by Rena Marks
It was a pathetic, dirty creature squatting in the corner of the cave. She was thin and milk-white, with dull red hair streaked through with gray. The scarring of burn tissue covered half her naked body. She was past the point of screaming, her throat raw and her voice nonexistent.
My heart slammed in my chest. I clenched my suddenly damp palms, unaware of anything but the need to reach her without frightening her further.
“Mum.”
I collapsed to my knees, crawling to her as best I could with the sudden hot rush of tears that poured down my face, obscuring my vision.
Not her.
Chapter Eleven
She was lost deep in the dark, twisted trails of her mind, trying as hard as she could to blend with the walls of the cave. She was too frail to be this frightened—she could die from the shock.
I wrung my hands, wondering what to do. Trying to resist from reaching out and scaring her further.
“Virginia Reis is your mother?” I was scarcely aware of the incredulous tone to Ethan’s voice, my attention was on the panicked sounds of the heart-wrenching sobs emanating from the redhead.
She turned to look at me. “My dolly,” she sobbed. “Did you trick me? The silver didn’t stop them.”
The rush of an old memory hit me. My hair being braided as a child. Tiny braids, twisting all over my head. She’d never meant the Barbie at all. She’d meant me.
“The silver was for the evil ones, remember?” I pacified. “These ones are not.”
“All the blood-sucking monsters are evil!” Though she shrieked, her exhausted voice had no volume, cracking and breaking painfully.
I kept mine passive. “No. Just the one who had you was bad.”
“Stop, stop, stop,” she screamed, rocking on her heels.
The hot burn of tears stung my eyes as a fresh wave threatened to overflow and spill. I turned to Reese. “Where’s her meds?”
He didn’t answer and I yelled. “Didn’t you kidnap her with her goddamn medication, Reese?” I rose to my feet, intent on raising bloody hell.
Ethan’s hand circled my arm, pausing me in mid-stride. “Shh, bella. She doesn’t need drugs. Watch.”
He carefully invaded her mind. I could almost feel the link between them and watched as she gradually grew calm. Her eyelids fluttered and she slumped against the wall, as zoned as if she had been injected.
“Her body is as poisoned as her mind with all the narcotics they’ve used on her.” Ethan was clammy with the effort of calming the crazed woman.
“Why is she naked?” I whispered.
A feminine voice spoke hesitantly. “That’s my fault. I was going to take her to bathe when she woke from her drugs. But she went into a fit.”
I sat in front of her, cross-legged. Reaching out tentatively, I brushed a lock of reddish hair from her tearstained face, tucking it behind one ear.
A drop of sweat rolled down Ethan’s temple, cutting a path as large as a trail of tears would. “I can’t take her under fully. She’s been this way for too long. She has to let herself slip under, to bend to my will. Only when she’s unconscious can she heal.”
“Let go, Mummy. Sleep,” I whispered urgently.
But a vacant look stared me back.
“I’ve always known where you were,” I shared. “I had to pretend I didn’t know. And each time they moved you, I memorized where. I’d break into my files, they never suspected. I knew one day I’d go to find you. One day I’d help you. Even after they moved you when I retired and took my own files, I found you again.”
Her voice was thick. “You did find me. Twice, dolly.”
“But I couldn’t take you. Couldn’t care for you. Not by myself. You were sick. Now you’re here and we have to get you well.”
“They’ll never make me well.”
“Ethan can. You have to let him.”
“No.” Her eyes glazed again.
“Bella,” Ethan said urgently, though his voice was tired. “You have to convince her. I can’t hold on much longer and I’ll never be able to access her mind again. The connections will be forever damaged.”
How to reason with an insane woman? When short on time? I didn’t know what to do and wanted to scream with frustration.
Suddenly it clicked.
Virginia Reis didn’t just look familiar because she looked like a red-headed version of me. Sister Emily had been a redhead too. Everything rang clear as a bell.
“Mum. Did you have a sister?”
She stared past me.
I called out, my voice sharp. “Virginia Reis. Do you have a sister?”
“Sister Afton. Mother Theresa. Sister Virginia. Sister…Emily,” she whispered.
“Son of a bitch,” I muttered. Sister Emily was Virginia’s real sister. That was why she had been so good to me. Maybe even Virginia had been in a nunnery before Ramon had gotten a hold of her. But now, I knew how to get through to her.
I whispered, so slowly. “Now I lay me…”
Her eyes darted quickly toward me.
“Down to sleep…”
She kept eye contact, more alert than I’d seen her so far.
“I pray the Lord…”
One solitary tear ran down her dirty cheek. I wiped it away.
“My soul to keep.”
“You look like Sister Emily,” she whispered and closed her eyes.
“So do you,” I whispered back but she was gone, lost in a trance.
Reese stepped in and covered her with a blanket before lifting her fragile body and carrying her away. I turned to Ethan.
He sat propped by a wall, eyes staring ahead sightlessly. Much like hers had been. I sat on his lap, wrapping my legs around him. He shivered with cold, trapped in the dark place of my mother’s mind. I hugged him to me, enclosing him with my warmth. Someone brought me a blanket and draped it over my shoulders. I wrapped it around both of us and cradled my head into the crook of his neck.
He began to warm. I felt his pulse beating in the side of his neck and pressed my lips to it. His scent rose from his skin, slightly salty, very masculine. I loved this tantalizing spot. The very first time we made love I’d latched onto the tender area, marking it as mine. A sweet spot to remind him the next day of what had been.
Aware of another presence, I stilled. Waiting, I watched in my peripheral vision as Reese lowered himself to sit nearby. “How long will he be like this?” I asked quietly.
He shrugged. “Hours. Hard to tell, ’cause she’s pretty bad. They’re connected. It’s rough for him to recoup here in the cave without amenities. But I couldn’t take her into the city with her screaming and all.”
The way he said amenities made me realize what he meant. Nutrition. Blood.
“Can he hear us?”
“I don’t think so. He’s too concentrated on Virginia Reis.”
Suddenly, I was aware of whispers among the inhabitants of the cave. I couldn’t make out the conversations, just tones.
“Virginia is your mother,” Reese said thoughtfully.
“She is.”
“Then the Academy knew what they were doing when they stole her child. She couldn’t fight back.”
“Apparently.”
“You and Ethan have quite a bit in common. You had a tragedy with your mother just like him.”
“What happened with his mother and sister?”
It took Reese a few moments to respond. “It was unheard of to strike down another vampire in those days. We were partners in survival, a war between us and the humans.
“Ethan’s father was the leader. One day he just…disappeared, leaving his pregnant widow inconsolable. You see, Afton, when we disappear, there is no evidence left behind upon death. We implode, therefore there are no bones, no dust…no closure. Our bodies live so long while we breathe, that when we stop, it’s as if the decades take their toll. But it takes a while, a few hours or so until the body realizes it is actually dead. Anyway, she couldn’t face it and Ethan was torn. He was in line for
leadership, he had to protect his people, not only from the killing humans but now from a vampiric civil war. He had to leave his mother behind while he went to different tribes for training.
When he returned home his mother had remarried. Naturally, no one could stand the man, but he was one of us. Accepted. Ethan willingly left to keep the peace.
“But he shouldn’t have, and will forever blame himself. When his baby sister turned up raped and beaten, he went after his stepfather. It was too late, however. His mother had gotten to him first, but at the last moment she was distracted by Ethan’s force of power bursting into the cave to save her.
“She was beheaded in those split few seconds.
“His sister was unable to deal with her rape being the cause of her mother’s death. She willingly met the sun, stabbing herself, hiding and bleeding for hours. Ethan rushed out to save her and was moments too late. She was in his arms when she exploded, unable to heal in the sunshine.
“Afterward was even worse. Two loved ones and he watched them both die. It was impossible for him to grieve for his loss, because it was his responsibility to sentence the vampire. Remember, this was an unheard of situation, no vampire had ever turned against another. We were unified in hiding from humans.
“Through it all, he had to remain stoic and unbiased to keep his position as vampire leader. Even when the vampire taunted him, bragging about how he had been the one to trick and kill Ethan’s father to become the husband of his mother. How he’d enjoyed both mother and daughter.”
“What made his mother marry him?”
“I think she just couldn’t bear the loss of her husband, especially not while pregnant. She would have married anyone in that span of time, especially one as sly as him. None of us saw the evil within him, even when we found out later he had been capturing and torturing humans.”
Capturing and torturing humans?
That hit too close to home.
“Ethan’s been entranced for a long time. I need to get him comfortable. I wonder if I can morph him back to my apartment?”
“Highly doubtful. The only one strong enough to morph another is Ethan. But no offense to you, Extinguisher.”
“It’s true I’ve never morphed a person along with me,” I said. “But Ethan has the ability too. I wonder if we can merge it together? But if Virginia wakes up, will she need me?”
“If I know Ethan, he won’t let her wake until her mind is either as healed as her body, or wiped clean of all the horrors within it. But he’ll need sleep. He deserves a comfortable place to suffer in while he absorbs her pain.”
“If she needs someone, promise me you’ll go back for Millicotti.”
“The priest?”
“Yes.”
“Well, I’ll be damned. He was there in that same institution?”
Apparently he was another individual they sought.
I held on tight to Ethan, whispering into his ear. “I’m going to try to get us back, baby. You just relax, I’ll take care of you.”
I could almost swear I felt his arms tighten around me.
Chapter Twelve
I stood in my kitchen, stirring a cup of tea. For the time being, Ethan slept.
While we called it sleep, it was more of a shutdown phase vampires did. They couldn’t rouse easily, it was eerily like death.
It hadn’t been easy to morph the two of us into my bed. He’d clenched his teeth with pain, even as he tried to shut down his body. Reese had instructed me to get him blood the moment he was able to rouse himself from his comatose state. I knew Reese expected me to allow Ethan to feed from me.
But I couldn’t do that.
I had to leave the apartment and find neutral blood. I could never allow Ethan to taste my blood, there were too many uncertainties he could find. As much as I hated to leave him alone, it was necessary.
Perhaps I would be back before he even stirred.
Finishing my tea, I headed to the hall closet. A small knife with an ivory handle was slipped into the strap on my upper thigh. I grabbed a backpack, loaded it with more weapons and swung it over my back. With one final look at my unconscious lover, I slipped out the balcony doors and jumped from the roof.
The ground rose to meet me as if in slow motion. I hit the spongy lawn with a faint thud. Rising from my protective crouch, I headed north.
When I reached my destination, it was as I expected. Locked shop, lights out, void of staff, except for the protective personnel.
Human police. They were a fat, lazy breed. A waste of mankind.
Yet, there had been a time when police were respected and useful, but training in intimidation tactics led to corruption and had changed all of that. They got to the point of where they didn’t have to answer to anyone. They felt they were the law. It was discrimination to fire an officer for his weight, so society looked the other way when donuts and other free tidbits became standard offerings to avoid harassment.
Once Extinguishers were introduced to society, human police became useless, lazy bureaucrats. Big, swollen heads on ego trips, filled with their self-inflicted power, yet amazingly inept. They relied on their weapons—strip those from them and they were a waste of oxygen.
There wouldn’t be much fight practice here.
I blended into the branches of a tree while the uniformed officer paused his leisurely walk around the building. He crackled into the speaker attached to his shoulder and rocked back on his heels, surveying the area.
I surveyed it also. The other person on that speaker was somewhere in the vicinity. That would make at least two of them.
A woman approached, out with her dog. “Officer, how are you?”
“Fine, ma’am.”
“I wondered if I could talk to you for just a minute? My brother is a policeman. How is Chief Thompson?”
Their voices faded away for me. But I could tell exactly when the officer became flattered by whatever the woman said. He literally preened, sucking air into his lungs to expand his chest, like a peacock strutting before a mirror.
I slipped toward the building where an electrical box was centered. Engineering never failed to amaze me.
A flip of the breaker shut off the alarms. Since the lights were already turned off inside, there was no hint of a loss of power. Shifting a few feet down to a window, I pulled a thin blade and popped the molding. I returned the ultra-thin weapon to the strap on my inner thigh.
It was almost too long. It could injure me should I climb carelessly through the window.
Carefully I slid the glass from the broken rubberized seal and set it inside the room.
I would hate for the moon to shine and cast a reflection onto the glass, signaling the idiot cop’s attention.
Pulling myself up, I somersaulted into the window. I didn’t have to bend my knees that way and my knife sat a little too low for comfort. The last thing I needed was to drip a trail of blood behind me like a gruesome version of Hansel and Gretel.
It was too quiet. I was used to Extinguishers jumping out from every angle. There was no threat here at all.
For the first time in my life, I had too many weapons.
I unzipped my insulated backpack and made new spots on my body to store the weapons. My boot, the back of my pants, a strap on my arm. When the bag was empty, I headed to the steel doors of the refrigerators.
I’d have to remember to return the power when I left.
I rummaged through the bags of blood stored there, finding an excess of O Negative. Naturally, being the universal blood type.
It ought to be tasty enough. And ironically, it was my own typing.
I stuffed as many bags into my backpack as I could and zippered it shut. Quietly, I slipped from the fridge, shutting it softly with a dull click.
Another dull click echoed right behind my ear.
“Well, well, pretty thing. What have we here?”
The breath stank behind me. The officer’d had garlic for lunch. He must have been inside the entire time, or I would
have sensed when he’d entered. But still, if nothing else I should have smelled his breath.
“You have no idea what you have.”
“I want you to spread your legs and place your hands flat against the wall.”
“You really should just walk away.”
“Are you kidding me? I have you on a breaking and entering charge, Extinguisher.”
Did he really think fame and fortune would boost his career? That he would go down in history as the arresting officer of an Original Extinguisher?
What a human fool. Because as easily as that, I could just morph away. Yet, I wouldn’t. I itched for a fight.
When he grabbed my wrist to twist it behind my back for a handcuff lock, I dropped completely to the floor, turning to face up.
He had intense concentration written across his boorish face as he used his brute strength to straddle me. He breathed deeply beneath his bulletproof vest, his diaphragm expanding his unnaturally hard chest. But I was passive, giving him a false sense of victory.
His gaze dropped to my breasts, the tops of which were softly pushed over my low-cut rounded neckline.
A slow, sultry smile began before I could stop it, as a new idea took hold. He lowered his heavy body onto me at the same time I raised and opened my thighs.
The exposed inches of steel blade that had been so uncomfortably strapped to my leg earlier pierced the one unprotected part of his body.
His tender testicles.
His face whitened before his eyes rolled back in his head. I pushed him off me and rose, casually fetching my backpack from against the fridge door.
Oh, it was just a little poke. He’d wake up eventually.
His partner was still talking to the woman when I slipped out. Just for kicks, I slid the pane of the window back into place, where dusty old grime and dried paint locked it into the frame like it’d never left.
Not sure how long it would be until Ethan woke, I decided to morph back home instead of waiting for the action between the bumbling human officers.