Intervamption

by Kristin Miller

  He looked down at her with blazing blue eyes—priceless sapphires bore no comparison. In a flash something changed. He looked lost. Like the reason for coming here to begin with vanished from sight. “I, ah, I didn’t expect this . . .” he whispered. “. . . or to find someone like you. And I know this might not make sense but I need you to come with me.”

  “Come with you where?”

  He swallowed hard, closing his eyes as his Adam’s apple jumped. He gripped her around the waist, his fingers digging in, kneading. “God, you smell so good . . . and your voice. . . .”

  She couldn’t breathe in his arms like this. Why couldn’t she breathe? No matter how much she tried to fill up her lungs, they came up shallow. “What are you doing to me?” she asked, her head dizzy, her feet light.

  “I was just going to ask you the same thing.” He tilted his head, leaned down to brush his lips against hers, then stopped. “Do you feel that?” he whispered.

  “Yes.” She reached up on tip-toe to meet him.

  His eyes flipped open on a sharp inhale. He grabbed her by the arm and dragged her down the path to his Hummer.

  “The door!” She leaned back, putting on the brakes, fighting his hold. “Wait, I have to close my door and get my things, I have to—”

  “There’s no time for that,” he said, pace fevered.

  A white and red industrial truck barreled around the corner, leaning heavily on its side tires as it gained control. It skidded to a stop in the middle of the road, its large Alvambra sign swinging off the side.

  Ruan grabbed Eve, shoved her behind him, holding her tight. “Get in the truck,” he growled. “Keys are on the front seat.”

  She climbed in and over the passenger seat and shoved the keys in the ignition. When she turned back around to see what was going on, Ruan was crouched and hissing. Hissing.

  She had in her right mind to bash her head into the steering wheel. Jump out of the Hummer, throw her hands in the air, and swear she wanted nothing to do with their cursed war. She’d had enough bloodshed and loss to last her two lifetimes. She had no more to give. No more tears to cry. No more heart to break. She vowed if she never held anything of value, never held anything close to her heart, there’d be nothing to take from her ever again.

  She’d sworn to steer clear of vampires. Yet here she was, getting in a truck with one. Brad Pitt look-a-like or not, she wasn’t about to lose her life over some heavy breathing and a roll in the hay, no matter how unbelievable that roll might be.

  As she unlocked her door she heard two loud pops. And a deep wail of agony.

  Gunshots.

  Ruan was hit.

  She clambered over the seats in time to see him hit the ground. She leaped out of the truck, her stomach in her throat.

  “Let’s get the hell out of here,” Ruan grumbled. Even though he was the one hurt, he curved an arm around her shoulder as if he was the one helping her into the Hummer. He climbed in first, sliding to the driver’s seat, hugging his arm to his side, before leaning over and helping her in. “Hold on tight.”

  She nodded, her eyes stuck like glue to the black blood oozing out of his chest. “You can’t drive like—”

  Two more pops sounded from the street. They were louder. Closer.

  “Go!” she screamed, as the back window shattered.

  Ruan shoved the Hummer into gear, floored the beast, peeling in and around corners until they’d left Brookside and lost the Alvambra truck in the rearview somewhere near the corner of Wing and A Prayer.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  “There are freaks in every species, vampires being no exception. Still, treat everyone equally.”

  —Vampire Etiquette Handbook, Chapter 4: Manners

  Slade could barely believe his ears. Hell, he could barely believe what any of his senses registered anymore.

  Meridian had been sitting in front him for hours, a youthful, ageless version of her former self, explaining things over and over again. His brain was simply having trouble believing the words coming out of her mouth. How could she be his mother? How could he have mixed blood? What did that make him, if he believed the hype?

  A freak. That’s what. A freak of nature.

  He pulled his head up from between his knees and scrubbed his hand across his head. “Christ. For the first time in my life, I don’t know what the hell to say or do.”

  Dylan returned from the kitchen with a glass of something ruby red in her hand. Smelled like B. God, the fact he could smell the blood type from where he sat was enough to royally fuck with his head.

  Let alone thinking about what he could smell on Dylan. He was all over her. Inside her body, in her veins. By the look in her eyes, he was in her heart too.

  “Here,” she handed him the glass. “You need to drink as much as you can before we head back. You’re still weak.”

  Weak, his ass. He glared up from his seat, too pissed about the whole situation to speak.

  “You know what I mean,” she said, shoving the drink into his hand. “My blood isn’t enough to sustain you. You’ll need this.”

  Meridian leaned back, her black robe sliding along the floral couch with her. “I’ve told you all you need to know to move forward, yet here you sit, dumbfounded like the day you were born. Except now, you are stronger. More pure than any before you. You only have one path from here, Slade.”

  “And what’s that?” He tipped back the glass, savoring the sweetness of the blood as it passed his lips.

  “Finish what was started when you were born. Give control back to the vampires of the world. Release them from therian rule. It’s time to end the war and rise again.”

  At first he wasn’t going to finish the whole drink . . . but after hearing the orders stacked up for him like hotcakes, he shot it back. Slammed the glass down on the rickety coffee table. “Just how do you propose I go about doing all that? It’s not like I’m a Primus or Sheik, or in any other position of power to make a stand and lead any race anywhere. Besides, you don’t even know if there’s gonna be a war.”

  “It’s a pity you still question me.”

  “I think it’s time to go,” he said, smacking his hands once over his knees before taking to his feet. “Dylan, I think we’ve tapped this well dry. Thank you, Mother, for all your help and guidance over the course of my life.”

  “Why do you think our family mark is on the scrolls?”

  “We’re not a family—”

  “You’re the one referenced in the scrolls as having the royal blood that will stop the war,” she continued over him. “You’re the only one left. Our only chance.”

  “It’s not my royal blood they seek and it sure as hell ain’t my job to force some sort of truce.”

  “You fool!” she screeched, her pale skin glowing against her onyx robes. “This is your destiny. It was the destiny of your brother, too, before he chose the dark over his duty. Will you deny it as he did? Will you let Dylan die with the khiss you refuse to save?”

  Hissing from both Slade and Meridian drowned out Dylan’s gasp.

  Slade took two giant steps forward, stopping in the middle of the room as if an invisible wall prevented him from stepping an inch closer to Meridian. “What do you mean, brother? I have a brother?” Time slowed to a crawl.

  “Had a brother,” Meridian corrected.

  Damn it, he’d seen him all those years ago. Slade remembered crouching over his scope, setting up the Primus in his sights . . . and hesitating. That familiar marking stretching across that vampire’s chest as he swung himself down from the Fell Street safe house had thrown him for a loop then. It destroyed his life, his status, and sent him spiraling into hell.

  “I saw him,” Slade breathed, still reeling in disbelief. Dylan knelt at his side and placed a comforting hand on his knee. It was fitting she was here for this, he thought. She was his family now and deserved to know everything about his past.

  Meridian stepped closer, staring right through Slade. “You couldn’t have se
en him. That’s not possible.”

  “The hell it isn’t,” he snapped. “He was one of my marks in the early nineteen hundreds. I set him up good, got him in my sights, saw his mark . . . my mark . . . along his neck.” Slade ran his fingers along his skin, tracing the same line he remembered. “I let him go. The only one I ever did.”

  Meridian measured Slade’s face as if trying to decide if he was pulling a fast one. She broke the invisible barrier between them by striding through it and capturing Slade’s face in her hands. She searched one eye, then the other.

  “Hmmm,” she mumbled, then drew back. “Looks like the ones who rule this roost want you to know more than I thought. . . .”

  “Out with it then.”

  “Slade, when you were born you were nearly three months premature. Much too weak to survive on your own. If we’d have let nature have its way, you would’ve died. You needed blood to survive, and not the kind I had on hand. If you didn’t feed from a strong, true, source, you’d have died right there in my arms. Your father, a pure therian born, gave his life so you could live. He let you drain him. It was his choice to make, and I stood by his decision. But your brother, Kane, was much older and very close to your father. He didn’t handle it well. Blamed you for killing him. Thought you should’ve died instead.

  “When you grew in strength and stubbornness, becoming a mirror image of your father, you started challenging Kane on every level. He lost his grip on reality. Couldn’t control his anger. Let it root and fester until it drove him mad. He left the sheltered life I’d built away from both races to keep you safe, choosing instead to work, live, and train under your Uncle Hiram—my brother and an honorable Primus in the area.”

  Slade wanted to interject. Needed to ask her to delve deeper into his past, but kept his trap shut and his ears open.

  “Shortly before the turn of the twentieth century, I got word that Kane sought to overthrow your uncle. He received a royal death at your Uncle’s hand, was buried in a locked chamber outside of Crimson Bay, though his thoughts and actions proved less than honorable. He should’ve had a traitor’s death at my own hands. That’s the last I’ve heard of your brother. If you’re right, he’s still alive. And Hiram’s kept some secrets.”

  “Where’s Hiram now?” Dylan asked, her tiny voice cutting the tension in the room like a knife.

  Meridian smiled tightly, waving her fingers in the air like a creepy side-show magician. “I think it’s time for both of you to leave; it’s nearly sunset and Winter Solstice is starting soon. Dylan, don’t forget what I told you. Go . . . be virtuous in your actions . . . all will turn out as it will be.”

  Dylan nodded, her blue eyes doubtful.

  Meridian turned to Slade. “My son, you have great lines of royalty behind you. Though things have not equaled out as was originally planned, you are doing us proud. Walk the line before you with honor and you will not regret a night of your life.”

  “I’ve only regretted one night until now . . . the day I didn’t kill my brother.”

  The air between them cracked like a whip.

  “If you say he is dead,” Slade continued, his voice a deep hush, “then there is only a single duty left in my life.”

  “End the war,” Meridian answered preemptively.

  “No.” He met her gaze head on. “Protecting Dylan and giving her the life she deserves is now my sole life purpose. Fortunately, that path leads me as far away from your war as possible.”

  All trace of a smile dropped from Meridian’s face. “If that is the way you will play, then know this, before you head to your Solstice celebration. You have now completed the Valcdana with one previously chosen. The role she plays in the end of days is in the open. One of her own kind has so graciously shared this information with Moses.”

  “How do you know this?” Slade asked, temperature rising. “You know Moses?”

  “I’ve been around longer than you would believe. Listen to my words, Assassin. If you do not kill her, there will be another to step up to the challenge and, most likely, succeed where you have chosen to fail.”

  “Over my dead body,” he growled.

  Meridian waved her fingers over his face, a slow tingling magic that stuck him in a sleeplike trance. “Sadly, that may be so.”

  Anticipation balled in Moses’s gut as he made the final call for his army of therians. Never before had so many of them come together under one Sheik’s command. Never had they all agreed to listen to a single voice, making simultaneous strikes on a series of havens in the area.

  “We’re in position,” Amon chirped over the airwaves. “Waiting on your say-so.”

  “In position” meant his entire therian squad was sitting pretty with their heavily-loaded arsenal across the street from that damned warehouse in the industrial district—the one holding Slade inside.

  “Ten-four,” Moses fired back. “When we start squashing these parasites right and left, you make the call to start the attacks on the others, got it?”

  “How many times you gonna go over this?”

  “Until I’m sure there’s not going to be any mistakes.”

  Amon chuckled into the receiver. “With how fired-up our boys are over the slaughter on Fell Street, there’s not going to be one blood-sucking mistake left. I can guarantee that much.”

  Fucking brilliant.

  Moses knew that set-up would piss them off enough to be on-board with anything he wanted. Hook, line, and sinker.

  “Good. Won’t be long now. We wait until the Primus arrives, then hit it quick.”

  “It’s your call.”

  The idea that every other Sheik in Crimson Bay was on edge, waiting for Moses’s word, was enough to make him blow his load. The only thing keeping him cocked back was the desire to catch Slade with his hand in the basket—in the middle of celebrating Winter Solstice with his newfound leech-mates.

  “If I do say so,” Amon continued, his Middle Eastern accent suddenly thicker than crude oil. “This couldn’t come at a more perfect time. You been hearing all the news about what these leeches are doing to the city? It’s like a free-for-all on mundanes out there.”

  “There’s only one thing causing these leeches to bleed everyone out—greed.” That and the therian-induced blood shortage, Moses thought. Didn’t take much either. Just a massive shut down of the blood banks and a heist of their Alvambra delivery vehicles.

  Amon huffed into the receiver. “Yeah, greed and the fact that they’re forgetting their place. I have a feeling that won’t happen after tonight.”

  Moses laughed. “Or ever again.”

  “You hear back from your squad about the blood source yet?”

  “Not a word.”

  “Want me to make a call to the Alvambra warehouse? Make sure we still have control?”

  Moses thought about how long it took to overtake the vampires on patrol of the blood supply. And how many refrigerators of blood they emptied. “No news is good news. Let’s leave it at that.”

  “You just let us know when it’s time to rock, and we’ll do the dirty work.”

  That’s exactly what Moses counted on. If everyone else was putting their shifts on the line, Moses could sit back. Keep his last shift safely tucked in his back pocket or he’d return to the fires of hell. Damn, he was cutting it close.

  As he hung up his cell, he wondered how close his squad was to finding Dylan—the one who’d supposedly end this war.

  Could never be too prepared by having a million back up plans, Moses figured. If Slade didn’t make the mark, he already had a dozen other equally-qualified therians ready to stake her in a heart-flicker.

  There was no fucking way a parasite was coming out of that warehouse in anything but a spit-shined urn.

  Savage stormed through the great room, his eyes scanning the room for a female he didn’t know, but hoped to recognize. Any one of these women could be Eve.

  When Ruan called, saying he’d recovered Eve and they were on their way, Savage thought his
heart would burst from his chest. With her blood, he’d feed the entire khiss, giving them the strength they’ve needed. Just in time to fight the good fight against the therians and point blame at Dylan and their Primus for making them weak to begin with.

  And a fight was surely coming. Hell, he’d set the whole goddamn thing up by calling Moses and lighting a fire under his ass all those months ago. At least from here on out he wouldn’t have to pretend to work with him anymore. After tonight, Moses would know he’d been double-crossed. From that moment in Mirage when he’d agreed to take Slade under his wing, he’d been waiting for the moment when he could show Moses what being a true ruler looked like. That the only reason Savage agreed to invite Slade into their haven to begin with was to do his dirty work and find the scrolls.

  He’d done his part, hadn’t he?

  When Moses called, gloating like a pig, saying Slade reported back about the Valcdana and that the key to peace was Dylan, Savage about split in two. How he’d managed to find the scrolls so quickly when his earlier teams had run into brick walls, Savage couldn’t fathom. He’d had to loosen the reigns, allowing Moses to feel a tad important by tracking down Dylan and staking her on his own. Surely he could handle that much.

  They couldn’t have her determined ass bringing peace when a war was what was needed for his upcoming rise to power.

  Other, more important things weren’t meant to be shared. The secret to strengthening their blood supply was too vital to blab to Moses about. He was keeping Eve tucked safely in his back pocket to reveal at the right moment.

  Right as therians attacked.

  Damn, it was too bad Ruan’s call was disconnected; otherwise he’d know where he and Eve were at this exact moment. He hated guessing, waiting, not knowing. They weren’t in Ruan’s studio, Erock’s chamber, or the Registrar’s office. He’d checked every hour for the last six dragging ones.