by Rye Brewer
He smiled when he noted the recognition on my face. I could just imagine how disgusted I looked as I thought about her.
“I can see there’s no love lost,” he murmured.
“It’s none of your business.”
“My business is getting my dagger back. It’s your business, too, because you’ll never see your precious Vance again if I don’t. This is as close as you’ll ever get.” He spun slowly, smiling the whole time. Showing off.
“Enough,” I snapped. How was I going to get through to Anissa? I wasn’t even sure where she was. And Mom. What about her? Not to mention the body in the vault. I was in a web, much like the ones decorating the dungeon. The harder I struggled to get out of it, the tighter it held me.
I left without another word, gesturing to the guards that I was finished. They could take him back to his cell and leave him there to rot for all I cared at the moment. The snide, evil monster. Taunting me like that. Using Vance against me.
“Philippa? Is that you out there?” A female voice, almost shrieking, carried down the corridor. “Please! Help me! You have to get me out of here!”
Genevieve.
I almost wanted to double back and take a good, long look at her for the sake of posterity. She had always been so poised, so untouchable. Perfect. She had fallen far. She’d be as dirty as Valerius. It must’ve been a special kind of torture for her.
“Please! Get me out of here! I had nothing to do with Lucian’s murder! Please, please, do something for me!” she pleaded.
Have a little dignity, I thought with a nasty smile. She may not have gotten Lucian killed, but she was hardly innocent. A nice, long stay in a filthy dungeon was just what she deserved.
There was no time to gloat over her misery. I needed to talk things out with someone. How was I supposed to manage everything that needed to be done to get Vance back? And even if I did, how would I get him out of prison?
Gage.
He would be the perfect sounding board. And it would’ve been nice if I knew where he was, too. But that was just as big a mystery as anything else. He was busy gallivanting around someplace.
6
Cari
The first thing I felt was burning. Like my body was on fire. All through me, invisible flames roared and burned and I writhed in agony. My muscles cramped and there was nothing I could do to make it stop.
My heart raced out of control. I thought it would explode right out of my chest. My head was in a vice. I rolled it from side to side, grimacing, desperate for relief. What was happening to me?
The last thing I remembered was blacking out. And then the burning agony of a million fiery swords stabbing me all over. I thought the pain was over when I blacked out. No. It was just beginning. Why wouldn’t somebody just let me die already?
“Cari!”
I looked to my right at the sound of my name. “Gage?”
What was he doing there? And in a cage or something?
“When did you get here? Oh, my God, what’s happening to me? Am I dying?”
“No—not anymore.”
Not anymore? What did that mean? I didn’t get the chance to ask before I writhed as a fresh wave of fire washed over me and a tearing sound made me look in surprise at my wrists.
I broke the leather restraints. The same thing with my ankles.
I was free.
The first thing I did was pull what was left of my dress together in front.
I looked at him again.
He didn’t even seem surprised.
“What’s happening?” I whispered before nausea attacked me and I bent over the table, spewing my guts up.
It was red.
Blood?
I was throwing up blood.
Tears rolled down my cheeks and I wiped them away with the backs of my hands—which came back bloody, too.
“Oh, my God!” I jumped off the bed with a shriek, backing away from the blood I had just hurled onto the floor.
I looked at him, standing there in that cage. “What am I supposed to do?” I asked, shaking all over.
The pain was still there, but the shock and confusion were worse.
“The first thing you have to do is free me,” he said.
“How can I do that? You’re in a cage! Where’s the lock? Is there a key?” My mind raced a million miles a minute and I babbled on and on.
“Just focus,” he hissed. “You can break me out. Here’s the lock. You can break it.”
“I can’t do that! What are you, crazy?”
“Cari. Look at me.”
I did.
He gripped the metal bars and stared into my eyes. “Cari, I didn’t have a choice. You were dying. You were so close. I had to save you. I couldn’t let you go. So I… I let you drink my blood.”
“You let me… what?” No. It was unbelievable.
“I gave you my blood. And it turned you into… what I am.”
Memories floated through my head. Vampires. Spying for vampires.
“No. It’s not true,” I said, shaking my head so hard it hurt.
“Yes. It’s true. I’m so sorry I didn’t tell you. I could’ve avoided all of this. But you’re a vampire now.”
He didn’t flinch. He didn’t even look away. It seemed like he was telling me the truth.
“I don’t understand,” I whispered through more tears.
Tears of blood. My God, I was crying blood.
“I know. I can tell you all about it, but you have to get me out of here.” He looked up at the open skylight.
I followed his gaze. It was open.
“I have to get out of the path of the sun—and so do you, now. It’ll kill us. We need to get out of here and back to someplace safe before the sun rises.”
“I still don’t know what you want me to do!”
“I want you to break this lock, Cari. You can do it. In these first minutes, when you just changed, you have the strength. You can do this. Find something around here to hit it with. I promise, it’ll work if you try hard enough.”
It sounded so stupid. Me, breaking a lock on a cage. That didn’t stop me from looking for something to use.
I picked up one of the poles used to hang bags of saline. “What about this?”
“It’s worth a try. Come on. We have to hurry.” He glanced up at the skylight.
“This is ridiculous.” Still, I lifted the pole—and realized it wasn’t heavy. It hardly weighed a thing. I looked at him.
He nodded.
“Hit it for all you’re worth,” he said, taking a step back to the opposite side of the cage.
What did I have to lose? I swung the pole back, then brought it forward with all the strength I could call up. When the lock shattered into pieces and fell to the floor, I dropped the pole in surprise.
He was right. He was right about everything.
I had super strength.
That had to mean he was right about me being a vampire, too.
7
Gage
I did it. I turned her. There was no going back. The League might kill us both if they found out, but there was no choice. I could only hope that she would forgive me one day for how I had just changed her life.
I opened the door to the cage and pulled her into my arms.
Her heart raced a mile a minute. She was so confused, terrified, unable to process what she had been through.
I wished I could tell her it would all get easier right away, but that would be a lie. She had a lot to get through before life became anything near normal again—even then, it would never look like her past life. But that could wait until later. Like after we were out of there.
“What am I going to do?” she wept against my shoulder.
“The first thing you’re gonna do is get the hell out of here with me.” I looked up at the open skylight again and judged the distance before tightening my grip around her slim body, crouching just a little and leaping from the floor straight up through the opening in the ceiling.
&n
bsp; She was still in my arms when we landed on the roof.
“How did you do that?” she breathed, looking around with wide eyes.
“I can tell you all about it when we’re safe.” I looked around, trying to get a handle on where we were in relation to anything I was familiar with. I hadn’t been paying much attention when I coursed after the car that took her to the warehouse. I only knew we were in an industrial area.
“I don’t understand why this is happening. Why me?” She was still in my arms.
I was afraid to let go, afraid she might lose control and jump off the roof or even worse. I couldn’t afford to let her go off on her own.
“We’ll talk about it later, I swear. I can’t take the time right now—we’re racing the sun here. We have to get inside before dawn. And those shifters will be looking for us any minute now.”
“Shifters…” she whispered.
Like she almost didn’t remember what happened before she died. It was hazy, like a half-forgotten dream.
That wouldn’t be the case forever. I had to get her to a safe place before she remembered everything.
“I have a safe house not far from here. An apartment, actually. We need to hurry.”
“Okay.” She buried her face in my shirt, totally trusting me.
I held her close for a minute and couldn’t escape the gratitude I felt that she was still alive.
“Hold onto me,” I ordered.
She nodded.
I started to course—and noticed the horizon lightening as dawn approached.
We had almost no time.
8
Cari
I told myself not to look. Just to keep my face pressed against him and not look around. I felt air rushing past me and knew we were moving fast. Very fast. Faster than people were supposed to be able to move on their own.
Then again, hadn’t I just broken a lock with a metal pole? And I didn’t just break it. The damn thing had almost exploded.
I couldn’t help myself. I had to glance away from his shirt to see how fast we moved. Things melted past—buildings, cars, busses. A blur. Faster than anything I had ever known.
Even faster than the Harley I used to ride on the back of when I dated Derrick, Mr. Motorcycle. And I had thought that was too fast back in the day.
I trusted Gage, even if I had no idea how we were doing what we were doing. Was it normal? Would I be able to do it?
I leaned against his chest again—I still felt sick and watching the world fly past wasn’t helping.
His heart raced against my ear. And I loved the sound more than I should have. It freaked me out, the way the rhythm called to me. It meant the blood was pounding in his veins.
Rich, hot blood.
I looked up at his neck. I could see his pulse racing against his skin in time with his heartbeat. There was blood in there, right there, so close. It hypnotized me. I couldn’t take my eyes off it.
All that blood…
I reached up without thinking about it and traced that pulsing, throbbing vein with the tip of my finger.
I didn’t count on a sharp, dangerous claw forming at the end of my finger, longer and sharper than my nails had ever been.
I bit back a gasp of surprise at the sight of that claw.
It left a thin, red line on his skin and at the end of that line, a drop of blood formed. Just one drop, but enough to catch my attention and make my own blood pound in my veins.
I want it. I need it.
I watched myself like I was somewhere outside my own body. Like I had no control over my finger as it caught that drop of blood on the tip.
A single, perfect, beautiful, rich drop of blood that set my nerves on fire and consumed my mind. My tongue yearned to taste it.
I raised my finger to my lips and extended my tongue, ready to lick.
I closed my eyes in anticipation.
Gage grabbed my hand just before I could take what I needed.
9
Gage
“What are you doing?” I held her wrist tight.
It wasn’t easy, keeping her from drinking my blood and coursing at the same time.
Her eyes seemed to glow with lust. “I just wanted to taste…” She tried to yank her wrist free from my grip—I was barely able to hold on. She was so strong.
“You can’t do that. Not yet.” I rubbed her fingertip on my shirt and heard her disappointed whimper.
“Why not?” She sounded like a little girl who just got denied a toy. I was surprised she didn’t pout.
“Just because. Because I said so for now. When we get someplace safe, we can talk about it.” I turned my focus back to coursing without getting us killed.
We had enough problems without running into the side of a building because I wasn’t looking where I was going.
“I don’t understand.”
“I know. You need to trust me. It’s important that you go through the entire change before you drink any blood. Just leave it at that.”
“But why?”
She was driving me crazy. I forgot what it was like to deal with a brand-new vampire.
She looked like an adult and, in many ways, was still the girl I first met on the street that night, in front of the club.
But inside, she wasn’t much more than a child. A very strong, petulant child. And a child had a temper, and a child wanted what she wanted when she wanted it. And a child didn’t understand why she had to wait and listen to somebody who knew better. And she didn’t want to understand, either.
I only shook my head in answer to her question and kept moving. There was no explaining to her how dangerous it would be if she drank before it was time.
I kept an eye on the horizon—lighter with every second—and put all my energy into getting us someplace safe, away from the sun, as fast as possible.
10
Cari
I held the scraps of my dress together and watched as Gage put a code into a keypad next to a closed door.
We were on the top floor of an apartment building. It was beautiful, all shiny wood and marble floors.
This was where his safe-house was? When I thought “safe-house,” I thought some rundown, abandoned place where people hid out. Not a ritzy apartment house way nicer than the best I could have afforded.
I wondered who lived there—and what I would find on the other side of the door. A shower, I hoped.
And more blood. The urge made my stomach turn even as my mouth watered.
“Come on in.” He opened the door and ushered me into a gorgeous place.
I could almost forget my bloodlust when I looked around.
The main room was wide open, with high ceilings and hardwood floors that shone like glass. Kitchen, dining room, living room, all open and spacious and beautiful.
My pulse slowed a little. I felt more comfortable.
He took my arm and led me to a big, overstuffed couch.
“Sit down.” He sounded like a parent talking to a little kid.
That was who I was to him. Not that it bothered me—I needed someone to take charge, to tell me what to do.
It was comforting when I didn’t know which end was up and the need for blood overwhelmed me. It was just slightly stronger than the hatred and disgust I felt for myself.
Who did he turned me into?
I rested against the couch cushions and watched as Gage went to the kitchen and opened the tall, stainless steel refrigerator.
Out came a clear plastic bag filled with a deep red liquid.
I gasped as my mouth filled with saliva. It was blood.
I leapt to my feet, reaching for it before I could stop myself. “I’m so hungry,” I whispered.
He shook his head. “You need to wait until your change is complete, like I said on the way here. It’s not time yet.”
“When will it be time?”
“I’m not sure. It’s different for everybody. You’ll know when it’s complete.”
“But what am I changing into?” I wa
iled. I wanted to tear the beautiful room apart—shred the cushions and gouge the wood, shatter the windows. “I’ve seen so much tonight and I don’t understand what’s happening! I remember what happened before… before…”
I couldn’t put it into words, but I was fairly sure I died. I thought I did. It felt like I did, but then I came back and there was the fire throughout my body and I was alive again and wishing I wasn’t because the agony was unbearable.
“What do you remember?” he asked.
“I saw men turning into animals! Oh, my God!” I forgot about holding my dress together and held my head in my hands. “Nothing makes sense! It’s impossible! This is all impossible, damn it! Moving as fast as we did and wanting to drink blood and all of it, nothing makes sense! And now I’m… I don’t know what I am and it scares me so much.” My hands fell to my sides.
“You know who you are.”
“I don’t!”
“You do. Stop lying to yourself. The longer you spend in denial, the worse it will be.” He came over to me, taking slow, measured steps.
I shook my head.
He nodded and kept walking—then passed me. To the window. I could see him in the reflection as he stared out at the skyline.
Then, he changed.
He opened his mouth and his canines elongated. His irises darkened pure black. His fingers became claws.
I took a step back, shaking my head. “No. No! I’m not that! I’m not like you!”
When he turned, he was normal again. The Gage I thought I knew.
He nodded, then came to me with his arms out.
I was too afraid to even move away from him. I let him hold me—it felt good.
“You have to accept it. This is who you are now.”