by HELEN HARDT
“Yeah,” River scoffed. “The twin thing.”
“Your father would be the first to tell you it’s real,” my father said.
“What are they doing to him?”
“Torture,” I said softly. “And they’re making him fight, aren’t they?”
“Honestly, I don’t know,” my father said. “They never made me fight while I was here.”
“That you remember,” I said, more to myself than to the rest of them. “I’m only remembering it gradually.”
“True,” my father said. “I do have lapses in my memory from when I was here.”
“They mutilated you,” I said, clenching my teeth. The image of my father’s bare genitals was something I could never unsee.
“Actually, that’s a memory that just recently resurfaced,” he said. “No one here mutilated me. It must have been done after I died. I have no memory of it, but I’m certain I left here intact.”
“How do you know?” River asked.
“I’m not going to go into detail,” he said. “Suffice it to say I know, and that even at my age, certain things…arise when you’d rather they didn’t.”
“Then…” Rage consumed me. Decker and his gang had mutilated my father’s dead body. But why?
Why else? So that I would see it.
So that I would be consumed by rage.
Rage at her.
My mind raced as thoughts bounced around like a pinball. “If she’s trying to breed vampires, she needed you intact, so you could—”
“Oh my God,” River said. “Is she using my father as breeding stock? Making him fuck these women? He would never…”
“No, your father is not a rapist, River.” My father laid a ghostly hand on River’s arm. “Neither am I. Neither is Dante.”
“I never had sex with anyone while I was here,” I agreed. Though there had been times when I’d wished for it, when she had ground on me, a young male with virtually no experience, and I’d wanted it. Wanted her even through my hate. Damn her.
“Neither did I,” my father said. “But if she’s trying to breed vampires, she’s certainly not going to mutilate one of her prime males.”
“Those bastards.” I seethed.
“I’m not my body, Dante. I felt nothing.”
“Still. You were a person, Dad. They shouldn’t have done that to you.”
“It wasn’t me,” he said again.
“Do you think that matters? Those thugs—”
“Either they did it because they were thugs, and that’s what thugs do, or they did it at her command,” he said. “Either way, it was done to punish you, Dante. To bring your anger to the surface. Don’t let them get what they were after.”
No, they weren’t after my anger, though that was certainly a side effect. They wanted to bring the dark energy to the surface. The dark energy she, or someone else here, had somehow planted within me.
Or awakened in me.
What if the darkness had always been there? What if she’d only activated it?
Energy crackled in my veins. Erin was still in the room with her friend and Logan. I peeked through the small window in the door to the room. She was sitting down, talking to Logan.
Possessiveness rose in me, and my fangs dropped with a painful snap.
“Dante?”
My father’s voice.
“Dante?”
Then River’s.
“Cuz, come on. This is important.”
I snapped back into myself. “What?”
“My brother is in no immediate danger, as I said,” my father said. “Abe Lincoln is.”
“Why?”
As soon as the word left my lips, I knew.
I used to dream of severed human heads.
The dream that wasn’t a dream after all.
Abe Lincoln was here to feed the winner from the fighting pit.
Chapter Two
Erin
“I remember everything when I’m here,” Logan said.
“Do you remember talking to River and me?”
“River?”
“Dante’s—my boyfriend’s—cousin. He was just in here.”
“Bits and pieces. I was in a car?”
I nodded. “River glamoured you to try to get you to tell us where you’d been when you disappeared, but you resisted the glamour in some way. You came out of it and then went back in.”
“Yeah. Bits and pieces. Damn Dr. Bonneville.”
“Did you ever work at the free clinic over on Gravier Street?”
“No. Wait. Yeah. Once. No, twice.”
“One of the women who disappeared and then returned mentioned you. Her name is Bella Lundy. You took blood from her.”
“I might have.” He scratched his head. “It’s all a blur from when I’m back there, above ground. It seems like this is my life now.”
“But you don’t remember all of this when you’re up there?”
“No. It’s the same here. Like right now, I can’t recall everything from up there. What the hell has she done to me?”
“Are you a competent surgeon, Logan?”
“Yeah. I did a surgical residency before my ER residency.”
“This is starting to make sense now. Bonneville isn’t a surgeon. She needs you for the complicated stuff.”
“She’s a bitch.”
“We already knew that,” I agreed. “She took my blood without my consent. She admitted it.”
“She forced you to donate blood? Are you B positive?”
“Yeah, but that’s not what I mean. She fed from me, Logan.”
“Fucking bitch.”
I inhaled. “Stating the obvious again. Is there anything else you can tell me? Is there a baby here? A girl?”
He nodded. “I operated on her. Nothing serious. A double inguinal hernia.”
Relief swept through me. “So she’s okay?”
“I haven’t seen her in the last day or two, but yeah, I think she’s okay.”
“Is her mother here? Is her name Patty?”
“Yeah.”
“I treated her at the ER. She and I bonded. I need to know she’s okay.”
“The people here in the hospital aren’t in danger, Erin. She’s doing some kind of research.”
“First, they are in danger. They’ve been taken from their lives against their will. That’s not right, and it’s dangerous in itself. As for her research, we already figured that out. She’s trying to produce vampire children by mating humans and vampires. B positive blood seems to be the key.”
“Not just B positive blood, but B positive women,” he agreed.
“Human women, yeah. According to Dante, vampire women are rare, so it’s easier for her to get vampire sperm than vampire eggs. Plus a vampire male can reproduce pretty much all the time while a vampire woman is only fertile once every couple of years.”
“There’s a vampire woman here.”
“I know. She’s Dante’s sister.”
She’s already pregnant, I added silently. By my brother.
I had to be careful. I wasn’t sure how much Logan knew. Clearly, Bonneville was using him as a surgeon and attending physician for her captives. At least I knew he was a good doctor.
“What is it about B positive blood?” I asked. “And human women? She let two of the women go. Why?”
“I don’t know, Erin. I guess they weren’t useful.”
“And why Lucy? She’s a—” I clamped my mouth shut. Did Logan know?
“She’s a what?”
“A…wolf shifter. She’s a wolf shifter.”
“For God’s sake.” Logan removed his glasses and began frantically cleaning them with a cloth from his coat pocket. “Vampires? And now shifters? How much am I supposed to take?”
You have no idea. “I met your great-grandfather.”
“That’s interesting, Erin, since he’s dead.”
“It wouldn’t be outside the realm of possibility,” I said, “but you’re wrong. He’s alive. He’s a
hundred and one years old.”
He shook his head. “Impossible.”
“Is your dad’s name Hector Crown?”
“Uh…yeah.”
“And your grandfather’s name was James?”
He nodded. “I never knew him. He and my dad didn’t speak, and the old guy’s dead now, which means his father can’t possibly be alive.”
“Parents sometimes outlive children, Logan.”
“Rarely.”
“It’s less rare when the parent in question is a vampire.”
“Oh, for God’s—” He stood. “I need to check on Lucy.”
I nodded and stood to assist. We checked her vitals. She was resting comfortably.
“She looks normal,” he said.
“She looks like she’s been pummeled,” I said.
“No. I mean she looks like a normal woman. Not a werewolf.”
“Apparently they prefer the term shifter.”
“Apparently my life isn’t anything like what it seems.”
“Trust me. I hear you. But surely you figured out…”
“Yeah. At least I know when I’m down here. Then, like I said, it’s all hazy and I think it’s mostly a dream.”
“You’re under a glamour to forget. Simple.”
“Erin, nothing about any of this is simple.”
I couldn’t help a chuckle. He had that right. “Do you know what happened to Lucy? Who did this to her?”
He shook his head. “I’m only here to treat patients. I think.” He cocked his head. “Sometimes…”
“What?”
“Sometimes I think I might do more here. I have dreams about this monstrous thing.”
“What kind of monstrous thing?”
“I don’t know. But it’s so clear, clearer than a normal dream, you know?”
“Can you describe it?”
“It’s human. Maybe. But it’s big and mean, and it hates me.”
“Why would it hate you?”
He swallowed. “Because, in the dream, I torture it. Big time.”
Chapter Three
Dante
“I know what they have planned for Abe Lincoln,” I said.
“So do I,” my father said. “It’s another memory that surfaced recently in my consciousness.”
I used to dream of severed human heads. How could I say this in front of River and Jay? Especially River, who’d never tasted a drop of human blood?
“Don’t keep us in suspense,” River said. “What is it?”
Endorphins flowed through my body, making me float on clouds even though I was tied down to a table. As I floated, I lapped up the red gold that dripped down on me. It gave me sustenance. It gave me strength.
It gave me the will to go forward.
That was her mistake.
She killed to feed me, but in so doing, she fed not only my body but also my soul.
My soul gained no sustenance from her blood. But these humans who had been sacrificed to feed me… Without knowing, they strengthened me. Preserved my will.
Their deaths were not in vain.
I would see to that.
I would escape.
And I would end this.
Once and for all.
I cleared my throat. “The thugs. They prey upon the homeless. Bea must know this. Why did she never tell us?”
“Don’t assume she knows,” my father said.
“How could she not? These are her people.”
“Bea doesn’t know every homeless person in New Orleans. Perhaps they’re not all homeless. They could be patients from hospitals who were freshly dead. Anyone who couldn’t or wouldn’t be traced.”
“Uncle Jules,” River said, “what the hell are you talking about?”
“Yeah,” Jay agreed. “I don’t like where this is going.”
“Dante?” my father said. “Should you tell them, or should I?”
My father was dead. A ghost. Still very much here, but not bound with the nausea that was pouring through me at the thought of what I—apparently both of us—had done.
No wonder she’d made sure we didn’t remember at first. Clearly, I had needed sustenance her blood hadn’t given me.
Or had it simply been a reward?
No, my father said he hadn’t fought.
It was sustenance we required. Vampire blood didn’t have all the nutrients we needed. We required human or animal blood.
“She has to feed the vampires she keeps here.”
“You said you drank her blood,” River said.
“I did. She forced me to. But I also…” I swallowed down the bile inching up my throat. “I was forced…” No, that wasn’t true. I could have shut my mouth, refused the blood. “I drank from freshly dead humans.”
Jay turned around and heaved, though nothing came up.
River, already pale, simply stared at me.
“I was tied down,” I said. “Their blood dripped onto me. I should have—”
“Don’t do this to yourself, Dante,” my father said. “You had a physiological need. I did as well.”
“You tasted fresh blood before Erin,” River said.
I nodded. I had nothing more to say.
“You didn’t kill anyone?” Jay asked.
“No!” My fangs dropped in anger. “I didn’t. I know that now. I absolutely know that.”
I felt no better, though. Even though I hadn’t killed, I still drank from the disembodied heads hanging over me.
“Do not blame him,” my father said. “You don’t know what it was like to be here. Right now, the important thing is to find Abe Lincoln and the others who were brought here as sustenance and free them.”
River cleared his throat. “Right. You’re right, Uncle Jules.”
Jay stood weakly, pale and sick-looking.
“You going to make it, partner?” River asked.
Jay nodded unconvincingly.
I tamped down the anger that threatened to rise. This was Erin’s brother. He might be one-quarter vampire, but he didn’t understand the lure of blood. Fresh blood.
“What do we do, Uncle Jules?” River asked.
“Abe is in a shielded area that Bea was able to get me access to.”
“Who else has been in and out, if anyone?” River asked.
“Just the thugs, as you call them. The Claiborne vampires. They can obviously pass through the shield.”
“Wait a minute.” I reached into my pocket and pulled out the lapel pin with the vampire fleur-de-lis etched on it. “Were they wearing this when they entered?”
“I think so,” my father said. “They all have them.”
“I wonder…”
“We only have one,” Jay said.
I cleared my throat. “You and I will go, Dad. Riv, you and Jay stay here with Erin.”
“Are you kidding?” River shook his head.
“Dante has been here,” my father said. “His memories are returning. Soon he’ll know his way around this place. You won’t. Besides, we don’t yet know if the pin will work.”
But I knew. The small gold trinket burned like a hot coal against my flesh. It was telling me something. Something I already knew. “There’s a reason Decker and the others were so freaked when they couldn’t find this pin at Em’s place. They didn’t want any of us getting our hands on it.”
Look to your left.
Someone had guided me first to the small vodka bottle and then to the lapel pin. Had it been her, as I originally thought?
Or had it been me?
The darkness inside me. The darkness that had helped me find my way back here once I’d let it in. Once I’d proved I didn’t fear it or what it might do to me.
Why would she care if one of the thugs lost their little lapel trinket?
Because it had another use—one I would take advantage of now.
“I’m going in,” I said. “It has to be me. My father and I are the only ones who’ve been here. Between the two of us, we can find our way.”
“But—”
“He’s right, River,” my father interrupted. “Plus, he has those strange powers that you don’t. This is how it has to be.”
“What exactly do you propose we tell my sister when she comes out of Lucy’s hospital room and finds you gone?” Jay arched his eyebrows.
“You tell her the truth,” I said. “That my father and I have gone to rescue Abe Lincoln. She knows he’s in danger. She was with me when Bea told us he was going to be drained.”
Jay nodded, sighing. “All right. She won’t be happy.”
“She’ll be happy about Abe,” I said. “She has a soft spot for him. He was her patient at the hospital a couple times. Plus she won’t want any more innocent blood shed. But don’t…” I couldn’t finish.
“Don’t what?” Jay asked.
“Don’t tell her I drank fresh human blood. Please. That is for me, and only me, to tell her.”
“But—”
“Don’t!” I said through clenched teeth. “Just don’t.” I turned to my father’s ghost. “Let’s go, Dad.”
Chapter Four
Erin
Logan’s face was paler than I’d ever seen it. He was naturally fair, like I was, but right now he was white. Like a ghost.
But not like a ghost after all. I knew a ghost. Julian looked like a person when he appeared. He was not white. He was Dante’s father, a vampire, so he was fair, but not white like a ghost.
Perception is reality. That fact became more ingrained in my head the further I delved into this mystery.
Logan had tortured something monstrous. In a dream. Or maybe not in a dream. I swallowed the nausea that threatened to come barreling up my throat.
He was suffering right now. He’d been unable to save Lucy due to the defibrillator malfunction, and now he was convinced he’d tortured some monstrous creature.
Lucy was still resting comfortably, so I focused on Logan.
“It could just be a dream, Logan.”
He shook his head. “No. It’s like all the others. A dream, until I’m back, and then I remember.”
“You’re here now, though, and you said it still seems like a dream.”