by HELEN HARDT
“What’s a shame?”
“That he’s not a killer.”
“What the hell are you saying, Logan?”
“I’m tired, Erin. So damned tired. It’s like I don’t sleep anymore. I have these three distinct lives, and I’m no longer in control. Death might be a better alternative.”
“Stop saying that! Death is never a better alternative. Humanity needs you, Logan. Now more than ever. You’re a good doctor. You just need some psychiatric help. An accurate diagnosis and the right meds and therapy. And you need to get the hell out of here.”
“I’m not sure any of that is in the cards for me.”
“If you help me, I swear I will help you. Dante is in control here, not Zabrina. I’m sure of it.”
“Then why isn’t he—” Logan stopped with a gasp.
I turned at the cracking sound of metal hinges breaking. The door to my dank cell lay on the floor, the empty doorframe filled with Dante’s magnificent form. His eyes glowed, the amber rings around his irises burning hot.
I glanced toward Logan. He cowered.
“Release her,” Dante growled.
“I… I can’t.” Logan stepped backward until his back hit the wall.
“Did you do this?”
“He’s only here to examine me, Dante. It was Zabrina who had me imprisoned here.”
Dante stalked forward, dropping a pack on the ground, and with brute strength tore the bindings from my feet. He regarded me, zeroing in on the mark on my leg where Bonneville had injected me with hormones. He inhaled. “Why is your scent different? It’s…synthetic. I don’t like it.”
“Hormones. She gave me hormones so I’d release more eggs. She’s preparing to harvest my ova because she no longer has the other VO positive women.”
Dante didn’t seem to be listening. Instead he stared at Logan. “Get. The fuck. Out.”
“Dante, please. We need to help him. She’s controlling him, making him—”
“I said get out!”
Logan lunged toward the door.
“Dante! I told him—”
“Quiet! You called me with your blood. You know what that means.”
I did. And I was ready to take whatever he gave me…although we no longer had a door.
Dante didn’t seem bothered in the least. “Where are your leggings?”
“I… I don’t know. My legs were bare when I woke up here.”
“Damn it!” He spread my legs and inhaled. Then he punctured the inside of my right thigh.
The sharp pain quickly morphed into pleasure as he drew blood from my femoral artery. My arousal was already thick in the air, but Dante was right.
It smelled different.
I smelled different.
Not bad, but different.
When he finished his feeding and licked my wounds closed, he met my gaze. His eyes were still on fire.
“Take off your panties.”
“Dante, we don’t have a door…”
“Don’t care. Take them off now, or I’ll rip them right off you.”
I couldn’t let him do that. I didn’t know where my pack was with my change of underwear. Damn! The book. I’d left the book in my pack.
I quickly wriggled out of my panties, and within seconds, Dante bent me over the table and was inside me, thrusting, thrusting, thrusting.
Taking what I’d offered when I called him to me with my blood.
“Mine,” he grunted. “Mine. Mine. Mine.”
“Yes, always yours.”
I relished the fullness as he pumped into me, and my skin tingled as the climax built. I resisted the urge to cry out as long as I could, but when he pushed into me, nudging my clit against the hardness of the table where I’d been bound, I could no longer hold back.
“Dante! Yes!”
The orgasm shattered me into tiny pieces—each one feeling the intensity of the climax—making it like thousands of releases at once. Shining stars surrounded me, pulsating in time with the contractions gyrating my whole body. The soft melodic jazz wafted around us, enveloping us in a musical bubble.
Still Dante thrust, taking, taking, taking. And I burst into climax once more.
This time he released as well, and so in tune was I with him, that I felt every pulse as he pumped his seed into me.
We stayed joined for a timeless moment, until Dante finally pulled out and released me.
“Erin,” he said gruffly.
“I’m okay.”
“I know. I’m sorry.”
I turned to face him. His eyes held such torment, I nearly wept. “For what?”
“I’m sorry I didn’t come for you sooner.”
“It’s all right. You came. You always come.”
“I shouldn’t have let the bitch waylay me. But…”
“What?”
“She said she’d poisoned you, and that if I didn’t go back into the fighting pit, she wouldn’t administer the antidote.”
“I don’t remember. She gave me a shot. She said it was hormones.”
“It was. I smell them. Are they supposed to make you ovulate? You’re not fertile.”
“Yeah, but they wouldn’t act this quickly, so we’re good.”
“Did she inject you with something else?”
“Not that I recall, but she could have glamoured me.”
“She could easily have been lying to me, Erin, but I couldn’t take the chance. I’m sorry.”
“For saving my life? Why would you be sorry?”
“Because you were calling to me. Your blood. This is all my fault.”
“How exactly is it your fault?”
He pulled a zippered plastic bag out of his pocket. He fingered the fine dust inside. “My father’s ashes.” He touched his fingers to my forehead. “I should have done this before, and I’m sorry.”
“Dante—”
“There’s no excuse, Erin. I shielded Abe Lincoln, all the women, Lucy and the baby, Jay, and Emilia. Why didn’t I think to shield you?”
Chapter Six
Dante
Guilt gnawed at me.
Erin.
The most important person in my life, and I hadn’t shielded her.
Why?
How could I be so thoughtless?
“Dante, it’s okay.”
No. It wasn’t okay. It wasn’t even close to okay. It was so far from okay.
“I love you, Erin.”
“I know that. I love you too.”
“You should have been my first thought. My first—”
“I am. Just as you’re mine. It’s normal to take the things we love for granted every once in a while.”
I shook my head with a harrumph. “This goes so far beyond taking you for granted.”
She smiled. God, she was so beautiful. “Maybe you subconsciously wanted me down here with you.”
“That’s crazy.”
“Is it? If what your grandfather told us about the blood bond is true, you need me and I need you. If we’re separated, we both die.”
Hmm. Maybe not so crazy after all. But… “Still, I should have shielded you. That will keep Bonneville away from you. Any vampire who intends to harm you. That’s what my dad said.”
“Any vampire? But not any human?”
“Hell, I don’t know. My dad said his ashes are a powerful shield, but that the real power comes from me. I am the shield.”
She touched her forehead. “Well, you’ve shielded me now, so we should be good.”
I sighed. Would we ever be “good” again? I wasn’t so sure.
Then—
“Oh, shit!”
Erin touched my cheek, the warmth in her fingers almost singeing me. I inhaled. She was still the best scent in the universe, but those synthetic hormones. I couldn’t wait for her body to metabolize them. They didn’t smell right.
“What?” she asked.
“I left River in the pit. With my uncle.”
“You found your uncle?”
I nodded. “She threw him in
the pit with Riv and me, said it was going to be two against one.”
“And they’re still there now?”
“I assume so. I…came when you called.” I shook my head. “You don’t understand, Erin. When your blood calls me, everything else ceases to exist. Only one thing pervades my mind. You. Getting to you.”
“You left them in the pit? To fight?”
“They aren’t going to fight. Braedon came to his senses. She’s got him jacked up on steroids or something. I hardly recognized him. But he won’t harm his son. I made sure of that.”
“How?”
“I…attacked River myself.”
“You what?”
“Try to understand. It was the only way. I had to find out if Bonneville was willing to sacrifice River. She’s not. I was also hoping to draw Braedon’s true personality out. I did.”
She sighed. “This is all so screwed up.”
“No truer words. Oh!” I dug into her pack, pulled out her book, and handed it to her.
“Thank God! I was afraid it might have fallen into the wrong hands.”
“It was on top of your pack when I woke up. I grabbed everything.”
She fondled the soft leather cover of the book. “What other secrets do you hold?” she asked softly.
And the book opened.
Chapter Seven
Erin
The page about vampire blood. I reread the paragraph about female vampire blood to Dante.
“The blood of a female vampire is a powerful philter. When ingested by a male, it increases muscle mass, strength, and accuracy. All senses become more enhanced, and additional powers emerge. However, it should be used only in the direst circumstances, as the negative side effects outweigh the positive. The male fed on female vampire blood will eventually undergo a metamorphosis—a profound change in form, psyche, and temperament that will eventually end in an inevitable painful death.
“The blood of the female vampire, however, pales in comparison to the much more potent blood of the male, especially that from a young vampire on the waning moon of maturity.”
Then, right before my eyes, the rest of the paragraph came into focus. I read aloud.
“Male vampire blood has unique properties not present in blood from a female vampire. While it will cause changes in psyche and temperament, the effect won’t be as pronounced as that from female blood. Its most profound effect, though, is prolonging the aging process. Any vampire who ingests male vampire blood will preserve his youth and vitality for as long as the ingestion continues. He will appear ageless, and indeed will never succumb to normal illness or injury. Any injury, even one seemingly fatal, will heal.”
Dante stared at me, his eyes full of introspection. “That means…”
“That means Zabrina could be centuries old. Maybe even older. This must be where the myth that vampires are forever young came from. Maybe there is fact behind the myth.”
“We were taught that we ourselves perpetuated the myths to stay under the radar.”
“Vampires probably did, but Dante, myths often have their basis in truth.”
He appeared thoughtful for a moment. Then, “Does it say anything else?”
The first sentence of the next paragraph then came into focus.
“Heed the warning, though. Male vampire blood has one major drawback, one that can never be reversed.”
“Keep going,” Dante said. “What’s the drawback?”
I shook my head. “The rest is illegible.”
“Are you kidding me?” He grabbed the book and scanned the page. “For fuck’s sake.”
“She has an Achilles’ heel,” I said.
“But we don’t know what it is, so what good does that do us?” Dante raised the book above his head, about to throw it harshly on the ground, when he met my gaze. “Sorry.” He handed it back to me.
“It’s okay. It’s frustrating. More than frustrating.” I ran my fingers over the smooth page of the book, and then something hit me. “Man. Oh, man.”
“What is it?”
“She’s such a narcissistic bitch!”
“Well, yeah.”
“I mean a real narcissist. Someone suffering from narcissistic personality disorder. She’s so sure she’ll never be caught, that she drops hints. She did it when she asked me to do that research, remember?”
“Yeah. What are you getting at?”
“The fingerprints on the little vodka bottle—the ones from a dead woman? They’re hers. They’re Bonneville’s.”
He shook his head. “Fucking bitch.”
“She was daring us, Dante. Daring us to figure this out, yet never thinking that we would. She considers herself above everyone else. A true narcissist.”
“She’s pretty smart, if she figured out that drinking my blood would extend her life, basically make her invulnerable. Maybe she’s trying to increase the population with the VO positive women and then make us all invulnerable.”
“Maybe. We don’t know if she’s even read the Texts. She might have figured all of this out on her own, and if she did, she might not know of the bad effect.”
“What does that matter?” he said. “We don’t know it either. That damned book!”
“The book must not think we need to know it yet.”
“That’s just ridiculous. Of course we need to know it. We need to stop her.”
“Do we really need to know? We’ve all but stopped her, Dante. We freed all the women she was holding.”
“Not all the women. Patty’s still here. And you, Erin. You’re still here.”
“I’m here only because you’re here. You’ve shielded me, and I could leave if I wanted to. But I don’t want to. You and I need each other.”
“Still, we need to stop her, Erin. We’ve freed everyone. What’s to stop her from going above ground and finding more vampire descendants who are VO positive?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know how rare it actually is.”
“She’s found several right here in New Orleans. Surely there are more.”
“Maybe,” I said. “Maybe not. This is a new discovery for her, though. I’m pretty sure.”
“How are you sure?”
“Because if it weren’t, we’d already have seen human women having vampire babies. Your existence would have been outed.”
“Maybe,” he said. “And maybe not.”
“Why do you say that?”
“The council.” He raked his fingers through his hair. “The council monitors all vampire activity, which means…”
“They know? You think they know?”
“Damn! I don’t know. Bill has been so weird since I returned. And she let me go, Erin. She let me go right when she started bringing women down here. There has to be some connection.”
“Yeah, I don’t understand that either,” I said. “Right when she finds the women, she lets her male vampire go.”
“Except she still had my father and uncle at that point.”
“But they’re older. You’re in the prime of life. A perfect male to father new vampire children.”
“Maybe not. Maybe my father and uncle are the true perfect specimens. Being twins and all. That’s really rare for us.”
“So you’ve said.” I scratched my head. “We’ll figure this out, Dante. Trust me. She’ll continue to drop clues, thinking we’re too stupid to see what she’s up to. It’s textbook.”
“Erin, maybe this is the part of the Texts that Bill read. The part about male vampire blood extending life and making us impervious to illness or injury. Maybe the council doesn’t know that little tidbit, and it spooked Bill. If vampires knew that, we’d all be feeding on our own males and we’d all be invincible. We could live forever and easily take over humanity.”
“Dante, if that were possible, wouldn’t Bonneville be doing that instead of trying to breed new vampires? Whatever the Achilles’ heel is, it must be huge. Or you’re right. That’s how she’d be doing it.”
“Whatever the Ac
hilles’ heel is, it hasn’t stopped her from drinking male blood.”
“True.” I looked down. “Where are my pants? We need to get out of here. We need to find Patty and get her out of here. Her recent surgery will prevent Bonneville from impregnating her, but her eggs can still be harvested. As can mine.”
“Over my dead body.” He inhaled. “Those synthetic hormones. I don’t like them.”
“Do they smell bad?” I asked.
“No. Not bad. Just not you.” He pawed through some stuff in one corner of the room. “Here. Found your pants. And your shoes and socks.”
“Thanks.” I dressed quickly. “Where are we going?”
“I need to see to River and my uncle.”
“Then I’m going with you.”
“Erin…”
“Dante, where else am I going to go? If I’m with you, you’ll be able to protect me, right? You’ve already shielded me.”
“Damn it!”
“You know I’m right.”
“I know. But what if she begins controlling me again?”
“She won’t. I trust you. I have faith. You need to have faith in yourself.”
Chapter Eight
Dante
Faith.
Right.
I’d already decided to have faith in myself. But where Erin was concerned, I couldn’t take any chances.
“Please, Dante. I know you’ll protect me. I know you will.”
I nodded. She needed me to have faith, and I needed to show her my assurance…even if I didn’t feel it one hundred percent. I’d allowed Bonneville to take her from me while we both slept, and I’d allowed her to inject Erin with hormones.
I’d failed Erin.
I would not fail her again. I couldn’t. Maybe her faith would be enough for both of us.
“Ready?” she said.
I nodded. “Time to find River and his dad.”
“Right.” She walked to the doorway and stepped on the wooden door that I’d forced to the ground. “After you.”
“No. We go together. Not one before or after the other.”