She glanced around, sighed, then pulled the black hooded sweatshirt over her head and peeled off her T-shirt.
Rebecca shucked out of her jeans, letting them shimmy down over the curve of her hips and down her lean legs. All she was wearing underneath was a little black scrap of nothing they called a G-string. Curious. Perhaps there was even more to her than he’d imagined.
All it did was make the ache more intense. Every fiber of him ached.
Her pale skin brought out the red highlights in her chestnut curls, the ones above and the ones peeping out below. He couldn’t stop the low rumble in his chest.
The imprint flared to life vicious in its intensity. He was already hard.
Rebecca whipped around, covering her near perfect breasts with her arms. Protective, but utterly useless as it only enhanced her cleavage more.
“Achilles?” she whispered harshly, her narrowed gaze darting around the room.
He fluxed, releasing his invisibility, and her eyes burned with fury.
“How long have you been there?”
“Long enough to know I need to tell you something.”
She lifted her chin. “Then tell me and get out.”
He crossed the room so quickly, she barely had time to suck in a startled breath. Fighting the imprint was becoming useless.
He pulled her into his arms. “You smell fantastic.” The scent of her was so addictive he couldn’t seem to get enough of it. He inhaled, letting it fill him up and bent his head, nuzzling along her neck.
Her breath hitched. “You, you wanted to tell me that?”
“No.” Her skin was like hot silk beneath his lips as he kissed a path to her lush mouth.
“What, wha—what did you want to tell me?”
He pulled back long enough to look into her eyes, to lose himself in the hazy, heated longing he saw there. Gods, she was as affected by the imprint as he was. He could tell it from the way she looked, the way she smelled, the jasmine scent of vampire attraction growing more intense. And then there had been her thoughts. She actually believed she was falling in love with him. Aw hell. It was only the imprint. She just didn’t know that, yet.
Achilles pulled her closer, reveling in the feel of her bare skin beneath his hands.
“I want you.” He crushed his mouth to hers in a kiss both demanding and pleading.
A soft yielding moan echoed in her throat, vibrating straight through him. She wrapped her arms around his neck, pulling him closer, pressing and rasping her barely covered breasts against his chest. He deepened the kiss, letting the sunshine of her wash over him. Her light wiped out the darkness within him. She fairly glowed with it.
She wrapped herself around him like a vine, her leg twining about his, her fingers tangling in fistfuls of his shirt. One moment he was rock steady absorbing everything she offered, the next he was falling. She’d pressed herself into him, purposely throwing them both off balance so that they landed on the bed. His fingers explored the curve of her spine and she shivered beneath his touch.
Her lips buzzed against his as she purred with satisfaction, her soft, devilishly clever tongue stroking his. Her fingers dug into his shirt, ripping it to shreds. She stopped kissing him for a moment and glanced down at the mess she’d made of the fabric. “Sorry. Guess I still don’t know my own strength.”
“Don’t care. Have others. There’s only one you.”
Her slightly kiss-swollen lips curved into a smile that made his body throb. “Show me.” Her husky whisper against his mouth nearly vaulted him off the mattress. He could have damn well levitated with the force of his reaction to her.
The phone rang, sharp and insistent on her nightstand. “Let it go to voice mail,” he growled.
The machine she used to screen calls beeped in the next room, a woman’s voice coming through loud and clear. “Hey, Beck. It’s Margo. If you’re there, pick up.”
Rebecca stiffened in his arms. “I’ve got to take that.”
He nodded, brushing a kiss to her temple and felt something inside him shrivel, wilt and die. He hated to let her go. And it wasn’t just this moment. He knew instinctively the call would change everything between them.
Chapter 13
Beck rolled away from him and fumbled for the phone on her nightstand, her voice echoing on the machine in the next room. “Hey, Margo. I’m here.”
“I’ve done it! We’ve done it!”
“Wait, back that up a sec. Do you mean to tell me it worked?” She took the phone with her into the living room so she could turn off the answering machine.
“Yes, the new ichor you gave me worked like a charm. The new vaccine turns people back to human in forty-eight hours.”
“That’s great news!” She turned to see Achilles had followed and was standing in the doorway to her bedroom, his shoulder leaning against the doorjamb. He’d phased a new shirt to replace the one she’d literally ripped off of him. The air chilled her skin and she realized she was only in her bra and panties. She phased a soft cotton bathrobe for herself. Then was stunned and pleased that she’d actually done so.
“There’s only one hitch.”
Beck pushed the button on the recorder, shutting off the speaker. She had a really bad feeling about that one hitch. “What’s that?”
“It turns them back into whatever their true chronological age is. Not so bad for those who’ve only been recently changed against their will like you and Kris. More problematic for people who’ve had long-term exposure.”
Beck’s stomach pitched. This was bad. Very bad. And not at all what she’d expected. “Are you telling me it kills older vampires?”
“Theoretically speaking, aging that fast would kill anything,” Margo quipped as if it were humorous. “But yes. I tested it.”
It wasn’t funny in the least to Beck. “It kills vampires.”
“No, it doesn’t. It only returns them to their human state.”
But they were already human. Different, but human. She had to do something. “Wait, Margo. You can’t hand that over to the investors. That’s not a vaccine, that’s genocide. If you let that virus out to the general public, you’re going to potentially kill thousands of vampires who haven’t done anything.”
“So?”
Anger bubbled up inside Beck making her gum line throb and her temperature kick up a notch. “Don’t you care that you’re taking innocent lives?”
Margo uttered a long-suffering sigh. “They’re not alive. They’re undead, remember.” A heavy pause interrupted their conversation and when Margo spoke again her voice was dripping with accusation. “Wait. I see what’s happening. Now that you’ve had to be one, you think you can play both sides. Well, here’s the reality, Beck. You’re either with them or you’re with the rest of us humans. What’s it going to be?”
Beck held back the fangs that were aching to come out, an uncomfortable mixture of anger and loyalty percolating inside her. “I want to go back to being mortal, but I don’t see the reason why we have to wipe out all of them in the process. People should have a choice to be vampire or not. That’s what this whole vaccine has always been about.”
“Only for you. The investors want a way to keep humans safe from the vampire virus—to control or eliminate it the way we did with small pox. The vaccine works and I’m giving it to the investors.”
Beck gripped the phone so tightly the hard plastic casing cracked. “Margo, please, stop and think this through—” She didn’t get a chance to finish before the dial tone told her Margo wasn’t interested in anything more she had to say.
“Dammit,” she muttered and chucked the phone across the room where it shattered against the wall.
“I take it that your chat with Margo didn’t go well.”
She turned and looked Achilles in the eye. A sudden ache, deep and pulsing, took up residence in her heart. “If Margo does what I think she’s going to do, vampires are toast.”
“Then we’ll have to find a way to stop her.”
H
is determination was heroic enough, but utterly asinine. You couldn’t fight science, except with science.
“We can’t. Vanquish isn’t just a vaccine anymore. It’s a vampire pesticide. Somehow Margo’s manipulated whatever genetics were unique to Eva’s ichor and found the key, the magic packet of DNA, that activates the aging portion of the virus.”
“The plague?”
Beck nodded, her fingers catching and snaring in her curls and she shoved her hand through her hair. “It won’t harm anyone who’s been recently turned, just age them by a few months or at most a year or two, but for anyone who’s been exposed for a long period of time …”
“They’ll turn to bone dust.” His voice sounded hollow.
Beck nodded again, unable to swallow past the thickness clogging her tight throat. Her eyes burned with unshed tears. Who knew that vampires could cry?
The hot tears trailed down her cheeks. Tears of regret. Tears of anger. Tears of frustration. “This is all my fault. I never should have given her Eva’s ichor.”
Achilles wrapped his arms around her, bringing her in close to his chest and kissing the top of her head. “You didn’t know what they intended. You had only the best of intentions.”
“Doesn’t matter. Now all vampires are at risk. Kris. Dmitri. My mom.” She pulled back looking up into his strong face. “You.”
He kissed her fiercely. And when he pulled back slowly, his eyes tender, Beck was certain she never wanted to be anywhere else. How could she have been so blind to trust Margo, to truly believe that the vaccine was the answer?
“Oh, God. What are we going to do?”
He rubbed his hand over her back in a slow, soothing circle. “First, we’re going to get a sample of Vanquish, then you’re going to get your sweet ass into the lab and find out what scientific hoodoo Margo’s performed and see if we can’t create an antidote.”
“That’s a good plan. But I meant what are we going to do about us?”
“Us?” His eyes widened a fraction. The question had been unexpected. He’d really thought that her reverting back to being mortal was just going to make all of this imprint stuff between them float away. Men really were dense. She didn’t even know exactly what an imprint was or how it worked. She only knew she felt something for him that wasn’t like anything she’d ever experienced for a guy before—alive or undead.
“You told me that you’d explain exactly what an imprint was when I was further along in my training. That it didn’t matter once I was mortal again because it would magically disappear. I want to go into this plan with my eyes open. What is an imprint and why were the council members willing to excommunicate you for it?”
Achilles blew out a rattling breath. The weight of his worry and loss pressed upon her shoulders like a physical thing.
“Why does it make you so sad?” she asked, her voice far smaller, far quieter than it had been.
He closed his eyes for a moment, trying to find the words he needed, then grasped her small hands folding them into his, cradling them. So fragile. Even now, as a vampire. His chest ached.
“That three-circle symbol in the council chambers stands for more than just what everyone thinks it does. Dmitri would tell you one circle is for life, another for death and the third for vampire, straddling the two—undeath. But it’s more than that. It’s an ancient reminder of the imprint where two vampires are interlinked as one united being. An imprint is like nothing else in the human realm. It is stronger than bonding with a mate. It is stronger than the link between a fledgling and maker. Between vampires it is enduring, and once fully formed and sealed, unbreakable.”
“Until death.” She said it with such certainty because she’d never known it could be any different. He gazed up at her worried expression.
He shook his head. “An imprint lasts beyond death. Slain vampires often are reborn, drawn to be made again.”
“Wait, are you telling me vampires are reincarnated?” She rolled her eyes. “Okay, professor, now I know you’ve gone off the deep end.”
He stroked his thumb over the smooth silk of her hand, a rush of sparks entering his blood at the touch. That didn’t happen every day. That was the power of an imprint at work.
“An imprint is more powerful than any one vampire.”
“What exactly does that mean? We’re going to share a brain or something?”
He cocked his mouth in a partial grin at her simplistic half truth. “Better … and worse. Vampires who share an imprint share their powers. They have a tighter link to each other’s thoughts.”
Her eyes widened enough that the green rim around the edge threatened to take over the brown clustered around the center. She squeezed his hand. “That’s why I could hear Dmitri talking to you, wasn’t it?”
He nodded. “Usually it takes a new vampire decades to develop that skill, even longer to develop others. You already have begun to tap into your link to my powers without even knowing how.”
She lifted a brow, her hand sliding from his. “So far I’m not seeing a downside here.”
He swallowed hard. Somehow the words themselves were bitter. “Vampires with an imprint also share each other’s pain.”
“You mean if you get hit in a fight, then I bruise?”
“Vampires don’t bruise.”
“Yeah, guess that would require blood, wouldn’t it.”
“A cut on me won’t leave a mark on you, but you’d feel it just the same, just as deep.”
Her face filled with a knowing look. “That’s why you’re so worried about it, isn’t it? You don’t want me to get hurt, so you think an imprint will take you out of the action. You won’t be able to risk fighting anymore.”
The thought had crossed his mind, but had been quickly overshadowed by something he feared far more. “No, I’m worried about what would happen to you if I’m beheaded. If I’m excommunicated and beheaded while you’re still a vampire, half of you would die. Living as a halfling is a horrible existence. You can’t love, you can’t hope. You can’t live. You merely exist.”
Her face softened, the light in her eyes growing distant, colder. “Have you imprinted before?”
“Yes.”
She lifted her chin and pulled her hand from his grasp. “Then how can you possibly imprint with me if it’s a forever thing?”
He stared at her, concerned with how she would react to the truth.
Because it is you. You as Ione.
Fine lines of surprise creased her face and he knew she’d heard his thought.
“Oh, no. You think I’m the reincarnation of this chick you were imprinted to before?”
He stepped closer, narrowing the gap between them. “I don’t think it, I know. You were Ione, and though you may not remember, the imprint never forgets. We are bound together, like it or not.”
Her whole body slackened in his hands as if her strength suddenly left her. Rebecca held a hand to her head. “I suddenly don’t feel so good.” He gently settled her down on the couch, grabbed a pillow and placed it by her head.
“What happened to her?”
Achilles turned away unable to bear the intensity of her gaze.
“She was captured, tortured and eventually beheaded by the Inquisition.”
The smell of rotting straw, sweet in comparison to the rancid odor of festering flesh and the acrid stench of burnt skin, saturated the air, making Beck gag reflexively. She glanced around and found herself surrounded by slime-covered walls of stone punctuated with shackles.
Her shoulders seared with a burning pain as did her spine, hips and knees from stretching on the rack. The skin on her bottom, newly regrown that night after having been burnt away once again on the red hot metal of the hot seat, still was too sensitive for her to sit on.
The taste of thick, cold metallic blood being poured into her mouth made Beck gasp for breath, not from the repulsive taste alone. It shot spikes of pain penetrating through her whole system, freezing her muscles and making even the movement of blinki
ng excruciatingly painful.
“Dead man’s blood. That’ll keep her quiet till the monsignor is done with her.” The strange voice echoed from above her.
Beck squeezed her eyes shut and shook her head, trying to rid herself of the pure terror that had her shaking and chilled.
When she opened them again it was to find herself in Achilles’s arms, his handsome face contorted into lines of pain and anxiety.
“What in the hell just happened?”
He closed his eyes and swore under his breath. “You were seeing your past. I’m sorry.”
Beck tried to shrug it off, but found she couldn’t. It had been too terrifying, too real, to just brush aside. She clung to him, but at the same time wanted to push away, especially if this imprint was the cause of those hideous images.
She let out a shuddering breath. “I was dying, but I couldn’t die.” She stared up at him, his eyes fathomless orbs of stormy green ocean.
“They fed you dead man’s blood. It’s a poison to vampires.”
“Why was it so cold? It felt like they’d injected me with liquid nitrogen.”
“There’s no life force left in it. Hurts like getting hit by a eighteen-wheeler, doesn’t it?”
Beck narrowed her eyes, rubbing her hand up and down her arm. The friction didn’t get rid of the deep cold locked in her bones. “So were you projecting those memories into my head?”
“No. It was hard enough to live with Ione through it the first time. Why on earth would I want to experience it again?”
“So if you didn’t project it, where did it come from?”
He slid his warm palm beneath the edge of her bathrobe, pressing it against her sternum. “It’s part of you, wound into the strands of your DNA.”
“You mean those junk strands?”
He massaged with his fingers, the warmth of them making the aching chill subside. “I don’t understand how rebirth works, I only know that I’ve seen it in action. I know it’s real. Whether you want to accept it or not, I know you were once my mentor and it ended badly.”
The Vampire Who Loved Me Page 14