“That’s… No. I don’t accept this.”
He raised his eyebrows. “It doesn’t matter if you accept it. It’s done, permanent.” Lucas tucked an errant strand of hair behind my ear and transferred his fingers to my chin. He tilted it upward as if he were about to kiss me. His eyes ducked down to my lips and back up again. “Like it or not, Claire, you’re mine now.”
I almost leaned into his caress. It felt good. Too good.
I slapped his hand away. “Go away.”
“Not happening. You’re staying by my side until I know you’re safe.” A slight growl entered his voice. “Look, can we put a pin in this? We kind of have more pressing issues to deal with right now.”
“No, this is important and time sensitive,” I countered. “The more time we spend together the stronger the bond gets, right?”
I tried not to stare as Lucas folded his arms across his bare, muscular chest.
“Correct.”
“Then go away and don’t come back.” I fluttered my hand in a shooing motion. “We’ll just break the bond before it gets worse.”
Lucas stared at me as if he thought I was crazy.
“It doesn’t work like that. And even if it did, I wouldn’t—couldn’t do it. We need you. You’re intrinsic to our mental health. Our happiness. We can’t be separated from you now.” He actually looked offended by my suggestion. Maybe even a little hurt.
I swallowed a twinge of guilt and powered onward. “We? Our? Do you have more mates or something? Is this some sister-wives bullshit?”
“No,” he snarled. “I was referring to my wolf and I. You’re our mate. We share you.”
Oh hell no! “I’m not having sex with a giant wolf, Lucas!”
“What? No. Why do you keep jumping to these crazy conclusions? Your Supernatural education is seriously lacking. And that’s not even possible, my dick is like the size of your thigh in wolf form.”
“That may be true, but you just told me your wolf wants to do me!”
“Yes, but he can do it through me.” He invaded my personal space. “There will be no wolf sex.”
“What’s he saying right now?” I glared up at him, not backing down. “I want him to agree to this.”
Lucas rolled his eyes and took a deep breath to control his temper.
“He doesn’t talk. It’s not like I have voices in my head. I think you’ve been watching too much TV. You realize True Supes is fictional, right?”
“Lucas, just leave, OK?” I folded my arms. “I’ll figure all this shit out, you know, without marrying a sixteen-year-old! Just go away before you get dragged into it further.”
“I’m already—!”
BANG!
Lucas froze, stunned. He slowly plucked something from his chest and stared at it. The object slipped through his fingers. His body started cracking and morphing as he scanned the roofs of the neighboring houses.
“Run,” he growled.
Before I had a chance to sprint away, a sharp sting struck my neck.
I was once told to run in zigzags to confuse a gunman. I only made it one step before the world flipped and swirled around me.
“—in the early hours of the morning occurred what is already being called the Fort Lawrence College Massacre…” The news anchor’s voice slowly prickled my consciousness. “—Fatal encounter reporting the deaths of forty-two Supernatural college students, authorities have refused to confirm any human casualties…”
I groggily opened my eyes, discovering a curtain of hair blocking my vision. I dragged my hand to tuck it behind my ear, but met with a metallic clank instead. Metal bracketed my wrists, tugging my left hand farther away the closer my right hand got to my face.
I frowned, but even that small movement felt thick and clumsy. I tossed my head back to flip the hair out of my eyes and instantly regretted it. My brain swam in its own cerebral juices; the room spun, light bright and blinding. I winced and swallowed a mouth full of cotton.
“—Back to our correspondent on the scene.” After squinting for a bit, my vision returned. “Ashley, can you give us any insights…” The reporter’s words faded out with the startling realization that I had been handcuffed to a sturdy metal table in an unfamiliar room. I tested the cuffs again. They held firm. I had the red marks on the meat of my palms to prove it.
Thoroughly stuck, I examined the cold, intimidating room instead. A wide mirror took up the majority of the wall opposite to me. My reflection looked disheveled; at first glance, I almost didn’t recognize myself without my thick-framed glasses. I turned my attention to the TV monitor in the corner of the room; it stood on top of a wheeled cart, broadcasting a news station.
Cold fear settled into my gut when I realized the screen displayed an aerial view of my college. First responder vehicles with their flashing lights littered the campus. A growing crowd held at bay by police officers and crime scene tape gawked by the sidelines. There were several white sheets out in the open, covering, presumably, corpses.
Some chunks weren’t big enough to be full bodies.
I swallowed a sob before it could escape. Now was not the time to fall apart. I stiffened my back and pointedly ignored the TV. I had bigger problems than my guilt right now. I’d allow myself to feel when I could afford to. Right now I had to figure out why I’m in this room… had I been abducted?
The last thing I remembered was Lucas telling me I was his mate. Butterflies assaulted my stomach. I frowned. I’m the last person who deserves warm and fuzzies. What the fuck was wrong with me?
I resumed my visual search of the room. I spotted a surveillance camera aimed directly at me. I looked down to my handcuffed hands bolted to the table, then back at the mirror—a two-way mirror.
An interrogation room.
My faint little spark of hope flickered out. I swallowed the lump in my throat. If a hunter, or even the police, had me, it meant my death sentence—it just hadn’t been carried out yet.
“Glad to see you bright-eyed and bushy tailed, Miss Sommers.” A man with a southern twang broke the silence.
I glanced over my shoulder to spot an extremely tall—at least 6’8”—man in his mid-twenties ducking under the doorway. He wore a black cowboy hat and a pleasant, lopsided grin. I noticed he held onto some files when I did a quick hand check; his nails were smooth, short, and perfectly normal—nothing like the clawed digits of a feral in half-beast form. For a human, this guy was truly massive.
Even though he wore a pleasant expression, his eyes remained cold and hard—sizing me up. The intimidating clack of his heeled footsteps alerted me that he wore boots—probably of the cowboy variety. My gaze dropped to the silver badge pinned to the breast pocket of his leather jacket.
I blanched.
The chair scraped on the floor when he pulled it back, real slow, like he was drawing out the tension. I felt like a bowstring pulled taut, ready to snap.
“U.S. Hunter Carson Vicks at your service, ma’am.” He tipped his hat, then settled into the chair. He spread out two manila folders with great care. “You can refer to me as Vicks or U.S. Hunter Vicks.”
The U.S. Hunter set his Stetson on the table, exposing hair the color of wheat shorn short. He pulled a pack of cigarettes from an inner pocket of his leather jacket, giving me a clear view of his shoulder holster. He had hazel green eyes and a smattering of freckles across the bridge of his nose. I might have considered him cute if he hadn’t just flashed his gun at me.
“Am I under arrest?”
“Well, that’s a matter up for debate, Miss Sommers.” He tapped out a cigarette, lit it, and took a deep drag—and his sweet time doing so. Perhaps it was a power play like how you can step one foot out of the batter box to take a few swings, letting the pitcher know you controlled the pace. “I understand you’re a succubus?”
My heart stuttered in my chest.
Shit, I needed to calm down and think this through.
If the hunter already knew I was a weird sex fairy… why hadn’t he
executed me? Maybe U.S. Hunters need some sort of confirmation of my brand of Supernatural to fall under their jurisdiction—it wasn’t like I had red eyes and fangs to give myself away. If I played my cards right, I might get incarcerated instead.
Or at least until my college DNA results come in…
The bite mark on my neck tingled. That’s it. Lucas would do everything in his considerable power to find me. That, I was sure of.
Warmth shot through me from our metaphysical bond—ran up the invisible string connecting us. I felt firm reassurance, almost like his arms were around me again. I just needed to stall long enough for Lucas to get here.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” I met Carson Vicks’ cold eyes. “I’m human.”
He gestured to the two tidy files on the table. “Pick one.”
“I want a lawyer.”
“The law’s not for your kind.”
“I’m not a fucking Supe, which means I do have a right to a lawyer. Actually, unless I’m under arrest, I’m free to go.” I jangled my handcuffs. “This is illegal containment. But, I’ll tell you what, if you let me go I’ll consider not suing you and this entire department into the ground.”
Carson Vicks’ eyebrows rose at my outburst. He clearly wasn’t impressed. From the same inside pocket that hosted cigarettes, he pulled out a piece of paper, unfolded it, turned it 180 degrees, and pushed it toward me on the table.
He held my angry gaze with a slight trace of bemusement. The quirk to his lip around the cigarette would have been cute if Lucas did it, but on this guy, it just pissed me off. I broke our staring contest to look down at the paper—and subsequently felt sucker punched, right in the gut.
My test results.
My succubus positive test results.
“You were saying?” He drawled.
“Looks like a forgery to me,” I replied with false confidence.
“Darlin’ I’m getting fed up with this game of yours.” He blew out smoke off to the side. “Don’t piss on me ‘n’ call it rain.”
I glared up at U.S. Hunter Vicks and gestured to the left folder with my manacled hands. “That one.”
“Now, that’s more like it.” His smile took on a vicious edge to it. “Ain’t it better when we get along all nice and proper?”
I narrowed my eyes. I got the feeling I’d somehow fallen into a trap. He looked a little too pleased by my choice of folder. Which was why I was completely unprepared when Vicks flipped through it, displaying mangled corpses and severed body parts. Crime scene photos off the college hallway.
I felt wretched at the sight, absolutely gutted.
Rumor has it, the gore-filled battle scenes in the movie Saving Private Ryan were filmed in black and white due to all the blood; the lack of color made it easier for the viewer to stomach. I wished these photos were in black at white, too.
“A mighty mess you’ve made for the clean-up crew...” Vicks paused at a particularly haunting image from the perspective of the hallway looking into the desecrated bathroom. The door that had kept the monsters at bay hung ajar off its hinges, scratched and torn to hell with even more holes from inhuman limbs piercing the metal. My brain couldn’t make sense of the dismembered body parts and bloody slush piled up in the open doorway.
Oh God, why was that blood so viscous and chunky?
Bile rose in my throat when I realized it was probably due to a mixture of vampire ash and severed bits mixing with it. And then I noticed a woman’s vacant gaze staring directly at the camera, at me.
I looked away.
“I didn’t do that,” I whispered.
Vicks practically caressed the pictures, almost how an obsessive teenage girl fawns over the magazine cover of her celebrity crush—not with the revulsion and horror the images certainly deserved.
For the first time since he entered the interrogation room, Carson Vicks’ eyes filled with something other than cold indifference toward me. I felt deeply uncomfortable with his heated stare affair with the massacred victims. Was this some sort of mind game or was he really just a sick fuck?
He caught me staring at him in disgust.
“Just admiring your handiwork.” He challenged me with his eyes.
What? Did he think I’d take pride in this tragedy? That I would brag a confession and be flattered by his approval? This fucker was just trying to wheedle a confession out of me, and he’d read me all wrong. “Put it away. I don’t want to see that shit.”
“Now what I pieced together from the witness statements, a second wave of Supernaturals experienced a much milder effect. If you can call ‘aving a frantic orgy mild—don’t worry, most of ‘em survived.” U.S. Hunter Vick’s caressed a particularly red picture. “The same can’t be said for the Supes you actually had contact with in the hallway, damn near tore themselves apart.” He flipped over the last image in the file: a picture of a hulked out Lucas Masters; naked, covered in blood, and standing right behind me. My figure was out of focus in the picture, staring up at the camera. “Only one other survivor as far as I can tell.”
Suddenly the memory of Lucas getting shot slammed into me. My heart rate increased. “Where is he?”
“Your feral friend here?” Vicks extinguished his cigarette on Lucas’ face in the picture. “Tough sonuva bitch. Had to put 6 rounds in him to put ‘im down, enough tranq to kill an elephant.”
“Is he alive?” I kept my voice calm, despite my heart attempting to crack open my chest. He couldn’t be dead. I would know it.
And just like that. I did know. Lucas was alive, I could feel that much at least.
Vicks shrugged. “Didn’t stick around to find out. Cleaner crew’s got him, but if he’s still kickin’, he sure as hell won’t be for long.”
My relatively new sense of comfort shattered. “Why?”
“I suspect that bloodbath in the hallway is due in large part to Mr. Masters. Now, we can’t suffer an animal like that to live, can we?”
“What proof do you have? You can’t just execute people over suspicions.”
Vicks leaned back in the chair, arms folded. “I believe the death warrant with his name on it says otherwise.”
A great, hot rage burst into flames at the thought of this asshole laying a hand on my man. Without thinking, I snarled, “Don’t you fucking touch him!”
I blinked, shocked at my outburst. But my startling hatred for Vicks could not be quenched—not as long as he threatened Lucas. I wanted to steal the life from him. I wanted to eat his fucking soul.
“You threatening a U.S. Hunter now?” Vicks leaned forward with a sparkle in his eyes. “That there’s a hangin’ offense.”
“No threat,” I said innocently. “But hypothetically, if I’m the monster you say I am. If I really killed those people, if I am really that dangerous… what makes you think threatening my friend is a good idea? What makes you think you’re safe from me in this very moment?” I smiled sweetly at him.
Vicks replied with his own toothy grin and the cross draw of a massive handgun. “This is my girlfriend, Cherry.” He placed the gun on the table, barrel pointed at me. “Cherry thinks I’m plenty safe.”
I registered the movement with my peripherals but didn’t bother looking at the gun, strangely undaunted. “I’m not so sure your girlfriend would be of much help here.”
Vicks leaned back in his chair again and popped a toothpick in his mouth. “I’ll take my chances.” He reached his freakishly long arms and grabbed the TV’s remote controller off the cart. I eyed the gun to see if it was within reach. It wasn’t.
“I think it’s time for a little show ‘n’ tell.” Vicks pressed a button and new footage began playing on the screen. I immediately recognized my face caught in a silent scream. There was no audio, but I didn’t need to hear my cries to relive the pain of Professor Capshaw stabbing my leg with his fingers. I looked away when he brought his bloodied hand to his lips.
I glared at my interrogator. “Turn it off.”
“Nah, this
is my favorite part.”
He was just as bad as the Batshit Blonde who filmed the whole thing. I clung to my anger, convinced myself that I was shaking from rage, that I wasn’t close to tears. I lashed out. “You’re a sick fuck, you know that?”
Carson Vicks dragged his feverish gaze away from the torture porn. The heat drained out of them before my eyes, gone flat and hard. “That’s a mighty fine skill you’ve got there.” He nodded toward the TV while locking his eyes on me. I looked back at the screen just in time to watch me turn the vampire to dust. “Too bad it’s wasted on you.”
“That’s no gift,” I spat.
Vicks shrugged. “Even so, the U.S. Government could use a skill set like this.”
I frowned. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about option two.” He opened the second file to reveal a stack of papers. It looked like some sort of heavy duty contract.
“What is that?”
“Your only chance to leave this room on the outside of a body bag. Matter o’ fact, I’ve got your death warrant right here.” He patted his leather jacket on the breast pocket, right underneath his badge. “Now, Miss Sommers, are you a patriot?” His hand hovered over the contract. After letting that sink in for a second, he moved his hand to caress Cherry. “Or are ya another monster I get to put down?”
I closed my eyes and considered my choices. First and foremost, I had a debt to repay and I couldn’t do that if I was dead. My life had been saved so many times, it was only right I returned the favor. I opened my eyes and lifted my chin. “Under one condition.”
“And what’s that?”
“You let Lucas go, no repercussions.” My voice was hard, no room for negotiation. I didn’t break eye contact.
“Deal.” He pushed the contract and a pen toward me.
Over the next two hours I pored over the contract in meticulous detail. The last thing I wanted to do was to get tricked into signing a confession instead.
The more I read, the more my stomach sank. I would truly be owned by the government if I followed through with this—not even a phone call to my parents. If I was being honest, a part of me was just stalling to give Lucas time to pull off some miraculous escape, to bust in here and get me out of this mess.
The Fervor: A Sinful Supes Story Page 10