Dawn's First Light

Lori rested her cheek against Keene's chest. She traced a pattern through the crisp auburn hairs that dusted his well-defined pecs. Returning his smile, she stared up into his gray eyes. Their bodies were still joined as one. And she could already feel him stirring back to life inside of her. Limp as a rag doll, she leaned her weight on him and moved her hand up to toy with the hairs curling into soft ringlets at the back of his neck. All of the sudden, the arguments in her head and their obvious differences didn't seem like such a big hurdle to overcome. It could be done. Although she wanted to say the words, she held them back. Some things didn't need to be said. They just were.

More sedate and happy than he'd ever been, Keene carried Lori to the bed for a proper loving. Framed in a backdrop of cornflower blue linen, her eyes heavily lidded with passion, she'd never looked more beautiful. Her blonde hair fanned out like spun silk to form a halo around her face. He balanced his weight on his palms and wedged her hips between her thighs, groaning at the soft, warm feel of her core against his length. He dipped his head to press a soft, chaste kiss to the tip of her nose as he eased inside of her body.

Lori shuddered in the pleasure of Keene gently slipping in between her wet folds to fill her body with his. She reached up to cup his face with her palms as he rode her with long, deep thrusts of his hips. Flexing her fingers, she pulled his mouth down to hers, for a kiss. Perhaps, if sex were one of the greatest mysteries of life, it wasn't in the act or the science behind it. But, in all the unspoken things it represented...the love, the joy, and the pleasure of two separate individuals coming together as one. Naked and exposed with no way to hide, sweating, breathing, living, and enjoying one another's bodies with impassioned strokes. His name escaped her lips as she came for him. And in that one hastily uttered word, she'd said everything there was to say.

Keene snatched the word from Lori's lips and held it on the tip of his tongue, savoring it like sweet candy. His name. Pride swelled within him from the giving of such pleasure. He felt a lightness the likes of which he'd forgotten. He imagined the sunshine on his face, soft warm blades of grass under his feet, clear blue skies, and gentle summer rain drops on his skin. Joy. Happy. Love. There were thousands of words to describe the emotions running through his mind. But, only one that summed them all up. Lori. His body convulsed in tremors of pleasure as he lost himself deep inside of her.

Lounging in Keene's arms, spent and sated, Lori sighed and twined her legs in a tangle around his. Running her toes up and down the soft hairs on his calves, she marveled at the man holding her to his chest. Keene was an enigma. He could kill with fierce brutality. He was centuries older than she and knew things she would probably never even begin to comprehend in the course of one lifetime. He was stronger and faster. And he'd live, forever, virtually unchanged. Her body would be dust in the ground by the time he had his first gray hair.

She began to understand what Janine meant when she said she was considering joining team vampire. It was a tempting proposition. To have forever with the man you love. How awful it would be to love someone with such fierce passion, like Janine had for Patrick, and know how short your time with him would be, if you didn't chose to die for love. Lori lifted Keene's big hand and wound her fingers through his. His palm alone was three times the size of her whole hand. Keene hadn't had a choice. And she wondered if he had, what he would have chosen.

Rising up on one elbow, Lori smiled down at Keene, grateful for whatever twist of fate that had brought them together. To her, there was no burden of choice. She loved him. And she'd already made her decision. It would cost her everything she was and everything she'd ever known.

Keene met Lori's gaze and lopsided, happy smile. He was in a joyous and blissful place and never wanted to leave it. Unfortunately, he'd have to. They both would, but not today. Today belonged to them. Gently taking her wrist with his fingers, he lifted her palm to his lips and pressed a kiss to the soft flesh. Meeting her was the best thing that had ever happened to him. And he would not allow his past to destroy it. He placed her hand on his heart and rested his palm over hers. He'd do anything to keep it beating and to secure his place in it.

"Lori, I promised you no secrets. And I am a man of my word. We've shared our bodies. And I'd like to share every part of myself with you. Every. Part. But, there's only one way I can do that. If you permit, I'd like to give you the only gift I have to offer. It's not a diamond or an expensive jewel. It's something more valuable. The heart and soul of who and what I am. And it's yours, freely given. Drink from me."

Lori didn't have to think twice about what Keene offered. Drinking his blood was his way of expressing his feelings for her. Vampires did not share of their blood openly. Their secrets, their strength, and everything they were lived in their blood. To taste it, was to know them on the most intense and private level there was. It would form a temporary bond between the two of them. She'd be linked to him the same way he was linked to her, if only for a short while. True bonding, was different. The vampire equivalent to marriage, bonding was forever. They could make love for decades and she'd never feel closer to him than she did right now. Her ears rang with the sound of her voice echoing in her head as she answered him. "Yes."



Chapter 40

Dane lounged on a wobbly, dilapidated, long ago decommissioned kitchen chair tucked in a corner of the basement, silently waiting for Thomas to awaken. He had to convince the good doctor to stop his damnable crusade. Humans were meant to die. There was no force on Earth that could change that.

Upstairs, Barbara, Thomas's mother dozed in front of the TV. Dane could smell the disease's progression in her body. She was dying from the cancer that had invaded her cells. He was surprised she was still living, given the extent of her illness. Frail and spent, her skin gray and her scent reeking of decay, only the sheer force of her will kept her alive. She was holding on for Thomas's sake. But, not even her love for her son could keep her going forever.

The woman had unfinished business and would most likely go out of this world suffering and in agony trying to get it done before she gave in and left this world. Dane regretted that deeply. And he had been tempted to ease her burden. Just a drop of his blood would reverse months of the damage done to her fragile body. But, it would only buy her a few seconds on the clock. Only one thing could completely cure her. And that was out of the question. The brothers could not interfere and save everyone. The world wasn't ready to know their secret. And life and death had to be kept in balance.

In all actuality, Thomas should be laying here, on a ratty futon, asleep in the basement. He should have died. Will shouldn't have healed him. Thomas should be in his grave after his fatal fall from the cliffs. Dane didn't blame Will for saving the man. It was damn hard to have such a gift and do nothing but stand to the side and watch someone die in front of you. Thomas had proven his worth time and time again, keeping their secrets, tending to their human members, and offering up his blood for the greater good.

In a way, Dane suspected, Thomas blamed Will and the rest of the brotherhood for doing nothing to save the woman upstairs. He didn't understand what had to be done to save her. His mother's illness was too advanced. The damage was too severe for a few drops of blood to permanently reverse. He asked too much of bother the brothers and of his mother. To save her life, she had to lose it. And the heaviest burden of all was that she'd outlive her son by centuries or longer.

Dane kept secrets too. Other than Barbara's love for her son, there was another reason she refused to go peacefully. Sometimes, the past snarled into a knot that could not be undone. It haunted people. And she had no idea how to make it right. In so many ways, she still saw Thomas as her little boy and had a mother's fierce instinct to protect him. And the only man who could help her undo the mistakes of the past had given up on trying long ago, when Thomas was just a baby.

Thomas had lived his whole life, believing things that weren't lies but weren't exactly the truth either. It wasn't his secret to tell and Dane had kept his mouth shut about it. He'd wanted to tell Thomas. But, it wasn't his place to do so. Barbara kept hanging on out of fear her baby boy would be all alone after she passed. But, of the secret shadowing their lives, she never breathed a word. Thomas wouldn't be alone and his mother didn't have to hang on, if she'd only find the words to tell him the truth.

Barbara was fiercely proud of her son, the doctor. And there was nothing she wouldn't do to protect him. She'd kept her illness a secret from him for too long. If the brothers had known sooner, they could have intervened in time. It was only when she got too sick to hide it that she'd told Thomas the truth of her condition. She was dying and she knew it.

Thomas held too much faith in his science. He believed the drugs he'd pumped into her system would save her life. They'd made her fragile condition worse. He'd left his job behind and moved back home, holing up in this makeshift lab in the basement in hopes of a cure. He consulted with Doc. And the Shaman tried everything he could to help. But, not even the herbs he mixed could do anything to stop the inevitable. Barbara was going to die. Soon.

Dane had to convince Thomas to hand the files in his possession and abandon his research. Thomas could not be allowed to continue searching for a cure that would never come. The doctor had found out too much about them already. Scientific things, that not even Dane understood. Thomas had discovered and translated into terms of lab results and numbers the science of what they were. And if he ever managed to harness the science behind the magic, the brotherhood...the whole race... would be doomed to an existence of hiding in the shadows while humans hunted them for their blood. And the landscape of the world would be changed forever. Dane could not allow that to happen. Thomas had noble intentions. But, he didn't fully understand the long-term impact of them. And Dane would do whatever it took to protect the secret. Even kill, if it came down to it.

Thomas stirred on the narrow futon and stretched, awakening from his nap. The backs of his eyelids felt like sandpaper. And his neck ached from the awkwardness of his posture on the lumpy mattress. His mom would accuse him of working too hard again. From upstairs he heard the sound of her TV shows echoing through the ductwork. He'd been asleep for a couple of hours. And it hadn't been a restful sleep. He'd flopped onto the futon to stretch his back and to keep from smashing his dead computer to bits in a fit of fury and fallen asleep.

Thank God, he'd managed to save his files to a thumb drive before the thing crashed. Contrary to popular belief, most doctors weren't as rich as they pretended to be and Thomas, like the majority, would be paying off his student loans until he was old and gray. The hospital in town didn't pay a fraction of what he'd made in the city. And he lived paycheck to paycheck, just like everybody else. Hopefully, his old laptop could be resurrected from the dead. Otherwise, he'd have to shell out the money for a new one. His research was close to the breaking point. Soon enough, he'd have his answers. And they were too important to be delayed by something like a failed computer.

Just to reassure himself, he patted the hip pocket of his jeans to feel the outline of the thumb drive that contained everything he'd discovered before the computer crashed. Sitting up in alarm, he realized the thumb drive wasn't in his pocket where he'd tucked it before resigning himself to the futon. "Shit!" He jumped up and felt along the mattress, thinking maybe it had fallen out of his pocket. No luck. He dropped to his knees, ducking his head under the frame to search under the futon, feeling along the concrete floor in desperation.

Dane moved out of the shadows. Thomas had no idea he wasn't alone. It'd be so easy to end his research for good, just a quick flick of the wrist and no more problems to deal with. As an ER physician, Thomas knew the fragility of life. But, Dane doubted that the man had thought a thing about the precarious nature of his own. How easily he could be taken out of the equation. Dane had slipped the thumb drive out of Thomas's pocket and held it in his fist. "Looking for something?"

Startled, Thomas straightened his spine and immediately whacked the back of his head on the metal frame of the futon he'd owned since college. Rubbing the sore spot, he bolted upright and scrambled to his feet. "Dane." Visits from the big man were not good news. In the years he'd been involved with the brotherhood, he'd only received such an honor only a handful of times. And it had never been a social call.

Even from across the room, Dane towered over him. The absence of the typical black leather combat gear the man usually wore didn't reassure Thomas that the visit was a quick drop by for tea and sconces. In denim jeans, a faded t-shirt, and beat up Converse sneakers, the vampire was terrifying. Standing at an easy six-foot four and two hundred plus pounds of sculpted muscle, his casual clothing couldn't hide the raw power of the man beneath. Anyone with a lick of common sense would know better than to rile the beast blocking the stairwell that led out of the basement. As if running for it was an option. Thomas wouldn't make it across the room before Dane snagged him.

"Uh, what can I do for you?" Thomas asked, uncomfortably rubbing the back of his neck. He knew exactly what Dane wanted and why he was here. The man had all the proof he needed, resting in the palm of his hand. Thomas inwardly groaned as he spotted his thumb drive clutched in Dane's palm. Great.

Thomas sank in defeat onto the edge of the futon, slouching to rest his elbows on his thighs. The evidence in Dane's palm explained so much. There was nowhere to hide from the brotherhood. Not even cyberspace. Toby could hack anyone with an Internet connection. And Thomas's decrepit laptop had been worked over. Everything he'd saved to the hard drive. All the research, he'd mailed to a half a dozen different e-mail accounts as back up to hide his tracks was most likely destroyed.

Thomas got it. The brothers, they were the ones who didn't understand. His mother was dying. Thousands of people all over the world were dying. And they had the power to stop it with something as simple and yet as complex as a drop of their blood. Why wouldn't they spare a sample to save the world? He looked up at Dane and down to the floor. He knew why. The secret. The damnable secret that condemned humanity to death in more ways than Thomas wanted to think about.

Dane closed his fist, crumbling the thumb drive in his palm to bits of plastic and shattered circuitry. He opened his hand to let the pieces fall to the floor. Thomas muttered under his breath and dragged a hand through his mop of thinning mouse brown hair at the sight of his work crumbled to unsalvageable bits. Dane felt bad for the man. He did. But, his sympathies for Thomas did not change his mind. Not one iota. "Stop this," he growled.

"I don't know what you're talking about," Thomas sputtered defensively. Dane could smell a lie. And there was no doubt that Thomas reeked of it. What other choice did he have? The package Rodg sent would be here in a day or so and once he received it, he had every intention of moving forward at full speed with his research. He only had to convince Dane otherwise long enough to find a cure. With the brothers onto him, he wouldn't have much time once he got his hands on the samples before they figured it out.

"I think you know exactly what I'm talking about." Dane pulled the vial out of his pocket and threw it at Thomas. He hated a liar. And Thomas was lying. He thought Thomas was a man he could reason with. Apparently not. There were other ways to ensure his cooperation though. As much as he hated to resort to them, Thomas was leaving him with few options.

"Shit!" Thomas gasped. He lunged off the futon to catch the vial before it hit the floor. Cradling the fragile glass tube in his palm, he glanced down at the blackish fluid that might give him the answers he needed and up at the furious vampire, glaring down at him. "Dane, I can explain," he stammered.

"Enough!" Dane bellowed. He bent over Thomas's quivering body. The man cowered at the edge of the futon. Thomas was an average sized male. He had a lean build that hinted he was a gym member, and did just enough of a workout to stay in shape. Dane gripped the collar of Thomas's shirt in his fist and easily jerked him onto his feet. Shaking him like a maraca, Dane got in the man's face. "What do I have to do to get your to stop? Turn you into a vampire?" He scoffed and dropped Thomas to his feet. "Not even that would work, would it? Then you'd just draw your own blood and continue with your damnable research." He curled his lips, exposing the tips of his fangs in promise. "The existence of my kind must be kept a secret. Don't make me regret that Will saved you."

"I owe the brothers everything. You know that," Thomas agreed in a shaky, tremulous voice. He sucked in a breath at the sight of Dane's fangs. He'd never seen them up close and personal before. And damn were they sharp and long, and pointy. Dane stalked forward, backing him to the edge of the futon. Thomas's eyes never left the gleaming white tips inches from his throat. He'd never considered that he might not live long enough to complete his research, till now. He swallowed to hide his fear and steeled himself for the bite. At least, when he died, it was a small consolation to know he wouldn't have to wait long at the pearly gates for his mom to join him.

"Then, I'd think that you'd want to show some measure of gratitude," Dane hissed. He could hear the man's heart beating wildly in his chest with fear. He might give the poor bastard a heart attack if he didn't tone it down a notch. And then, he'd have to save him a second time. He hated resorting to intimidation to gain Thomas's cooperation. But, whatever worked. And he really didn't want to kill the man to silence him.

"I do. There isn't anything that I wouldn't do for you," Thomas said. He hated the weak, helpless girly tone in his voice. But, he wasn't above begging to save his life.

"That's what I wanted to hear." Dane said, sheathing his fangs. "So you won't mind giving me your research then. I'd rather you surrender it of your free will than for me to have to force you."

"How would you do that?" Thomas squeaked. He didn't want to become a vampire any more than he wanted to die. The whole blood sucking thing really wasn't for him. If the brothers had any idea how many pathogens swam in people's blood streams, they wouldn't be so big on it either. The futon hit the back of his calves, pinning him between the mattress and Dane's bulk.

"Blood bond. You wouldn't be able to hide any secrets from me if I drank from you and bound you to me in return." Dane snatched Thomas's trembling wrist. Squeezing it tightly in between his fingers as Thomas grappled to free himself from his grip. "But, I wouldn't have to take such an extreme measure, if I could gain your cooperation."

Thomas gulped. He'd never seen Dane in full vamp mode before. But, then again, he'd never managed to piss the man off before either. One didn't poke a rattlesnake with a stick and expect not to get bitten. And Dane was one hell of a big rattlesnake. "Ok, ok...fine. My research." He eased a sigh of relief as Dane dropped his wrist and followed him across the room to the rusted file cabinet that held his notes.