“To feed you,” she replied taking another step forward.
“I’m sorry, there’s been a mistake. I, I don’t drink live blood,” Chloe apologized, her eyes growing wide when Molly pulled the hidden blade from her pants and sliced into her own arm.
Chloe covered her nose and mouth with shock when the sweet scent of Molly’s blood invaded her nostrils and forced her fangs down. She’d never been around live human blood before and the aroma was more enticing than she could have ever imagined.
Chloe fled to the farthest wall, trying to put as much distance as possible between her and Molly, who watched with a triumphant smile.
“I’ve been told it is amazing, drinking live,” Molly continued as she moved towards Chloe.
“Please, just leave,” Chloe begged without looking back, her voice strained from the pain of her sudden hunger for Molly’s blood.
It was just the opportunity Molly was looking for. Without another word, she rushed forward, her eyes wild with fury as she swung the blade, wildly aiming for the back of Chloe’s neck.
In that flash of a moment before the steel made contact, Molly’s rage and thoughts were completely focused on her plan to kill Chloe, giving the young telepath just enough warning to defend herself from the attack. She spun around, moving so fast that Molly’s human eyes couldn’t process the motion until, instead of sinking the blade into Chloe’s neck, she found herself flying back, the force of Chloe’s kick lifting her several inches off the ground before she slammed into door.
With rage still pulsing through her body, Molly tried to stand, intent on carrying out her plans; but as she breathed in with the effort, no air came. She gasped, and then coughed, sending a spray of blood into the air. She grasped for her chest, confused and disoriented when her hand pushed against the blade which was planted firmly in the side of her chest just below her breast.
Chloe stared with wide eyes as Molly attempted to yell out with the pain, but she couldn’t take in enough air to manage it. The force with which the human had fallen, coupled with the angle of the blade in her hand, succeeded in puncturing her lung. More blood poured from Molly’s mouth as she tried again to move, and her eyes started to roll back.
Chloe ran to her, holding her breath to avoid taking in the scent of Molly’s blood, which grew stronger with each passing moment as the vital liquid continued to spill from her wound.
Despite what Molly had just attempted, and all that Chloe knew about what kind of person she was, she couldn’t just sit there and watch her die. Chloe could feel Molly’s agony as her own, the silent screams of her pain ringing inside both their minds and, despite herself, she gasped, taking in the scent of blood, again causing her fangs to drop even further.
She placed her hands on Molly’s chest near the blade, focusing her healing ability. The pain she felt through Molly’s mind was enough to help her resist the blood that was covering her hands as she tried to save the life of the woman who wanted her dead.
“Listen to me, Molly!” Chloe yelled, leaning closer to the woman who was inching closer to death with each shallow breath, despite the flow of healing power that was pulsing through her hands. She was bleeding out faster than Chloe could heal her and Chloe knew she didn’t have much time left.
Shortly after Chloe healed Alexa, who had been long dead by the time her body was returned to the compound, the pair ventured out to the stables, hoping to share a ride as they continued to get reacquainted, only to discover Chloe’s favorite horse lying dead in the stall. She tried for hours to revive the animal to no avail until Alexa finally tore her away, exhausted and defeated. Curious about the extent and limitations of her powers, Commander Claesson and his team of scientists had called on her when some of their injured men were returned to the compound learning she could only resurrect other vampires, and even then only if their central nervous system remained intact, meaning there was no coming back from a head shot or decapitation. Humans and animals, it seemed, could only be healed before the point of death; once they were gone, there was no coming back.
“You have to drink my blood,” Chloe yelled, not sure if Molly could even hear her, biting into her own wrist and pressing it to Molly’s bluish lips. In her training back on The Elite compound, she’d learned that vampire blood could speed human healing. She just prayed it was enough to buy her the time she needed to seal Molly’s wounds.
Molly had already lost consciousness, but desperate, Chloe kept her wrist against the ghost-white woman’s lips, her vampire blood dripping down porcelain skin and mingling with the crimson already staining Molly’s blouse. She kept her wrist there, doing everything she could to get the blood into Molly’s system while she continued focusing her power to stitch the broken flesh back together. She kept trying, even after her preternatural hearing could no longer detect the faint flutter of Molly’s heartbeat.
✧
All Chloe wanted was for Molly to wake up. She was a pure, gentle soul and the weight of causing the death of another living creature pressed on her like nothing she had ever experienced before. Yes, she had used her powers to disable infected soldiers before, and they were ultimately killed as a result, but she hadn’t killed them; they hadn’t died by her hand. Somehow this was different. Molly was human; she was weak, almost defenseless against a vampire, let alone one as powerful as Chloe. And while everything that Kaleb and Asana had told her, and all the glimpses of Molly she’d caught in Lucias’s mind indicated that she was evil, twisted, Chloe believed there was good in her. She believed there was good in everyone, almost. After all her time in Lucias’s mind, she had yet to find evidence of good in him.
Time seemed to be standing still as she stayed there, her wrist still pressed to Molly’s lips even though the punctures she’d made had long healed closed.
Her guilt was so powerful that she didn’t even feel the usual surge of fear when she sensed that Lucias was near. He entered, unannounced, but remained eerily silent just inside the door as he took in the carnage of Chloe’s quarters. His mind was swimming with unfamiliar emotions. The scent of death hung heavy in the air; there was no denying that Molly was dead.
“What have you done?” he whispered, stepping closer and getting a full view of Molly’s bloody, lifeless body cradled gently in Chloe’s arms. Chloe wasn’t certain if the question was directed at her or Molly. Even as rage and something altogether unfamiliar, actual sadness, washed over him, Lucias’s fangs dropped from his gums and his cock began to fill. It was the blood. Both the scent of it in the air and the sight of it covering Chloe’s beautiful form as she clutched the remains of her first kill turned him on.
He’d lost a precious possession in the process, but he had already resolved himself to that inevitability. The fact that Molly was even there in Chloe’s room was evidence of that. Still, he felt the loss as much as someone like him could, but he pushed those emotions back and simply waited in silence.
After several minutes, Chloe gently moved Molly’s body away. Bile rose up in her throat as she glanced at Lucias; his growing desire apparent in the tenting of his expensive pants and the blaring thoughts in his head. She cringed at seeing her own image in his mind resembling some tormented ghost from a horror movie between the tears covering her face, her skin left pale by the events of the last hour and a mixture of Molly’s blood and her own covering the front of her cream-colored dress. Using speed, which made her nearly impossible for Lucias to track, she moved into the bathroom and closed and locked the door behind her.
Chloe screamed out her frustration, the mirror in front of her shattering as it was assaulted by her rising power. She stripped away her stained clothes, stepping into the shower and turning it on full blast, not caring that it was freezing cold or that it was very soon going to be scalding hot. She hated that Lucias was hovering outside and would never have shown him such weakness or showered with him anywhere nearby, but her need to remove the proof of what she had done far outweighed her fear of him.
Lucias pac
ed just outside the door, focusing his senses on Chloe inside and, despite the alien feelings of grief for Molly tugging at him, he smiled.
Chloe had killed, the act stripping away a layer of innocence which had separated her from him. Now she was vulnerable, uncertain of herself, but somehow stronger, more powerful. He didn’t possess the power of telepathy, or any special ability for that matter, but even he could sense the change. This was his chance, perhaps the only one he would get.
His cock grew harder as he listened to the slow strum of Chloe’s heartbeat amidst the droplets of water he envisioned pouring over her perfect naked form only a few feet away. Only one locked door stood between him and the object of his desire, the barrier providing no real challenge for a determined vampire. He could be inside the room, and Chloe, practically before she knew what had happened.
Perhaps she will not even fight it. He thought, reaching for the handle, his heart speeding with anticipation and desire.
“What happened?” Lucias’s head snapped around to the source of the gravelly voice, his eyes wide with shock at first and then, when he realized what he was seeing, pure joy. “I’m so thirsty,” Molly continued grabbing her throat, her blue eyes glowing with the unmistakable power of his kind.
CHAPTER 7 - Discovery
“How could you let him do this?” Rachel asked, her voice still rough after spending the past hour unconscious on Cami’s bathroom floor thanks to the tranquilizer with which her good friend had injected her.
“If it makes you feel any better, you’re not the only one who got knocked out,” Jared said, referring to the guard in Jasmine’s bathroom, trying to be funny, but falling short of the target and earning irritated glares from both women.
“Jared, can you give us a few minutes alone?” Cami asked, looking at him pointedly. As much as he hated leaving her for even a second, he slipped out the door.
“That’s the point, Rach, we didn’t let him. We kidnapped and threatened you to make him help us, at least that’s what Dante and Alexa are going to tell Commander Claesson,” Cami said, offering her a bag of blood before she slipped to the door and engaged the soundproofing, not wanting Jared listening in as he was undoubtedly doing. “We told Martinez we would cover for him, we just didn’t mention how. It wouldn’t work if someone saw you wandering free around the compound. He’ll understand when you tell him.”
“The only thing he’s going to understand, when he hears that you drugged me and hid me away, is anger. Oh, God; he’ll probably challenge Dante! He’ll never win and then he’ll be shipped off in Dante’s place or worse.” Rachel responded, panic lacing her voice.
“I mean, when you tell him about the baby, Rach.”
“But, how did you…?”
Cami smiled warmly at her friend and placed her hand on her shoulder. “You’ve been glowing for days,” Cami offered in explanation, “and according to Jared, you’re a loud broadcaster. It seems you’ve been thinking of nothing else since you found out.”
She pulled Rachel into a warm embrace, evidence of how much she had changed since meeting Jared. In all the years the two women had known each other, Cami had never hugged Rachel before.
“So you understand why we couldn’t let him take the fall for anything we’ve done. Dante loves Layla and Ethan is my brother, so it’s worth it for us, but you’re going to need Martinez; your baby is going to need him.”
“What about Jared? How in the hell did you get him to agree to this craziness? Even if it works and Ethan is cured, you and Dante are going to be punished. Claesson will figure out that you helped, you know how he is. Don’t you remember for how long he sent you away last time?” Rachel asked, the concern for her friend evident.
“Jared doesn’t know. At least he doesn’t fully understand, but it was a risk I had to take for my brother. I’m praying Chloe was right and, if Ethan is cured, Commander Claesson will be too busy to dig into it and if not, maybe he’ll be lenient and only sentence us to a couple of years down South.”
“Jared is going to be furious, Cami. You should have told him the truth. Going down there will be easier on you than on him; you’ll be kept busy while he’ll be stuck back here with nothing but his worry to keep him company.”
Cami was well aware of how angry Jared was going to be when he learned that the standard punishment for an infraction of this magnitude was a sentence in The Elite’s most notorious compound, located in Antarctica. Given the nature of the terrain and the weather down there, it was The Elite’s most secure and most dreaded facility with only one way in and out. Cami knew it well; she’d spent five years there in the early 1900s. Back then it hadn’t been so bad, hardly any different from life on the compound in Indy as far as she was concerned, apart from the dreadful cold, but that was before; before she was in love. She really wasn’t sure how she could abide being separated from Jared for any length of time, but Ethan was her brother and he needed her help. She had lost him for so long before; she couldn’t bear it again.
“There is another option,” Cami whispered, receiving a shocked look from Rachel in return.
Everyone in The Elite was surprised by Cami’s relationship with Jared, even Rachel, given her generally cold nature over the decades; but despite the rapid thaw in her demeanor over the past few weeks, it was unfathomable to think she would consider the only alternative to a sentence at the South Pole.
“You would consider that?”
“For him? Yes. It isn’t even really a choice anymore; he is my life now,” Cami replied, certain in her decision. She only hoped the Commander would let it stand if it came to that. “And what about you; what will you do when the baby comes?”
Rachel and Martinez were crossing into uncharted waters, being the first mated pair in The Elite and now the first parents. There were no clear rules on the subject, but it was hard to imagine a child growing up in such an environment. The Commander’s own daughter was a rare presence on the compound; having a civilian mother allowed them to live in a nearby colony where he visited as often as possible, but it would be harder for Rachel and Martinez. One of them would have to turn their back on virtually the only life they had known, and deciding which would not be an easy task, given the value of each of their unique abilities.
“I honestly don’t know. Obviously, I have to tell John first. I can hardly bear the thought of living separately if only one of us stays on here; but how can we raise a child on the compound?”
The soldiers had tempered their behavior and language as much as possible while Chloe was around, but her childhood lasted only days, not the years it would take a typical vampire child to mature. The alternative would be for both of them to leave The Elite and join a colony or make a home amongst the humans, but that would not be without challenges. They had lived the strict lives of soldiers for decades, centuries even. Living and working amongst civilians, vampire or human, would require an incredible amount of adjustment, especially when it came to making a living. While the life of an Elite soldier was strict, they enjoyed many of the finer things in life as reward. A comparable career in the civilian sector required a skill set and education neither of them possessed.
“All of the planning and consideration in the world could very well be in vain. There is a good chance that none of us will be alive to worry about it,” Rachel stated, her tone flat as she placed her hand over the tiny life deep within her belly, and her eyes welled up with tears. She’d never considered having children before she fell in love with John Martinez, having resolved herself to a soldier’s life; but now that it had happened, she wanted nothing more than to see her child come into the world.
Cami took Rachel’s hand, another unexpected display of affection and intimacy. “Rachel, I wish I had answers for you, but nothing is certain now. All I can tell you is that I will do everything in my power to protect you and make sure that this world is one you want to bring your child into.”
“Thanks, Cami,” Rachel replied with a weak smile.
“I hate to do this now, but we need your help with one more tiny detail,” Cami said, holding her thumb and forefinger together to indicate how small a favor it was, though the look on her face implied that it was a pretty big one.
“What?” Rachel asked suspiciously.
“There’s a soldier in Jasmine’s bathroom who’s going to need some new memories before we can let him go,” she replied with a shrug.
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