“But you did feel something.”
“Don’t you want more than to feel like someone’s comfortable old coat? Don’t you want someone who lights on fire when you touch her?”
“Is that what you feel for him?” Tristan started to flush, and the muscles in his neck bulged.
“It isn’t about me and him. It’s about me and you. I once thought that what we had was enough, because it met my needs. But what I realize now is that I never met yours. The most selfless thing I can do for you now is let you go. Go. Find that person who deserves you as much as you deserve her.”
“But I want you.”
She sighed. “I have to go.”
“You mean you have to go to him.”
She checked her watch. “No, I mean I have to go.” She turned again for the door, and this time she had the door open before he grabbed her.
“No! I won’t let you do this. We are meant to be together.” He picked her up and carried her back into the apartment. Kale barked madly, jumping on Tristan. She struggled. Her mind snapped into action. This had taken too long. She didn’t want to hurt him, but she had no choice. She needed to get out of here and fast; she had a job to do.
Pushing him with her mind he fell forward. He tried to catch himself on the side of the couch but had to drop her to do it. She scrambled away from him, further into the apartment with Kale growling at her side. Tristan got to his feet.
“Tristan, don’t make me hurt you, please. I don’t want to hurt you!”
“You won’t hurt me. I know you.” He advanced on her.
“But I will,” came a heavy voice from the open door.
“Luca, don’t,” Evaine choked.
Tristan’s eyes widened as Luca advanced.
“Don’t!” She stopped him with a mental shove and held him in place.
The phone buzzed in Evaine’s purse. Luca’s eyes flicked her direction. His anger was palpable. “Don’t.” She dug around in her purse. She answered the call on the third ring. “Hello? OK, I’ll be down in a minute. No, everything’s fine, Nate. I’m on my way.”
Luca’s posture continued to tense.
“They’re here.” She released him and got to her feet. “I have to go down.”
“What’s going on?” Tristan didn’t take his eyes off of Luca.
“I’ve been trying to tell you.” She grabbed Kale by the collar, clipped on his leash. “We found the doctor. The Feeders are here. They’ve been looking for me. If I don’t go now—”
“Wait!” Tristan yelled pressing his hands to his head. “You mean you didn’t really come into the city for Kale? You didn’t want to see me?”
She didn’t speak.
“And you’re hoping what? That they’ll grab you?” He turned to Luca. “I can’t believe you are letting her do this.”
“She isn’t the weak, defenseless creature you think she is. She could protect herself and all the rest of us if we needed her too. We’re lucky that she’s the one they want.”
“Lucky? Lucky? Are you insane?”
Evaine spoke calmly. “Look at me. Really see me.” She let go of Kale, grabbed a wipe from her purse and removed the face makeup. “This is me. I may not be dead, but I’m not alive anymore either. I’m something else. You need to move on, and I need to go on as well.” Picking Kale’s leash she walked to the door, her heart heavy with sadness. “Good-bye, Tristan.”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Evaine took the stairs down to the lobby, but went out the service entrance. She pushed open the door and walked through the alleyway, crossed the street to the other side, and then back to the front of the building. Pulling up her jacket collar she continued down the block. A chill crept up her neck as she started down a side street. Her vision came into sharp focus. She removed her earbuds and heard several people moving about ten yards away. She couldn’t smell them yet; the wind was blowing in the wrong direction.
Now was the time. She walked into the park and sat down on the bench. Kale sat at her feet staring at her till she told him to go. Reluctantly he rolled around on the grass, continually looking at her. Pulling out Luca’s phone she dialed Abbey at the house.
“Luca, sorry, I needed to get out. No, no, I’ll be back in a while. You too. Bye.” She hung up. The trap was set. Footsteps and whispers came closer, Kale started to bark, and then he growled. She pretended to calm him, but he started to go nuts. She tied him to the bench and told him to sit, praying that someone would get him out.
After she tied up Kale everything happened very fast. One minute there was no one in the park but her and then within seconds there were five, maybe six, Feeders, surrounding her. She tried to scream but nothing came out. She got up to run and Julius was on her before she made it to the street. She pushed him with her mind. He stumbled, but kept coming. The push wasn’t meant to keep him out of the running, only slow him down. Behind her Kale went crazy. At one point she thought he had gotten free, but he never caught up to her.
A Feeder jumped into her path, startling her. He lunged, and she gave him a mental shove. He flew ten feet in the air and landed with a crunch. It was just enough time for Julius to come up from behind and wrap his arms around her.
“Hello, little miss,” he hissed in her ear. Plan or no plan panic set in and she fought with all she had. She was about to give him a shove when she got a somewhat calming pulse of reassurance. Luca was nearby. She called to him mentally.
“I’m here. Struggle to make it believable, but don’t push him.” She did struggle. She struggled and cried for help, but when a second Feeder grabbed her by the legs she started to tire. A third came up to her with a knife. It took everything in her to stop from knocking him down the block.
“I want a piece,” the Feeder said.
“That’s not the plan, Eli,” Julius hissed.
“I don’t want to wait!”
“But do you want to deal with Damien?” The look in the Eli’s eye told her he was having a change of heart. “That’s what I thought,” Julius finished. “Bag her head; we gotta get out of here.”
A fourth Feeder came over and pulled a dirty, smelly piece of fabric out of his pocket. He tried to put it over her face, but she resisted. Julius pulled her by the hair.
“Damien said bring you back undead, not unharmed. I’m all that stands between you and Eli and Chang. Behave, or I’ll let them have some fun with you first. Do you understand?”
Evaine nodded mutely. They put the bag over her head. Tears moistened her eyes, and her chest tightened. She felt Luca’s presence and tried to draw calm from him. A sharp pain pinched her side and everything went fuzzy, then black.
She was sick of being knocked out and waking up somewhere else. She didn’t like it at all. She was going to let Luca know that from now on, if the choice was to hurt her or knock her out, to hurt her. She couldn’t even count how many times she had been knocked out in the last seven weeks.
She was sitting in a chair—that much she could tell—restrained by rope of some kind, tied uncomfortably tight on her wrists. Cold, damp air made her back and shoulders ache. Her fingers had gone totally numb. The wet, dirty burlap fabric of the bag scratched against her cheek. At one time it had probably held some sort of cheese, but now it smelled of stinky feet. Listening to the sounds around her, she knew there were people in the room, but she couldn’t tell where she was or who they were.
She felt the first poundings of panic in her chest. Trying to calm herself she reached out to Luca with her mind, but there was nothing there. She concentrated on the rhythmical sound of water dripping somewhere to her left and refused to give in to the rising terror. Focusing she reached for Luca again. Nothing. She knew how to do this, she’d done it before. She envisioned the ribbon connecting her to Luca. It was bright red on a large golden spool. She reached with her mind as far as it could go, letting the spool roll out across the floor of her mind, stretching out farther away from her. Down a hallway, then another and another. Twisting with the cor
ners, rolling up hill, down in a ditch, until the ribbon was completely extended. When the ribbon had run out, she called to him.
He wasn’t there. Nothing was there. She couldn’t feel him at all. This had not been part of the bargain. She hadn’t even considered the possibility that he wouldn’t be there when she needed him.
A sharp pain stabbed her in her left arm. She cried out.
“See.” The voice was familiar. “I told you she’s awake.”
“That’s enough, Karen,” a deep male voice said.
“What does it matter? You said we were going to cut her up anyway.”
The hood was pulled off her face, and a bright light blinded her. The smell wasn’t much better with the hood off. She couldn’t focus for several minutes. Fuzzy shapes blurred her vision. Someone sat in a chair about ten feet in front of her. A second milled around the first person. After her eyes focused she saw a large man about the size of Luca, with a short white faux hawk and deep-set orange eyes. He looked as though he belonged on a Harley, dressed in jeans and a T-shirt with a black leather jacket over top and cowboy boots to finish him off. Draped over him, like a cheap piece of costume jewelry, was Karen. She had more makeup on than usual and her hair stood out in an eighties style. Her Juicy T-shirt was too tight and had been torn to show off her belly button ring. Worst of all, Karen’s skirt was so short that if Evaine tilted her head downward even a little bit she was sure she would have been able to see all the way up.
“Wakey, wakey, Evaine,” Karen said. “Time for us to play.”
“Karen, why don’t you go get me a drink,” the man said. His piercing eyes never left Evaine. A hiss escaped Karen’s lips. She snarled, clearly miffed at being dismissed. The man waited till Karen was gone before he spoke again.
“You’ve been a lot of trouble. I’ve tried to get you to visit me a few times of your own accord, but I suppose Nate and Luca felt it was for the best that you didn’t. Several of my family members have been hurt or killed trying to bring you here. But you’re here now, so I guess that’s all that matters, and you’re alone. Which makes it easier.” He stretched out his legs in front of him. They were long and muscular and looked as though they could do serious damage if they kicked someone.
He had a strong angular face with large bone structure. He looked as if in life he had been a brutal man. Shrugging off his leather jacket she saw sizeable arm muscles flexed beneath his T-shirt. He cleaned his nails with a pocket knife.
“You see, we figured your ability was just something new, something more evolved. So initially that’s why I wanted to see you. I’d heard it was amazing. But when Karen told us about your connection with Luca, well, that threw it all into a whole new league. We decided that you had to be brought here because we had to know. I had to know.” He seemed to trail off as if he were speaking to himself. Evaine tried to use her ability on him, nothing happened, something was wrong. Something was…missing.
“It won’t work.” He tapped his head. “Doc gave you something to block the ability. You can’t hurt anyone.” He stared at her for a minute and then started talking to himself. “You’re so much prettier than I imagined. I knew Karen was crazy jealous, but now I see why. That Luca’s one lucky guy. I mean that with the utmost respect. If you weren’t going to hate me after all of this I would definitely throw my hat in the ring as a contender for your affections.” He raised his hands. “I know, I know, I’m with Karen, but there really is no comparison. She’s fun, most of the time. When she isn’t trying to seduce the most powerful man in the room or worried about her makeup.”
“Why do you want me?”
“Well, that’s kind of a hard thing to answer.”
She wasn’t sure what game he was playing. Reaching out to the end of her ribbon again for Luca she called to him, but couldn’t find him. She tried again to push Damien. Nothing happened. Now that she was more alert she could feel something inside her head. A hole, a numb spot. Her mind was clear, but in one large spot it got fuzzy, then numb. There had to be a way around it.
Damien watched her strangely. Like he wanted to hurt her and save her all at the same time. It creeped her out. Where the other Feeders were dirty and smelly and just plain wrong, he seemed normal.
Her arm throbbed. A gash marred her expensive blouse. What was it Karen had said? “What does it matter? You said we were going to cut her up anyway.”
“I’m sorry about that. Karen is a little over enthusiastic when it comes to you, I’m afraid. When I told her what we had planned to do—”
“What are you planning on doing?”
“Well, see, that is a bit unpleasant. A few months ago I started having to improvise with my Feeder family. Nate said we were attracting too much attention by feeding in the open. There were several incidents that had to be cleaned up. So I had to find a way to keep the feeding under wraps. I built an arena.” He held up his hands. “Classless and vile, I agree, but they don’t have the same values that we do. A few of them would go out and round up humans. The humans were put into the arena to fight and for food.
“Thing was, many of them didn’t die right away. Some lasted several rounds, days even. We discovered that those humans who had been fed on, but not killed, had an emotional type of connection with those who had fed off of them. It was very irritating to my Feeders, but it caused a strange effect. The undead who had this connection also seemed to regain a small part of their humanity while the connection lasted.
“Then Karen told us how you had gained Luca’s ability to project your thoughts onto him. I started to wonder if you had bitten him. Karen said that your first night you attacked and bit him. So I had a thought. If we had a connection with the humans that were still alive after they were bitten, and you had gained Luca’s ability when you bit him, would it then be possible for others to gain your remarkable ability were we to—”
“Bite me,” Evaine finished. She felt sick. Her senses were as heightened as they’d ever been. Scanning the room she tried to find something to use as a weapon.
They were in an old tunnel. The walls were brick and swathed with rugs of different colors, shapes, and sizes. The floor was cement and also covered in all kinds of rugs. There were Christmas lights hanging on the curved ceiling and floor lamps in the corners. A low bed wrapped in a large colorful comforter and huge pillows sat in the corner. A standing laundry sink dripped water down the wall. The wooden table that Damien sat at didn’t look bolted to the floor. Bookcases along one wall were lined with books.
She tried to think of something to say, but couldn’t. Should she be strong? Plead? Should she talk about herself like on TV with someone who kidnaps you so that they would identify with you and see you as a real person? “How long ago did you rebirth?”
Damien looked at her, caught off guard by the question. “About twelve years ago. I was the first. I’ve been with the Doc since the beginning. Well, her and Lisette.”
“Who’s Lisette?”
“I’m Lisette.” A small girl came into the room. She appeared to be about twelve, but her eyes told another story. It was obvious that she was much older, though her voice was light. “You’re Evaine. We’ve been waiting for you to come. Mother’s been so anxious about you since you rebirthed. The doctor that she left you with took certain scientific liberties with you, and then did the unfortunate thing of dying before he let anyone know what they were. And of course since Nate came and took you away so fast we had no idea what your abilities would be until after you were gone. But we’ve been keeping an eye on you and awaiting your return.”
“Your mother is the doctor? The one in the building last week. She stuck me with a needle.”
“Yes, it was to get some of your DNA. She recognized who you were immediately. We’ve been trying so hard to duplicate what was done to you.”
“Why? What was done to me?”
The little girl walked further into the room. She stood casually by Damien and stroked his hair. “You were given a new version of the
T1040 serum. Where the others who had been given doses were either unresponsive or came back in the normal fashion, you were different. You died, really died. You were dead for over six hours. They had you wrapped up in a pretty white sheet and were getting ready to throw you in the incinerator when you moved. Something had happened. You’d come back, but of your own accord. You had mutated the serum. Changed it. You’d become better. After being given the usual stimuli, your brain responded. More than anyone else had or has since. See, the serum was made to fix damaged parts of the brain. Until you, the serum had never worked as it was meant to. Only, we don’t know why.” She continued to play with the short spikes on the top of Damien’s head while he stared at Evaine.
Evaine had to do something; she had to win herself some time. The girl had a sweet smile and large eyes. Her white hair hung fine and long, straight down her to her waist.
“How old are you?”
“Well, when I rebirthed I was ten, but now I am twenty-two. I can’t tell you what a bore it is to be stuck in this body forever. Especially when my mind is that of an adult and I have adult…desires.” The girl looked longingly at Damien.
“Now, pet,” he said, “you are the best little sister a guy could have, but—”
Lisette withdrew her hand from his head and scowled. “I don’t need another older brother. I’ve told you that before. I had one once and he was enough. I don’t want a brother. I want a lover.” She turned her back on him to pout. He smiled warmly and looked over at her, pulling on her hair.
“Come on, don’t start this again. You know I love you, but not like that.” He pulled her into his lap, as she protested weakly, and gave her a great big hug and tickled her neck with his whiskers. Evaine grimaced. The scene was not normal. The little girl let out a peel of playful laughter despite herself and told him to stop. He did finally and she flung her arms around his neck in a hug. He hugged her with a genuine smile.
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