by Kim Cormack
Grey glanced back and offered his services, “I’ll do it.” Lexy swatted him and he giggled.
Lexy looked back at Kayn and whispered, “Biting your lip releases serotonin. Cutting yourself also works like a charm, because of the Dragon thing but that’s off the table if this is supposed to be a sneak attack.”
Kayn bit her lip while thinking of the last time she was with Frost and what he was capable of doing with only a touch. If he were here this would be simple. No lingering moral dilemmas to obsess over in her mind.
Zach whispered, “I have an idea. You’re already wearing yoga pants. Just say you were out for a jog and you tripped. Between the scent of the blood and your pheromones this should be like taking candy from a bunch of long fanged babies.” Comfortable in his roll as impromptu make out buddy, Zach caressed her hair as he seductively moved in. His lips parted as they met hers. She urged her Handler on with an erotic dart of her tongue. Forgetting they had witnesses, she straddled Zach as he moved his hands intimately over the sparse coverage of her clothes. She felt his arousal as she moved against him until she felt the spine-tingling euphoria as her pheromones released in an intoxicating knee buckling wave.
Grey began panicking, “Get out! Get out of here! Quick Brighton!”
She got out, slit her hand with a knife and tossed it back into the car. She casually wiped the blood on her spicy Dorito dusted pants and closed the door. They all ducked and peered up as Kayn marched across the street and aggressively knocked on the front door. She was invited inside by Carmen with a still oozing bite mark on her neck. They were feeding on her. Intrigued by the large mysterious gathering of Lampir, Kayn boldly entered the kitchen and instructed Carmen to leave. Kayn addressed the group of Lampir, “Please remain seated.” She stood in front of the table full of salivating mesmerized Lampir, looked directly at the one that accompanied the girl to the door earlier and enquired, “May we speak privately?”
“As enticing as you are that feels like a horrible idea,” he replied as his eyes traveled her body.
“You won’t be harmed. You have my word,” Kayn assured.
The dark featured undeniably attractive Lampir got up from his seat. He held out is hand and bargained, “Promise me you’ll let me have a taste and I’ll go.”
“Do I get a taste too?” Kayn sparred as she opted out of taking his hand and followed him to a doorway that led to a steep flight of cement stairs into the basement.
“Ladies first,” he politely motioned for her to take the lead into the unknown.
Kayn wasn’t a stranger to taking leaps into unknown places anymore so she shrugged and went down the stairs. She heard him lock the door. He turned on a light and what she saw was rather unexpected. There were no windows and cement walls. No natural light at all. They were crashing here. The whole lot of them. “Humour me?” she asked. “Why didn’t you dispose of the parent’s bodies?”
“Oh, they’re not dead,” the deviously attractive Lampir revealed as he intimately trailed his fingertips in an enticing path down her arm. “They’re in transition.”
“So, you’re completely unaware that you’ve stumbled into the middle of a Correction?” Kayn clarified while seductively caressing his silky dark hair.
“Carmen’s not up for Correction. She’s just a distraction,” he confessed, with the moist intoxicating heat of his breath feathering against her throat.
He had information she needed. Kevin was right. But right now, she didn’t care about that. She wanted to feel his teeth sinking into the soft ivory flesh of her neck. She was totally going to let him bite her and he knew it. He parted his jaws and sunk his teeth into her throat. It felt like intoxicating bliss inducing needles. It was incredible. She didn’t want it to stop. He pressed the length of his body against hers while making breathy noises of pleasure that caused another unexpected burst of resolve numbing pheromones to release from her skin. Shit, she was going to get herself in trouble. This ability wasn’t easy to control. She whispered, “Stop.”
Obediently, his fangs left her neck. He stared at her in awe as her skin healed and whispered, “What are you?”
Kayn slid her hands beneath the naughty stranger’s shirt. Every touch was a thousand times the intensity. She met his spellbound gaze while confessing, “Something new...” She was playing with fire and getting burned was on the table but she didn’t care, not in the least. She wanted more. More of everything. “Don’t you dare move a muscle it’s my turn.” Kayn slid her hands up his muscular chest until her palms were flush against his cool skin. He wasn’t attempting to get away. Her suggestion had sealed his fate. Her Conduit ability began heating her hands as the Lampir’s life force traveled up both arms and gathered in her chest. She eagerly replenished the energy he’d taken from her in blood. Flashes of his memories and information from his subconscious fed images into her mind. It was like putting together a puzzle with missing pieces.
He pulled away and breathlessly questioned, “What are you doing?”
“I was hungry too,” she clarified. “Surely, you didn’t think the feeding was going to be one sided?” Kayn sensed she was losing her control over him so she stepped closer, parted her lips and aggressively rekindled their make out session. He stripped off his shirt and tossed it aside. Whoops. How far was she willing to take this? She’d better decide and quick.
He walked her back until he had her flush against the wall as he ominously whispered, “My turn.”
The door was locked. She could just do this. Lord help her she wanted the release with every inch of her being. Nobody would ever have to know. She shivered as he sunk his fangs into her throat. Feeding off Lampir energy was addictive, overpoweringly so. She needed this. He slipped his hand into her pants and just as he was about to touch her where every nerve ending in her body was crying out to be touched, there was a loud pound on the door at the top of the stairs. Startled, they leapt apart. No! Not now! There was another loud crash and her focus returned. She’d seen their plan. It was diabolically brilliant.
With a flirtatious smile, the Lampir stepped away and introduced himself, “Just on the off chance we end up fighting and I don’t have a second chance to say this, my name’s Paul and you my dear are delectable.” There was another crash followed by the sound of splitting wood. “I’m just going to go up there and see who it is before I end up having to fix that door,” her sexy cohort announced as he dashed up the stairs.
Kayn remained there watching the empty bottom of the staircase. With the top obscured from view, she could only guess what was going on. After a few loud crashes, sexy Paul’s lifeless corpse tumbled down the stairs. His neck was broken. Snapping a Lampir’s neck was only temporary. They had special weapons that worked on a variety of other worldly creatures. Only a wooden dagger or bullet to the heart sealed a Lampir’s demise. She stood before the lifeless body of her make out buddy and raised her eyes to the sound of slow steps descending the stairs. It was Zach.
“Is there a reason you’re down here in this creepy basement? You do realize your symbol went off,” he teased, while grinning like a cat that just ate a canary.
She stepped over Paul’s body, with her pheromones on overdrive. She maneuvered her way past Zach without touching him while mumbling, “I have the information.” She was seriously horrible at her job. She had no idea what she was doing. Not a damn clue.
“Well?” her Handler questioned as he pursued her up the stairs.
“Well, what?” she countered.
Zach playfully shoved her and teased, “It sounded like you were to busy making out with this devilishly attractive stranger to question anything?”
Why did she keep trying to use this ability when she had no idea how to control it? They stepped out into the living room just as Lexy staked one of the house dwellers in the chest. He lit on fire and turned to ash. No! What was she doing? She told Paul she wasn’t going to hurt him.
Lexy peered up and questioned, “Did you finish off the one on the stair
s?”
Zach sighed, “I’ll do it,” as he doubled back to the kitchen.
Kayn quietly followed and as they reached the top of the stairs she grasped his arm and whispered, “Wait. I promised I wouldn’t hurt him.”
“Now why on earth would you go and say something like that?” Zach whispered back. He stopped moving out of respect for her wishes as he quietly asserted, “They were in the process of turning three humans. They’re not allowed to do that. Our response is crystal clear in this case.”
She’d spoken the words so she felt obligated to stand by them even if Paul should be punished. Kayn stepped in front of Zach and urged, “Can’t we just leave this one. Just once. My word is all I have.”
Zach lovingly cupped her cheeks with his hands and whispered, “We can’t save every guy you make out with. You understand that, right? How good was his information?”
“Excellent. I promise,” she responded truthfully, while still standing in his way.
Zach slowly shook his head as he instructed, “Give him a burst of healing energy and tell him to run. I’ll try to keep Lexy occupied. A minute or two is all I can give you.”
Kayn nodded in silent agreement as she closed the door behind her and raced down the stairs. She knelt before Paul and placed her hands on his chest. He opened his eyes and gasped. He must have been almost healed. She whispered, “Run.”
In a blur, Paul disappeared. Kayn remained seated on the cool cement stairs with only the humming of the vacuum as back noise. They were vacuuming up Lampir ashes. She started to giggle. This unconventional move was going to come back and bite her in the ass. She got up and scaled the stairs. The back door had been left wide open and the kitchen was spotless. She closed it and walked away. Why had she let him go? Zach was right. They were turning this girl’s family. She wanted to blame Kevin for setting her actions in motion but all he’d done is tell her what she needed to do. He hadn’t told her to practically sleep with the guy while siphoning information. She’d been the one to take this into unchartered territory. Kayn wandered back into the living room. Grey was dumping the full container of Lampir ashes from the vacuum into a plastic bag. Yet another check on the list of crazy shit she was just supposed to roll with.
Grey peered up and remarked, “You’ll have to kill him eventually and just so you know there’s always messed up consequences for just letting someone go.”
She hadn’t gotten away with a damn thing. Kayn nodded her acceptance of the inevitable. She met Grey’s concerned expression with one of resolve, “I gave Paul my word. I know I’ll pay for it at some point in the future.”
“You know, it’s not too late to hunt Paul down and kill him,” Grey pointed out. “No harm no foul.”
Frost hadn’t been gone a month and ironically, she was the one with ability related fidelity issues. Shit. She had to kill this guy, didn’t she? Kayn held out her hand and requested, “Toss me that knife on the couch,”
Grey wiped the sweat from his brow and grinned as he reached over and handed her the knife while saying, “Now, that’s the spirit Brighton.”
She’d only taken a step towards the door when it abruptly opened. It was Lexy, looking quite satisfied with herself. Zach was a few paces behind her. She knew what they’d done by the guilty expression on Zach’s face.
Lexy announced, “The situation has been dealt with. No witnesses. The rules have a purpose. Dead Lampir tell no tales.” She winked at Kayn. “What did you find out?”
Oh, yes. She was supposed to share the information she’d recovered from the Lampir’s mind. Kayn addressed the group, “The girl we’ve been following is a decoy. I did see a yellow hue around another girl but she was pregnant. I assumed there was no way it would be her. I was partially right...It’s the baby she’s carrying.”
“Why are we even here? They have to wait to do the Correction until the child is over the age of sixteen. Those are the rules,” Grey clarified.
“Not if the pregnant mother has abilities and is scheduled for Correction. It’s completely within their rights to do it in that case. The infant she’s carrying would be irrelevant under immortal law,” Lexy explained. She turned to Kayn and said, “I really didn’t see anyone else with yellow hues in their auras. You told me about the pregnant girl. I looked and I didn’t see it. Maybe, it wasn’t the right girl?”
“I’ll show you who she is when we get to school,” Kayn answered while helping the others dispose of the evidence.
Zach nudged her and whispered, “It’s only nine o’clock. We have a whole night of sleep before school.”
She wasn’t going to be able to sleep. She was a seriously horrible girlfriend. Grey handed her the container full of Lampir ash. Kayn strolled back through the kitchen and mumbled, “Sorry Paul” as she dumped it out the back door and watched the ashes as they floated away. Oh yes...Sexy Lampir guy was killed outside. He wasn’t even in there.
“You didn’t put the bloody towels in the garbage can outside, did you?” Lexy enquired as Zach strolled by.
He answered, “They’re in the basement with the girl.”
“Was she awake?” Lexy enquired as she finished bleaching the linoleum.
“She’s up and bitey,” Zach confirmed. “Why didn’t we gag her?”
“Grey was supposed to do it,” Lexy sighed. “He’s outside texting the address to the Aries Group. You two go downstairs and kill Carmen. Take the dust pan and the broom with you. Sweep her up and toss her out the back door.”
Zach shrugged and exclaimed, “I’ll go get the dustpan and broom.”
Kayn turned the end table on its side, stomped on it and snapped off a leg. Such a waste. She should eat her.
Zach reappeared with the cleaning supplies and stated, “You’re not eating anyone else today. I’m exhausted.”
Spoil sport.
“I heard that,” Zach mumbled. He snatched Kayn’s weapon, handed her the broom and said, “I’ve got this.”
After they’d dealt with their final duty they wandered across the street to where Lexy and Grey were waiting. Grey’s cell vibrated as they got back into the car. He quietly read the message in his mind first, appearing to be upset about something.
Lexy touched her Handler’s arm as she asked, “What happened?” Grey passed Lexy his cell as he turned the key in the ignition with dewy eyes. Lexy scrolled through the messages. She looked back and said, “The Ankh from the other continent didn’t make it out of the Testing.”
They’d all known that was going to happen.
Lexy was beaming as she added, “The Trinity from your Testing made it out with the other continent.”
Kayn blinked away the memories of the Testing as they flooded her mind. Her friends from Trinity were free. Melody was probably ecstatic. The rest of their clan was celebrating and they were hearing about this via text.
Chapter 14
As You Are
THEY’D HAD A MINI CELEBRATION the night before, so the next day the girls were feeling more than a little rough as they entered the high school in search of the pregnant girl. As they took their seats at the back of the room, the short haired brunette in question strolled in looking like she’d swallowed a watermelon.
Lexy opened her book as she whispered, “I don’t see it.”
This was rather peculiar because for Kayn, the yellow haze around the girl was even brighter than it had been the prior week. She quietly replied, “I do. It’s more intense.”
The graying teacher in his mid fifties placed his palm on Kayn’s desk as he interrupted their conversation, “Miss Smith with the blonde hair, you’ve just volunteered. Head up to the board and answer the question.”
He didn’t even know her actual name. Oh, she so despised being the centre of attention. Kayn got up and sauntered over to the chalk board. She’d always had concentration issues but with the steady hum of thoughts in the room the squeaky hamster wheel between her ears wasn’t going to play along. This was where the ability to hear other people�
��s thoughts came in handy. There were a lot of conflicting answers floating through the minds closest to where she was standing. She decided to go with the pregnant girls answer as she wrote, 37 on the board.
The teacher smiled and asked, “How did you get to that answer? You didn’t show your work.”
When in doubt just say something confusing. Kayn turned around to face the class as she proclaimed, “Magic.”
“Funny,” the good-humoured teacher sparred. “Go sit down Miss Smith.”
Kayn pressed her lips together to stop herself from smiling as she slipped back into her seat.
The teacher placed a quiz on everyone’s desk and as he handed a copy to Kayn, he said, “You’re obviously quite advanced. You should have no problem with this.”
Well shit. A buzzer went off. Kayn opened her quiz. Yes. She’d always had a strange gift when it came to multiple choice. Now, if she could only block out the buzz of everyone’s thoughts. She whipped through the test while feeding Lexy the answers and finished long before the bell rang. She watched the expectant teen. She’d completed her test too. She couldn’t imagine having a baby at her age but at least she got to have one. She never would get married or have babies. Those things weren’t in her future at all anymore and it made her heart ache. Lexy interrupted her thoughts by adding unspoken commentary, ‘Don’t let yourself think about it.’ Just then, the pregnant girl excused herself to go to the washroom.
The teacher razzed, “You’re not going to have that baby in there are you Emma?”
“I might,” the expectant teen saucily bantered.
Kayn was instantly fascinated by the girl who was comfortable enough in her own skin to joke about going into early labor with her teacher. Kayn waited a minute or two before asking to use the washroom. Emma...That was a pretty name. This girl could be Ankh. She barely knew anything about her and already liked her. Kayn stepped out into the empty hall lined with beige lockers and made her way to the girl’s bathroom. Her stomach cramped and she swung around, feeling spooked. There was nobody there. She gave the washroom door a good hard shove just as the expectant teen was coming out and she toppled over. Kayn grabbed her, stopped her from falling and apologized, “I’m so sorry.