by Alyssa Day
“Please,” she whispered to the vampire. “I would prefer the kick now.”
The vampire stared down at her, puzzled, but then Litton fastened the helmet on her head, and nothing else mattered but the pain and the light. Her brain shattered and re-formed, as it had so many times before, but this time there was a difference. This time she had entirely given up hope.
She quit fighting it, but her Gift resisted in spite of her conscious mind, and when Litton kept returning, over and over, and telling her he was her friend, her Gift forced her to tell him that it was a lie.
Litton was not her friend. He never would be. He had killed the one man she’d ever wanted to spend her life with; the one man whose courage and kindness had given her hope for the future.
He finally shrieked with frustration or rage and ordered them to ramp it up to the red zone, and she laughed. The red zone might mean freedom, now that she had seen there truly was nothing left to live for. Susannah was gone. Tiernan would never live as a slave to this monster, and although her heart and mind and soul flinched away from the thought, Brennan was dead—Brennan, dead in this horrible place after two thousand years protecting humanity.
She faced death with little regret, except that she would never be able to break the story, bring this evil to the light of day. Brennan was gone, so there was no point to hoping for a future for herself.
She heard Litton’s voice: “If she can’t be enthralled, she may as well be dead.”
She laughed. She’d won. She was free. The red haze of agony lightened and turned to a pure and indescribably beautiful white light, and suddenly everything else and everyone else fell away and a single figure stood there, limned by the light, carrying a bundle in her arms.
“Welcome,” Susannah said, smiling, holding her baby. “I’ve missed you so much.”
Tiernan smiled and stepped forward into the light.
Chapter 37
Devon’s eyes snapped open from the brief rest. He needed more, the long, healing day sleep, but there was no time and, underground, he could survive without it. He immediately warmed several bottles of blood; he and Deirdre needed the sustenance. He hated to wake her, but she would be terrified if she woke alone.
“Deirdre,” he said. She shot straight up off the long bench where he’d put her when they made it to his rooms and flew at him, her eyes blind with fear.
He caught her and soothed her, repeating her name over and over until she came out of it and calmed down. She drank four bottles of blood in huge gulps, not stopping until she’d drained them all. Then she wiped her mouth and stared at him, still silent.
“I have to go after them,” he said. “I need to get to Brennan. You should stay here, where it’s safe. The others will see me as weak now, after Jones, and I’ll have to battle at least one, if not several of them.”
“I’m going with you,” she said, showing her fangs.
“It’s not safe.”
“I have never been safe,” she said flatly, and the argument was finished. She was going with him.
Chapter 38
Alaric scanned the room. Lucas and twenty of his shifters, Jack, Alexios, Quinn, and about a dozen of her rebels all stood ready to assist. It would have to be enough.
“We have an idea of how to get in, but we’re not entirely sure,” Quinn said. “We’re going to need to search.”
“I know the direction Brennan’s last mental blast came from,” Alexios said. “We can use that to triangulate.”
Alaric nodded. “I have been trying to reach him since I arrived, but the static you mentioned is too strong. It is almost certainly electrical interference, on an enormous scale. A laboratory full of equipment would not be enough, I don’t believe, so I’m somewhat confused.”
Quinn shoved a hand through her choppy dark hair. “It could be Tasers. Or an electrified cell. Or you may have to face the possibility—”
“No,” Alexios said firmly. “No. The only possibility we face is the one where we find them, alive and mostly unharmed. If you believe different, feel free to get out.”
“Alexios,” Alaric snarled, but Quinn held up a hand, shaking her head.
“I’m sorry, Alexios,” she said. “I’ve seen too much death lately, and I’m becoming hardened to it. We’ll find them alive.”
“No time like the present,” Lucas said. “It’s a plus to catch vamps in the daytime, even if they are underground. They’ll be weaker.”
They headed out the door, coordinating directions among them. Quinn stepped into the lead vehicle with Lucas and Alexios, and Alaric leapt into the air. He would fly as mist and keep an eye on her.
Just in case.
Chapter 39
Brennan struggled to his feet. He had to get to . . . the woman. He had to save her—he couldn’t fail her again.
He wouldn’t fail her again, although he couldn’t remember her name. It was right there, teasing the edge of his mind, but not quite available. Not quite real. It didn’t matter, though. Wasn’t relevant.
He had to focus, to ignore his body’s weakness and fight them. They hadn’t even bothered to lock his cell door yet, since he’d been collapsed on the floor and they thought he was unconscious. The two men guarding him had both gone to the door and were talking to someone else in the hall.
Fools. He’d kill them both before they realized he was awake. Kill them and rescue the woman, and then find another way to escape, if he had to kill a thousand vampires and these thugs, too. The men had guns. Brennan knew how to use a gun. Ven had taught him, in spite of his reluctance. Now he was fiercely, triumphantly, glad of it.
He took two steps, cleared the cell door, and had almost reached the thugs, who still didn’t notice him, when the world—or simply thousands of years of lost emotion—crashed down on his head, smashing him to the floor. Memories flooded into him, through him:
Tiernan, collapsing in his arms in Boston. His emotions soaring back, swirling around him like playful waves.
Tiernan, in the hotel room. In the forest. In Atlantis.
Tiernan, Tiernan, Tiernan, whose courage and unshaken belief in him had been enough to help him survive the ever-increasing torture of the chair and the helmet.
He remembered her. He wanted to shout and dance with joy, but the guards turned around and saw him, and anyway, the joy turned to despair, because it was too late.
Too. Late.
Because the words of the curse were tolling bells of death in his mind:
YOU WILL ALSO BE CURSED TO FORGET YOUR MATE WHENEVER SHE IS OUT OF YOUR SIGHT. ONLY WHEN SHE IS DEAD—HER HEART STOPPED AND HER SOUL FLOWN—WILL YOUR MEMORY OF HER FULLY RETURN TO YOU, THUS ALLOWING YOU UNTIL THE END OF YOUR DAYS TO REPENT BRINGING DISHONOR UPON THE NAME OF THE WARRIORS OF POSEIDON.
He remembered her. Fully, as Poseidon had decreed. That could only mean one thing. He threw back his head and howled, so loud and so long that he almost didn’t hear the guard rush up to the ones standing at the door. Pain ripped through his gut, tearing him apart, eviscerating him.
“Isn’t Brennan dead? I told the woman that he was dead, like the scientist told me to, and she quit fighting. They killed her,” the man said, hoarse with fear or excitement. “The woman. Tracy Baum. They jacked up the juice too high, and she’s dead.”
Brennan wanted to die. He was ready to beg for death, so that he could follow her into the next life. Soon, Tiernan, he vowed.
First, he would kill them all.
The berserker rage flamed up inside him, but this time, instead of trying to control it, he fed the fire. The sensory overload triggered another memory, and he rolled over onto all fours, hunched into himself, and slipped Alaric’s vial out of his pocket. He’d forgotten it, when he’d forgotten her.
Now he would remember, and he would make sure that no one who’d had any part in harming her would ever forget. He drained the tiny bottle, feeling the energy shoot through his body like bottled starlight—if starlight were mixed with rocket fuel and magic.
He called the power, and his body itself became a lightning rod for the energy and the starlight and the sheer, destructive force of a Warrior of Poseidon who had nothing left to live for.
They’d killed his woman. They would feel his wrath.
He threw water at them in the form of a tsunami, or at least that’s what he intended, but instead a lightning bolt shot out from his fingers and smashed through the room, zigzagging through the space, leaving nothing but devastation in its wake. It exploded the steel bars of the cells, crushing them into an insane sculpture of twisted metal, and smashed the men into piles of broken bone and flesh on the floor.
The electricity in the room sparked wildly, trying to ground itself, but he didn’t allow it to dissipate; he took it into himself and felt the power surge through him. When every cell in his body was lit up like a supernova, he headed through the door toward the lab.
Litton was going to die first.
Chapter 40
Brennan ran through the hallway with lightning at his fingertips and murder in his eyes. Nothing mattered—nothing would ever have meaning again—beyond the single imperative: kill them.
Kill them all.
He burst through the door to the lab and saw her pale, still body, death’s unfeeling messenger having come and gone and taken its toll. The small, cold corner of his heart that had held out hope—in spite of the guard, in spite of the curse—shriveled and died in his chest.
Four came at him: two in the white coats of science, one with his gun already in hand, and one with fangs bared. Brennan never slowed down. He blasted them with the dark power; the lightning they’d called into his brain so many times had become part of him. He wielded death and despair on the wings of shining, surging power, and they died.
They all died. The men burned and the vampire flamed into ash on the floor.
And it was good.
But Tiernan, his Tiernan, his true mate. She still lay silent and unmoving, unseeing eyes staring up at the ceiling, the beginning of a smile on her pale, dead face.
He pressed his lips to hers and tried to breathe for her, in and out, over and over, but her lifeless form never responded, though her skin was still warm. He tried, desperate for some response—any response—but it was futile. He straightened at last, the final, dreadful acceptance claiming him.
She was gone.
“It wasn’t my fault,” a voice came, sniveling from the corner. “Damn Smitty for quitting, I need him here now. It wasn’t my fault.”
Litton.
“You will die for this,” Brennan said, but he didn’t recognize his own voice. The lightning had swallowed him up, eaten his soul, and the power surged through him until he had a voice filled with thunder and gale-force winds.
He was no longer Brennan, but a storm-chased tsunami, and he would wreak destruction like the world had never known.
“Who else?” he demanded.
“What?” Litton edged away from him, but Brennan pointed a finger and the lightning surged. The computers and machines near Litton exploded, raining shrapnel on and around the monster who had killed Tiernan.
Litton fell to the floor, bleeding and crying out, but Brennan had no pity. The lightning had consumed pity; eaten it whole and regurgitated vengeance and death.
“Who else knows how to use these machines? Who else knows the science of enthrallment?” Brennan asked. Though he would die soon, in only minutes if the gods were merciful, he would fulfill Tiernan’s wishes as his final gift to her. He would avenge her, and Susannah, and the baby, and possibly in some way redeem himself for the baby he had not been able to save.
“Nobody,” Litton said. “I didn’t let anyone else know all of my secrets. They would steal them.” Triumphant glee lit up the monster’s face. “So you can’t kill me. You need me, if you want to know how this all works.” Litton’s tone turned shrill and wheedling. “We can work together. All the power can be yours.”
Brennan smiled, a bleak and terrible smile, and Litton flinched, cowering in the corner. “You mistake my intent entirely,” Brennan said. “No one should have this knowledge. Now I will face Tiernan in the next world, content in the knowledge that this hideous experiment died with you.”
Litton screamed and tried to crawl away, and Brennan knew a moment’s pity, Tiernan’s words ringing in his ears. Enough death. Enough killing. Litton would be brought to justice and suffer long years in prison. Needing only to get to Tiernan, to hold her one last time, he turned away and crossed to the chair. He gently touched her face, which was still warm, but so very pale. “I will always love you, mi amara, through this life and beyond,” he whispered.
The first gunshot hit the chair. The second smashed into the back of his leg.
As he fell, he spun on his good leg and threw the power—all the power, every ounce of the power—at Litton, who stood against the far wall, the gun from the fallen guard clutched in his shaking hands.
It was Brennan’s turn to call the lightning.
When the smoke cleared, nothing but a blackened pile of smoldering bone remained.
Brennan returned to Tiernan, limping now, blood running freely down his leg. The bullet had missed bone and artery and had gone clear through flesh, but if he left it untreated and unbound, surely it would be enough to kill him.
He prayed it would be enough to kill him.
He ripped the restraints off of Tiernan’s wrists and pulled her gently, so carefully, into his arms. Everything he’d ever wished for lay like ash in his arms and heart and mind. He resolved to carry her out of that miserable place of pain and death, find a way back to the park, and sit with her in the cool peace of the forest until his blood left his body in sufficient quantities to allow him to join her.
He stood, turning toward the door, and took the first step toward freedom, prepared to blast his way out, through guards, through scientists, even through the vampires.
The last thing he expected was the vampire who walked through the door.
Chapter 41
“Daniel?” Brennan stared at the vampire who’d suddenly appeared like a hallucination to his overwrought mind. The vampire who had allied with the Atlanteans over and over again, who had saved Quinn’s life although at the price of a blood bond, here he was and Brennan’s mind could not make sense of it.
“Brennan, we don’t have much time,” Daniel began, but then he looked—really looked—at Tiernan, and he froze. “No. No, not again.”
“She is dead, and the one who brought us here and murdered her lies dead as well,” Brennan said, barely managing to speak through the pain that swamped his mind and drained the breath from his lungs. “I will be next.”
A female entered the room, another vampire, and she scanned the equipment, then trained her gaze on Tiernan. “How long?” she asked, her voice urgent. “How long since she died?”
“A few minutes, perhaps. Long enough for my heart to die with her. Now, get out of my way or by all the gods, I will destroy you, too, Daniel, no matter what help you have been to me and mine in the past.”
The woman pushed past Daniel and blurred with preternatural vampire speed across the floor to Brennan, so fast Brennan didn’t have time to move before she was there, staring down at Tiernan and touching her skin.
“We might be able to resuscitate her,” she said, and at first the words had no meaning, they were just sounds, but then a great, dark hope lit Brennan’s world and he staggered back as though she’d struck him.
“What? How? Vampires have no healing magic,” he said, sanity and rationality returning to crush hope.
“No, we have something better,” she said, pointing to the as yet undamaged machines that had been behind Brennan, near the chair. “Modern life-saving equipment. Put her back in that chair.”
He didn’t move. Couldn’t move. Could only stand there, holding the body of his woman, not daring to hope.
“The machin
es, Brennan. They have machines to make her heart start again. I know how to use them.”
Daniel leapt across the room to Brennan. “Let Deirdre help, Brennan. Please, let her try.” He gently but quickly steered Brennan around and back to the chair.
Brennan hesitated still; no matter that he had some measure of trust for Daniel, he did not know the other vampire and, most of all, to put Tiernan back in the chair that had tortured and killed her felt like the worst kind of blasphemy.
“Please,” Deirdre said, looking up at him with eyes that were so familiar, and something clicked in Brennan’s mind.
“Deirdre? Erin’s sister?”
She nodded, fathomless pain in the dark depths of her deep blue eyes, and she even smiled a little. “Yes. Please let me help this one, as you and your Atlanteans helped my sister.”
She put one hand under Tiernan’s head and helped Brennan guide her back onto the hated chair, and then Deirdre ripped Tiernan’s shirt open and put pads on her chest that were attached to wires and a machine—a different machine, not the same, not the helmet—and she yelled, “Clear,” but Brennan didn’t know what that meant and he didn’t move.
Daniel yanked Brennan back and away from Tiernan, but he didn’t have time to protest before Deirdre made the machine bring another kind of lightning, and Tiernan’s body jumped in the chair and then fell back, still silent and unmoving.
Brennan roared out his anguish from hope extinguished, and he stumbled back, would have fallen, but Daniel caught his arm in a strong grip.
“It didn’t work,” Brennan said, unnecessarily, as they could all see that it had not brought his Tiernan back, but Deirdre ignored him and adjusted dials on the machine and again yelled out the word.
“Clear!”
This time Tiernan’s body jumped higher, but the result was the same: no life, no heartbeat, no Tiernan. But Brennan looked at the machine and then at Tiernan and he knew what to do.