by Skye Jones
“I get it,” I said. “Jackson will kill you if you don’t, and he’s all alpha male. But hey, you’re a vampire so I’m sure you can stand up to him.”
“You think it’s Jackson who concerns me?” Ivan scoffed.
I paused in my freak out because his question pulled me up short. “Yeah, of course, he’s the one who always goes off the reservation when it comes to my safety.”
“Hmm, but who is the one who always genuinely keeps you safe? If, for example, we hadn’t done this, and they don’t get the cure for the virus, you may get bit at any time. Without the cure, you’re always in danger.”
“Are you saying Jackson doesn’t truly care for my safety?”
I gave the door another kick in anger at his insinuation.
“No, child, I am saying Jackson is a male who acts on instinct and he loves you deeply; he would kill for you, but Alex is the one who makes the decisions that really will keep you safe.”
“Yes, because he thinks with his head, which still doesn’t invalidate my earlier point.”
He laughed low, and I swore it vibrated through the door.
“Alex is a male vampire. You have fed him, and he has told me from now on he will only ever feed from you. He has bonded with you. Do you understand what that means?”
I shook my head, then realized he couldn’t see and spoke up. “No, what does it mean?”
“It means don’t be fooled because he’s got a cooler head on his shoulders, or because he has manners. The deadliest male out of that rather deadly group is most certainly Alex. He would try to kill me if I didn’t keep you safe, and he’d have a much better chance of doing it than Jackson.”
I rested my head against the door. At least this surprising turn of conversation had taken my panic away.
“Shit, there’s someone coming,” Angel said.
The van door opened, and she got shoved roughly inside, Mum too.
“Ow, that hurt, Ivan!” Angel huffed out an annoyed breath.
“Shut. Up.”
For a while I heard nothing, then Ivan muttered a string of curses and the door swung open. “It’s them.”
His words surprised me. Why the swearing jag? I clambered out of the van and stopped dead, holding onto the door handle for support.
Coming down the road were two men, dragging a third with them. One on each side of him, a long arm slung over their shoulders. The guy being dragged was the biggest.
Jackson.
Circling around them was what looked like a huge black dog. Bigger than any Great Dane I’d ever seen.
I cried out and ran toward them, pausing when the dog looked at me and I saw it had glowing preternatural yellow eyes.
What the hell?
Alex and Doc were dragging Jackson, and seeing him so vulnerable made my stomach churn
Jackson’s head lolled and when I looked at him closely, I gasped at the blood staining the side of his dark t-shirt.
“He got shot after we exited. Some of the guards chased us, fired at us, and one of the bullets hit.” Alex laid it out calmly.
“Is he going to be okay?” I was beside myself, hysteria building in me.
I kept glancing at the dog, which I realized wasn’t a dog, but a sleek black wolf.
Ben?
As if in answer the creature ran to me and nudged my hand.
Jesus, he’d changed completely. I shook myself and focused on what was going on.
There was no one else with them, which meant they didn’t have the man with the password to the net. The whole reason they’d gone in the first place.
Reaching the van, Ivan helped Alex carefully lift Jackson inside and place him on a pile of old folded cardboard.
I turned to Doc. “Is he going to live?”
“Yes. He’ll live,” Alex answered my question. “Even if we have to turn him, he’ll live.”
“We haven’t even got the man you went to retrieve, so it’s all been for nothing.” I ran my fingers through my hair, exasperated and scared.
Doc gave me a grim smile, reached inside the pocket of the lightweight jacket he wore, and pulled something out.
It was a piece of paper. “What’s that?”
“This, my gorgeous, is a password to the dark net used by the government. And this…” He turned the paper over to reveal more scrawled figures. “Are coordinates to where vials of the cure are kept.”
“We’ve got to go back in there?”
“No. These bastards have some stockpiled in various places around the country, in case the capital gets over run, and we have the coordinates to three of the nearest.”
“The best part of it is, from what Alex could tell,” Doc supplied, “these caches aren’t even guarded. No one knows about them except for some secretive bullshit society called the Council of Twelve, and one of the Council of Twelve just told us everything. Alex wiped his memory too, to the best of his ability.”
“It’s not fool proof,” Alex said as he ripped Jackson’s t-shirt to reveal a bullet hole in his side. “So the bastard might remember, which means we’ve got to get the cure in the next day or so. But we need to get Jackson back first and get him treated.”
“Why is he unconscious?” I asked.
“Got hit by a bullet in the side, slowed him down, and he stumbled a little. One of the guards was throwing rocks at us, and one hit Jack in the head.” Doc frowned. “He’s going to have a hell of a headache.”
Alex nodded at the wolf. “About the time the bullet hit Jackson, Fido here changed. Full on changed. And quick as lightening too.” He paused, giving a small smile. “I had wondered if he could, but thought if anything gave him the impetus it would be danger to you. Seems Ben loves us all, if not in quite the same way.”
Doc climbed into the van and used the light on his phone to look at Jackson’s wound. “Went straight through. I think he’s going to be okay if we can get him home soon and sewn up. It’s the head wound that’s more concerning. You never can tell with those fuckers.”
With those words, he crawled around Jackson, took his head and rested it on his lap. “I’ll try to hold him as still as I can. You,” he pointed to Ben, “can you change back and drive? Get us out of here, go as fast as you can but try to keep it smooth.”
Ben gave a low whine, and then the cracking, stretching thing started to happen. Soon he was stood before me, a man again. Although a stark naked one. He wasn’t shaking on the ground either, like he had been the first time I saw him post change.
“Fuck, no clothes.” He shook his head and then walked around to the front of the van. “I feel like shit but nothing like I normally do. This full shifting thing is awesome.” He grinned. “So yeah, I can drive.”
I climbed into the back with Doc and Jackson. Alex joined us, as did my parents. Angel and Ivan went to ride up front with Ben.
I heard him joking with them, telling them not to look at his junk, and I marvelled how different he was in the aftermath of the change this time. As if fully changing wasn’t as hard on him as being the hybrid beast I’d seen before.
The light on in the back, I still found the experience disorientating and more than a little nausea-inducing as I couldn’t see out of a window. We’d been driving for about ten or fifteen minutes, when a deep groan from Jackson had me whip my head around to look at him.
“Woah.” Doc held him down. “Don’t move, Jack, you’ve been hit in the head.”
“Where the fuck am I?”
“We’re on our way back from the capital,” Alex said.
“What?”
“With Milly. She’s safe.” Doc gave a soft laugh. “I know you’ll want to know that before anything else. She’s fine, so you can sit back and rest.”
“Who the fuck is Milly?”
With those words, the bottom of my world fell out.
Doc cast me a worried glance. “Don’t panic.” He kept his voice low as he spoke to me. “Concussion. His memory should come back.”
Should. Should? And if
it didn’t?
The drive was excruciating from then on. A heavy, tense atmosphere filled the back of the van.
Doc questioned Jackson, whose memory seemed to stop at a point during their time in captivity. He had no memory of the big house they now lived in, and none of me, either.
My stomach swirled with sickness as I hoped and prayed he’d get his memory back. If he didn’t, he might not want me anymore, and the idea killed me.
“We need to get back to the center,” Jackson said.
“No, brother, we don’t live there anymore,” Doc replied.
Jackson started to struggle to sit up. “What the fuck is going on?”
Doc tried to hold him down, but Jackson was stronger.
“You want me to knock him out again?” Alex asked.
I gave a gasp, and Alex touched my knee. “Joking, Milly.”
“Jackson, calm down.”
“Alex?”
“Yeah, it’s me.” The light in the van flickered and then went out.
Alex cursed and then I heard fumbling, and the white light of the torch on his phone lit up some of the space. Alex leaned into the glow of light from the phone, and Jackson turned to him.
“I can’t remember… fuck. It’s hazy.”
“It’s okay, it should come back. Try to stay calm. The more you freak out, the longer the injury can last. Keep calm and you can rest when we get back.”
“Keep calm.” Jackson nodded, winced, and rested his head back down.
I hesitated to get near him, what with him not remembering me, but I wanted to touch him. I inched closer and let my hand rest on his solid chest. He turned to me, and his whisky eyes burned in the ghostly light from the phones.
“I know you.”
Relief filled my chest.
“I’ve dreamed about you.”
“Yes, you have. You know me in real life too. I’m Milly.”
He closed his eyes and laid his head back, but his hand found mine and held it against his chest as the van bumped on the uneven road.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Jackson: It’s All a Blur
He’d been back at the dilapidated mansion they apparently called home for over an hour, and nothing made sense to him. His brain insisted they all still lived at the medical center, and yet, parts of the mansion were familiar to him. His bedroom, where he now lay resting, the library, he’d been put in and told to sit when they first got back.
He’d gotten a bandage around his middle, and rudimentary stitches courtesy of Doc. They’d hurt like hell going in.
Whenever he tried to form a coherent thought his brain skidded off to think about something else. When he tried to catch a memory and examine it, the damn thing flew away like a butterfly escaping the net of his mind. It freaked him out.
A knock at the door startled him, and he blew out a calming breath. “Come in.”
It opened, and Milly walked in. He remembered her, or rather the essence of her. Her scent, smile, that glorious hair. He didn’t remember her name though, or anything about her time here with them. On an elemental level though, his body did because whenever she was around, her presence calmed him. Soothed his worry, lowered his heart rate.
“Can I?” She gestured to the bed, and he gave a nod.
Fuck, he had to remember to stop nodding and shaking his head for a while.
Slow and careful, she climbed onto the bed and curled in next to him. For a moment, he froze. The intimacy of it weird when he didn’t remember their time together, but her warmth seeped into his uninjured side, where she lay. Her scent surrounded him.
His brain might not recall it in a logical, linear way, but on some level his heart knew she was his.
“I want you to come back to me, Jackson, and for that, Doc says you need to rest. He says you might never remember the events right before the accident. You might not even remember the last few weeks, but you ought to start remembering your time in this house. Thing is, if you lose the last few weeks, you’ll lose your memories of me.”
She paused and sucked in air. “I won’t lie, at first that terrified me, but then I thought, if the worst happens, I’ll simply have to make you fall in love with me all over again.”
He didn’t think it would take much. He lifted his arm, letting her scoot in closer, and rested it on her side, his hand on the soft curve of her hip and ass.
“Can I sleep here? I often do,” she said. “And this way, I can keep an eye on you. Make sure you’re okay. Doc says you can rest. I always believed a person with a concussion shouldn’t be allowed to sleep, but Doc says that’s rubbish.”
She gave a low laugh, and it vibrated through him.
“He says your pupils aren’t dilated, and you can walk and talk fine so you get to sleep. But I have to wake you up every few hours, check you’re still rousable. I’m going to stay here, and you’re going to sleep and get the rest you need.”
She lifted her head. Looked him right in the eye, her face so pretty in the low light of the lamp. “Can I kiss you?”
“Yes.”
She smiled at him, warm and beautiful. She leaned in and brushed her lips over his, light and gentle. He opened his mouth to her slightly, and her taste hit, exploding on his tongue. He let out a soft groan as she pulled away, smiled at him, and then lightly brushed his lips once more before settling down.
“Isn’t there a lot to do?” he asked as she snuggled to his side. “Alex said some of us need to go and get the cure tomorrow. Aren’t plans being made?”
“They are,” she said. “But I’d rather be here with you. They can make plans fine on their own. Don’t worry about any of it. Rest, Jackson.”
And he did. He closed his eyes and let her warmth and scent soothe him.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Milly: Once Bitten
“Shit, shit, shit.”
The alarmed shouting woke me with a start.
It took a moment to realize where I was. In Jackson’s room. He slept soundly beside me.
“What the fuck do we do now?”
“How did he get bit?”
“Christ knows. He was feeding her and this time he must have gotten too close.”
I disentangled myself carefully from Jackson and crept to the door, opening it a crack. The light from the hallway hit my eyes. It was still dark, which meant I couldn’t have been asleep all that long.
I walked into Ben hopping about, pushing one leg into his trousers, getting dressed as he tried to walk. Doc beside him, hair stuck up, face grim.
I glanced back at Jackson and seeing him still asleep, stepped out of his room and closed the door softly behind me.
“What’s going on?” I asked.
“Slim’s been bit,” Doc said tersely.
“What? By who?”
“His sister,” Ben said as if I was stupid for even asking.
“Oh, God.”
“You know.” Ben paused and leaned against the wall as he finally got his trousers on and up, fingers fumbling with the belt. “He gave us the info to get into the capital, and we got the whereabouts of the cure. Do we need him anymore? We could simply let nature take its course. It’s what Jackson would want.”
I should want that too. After what Slim had done to me, but I found I didn’t.
“He still knows lots of other stuff. Information about the members of the council. He can also help us take the Ravens out. He knows about the Russian’s. Tons of stuff. We let him die, that info dies with him.”
“Not much else we can do,” Ben said as we headed for the stairs.
We jogged down them together, to find an ashen faced Angel at the bottom of the stairs, pacing.
“He’s in there,” she said, pointing to the room the men sometimes used to play games on the old TV.
I went in and stopped. Slim’s skin shone sickly pale in the light of the room. Ivan watched him, no wariness at all. Slim groaned and his body convulsed.
“Where’s his sister?” Doc asked.
�
�Still tied up in the outbuildings.” Angel leaned against the doorway, watching Slim, her eyes wide.
“We are going to get the cure tomorrow, aren’t we?” I asked no one in particular. “We can give it to him.”
“Yes, we are. Might be too late though.” Ivan ran a hand over his smooth jaw.
“I thought it worked on people infected for a long time?” I asked. “Slim wants it for his sister.”
“I doubt anything is saving her.” Ivan ignored Slim’s groans and thrashing at his words.
Doc’s face was tense. “We don’t know for certain how the cure works. No one does. We know it can make you immune. We got as much from the old fellow we talked to in the capital. He says it’s fool proof as a vaccine, sketchy as a cure.”
“Fucking hell, everything I’ve done all for nothing.” Slim groaned again. His body convulsed and went rigid, chest up in the air, arms and legs straight out, before he flopped back with an exhausted whimper.
“Kill me.” He looked at Alex when he spoke next. “Kill me. You can do it. I don’t want to turn into one of them, and I don’t think anything can save my sister now. She’s…” he sobbed, actually sobbed. The big, scary man, who’d haunted more than a few of my nightmares broke in front of us. “She’s not there, she’s gone. I should have realized it a long time ago, but I couldn’t accept it. She was the only person in the world who ever gave a shit about me, and I swore to keep her safe. I failed.”
“If we kill you and make it quick, you need to tell us all you know before you start frothing at the fucking mouth,” Ben said. His voice and eyes were cold, and his words shocked me.
“You can’t kill him.” The words were out before I knew I was going to say them.
“Milly, he hurt you.” Ben shook his head at me as if I were a stupid child, and frankly, maybe I was. “He hurt you, and he’s not trustworthy. I say we do what he wants, but after he tells us what we need to know.”
Slim laughed. “There’s a shit ton to tell you. No way I have the time or the presence of mind to do it now. The Minsk, the ship you guys have been waiting on, is coming. The Ravens are planning God knows what. I still have a lot of information about the bastards running things in London. Even with the cure, if they aren’t taken down, it’s all for nothing. They’ll change the virus. Alter it, like they have before. Make the cure useless. Make a new one. They’ve got labs, scientists, and the capital has all the power needed. There are good people there though.” He paused, held his stomach as he winced, and carried on, his voice raw. Pained. “There are people in London who want to change things, overthrow the corrupt cabal in power. Sienna is a cancer on the resistance. She needs taken out and proper leaders put in place, and then we could really fight. I can’t tell you all I need to, I don’t have time. I can feel it. It’s eating at me.” His eyes were wide, scared. “Kill me. Don’t let me turn, and then kill my sister.”