by Kaia Bennett
In the memory, the man hurt Vaughn, squeezing his cock and ramming his tender ass, forcing Vaughn to come again. In the memory, Vaughn’s anguished cries broke my heart.
In the memory, the man’s eyes bloomed black, his fangs stretched and he shoved them into Vaughn’s neck for the last time.
I walked into the memory. I reached out from the shadows into the light. I touched Vaughn’s tear-stained face, turning his gaze to meet mine as the man—vampire—drained Vaughn’s humanity. Like a ghost floating away from his human body, Vaughn’s mind followed me, away from the shadow.
He can’t hurt you anymore.
In the real world Vaughn echoed my words against my mouth, lost in a trance. Lost in the peace I’d given him.
“He can’t hurt me anymore....”
The horrible things Vaughn had done to girls like me, to boys like he’d been in that dungeon underground, were reprehensible. I hated him more because I knew he’d come from pain and yet, he’d chosen to inflict pain and death on others.
But I pitied him, too. I pitied the scared man he’d been. The human man.
I left Vaughn in the soft space between the wounds of the past and the scars he bore today. I left him floating in the fog and reached for the knife.
One shot. One cut.
Vaughn stared into my face, but he looked dazed. His body drove into me on autopilot.
I conjured the image of Margot, grabbed Vaughn’s hair, and yanked his throat back.
I rolled with him as I buried the knife as deeply into his throat as I could, which wasn’t far enough. I sliced, I sliced again, the waterfall of blood splashing me as I hit bone again. He jerked, making the blade slip. With all my weight leaning on the knife, I winced at the grating vibration that echoed along my arms when the blade slipped between two bones. I choked on the flood sputtering as Vaughn’s life ran out of him, and then I gasped in air as Vaughn sank onto the floor. He stared up at me with human eyes, ice blue and full of power. His eyes froze in death when I put all my weight down on the knife and sliced until I felt the blade slide through the tough tube that would never again swallow anyone’s blood.
Red. The entire world had gone red. I howled with rage and adrenaline and anguish with Vaughn’s body still buried within mine. Like Liam’s, I sensed his memories would forever haunt my mind.
I lifted the knife and drove the point into his heart. His chest heaved with every strike. Blood bubbled past his lips. I screamed like a primitive thing. Jerking the knife free, I raised my arms and brought the blade down again. Over and over, I buried the knife in his chest, my tears running unabated. I stabbed until Vaughn’s chest bore dozens upon dozens of slicing wounds and my arm wouldn’t lift anymore.
I slid off of him, scrambling away. I wanted out of this room worse than I’d ever wanted anything, even to live, but I drew up short, gasping for breath and gaping at the smooth metal panel barring my run for freedom.
To the left, a steady red light gleamed. Whirling, I shrieked.
“What’s the goddamn code, Vaughn?”
In death he looked frightened, just like the tormented boy he’d been in his human life. I sobbed, shaking from my toes to the roots of my hair, my hands covered in Vaughn.
“What’s the goddamn code, you sonofabitch!”
Part of me expected him to sit up, to roar and beat me, break my bones, hurt me with all the fury he’d reserve for a person who betrayed his pain and mastered him.
He didn’t move. He stared blankly up at the ceiling. His body never changed, except for the dwindling flow of blood.
Shock took hold and I wrapped my arms around myself and rocked.
If I lived I’d end up in a place like this forever.
If I lived.
Jesse.
I stared down at the carnage I’d made of his friend, wondering who I’d become.
My mouth went dry and my gaze flitted over the blood Vaughn wore like a shroud.
If I lived.
You’ll need to be strong. It was a good kill, the beast said. Now drink.
“No.” I shook my head.
Drink. The beast licked her lips.
Drink. The chorus rose. The me I used to be. The girl whose jacket I wore. Kelsey. Michelle. Colin. Regina. The girl whose name was scrawled into the bracelet I’d taken. The boy who’d been Liam’s last meal in the motel room. The girl who wore the feather necklace, the leash Vaughn had torn off me.
One by one, they stepped out of the shadows of the cage.
Drink. They echoed. Drink.
I whimpered and licked my hands, salty tears replacing Vaughn’s blood on my fingers.
I cried, but didn’t gag on the sharp flavor of my second victim, my tormentor. I stumbled forward, fell to my knees when I could no longer stand, and crawled to Vaughn. I lowered my face to the wound at his neck and drank deep, slurping, licking his raised skin where the stab wounds puckered.
I cried, but didn’t throw up. I drank until full, until I felt power in every vein. Then I backed away, tucking myself into the corner of the padded room as far away from Vaughn as I could get.
I wept silently, arms wrapped around my knees, and stared at the door in a bright white room splattered with blood.
Waiting.
22
Hours and hours passed. I knew this rationally, but I lost track of the time. I didn’t sleep, or doze. I stared at a blank field beyond Vaughn’s dead body and the puddles of his coagulated blood.
I shivered, but didn’t feel the cold. I cried, but my wounds healed. The pain of Vaughn’s cut and his rough possession melted away, and so did time.
When the keypad on the door beeped, I tried to stand but couldn’t move anything but my eyes.
Jesse swung the door open, his expression grim. I couldn’t read him. I couldn’t do anything but blink.
The shadows behind his back shifted, moving like in the dream, until another man took a step into the room. His dark dress shoes squeaked against the plastic. My gaze trailed up the immaculate fall of his suit pants, the creases sharp enough to cut. The man’s hand’s remained in his pockets, his unbuttoned dark suit jacket and crisp white dress shirt fading in and out of focus as I blinked. The shirt left a swath of pale gold skin visible on his chest. Broad shoulders, thick neck. Sturdy chin and full lips that rivaled Jesse’s chiseled, skilled pair.
He had ran wide nose, a bump present at the center, like guys have when their nose gets broken. Sharp cheekbones and angled, dark eyes. He stood about the same height as Jesse, with a glossy swath of dark hair falling over his forehead.
He smelled and looked like a cologne commercial come to life. Something about him struck me as strange. I knew a vampire when I saw one now, but this man seemed different from Jesse.
My gaze switched to Jesse. I wondered if my stare appeared inquisitive or just blank, like my insides. Empty.
“Got quite a mess on our hands here,” the unknown man replied. His melodic baritone rumbled through a room that had been silent for hours. Save the faint buzzing of the lights and my own deafening breaths.
Our? No mess on Jesse’s hands. Who was the other half of “our”?
Jesse didn’t ask what had happened. He seemed to know the second my gaze locked with his. He vibrated with fury—and something else. Something like fear. Jesse’s glance darted to the stranger, who took a long-legged step into the room.
“What’s your name, girl?”
I drew a blank, my mouth refusing to work. I didn’t like the way my lips felt when I parted them and tried to speak. He remained patient, pinning me with dark brown eyes. I wondered if his eyes had begun to bloom from bloodlust or if they were always that obsidian color. I wondered if vampires even liked the blood of other vampires.
“Evie.”
“Can you stand, Evie?” The man stared at my blood-covered legs.
I didn’t know. I stared at my legs like they belonged to someone else. When I flexed my toes, the dried carmine pulled the skin along my shins. I’d b
een sitting in the same position so long, moving felt odd.
The man walked closer, telegraphing every step.
I unraveled, tingle by tingle, from my cocoon. I pried my hands from their death grip on my thighs and braced my arms on the walls to either side of the corner I inhabited. I never took my eyes off the man, nor Jesse, who hadn’t moved from the door.
Jesse stared down at Vaughn for long, torturous moments, moments where he would decide what to do with me. I’d killed his friend, his brother. But his brother had laid in wait for Jesse to leave, maneuvering into a position where Vaughn could have me all to himself. Jesse had no illusions about Vaughn. Jesse knew I’d been down here because Vaughn planned to murder me while he had the chance.
Right?
The man peeled off his jacket, slow, as if trying not to startle me. My heart skittered. I read his undressing as a danger sign. I froze in a crouch, halfway off the floor.
You too? I couldn’t take on both of them if they planned to take Vaughn’s place as tormentors.
“To cover yourself with.”
The stranger held out his hand to me, the jacket held aloft in the other and stepped closer. He avoided the violent spatters and silent river of blood until he towered over me.
Weakness shook me. I cowered as his shadow consumed me.
“Leave her be, Cai.” Jesse’s strained voice shook me out of my panic. “I doubt she wants to be touched.”
Cai.
I catalogued the name, but almost laughed. I doubted I’d have much use for names if Jesse’s reaction was any sign. He hadn’t so much as moved from the doorway. He hadn’t come to me, lifted me into his arms, and asked me if I was alright. And why would he? Vaughn hadn’t done anything to me Jesse hadn’t done himself.
Cai ignored Jesse. “I won’t hurt you, Evie. Take my hand.”
Naked as a blood-soaked jaybird, I rose to my full height, swayed, then steadied myself. My legs wobbled like gelatin, gave out, then fortified. I took a step. Then another. Despite getting to my feet, he still towered over me. Just like Jesse. Just like Vaughn.
Not like Jesse or Vaughn. He hasn’t stared at me like I’m a tasty morsel, parading me around to be fucked and bled.
Well, it’s still early. We did just meet, give him a minute to disappoint.
I took Cai’s extended hand and steadied myself while staring at his shoulder. His jacket fell around me. I sighed in relief.
I looked up to see I’d been half wrong about the chivalrous new vampire. His eyes, while not completely black, had bled out some. Bloodlust shone in his gaze, but he had the emotion on a tight leash. I, on the other hand, had no room for any emotion but trepidation. I kept my distance, and once he placed his jacket on my shoulders, I pulled my hand away from his.
“Thank you.”
I swallowed, my throat raspy and sore from screaming, unused to speaking after hours of silence.
“Don’t thank me.” His voice hinted at something beyond a dismissive “Don’t mention it.”
When I glanced over, Jesse had disappeared. I hadn’t heard or seen Jesse move, but my heart stopped when I wondered what would happen when I made my way up those stairs.
Cai stooped to gather my clothes, the cleanest thing in the room, next to the ceiling.
I made it to the door. The stairs loomed and my knees gave out. When Cai touched me, I flinched.
“I can do it.”
His assessing stare held a strange mixture of pity and amusement. Cai tilted his head to the side, leaned his forearm against the doorjamb, and waited.
I made my way up the stairs, clutching the wall with Cai at my back, ascending with the same creepy feeling of being escorted to my doom.
At the landing, I burst into a room with darkness seeping through the windows and dim lighting. I squinted, taken back by the passage of time, the lack of sunlight.
I’d been down in the basement all night and through the following day? Jesse, true to his word, hadn’t returned until the next evening?
“When did Vaughn take you downstairs?” Jesse had his back to me, looking out over the water. Lights across the lake glinted. Water twinkled and rippled.
Jesse’s reflection in the window, the play on light and glass, confused my addled brain. Cai walked around me and took a seat on the couch. He crossed a foot over his knee and spread out, arms resting on the back of the couch. I had to look away, thinking about the weight of Vaughn’s arm around my shoulder, and the way he’d woken me where Cai sat.
“Not—” I cleared my throat. “Not long after you left. I ate. Took a nap. When Va—he woke me, it was still daytime.”
Did I imagine things or did Jesse close his eyes and grit his teeth?
Cai gave Jesse a look.
“We should talk, Jesse. Without the girl present.”
“Who are you?”
Cai met my gaze and smiled. Not a cruel smile, but most certainly not a kind one.
“A representative for a very important person.”
Jesse sighed. “He’s an emissary. For my father.”
The word “father” had never sounded more like a curse. A chill wracked me, even though the house had been set to a pleasant temperature.
“Who’s your father?” I looked at Cai. “Can… c-can vampires have fathers?”
Cai flashed his teeth and laughed. “Oh, you poor thing. You haven’t told her anything have you, Jesse?”
“No.” Jesse’s simple reply sent a lick of ice down my spine. I shuddered and turned, thinking for a twisted moment that Vaughn could be right behind me, smiling and licking the salt of my skin off his lips.
I turned back, and Cai’s smile no longer split his mouth in a haze of perfect white.
“He did a number on you.” It wasn’t a question Cai asked, but a statement of fact.
I shuddered. “What haven’t you told me?” I pitched the question to Jesse, couched in soothing tones. Demanding anything of a man whose brother I’d murdered would be tricky, but I needed answers.
Cai hadn’t been sent here by accident.
Don’t thank me….
“Everything.” Jesse turned and walked around the coffee table to sit on an armchair opposite Cai.
“Go upstairs. Take a shower. When you’re done, get dressed and come back down.”
I stood still for a moment. “You’re… you’re not mad at me?”
I hated how weak my voice sounded, the plea that made the words crack. I despised the tears of relief that waited, if he’d only say I had nothing to fear anymore.
Jesse swallowed. I couldn’t read his expression, but his voice soothed me when he nodded toward the stairs. “Go on, Evie. Take your time, then come to me.”
I didn’t dare cry, not with both men—vampires—watching me. I turned for the stairs, took them at a glacial pace, and finally, stumbled into the shower.
Even under the hot water, I couldn’t stop shaking. I watched the shower floor be consumed with never-ending swirls of scarlet. I let myself cry. When the sobs threatened to split my chest open I closed a hand over my mouth and muffled the sound. Over and over I saw Vaughn’s knife enter his skin, sliding into him like butter. Every once in a while, the knife caught on bone. My hands ached, and when I stared at my rosy palms I saw the faint threads of healing cuts.
As long as I lived, I’d never get Vaughn’s face out of my mind, the helplessness of his trance, the tears streaming down his cheeks.
He’d been at peace for a moment. A true peace. When he’d returned to the real world from the trance I forced on him, the shock twisting his features as I flipped him over and shoved the knife into bone… I shouldn’t feel guilt. He’d made so many victims breathe their last in similar fashion.
Then again, his last breath as a human man had been the same. How long had Vaughn lived in that dark torture chamber of his mind, bound to the floor and fearing every shadow?
Who would he have been if not for the horror that changed him?
Time passed under a waterfal
l. I stayed in the hot spray until every drop of blood tumbled down the drain and my skin pruned.
The shower turned off with a swish, so gentle and powerful. I stepped out, bone-tired and dripping everywhere, but I wanted to brush the blood off my teeth. My feet slapped against tile. In the mirror, a girl I’d never seen before brushed her teeth. She wore my face, but my eyes were haunted. Vampire blood gave my skin a dewy glow and my hair a glossy sheen, but vampire blood couldn’t do anything about the deaths floating in black eyes. I’d drunk enough that my eyes went from doe-eyed to almost otherworldly. They didn’t bloom black like a vampire’s. That had to be some kind of victory. I dried off, wrapped the towel around my chest, and walked with more strength to the bedroom where my clothes were kept.
“She killed him right under your nose. That’s the point, Jesse.”
Cai’s voice floated up the stairs. I stilled at the bedroom doorway.
“She killed him because he came back early,” Jesse corrected. “I told him over and over to watch it with her, but he didn’t listen.”
“Your father doesn’t care about some turned mutt. Vaughn is meaningless and so is Liam.”
Silence.
Then, “If you weren’t my father’s bitch, I’d rip your heart out through your chest and make you eat it.” The icy malice in Jesse’s voice swept a chill over my damp skin.
“The whole of North America’s vampire population is your father’s bitch, including you.” Cai’s tone seemed congenial, but his voice dropped a sinister octave. “And, I’d like to see you try.”
I stepped into the bedroom, ears pricked. Thanks to Vaughn’s blood, they might well have held their quiet conversation at the foot of the bed. Did they know I could hear? Maybe they didn’t care.
I rifled for underwear, jeans, and the long-sleeved crop top Jesse had bought, the only thing I had that would cover some skin.
“… lost the reins on this one.”
Their voices became muffled when I pulled on my shirt.
“… tell my father… in control here. That’s the point of… free run means I’m free to do what I like.”
I tiptoed to the door.