Hunger Awakened

by Dee Carney

  Alice looked up at Sebastian, her attention snagged by the small plume of smoke drifting from his face. His gaze went to her, an apology forming in dark eyes drifting toward blood-red in coloring. Her mouth lifted in a small smile, the signs of his dragon always exciting her possibly more than they should have. He could have only done it one better by letting those gorgeous wings flap in the small room. That’d show the stupid Council. Then they’d really get to see who was arrogant.

  No, not arrogant.

  Justified.

  * * *

  The door to the room opened and only seconds later, a cart was pushed through. He might have taken a moment to study the objects on its surface, but once he caught sight of three stakes, his heart began to flutter. When Antaeus Stavrou stepped into the room, face hardened and determined, Bast tensed. He stepped forward, putting himself between the executioner and Alice.

  “Is anyone going to ask me my thoughts or opinions, or do they not matter because I’m just a human? Or I’m not quite a vampire yet,” Alice amended. She was still looking at Bast, and when he glanced back to look at her, his heart swelled with so much emotion that he couldn’t have pulled his gaze away from her if he tried. They stood in a quiet room, full of people who condemned him, and she took it all in stride.

  He studied her blue eyes, gone brighter since she’d begun transition. Those crazy curls seemed a little tamer but framed her face as if it was a picture of sensual beauty. Which, of course, it was. Her skin seemed creamier, a little more soothed. The fatigue he’d witnessed over the past week, the underlining defeat she’d held within her, all gone now. Transition suited her well and would only enfold her tighter in its embrace over the next few days.

  In his heart, he knew that the tumor, which had sent her so close to death’s door, would begin to shrink and then eradicate itself altogether. Once she survived the judgment of a council gone drunk on its own power, she would live to see many wondrous things.

  “I’m afraid you are collateral damage,” Councilman Renner said from across the room. Bast dragged his attention away from Alice to frown at him. “This isn’t about you as a human, but the message being sent to the rest of the vampire community. Regardless if we like you, and I for one do, the idea that vampires can create vampires without consent is unfathomable. Vampires would overrun the world if left unrestrained.”

  “But you’re deciding my fate. How can you sentence me to death when I haven’t done anything wrong? I won’t be punished for loving someone.”

  “Your crime isn’t for loving someone. It’s for being born,” Renner said gently. “It’s not a decision against you. The crime is Sebastian’s, but you have to bear the brunt of it.”

  Alice squeezed Bast’s hand, then looked up at him again. Winked.

  He blinked back, confused. Did she know something that he didn’t?

  She turned her attention back to Sage. “We were on our way to establishing a sort of relationship, right? Was it my imagination? The Council had taken my proposal to be its historian very well, I’d thought.”

  Sage answered. “We would have considered it. Yes.”

  “I see.” She released his hand to begin pacing in front of him. He almost smiled at her attorney-like demeanor in this mockery of a trial. “Would I have chronicled anything beyond the Council’s members and their activities, you think?”

  “I don’t see how this—”

  “Humor me.”

  Renner’s eyes narrowed. “Perhaps the matters of history that pertain to the entire community, if you’d had the time for it.”

  “I see,” she replied judiciously. “One of the things you don’t know about me is that my beginnings as a genealogist are humble. Initiated because deep in my veins, the blood of royalty runs. And with that pedigree comes certain privilege. In some cultures, people believed that royalty also held sway over other creatures. Can you believe it? Just because one was born to a certain family. Knowing that, I now understand how Sebastian and I were drawn together. The affinity. It’s also easy to see how others could never understand it and maybe even condemn it. But they don’t know enough to make decisions about us. Not really. And let me tell you what else I know. A week ago, I didn’t know anything about vampires or werewolves or even dragons. I was a simple girl living a simple life. Then I met this amazing man who introduced me to an incredible life. And one of our earliest adventures together involved a bunch of werewolves. How many of them exist, you think?”

  The sudden left turn of her last question added to Bast’s confusion. He had no idea where this was going.

  Renner’s brow furrowed. “They number in the thousands.” He looked around the room for confirmation. “Not more than a few hundred thousand, I would think.”

  “But you don’t know?”

  “Not for certain. How could we?”

  Alice stopped her pacing and lifted her head. The smile that followed next gleamed. “Why don’t you know?” she persisted.

  “This Council is the law body for vampires. We concern ourselves with vampire matters. Anything we know or do pertaining to werewolves occurs when their actions affect us and only then.”

  “But you don’t rule over them?”

  “No, of course not,” Sage snapped.

  “I see.” She resumed pacing, face cast down as if deep in thought.

  Bast folded his arms across his chest, his admiration almost overriding his curiosity.

  “I once heard Sebastian being called hybride by his own man. Ever heard that term before?” She looked up, searching faces, obviously awaiting an answer. No one spoke. Turning to Bast, she asked, “What’s it mean, darling?”

  Bast said between tightened lips, “Hybrid. Mongrel.”

  She said innocently, “But what does that have to do with...oh! I see. They’re calling you a hybrid. A cross between two species.” Alice walked over to Bast and, with the softest stroke of her hand, caressed his face. “My hybrid,” she said just above a whisper. Loud enough for any vampire to hear, but the words triggered something within Bast. And he suddenly understood all of it.

  With Alice’s touch still centering him, he took a deep breath. Closing his eyes, he found the pool of heat at his center and focused on it. The taste of sulfur filled his throat a moment later and Bast indulged in it. His body tensed, every muscle burning with strain. He gave in to the sensation, relishing it. Willing it to spread.

  He opened his eyes, allowing the members of the Council to witness the change already forming there. The swirl of colors and reptilian elongation Alice had described to him. The world around him brightened, becoming sharper. Details in hair follicles, skin pores and fabric threads no longer secrets being kept from him. He saw it all. His mouth watered from their taste. Their smell.

  Alice whirled toward the members of the Council. “If you have no right to make claims over the werewolf population...”

  The pain flowed through his back, where the agony coalesced in two lateral centers. The harsh scissoring sound of fabric ripping behind him shattered the silence, and Bast simultaneously released a groan. The sweet torture would be worth it in the end.

  Hands balled into fists and black scales sprouted down his arms, ripples of shining ovals unfolding like playing cards at the hands of a skilled Vegas dealer. He stretched his neck, mentally tracing where his skin hardened and changed. The heat built and rose across him in more rhythmic waves.

  Bast exhaled, concentrating hard. Stopping the ascension. A
quick second later, he changed focus, sending his thoughts racing to his back, where his glorious wings began to grow and spread. After a moment, he stood before the Council, wings outstretched, spanning the width of the entire room. He scanned each member, memorizing the astonished faces as smoke ascended from his nose.

  Alice took a few steps back and glanced at him over her shoulder. Her gaze went straight to his wings. “So damned sexy,” she muttered before turning on the Council. “If you have no rights over werewolves, if your laws are meaningless to them...” She leaned forward, glaring. “Then why the fuck do you think any of your laws apply to a dragon and its mate?”

  The room erupted into shouts and the Council members began dividing—those who agreed with Alice against those who didn’t. Not that it mattered to Bast. She was right. He was a dragon and he accepted what that meant. The Council was no longer a part of his life. The woman standing at his side was and forever would be.

  He turned toward the doorway, finding Antaeus standing before it. The executioner dipped his head in silent agreement. He mouthed, well matched, and Bast almost grinned at him in reply. Antaeus turned the knob and stepped away from the door as it swung away. Freedom to be found beyond the threshold.

  Taking the cue, Bast waited for Alice to lead them out. Anyone who dared stand in her way would find him or herself quickly confronted by a possessive dragon. When she didn’t move though, he tilted his head over his shoulder, trying to capture her attention. “Alice?” he said gently.

  No response.

  Bast glided to her front, ignoring the way the Council members scrambled to get out of his way. He accidentally brushed against one of them, who shrieked as his wing made contact. His heart was pounding too hard for Bast to care. “Alice!”

  Horrified, he watched as her muscles began to contract. Over and over again. The tonic-clonic seizure took her from rigid stiffness to violent activity within seconds.

  “No!” he screamed.

  Too late.

  He’d been too fucking late.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Pain rippled down Bast’s back as he went to her, wrapping his arms around her. “No...no...”

  Tears filled his eyes, flooding his cheeks until he could scarcely see as he lowered their bodies to the floor. He tried so hard, so incredibly hard to make her stop shaking. To get her body to stop its frantic movement. “Please, Alice. Don’t do this.” He looked up. Searched the room for someone—anyone—to help him. To help her. “Don’t do this to me now.”

  He’d only just found her. Their time together too short. Too damned short.

  He wanted eternity. Demanded it. If this seizure took her from him...the thought was too horrible to even complete.

  Had he been too selfish by turning her into a vampire? He’d thought that with the ability to create Jasmine Gerulaitis, the crazy universe—the one that had hated him all this time, the one that made him a pariah among the only family he’d ever known—he’d thought just maybe it had figured he’d deserved a break. That they deserved a chance at love, no matter how flawed they were. He had so much and he’d give it all away. Every penny of it. Just please God, please, give him back this woman.

  Turning her on the side, he tried to focus past the tears and fear. Her last seizure hadn’t lasted more than a couple of minutes, although every second felt like an eternity. Protect her from injury. That’s all he had to do. When she awoke, she would be fine. No matter what the doctor had said. She would be fine because she had to be.

  Arm beneath her head, he leaned closer. “You’re going to be fine, Alice. Are you listening to me?” He slammed his eyes shut, cleared the tears still flowing and tried again. “I love you and you will not leave me. Not now. Not ever. We have a very long life together ahead of us, and I won’t do it without you. I won’t.”

  “Kent.”

  His head snapped up, teeth bared as he growled at Councilman Sage. Bast called on his dragon, the one that came to him now as easily as blinking, and a ripple of scales raced down his arm again. The hand nearest to Sage stretched into a claw with lethal nails meant for shredding his enemy to pieces. And right now, Sage was enemy.

  The older vampire took a step back. “I only wanted to ask if you needed anything. To help.”

  “Why?” rumbled from his throat.

  “This isn’t over, but the Council is divided. I predict that most likely she was right.” His gaze went to Alice. To his surprise, Bast noted genuine concern there. “You’re not truly vampire and therefore, not under our laws. You are a dragon...a rare species that we cannot afford to have against us. We hold no dominion over you, unless you choose to live as one of the vampire nation, which we of course cannot allow you to do.”

  Bast turned his back on the man, not caring if he lived or died right now. Not wanting to be a vampire for the first time in his life. His one focus, his only concern was the woman before him. “Did you hear that, princess? We’re free.” Was it his imagination, or did there seem to be less activity now? “So come back to me. Whole. Come back to me so that we can do so many things. Remember what I said? I’ll give you everything you’ve ever dreamed. Anything at all. Just come back to me.”

  He gritted his teeth as stabbing pins prickled up his arm, wiping away the scales and remainder of his dragon features. Alice continued to jerk, each movement soliciting a soft moan from her. He would have loved to dream she knew what was happening to her and was on her way back, fighting and clawing her way back to him. Struggling to survive. But so far, she hadn’t done anything or said a word. And he was desperate. So very desperate for one little sign. Just one.

  “You figured it out, why you and I were meant to be. You’re a princess, and princesses and dragons have always been together. Our true natures knew we belonged with each other. So see, you can’t leave. You can’t defy nature.” The contractions began to slow, and Bast watched every unnatural movement, willing it to be the last. “If you love me, Alice, you’ll stop now,” he whispered. “Stop, please...please.”

  And it worked. For whatever reason, and he didn’t care how or why, she stopped. There was no more clenching and unclenching. No more uncoordinated jerks that rattled her entire body. Alice lay in his arms, her mouth pressed tightly together, the skin around her eyes pinched. There wasn’t peace in her expression, but all of the tension he’d just witnessed from her illness settled into a single place.

  She only now had to wake up.

  Bast got to his feet, carrying her in his arms. He held on tightly, almost too timid to believe the seizure had stopped. Some irrational part of his brain insisted that if he took a single step, she would begin to seize again and it would be the last thing she did. That he’d never hear her laugh again. Never look into those beautiful blue eyes. Paralyzed with fear, he looked to the door, wanting with every heartbeat to take her through it and to the other side. To get her medical help. But he couldn’t do it. “Alice,” he groaned. Oh, God. Please help.

  A voice called to him. “Bast.”

  He blinked through the blur to find Drew waiting. He stood in the doorway, watching Bast. Watching Alice.

  “I—I can’t. She’ll die.”

  “She won’t die,” Drew reassured. “She’s just sleeping. Look at her. Look at her chest. She’s breathing and just sleeping.”

  Like he said, there was a slow rise and fall to her chest. But it wasn’t enough. Not nearly. “Will she wake up?”

  “I don’t know, old friend
. Let’s take her to the hospital, and we’ll wait and see, okay?”

  Bast nodded and took a single step forward. Then another. And then another.

  * * *

  His eyes burned, but Bast forced them open, wincing as fluorescent lighting filled his vision. The monotonous beep-beep-beep almost didn’t register anymore, but he had a feeling that if it stopped, it would have snapped him to attention, even as fatigued as he felt. His muscles, stiff from constant vigil, protested as he sat up, but Bast ignored them.

  Forty-eight hours of no sleep. Forty-eight hours of waiting at her side as she slept beneath starched sheets and machines monitored her continuously from the bedside. He made sure to speak to her every hour. To make sure she knew he waited for her and had no intention of going anywhere. Not without her. Not until she woke up for him.

  One more day and he’d transfer her to the care of a vampire physician, but for now, the humans seemed to be doing a commendable job. They scanned her brain, surprised that the tumor seemed to be smaller than only a few days previous. They chalked the difference up to human error, but Bast knew differently. He just hoped that the other anatomical changes she was undergoing while unconscious had occurred quickly enough. That she’d begun to transition before having a seizure could do permanent harm. There was just no way to tell until she woke up.

  He turned his head to find Drew watching him. His warrior sipped on a mug of something hot. Coffee, he guessed. Bast couldn’t tell the last time he’d moved from his spot against the wall, out of the way of hospital staff but close enough to be useful if needed. When this was over, Bast wouldn’t have enough ways to repay him.