by HELEN HARDT
For a moment, I saw light.
But only for a moment.
Perhaps I forced the light away to make room for my old friend, the darkness. Or perhaps the light was only a brief side effect of ingesting her blood.
Each time, though, something in me changed. It happened gradually, but it happened. I felt it in the marrow of my bones. I felt it in the core of my brain.
And for one horrid second after each feeding, I found myself smiling.
I awoke with a start, jarred.
Shit! How could I have fallen asleep?
But it had given me a memory. I’d tried to force a memory but had no luck. When I finally drifted off to sleep, one came to me. I ran through it in my mind. What was its purpose? I’d always felt sickened after taking her blood, but I’d assumed it was psychological. Now, with this memory, and after reading the deciphered paragraph in the Texts, I knew it was indeed physical.
She always told me she’d found a way to combat the negative side effects of ingesting vampire blood. Had that been a lie? Most likely. I did change. The darkness had become part of me. She’d expected it to take me over.
It almost had, until I accepted it, embraced it, and now worked to control it.
I would be successful.
I would take her down.
For myself. For Erin. For all.
I turned to kiss Erin’s head.
She wasn’t there.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Erin
“Let me go!” I pulled against the straps holding me down.
“I can’t, Erin,” Dr. Bonneville said. “You’ve cost me all the women I’ve collected. They’re all gone, save for Patty. I’m afraid you’re all I have left.”
Dante truly was powerful. Bonneville had been running this operation for months now, and Dante had freed the women in a couple of days. Inside I smiled. Not on the outside. I would not give her the satisfaction.
“You know Dante will come for me.”
“Indeed. In fact, I’m counting on it.”
Damn! Don’t come, Dante. Please, don’t come. Could he hear my silent plea? He had so much power. I had to believe he could hear me.
It didn’t matter, though. He would come for me anyway. He’d walk right into her trap.
“Why are you doing this? You’re a physician, for God’s sake. You took an oath to do no harm!”
“I’m not doing any harm, Erin.”
“You are! You’re holding people here against their will. Performing experiments.”
“All for the greater good, I assure you.”
“How is any of this for the greater good? So you increase the vampire population. It will take centuries for any of that to have any effect at all. And even then, humans will still outnumber you.”
“Look at this from my perspective, Erin. Would you let your own species die out?”
An anvil hit me in the gut. Nothing like getting right to the point. “I wouldn’t kidnap innocent people for any reason.”
“Sorry, Erin. You didn’t answer the question. Would you let your people become extinct if you could prevent it?”
“Not if it meant—”
“Yes or no!”
“This isn’t a courtroom drama. Nothing is absolute, Zabrina.” The first time I’d used her given name. After what she’d done, I no longer felt comfortable calling her Doctor. “There’s still the issue of right and wrong.”
My use of her first name didn’t seem to faze her. “There’s also the issue of the end justifies the means.”
“Not if it infringes on people’s rights.”
“Rights? Don’t my people have the right to survive, Erin?”
“Don’t mine?”
“I’ve taken no lives. None. I’m a physician for God’s sake.”
“Maybe not personally. But you’ve tortured innocent people. You held Dante here for ten years, forced him to—”
“Everything Dante has been through has made him who he is today. The man you love.”
Wow. How did I argue with that? Easy. Put me in fucking chains and I’d argue with anything. I opened my mouth to speak, but she cut me off.
“I could glamour you, you know. I don’t have to listen to your petty whining.”
“Go ahead. You glamoured me all those times you fed on me without my permission.”
“A woman’s got to eat. Why not choose the sweetest fruit?”
I seethed, rage eking out of every pore in my body. Calm down, Erin. Get some information. Get anything.
“What is VO positive?”
“None of your business.”
“Why not? You can always glamour me into forgetting it.”
“You won’t understand.”
“Why wouldn’t I? I’m a nurse. A medical professional. And whatever this VO thing is, apparently I have it.”
“Fine.” She put down the file she was perusing and sat down in the chair next to the bed I was strapped to. “VO is—”
“Short for vampyr omega?”
“Where did you hear that?”
“A little bird told me.”
“Fuck off, Erin.” She stood. “I have work to do.”
Shit! She’d been about to tell me. I could handle this. She was a narcissist through and through. All I had to do was bring that out. “It’s nothing, isn’t it? Something you made up so you could indulge in your psychopathic fantasies about kidnapping innocent women. Feeding off a potent male vampire. You’re nothing!”
Yup. That did it.
She turned back to me with a snarl, baring her teeth. “You dare insult me? My work is legendary. It will change the world!”
“How? You’re nothing but one vampire woman. How can you change the world?”
“VO, Erin, is a marker that occurs on the twenty-third chromosome in a small minority of B positive women who have vampire ancestry.”
“I’ve figured out the rest, Zabrina, despite the tiny little mind you think I have. You wanted me pregnant by Dante. You think we’ll have a vampire baby.”
“You will have a vampire baby if you get pregnant by a vampire male, but that’s not why I wanted you pregnant by Dante.”
“Why then?”
She snarled. “Dante is very special.”
“One thing we can agree on,” I said.
“The father of Patty’s baby is a vampire,” she said.
“I know. His name is Liam.”
She chuckled. “That’s her boyfriend’s name. He’s not the father, however.”
Rage surged into me again. “You had her raped?”
“I had nothing to do with anything! I don’t control what another vampire does any more than you do.”
“You got that right. You thought you could control Dante, but he’s stronger than you ever imagined, isn’t he?”
She bared her fangs to me once more, but I was done fearing this woman.
“Dante will come to see the truth. So will the others. Even the women. Even Patty.”
“Patty doesn’t know, does she? She thinks her boyfriend is the father. Whoever raped her glamoured her into forgetting it. No wonder Liam refused to marry her. He must doubt that he’s the father.”
“Or he’s just an asshole,” Bonneville said.
I couldn’t fault her observation. Still, there was a vampire rapist on the loose. “Is it one of your Claiborne drug-runner thugs?”
“I don’t know who it was. Believe it or not, this happened totally by accident. I already told you I had nothing to do with it. It was as big a surprise to me as anyone else when she gave birth to a vampire baby, but it proved my theory. I tested her blood, and Patty has the VO marker. Therefore, her baby is vampire. A vampire female, no less. Very rare.”
Did Bonneville not know yet that the baby was gone? I wasn’t about to tell her. “You’re keeping all the VO women who don’t have any genetic abnormalities. I saw the records, Zabrina.”
“My work is more important than the liberty of a few women.”
�
�More important for whom?”
“For everyone.”
“Really. For me?”
“Especially for you. Your children will be fathered by Dante, as fine a vampire specimen as was ever created. Your children are the future of my species. You’ll be the mother of greatness.”
“Not if you force me to get pregnant and give birth down here. No child of mine will be born imprisoned.”
“You won’t have that choice, I’m afraid.”
And then I knew.
This wasn’t about saving her species. If that were her only goal, she could accomplish it above ground. She could use her glamour and inseminate VO positive women with vampire semen. She had a whole hospital at her disposal.
Saving her species was only the beginning.
With us down here, she could monitor everything. Bring things to whatever conclusion she wanted. She could force breeding. Harvest our eggs and implant embryos fertilized by vampire seed into surrogates.
“You’re lying to me,” I said.
“About what?”
“Vampyr omega. There’s a reason you used that name for the marker. You’re a supremacist, aren’t you? Just like Levi Gaston.”
“He was a stupid old fool.”
“Maybe, but you share his philosophy. You think vampires are the superior species.”
“We are superior.”
“If you are, wouldn’t evolution have proved that? Wouldn’t your numbers increase instead of decrease?”
Zabrina approached me, growling, and slapped me hard in the face. I cringed as my cheek numbed for an instant and then burning pain spread over my skin.
“Enough!” she yelled. “That’s enough! You have no idea what we’re capable of. No idea what I am capable of. No idea who I truly am!”
My body buzzed with her glamour—yes, I remembered it now—and then my mind went blank.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Dante
Rage tumbled through me. At her, for taking Erin, but mostly at myself.
I’d gotten cocky. I might have power, but I was still a mortal being—one who required sleep. I’d let myself be weak for a moment, and she had swooped in and taken the one person who meant more to me than my own life.
She’d taken the person who was my life. My everything. My blood. My body. My soul.
“Dante.” My father appeared.
“Where is she, Dad? Where?”
“She’s in a hospital room, strapped to a bed.”
“No!” I roared. “Why didn’t you stop her!”
“I was searching for River. I’m sorry, son.”
“Where is he?”
“I haven’t found him yet. A new shield has been erected around certain parts of this compound. I’m going to have to go above ground and get Bea to allow me through.”
I fingered the vampire fleur-de-lis pin on my shirt. “Will I be able to get through?”
“I don’t know. Most likely, unless she doesn’t allow her thugs to get through.”
It was a miracle she hadn’t noticed the pin yet. I quickly unpinned it from inside the collar of my shirt and pinned it to my boxer briefs, where it would be less likely to be discovered.
“Dad, please understand. My first priority has to be Erin.”
“I do understand, son. I can take you to her. She’s not shielded, but she is tied down.”
“Not for long. Show— Wait!”
Erin’s pack lay on the floor where I’d tossed it, her book peeking out from the unzipped top. Whoever came and took Erin while we were sleeping either hadn’t noticed it or didn’t think anything of it. Which meant it probably hadn’t been Bonneville. Who else could have gotten in here without my knowing?
The answer?
No one.
No fucking one.
I would have heard anyone who tried to take my love away from me, and no one could stop me with a glamour.
“Dad? Something doesn’t add up here. How could Erin—”
“There’s only one answer. She left voluntarily.”
“But why?”
“I don’t know. Maybe it wasn’t voluntary. Maybe she got up and went to the bathroom or something.”
“But I would have heard her.”
“Not if what she was doing was normal. You were asleep.”
“I’m also down here. I’m on high alert.”
“True. I admit it’s a riddle.”
“One I’m going to solve. I was sure, Dad, that I’d conquered the power that bitch had over me. What if I haven’t? What if she can still find a way to control me?”
“I think that’s why she took Erin, son. She knows she can control you if Erin is at stake.”
“But it still doesn’t answer how she got Erin in the first place. She wouldn’t go voluntarily.”
“Then somehow she left this room in a normal manner, and then she was taken.”
“Or…” I rubbed at a tender spot on my neck. “Damn.”
“What is it? Let me see.” In an instant, my father was in front of me. “That explains it. You were injected with something.”
“How long was I asleep?”
“I don’t know. Several hours.”
“Time doesn’t have any meaning down here.”
“Time doesn’t actually have any meaning at all, Dante.”
“You know what I mean, Dad. I get that you’re noncorporeal and time is all relative and all that bullshit. But I’m a physical body that ages with the passage of time. Time has meaning for me, okay? But down here, there’s no telling what time it is.” I huffed. “What could she have given me that would put me out for a few hours? And why don’t I remember her coming in to do it? I should have heard her.”
“A lot of drugs give you retroactive amnesia for a few minutes. You probably wouldn’t remember the few seconds it took her to come in and inject you.”
“But she’d have to incapacitate me before she could even come close enough to inject me. My reflexes—”
“Maybe aren’t as strong as hers. There’s much we don’t know about her. Erin hasn’t been able to find her anywhere online. She’s kept her tracks well covered over the years.”
“That bitch! No, it wasn’t enough for her to violate me for ten years. Now she drugs me? That was the last time, Dad. I swear to God!” I curled my hands into fists and let my teeth lengthen and sharpen to their most lethal points. She would not get away with this. I would shut this fucking place down. “Take me to Erin,” I said in a voice I hardly recognized.
“Easy, son. If you want to be any help to Erin, you need control.”
“Fuck control.”
“Dante—”
“I said ‘fuck control.’”
My father disappeared.
I didn’t care. I was alone in this now. No Erin. No River. No Dad. No Uncle Brae. She’d taken everything from me.
Everything.
And now I’d make her fucking pay.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Erin
Darkness shrouded me. I couldn’t see. Couldn’t make my eyes adjust.
Tied down. Still tied down.
“Dante!” I screamed. “Dante! Help me!”
I pulled against the bindings. I lay on my back, my wrists and ankles bound. This was no hospital bed, as I’d been in earlier. This was…
This was…
Oh, God. This was where Dante had been kept. Perhaps even the same room.
“I can’t see!” I cried. “Dante!”
The door opened, letting in just a sliver of light, but not enough for me to see anything except a dark figure.
“Stay away from me! Dante! Help!”
“He can’t hear you.” A male voice.
“Who are you? You leave me the fuck alone!”
“I do what I’m told.”
I squinted but still couldn’t see. How was it so dark that my eyes couldn’t adjust?
He released my wrists and pulled me into a sitting position. “It’s time for your meal.”
“Doesn’t matter. You’ll eat.” He wheeled a table over and placed it in front of me.
I inhaled. Beef, maybe? Or pork? Without the ability to see, I couldn’t be sure. Funny how the senses were all connected. Didn’t matter. I wasn’t eating. With a grand gesture, I tossed the tray to the floor.
The man chuckled. “You think you’re the first to do that? You get to go hungry now and enjoy the stench of rotting food until someone decides to clean it up. That someone won’t be me, by the way.”
“Fuck you.”
He came close to me, our faces inches apart, and finally I saw something. The blue of his eyes was so light it seemed to glow. Then he opened his mouth.
No fangs.
This man was human. He wouldn’t steal my blood, but he could still inflict a lot of harm.
“Why are you doing this? What did she do to you to make you do this?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, little one. I was told to feed you.”
“Who told you?”
He furrowed his brow. “No one’s asked me that before.”
“Who?” I said again.
“I…don’t know.”
“How long have you been here?”
“I…don’t know.”
“I can get you out of here.”
He guffawed. “Now that’s funny. You’re tied up at the moment, as far as I can tell.”
“If you untie my legs, I can get you out of here. I swear it. All I need is a knife.”
“Right. I give you a knife, and you carve out my heart.”
“I won’t say it’s not tempting, but I won’t. I swear it. I’m a nurse. I don’t harm people. Get me the knife, I just need to…” God, how to say this?
I need to cut myself open so my vampire boyfriend will smell my blood and come to me.
Oh, what the fuck?
“I need to cut myself open so my vampire boyfriend will smell my blood and come to me.”
“You’re crazy. I’m done here.” He pushed me down and bound my wrists once more.
“No! Help me! I can get you out—”