“It’s everything we’ve ever wanted,” he said with a smile, reaching for me. “Come see.”
My feet wouldn’t move. He had that gleam—the evil gleam I’d seen before.
When I didn’t move, he stepped forward and took my hand.
“What are you doing?” I asked, terrified.
Nicholas flipped over my wrist to expose my forearm and slid the needle in before I could object. Katie cried out in a sob. Mr. Cruor shushed her.
“Ready?” Nicholas’ finger rested on the plunger.
“For what?” Tears slid down my cheeks.
“For the ever after?”
I swallowed, hard. “No.”
“You’ll thank me after,” he whispered before he pushed the fluid into my arm.
I gasped expecting pain when there was nothing but cold, icy cold. Then heat began to build. Scorching heat. I stared up at Nicholas as he studied me. Cold tears streaming down my hot cheeks. Pressure to breathe filled my lungs, but no amount of oxygen made the feeling go away. I tried to talk, but my lips were numb, too.
“What did you do?” I wanted to yell. How could he do this? Kill me slowly. He said he loved me.
I slumped forward into Nicholas’ willing arms.
Katie shrieked something in the background, but I couldn’t hear her clearly over the ringing in my ears and the burning of my flesh.
“It’ll all be over soon,” Nicholas whispered in my ear. “And then, my love, we’ll run away like you asked, and command the world.”
Blood Wars - Volume Three
CHAPTER ONE
After I didn’t think I could take another second of it, the pain finally ended.
I sucked in a crisp breath, surprised I could taste the air. Like sugar mixed with the chocolaty aftertaste of fear. Lots of fear. Something about that excited me. I half expected my heart to race in response, but I felt nothing. Was I dreaming this?
My eyes slowly opened. Bright colors exploded into my vision. Sparkles of light mixed with rainbows, everywhere, and I couldn’t quite focus on anything.
This competed with all the sounds. Beyond the arguing were other things—little things. A fluttering of a moth’s wings. The scurrying of little feet. The ticking of a watch. A collective whooshing of liquid. It oddly made me thirsty.
My eyes focused on Nicholas who stood before me. I heard his whooshing the loudest. I could sense his anticipation. He leaned toward me and put his neck to my lips.
I inhaled the glorious scent of him, the new tasty scent. At first, I kissed his skin, but that wasn’t enough. I wanted more. Then my stomach rumbled and the desire hit. My hands squeezed on his shoulders and my mouth ached for pressure.
“Do it,” he whispered.
I opened my mouth and pressed my teeth onto his skin, not biting, just pressing. The ache didn’t subside, until there was a pop at my gums. He moaned, and there was a gush of glorious liquid.
I drank in the buttery goodness, losing my mind in bliss. Rich and velvety. Sweet, yet full of life. I was shocked my reaction wasn’t disgust. Why hadn’t I tried this before?
“Slow down,” Nicholas moaned as he crumbled against me like a shaking leaf.
I didn’t want to slow down. This had barely begun to quench my appetite.
“Please,” he whispered.
Then the delightful taste soured. I pulled away, and wiped the warm liquid off my chin, overwhelmed with sadness. Nicholas fell to the floor, grasping his neck as blood oozed between his fingers.
“Real smooth.” Katie shuffled her legs against the floor behind me, then she let out an “oof.”
I whipped around. Mr. Cruor AKA Cain, Rachel who’d called herself Raquel, and Katie were still kneeling, but Katie favored her right side. I studied them, wanting only what pulsed in their veins.
“Please, my Queen,” Rachel said, exposing her neck. “Take me.”
Katie nudged her aside. “We’re BFF’s and she’s here because of me. Move over, sister.” She smiled at me, and held out her wrist. “All forgiven now? I did this for you.”
I blinked at them, annoyed at their bickering, and stepped forward to silence them. I could sense the lies—taste them like stinky gym socks on the air. My feet glided fluidly across the floor. Nothing hurt anymore. I bounced on the balls of my feet in amazement and crashed my head against the ceiling. Laughter bubbled from my lips as I hovered some twenty feet above them. I could fly, but how?
“Hey, be careful.” Cain batted at the falling ceiling material.
I found the little urchin and had his shirt balled in my hands before I could fully think about it.
He gasped before me, quivering. “I’m sorry, my Queen. I didn’t mean to speak like that.”
“How did this happen?” I asked.
“It was…” he choked out. “Can’t… breathe.” His feeble hands scratched at my fist.
There was an obnoxious crunch and his eyes lulled backward in his head. I let go and watched as if it were a dream. He tumbled ten-feet to the floor in a heap, and didn’t move. I’d apparently hovered off the floor again.
Rachel and Katie’s eyes rounded, staring at him, then at me.
“Is he dead?” Katie whispered.
I could hear the slow whooshing of his heart. “No.”
Nicholas cried out and arched his back. Something inside me stirred over my desire to rip everyone’s head off. Compassion, maybe?
“What’s wrong with him?” I watched the man I’d loved once, wishing to silence him from the infernal noise he made.
“He’s changing.” Rachel looked on longingly, and I tasted the spice of envy on the air.
“Into what?”
Katie and Rachel’s gaze found me. I landed and my feet sunk in six inches, breaking apart the stone floor.
“A vampire,” Katie said, eyes wide.
Vampire? For some reason, the idea didn’t compute.
I studied my hands again, at how I could almost see with my skin. I knew everything around me, living and dead. Was this what being a vampire was like?
The stone busted into clumps as I knelt in front of Katie, so fast I couldn’t help myself. She shrieked, holding up her trembling hands, then lowered them. I could break her easily, just like I had Cain.
“What’s happening to me?”
“You’re becoming immortal…” She averted her eyes. “There was a formula and Horace, I mean Cain knew kind of what to do, so did his brother…”
“He’s dead,” Rachel mumbled.
I turned to Rachel. “Who’s dead?”
“Myhail… uh, Dr. V. He injected himself with the serum, the idiot,” she said angrily. “Now he’s dead.”
I crawled closer to her. “What serum?”
She pointed to the syringe lying at Nicholas’ feet.
He writhed and clawed the floor. The moment I spotted him, I wanted to go to him, and stop the pain, but the sparkling canister twinkled under the lights distracted me.
“What’s in the serum?”
Rachel worked her jaw. “Blood.”
“Who’s blood?”
“All the prior vampires.”
“All of them?”
“Yes.”
“Mine, too?” I asked.
“No. After I retrieved Phil’s sample, we mixed the blood together, and tried it. Nothing happened. So we added yours. Myhail suffered the consequences of that. Then Nicholas suggested—”
“Nicholas?” I cocked my head.
Rachel stopped talking just as strong arms wrapped around my waist. They pulled me to my feet. Nicholas looked down at me with dark nebulous eyes. Sexy eyes. My stomach tickled. Yes, I did love him.
He crashed his lips against mine and we flew across the room, busting into the wall. The elation filled me before something singed my skin. I yelped and recoiled.
Smoke wafted from my hand. “What is that?”
Nicholas sighed and scanned the room for the source. “The sun.”
“Sun?” I turned my head in confusion, finding th
e small stream filtering through a crack running up the wall to the ceiling.
“It’ll burn our skin—”
“And you’ve been behind all of this?”
The corner of his lip turned up. “Yes.”
I blinked at him. Rachel and Katie’s eyes were on me, watching longingly. Then my gaze lifted to the door. Phil stood in a plume of fear, delicious fear.
He held out a gun pointed toward us with shaking hands. “Son of a bitch—”
I laughed, before I crushed the gun in my hand. “You’ve been holding out on me.”
He looked up at me in terror. “Parker?”
“You’re lucky I like you,” I replied.
“What happened?”
“I don’t know,” I whispered as I brought my lips to his neck. I wanted to savor it again, take my time.
“No.” He covered his neck with his hand.
I growled—actually growled. It startled me.
“Move your hand,” I commanded.
“Don’t bite me. Just…” He scratched at his wrist, breaking the skin. “Here.” A droplet of blood scented the air and instantly drove me mad.
Unable to stop myself, I grabbed him and sucked. Everything about his taste was so glorious, so much more so since the blood was sweetened with fear. My insides filled with warmth and buttery goodness, and I wanted to drink forever.
He begged me to stop, but I couldn’t.
“Don’t kill him yet,” I heard Nicholas say.
I lifted my head toward him, wondering what he was doing. Phil fell from my fingers and crumbled to the floor beside me. Anger filled me as Katie clung to Nicholas, groaning in pleasure and rubbing herself against his leg while he drained her.
In a fit of jealousy, I flew across the room and grabbed his neck, yanking him off of her.
“What?” he said with a chuckle.
“You stay away from her, you hear me?”
“I owed her a favor.”
“Favor?”
He laughed, and I tried my hardest to dig my nails into his skin.
“Hurt me more,” he purred, before kissing me hard. I could taste Katie on his lips. Disgusted, I spat and pressed my fingertips harder into his neck. He laughed again. “You’re so feisty.”
Behind us, Katie and Rachel started to writhe against the floor.
Distracted, I turned to them. “What did you do?”
“I started our army,” he said with a smile. Then he took my hand and pulled me out of the study. “Come on. I have something to show you.”
Giddy, I laughed, forgiving him quickly. How I loved surprises.
CHAPTER TWO
My eyes caught a trail of blood droplets that led through the opened front door, blood that tasted divine; Phil’s blood. I made a move to see where he’d gone, then shirked away from the sunlight.
“Don’t worry about him. He won’t talk.” Nicholas placed his hands on my shoulders and pulled me against my will.
“Stop doing that!” I yanked away. “I don’t need you to lead me.”
Nicholas smiled and pulled me into his arms, silencing me with a deep kiss. I succumbed to him and pressed my body against his. We were in motion again, then abruptly stopped. Sheetrock buckled and cracked, flaking down on us.
“You’ll have to stop doing that,” he breathed in my hair.
“Doing what?”
“Destroying everything. We have to live here, after all.”
“Live here?” I asked, confused.
“Well, until we can get settled. There’s a lot to do.” He gestured to the elevators.
Mimi crossed our path with her eyes low, and then she bowed quickly before continuing on. Actually, everyone we passed showed the same kind of reverence.
“What are they doing—?” My reflection in a nearby mirror stopped me from finishing my question.
Long lustrous hair—brown with golden highlights—completely opposite from Mimi’s dye job earlier, flowed in waves over my shoulders. My eyes were sky blue and my lips were crimson against my pale skin. Blood stained the silk pajamas I wore.
“I’ll have to teach you how to feed without making a mess.”
Angered, I swung around ready to smack Nicholas in the face.
He caught my hand again before restraining it behind my back.
“Ah ah. Control, my princess. Control.”
I growled again, a deep rumble that ripped through my chest and echoed down the hall. “Why do I feel like this?”
“You’ve never been a vampire before. It takes time to get used to it.”
He was right. The teetering emotions raging inside me made thinking, let alone interacting with people, difficult. Every shiny thought that crossed my synapses controlled me, and I went with them unconcerned with the consequences.
“Is this why I want to rip your face off or kiss you every other thing you say?” I said through gritted teeth.
“Yes.”
Over his shoulder, I spotted Katie who stumbled into the hall holding someone larger than herself. When she finished, Slide landed on the floor in a heap.
“Why her?” I turned to Nicholas enraged once again.
Nicholas followed my gaze and smiled, then guided me to the elevators. “Don’t worry about that.”
“Don’t worry? She’s been the bane of my existence ever since we’ve woken in this bazaaro world.” Not to mention she lied about everything. It took all my control not to run over and rip her head off. “If you think she was a bitch before, just wait.”
He pressed the button for the basement. “She brought you to me. I owed it to her.”
“Brought me? I can’t believe you were working with them this entire time.”
Nicholas laughed. “Well, I couldn’t just come out and tell you. You hate vampires, or at least you did.” He trailed his finger over my skin, leaving a trail of goose bumps behind. “I knew once you experienced what it felt like and everything with it, you’d change your mind.”
“Lucky guess.”
Then Nicholas’ angry reaction to when I’d mentioned becoming a vampire again made sense. It wasn’t just Mr. Cruor. That’s what he’d wanted, too.
Once again, I marveled at how alive and indestructible I felt. At how my hands could pick up the textures of emotion as if they were floating on the air. Then what Rachel had said about the serum killing Dr. V. filtered in my mind.
I slammed Nicholas against the silver doors. “You almost killed me,” I seethed
Nicholas raised his brows in surprise. “I did no such thing.”
“Dr. V. died from the serum you just put into me.”
“No. It wasn’t the same. You’re special and that’s why it worked,” he breathed in my ear. “Now let me go before you break something important.”
I wasn’t hurting him, but still, I could care less if I trashed Cain’s house. He’d practically sacrificed me for his selfish ambitions.
“What if you’d killed me too?”
“I didn’t, so we have nothing to worry about.” He removed himself from my grip and straightened his clothes. There was no remorse, not a worry. What if I had died? Did he even care?
“Cain waits,” I said quickly. “He doesn’t get to be a vampire—not yet.”
Nicholas rolled his eyes and sighed. “Too late.”
“What?”
“We have a hierarchy—”
Nicholas stopped once the elevator doors slid open with a soft hiss and a new smell assaulted me—one I knew. My head whipped around.
“Hello, Julia.” Alora stood in a sundress, red hair tumbling over her shoulders. She flashed a charming smile. “We meet again.”
I blinked at her in shock before her jealousy and lust for power had a chance to leave its disgusting tartness on my tongue. Then things began to click. This wasn’t about me embracing the dark side, or even Cain. This was about Alora using her son to finally get her wish to rule.
“How did I know you’d be here?” I moved forward, taking my time. I’d be
cordial before I crushed her like the little bug that she was.
Nicholas’ hand grasped onto my shoulder, restraining me. Could he sense the air, too? Sense my rage?
“Mother,” he said. “You were right.”
“I’m always right.”
Right? So it was her idea to use me as a lab rat? What about Cain?
“You were lucky,” I seethed, reaching forward. One flick of my wrist and she’d be no more. I couldn’t wait to see her eyes bulge and to hear her beg for mercy as I enjoyed every last drop. “You could have killed me.”
“I highly doubt that.” Her confidence fluttered my way.
“Such confidence,” I growled. “Pride commeth before the fall.”
“Always…” She lifted her auburn hair off her shoulder, revealing her cleavage and between her breasts hung a deep-blue stone on a chain. It rippled with colors so bright they hurt my eyes. In a flash, my fingers moved to touch it. Then there was pain. A million stinging needles pierced my body at once, and I shied away, biting back a scream.
“What is that thing?”
Alora laughed. “You think I wouldn’t be prepared for your birth?”
My mind whirred. Though it didn’t look like the talisman from the past, it sure acted like it. I gritted my teeth, glaring at her. I waited for Nicholas to say something.
Instead he took his mother’s side. My gaze went back and forth between them. Then the betrayal hit hard. It wasn’t about our relationship, or even that we’d run away. He’d done this for her, just like before. How stupid of me to think she wouldn’t be involved. The mother-in-law from hell.
“No,” I said backing away.
“Julia?” Nicholas reached for me. “What’s wrong?”
His play for innocence disgusted me.
“How could you?”
I turned and ran for the front door, reaching it in seconds. The sun found me first, burning my skin. I shrieked and flew upwards, perching myself on the second floor landing. Then I slipped inside my room and slammed the door. Sobs wracked my body as I crumpled on the bed, but the tears wouldn’t come. Bright light from the windows prickled my skin just enough to make me uncomfortable. After a few annoying minutes, I drew the curtains, shrouding myself in the dark.
If I didn’t get ahold of the talisman, this would be my life now. In the dark. Alone. With the insatiable desire to drink blood. To be a killer.
Blood Wars: Book 4 (The Talisman Series) Page 16