such a possibility reassuring, but the prospect of such a thing scared her.

I can’t come back to life if there isn’t life to fuel me, she told herself. She wasn’t in a rush to die, but the possibility of never being able to die was more than a little overwhelming. She wasn’t indestructible, just a little more difficult to kill than other vampires.

So are my loved ones, she reminded herself. If I’m close enough to bring them back to life, I can.

Melissa stepped forward and embraced Luther. He hugged her back, lifting her off the ground as he squeezed her. “Good to see you too,” he murmured before setting her down. “How many of them are left?” he asked Julian.

“We’ve killed all but two of them. According to the memories of the woman we captured, those two are the last of them.”

“Then they’re all dead,” Dani said. “We took out two who were trying to get away before the whole place went sky high.”

“So that’s it, no more Commission?” Chris asked.

Quinn looked to Julian as he gazed over the mountainside to the remains of the building below. The flames danced in his icy-blue eyes and highlighted the chiseled planes of his face. Standing only in the borrowed jeans, he still somehow managed to look more lethal than all of the vampires gathered around them.

His gaze came to her, and he placed his hand against her cheek. “No more Commission,” he murmured and kissed her with a tenderness that curled her bare toes into the earth.

She rested her hand against his stubble-roughened cheek, savoring the feel of him. They’d destroyed the cause of many of her nightmares with Earl, and now Julian’s nightmares had been burnt away in the mountains of Pennsylvania. He broke the kiss off and dragged her against his chest.

“It’s an entirely different world, Dewdrop,” he murmured in her ear.

“It has been since the first night you walked into Clint’s bar.”

He chuckled before kissing her ear and bending to swing her into his arms again. “Let’s get out of here before the sun comes up.”

“Yes please,” she said. “I’ve had enough being on fire for one day.”

His long legs ate away the ground as he carried her back down the hill. They stopped at the bottom. Shifting his hold on her, Julian held his hand out to Chris when he stopped beside them, panting slightly.

“Phone?” Julian asked.

Chris dug into his pocket, pulled out one of the burner phones and handed it to Julian. Julian hit a button on the phone before lifting it to his ear.

“It’s been taking care of,” Julian said through the phone, most likely to Vern. “Send someone to gather the group of vampires who went to find the back road and meet us at the vehicles.”

Julian tossed the phone into the woods before he started walking toward where they’d left the vehicles. He kept her in his arms when they made it back to the RV and didn’t let her go while the other vampires gathered around them.