by Fiona Zedde
Kylie stared at the woman in horror. That first morning?
Olivia had been plotting to get Kylie to bite her the whole time? Her head spun with the revelation.
The woman’s eyes raked Kylie. “She may have set this up, but you’re the one who killed her. You’re the one who took her away from me.”
“No,” Kylie said, finally finding her voice. “No.” She refused to take any responsibility for what Olivia had done. Now that the current had stopped burning through her body, she clearly felt the anger surface. The rage building higher and higher until she was gasping with it. Olivia had used her. Led them to capture her. Taken the trust Kylie had given to no one else and twisted it for her own use.
“Fuck you,” Kylie growled.
The human woman snarled, sounding like a beast herself. “You don’t want to go there with me—”
A sudden noise, barely audible, jerked Kylie’s attention away from the woman. There was something familiar in the noise, an agony she remembered from not too long ago. When the noise came again, a scream, she knew what it was. Seconds later, a flash of movement down the hallway, a creature moving inhumanly fast. Then darkness abruptly fell in the underground complex, the screech of metal, the spark of electrical wires.
“Kill it!” someone screamed.
“No!” A hysterical wail.
But then a steady stream of automatic gunfire rang out. A shout of rage and fear from the same vampiric throat. The sound of a blade slicing through flesh and striking stone. Silence.
The noises told a story that struck a cold lance of fear through Kylie’s chest. What the hell had they done? She spun to ask the woman what was going on, but she was already running down the hallway toward the terrifying sounds.
But she didn’t make it very far before the source of the noises came to her.
Olivia, running.
Destruction in motion.
Somehow, she had been turned. Her humanity peeled away and discarded to reveal a howling beast. In a burst of inhuman speed, she blazed down the hallway. Her face was smeared with blood and her fangs were unsheathed, stained scarlet. She screamed with rage.
Olivia was still wearing the loose jeans she had on when the Bertrams had taken her away. But that was the only similarity between then and now. Her chest was bare, flecked with blood, small breasts bouncing as she ran.
Kylie saw her in slow motion as she raced down the hallway, arms pumping, knees rising and falling in perfect rhythm. She had been truly transformed. All her sickness swept away as if it had never been. And with the virus wiping away the wreckage that cancer had left behind, Kylie saw Olivia how she must have been before it all started.
Her cheeks were rounder, but not softer, a hardness flashing behind her eyes. And her body. Kylie blinked in the face of this metamorphosis. Arms sleek with muscle, belly flat and hard, both small breasts symmetrical again, the left one whole and unscarred. The air of fragility about her, gone.
Kylie barely recognized her as the young woman she’d ravaged with her fangs. Her neck was completely healed and her body moved with a strength and power it never had before. Olivia ran through the halls snarling incoherently through her new fangs while the Bertrams chased her. But the soldiers didn’t fire their weapons. They didn’t seem to know what to do, how to handle one of theirs who had been turned.
Olivia raced past her mother, ran to Kylie’s cell, and ripped away the door as if it was no more significant than tissue paper. She used the remote that Kylie noticed for the first time to free her from the shackles and chains, ignoring her mother all the while.
“Come!”
At least that’s what Kylie thought she said. Olivia’s mouth was hinged open, the lips pressed apart by fangs she seemed to have no control over. She grabbed Kylie by the hand and sprinted away from the humans, past the cells, some empty, some filled with other chained vampires. Vampires who had spikes through their bodies, the tissue healing around the metal object in an agony that never ceased. One youngling was sucking her own arm, drinking the blood that spilled from the wound.
They ran down a long tunnel leading up steep stone steps and into the musty darkness of a cave that seemed like it had no way out.
“Wait!” Kylie shouted. “We’re not strong enough to dig through that!”
But Olivia didn’t pause. She tapped a hidden button and a secret door in the rock opened. They tumbled out into the woods and the smell of earth and growing things. Kylie ran behind Olivia, following her when she darted for a pile of leaves and twigs covering a familiar black Jeep.
Working quickly, they ripped aside the camouflage then jumped in the Jeep that already had the key in the ignition. Then they were flying, speeding through the woods at a pace the human Kylie would have considered suicidal.
But she held on to the handgrip above the door and clenched her teeth, prepared for a crash at any moment. She shot Olivia a sideways glance as the SUV rumbled over rocks and dirt and downed tree limbs. Her teeth rattled in her head when the Jeep seemed to find every rock and rut in the woods. Branches swatted against the top of the SUV as they sped past low trees. Insects exploded against the windshield, their yellow guts splashing across the glass like paint. The wind roared through the open windows.
Kylie trembled, her butt hopping up and down in the seat as the Jeep rumbled through the woods. Inside that place, she had been afraid. Truly afraid. She could honestly say that after being turned, she was never afraid of anything that walked the earth. No other vampire. Certainly no humans. But being captured by Olivia’s family proved to her there was more pain and suffering and terror out there than she ever thought. Kylie looked over at the newly turned Olivia. The vampire who’d wanted to be turned all along. She was beautiful.
Olivia gripped the wheel in two gray-knuckled fists, her eyes staring straight ahead beyond the windshield. She looked terrified but determined. And her fangs had retracted back into her mouth. If Kylie didn’t pay close attention, she could almost fool herself into thinking it was lipstick that made her lips so red and wet.
“Shit!” Olivia said as a branch slapped the side of her face through the open window. But she only ducked her head instead of closing the window. Her new senses, Kylie thought. She wanted to feel something—the danger of their flight, the gushing wind—rather than the human safety she’d experienced all her life. Kylie was only too aware of that feeling and what it could lead to.
“You didn’t have to save me,” Kylie said softly.
She grit her teeth when the Jeep hopped over a particularly large log, smacking her head against the roof.
“Yes, I did.” Olivia shouted to hear herself above the wind. “This is my fault.”
Damn right it is.
Kylie looked away from her, wanting to shout and scream at her for the betrayal, but knowing it wasn’t the right time. When would be the right time then? A voice demanded at the back of her mind. That was the voice that wanted revenge for the agony of lust and love she had felt for Olivia. Lust and love that had just been tools to get her to do exactly what Olivia wanted. Kylie clamped her mouth shut.
Seconds later, Olivia slammed on the brakes. They were still in the midst of the woods, but a river was only a few feet from the front of the Jeep. A wide, muddy green stretch of rushing water that looked deep enough to easily cover both their heads.
“Come on!” Olivia jumped out of the Jeep and dashed to the front of the SUV, staring across to the other side of the river. “We have to swim across.”
“It’s probably better to let the current carry us downstream and away from here.” Kylie climbed out of the truck, not bothering to close the door. Her bare feet and legs sank into the damp leaves and dirt. “They’d expect us to cross and keep going.”
“They’ll soon have choppers in the air looking for us. It wouldn’t do any good for us to go downstream. They’d see us in a minute. I know how they search.”
“Yes, you do know, don’t you?” Kylie snapped, unable to hold her tongue
any longer.
She stared at Olivia, feeling the anger rise up in her swift and hot, like lust. She was distractingly beautiful, her bare breasts drawing Kylie’s eyes.
Olivia was probably the one who had discarded the shirts Kylie had torn in her lust to get to her skin. The memory of that feeding filled Kylie, building her fury. That act had been the culmination of all of Olivia’s deception. All that she had led Kylie to do from the instant she climbed into her apartment.
“I should fucking kill you,” Kylie growled.
Olivia swung to face her, eyes narrowing. “For what, saving your ass?” Her hands rose up at her sides, fingers curled into claws. Her humanity was gone.
“You know damn well why. You tricked me into coming into your apartment. You manipulated me into falling for you.”
A rush of emotions moved across Olivia’s face, but she did not lower her clawed hands. “I won’t spend the rest of my existence apologizing for what I did. Because I’m not sorry for it.” She lowered her voice. “It’s everything else that came after that I regret.”
“What, having to bear the indignity of fucking me when all you wanted was my virus in your neck?” Kylie slammed her fist into the front of the Jeep, creeping closer to Olivia, desperately wanting the ache of the betrayal to go away. She’d do anything to end the agony of it. Her own claws came up. She crouched low, growling at the woman who was the source of all her pain.
“Don’t be stupid!” Olivia shouted. Her eyes snapped fire and her killing teeth flashed out.
Kylie’s animal rose hard and fierce inside her. Now she would get the chance to kill the pain.
“Are we interrupting something?” A low, rumbling voice flowed out at them from the darkness of the river.
Olivia gasped.
Chapter Twenty-three
Kylie leapt back against the Jeep, a hand flying out to grab Olivia and drag her backward with her. A dark shape fully emerged from the river to stand on the bank. A half a dozen other shapes slipped up from the water, clambering silently to fan out on either side of the first figure. Silvija.
“What are you doing here?” Kylie stared at the clan in astonishment.
“Rescuing you.” Silvija’s mouth twisted in an ironic smile. She turned to Julia on her right. “Radio in. Tell her we have Kylie. Now we strike the humans.” Silvija glanced briefly at Kylie’s nakedness and without pausing, pulled off her T-shirt and offered it to her. She barely looked at the bare-breasted Olivia.
“No!” Before she could react, Olivia jerked from her arms to stand in front of Silvija. “Don’t hurt them.”
Kylie took the oversized shirt from Silvija and pulled it on, carefully watching Olivia. The shirt fell halfway down her thighs. Whatever special fabric it was made from already pulled most of the moisture from the shirt so that it felt nearly dry.
Silvija, with her powerful torso now bared in a sports bra, looked at Kylie. “Did you turn her?”
She vehemently shook her head. “No. It was someone else. Someone they killed.” She remembered the vampiric scream, the sound of steel striking concrete through flesh, the thud of the body falling in separate pieces.
Silvija nodded once, and the others—Julia, Liam, Violet, Ivy, Rufus—moved in the direction Kylie and Olivia had just come from. All the vampires were dressed in black, blending in with the looming dark trees, the bushes, the shadowy landscape. In the distance, Kylie heard the blades of a helicopter.
“Stop!” Olivia grabbed Silvija’s arm.
Silvija looked down at her with disdain. Even from where Kylie stood, she saw the killing frost in her eyes. Olivia quickly dropped her hand.
“Don’t hurt them,” she pleaded. “They didn’t realize what any of this meant when they went after Kylie.”
“Don’t worry.” Silvija’s eyes glittered. “I’ll make them understand the error of their ways.” She stepped forward until Olivia had no choice but to move out of her way.
“Kylie needs blood!” Olivia shouted in desperation. “You should take care of her first. She’s been tortured.”
“Don’t worry about Kylie.” Silvija kept walking. “We take care of our own.”
In a flash, Olivia was in front of her, clutching at Silvija’s booted legs. “Please don’t do this. Please. I’ll do anything.”
Kylie swallowed at the image Olivia made, kneeling at Silvija’s feet with her sumptuous skin glowing under the moonlight, her breasts bare and beautiful, her full mouth red and trembling.
But Silvija only looked down at her with annoyance. “I have a woman who sees to all my needs. There’s nothing you can provide for me or for the clan that we don’t already have.” She kicked Olivia aside, a blur of her booted foot that slammed her in her bare chest. She flew across the forest and smashed into a tree nearly twenty feet away with a dull thud. Olivia gasped, a hand pressed against her chest. Silvija kept walking.
Kylie helped Olivia to her feet. She staggered on unsteady legs, gasping and rubbing her chest as she stared at Silvija in horror.
“Not everyone in the clan is as gullible as me,” Kylie said. “Or as nice.”
“But they can’t kill them. They can’t.”
“Silvija will do whatever she wants.” But as much as Kylie knew that Silvija was planning to take them down, she couldn’t deny the surge of satisfaction from knowing that soon the people who’d tortured and starved her would no longer be on the earth. She only wished that she was the one serving them their rough justice.
Just then, Kylie heard the chopper come closer. It hovered above a small clearing a few hundred feet away then landed. The radio crackled quietly on Silvija’s hip, a frequency too low for humans to hear. Kylie heard her mother’s voice then Silvija’s response. She called the clan back with a low word.
“We’ll finish this another time,” Silvija said, emerging from the woods with the two-way radio at her lips. She spoke into the radio. “We’re on the way now.”
Olivia’s eyed widened. Even with her newfound power, she looked like a bewildered child, bloody tears drying on her face as she wobbled from Silvija’s kick. “What happened?”
“New information.” Kylie stepped back to allow her to stand on her own feet. “We have to go now.”
The vampires who had gone ahead of Silvija crept on silent feet from the woods, heading for the clearing where the helicopter sat waiting for them. Kylie deliberately turned away from Olivia to follow her clan toward the chopper, a fat black beast of a machine with her mother in the cockpit.
Belle sat with the large headset nearly obscuring her features. She wore black just like everyone else. Her gloved hands easily held the cyclic control stick as she waited for the clan to board. Kylie felt more than saw her mother’s thorough gaze on her, examining every inch of Kylie as she ducked her head down and clambered into the machine. Belle nodded before fanning her eyes around her, watching for enemies lurking nearby. Silvija slammed the door shut when everyone was on board then climbed into the front beside Belle. The chopper immediately took off, ascending quickly into the night sky.
No one spoke for the duration of the ride back to New York. Kylie sat pressed between Ivy and Rufus, enjoying the simple feeling of their flesh against hers, a necessity she’d been denied for the past few days. She whimpered quietly at the thought of the things she had done and gone through since being in Atlanta. Losing her virginity. Nearly losing her second life. Killing Olivia.
“Fuck….”
Rufus put a hand on her shoulder, and she closed her eyes, simply grateful to be back where she belonged.
Chapter Twenty-four
As soon as the chopper landed on the roof, the clan shot into motion. Silvija wrenched open the door and jumped down, flicking up a wrist to glance at her watch then at Violet with a quick nod. Belle turned off the machine, threw off the headphones and yanked open the door to pull Kylie into her arms.
“You scared the shit out of me!” She squeezed Kylie so hard that her ribs creaked. For once, she didn’t res
ist the love her mother was showing her, returning the exuberant hug with one of her own. “Don’t do that again.”
The slowing blades of the helicopter chopped the air above them. New York’s night lights blazed in all directions, feeding rather than defeating the darkness.
“I’m sorry,” Kylie said, her voice muffled in her mother’s thick hair. She inhaled Belle’s sea-salt scent and trembled in relief to smell it again. Her eyes closed. “I didn’t mean for you to bring in the troops.”
The other members of the clan squeezed Kylie’s shoulder or arm as they walked away, leaving her alone with her mother. Silvija gave her a brief look before following the others with a reluctant Olivia in tow. She threw a frantic glance at Kylie, but Silvija firmly took her arm and pulled her away before she could say or do anything.
“You have nothing to be sorry for, baby. I’m just glad you’re safe.” Her mother hugged her again, then pulled away, looking into her face, smoothing her cool palms over Kylie’s cheeks. “If they’d destroyed you, I would have gutted them all, no matter what Silvija said or what kind of weapons they had.”
“I survived,” Kylie murmured, overwhelmed by sudden emotion. This is what she had nearly lost. “I’m safe.”
“And so are those humans, for the time being.” Belle made a dismissive motion then touched Kylie’s face again. “You need to eat.”
“I will.” But she knew that Silvija wanted a thorough debriefing. She wouldn’t be able to eat or even change her clothes until then. “After.”
“I left something for you in your room, when you’re ready.”
“Thank you.” Kylie allowed herself to rest in Belle’s arms for another moment, feeling her mother’s strength and love that she had ignored for so long. “I…Thank you.”