All of the sudden, the vampires that had restrained him fell to the floor, screaming in terror. Sofia and the other vampires stared at them in shock, but before anyone had time to react, Erik ran toward Sofia and shoved his hand into her chest. She let out a strangled gasp before Erik ripped her heart out.
Her body dropped limply onto the ground, blood soaking into the concrete from the gaping hole in her chest. Erik dropped the mangled heart onto her lifeless body. Several vampires scrambled forward to restrain him again, jerking roughly at his arms. This time, one of the vampires placed the tip of a dagger against his throat to ensure that he couldn’t pull a stunt like that again.
Erik just smirked and said, “Two down. Only about a hundred to go.”
Rose stared blankly at the gory mess, stunned by what had just happened.
“Thank you, Erik Olafsson,” Theron said suddenly. They turned to find him fully conscious and standing. He dusted himself off, the hole in his head healing as they watched. “I hate blood bonds, and you took care of that for me.”
Erik grimaced. “Correction: One down. A hundred and one to go.”
Theron stepped over Sofia’s blood-soaked corpse. “Keep the dagger against his throat, idiots,” he growled at the oafish vampires that held Erik. “He is an empath. You cannot expect to restrain him with brute strength alone.”
“Your IQ must be really low if Theron thinks you’re an idiot,” Rose said.
Theron moved so quickly that Rose didn’t realize that he’d moved until his hand closed around her throat. She felt his breath on her face as he leaned in close. His fangs flashed in the glow of the fire, and blood coated his face. His breath smelled of something sweet and unfamiliar. “You must really want to die.”
“It’s on my bucket list,” Rose said hoarsely.
Theron tightened his grip around her throat. Her feet left the floor as he lifted her off the ground. Her lungs screamed for air. Her chest burned as if her lungs were full of fire, instead of air, and her lungs throbbed as if they’d explode at any moment. The metal handcuffs on her wrists seemed to grow heavier as she hung there, her body contorted in that awkward, painful position. She thought she heard someone yelling, but the sounds grew duller the longer she went without breathing, and her surroundings seemed to drift farther and farther away.
“This is apparently the only way to shut you up,” Theron growled.
“Let her go, or I swear I will make you regret it,” Kallias snarled at him.
Theron laughed, “And how will you do that? You will be dead soon.”
Kallias jerked desperately at his chains, but he just didn’t have enough strength left to break them. “Maybe, or maybe not. But even if I do die, I will come back for you. I will come back as many times as it takes,” he growled.
Theron’s lips curved into a surprised smile. “Do you love her?”
Kallias froze, and for the first time all night, fear flashed in his eyes. Even as his skin had turned blue from blood loss, as he’d suffered painful, fatal injuries, he’d never actually looked afraid. But now, the fear was visible in his wide, brown eyes. “No. I don’t,” he said quickly. “This has nothing to do with her.”
Erik glanced at Theron. He felt Theron’s amused, pleased reaction to Kallias’s response, and he realized that Theron didn’t believe Kallias. Erik shifted in the vampires’ hold, wincing as the movement caused the tip of the dagger to press harder against his skin. “Hey, you don’t want to kill her yet, do you?” Erik asked. “You will not want her blood if she’s dead, and that would be a waste of a lot of powerful, delicious blood. I sure as hell wouldn’t waste it, if I were you.”
“No one asked you, Blondie,” one of the vampires snarled in Erik’s ear.
“You realize I made you cry like two minutes ago, right?” Erik countered.
Theron glanced curiously at Erik. “He has a point, actually,” he admitted. Then, he suddenly released Rose’s neck, causing her to collapse onto her knees. She choked and gasped as her sore lungs desperately tried to pull in a little bit of air. Theron assessed her thoughtfully as he watched her gasp for air. “I supposed it would be a waste.” He crouched in front of her and grasped her chin tightly to force her to look at him. He smiled. “Besides, it is not my style to kill painlessly.”
“That…was…painlessly?” she panted, squinting at his blurry form.
Theron turned back toward Erik. “I like you, Erik Olafsson.”
“Psychos are my type, apparently,” Erik quipped.
Theron’s brows furrowed. “I meant that I like you because we are alike.”
Erik snorted at that. “Sure, except I’m hotter than you, smarter than you, more skilled than you, and much less psychotic. So, basically, we’re nothing alike.”
“We both have a taste for torture,” Theron elaborated.
Erik’s smirk faded, and his skin paled. “I don’t enjoy torturing anyone.”
Theron smiled. “I heard Darius’s screams. It was…impressive.”
Every bit of playfulness and cockiness left Erik’s expression, leaving only what was buried beneath all of that: regret. “I didn’t enjoy it,” he said quietly.
“What is wrong with you?” Rose snarled at Theron. “What happened to you to make you enjoy making others miserable? Or were you just born this way?”
Theron returned to her. He crouched in front of her, smiling as his finger traced the bruise he’d left on her neck. “There is nothing wrong with me. I feel fine. As a matter of fact, I am quite pleased with the way tonight turned out. You see, I like patterns. History repeats itself, and it is so much fun when it does.”
Rose suddenly heard a harsh, pained grunt and then the harsh clanging of the metal chains as they broke. She lifted her head, glancing toward Kallias. He fell forward onto his stomach, coughing up thick clumps of blood. He’d broken the chains, but his skin looked papery with a bluish tint, like the skin of a corpse.
Theron stood and walked over to Kallias. He placed his foot on Kallias’s back to hold him on the floor. Kallias choked again on his own blood. Theron pressed down harder, and the sound of cracking bones echoed through the room.
“No! Stop!” Rose cried, her eyes widening in horror. “Stop hurting him!”
“The control is exhilarating,” Theron continued speaking to Rose, as if he’d never stopped. “I love the fact that I can break people who think they are unbreakable. You have no idea how boring and meticulous immortality can be. It is almost as boring as your pitiful human existence. But when I break people, when I experience true power over them, I actually feel something. It’s intoxicating.”
Rose narrowed her eyes at him, disgust twisting at her features. “You’re a textbook psychopath,” she snarled. “There isn’t a shred of sanity inside of you.”
His lip curled in contempt. “I really hate being interrupted.”
“Yeah, you covered that, actually,” Rose said, “in the need for control.”
Theron’s face contorted with rage. He removed his shoe from Kallias’s back and walked toward her. “It’s people like you and Kallias that really get to me,” he growled as he snatched her head back with a handful of her hair. “You are so willful. You act like you cannot be broken when I know that you can.”
Rose glared up at him as he continued to hold her painfully by her hair.
“That is why I have to show you that you’re wrong. I have to prove that I can break you,” he snarled, his black eyes wide and anxious. He jerked his head toward Kallias, even though she couldn’t follow his gaze. “That is what I hate most about him. Everyone breaks under torture. Everyone. But no matter what I do to him, he never does.” A smile curled at his lips. “Except he did. Once.”
Kallias planted his hands on the concrete floor and tried to push himself up, coughing as he tried to lift his body with whatever strength he had left.
“Kallias, you have to stop. You’ll just die quicker,” Erik warned.
“Leave. Her. Alone,” Kallias growled at
Theron, gasping for breath.
Theron smiled and continued, “I thought it would be pleasing to repeat the time that I shared with Kallias, to repeat the torture and even the part where I killed him, except this time, I would kill him permanently. But it wasn’t enough. He was even more willful this time. But now, I know what I was missing. I was missing one key ingredient to the experience, the one thing that did break him.”
Rose stared at him, horrified by what had happened to Kallias.
“Do you want to know what it was?” he asked with a sickening smile, his eyes wild and manic. He waited for a moment, and when she didn’t answer, he jerked her head back so far that she feared her neck would snap. He knelt down, pressing his forehead to hers, as he snarled in her face, “Ask me what it was.”
“What was it?” she whimpered, her entire body shaking from the pain.
“Killing the person he loved,” Theron answered with a sadistic grin.
He let go of her hair so harshly that it caused her to fall face-first onto the floor. He walked toward Kallias who still lay in the floor, unchained. No one had bothered to chain him up again or restrain him because he was too weak to fight anyway. “I thought that I wouldn’t get to repeat that part,” Theron laughed. “But then, you actually came here out of your own volition. What are the chances?”
With her wrists handcuffed, the most Rose could manage to do was roll onto her shoulder. “The chances are high. He needed me. So, I’m here.”
Kallias lifted his head, just barely, to look at her, his brows furrowing.
Theron ignored her. “The point is that I had assumed that he would die without me ever getting to repeat that crucial part, and then you showed up.”
He grasped Kallias’s shoulder and shoved him against the wall, pulling him into an upright position. Blood stained the floor where Kallias had been lying on it. His head fell back against the wall, blood trickling from his mouth.
“And I think he has just enough life left in him to see it,” Theron said.
“You’re replacing his wife with me? You actually think he loves me like he loved her?” Rose scoffed as she finally managed to roll into a sitting position.
Kallias glanced at her, and pain seemed to flash in his weak, brown eyes. But then, he seemed to paste on his mask of stoicism as he looked up at Theron. “She is right. I don’t love her,” he told Theron. His voice was so weak that it sounded monotone. “She means nothing to me. You have no reason to kill her.”
She winced. Even though she feared as much, it still hurt to hear it.
“You really think I am that stupid?” Theron snarled at him.
Theron started to take a step toward Rose, but the moment he took the first step, Kallias lurched toward him, throwing his body forward the best that he could, and latched onto his leg. He twisted and rolled, managing to knock Theron onto the floor. Theron collapsed on the floor, taken by surprise at first, but then, he turned and, snatching his dagger from the sheath attached to his belt, plunged the blade into Kallias’s chest. Kallias fell flat on his back, spitting up blood.
“No!” Rose screamed. She felt a wave of anger shoot through her veins, setting every nerve in her body alive, boiling her blood. “Stop hurting him!”
Theron stood, his lips drawing downward into a malicious scowl. He jerked the dagger from Kallias’s chest. He narrowed his eyes at Rose. “Or what?”
“I’ll kill you,” Rose snarled. She didn’t know where the words came from. They just poured out of her mouth, as if that darkness had always been there.
Erik’s eyes widened as he felt the intense, dark emotions that suddenly radiated from Rose. He had never felt anything like it. “Rose, are you okay?”
“You think you can hurt me, human? Kill me?” Theron scoffed. “I had planned to kill you first, but I’ve changed my mind.” He stabbed Kallias again.
Nothing could have prepared any of them for what happened next…
Erik gasped as he felt a shockwave of unfathomable anger ripple through the room. A thunderous roar echoed through the building like a whirlwind, and as Erik closed his eyes and shielded his face, he realized that it actually felt like a whirlwind as well. His brows furrowed as he glanced at the arm that he’d used to shield his face, suddenly realizing that the vampires weren’t holding him anymore.
He reluctantly opened his eyes to look at Rose. He noticed tiny shards of metal lying at her feet, the handcuffs shattered into thousands of pieces. Her long, red hair flowed and whipped around her shoulders, as if being blown by a strong wind. The power that rippled through her body seemed almost visible. A dark haze outlined her body, rippling and dancing around her. She stood her ground, her feet shoulder-length apart, as she glared murderously at Theron.
Nothing about her seemed human anymore.
But by far, the most terrifying chance in her appearance was her eyes. Those eyes that had been a bright, innocent blue had transformed completely. A swirling red haze covered her eyes, glowing and flickering like fire. Those inhuman, blood-red eyes sent a chill of terror down his spine, an innate warning that she was dangerous, that whatever she was—she was worse than a vampire.
“I warned you not to hurt him,” she said. The room shook as she spoke.
As Erik glanced around the room, he suddenly realized that he and Rose were the only ones left standing. All of the other vampires in the room were sprawled across the floor, as if some invisible force held them there. When his gaze finally found Kallias, still against the wall, Erik rushed over to him.
Erik fell to his knees beside him. “Kallias, are you still conscious?”
Kallias opened his eyes, cringing as he tried to raise his head. “Barely.”
“Stop,” Erik snapped. “You have to stop moving. Kallias, you’re dying.”
“Please stop her,” Kallias begged. “She is using too much power.”
Erik turned to stare at her, once again stunned by the terrifying, majestic haze in her eyes. “What the hell is she? I have never seen anything like that.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Kallias said. “She’s Rose. That is all that matters.”
Erik glanced at him and sighed, “Okay. I will do what I can.”
“Thank you, Erik,” he said as he stared worriedly at Rose.
Erik returned to his feet, warily watching the scene before him. Rose had flung Theron against the wall and pinned him there. He couldn’t move at all. His arms, legs, head, and torso seemed paralyzed. His feet hovered inches above the floor as Rose held him against the wall with nothing more than her mind.
Theron stared at her, his dark eyes wide with shock. “What are you?”
Erik took a hesitant step toward Rose. He could feel the intense waves of emotion spiraling through her. He’d never felt anything like it. The emotions were dark, darker than any emotion he’d ever felt and completely at odds with her ordinary emotions. Rage and terror coursed through her, drawing out this dark, unfathomable power. “Rose?” he called. “You need to let me calm you.”
Rose turned her strange, inhuman gaze toward him, and Erik actually stumbled back in shock as he stared at the full intensity of her blood-red eyes. “Stay away from me, Erik,” she warned. “I don’t want to be calm right now.”
“What happened to your eyes?” Theron asked suddenly.
She looked at Theron, studying him with those strange eyes. “My eyes?”
Erik approached her slowly. “Rose, you’re using too much power.”
Her unnerving gaze shifted toward him again, and his feet suddenly left the ground, his back crashing into the wall behind him. “I told you to stay away.”
Theron spoke, drawing her attention back to him, “I’m not afraid of you, human…or those eyes of yours. What are you going to do? Hold me here until you die?” There was a hint of nervousness in his eyes that contradicted his words.
“Actually,” Rose said darkly. A dagger flew through the air and stopped just before it would’ve stabbed straight into his face. It moved,
hovering in the air, until the blade pressed against his throat. “I was thinking you would die first.”
Theron visibly paled, his smile fading. “No,” he pleaded. “Please.”
“Rose, don’t,” Kallias said, his voice quiet and weak as he pulled himself onto his hands and knees. “Please, don’t do that. You don’t want to do that.”
“Why not?” Rose asked. “He hurt you.”
“Because you’ll have blood on your hands,” Erik answered for him, wincing as he tried to stand. “And it won’t matter if it’s good or evil. It’s still blood. It’s guilt. You will have taken a life, and there is no going back after that.”
“If I don’t kill him, he will keep hurting people,” Rose told Erik.
“Let us kill him,” Erik urged. “We crossed that line a long time ago.”
“Please, Rose,” Kallias pleaded. “You will kill yourself if you don’t stop.”
She turned her gaze back toward Theron. “I don’t care. He needs to die.”
Erik glanced at Kallias, and seeing the desperation in his friend’s face, he said the one thing that he knew would stop her: “Kallias is dying. We have to go.”
Rose turned to look at Erik, and her eyes began to flash back and forth between the human blue color and the inhuman red haze. “What do you mean?”
“Every moment that we stay here, he inches closer to death,” Erik said. “If you want to save him, we have to get him somewhere safe before sunrise.”
Her eyes faded back to blue, her decision made. “Get him out of here.”
“No,” Kallias snarled, his voice a little stronger than before.
“Only if you are right behind us,” Erik added for Kallias’s sake.
“I am,” Rose said. The dagger left Theron’s throat and spiraled through the air, landing in her hand. “I’ll hold them long enough for you two to get away.”
Erik moved swiftly and lifted up Kallias, ignoring his protests. Then, he disappeared from the room in a flash of movement. Rose took several steps backward, using what little of her strength that she had left to hold Theron and the other vampires still, even as her head began to spin and her stomach heaved.
The Stone of the Eklektos Page 69