Rare Vintage by Bianca D'Arc Page B

don’t want to fight you, Leonard.” Marc sighed as the
other man sneered.
    “I don’t want to fight you either, Marc. I want to kill
you.”
    Shaking his head as he removed his jacket and folded it
neatly, Marc knew there was no way to avoid this. He knew Ian was out there
somewhere, watching over Kelly should the unthinkable happen and some twist of
fate let this sniveling wimp win. In all likelihood though, Marc would see
Leonard Gibson dead before the hour was through. It couldn’t be too soon as far
as Marc was concerned.
    Leonard’s people stayed with the limo, and Ian remained out
of sight. Marc didn’t know where his friend was, but he trusted Ian to be where
he needed him most.
    The challenge went as Marc expected it would. Leonard did
all the posturing and proclaiming of any of the challengers he’d faced in the
past, but like them, he went down quickly. Marc fought a clean fight, as he
always did, but he should have known Leonard was enough of a snake to fight
dirty.
    There were few things in this world that could kill a
vampire. A stake to the heart, full sun, the rare catastrophic injury that led
to complete blood loss…and silver. Silver was agonizingly painful and took its
time killing. It was a substance his kind steered clear of at all costs, but
Marc should have foreseen that if Leonard didn’t win their challenge, he’d have
some way to get even.
    He saw it in Leonard’s eyes first, but by then it was too
late to avoid the deathblow—a mere scratch in reality, but executed with
devious zeal. Leonard clutched a silver claw whose hollowed out tips were
loaded with pulverized silver dust. He raked it across Marc’s chest and it
burned everywhere it touched. Leonard fell dead with Marc’s next blow, but he’d
already killed Marc. Damnably slow and excruciatingly painful.
    As Leonard’s body turned to dust with the extinguishing of
his life force, Marc fell to his knees, clutching his chest. He was only dimly
aware of Leonard’s people climbing back into the limo and driving away.
    Marc’s skin began to blister as the silver worked its way
inside. The only thing that could save him now was blood and alcohol.
Perversely, he lay in the middle of a vineyard with the deep red fermented
blessing only a few yards distant in one of the outbuildings, but he had no
strength to get there.
    He felt himself losing the ability to reason or to think
beyond the incredible pain. The doorway in his mind he’d been careful to keep
shut opened wide. He felt the gasp of shock from his mate and he regretted the
pain he caused her, even as he slid into a semi-conscious state on the grass
next to Leonard’s ashes. He’d be joining him soon, he knew.
    “I love you, mon coeur .”
    The thought whispered from his mind to his mate’s in his
last moments of coherence. It was all he could say but there was a wealth of
feeling behind those simple words. He had many regrets, but most of all he
regretted leaving her so soon. He’d only just found her, and now she would have
to go on alone.
    “I’m sorry.”
     
    Kelly gasped as she was hit by a wave of pain. Atticus and
Lissa had just arrived home and were speaking with her in the hall when her
world began to spin.
    She vaguely felt herself being caught in her employer’s
strong arms. She saw his worried face floating above her, but her mind was
focused on the pain of her mate.
    “Marc!” she screamed, clawing at Atticus to let her go, knowing
that just a few hundred yards distant, her mate was breathing his last.
    Atticus must have let her go because the next thing she
knew, she was running across a field toward Marc’s gasping body. Kneeling at
his side, she uncovered the festering claw marks, at a loss as to what to do
for him.
    “Silver,” Atticus hissed, placing his mate behind him.
They’d apparently followed close behind her in her mad dash from the house to
the field. “We have to get him inside to the vats.” Lissa tried to move next to
her friend,