by Celia Kyle
“Hi.” She smiled at the other woman, her outfit designating her as a maid. Considering the size of the house, Zoe could believe Arik needed a big staff. “I called a cab, and I wanted to wait outside. Is there an alarm to disable or…”
“Sure, one second.” The maid returned her smile, padding to a keypad and disarming whatever system was in place. The woman turned and opened the door for Zoe, heat blasting into the space from outside. “You’re welcome to wait inside, if— “
Zoe jumped out the door. “Nope, out here is good. I’ll just sit on the bench and wait. Thanks!”
She rushed over to a wrought iron bench and settled onto the seat, giving the girl a reassuring smile before she disappeared back into the house. If she’d stayed inside a moment more, she would have gone back upstairs and crawled in beside Arik. Again.
Zoe had too much to do to get snared in his web for a second time that morning.
She rested, letting the sun lull her a little, and allowed her eyes to drift closed. She’d hear the car coming up the driveway. It’d wake her and she’d…
A low thump was followed by a fierce sting, yanking her from the half-sleep to full wakefulness. At least, for a moment anyway. Long enough to see Cason striding toward her, evil smile in place. She reached to rub away the hurt and she suddenly realized what he held in his hand. A dart gun. A dart gun that shot her in the neck.
Pain woke her. Pain unrelated to the dart that’d pierced her neck and she suspected it was tied directly to the boot aimed at her stomach. It collided with her midsection, sending the food she’d consumed rising into her throat. She grunted with the hit, curling in on herself to protect her belly. But chains in the floor kept her from moving, from covering any part of her.
That was when other pains became apparent—her face, her arm, her shoulder, her leg.
Okay, what wasn’t broken? Not much.
“Awake now, little pretty?” There was a crazed edge to Cason’s speech, as if he’d tumbled off into the deep end. “I’ve been waiting.”
Zoe opened her one good eye, the other swollen shut, and glanced around the room. She hunted for her captor, the man who’d drugged her and then beaten her ass.
Piece of shit coward.
Blood pooled in her mouth and she spat it onto the floor, saliva dripping from her lips.
“Did you hear me?” Another kick. To her ribs that time.
She groaned and swallowed the pain, pushing it deep and away from her fried mind. “Yeah,” she rasped.
“You’ve been keeping me waiting.”
“I’m sorry?” What did he want?
“That’s better, little pretty.” Cason crouched in front of her, brushing her blood matted hair from her face. “You are pretty. I can see why he wants you, but he has to share.” Cason clucked his tongue. “Papas always share.”
She remained silent, not knowing how to answer his statement. He soon showed her what she should have said.
Cason fisted her hair, pulling until she thought pieces of her scalp would tear free. “Don’t you agree?”
“Yeah. Papas always share.” Except when their sons were raving lunatics.
“He’s always shared until you. He did this to me, you know.” Cason tapped one elongated fang with his free hand. “And then he promised to take care of me. He shared with me. Except you.” The vamp sneered at her. “But a promise is a promise.”
He sounded so young, no more than six if his tone told her anything. A six-year-old mind in a dangerous, vampire body.
“It is,” she was going to have to agree with him until Arik came.
And Arik would come.
“He made me eat people, did you know that?”
“Did he?”
Cason nodded. “He did. He made me this and then I ate people. It’s his fault.”
Nerves had her shaking, stark fear consuming her, and she fought to keep her voice smooth. “Of course it’s his fault.”
The soft smile parting his lips transformed, shifting into the evil grin she woke to. “Liar.”
The young voice was gone and the elder Cason rose to his feet, pulling back a leg and kicking her yet again. “You shouldn’t lie.” His voice was filled with loathing and menace. “God doesn’t like it.”
Yeah, well, Zoe wasn’t all that concerned with what God liked while she was held captive by a crazy-ass vamp.
Instead of saying anything, she kept her mouth shut, waiting to see what’d happen next. She didn’t have to wait long. Kicks. Punches. Cuts with those vamp nails.
A sob escaped her, followed by another and another until tears blurred whatever was left of her vision. “Why,” she whispered the word, unable to shout. “Why?”
Why should she ask? Did the crazy need a reason?
Cason crouched beside her, his head tilted to the side like a confused puppy. “Why?” He poked out his lower lip. The younger version of Cason was back. “Because you’re too pretty.” Cason stroked her cheek, nail cutting a line into her flesh. “And he likes you too much. There can be only one of us, little pretty.” He gave her another cut. “Only one.”
Arik had awoken alone, disgruntled to be without Zoe, he was slightly soothed by the scent surrounding him—Zoe and their lovemaking. Their passion.
Then he’d strode through his home, hunting his Zoe.
And noticed the alarm system had been disarmed.
And saw a cab out front—the empty cab and annoyed driver speaking with one of his staff.
And found two scents on the porch—Cason and Zoe.
Rage unlike he’d ever experienced suffused him, snatching what hints of controlled remained within his body. He raced into the house, barking out orders to his staff, demanding answers most couldn’t give and terrorizing a single maid who admitted to what she’d done.
Zoe had tried to leave via a cab, but Cason had obviously gotten to her first.
He would kill his bloodchild if he’d done anything to Zoe. Slowly, methodically. He’d ensure Cason felt more pain than he’d ever imagined and then give even more.
Arik grabbed a house phone and dialed the numbers by memory, calling his closest friends—three men who’d walked through hell with him and survived.
His message was short and concise—a demand, a call to arms. “Cason has taken Zoe. We hunt.”
Arik strapped guns and blades to his body, prepared for the battle to come. Too overcome with fury, he allowed Stian to drive, navigate through the streets while they sought his bloodchild.
“Anything yet?” Espen’s methodical scrape of stone on metal was a monotonous—almost soothing—cadence. He sharpened his knife to run through Cason.
He closed his eyes, searching out the thread that tied him to his bloodchild. It remained the smallest tendril of rope, so tiny he couldn’t follow it to Cason’s location.
“No,” Arik growled. “We’re going to have to check his normal haunts.” He hated the delay it’d cause, the extra time spent searching instead of simply locating his bloodchild immediately. “Go one by one.”
“What about to Zoe?” Reidar occupied himself with loading his guns.
Arik shook his head. “We didn’t form a bond. I’ve fed from her twice and we’ve shared passion, but…”
But there was nothing formal. No exchange that could allow him to locate her.
“Twice in such a short time?” Stian’s voice held a hint of chiding. Humans weren’t that resilient and he truly had harmed Zoe by taking so much.
Instead of admitting his fault, he grunted.
“Then there’s something there.”
“We didn’t exchange— “
Stian snorted. “You and I have spent many years apart, my friend. Believe me when I say I know more of this than you.” Arik lifted a brow and Stian shrugged. “Some women like the chase. A deep sip makes the hunt that much easier, and more pleasurable.”
And Arik had taken two from her.
“How?” How was it done and how had he not known after a millennium?<
br />
“Close your eyes, and think of her. Remember her scent and taste of her blood until you almost feel as if you were drinking at this moment.” Arik did as demanded, the copper and sweetness filling his head, overwhelming all other sensations. “Now, hunt.”
The first hint of her was a tug at his heart, a yank that had him demanding they turn around, turn right, then left… travel for miles and well beyond Cason’s typical holes.
“Stop,” he snapped and Stian stomped on the brakes, halting their motion.
The SUV still rocked in place when Arik leapt out of the door, breathing deeply and searching for the flavors that consumed his mind. He licked his lips, pricking his tongue and it sparked a similar memory—Zoe doing the same to him and he could practically taste her blood sliding over his tongue.
Arik stood in the middle of a residential street, the suburbs crowded with home after home, side by side. He turned in a circle, gaze scanning the block-shaped houses. He pressed a hand to his chest, willing that sensation to return, to direct him to his Zoe.
His… hjarta. His very own living and breathing heart. The truth slammed into him, nearly sending him to his knees with the new knowledge. She was the one woman he’d searched for and then given up on ever finding.
He sensed the others moving to his side, men he trusted more than any other were now prepared to fight one of their own.
“He dies.”
Stian grunted. The man had always believed Cason should have been put down long before now.
Reidar tried to reason with him. “Arik, he is your bloodchild. If you…”
“She is my hjarta, Reidar. He has laid hands on her.”
“We stand behind you.” Espen snarled and he sensed the vampire’s barely suppressed violence. Zoe had only spoken with the gruff vampire for mere moments and yet she’d already earned his devotion.
Arik jerked his head in a quick nod and stared at the surrounding homes once more, searching for Zoe, praying that the tug would come once more.
Then it did. When his gaze landed on a pale green house, no lights coming through the windows and a car sitting outside, he knew he’d found her.
“There,” he pointed, certainty growing with each breath. “He took her there.”
“The location surprises me,” Stian murmured.
“He shielded himself from me. He’s getting better at hiding. He knew where we’d go first.” Reidar racked the slide on his gun, chambering a round.
“This home gives him more time with her,” Espen added the obvious.
The closer they drew to the small house, the more certain he became. He felt Zoe’s heartbeat in his blood, the sluggish squeeze and release of the muscle that kept her alive. The sluggishness worried him. Then came hints of her pain, his nerves reacting to a phantom ache.
“She’s not in good shape.” It hurt him to breathe and his vision went blurry for a bare moment. “Broken ribs. I think her eyes are swollen shut.” He wanted to shy from the sensations but instead pushed onward. “Possibly a broken arm or leg.” He couldn’t tell. The left side of his body simply flared with agony.
They stopped at the end of the driveway, not even trying to hide their presence. He turned his back on the house and faced the three men who’d followed him into battle many times before. “Your purpose is to protect her. Above all else, keep her safe and do not let her come to further harm.” He met the face of each vampire and saw the same resolve that burned in his gut. “Seier eller Valhalla.”
All three echoed him. “Seier eller Valhalla.”
Victory or Valhalla. Short and simple. Those were their only choices once they stepped inside that home.
7
It wasn’t the pain that woke her. No, it’d become a regular friend of sorts, a reminder she was still alive. The throbbing, pulsating hurt wrapped around her chest, squeezing like an iron band and making it nearly impossible to breathe. She flexed her arms, carefully tugging on the chains that secured her to the floor, but careful not to make a sound. The subsequent hurt flared but felt more like bone-deep bruising instead of a break.
She repeated the action, pointing her toes and tensing, waiting for the jolt. She sucked in a rough breath, clenching her jaw and swallowing her shout. Agony. Pure fucking agony. But she didn’t think he’d snapped any bones. It seemed like it was just her ribs that suffered the most.
A soft shuffle reached her, a brush of shoes on carpet? From above? Had Cason woken from his sleep? How much time had passed?
Zoe had no idea. She remembered it’d been morning when he snatched her from Arik’s. The next time she’d opened her eyes, it was in this room, bare concrete floor and cinderblock walls. Based on the sounds that’d filtered through, she figured she was in a house of some sort. In the suburbs? She’d heard kids playing, what sounded like a school bus, and the slow passing of cars.
The basement of a suburban home where screaming hadn’t drawn anyone’s notice. And damn, but she’d screamed. He’d only left her alone when the day forced him to sleep and now she wondered if night had fallen and another beating was in store.
Or worse. He wanted to eat his little pretty, didn’t he?
Cason needed to be put down whether Arik wanted to accept it or not.
This time it was a creak, the floor shifting and groaning with added weight. But the movements were slow. Sluggish? Or simply… careful?
Zoe didn’t want to let hope surge forward, but she couldn’t stop the emotion from rolling over her. Arik had found her. Found her and he’d rescue her and he’d…
A tear escaped her eye, the salty liquid stinging the cut on her face. That merely caused another to flow, to add to that annoying pain gradually spreading through her. Hadn’t she suffered enough already?
Voices reached through the floor above her, more than one murmuring, and something inside her screamed that it was Arik.
“Arik,” her lips formed his name, but she wasn’t sure if she spoke aloud. “Arik,” she tried again, this time, his name coming out as a wheeze.
The voices halted, silence descending, and she wondered if it was nothing more than a dream.
More soft words, indistinguishable but… real?
A nearby door opened, a bright light filtering into the room, and Zoe snapped her head away from the glow. The sudden flare seared her eyes and, in truth, she didn’t want to see Cason coming for her once again.
“Skatten min?” That husky whisper, the deep timbre that touched something in her soul. She slowly shifted to look at the stairwell on the opposite side of the room, to the path to freedom… and the four men who stood on the wooden stairs.
She recognized the other three, but the one up front, the one whose eyes were a blazing red, held her attention. “Arik.” That one word held her joy and relief, her pain and her fear. “Arik.”
“Hjarta.” Between one heartbeat and the next, he was at her side, fists wrapped around the metal chains. A tug snapped the first and the others followed in quick succession, Stian, Espen and Reidar breaking them with ease. She ached to throw herself into his arms, but she wasn’t sure she could move. “I don’t know where to touch you.”
His fingers were gentle when they ghosted over her damaged skin, but his expression—his eyes—said violence was soon to come.
Zoe lifted her hand, gritting her teeth against the agony from her battered flesh, and reached for him. “I’ll be okay.”
She hoped. Prayed, really.
He cradled her hand in his, lowering his lips and brushing a kiss across the bruises on her wrist. She hissed with even that ghost of a touch and Arik tensed further.
Then his attention was no longer on her, but slowly sliding from vampire to vampire. Each one nodded, their eyes just as red, proof that they craved blood.
Hers? No, she mentally shook her head. Cason’s.
A creak upstairs, the heavy thud of feet on the floor.
It looked like they’d get their wish.
“Can you stand, hjarta?” His expressio
n told her that he hated to ask.
Zoe nodded. “With help.”
Arik jerked his head in a nod and then tipped his chin to the men. He stepped away from her, the other three moving and then large, yet gentle, hands gripped her biceps. She found herself carefully lifted into Stian’s arms, cradled against his chest.
Just as the heavy thud of boots pounded on the steps, he strode to a far corner of the room and Reidar and Espen positioned themselves between her and the rest of the room.
“We should just leave,” she pushed the words past her dry throat.
Stian’s attention lowered to her, his jaw tight. “No, hjarta of Arik.” He looked back to the steps. “This must be finished. Now.”
Cason slowly trod down the steps, body gradually coming into view. Dark splatters stained the bottom of his jeans, marring the thin blue material.
Her blood. She was staring at her blood covering his clothing.
Suddenly she was glad for the vamps standing between her and the crazed man approaching.
Cason turned the last corner, coming around the landing and then hopping over the last two steps. A smile split the vamp’s features before he spoke. “Papa!” That smile, that voice. Young Cason was in control. His attention moved from Arik to Zoe and the other vamps before returning to his bloodsire. “Are you very angry?”
Arik flexed his hands, fisting them tightly before uncurling slowly. Claws tipped those long digits. Claws that could easily slice through flesh. She’d experienced that agony at Cason’s hands and part of her couldn’t wait for Cason to feel it as well.
“You took my hjarta, Cason. You tortured her. You have gone too far, bloodson. It is time to end this.”
“But you always share.” Cason, the massive vamp who couldn’t wait to kill her, pouted.
“You were warned. You were told to stay away from her.” Arik’s voice remained hard.
“I just wanted to play with the little pretty.” He even stomped, his twisted mind stuck at a young age.
“It’s over, Cason.”
Cason pressed his lips together, eyes narrowed, jaw tense. “How did you find me? I shielded from you.” He sneered. “You’re weak. It’s easy to hide, but this time… How?”