Whoever won would feed. Whoever lost would die, drained, the circle of life proven once again. For only the strongest could survive; everyone else became a snack. Until Aden, her every action had been motivated by that principle. After him, she had fought to protect those weaker than herself. Fought her instinct to take, to have. Now, she couldn’t fight. She wanted. She would have.
All too soon, however, Aden pinned her, and this time, he held her down so firmly, she was unable to wrestle her way free. Their bodies rubbed together as she still continued to struggle, their limbs tangling. Finally, he managed to grab her wrists and brace them over her head.
Game over. She had lost.
She took stock. She was panting, sweating, her neck throbbing, her mind locked on one thought: TASTETASTETASTE.
Yes.
“Let go,” she snarled.
Above her, Aden stilled. He, too, was panting and sweating. His eyes were still glowing that bright crimson, but now there were flecks of amber mixed with the red. Amber, his natural color. That meant, for once, Elijah had been wrong. Aden was in there, still battling the beast for control.
She could do no less.
The thought was a lifeline, and she clung. Victoria concentrated on her breathing, in and out, slow and measured. Voices other than her own began to penetrate her awareness.
—feeling worse, Caleb was saying.
The dizziness had never been this bad before. And once the switch-switch-switch had begun, the souls should not have been able to stay put. Why hadn’t they left her?
We all have to stay calm, Elijah said. Okay? We’ll be fine. I know we’ll be fine.
You’re lying. Julian’s words were slurred. Hurts too badly for us to be fine.
Yes, lying. Panic drenched Caleb’s voice. This is terrible, I’m dying, and you’re dying, too. We’re all dying. I know we’re dying.
Stop saying the word dying and calm down, Elijah commanded. Now. Your little anxiety attacks are placing Aden and Victoria in more danger.
At last, concern. But it was too little, too late. They were already in danger.
I just…I need…
Caleb! You’re placing all of us in danger, too. Please, calm down.
“Thirsty,” Aden said, his gravelly voice drawing her back to the hated present.
The amber was fading in his eyes, the red expanding. He was losing the battle…would soon attack her, his gaze already zeroing in on the still-seeping wound in her neck. He licked his lips, his eyes closing as he savored the lingering flavor of her.
This was the perfect time for her to strike, she thought, reverting to her baser urges. Her opponent was distracted. “Taste,” she said, the word garbled.
Victoria. You love him. You fought to save him. Don’t undermine your own efforts by succumbing to a hunger you can control. A voice of reason in the chaos of her mind. But of course, Elijah, the psychic, would know exactly what to say to reach her. All right? Okay? I can’t deal with both you and Caleb right now, on top of the dizziness. One of you has to act like a grown-up. And since you’re eighty-something years old, I pick you.
Aden’s eyelids popped open. Bright red, no longer any hint of his humanity.
Control herself, yes. She could. She would. “Aden, please.” Save him, yes. She would try that, too. He meant everything to her. “I know you can hear me. I know you don’t really want to hurt me.”
A pause, heavy and laden with tension. Then, miraculously, another flicker of amber, deep in those beloved eyes. “Can’t hurt…” he said. “Don’t want to hurt.”
Tears of relief pooled in her lashes, leaked onto her cheeks. “Let go of my hands, Aden. Please.”
Another pause, this one lasting an eternity. Slowly, so slowly, he uncurled his fingers from her wrists and lifted his arms away from her. He straightened until he was straddling her, his knees pressing into her hips.
“Victoria…sorry, so sorry. Your poor, beautiful neck.” The dual voice, one his, one the beast’s, tendrils of sympathy and smoke, blending together, wafting over her.
She offered him a soft smile. “Nothing to apologize for.” I did this to you.
I…need…you must… Caleb couldn’t quite catch his breath—and suddenly, Victoria couldn’t quite catch her breath, either. Something’s happening…I can’t…
Listen to me carefully, Caleb, Elijah lashed out. We can’t go back to Aden yet. We’ll be killed.
Killed? Caleb gasped. Figures. I knew we were going to die.
What do you mean, killed? Julian snarled.
I mean, we’ll be fine unless you two keep this up! Your panic is going to drive us out of Victoria, and we can’t leave Victoria. Not yet. So you have to calm down like I told you. Do you hear me? We can return to Aden later. After the…just after. So, Caleb, Julian, are you listening to—
His speech ended abruptly. Caleb screamed, then Julian screamed, the sounds blending with Elijah’s sudden groan of distress. No, they hadn’t listened.
Neither had she, apparently. Victoria was the next to scream, and the sound of that busted her eardrums. Loud, loud, so loud. Hurt, hurt, so hurt. Then, she didn’t care. The pain left, and her scream softened into a purr.
Somehow, some way, absolute power was birthed inside her, blasting through her, fusing with her. Now, a part of her. Good, good, so good.
Throughout the decades of her life, she had drained several witches. A bad thing for vampires. Witches were their drug of no-choice, and once sampled, it was difficult to think about anything else. She knew that very well. Though years had passed since her last bender, some days the cravings hit her, and she’d find herself running through the woods, searching, searching, desperate to find a witch. Any witch. And that was reason number one why witches and vampires usually avoided each other.
But, oh, this sudden burst of power…it was witchlike, intoxicating, warmth and sunlight, yet cold like a snowstorm. Dizzying, overwhelming, everything and nothing. She floated on clouds, swept away from the cave. She dozed on a beach, water lapping at her feet. She danced in the rain, as carefree as the child she’d never been allowed to be.
Such a beautiful eternity awaited her here. She never wanted to leave.
She thought she heard the souls crying, soft, almost childlike. Where they not experiencing this, too?
A roar cut through her euphoria. That roar stretched out wispy tentacles, and those tentacles wrapped around her, surprisingly strong, tugging her away. Frowning, she dug her heels into the ground. I’m staying!
A second roar inside her head, louder now, threatening, causing a chilled, clammy sheen of perspiration to coat her….
In a snap, she was jerked back to the present. And just like that, her sense of tranquility vanished. No. No, no, no.
Oh, yes. The souls were no longer chattering, screaming, crying, anything, and the sense of power had evaporated with the tranquility. More than that, Chompers had returned, and he didn’t want her to hurt Aden.
Before, each time her beast had returned to her, she had experienced a sharp lance of acknowledgment. Nothing more. Then he’d left her again. Then returned. An endless cycle as she and Aden endlessly drank. But this…this was something different. Something stronger. A passing of energy, perhaps. Or had that been a final break of the ever-changing cycle of possession?
Chompers’ hunger blended with her own, familiar, yet utterly unwelcome because he would not allow her to do anything about it. He never did, not with Aden.
Victoria blinked open her eyes, gasped. She had never left the cave, but she’d been busy. She was on her feet, her arms outstretched. A golden glow radiated from between her fingers, dimming…gone. Aden lay in a crumpled heap against the far wall. He was unconscious, unmoving, maybe even—no. No!
Her bare feet dug into the rocks as she raced to him. The moment she reached him, she was crouching and feeling for a pulse. No, no, no. Please, please. There! Fast, too fast and too weak, but there. He was alive.
Relief flooded her, follow
ed quickly by remorse. What had she done to him? Beaten him? Drained him? No, she couldn’t have. Chompers wouldn’t have allowed that, either. Right?
“Oh, Aden.” She smoothed the hair from his brow. There were no bruises on his face, no punctures in his neck. “What’s wrong with you?”
A sound wafted to her ears. Frowning, she leaned down. Was he…humming? She blinked, listened more intently. Yes, yes, he was. And if he was humming, he wasn’t hurting. Right? He must be experiencing some sort of euphoria. Perhaps even the same euphoria she’d basked in. Right?
Please, be right.
She studied him more intently. His expression was serene, his lips edged upward. He looked boyish, innocent, almost angelic. He was experiencing the euphoria, then.
Relaxing, she traced her fingertip along his hairline. He was so striking, with his hair dyed black and those two-inch blond roots. Perfectly arched eyebrows rose above perfectly uptilted eyes. His nose was perfectly sloped. His lips were soft, his chin stubborn. Again, perfectly. His was a face a girl would never tire of looking at. Maybe because every new glance revealed a previously undiscovered nuance. This time, she saw the thick, feathering fan of his lashes, a golden chocolate in the haze of the cave.
“Wake up for me, Aden. Please.”
Nothing, no response.
Perhaps, like her, he didn’t want to leave. Well, too bad. They had some chatting to do.
“Aden. Aden, wake up.”
Again nothing. No, not nothing. He scowled, and the scowl soon became a grimace.
Her heart galloped against her ribs. All right. What if he wasn’t floating and carefree? What if he was stuck? Or worse, agonized? That grimace…
He panted out a breath once, twice, shallow and rasping. Crackling. She’d heard that crackle before—each time she’d taken too much blood from a human.
He won’t die. He can’t. They’d been here a week. Seven days, three hours and eighteen minutes. They’d fought and kissed and drank from each other the entire time. Aden had survived all of that; surely he would survive this. Whatever this was.
Shame suddenly outweighed her ever-present guilt. And maybe that shame was what corralled her beast, stopping him from screaming for release the way he had every time before.
Wait. Chompers wasn’t screaming. The realization caused her to blink with confusion. A quick glance at her chest, and she saw that all of her wards had faded. Even still, the beast was silent. That had never happened before.
What else was different? Her gaze fell to Aden’s neck, where his pulse drummed sporadically. Her mouth watered, but the urge, the electrifying need to bite him, wasn’t there.
No, not true. It was there, it simply wasn’t as strong. It was controllable. Even still, she was thirsty, desperate to drink from someone. And if she could now take from someone else, perhaps Aden could, as well. If so…
He could be saved. Completely. She hoped. There was only one way to find out. Though she was still weak, she twined her fingers with Aden’s and closed her eyes, imagining her bedroom at the vampire stronghold near Crossroads, Oklahoma. White carpet, white walls, white bed covers.
Please work, she thought. Please.
A cold breeze kicked up, blowing her hair up and down, the strands winding together and knotting. It was working! Her grip tightened on Aden, and her lips curved into a grin. The floor fell away, leaving them suspended in the air. Any moment now and they would be—
Her feet settled on a soft, plush foundation. Carpet.
Home. They were home.
THREE
Three days later
THE BEDROOM DOOR CRASHED against the wall as a harsh male voice snarled, “I hear you’ve threatened to disembowel anyone who steps foot in your room. Well, here I am. But before you disembowel me, you better tell me what the hell is going on.”
Victoria stopped pacing and whipped around to face the intruder. Riley. Her bodyguard. Her best friend. Tall, as muscled as Aden now was, with a face roughened by life and fist fights.
Her chest constricted. He wasn’t handsome in a Prince of Your Dreams way like Aden, but in a sexy I’ll Kick Your Ass No Matter What It Takes and Laugh way, and that was exactly what she needed at the moment. A willingness to do whatever was necessary.
He might be the one person able to help her.
And though he was obviously fuming, his eyes glittering with angry heat, he was the best thing she’d seen in days. He had dark, shaggy hair, bright green eyes fringed by long lashes of the darkest jet, and a nose broken too many times to count, with a slight bump in the center. Certain injuries, when received repeatedly, simply couldn’t heal properly.
He wore a green Lucky Charms T-shirt and jeans—or what looked to be jeans, since she knew they weren’t really denim. He was the only slash of color in her white-as-the-clouds bedroom.
“Nice shirt,” she said. One, to distract him from his anger before she spilled her secrets, and two, to showcase the sense of humor she was desperately trying to develop. Once, his human girlfriend, Mary Ann Gray, had accused Victoria of being too somber.
“Only thing I could find. Victoria. Talk. Now. Before I assume the worst and just start offing everyone in the house.”
The pretend sense of humor vanished, and tears filled her eyes, those stupid human tears she’d never shed before coming to the States. She raced to Riley, throwing herself into his strong, capable arms.
“I’m so glad you’re here.”
“You might not be so glad if I have to force you to start talking.” Despite the threat, he hugged her tight, exactly as he’d done when they were younger and other vampires refused to play with her.
Because she was a daughter of Vlad the Impaler, every one had feared punishment if she were hurt—or worse—on their watch. But not Riley. Never Riley. He was like the brother she had always wanted, her comforter and her shield.
Oh, she had a blood brother. Sorin. Except, Vlad had forbidden her from looking at, talking to or even acknowledging him. Father Dearest hadn’t wanted his only son tainted by his “too soft” daughters. In fact, when Aden had asked Victoria about her siblings back when they’d first met, she’d named only her sisters. Last she’d inadvertently heard, Sorin was leading half of the vampire army through Europe, keeping Bloody Mary, the leader of the Scottish faction, in line. Combine all of that, and Sorin didn’t count.
Besides, Vlad had long ago given Riley charge of Victoria’s care, and the wolf shifter had taken the job seriously. Not just out of a sense of duty, or fear of torture and death if he failed, but also because he liked her. They were friends first and everything else second.
“Why are you here, though?” she asked, ignoring his demand. Again.
“My brothers hunted me down and scared two centuries off my life when they told me you’d ventured into Crazy Town. Now, enough about me.” Riley pulled back and cupped her cheeks, forcing her to peer up at him. “Have you fed properly? You look like crap.”
His concern—and insult—offered more comfort than anything else could have and was so wonderfully Riley she responded in a way she knew he would approve. “Yes, Daddy. I’ve fed properly.” Truth. Five minutes after arriving home and settling Aden in her bed, she’d had her fangs buried deep inside one of the blood-slaves who lived here at the stronghold.
So thirsty had she been, she’d nearly drained the human dry. Her sister Lauren had managed to jerk her away just in time. Her other sister, Stephanie, had found her a second human, and a third and a fourth, and she’d drunk until her stomach could hold no more.
“Smart-ass.” Riley’s lips twitched with his amusement. “When did you learn to wield sarcasm?”
“I can’t remember exactly.” All she knew was that she’d had a choice. Find the humor in what happened to her or drown in her misery. “Two weeks ago, maybe.”
The mention of time wiped away his delighted expression, leaving him with a cold frown.
Only one person affected him that way. Mary Ann Gray. The girl had stru
ck out on her own the same night Aden had been stabbed, and Riley the Besotted Wolf had charged after her, determined to protect her despite the hazard to himself.
“Where’s your human?” Wait. Mary Ann wasn’t quite human anymore. The girl had become a drainer—something Victoria had not seen coming—able to suck the magic from witches, the beasts from vampires, the power from fairies and the ability to shift forms from the wolves.
Victoria had begun to wonder if Mary Ann had ever been human. After all, fairies were drainers. The difference was, the fairies could control their hunger and feedings. Mary Ann could not. Still. That raised a startling question. Could Mary Ann be a human/fairy hybrid?
Victoria had never heard of such a pairing, but as she was learning, anything was possible. If Mary Ann was somehow a hybrid, every vampire and shifter in this stronghold—besides Riley, of course—would want the girl dead. More than they already did. Fae were Enemy One. Dangerous in the extreme. A threat to otherworld existence.
“Well?” Victoria insisted when Riley offered no reply.
“I lost her.” A muscle underneath his eye jerked, a sure sign of his upset.
“Wait. You, an expert tracker, lost a teenager who wouldn’t know how to hide if she were invisible?” Another sign that Mary Ann was more than she seemed.
The ticking migrated to Riley’s jaw. “Yes.”
“You should be ashamed.”
“I don’t want to talk about it,” he said. “I’m here to talk about you. How are you? Seriously?”
“I’m fine.”
“All right. I’ll pretend I believe that. Any word from your father?”
“No.” Vlad had ordered Aden’s execution while remaining in the shadows. Shadows he had yet to vacate.
She’d never been so grateful for her father’s vanity. He wanted to be seen as invincible, always. So, no one here knew Vlad was still alive, and if she had her way, they never would. The vampires might rebel against Aden before he was officially crowned king, and if they rebelled while he was in this condition, he would lose. Everything he’d already endured would have been for nothing.
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