Eternal Embrace by Billi Jean Page A

worried.
    He couldn’t blame her, he was too. The Death Stalkers’ move from enticing the young and stupid to their side to forcing the dark vows on humans and immortals didn’t sit well with him. The idea they had the power to enslave their victims and transform them into some kind of animal shot his worry up a hundred notches.
    “Yeah, we just have to hope that those turned can still sense us, the good guys, from the bad, right?” he asked.
    Ranger shot him a worried scowl, and circled his arms around his vampire mate. Star exhaled, looking seriously concerned. “We’ll deal with that when we are forced to, but Sammie indicated that the creatures Derrick freed were aware. We will have to hope the same holds true.”
    “Right,” Torque clipped his jacket closed and adjusted his broadsword, squinting at them all. “Any questions?”
    No one said a word. What was there left to ask? Another battle, another struggle against an evil that never ended. For what? For people who never understood the danger that lurked, waiting to pounce on them. Unexpectedly an image of Joey’s teasing smile rose in his mind. He firmed his grip on his sword hilt and nodded when Torque’s gaze lingered on him. There were a million reasons he fought, but Joey’s safety suddenly became paramount.
    “Good. Let’s go. Beauty, give Jax the area so he can shift.”
    Beauty nodded and reached out, touching his hand lightly, and immediately he got a picture of a white, high-ceilinged tunnel with a deep line of black running through what he assumed was a wall of roughly carved-out salt. In the centre, someone had tied a pink ribbon on a stake with, oddly enough, a picture of Pink, the hip rocker, on the wall above the wood.
    “What’s with the rock star?” he asked.
    “Hunter. She thought we’d need something exact or we’d land anywhere in the mines.” Beauty grinned and shrugged. “She likes her music, too.”
    Torque shook his black hair out of his eyes. “Let’s go. You good?”
    Jax nodded, focused his mind on the spot Hunter had chosen and landed in hell.
    Fire hit his face, forcing him to shift to the left only to land in another burst of flame. The sleeve of his jacket caught fire and only died out when he shifted ten feet over. He landed on top of an enormous pile of salt rock and watched as below him, the Death Stalkers swarmed Beauty and Torque. Hunter called from across the pit, her voice sounding hoarse over the fray.
    From beneath him, six men dressed in black T-shirts and black, salt-dusted jeans attacked Beauty and Torque, forcing them back against the wall and nearly getting their hands on Beauty before she could draw her blades.
    Jax jumped down, landing next to the couple, taking a blow meant to take off Torque’s head. He sensed Beauty spelling something wicked, and the hairs on his arms lifted as the air grew charged. Two seconds later, the tunnel seemed to shudder and with an enormous blast of power, the walls and ceiling collapsed on him, dropping a ton of salt on his head.

Chapter Seven
    The longer Joey paced the room Jaxon used as his bedroom-slash-library, the higher her fears rose. She’d run out of bagged blood. It was past the seven days Jaxon had told her to wait here, but the last two nights, she’d been too nervous to leave this sanctuary. But as the minutes ticked by, she slowly came to terms with the realisation that he wasn’t coming back.
    Jaxon, the big jerk, had hurt her again. This time though, she choked on a sob, because she knew he’d not meant to leave her like this—but the pain in her chest made the truth of his loss all the more real.
    He would have come back.
    If he could have, he would have come back.
    She gripped the table where he’d made love to her with such urgency that first night she’d learned she was a vampire. The tears burst free. Something had happened to him. Something bad and he was either hurt—or worse, gone forever.
    She didn’t know where he was. She didn’t