by K. A. Linde
“The bunker? And Beckham?” Jodie asked. “Are you okay? Oh my God!”
Reyna didn’t respond to that. She didn’t know if she would ever be okay, but she was moving forward. She was doing what Beckham would have wanted her to do.
Chapter 6
They made it back to Washington’s mansion an hour later. Meghan and Tye had come back hours ago and Washington was acting the part of the mad scientist in the basement.
The good news was that he’d gotten in touch with the housekeeper he trusted so they had food. And that was about it.
Meghan and Tye had checked out the bunker and it was destroyed. They couldn’t even get through the main entrances. They’d had to find another way in, and even then it was clear from the heat coming off the place from the fire that nothing could survive in that.
No one knew what had happened to the people. To Drew and Laura, who had been inside. Or Everett, who had been imprisoned for turning Reyna in to Visage and acting as a spy for Harrington. Or Sydney…their leader. The very person who had started Elle, who was Elle. Everyone thought Elle had died, and in some ways she had. They’d turned her and when she’d come back, she’d no longer been Elle. She’d become Sydney. Now it was possible that she was really gone.
Jodie integrated well. Maybe even better than she had when she’d initially come to Elle. Back then, she had gotten her first real taste of what the world was like now. And realized the good that she could do working with Elle. She still didn’t like Washington. He had been one of the doctors who had experimented on her when she had been kidnapped at a young age. But she was coming around. And it was good to see them all working together for the last week.
“Why don’t we have communication with the other safe houses?” Jodie grumbled. “It’s been a week since New Year’s. Shouldn’t someone be able to reach us?”
Tye sighed. “I wish I knew. Meghan and I have checked a lot of the safe houses we knew. Some of them look like people were in them, but now they’re empty. They look abandoned.”
“Where could everyone have gone?” Jodie inquired. “Are there places other than the bunker?”
“Yes,” Washington said. He frowned. “But for safety reasons, we weren’t supposed to know where they all were. So much of the information that Elle had—what do you say?—went down with the ship?”
“If we had Tony, we might’ve been able to access it,” Meghan said. Tony was Elle’s resident techie, but he had been at the bunker on the day of the explosion.
“You think it might be on a server somewhere?” Reyna asked. “Or in the Cloud?”
She was still wrestling with these terms. After years without Internet or cellphones or anything like that, she was picking up all these new things as quickly as she could.
“The main servers were in the bunker,” Washington said.
“There had to be backups though, right?” Gabe suggested.
“But we don’t know where those are either,” Tye pointed out, crossing his arms and sitting back.
“We need a fucking break,” Jodie snapped. “Where haven’t we looked? What can I do? Do we not have cellphones or something? Technology should help.”
“We’ve called all the numbers we have. A lot of the phones were burners so they couldn’t be tracked. We really didn’t plan to be this disconnected from one another,” Tye said with a grimace.
Reyna leaned back in her chair and kicked her feet up on the antique dining room table. She ignored Washington’s pointed stare at her audacity. Getting Jodie back had been a win. Not only was she Reyna’s closest friend and a link to the Visage prison experiments, but Jodie had special blood too.
Reyna’s blood was the very rare Rh null negative with so few matches in the entire world. And unfortunately, one of those was William Harrington. But Jodie’s had the potential to unlock a possible blood antidote—which would make it so that vampires could drink anyone’s blood, not just their blood type match, and have the same benefits.
Yet, despite having Jodie back, they were still just a pathetic crew of six now.
Six people to take on all of Visage.
A week ago when she’d stepped out of the shower, she had felt so certain that they could do this. Now she was wondering what the hell she’d been thinking. She knew it was still possible to stop Harrington. But was it hubris to believe that six people could succeed where an army had failed?
She shook her head. She didn’t have answers. There was a link that she was missing. But she didn’t know what it was. She needed to figure it out though, or else they were going to be stuck.
“What do you think, Rey?” Jodie asked. The nickname that her brothers used hit her like a punch to the gut.
“I think we need to think about this more. We’re missing something.” Reyna stood from her chair. “It’s almost dinner. Why don’t we all come back after dinner and play out a list of our next moves? We can go from there.”
Reyna trudged from the room. Sitting around and talking in circles wasn’t helping her. She wanted to walk the grounds to clear her head, but what she really missed was her camera.
Beckham had given her a camera when she had first lived with him. He’d said it would give her perspective. And it sure as hell had. She could use a piece of that perspective right about now.
Her feet carried her up the steps and to the landing where Beckham’s bedroom was. She had investigated it some, but the smell alone made it difficult to even be in there. She hadn’t been sleeping much to begin with. Nightmares haunted her every time she closed her eyes. They made her want to scream like a teakettle to escape. But no, she was traped in a cage of her own making—a musky smell, fierce handwriting, black suits, an inexplicable presence.
Beckham was the other side of her coin. And now she was one-dimensional.
But she would come up with a solution to this problem. She went to the bookshelf and gently ran her hand along the leather bindings. She’d already surveyed them, but she couldn’t get enough of it. They smelled like fresh parchment and long days tucked away in alcoves devouring the material. She kept hoping one of the books would reveal a trapdoor. It would swing open and reveal all of Beckham’s secrets. An easy way to fix everything. A deus ex machina.
But no.
There was just her.
She had to make it happen.
Reyna sat at the desk and pulled Beckham’s papers toward her. As she sat amongst his materials, she felt so connected to him. So close to him. A powerful emotion ripped through her. It started in her heart and expanded outward, encasing her entire body. This was Beckham.
Her Becks.
She coughed as tears came to her eyes. Why did the connection have to be so strong even when he was gone? She didn’t want to lose it either though. Feeling him like this was a grasp at the real thing. It prolonged the inevitable. She knew one day she would wake up and realize that there was no more connection. That he was really and truly gone even from her.
A severed connection.
It struck her and she had to force herself from the chair.
This wasn’t helping. This wasn’t helping anything.
Reyna rushed from the room, desperate to be free of his ghost.
But as she raced down the stairs and outside into the brisk cold, the feeling only intensified. She wasn’t running from him. She was getting closer.
She clutched her chest. The sensation was so real. She’d felt it before but never this strong. Not even when he’d been alive had she felt the connection this strongly.
As if she could reach out and touch him, even though it was impossible.
She ran her hands back through her dark hair and turned her eyes skyward. She missed him something fierce. She was strong. She was ready to take on the world. But she wasn’t ready to move past him. Her heart ached for him. Literally. It was actually beating fiercely in her che
st.
She shook her head in confusion and started walking. Why was she having this reaction? A tear slipped down her cheek as she kept going down the gravel road. She was nearly to the gate when she started running. She didn’t even know what she was doing, but she couldn’t stop.
When she rounded the last corner, the gate was hanging wide open. Fear pricked at her. They surely had not left that open. None of them would be so careless. And yet it was open. The only way into Washington’s mansion was open for anyone to come in.
She stilled her feet as she approached. Her heart was still pattering away and the feeling only intensified the closer she got to the gate. What was happening? Why was she walking right toward danger?
And then a figure appeared at her right. A vampire woman with ruby red hair and two wicked-looking blades. Another vampire woman was beside her—short and black with a shaved head. The next two men she recognized on the spot—Beckham’s driver, Gerard, and Reyna’s bodyguard. Both also vampires.
Her stomach twisted at the sight of them. She turned to face them. Fear was evident on her face. “What…what are you doing here?”
She felt him before she saw him. Reyna whirled around. Her hair flew wide as she did so. Her heart was in her throat. The sense of rightness overwhelmed her.
“They’re with me, Little One,” Beckham said.
Chapter 7
Reyna’s hand flew to her chest.
Beckham.
Beckham.
Beckham.
Her mind raced ahead of her. Her heart ceased palpitating. Her eyes bulged and jaw dropped and she simply froze.
This…made no sense.
It was impossible.
Beyond impossible.
People didn’t come back to life. Well, not more than once. Once a vampire was dead, they were dead. There was no coming back. There was no second life as another vampire.
Yet, there he was.
Her heart contracted painfully.
There.
He.
Was.
Her perfect Beckham. Tall, dark, brooding, with midnight eyes that whispered threats and echoed passion. A figure so imposing that others shrank back at the sheer size of him, the promise of death on the razor-edged planes of his face, and the confidence that oozed out of every pore. And that was before they even learned of his reputation. A person didn’t need to know it to recognize the threat before them.
And yet, he wasn’t a threat to her. He never had been. He never would be.
“How?” she finally gasped out.
“It is a long story,” Beckham said.
Reyna shook her head. She was still finding it hard to wrap her mind around what was happening. She wanted to run to him, to put her arms around him, to believe what she was seeing. But how could she?
She had watched him die. Seen his body slump to the ground and die before her very eyes. It wasn’t secondhand knowledge that she could refute. She had been there. She had cut open her own arm to try to save him and it hadn’t worked. How could he possibly be here right now?
“No. It’s…it’s not possible,” she stammered out.
“It appears that it is.”
“Tell me…tell me something only I would know,” she said. “You could be an…imposter.” She knew that was practically impossible as well. No one could pretend to be Beckham. She could feel down to her very being that it was him. She had sensed him upstairs in his bedroom and run the length of the driveway to reach him. It had to be him. And yet she needed to be sure.
His dark eyes clouded with anger at having to prove himself. But he never let the words slip from his mouth. He just considered what to tell her.
“White roses are for new beginnings,” he told her, taking a step forward. “I used to focus solely on my phone because your presence was such a distraction.” Another step forward. “I can sense your blood.” They were practically touching now. “I can sense it right now. You. All of you. The smell of you. The taste of you. The way your body vibrates at my nearness.” He dipped down and brought his lips close to her mouth. “I am who I say I am, Little One. I am yours.”
The dam broke.
Reyna threw her arms around his shoulders and crushed her body against his chest. He tucked her in close, burying his face into her dark hair.
“You’re back. You’re really back,” she gasped as tears soaked through his shirt.
“Shh.” He stroked her affectionately.
“I don’t understand. I don’t…”
She pulled away to look up at him. They were facing down the impossible. Vampires didn’t return from the dead, yet Beckham was here. He shouldn’t be standing before her, but he was.
Their eyes locked and she lost sight of everything else. The pain disintegrated. The cold was gone. She didn’t even notice their breath fogging between them. Or the people he had brought with him. Or the trees. Or the gravel. Or the gate.
Nothing.
It was just her and Beckham once more.
“How are you alive?” she whispered. “I saw you die. I watched it happen.”
His brow furrowed at that. “Let’s get you out of the cold and I will explain everything.”
He gestured for her to begin walking. Her boots crunched against the gravel and the cold bit back into her consciousness. It was subfreezing temperatures and she didn’t even have a coat on. What had she been thinking?
Well, of course she hadn’t been thinking.
The four people who had come with Beckham formed around them as they moved forward. They all looked lethal and kept assessing their surroundings for threats. She wondered what their stories were, how they had ended up with Beckham, and what they were doing here with him.
She had a lot of questions.
“I can’t believe you’re really here.” She reached out and touched the sleeve of his jacket. He was solid and firm. Real.
“I am as surprised as you are,” he admitted.
“It isn’t every day that your boyfriend comes back from the dead.”
He arched an eyebrow. “Has it happened to you before?”
She laughed. It was the first time she had laughed in over a week. It made her feel lighter. As if she were walking on clouds. She glanced up at Beckham. “No. Just you.”
He wrapped an arm across her shoulders in response and they continued the rest of the way to Washington’s mansion. Gabe and Meghan were arguing out front. Reyna suspected it had something to do with her sprinting out of the house at top speed. But when they saw her coming back with Beckham and a retinue, both of their jaws dropped.
“Oh my God,” Meghan said.
“Is that…” Gabe let the question trail off.
“Yes,” Meghan breathed.
“How?”
That was the million-dollar question.
“Meghan. Gabe,” Beckham said with a head nod.
“Is this some kind of joke?” Gabe asked.
“It would not be a very funny one.”
“It’s really him,” Reyna told them.
“Let’s continue inside. I will explain what I know,” Beckham said. He turned back to face the four who were following him. “Philippé, do a perimeter sweep. Katarina, check the defenses. Return to me when you’re finished. Gerard, Zoya, you’re on me.”
Then he strode into the mansion as if he owned the place, with Reyna at his side. The entire exchange left Reyna even more confused. More questions sprung up. She ached to ask them all, but at the same time she felt at peace. As if all her hopes and dreams had been answered. She had demanded a miracle. And she had received one.
The entourage assembled in the dining room. Gabe rushed to get Tye and Jodie, while Meghan found Washington speaking to a young woman in the kitchen. Their looks of shock at him appearing out of nowhere perfectly mirrored Reyna
’s.
“Roger,” Beckham said, extending his hand to Washington.
“Beckham,” Washington replied with awe.
“And the lovely Genevieve,” Beckham said. His attention turned to the vampire woman Washington had brought from the kitchen. She was only about five feet tall and looked not a day over twenty. She wore her straw blond hair parted down the middle and in a braided bun at the base of her neck.
“Mr. Anderson,” she said demurely. “It’s a pleasure to have you back in residence.”
“You know each other?” Reyna asked in confusion.
“Yes,” Beckham answered.
“Genevieve has been a close associate of ours for a long time,” Washington said. “I trust her implicitly. As has Beckham.”
“Indeed,” Beckham agreed. “I’m certain everyone here wants to know how I am not dead.”
The room went silent except for the scraping of chairs as everyone sat.
“William did not kill me but he did fracture my neck that day. He rendered me unconscious. I healed because I had fed before going to the New Year’s Eve party and was informed when I awoke that Reyna had given me her own blood as well.”
Reyna leaned forward, but it was Washington who spoke. “Reyna is your blood match. It would make perfect sense that her blood would help you heal.”
Beckham’s head whipped toward Reyna. He clearly already knew that term, but she had never had the chance to tell him that fateful night. “Is this true?”
She nodded, her heart expanding at the intensity in his gaze.
“Uh, I’m gathering a blood match is something special?” Jodie asked from the other side of the table.
“A perfect pairing of the blood composition. Beyond blood type itself but down to its very foundation. A one-to-one match,” Washington explained.
The room fell silent again as they stared at Beckham and Reyna. As they saw how unique they were to be in one place. To have discovered each other.
“Well, that explains much,” Beckham concluded.
“It could explain everything,” Washington said.
Beckham nodded. He processed the information and seemed to sort it into what had happened before continuing. “I remember nothing after William hurt me until I woke up in a morgue. I was in a metal container, on the docket to be incinerated that afternoon. I escaped the confines of the metal tube and found a blubbering Penelope. She had been watching over me. Mourning, I suppose, in her own way.”