by Unknown
“When will Nekayla be here?” Demetrius didn’t answer Roman this time. A slow wicked grin filled his lips as he looked over at Neesa, proud enough you would think he had already won. “What about the Shifter we found with the Descendant? Think he could be a problem?”
“If he’s still alive and he’s with them, kill him. I don’t care how you do it, Roman. Just kill them. The only ones you need alive for now are the New Blood and D’Tera.” Demetrius grumbled. Roman irritated him a great deal. This wasn’t complicated.
“What about Phoenix? Nekayla said he belonged to her.” Demetrius shook his head but Roman kept on, “I’m not facing Nekayla’s rage because you’re jealous, Crossbreed.”
Demetrius snarled and in a blinding fast movement Roman was thrown into a wall. “Phoenix is nothing. You couldn’t take him out anyway. Leave Phoenix to me.”
“You’re going to openly defy her?” Roman laughed, though blood oozed from his mouth. It was obvious Demetrius had broken bones in the hit. “She’ll love to hear that.”
“Don’t be so certain you’ll survive to tell her, boy,” Demetrius rumbled low before stalking out of the room.
I wanted to stay. I wanted to know more. But I was being sucked away from them. My screams were unheard for I had no voice here.
I heard Neesa’s words though I had lost sight of her. “You’re not done yet. Damien came to me to find out your oldest truth. Time to learn who you are, Lianna.”
The island emerged around me from my existence of darkness where I left Neesa. I wasn’t dreaming.
As things came into existence my memories of being Lianna faded. Neesa was not suffering for she was not a part of this world. Here in this world there was nothing that mattered other than getting to Damien. My feet carried me through the thick brush and wild life of the jungle onto the most perfect of all beaches.
Sand as white and soft as baby powder pressed up between my toes. Brilliant white and pink light came from the sky above. I registered the time to be sunset. The sand sparkled in the light like powdered diamonds.
As I stepped from the edge of the jungle onto the beach my heart swelled and my stomach did excited flips. Damien.
I ran to him. Damien laughed as I surprised him by pouncing him into the sand. Squeezing my hips firmly, he moved me so I straddled him. My raven black hair cloaked us as I leaned down and playfully nipped at his lips. We made love there on the beach.
Hours later Damien slept in the small hut that was our home. Outside I sat in the sand on the beach under the billions of stars, staring up at a massive blue moon.
Something strange stirred inside of me. Calling me. Standing slowly as if in a trance, I walked back into the wooded jungle. I spent what felt like seconds but I knew was hours, gathering strange plants into a sheer cloth much like the wrap that covered me.
Damien had woken in my absence and was there waiting for me when I returned. He had built a much larger fire despite the heat of the night.
You could feel the magic in the air as thick as the fog that covered the ocean. We were going to perform a very important ritual. I’d need him for this. It was one of the very few times I allowed him to be a part the casting.
Just as we began, everything became a fast haze and I felt my consciousness try to take me back to Lianna’s reality. I fought to hang onto the vision desperately. Amazingly, I held myself there.
Things had changed. Shayla was in control, but Lianna was fully aware. I had watched time move in a blur as the night and day interchanged like pressing fast forward. During this time, years passed.
The most perfect magical dream had turned into my most horrific nightmare. The paradise I had known before was gone. Ravaged and destroyed. The pure white sand was stained red with blood no matter where one looked.
I was being held by the wrists with rusted sharp chains, tightened until my skin bled. I hung from a tall pure white tree that had been hacked to pieces. The wounds on my body, fresh and old, were real wounds. The pain was overwhelming.
There was no clean bit of my flesh. Whip marks and chain lashes, as well my ribs were all broken. It didn’t matter to me though. Let them end it. They’d killed nearly everyone else. Everyone but the one that mattered most. He’d fought to protect them, all of them. He fought to protect her, too, and for it was sentenced to die before her.
My gaze was glued to him. Damien. He, too, was chained with the same worn steel as I was. Tethered to two large metal spears coming out of the earth. His body was not quite as bad off as mine, but the head wound was awful. The gash was deep. Blood streaked the entire left side of his body. He looked dazed but his eyes remained locked on mine.
Suddenly, he forced his eyes away from me to a woman that stood between the both of us. She wore a sheer brown sarong wrapping her voluptuous body. She was the most stunning creature to ever walk this earth. And yet to look at her was to look upon all the evil in the world.
Tribal markings covered her body. They were all freshly painted with my blood. Her body was pale yet shimmered as if she’d been brushed with powdered gold. She’d been prepared for a ritual. Her eyes glistened like red rubies sparkling in the light of the night. Or maybe the way fresh blood gleamed in moonlight.
This night the moon was not perfect pale blue or bright white for that matter. It was red. When I looked up to it I felt my lips move. “Blood moon.”
“Please, just let her go. I will do anything that you ask. Please! She did nothing to you! She’s no threat. Nothing could threaten you,” Damien moaned through torn lips.
I felt her eyes burning into my flesh as she slid her body to sit on her knees in front of Damien. “You’re right, Damien. My sweet, innocent, brave hearted man. You will do anything I ask. And no, nothing can threaten me.” Her hand slid around his neck. I watched her kiss onto his bloodied lips, succulent and hard
She licked his blood off her lips slowly as she pulled from him. Holding her hand to his neck, she twisted swift and hard. I thought it would break by her touch. Her mouth opened wide and closed in on his neck.
My scream for Damien was bloodcurdling. “Noooo!”
Damien gurgled out a cry of pain as his flesh was ripped off in a large chunk from his neck. Blood gushed from his throat like a small geyser, but her mouth drank in every drop. His head hung limp when she was done.
Barely a few drops of blood spilled from his neck. Another terrorized scream ripped from my lips so loud my voice even went silent from it. Thrashing, desperate to be free of the chains, I fought uselessly.
Her head tilted just slightly as she watched his body fall limp. “Shhh, my pet, you will be with me soon enough.” Her sinister lips whispered as her wrist came up to her mouth, fangs sliced into snowy flesh. Her other hand lifted Damien’s chin. Raising her bleeding wrist, she let her thick blood dribble into his mouth. His reaction was instant.
Damien’s body arched back violently, head lifting towards her wrist desperate to drink. Her blood was too powerful to resist. It was pure strength. So much more powerful than I had ever dreamed possible.
Damien’s eyes looked up to me with a burning fury surging through his body. His screams of pain echoed. Two other large creatures took a hold of his body as the blood pulsed through him. One was Demetrius. He was pure blooded Shifter in this place. I hadn’t hardly recognized him, but suddenly no I knew.
Shayla didn’t know what they all were. Only that they were not human. The woman was the most powerful. She was the embodiment of death. She was Nekayla.
Nekayla rose in that unnatural way. Too smooth. Too easily. Like a serpent. She backed away from Damien with the sickest of grins as she turned in my direction. “He’s mine now.”
My mind was swimming. I was losing the image of the dream. The pain was too much for my mind. But then I realized it was not just the pain.
I was dying in this world. My broken body was in shock from watching my lover turn into the Vampire he was destined to be. The pain that was so unbearable was not just the wound
s from before. My heart was breaking.
My lips trembled out the last spell I would ever cast. A gift for my beloved. The telepathy. “Hear me, Damien! You will hear my call without words from across time itself. I will come back for you. My soul is bound to you. Until the time has come, this life you will not remember.” The memory loss.
As simple as it seemed the chant itself was powerful. Shayla continued repeating it as fast as possible. Shayla needed to make Damien forget Nekayla to protect him. But in doing so he had to forget everything else as well. It was the only way. She’d cried out with such power that as she beckoned him to hear her, he would forever hear all. His telepathy.
Nekayla was in front of me before I had seen her move. Her hand was on my throat, nails long and sharp like talons dug into the flesh causing the blood to gush over her hand. Her other hand had pressed against my sternum. The infallible talons ripped into my torso. The pain did not last long.
Refusing to look at Nekayla, my gaze remained on Damien’s face. The rage that burst through him snapped the chains. A New Blood so fresh in turn should not have been able to manage such a feat. His fangs hadn’t even come in, but the rage and power of her blood was enough to give him fight.
My vision was fading. My body hung ripped open straight to my heart. My head dropped. I could not see Damien any longer. Nekayla had ripped the heart from my chest as it was still beating.
I was gone...
My body was surging, shaking violently. Damien’s hand held hard around my chin trying to hold me steady. Blood poured from my eyes, stealing my vision. I could feel the moisture running down my cheeks. I woke screaming violently, angrier than I had ever been in any existence.
Phoenix was kneeled over me, grabbing my shoulders trying to hold me down. I fought instinctively. The rage of watching Neesa and my past still controlled my body. I was desperate for revenge.
“Anna, Anna! Stop!” Phoenix’s hands took hold of my face twisting me to look up into his eyes as he hovered over me. Stop. His eyes stayed on mine. Slowly, my body began to calm to the fact that these were not the two I needed to fight.
It had been him in the meadow pushing me to fight. To not give up. Not my own self encouragement. I wasn’t sure how I knew, but I was positive. Phoenix nodded a confirmation to my realization. “Breathe. Focus.” He let out a deep anxious breath as he instructed me. “What did you see?”
“More than everything.” Damien’s touch softened and he pulled me into his lap wrapping himself around me.
Phoenix sat in front of me with one knee up. Always ready to jump up if he had to. His hands rest on my knees. Radiant Caribbean blue eyes stared deep into mine, urging my body to calm.
“I felt it all. Everything that was or had happened to them happened to me.” Phoenix nodded understandingly. “It was so real.” I choked on a hysterical sob, smothering it before it could send me over the edge.
Had they seen?
Phoenix shook his head, eyes leaving mine to look to the floor. They’d tried. Neither had been able to get in.
The blood still stained my cheeks. It soaked Damien’s shirt. I must have bit my lip again. I tasted blood as well.
“Thought I’d lost you.” Damien kissed my hair, my cheeks. Anywhere he could. He looked as ragged as I was.
“I died. It felt as if I died. I watched her turn you,” my voice quaked, it was barely audible. If they had not have been so close they may not have heard it.
“Wait, then it was his past again? You didn’t get to Neesa?” Phoenix looked confused, but he had moved close enough his one knee pressed into my own. His hands rested on my thighs as he sat across from me.
I shook my head before rubbing my eyes. “No. It was Neesa who showed me everything. I saw her. She spoke to me. I saw them in the warehouse.” I saw them torturing her. They’ve raped her. I didn’t want anyone else to hear it. Especially not Ryce.
Damien and Phoenix sneered visibly. That same longing to kill that I’d woken with flashed through Phoenix’s eyes as I’m sure Damien’s, too.
“I could feel her pain as if it were my own.” My body trembled violently. Hatred for what they’d done to her. Fear for what they could do to her still. “When the vision of the warehouse ended she said it was time for me to learn who I am. She didn’t know we already knew.”
I licked over my lips. The blood tasted strange. “What happened when I was out?” I looked right into Phoenix’s eyes only because I was sitting in Damien’s lap, and Phoenix had my direct line of sight. Phoenix took my hand in both of his. His fingers traced a pattern left by my own dry blood.
They looked up to one another right past me. Damien’s chest rumbled when he spoke, “You were shaking horribly. You were starting to scream. And then your eyes started bleeding. Your nose. Your ears.”
Damien took a deep breath. Phoenix kept his hands over my own snugly. He spoke next, “Your fists were gripped so tightly you were ripping the skin of your palms back.”
Damien. “Just like your mortal dreams, you lived their pain physically. Red marks started spreading over your flesh and seeping blood. For every one you cried out. We didn’t know what to do.”
Back to Phoenix. “We tried to wake you up once but it just got worse. You started seizing. We were afraid it would hurt you. So you drank from us both.” The strangest part was how emotionless Phoenix was. Calm cool and collected. These are the facts, deal with it. I had survived. That’s all that mattered to them.
The strange feeling was their blood pulsing its way through my body. The connection was so powerful that I felt as if I had become a part of them both.
Now I’d had Phoenix’s blood twice. Once for nothing more than the want of it, in some hope that I wouldn’t be such a liability to them. And where Damien had only suspected it before, I had just confirmed that dangerous fact.
Leaning so close against him, I felt his body go stiff, and then slump as if in defeat. Grabbing hold of my lips, he lift me up and set me to the floor. By need was one thing. I asked Phoenix for it. It didn’t matter how good the reason was. He stood instantly across the room.
Standing just as fast, I turned sharply to go to him. Two hands latched onto my hips, stopping me. “He’ll forgive you in time.”
Damien hadn’t spoken to me in hours. During which time Phoenix couldn’t bring himself to leave my side. I explained in detail to him what had happened in the visions of both Neesa and Shayla’s life, except that first intimate moment. I wasn’t able to consider Shayla and I the same person yet.
I felt completely better by now of course. In fact I was more than a hundred percent. I felt like a thousand and fifty physically even though I looked like absolute hell.
Eventually everyone figured out enough to leave the three of us all to our own. Even Ryce kept his distance once I’d told him she was alive. Lara was watching her precognizant clock so we would be ready when the time came. We’d made our plans. She’d give us fifteen minutes to get into place.
Phoenix and I sat at the top of the stairs. I couldn’t stand being in the same room with everyone else at the moment. “This is where I died. Really died. At least the second time around,” I sounded more thoughtful than anything.
“Demetrius was standing over me. I was pretty torn up by then. Damien came in, and I rolled myself down the stairs. Demetrius came down after me. If Demetrius wouldn’t have bitten me, if he would have drank from a wound that was already open… I wouldn’t be here today. His venom kept me alive until Damien got to me.” Placing my chin on my knees, I looked down at the stairs, playing out the entire event in my head. He knew this. I don’t know why I was explaining it.
Phoenix sat next to me, staring down at the same steps as I, whilst seeing it all in my mind. “It was smart getting them to feed from you like that. Incredibly stupid, but smart the way you infected them all. Few humans would have had the capacity to think that way. Let alone the guts to do it.”
I shrugged. It was the only idea I could come up with at
the time that gave Damien an advantage. “You know me, always one to help.” He chuckled, nudging my shoulder with his own.
“You ready for this?” he asked after a moment of pause. He meant everything. Tonight and then later. If there was a later. “There will be a later for you, Anna. I’ll make sure of that, don’t worry.”
“Yeah. I can hack it,” I said, dismissing the last comment. “So you get what you want. Demetrius is looking to get to you more than anyone.”
“Everyone else is just an order. Demetrius and I have some unfinished business.” The way he said it felt ominous as a strange feeling of the most abysmal grief and fury washed through him to me. I was beginning to get very well acquainted with those two emotions. Along with the guilt I was a walking trifecta.
Taking in a deep breath I let it out slowly. “Okay, care to explain that?” we kept our voices so low no one could hear.
“Not really.” He sighed. We sat in silence for a long time. But I could still feel the same emotions radiating off him still and growing stronger, the closer he got to the time he would see Demetrius. “Her name was Mela. She was my soul mate.”
Fury overwhelmed the grief as he thought on the memory. I knew this even though I couldn’t see it. For that I was strangely grateful. So was he. I put the two together without him saying more of course.
Demetrius had killed her. It was too awful for a simple apology of his grief. I’m sorry for your loss doesn’t exactly cut it when you can feel the pain like I could, and knew what it did to him. It was the same feeling I’d had as Shayla when watching Damien die. We each had our reasons for insisting on being here tonight. We had scores to settle. There’d been no other choice but to take his blood. I had to be ready.
Knowing no words could ever be enough my hand slid into his, lacing my fingers into his stiff cold hands. At first he didn’t move but after a moment he clutched mine tightly.
Damien certainly had nothing to worry about with Phoenix. We cared for each other deeply. Yes we even loved each other, but not how we loved our soul mates. Whatever we were to one another, it was not the same. Nothing could change how I felt for Damien. Just like Phoenix would never get over the loss of his Mela. There was no one else for him in this world.