“Marcus knows Camilla is here and he knew we were together. He won’t believe you’re the innocent captive,” he reminded her and Wynter nodded. She then looked over her shoulder out to where the six vampires still stood, patiently waiting for their prey to come to them.
“Give me your phone,” she told him, and Jakob did as she asked but it was evident by the sour look on his face that he wasn’t keen on whatever idea she had in mind.
She dialled Marcus’s number, thinking it was a long shot, but that it just might work.
Wynter then climbed up onto the sofa on her knees and faced the window, watching as Marcus reacted to the phone vibrating in his pocket and then plucked it out. He grinned down at it smugly and then answered the call before lifting it to his ear.
“You’ve given up quicker than I would’ve expected, Jakob. I’m surprised,” his voice echoed down the line and Wynter let out a small cry at how deadly his tone was. How feral. Marcus had come to claim what was his and she knew he’d kill anyone who got in his way. There was no way out of this for Camilla, but she knew she might be able to at least negotiate some kind of a deal for Jakob. After all, he had kept Wynter safe like he’d promised. “My sweet…” Marcus sighed, having heard her and realised it wasn’t the phone’s owner on the other end. “I’ve missed you.”
“And I you, Marcus,” she lied, “have you come to take me home?”
“Indeed I have,” he replied, and Wynter watched as his smile began to widen at hearing her compliance. “Why don’t you invite me in and we can be done with this farce?”
“I would, but I have made promises to Camilla and Jakob to secure their safety. She came here to ensure you no longer wanted me, Marcus. To ruin my body and mind as she saw fit, but I have struck a deal. My life for hers. Jakob’s too.”
“I will not honour any such deal,” he ground, and she stared out the window at him, and his face was like thunder.
“Then I cannot leave,” she told him, and then peered down at Jakob, who urged her to deepen the threat. He mouthed to her to go on. To make Marcus believe it and act on her warnings. “Jakob has me at his mercy, Marcus. He will kill me and has told me so on more than one occasion. The only way to spare my life is to meet his demands.”
“Then it appears we are at an impasse,” he replied before abruptly ending the call.
Apparently he wasn’t in the mood to negotiate.
Wynter then watched in horror as he walked over to a nearby parked car, lifted it up off the ground with ease, and then sent it hurtling towards the window she herself was watching from. Wynter shrieked and clambered away, but luckily the exterior of the house took the force of his attack and the three captive housemates were kept safe, for now.
He was testing the forces holding them safely inside. Seeing what could cross over and what couldn’t. This clearly was not a hostage negotiation, but a mission for vengeance, casualties be damned.
Wynter turned to Jakob with wide eyes and she climbed into his open arms, finding shelter there, and solace. He held her like he just might love her back. As if he were scared of losing her. Or at least she hoped so.
It would be nice to die thinking someone actually did love her.
“I can’t let him hurt you,” she whispered.
“And I cannot let him take you away. Not now,” Jakob answered, and Wynter turned her head so she could peer up into his face. She was about to ask what he’d meant by that, when she saw his eyes begin to change their hue. The incredible blues were resonating with waves of light and dark from deep within.
The sight was mesmerising, and she knew exactly what it meant. Jakob’s soul was screaming to hers, and he wasn’t even trying to hide it.
“So you did lie to me after all,” she whispered, stroking his cheek tenderly as she watched his eyes glow brighter still. “You do have a soul.”
“Apparently so,” he replied with a soft smile, his gaze still boring into hers. And she didn’t look away, not even for a second.
“What now?” Wynter asked, thinking they were quickly running out of time, and options.
“Come here,” he said, holding her closer, and she couldn’t deny that she wanted it. Wanted him. Unlike all the times when Marcus’s eyes had shone like this, she craved the soul on offer behind the eyes currently staring into her own.
There was no denying that she loved him. No refusing his call, or that pull he had.
“No,” Camilla shouted, and she tried to grab them and yank the pair apart, but it was no use. They both ignored her.
Wynter continued to peer back into Jakob’s eyes and realised that what she felt wasn’t about sex or the intimacy, but the comfort and the adoration she felt for him. And the love resonating between the two of them. It was real and unbreakable, and as she continued to stare into his impossibly bright eyes, Wynter accepted the vampire before her.
His soul reached for hers and she let it. The good and the bad, none of it mattered. All that existed was them, and Wynter realised then how she was already free. That she loved Jakob and was ready to accept whatever lay ahead, just as long as they were together.
Her soul merged with his in that moment of clarity and acceptance. It felt like some kind of explosion in her chest, and was terrifying, but even when each of them realised what was happening, neither tried to stop it.
Jakob then kissed her fervently and smiled, watching her bask in his affection as they both ignored the world around them for a few seconds and performed the strange and unbreakable rite.
They were one now. Two halves of a whole and, against all odds, they truly loved one another.
She’d never been happier and felt her entire body ache for him.
Wynter had to admit, she didn’t feel much different in herself afterwards, but she could see a difference in Jakob. The way he touched her and was aware of her every movement told her he had some instinctual need to keep watch over her. To have her close and safe, and even when Camilla approached them, he bristled and put himself between his sire and his soul mate.
“You don’t speak to her, Camilla. Don’t look at her. Don’t try and hurt her. Not any more,” he demanded. “She’s mine.”
“I can see that,” Camilla retorted with a sour look on her face, “but have you stopped to think what Marcus is going to make of this happy little union? I doubt he’ll accept it, even if he has no hope of coming between the two of you.”
“We will fight,” Wynter answered resolutely.
“Then you will die, and so will Jakob,” she countered, but then her features softened.
Camilla took a proper look at the vampire she herself had sired, and sighed. She touched Jakob’s face with her hand and shook her head, marvelling at the change in him. “Or I can help you.”
“How?” both she and him answered at the same time and Camilla smiled to herself.
“I shall require Wynter’s blood. And then, you two must jump,” she told them, pointing to the back door that led directly out onto the cliff edge. Wynter couldn’t fathom what she was getting at, but Jakob seemed to understand and he nodded.
“Thank you,” he told her, before rushing to the kitchen.
He then returned with a knife and an empty mug. “Let me take some, just a little…” he asked Wynter, and took her hand in his. She nodded, watching as he ever so delicately cut her wrist and let the blood flow into the cup he’d held at the ready.
She felt like asking him why, but instead just accepted that what he was doing was for the best. Something deep within told her not to question Jakob’s actions, and for once, she went along with what was happening and had no argument at all.
After wrapping the wound to close it, Jakob then gave the cup to Camilla with a nod. She drank it down and, without a backwards glance, walked directly out into the front garden towards her awaiting foes.
“She’s sacrificing herself for you,” Wynter realised, “but why me?”
“Because we are one, Wynter,” Jakob replied with a frown, “and now,
we must run. There isn’t much time.”
Wynter nodded and, without daring to look back in Marcus’s direction, she followed Jakob towards the cliff edge and let him lift her onto his back. Once secured, she held tight and closed her eyes.
“Do it,” she whimpered, and then felt the rush of air whizz past as Jakob stepped off and the pair of them went plummeting towards the rocky ground.
Twenty
Marcus sensed so very many changes happening around him, and could smell Wynter on the air even still, but her scent had altered. Her lingering presence was gone and only a part of her remained. He wasn’t sure what it meant, but something suddenly felt wrong.
And then, all of a sudden, a figure stepped out of the nothingness and appeared like an apparition in the morning sunlight. It was Camilla, and she reeked of Wynter’s scent. So, that answered at least one of his questions, but as Marcus approached her, he realised just why she smelled so strongly of his beloved girl. She had tasted her. Drank from her.
“You dare drink from my slave?” he roared as he advanced, pinning Camilla by her throat and taking her down onto the ground. “I thought you’d agreed not to hurt her?”
“I lied,” Camilla replied, mocking him with a deep belly laugh that made his blood boil, “I drank her dry and then left her to rot. Jakob too. He was weak and refused to kill her for me, so I took care of them both.”
“I don’t believe it,” Marcus roared, but then he searched for any other sign of her, and realised Camilla was right. He couldn’t smell her or sense Wynter like before. The only lingering presence was the scent of her blood on the vampire in his grasp’s lips, and for that, he ripped her head clean from her shoulders.
She was dead in an instant and yet Marcus was still left unsatisfied. He needed to see the body. To know for sure that Wynter was gone. He turned to his horde and issued another of his silent commands.
Find a way in.
Failing that, you find whoever is responsible for this cloaking spell and break it.
He had to know the truth and see it with his own eyes. Marcus couldn’t rest until he knew that she was dead. That he would never see her alive again. If it were true, he wouldn’t rest easy, but at least he’d be able to move forward. Move on.
His Priestess was going to tell him more about what she’d divined. And maybe tell him off. Had she seen this coming? Was all of this part and parcel of the prophecy she had delivered? The full moon has risen after all and it was possible Wynter had done as Marcella had foreseen and gone into the arms of another. But who?
Warren was miles away and Jakob wasn’t capable of love. Camilla herself had told him how her progeny was soulless so it couldn’t be him.
Either way, he had to know the truth, and quickly.
He’d had enough of the guessing games.
***
Wynter and Jakob hit the rocky ground with a hard thud and she almost lost her grip on him it was so thundering. The shock of it was still reverberating around in her bones as she righted herself, but he didn’t seem fazed in the slightest by the fall. She peered up at where they’d dropped from and couldn’t quite believe they’d fallen so far without injury, and held Jakob tighter as it dawned on her just how much trouble they were in.
Marcus was going to find them. And when he did, Jakob was all but dead. Wynter wanted to weep. What had they done? Such fools, the pair of them. There was no doubt about it. They’d have to be clever and cunning if they had any hope of evading her oppressive boss, and she didn’t even know where to begin.
“Jak, where can we go? What can we do?” she whispered in his ear, but rather than answer her, he put her down and turned to her with a frown.
“It’s already too late,” he told her, stroking her cheek with his hand. And then he placed a soft kiss against her lips. “They’ve found us.”
“Who?” Wynter asked, but she got her answer before her soul mate could utter another sound.
Everything suddenly went still and eerily silent.
The wind came to a strange stop.
Even the waves seemed to take a step back, and that was when Wynter saw two unnervingly pale figures approaching from the corner of each eye. They were men, if she could call them that, and were advancing at breakneck speed, running directly towards them. “No. No. No,” she muttered over and over, her head darting left and right as the vampire soldiers approached them. “What do we do, Jak?”
“Run!” Jakob screamed at her, shoving Wynter away, and she fell back on the sand just as the two soldiers collided with her beloved. The three of them began to fight, but then one of the soldiers stopped and turned to her, seemingly fixated on her scent as Wynter clambered back in fear. His deep, red eyes burned into her soul and then the vampire approached, his hands reaching out.
Wynter screamed and cried out as his icy hand touched her, assuming she would be dead a second later, but instead the vampire pulled her to him, his mouth open as if he were about to take a bite.
She pushed her hands against his huge shoulders and punched at him in vain, which was when she noticed how the beaded bracelet on her wrist was now somehow fully white. The black bead was gone, but the bracelet hadn’t been broken. It was somehow still fully intact.
And that was when she felt the presence of another being beside them. The vampire holding her was then suddenly wrenched back by hands that were as black as the bead had once been. As he was thrown, Wynter caught proper sight of her strange saviour. It was clearly a man, but he wasn’t like anyone she’d seen before. His body was wispy, like it might not really be there, and yet he was fighting the vampire soldier with ease as if he were whole. He was laying punches against his pale skin that caused blows as real as Jakob’s were against the other soldier.
She could do nothing more than watch in shock as they continued to fight around her. Was this the protection the Priestess had told her about? No, surely it couldn’t be? Wynter was sure she had to be overthinking things. Perhaps even seeing things in her shock. The bracelet was nothing more than a trinket. The man was just dark skinned and moving so fast she couldn’t see him properly.
Yeah, and the two zombie-like soldiers embroiled in battles before her were just men.
Not to mention her vampire soul mate.
God, she really was fucked.
She continued to watch and it truly seemed as if the soulless vampire killer who had grabbed her was no match for his new foe, and so Wynter left them to battle it out and focussed her attention back on Jakob. He was miraculously still alive and fighting the other soldier off, but it was clear his strength was waning, and Wynter decided she had to intervene.
These soldiers were Marcus’s lackeys after all, and so she had to assume they weren’t there to kill her, but to take her back as a hostage. Unharmed. With Jak, on the other hand, she was willing to bet there were no such caveats.
She saw the soldier rear back and then flung herself between them, and took the punch meant for Jakob directly to her collarbone, which snapped in two like a twig. She screamed in pain, but didn’t regret it. The vampire stopped for the merest second to assess the situation, and Wynter used it as her chance to save Jakob’s life.
There was no end of pain radiating from her broken bone, but Wynter’s body also flooded with much needed adrenaline and she used every ounce of strength she had left to climb back on her feet and face the vampire soldier nose-to-nose.
“You have one real objective, am I right? To take me to your master,” she demanded of him and was answered with a sneer. “Then do it,” Wynter added, before taking off in the direction of the dunes ahead.
She didn’t get far before the soldier was on her, of course, but she managed to look back and saw Jakob had been left behind, just like she’d planned. He was still kneeling in the sand, watching her in shock. “Run you idiot!” she then bellowed, and was pleased to see him follow her order.
Jak stood and charged directly into the ocean in a bid to escape before either soldier noticed her ruse,
taking the one and only chance she was able to offer him.
He turned back for a second to shout to her before he let the waves carry him away, and as the soldier finally took her down, Wynter held onto Jakob’s words like gospel.
I’ll save you…
The end of book two in the Blood Slave series…
About the Author
Eden Wildblood is setting out on a journey to tell her dark stories to the world. She devours horror movies and books, and listens to heavy metal, and yet always wonders why people are still surprised when she reveals her dark side.
But now, she’s using that part of herself to bring that darkness to life. To share her soul with the world…
Find out more about Eden by following her on Facebook
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Round Two Page 17