by Melody Raven
He pushed himself up slowly, as though he were in no hurry. “How long have you known there were other Vopura here?” he asked softly.
Mikel shook his head. “I don’t answer to you.”
John flashed to the door. Mikel thought he was going for an attack, so he flinched away, and the five remaining guards all surrounded him.
John couldn’t exactly lock the door considering he’d broken it when he’d kicked it in, but he pulled down a nearby bookshelf, sending the barrier tumbling in front of the door. “It’s not that you don’t answer to me. It’s that you won’t. You never did respect me. And you never will. I was okay with that. I could have lived with that. But I can’t live without—” He couldn’t get the rest of the words out. But he didn’t have to. Tela’s lifeless body spoke for itself. All of the guards unsheathed long, sharp swords, and pointed them in his direction.
“You know you can’t get me,” taunted Mikel.
It did look bad. His little dagger wasn’t much compared to those swords. John frowned and glanced at Nicolas. “Do I know that?” he asked.
Nicolas clicked his tongue. “We can’t really know anything until you try, can we?”
“Can-do attitude.” John pulled out his own dagger. Not as long as a sword, but it would get the job done. “I like that.”
Nicolas smiled at him. “Well then, this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.” And then he snapped into action.
John followed suit. Whoever this Nicolas was, he knew what he was doing. He ducked the sharp blades easily and was able to sneak his little dagger in every opening the guards gave him. Which was good, because John didn’t have a lot of time to babysit him. They were outnumbered, so the quicker they got these guys down, the better.
Mikel didn’t like to switch out his guards too often. He liked the loyalty. John knew each and every one of their names. He had dealt with them all before and after his freedom. But right now, they didn’t have names to him. They were obstacle one, obstacle two, obstacle three, obstacle four, and obstacle five. Nothing more and nothing less to him.
The first one immediately went for his throat, but it was much too obvious of a choice. John leaned back and kicked out a leg at the same time, catching obstacle one in a rib and shoving him hard against the wall right next to where Mikel was cowering. As John straightened, the second obstacle swung lower, right at John’s gut. He could respect that move more because it was harder to block, but he was still able to dodge right as the sword cut through his shirt and grazed his skin.
The small slice stung as the silver touched him, but it gave him the chance to throw his dagger, landing it right in obstacle two’s heart.
And then there were four.
Nicolas was making quick work of his people, another Vopura falling to the ground a second later. Mikel, apparently understanding that this wasn’t going his way, made a run for the door, so as the first obstacle came running at John again, he bent down and ran at him. The sword went through John’s shoulder, missing his heart by a few inches, but he was able to get his good shoulder right in the gut of his attacker, shoving obstacle one into the wall right in front of Mikel, blocking his cowardly escape. As soon as the other Vopura was pinned, John grabbed his head with both hands and gave a vicious twist. The Vopura fell, lifeless, to the ground and John made eye contact with Mikel. “Now, what were you saying about me answering to you?”
Mikel took a nervous gulp and glanced between John and Nicolas, who was finishing with his last guard. “Your human betrayed us.” His voice quivered with fear. “What I did was understandable.”
“I don’t understand it,” screamed John in his face. “I don’t understand what I’m supposed to do now. Explain it to me!”
Mikel held his hands out in front of him. “Think about what you’re doing! I’m not the end of this. If I die, my family will come after you. They’ll take everything from you! Your whole world will be laid to waste.”
John nodded while he reached toward the sword in his shoulder and pulled it out slowly, keeping eye contact with Mikel the whole time. “Your war is over.” In a blur, he turned that knife on Mikel and slammed it into his gut. The vampire screamed as he was pinned to the wall, but John withdrew the sword before Mikel could grab it, then inserted it once more, this time in his shoulder just above the heart, enough to nick it. “Careful,” he spat out in Mikel’s ear. “If you struggle, there’s no telling where that silver could hit.”
Mikel’s eyes widened in fear, and he abruptly stopped moving. “Take it out. Please take it out. We can talk about this. I can make a deal.” He reverted back to their native language. “I can make you a general. I can make sure you’re the one with the slaves. If you help me, you’ll never be powerless again.”
“You’re the powerless one now,” said John in English. “And seeing as how you only have a few more minutes to live, I promise you that you’ll never be in power again.”
“Wait, wait! If you help me, I can—”
There was a loud bang, and the bookshelf went flying forward in the room. John flinched as it went flying toward Tela’s unmoving body, but it stopped just in time. Dante stepped in. Immediately, John grabbed the sword and yanked it hard out of Mikel’s shoulder, causing the former leader to fall to his knees in a mixture of pain and shock.
“You’re too late. Mikel’s mine,” John warned.
Dante looked between Tela’s body and where Mikel was crumpled on the floor. “I’m not here to fight you. I’m here to help.”
John’s fist tightened on the handle. “How the hell can you help me anymore? You destroyed me!”
Dante nodded, not fighting the accusation. “I can’t argue against things done in the past. But I have to warn you. Before I killed Tela, I fed her my blood.”
Nicolas scoffed. “You have to be kidding.”
“I’m not. We have to get her out of here. There’s a very good chance she could start to transition any moment now.”
They all stood there in shock, no one moving. And then John knew what needed to be done. He lifted up the sword and brought it down over Mikel’s neck in one swift motion, the blow immediately killing the leader of the invading Vopura. “Well, don’t just stand there. Let’s get the hell out of here.”
Tela’s memory came in flashes. The flash of Dante grabbing her. The flash of him prying her mouth open. Even the burst of pain as he tightened his arm around her neck.
Tela snapped awake, gasping at the sensation of moving from dream to consciousness so quickly. Those first two seconds were so chaotic. She had no idea where she was, and she was surrounded by faces, and she had no idea where she should be.
Blinking rapidly, her brain struggled to make sense of everything. Where was she? It looked like some sort of tent. Why would she be in a tent? Before she could ask, everyone around her started talking at once.
“Tela, are you—”
“Fuck, she’s awake.”
“How are you doing? What’s the last thing you remember?”
But as she blinked past all the confusion, her eyes slowly came to focus on John, who sat right next to her. “I can’t believe you’re here. Wait, where’s here?” No one answered her. They were all just staring at her, as if she’d grown a second head or something. She looked down at her hands and everything looked okay. Her legs were under a blanket, and she wiggled her toes just to verify they were still there and attached to her body. “What’s wrong?”
John didn’t say anything. He just furrowed his brow and stared at her harder, which did nothing to make her feel better.
“Is it Dani? Did she get caught going to the wall?”
Tela started to get up, and John reached a hand out to stop her. “Dani’s fine. Travis sent a car to bring her here.”
“Here.... Where is here?”
“Just outside of Seattle.”
She took a few deep breaths as that set in. “Did you say outside Seattle?”
He nodded.
“And the wall
?”
“It’s down.”
A huge grin spread across her face, and she covered her mouth with a hand. “For real?” But as she looked up and around at the various nods of confirmation, she actually started to believe it. Holy shit. She’d done it. Her smile fell a bit. Wait. She hadn’t done anything.... “I thought Mikel burned the key?”
“We didn’t need a key,” said Travis. “We found a bulldozer.”
She wasn’t sure whether she should ask him what he meant by that or ask what he was doing here first.
But before she could ask anything, John cut in. “How are you feeling?”
“I, um, fine? I mean, I have a headache. But that vampire choked me out, so I figure that’s normal. The lights are hurting me, and everything is too loud. So like a choking hangover, I guess?”
John glanced over his shoulder at the other guys in the room. Tela didn’t know what he was saying in that glance. But all of a sudden, everyone started to file out of the tent-like structure they were in.
“What’s going on? Where the hell are we? I feel like the fact that we’re both here and alive is a great thing, but no one seems like they’re all that excited. What am I missing?”
Before John answered, he leaned forward and captured her mouth with his, giving her a fierce, passionate kiss. Suddenly the lights and sounds around her didn’t bother her anymore. All that existed was John, and that was just how she liked it.
But all too soon, John broke off the kiss. Tela wanted to capture his mouth once more but knew they had things to talk about.
“Will you go to dinner with me?” asked John abruptly.
“Um, like the last dinner we went to? Because that was terrible.”
“No. An honest dinner. One I’m not paying you for. Just you and me together.”
She couldn’t help but smile as she ran her fingers down the hard edges of his cheek. He felt different. Sexier. Was it possible for someone to feel sexier? Well, he sure as hell did. “I’d love to have dinner with you.”
“Great. Because we’ll have a lot to talk about.”
“About everything that happened while I was out?”
“Yeah. But mostly about the fact that you’re a vampire now.”
She opened her mouth, but no words came out. Well, hell.
~~~THE END~~~
Start reading Blood Bond today! Click here: https://amzn.to/2FdGgnZ
Keep reading for a sneak peek at Book 2 in the New Breed series:
Blood Bond
She belongs to him. His mind calls for her. His body craves her. And if she thinks she can get away from him, she's got a lot to learn.
Alissa Sullivan didn't ask to be sucked into this supernatural battle between vampires and their parallel world counterparts, Vopura. But when a seemingly simple government contract turns her world upside down, she finds herself right smack dab in the middle of this war and her only hope of surviving is trusting Dante, the former general of the evil Vopura army that invaded Seattle.
And when she finds herself accidentally bonded to him, Alissa has to learn how to balance a supernatural matrimony she never wanted with her obligation help to destroy all of his species.
Start reading Blood Bond today! Click here: https://amzn.to/2FdGgnZ
“A portal?”
“A portal,” confirmed Joshua Park in a serious voice she never expected to spout such crazy notions.
Alyssa looked between the men standing around her in the room and didn’t see any sign of sarcasm. Not that the mayor of Seattle, Holden Barrons, and General Paul Wesley, a five-star general, at least according to the fancy decorations on his suit, would be sarcastic.
She leaned forward and looked at the shimmery surface. It looked like water. Like a puddle in the middle of the floor. That was a good thing. At least if someone took a picture, it wouldn’t look like some otherworldly portal.
And that was her job, apparently. To make sure that the public only knew what she wanted them to know. Usually she was called in to cover up a simple affair or secret baby. Nothing like this conspiracy.
“And how many people know about this portal?” she asked, trying to sound cool and collected. Not as if her entire worldview were collapsing around her.
“Unknown,” said General Wesley.
Figured. “All right. At least the truth sounds crazier than any fiction we’re going to come up with. And what fiction do you have in mind?”
“We’d rather shoulder the blame on this than induce a mass panic. A government experiment gone wrong. In an effort to give our soldiers the advantages they’d need on the field, they went crazy and started to crave blood.”
Oh goodness. They really did need her. “We can’t say you accidentally made vampires. You made soldiers who thought they were vampires. A delusion that went too far.”
Joshua Park clapped and pointed at her. “Did you hear that? I told you this girl knows what she’s talking about.”
“So you can make up a good story,” said the general, not looking at all won over. “Until the public actually starts believing it, I’m not convinced.”
He was right. She could talk a good talk all she wanted, but she was going to have to actually prove herself here. “We’re going to have to be careful about this. Any good cover-up never looks like a cover-up. I’d play it cool with the press for another day. Keep on saying ‘No comment’ while I get some of the conspiracy theory boards fired up and then we’ll leak a video. On Monday, we can go forward with our planned story.”
“That’s it?” asked Wesley skeptically.
Alyssa snorted. “My job is to make this easy for you, but, believe me, there’s nothing easy about it. I’m going to have a few hundred accounts all supporting this theory. Besides, right now, people would much rather hate the government than some supernatural entity.”
The general snorted. “You’re smarter than I first thought,” he grumbled.
She wondered whether he’d underestimated her because she was a woman or because she was in sweatpants and sneakers. But it wasn’t as if her army escort had given her a chance to change. She’d been picked up outside the grocery store with her pint of ice cream that was surely ruined and a gossip magazine, which was now probably covered by the melting ice cream, and ushered unceremoniously into a black windowless van that had driven her right into the heart of Seattle. But they’d assured her they’d already been to her house and packed her a bag, which, shockingly, didn’t give her any comfort.
News of the Siege of Seattle had spread quickly, but very little information had been leaked to the public. Everyone had been buzzing about which terrorist organization had been responsible, but as the weeks stretched on, it became more and more apparent that none of the usual suspects had taken credit for it.
But with all the speculation going on during the twenty-four-hour news cycle, no one had thought vampires were responsible. No wonder the government had cut off internet so soon in the city. This would go down as one of the biggest cover-ups of all time.
Though she supposed no one could know that. If a cover-up was good enough, it went unnoticed. That was kind of the point.
Suddenly, the monumental task ahead of her sunk in. Holy shit, how was she going to pull this off? She was going to need a team. A whole team. Some sort of support. She was just one person and—
“We’ve arranged a house for you,” said Joshua, as though that would help her in any way.
“Why can’t I go back to my apartment?”
“Because we want you where we can keep an eye on you. You’re a civilian who we’re trusting with this. If word gets out, you’re the first one we’re going to come looking for.”
Alyssa pursed her mouth and stopped herself from saying what she really wanted to say. If it were up to her, she’d turn this job down. She didn’t need the money and she sure as hell didn’t need the hassle.
But when Joshua had met her in the car and asked her whether she wanted to be brought in on a top-clearance job, she’d impul
sively said yes. She thought there was a pregnancy or a scandal that had to be covered up. Not this. She’d give anything for a dead hooker right now.
Okay, maybe this was better than helping a murderer. But not much better.
And she was well aware why they were bringing in a civilian for this and not using their vast resources. It was because General Wesley wanted her to fail. She’d be the scapegoat and he could shrug his shoulders and say he tried his best.
She was officially being set up to fail.
She stared into the otherworldly portal. She might as well step through it now. Her world was never going to be the same.
“Would you like me to drive you to your safe house?” asked Joshua after all the other, more important men were gone. Not that Joshua wasn’t important in his own right. But they might as well be on the same level considering the giants they were dealing with.
She had to hold back a laugh at the word “safe.” She had a feeling that word didn’t mean what Joshua thought it did. “How far away is this place?”
“What does it matter?”
What a soldier. He lived his entire life on a need-to-know basis. “It matters because I’ve had to pee since you kidnapped me a few hours ago.”
“Fair enough,” he said, smartly ignoring the kidnapping dig. “The closest bathroom is down the hall and to the right.”
She raised a brow. “You’re not going to follow me?”
Joshua snorted. “This building is crawling with army. There’s nowhere you could go you’re not allowed. Besides, you never know if there are any vampires we missed.”
Her skin crawled at the notion. She liked her blood. She’d prefer it stay right where it was. “So down the hall on the right?”
“Yep.”
“I’ll be right back then.”
She made her way carefully through the basement corridor of the Sorenson Building. A building she’d never heard about before tonight. Apparently the rich and powerful used to live here. Until that portal was closed, she was betting even those rich and powerful dollars couldn’t get the building reopened.