“Your blood pulsing through your heart?”
“My love for you making my heart pound like crazy.”
He’s not the same. He’s not the same. He’s not the same.
But, he felt the same—mostly, Jess decided. His body should be atrophied and weak after all he’d gone through, but he was strong and muscled. Like before. Only better. She thought about their recent lovemaking.
Accept. Zeke had told her she’d have to accept in order to be able to fight whatever was coming. He hadn’t been clear what “accept” meant, but she had the feeling part of it had to do with changing her core beliefs.
Just inches from his face, she inhaled his spicy scent. He still smelled the same. And as she looked into his eyes, she noted that desire burned behind his familiar irises.
His hands ran up and down her bare arms. She wore a sleeveless shell and black jeans. Less formal, more feminine. Had she done that on purpose?
His hand squeezed hers. His touch heated her interminably icy flesh.
She pressed her lips to his willingly. His warm tongue tangled with hers and she melted into him in a way she should never consider with a human. His blood was too tempting to her.
When she pulled back, slightly breathless, he said, “I’ve been thinking of nothing but yesterday.”
“One track mind?” she joked.
“No, that’s not quite true. I’ve had these lustful thoughts about you long before I remembered us.”
Jess leaned back. “There’s one major thing about you that hasn’t changed,” she noted.
“What’s that?” He used two fingers to push a lock of hair back from her eyes.
“You’re still good for my ego, but it’s a good thing you don’t bring out the real me, isn’t it?”
He grinned. “Oh, but I do. The woman you are right now is the real you.”
“Unless you make me angry.”
“Not afraid of that.” His hands began to caress her shoulders before moving down the line of her back. It took everything inside her not to arch forward and offer herself to him completely.
She’d almost forgotten they weren’t alone until Sephina started to cry. That meant they had to feed her, and get to the lab right away. No more time to spend strolling down memory lane.
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Chapter Eighteen
“Momma, momma, momma,” Sephina murmured over and over in the backseat of the SUV. No way could a person harden their heart or their resolve against something like that. Poor little girl didn’t understand where her mother had gone.
Britt didn’t even try to talk to Jess on the drive to the lab. Listening to the child would break her heart even though she played it tough. He knew it was killing her inside.
He parked and got out of the SUV faster than Jess. Jess hung back purposely, he knew. He’d pretend he had no idea that her heart was as soft as marshmallows under all that tough vampire exterior. He reached into the backseat and unbuckled the tiny girl. She plucked her thumb out of her mouth to look at him with hopeful eyes, then stuck her little lips out in disapproval when she realized it wasn’t her mother. She shoved her thumb back in again and began sucking fervently .
“Hi, baby. Come to Uncle Britt.” He lifted the child into his arms and tickled her under the chin to distract her. She giggled, even with her thumb firmly planted in her mouth.
“Would you take the baby inside?” Jess asked. No doubt she was going to do a perimeter check. “After you get her situated with Sampson, meet me in the hallway outside of the morgue and we’ll look in on Terry.”
He nodded seriously and made his way across the parking lot and took the elevator down. Sephina’s black eyes glistened at him while she sucked her thumb furiously. “It’s going to be okay, sweetie,” Britt said, his gut tightening. “Uncle Britt and Aunt Jess are going to make everything better,” he promised, then closed his eyes tight. Dear God, let me keep my promise.
Sampson must’ve heard the elevator coming down because he met him at the lab door. He took Sephina with all the practice of a loving grandfather. He’d always imagined Sampson spent all of his time in the lab. Who knew he had a life outside this building.
When Britt explained the next part of the plan, Sampson wasn’t thrilled. Still he agreed to be locked into the vault with the baby for Sephina’s sake. “You’d better not leave us locked in here any longer than necessary.” He stepped into the vault with the baby and hit the codes for the appropriate lock-down procedure. The heavy steel door slowly closed automatically, then several locks whirred and clicked into place while Britt waited to make sure it was secure.
Next, Britt made his way to the rendezvous point with Jess. She wasn’t outside the lab where she said she’d be, and he wondered if something had gone wrong outside. His heart rate picked up.
“Britt? That you?” Jess called from the holding cell area. “I’m down here in Terry’s cell.”
He strode down the hall and looked through the Plexiglas at her. “What are you doing in there?”
“I wanted to see if Terry’s body was nearing reanimation. The door shut behind me, and it has an automatic lock. Can you get me out?” Jess asked.
“How will I do that?”
“Sampson has the key. You’ll have to phone into the vault and ask him to open up so he can come and let me out.”
Britt chewed on the corner of his lip and instinctively reached out, his fingers tingling just before he grabbed the knob. He turned the handle and the door opened.
Jess gasped.
“Probably already unlocked,” he said.
She shook her head. “Not possible. It locks automatically when it shuts.” She stepped back into the hall, and when the door shut again they both heard the lock set.
“Let’s be sure the door was locked.” He watched her yank on the handle as hard as she could. The bolts and locks creaked and the plastic shuddered, but held its seal. Just like it was supposed to do. This room was made to keep superhuman vamps inside. The term impenetrable floated in his thoughts.
“Try to open the door now, Britt,” she suddenly ordered.
“If you can’t do it, I won’t be able to.” He hoped.
“Just give it a try.”
His gut clenched. He placed his hand around the handle and turned. The door opened with a mere whisper as the air inside escaped into the hallway. “Shit.”
Jess sighed, but it wasn’t a sigh of contentment. “We need to find Zeke. We have to find out what you’re capable of doing. You have abilities we don’t understand, and that can be dangerous.”
Britt’s heart squeezed painfully in his chest. Dangerous all right. Dangerous to this beautiful woman in front of him. “I think that’s the main idea,” he said grimly. “Either way, I’m still the same man you tracked down and recruited for the Black Ops Team. Not merely some weirdo who can do magic tricks.”
Jess frowned. “That explains how you got into my bedroom. Good ability to have,” she said. “As long as you’re on my team.”
“Why do you think I was brought back, if that is what happened?” Worry lines etched across Britt’s forehead.
She placed her hand over his heart. “Maybe, because I couldn’t live without you.”
His gaze softened. “Jess, I’m worried. I could hurt you. We need to find Zeke. A while ago he told me some things about what’s happening, but they were all generalizations. He said stuff about following our own paths that sounded more like psychobabble than advice that we could use. The time for jerking us around is over—we need more direction.”
When she merely sighed, he gently lifted her chin until she had to look at him.
Suddenly, he felt as if he was beside Jess while they both catapulted into some sort of weird, shadowy plane of existence. He not only sensed her presence, but he heard her thoughts, felt them like they were in his own head. She carried vague memories, centuries of ancient vampire knowledge, inside her, as did every vampire. Dread scaled up his back. He knew e
verything she knew at the same time that she thought it. A memory tripped inside her. Something dark, ethereal and intrinsic fought for control. She was unconsciously remembering dark ceremonies, strange music and scents that vied to reach her conscious mind. It was all ethereal, terrible, and basic to her being, a primal ceremony much too similar to Britt’s dream to be a coincidence. A ceremony important to vampires. Important to mankind if this was the place he and Jess had to fight for humanities’ sake.
Wait! She sensed his presence. He’d scared her. She knew someone else was here with her, but she didn’t know who. He dropped his hands and suddenly all the ancient memories disappeared.
She looked at him now, horror dancing behind her hollow gaze. “What did you just do?”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean for that to happen.” His shoulders hunched. “I don’t even know how I did it.”
“You were in my mind. You were spying on my unconscious thoughts.” Jess jerked away from him, rubbing her hands up and down her arms. Had he seen her at her worst—seen how she’d attacked James in bloodlust and turned him into a vampire all those years ago?
He reached out to her again, but she swatted him away. When he tried to touch her arm, she moved further away from him. She needed him as much as she needed blood for sustenance, but he’d proven again how dangerous he could be to her.
Apparently undaunted by her brush-off, he grabbed her and kissed her without permission. His mouth pressed hard against hers, and she groaned against him, allowed the kiss to happen before she found the strength to push him away again.
Was she capable of hiding the desire she felt for him? The fear? What else was he capable of doing?
“We have to destroy the paste right now. It’s too risky to even keep it under lock and key,” Britt said, his tone urgent.
“We can’t.” Jess moved away from him, her stance rigid.
“Why not?” He felt as perplexed as he probably looked right now.
“It’s not in this building anymore.” She folded her arms across her chest and glared at him. “Couldn’t find that tidbit of information in my head when you were spying?”
Britt’s shoulders tightened. His muscles strained against his shirt, and he rubbed the back of his neck. “Yesterday you indicated the paste was here.”
“It was. But I didn’t want it here when James comes for Terry, just in case. So I snuck out of my apartment about an hour before sunset, while you were still asleep, and moved it.”
Britt’s eyebrows rose. “I’d forgotten that you could go outside in the sunshine if you prepare ahead with prayers.”
“It’s a handy trait to have.” She looked at her watch and frowned. “James should’ve been here by now.”
Britt frowned in worry. “Maybe he’s not here because they’re going to use James as bait to get the paste. They can’t get their hands on Regent right now, but they have to know you and James are deeply connected and that you wouldn’t willingly let him die, not even for something like this.” He shook his head. “I wondered why they went after James and Terry. Unfortunately, it’s all beginning to make sense.”
“Yes, it does make sense. It also makes sense that they’ll come here because Terry is here.”
“And James isn’t. Isn’t that enough to prove it to you? As her husband, wouldn’t it be his utmost desire to be here when she turns?”
She pursed her lips and squeezed her hands into tight knots. “Yes. And, for the record, I hate it when you’re right about something like this.” She also hated that he’d experienced some of her thoughts, her memories. He’d violated her in the worst way possible, and he didn’t even know how he’d done it. Or why.
“Me too, Jess,” he said.
A sudden breath of air whispered through Jess’s hair and she froze.
“Time for you both to listen to me,” a familiar voice said from out of nowhere.
Jess reached up and touched her hair, felt the energy of those ghostly fingers before she whipped out her stake and spun around to the owner of the voice.
She could see him—kind of. It was Zeke again, only this time they could see right through him. He looked ragged and had dark circles under his haunted eyes.
“Britt?”
“I see him too,” he said.
“You must listen to me. The time has come to impart this final information you’ll need to combat what is coming.” His image wavered. “Generations ago, I was one of the two named Hunapu who saved the world from the worst villains history could possibly imagine. The ‘royalty’ of the Mayan people were invaded by monsters called the Lords of Death, the vampires who demanded the blood sacrifices. Terrifying, bloodthirsty vampires whose appetites were insatiable. With the use of the paste they lured my people like sheep to their slaughter until we almost disappeared. And in turn my people nearly gave the vampires what they wanted—invincibility and an unending, drug-controlled voluntary food source.”
“That’s what nearly caused the collapse of the Mayan civilization?” Britt asked in wonder. “My dream was true?
“Yes, unfortunately, they controlled the Mayan people with the aid of the paste. We stopped them. Unfortunately, Vaslov found it and reintroduced it to them.”
Zeke’s head tipped in shame. “I regret that my twin brother and I were at odds. It took us too long to come to the truth of our destiny, which was that we were supposed to stop the vampires from becoming indestructible. That was our goal, and it will be your goal to stop them, now.”
Even in his ethereal state, it was easy to see the pain, the toll that his role in the near collapse of an entire civilization had caused.
“Our ability to come to you, to bring Britt back and make you both understand what is at stake for your people, is limited. We must hurry in order to complete your initiation.”
“But the vampires won’t get the paste,” Jess said. “I’ve got it in a place they’ll never find it.”
“They already have it.” Zeke’s pain made his statement incontrovertible. “They’re already reawakening their past abilities. The first blood sacrifice will take place tomorrow night during the full moon, and after that they’ll be so powerful no one will be able to stop them.”
[Back to Table of Contents]
Chapter Nineteen
Zeke raised his hands over their heads. “Are you both willing and prepared for unification. You must agree to work as one in order to combat the vampires and the paste.”
Jess nodded tentatively and Britt verbally said, “Yes.”
Jess collapsed instantly. Britt tried to catch her before she fell to the floor.
He managed to pull her to his chest and wrap his arms around her. Her teeth chattered and her body vibrated violently, building in intensity until the chill moved up his arms. Before he knew what was happening, he felt himself falling inward. Felt his own body begin to quake in response to Jess’s.
His consciousness remained strangely aware, while everything went silent. Had he passed out? Surrounded by black he felt another essence nearby—similar to what happened to them earlier.
“Jess?” he thought.
“It’s me.”
He knew it was her even though they had no physical form, just mere consciousness. Their minds sought each other, merged, melded and began to share knowledge. As he’d experienced earlier, her memories were terrible, yet they flooded his brain with horrifying splashes of her painful transition to vampire. The first time it had merely been a sample of what was to come. Memories spilled from her brain into his until he felt as if his mind would explode. Too much horror. Too many memories for one mind to take in so quickly.
He reacted. His essence was incapable of sound, but he knew Jess had heard his cry of pain and he felt her shame, her tears. Their sharing continued for what felt like years. Somehow they knew time was different here. Time was on their side, but when they woke, it would be their enemy.
When he finally opened his eyes, they were on the floor, side by side. They stared at each other
for a long moment. She took in a long, sad breath, and fear spiked his heart when he realized what they’d learned during their unification. Not only had he experienced her memories, and she his, they had just become a modern version of the Mayan Twins. They were the only two on the planet with any hope of being able to battle the vampires in control of the paste. If they failed, humanity could become extinct.
“At least now we know why I’ve been given such scary abilities,” he stated dryly. During their melding of souls they were also given visual images of what the vampires did to humans under the influence of the paste. How much more powerful they’ll be this time. “It’s hard to believe even vampires can be that malevolent.
“Really? I’m not surprised at all.” She got up and moved away from him. Probably because he’d visited every dark corner of her being. He knew her inside and out now. Good and evil.
Britt’s heart ached for her.
What she didn’t realize was that because of the experience, seeing what she’d been able to overcome, he loved her more than ever. He’d felt her shame when he’d shared her memories. But even though she’d had dark longings and needs during her years as a vampire, she’d only taken one life. James, her friend and coworker, had been her only victim.
Jess cringed at the thought that Britt knew her most shameful sins. He knew her every private thought. But now, not only did he know her pain, but he’d seen the truth about her—the way she had to fight the lure of these monsters. The way their nearness and vile deeds sang to her inner being, called to her like a mother’s heartbeat. Like a drug, they infected her body and her mind regardless of the horrors her evil creators were capable of. She belonged to that line of terrible creatures whose sole existence was to feed from humans, to make them into their own herd of blood source. Her stomach churned. Strange sensations attacked her and she pressed her hands against the building unusual heat built inside her.
Her limbs became warm and heavy. She stared at her arms. They were turning pink. She held up her hands and frowned at them. She felt as if she was human again, and that scared the daylights out of her. She needed her vampire strength, now, more than ever.
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