“It’s over.” When my father didn’t respond, I tried again. “Dad, it’s over.”
“Oh.” My dad quit looking for Vampires and ceased moving. He took an audible breath. “Yes. Of course.”
I went to him, calmness making me familiarly numb. This was what happened after battle. The blissful nothingness. I strolled past, patting my father on the shoulder. I almost hoped he criticized me. Right now, it wouldn’t matter at all.
“Good work, boys.”
Chad responded. “Thanks, Dad.”
I wasn’t interested in his gratitude. Just whatever came next. The room was empty save for the dust of the undead. If I’d had time to think it through, I would have stolen some clothing off them before we got down to it. But I hadn’t been in that frame of mind.
Brynna appeared before me, quickly wiping tears from her eyes. The blissful numb faded immediately. “What’s wrong?”
She shook her head. “Nothing.”
“Obviously something is wrong. You’re crying.”
Brynna visibly swallowed. “You really are as kind as he said you were.”
“As who said I was?”
She groaned. “Listen…”
A loud rumbled started above our heads. I looked up in time to see plaster raining down. What in the ever-loving fuck? Brynna gasped. “Cave in.”
That was the last thing I heard. The world went black with a boom. Or maybe it was the other way around. Maybe it went boom first. I didn’t know. Just… nothing.
I woke to my name being repeated. Over and over. I forced my eyes open even though I really wanted to slip back into nothingness. But someone was calling me, so I had to wake. My ears rang, my throat was dry, and the world didn’t seem right. It tilted somehow.
Brynna kneeled next to me. We were… where were we? “What happened?”
It hurt to talk. Why did it feel like I’d swallowed concrete?
“The ceiling came down.” She pointed to her left. “Collapsed. I grabbed you. And I got us a little bit away. Unfortunately, we are trapped on all sides. The ceiling is partially down. It’s like we’re in a box.”
Well, that was incredibly bad news. Though dizzy, I managed to get to my knees. She and I were okay for now. I was pretty sure I was going to puke, but my need to vomit could wait a second. “The others?”
“I don’t know.” She looked down. “I only grabbed you. I’m sorry. I was next to you and…”
My throat tightened, but I wouldn’t let in thoughts of their deaths right now. I had no way to confirm they were gone, and most likely, they’d jumped away. We were good at that. I touched her arm. “This is four.”
She shook her head. “I don’t follow.”
I held up four fingers. “That’s how many times I’d be dead if not for you. Oh no, the last time with the scientists. Five.” I changed the number of fingers I held up.
She sat back on her rear. “I might not have been successful this time. We might yet die.”
If she wanted to be a downer, didn’t mean I had to follow her lead. “Well, I’ve lived well past my expiration date. I should be what? Two hundred? Three hundred years old now?”
I crawled over to the wall and leaned against it. Silence followed me. Then she finally said, “There’s something I should tell you.”
Something else? “What’s that, beautiful?”
She furrowed her brow. “Um, at some point, I’m going to have to feed.”
I pointed to my backpack. I still wore it. “We can share rations. When I’m clearer in the head, we’ll start brainstorming a way out. If we’re careful, we have days of food and water.”
Brynna looked down. “No, I mean, I’m going to need blood.”
I was slower than I should have been because it took me a second to follow what she said. “You’re not a Vampire anymore.” Had she hit her head?
She sighed. “They didn’t entirely cure me. There will be part of me that is always Vampire. I am going to have to consume blood. It doesn’t have to be human and even if it is, I don’t have to kill anyone. I eat and drink regular substances, too. But this is a factor. About once a week. I’m due soon.”
I had to fight to concentrate. I was most certainly concussed. But that didn’t matter right now. Brynna had to feed. “How soon?”
“Today.” She looked away. “I’m sorry.” She buried her face in her knees. It was harder to understand her, but she continued speaking. “The doctors initially said the need would stop. It hasn’t, but every month I hope. I’m sorry, Micah. This is all my fault.”
It would be easy to let her take the blame for this. I knew better than most how it was to be responsible for the world’s ills. Okay, maybe she could have not let her bloodlust go so long, but it wasn’t like she knew she was going to be in this mess.
“You didn’t make the ceiling come down. You didn’t get us caught in here. Nothing about this is your fault. In fact, you didn’t make yourself a mons—Vampire. Let’s go ahead and blame Isaac Icahn and everyone like him.”
She lifted her head. “I have a hard time reconciling you. In Chad’s memory, he saw you as so smart, kind, funny. He envied you your ease with people. Thought the world of you. He still does, obviously. I can see it. Just now, you were all those things. And yet earlier, you showed you can also be cruel. Who are you Micah Lyons?”
That was the question of the day. Who was I? “Right now I’m a guy with a throbbing headache.”
“Fair enough.” She put her head against her knees again.
I didn’t have to be an asshole, even with my headache. “Who am I? I’m a guy who was born in New Jersey. Down by the shore. A long time ago. I don’t even know if there is a beach anymore. I had my heads in the clouds. I was a lousy student. I was frozen when I was seventeen. Woke up still seventeen. Now I’m twenty-two. I don’t even know who I’d have been if none of this crap happened. If Chad has those nice thoughts about me, it’s because Chad is such a nice guy. He sees the best of everyone. I don’t.” I sighed. Wasn’t that the truth? “Who are you?”
Brynna raised her gaze. “Well, I was a Vampire. I…”
I raised my hand to stop her. “Before then. Who were you?”
I didn’t think I could stomach thoughts of her Vampire life right then. Waves of nausea rippled over me every time I moved. I was really going to vomit soon whether I liked it or not. We didn’t have to hurry along the process.
“I was a twenty-year-old woman attending Columbia as an undergraduate in New York City.”
I laughed. “So you’re a smartie. Go on.”
“I was.” She didn’t even sound the least bit modest about it. Owning her intelligence was seriously hot. Oh hell, what was wrong with me? I’d blame the concussion, but it’d started before the walls fell in. “I was studying comparative literature and society.”
I choked. “You weren’t planning on eating after you got out college?”
Her grin could have lit up the whole underground maze. “I was planning on teaching. I was going to get a Masters and a Ph.D.”
I couldn’t remember the last time I talked like this. “You liked school that much?”
From the little bit of fluorescent light creeping in through cracks in the downed ceiling, it became obvious that Brynna’s gaze grew distant. “I loved it. I understood it. There was never a time I couldn’t make sense of school. I loved writing papers. What authors said, what they meant, how they could be interpreted—it all seemed so important. Like the Allegory of the Cave. Plato.”
I shook my head. “I’m not smart. I don’t know what that is.”
I liked how discussing the subject animated her. “You were what? Seventeen when you were frozen? I don’t know if they do Plato in every high school. I attended a really challenging academy in New York City. We did college level work as juniors and seniors.”
She wasn’t smart… she was smart.
“A New York City girl.” They were like unattainable magical creatures to Jersey boys. So perfectly put
together, so sophisticated.
“I never even went to New Jersey before I was changed. Not even to go to the mall.”
I clasped at my heart. “Oh, the way you say mall with such derision. The malls in Jersey were epic. Things of beauty. You could have gotten a pretzel anytime you wanted.”
Her face fell. “Anyway, yeah. That’s who I was. I’m too old for you.”
I wasn’t going to dissuade her about my attraction. She’d have to be stupid to not realize my interest, considering I continued flirting with her while my head pounded so loudly it could have been a mariachi band playing a tune.
“Let’s do the math. I was frozen at seventeen. Woke up seventeen. I’ve aged. I’m twenty-two. You were turned at twenty. You were fixed a year ago when you conceivably started aging. So you’re twenty-one. And even if you were older, that’s hot.”
She laughed so hard she threw her head back. “I really like you, Micah. I think you’re more how Chad sees you than you see you.”
A dripping noise in the distance punctuated the silence. Somewhere, water made its way along the stone. Drip. Drip. It traveled through small spaces, never stopping, always finding the next space to fill until it was finally absorbed. As destructive as it was life saving.
I shouldn’t be left alone with my own thoughts. “Tell me more about Plato. I interrupted you. I might not be able to understand. I was bad at school.”
“School isn’t for everyone. That doesn’t mean you weren’t smart. In Chad’s memories, you were a pilot. You had learned to fly the second it was legal. You wanted to be in the military. Like your father.”
I rubbed my eyes. “Dad was an Army Ranger. I wanted to fly Navy planes. But yes, sort of. Plato. In the dumbest terms possible.”
She scooted over next to me. “Someone did a number on you, didn’t they?” Brynna’s dark hair fell down the front of her body. I wanted to run my fingers through it, but I didn’t. She’d been a Columbia undergraduate with a bright future ahead of her. All of my flirting aside, she’d be bored with a dolt like me soon enough. Losing her would hurt. I tried really hard to avoid emotional pain. Why look for it when there was so much freely given?
“Plato. He uses Socrates as a character and Socrates goes on to describe these people. They’ve been chained up their whole lives. They’re forced to look at the same wall, a blank one. They have a fire behind them and when objects are moved in front of the fire it casts shadows on the wall. They name them. The shadows are what those people know of life. Plato goes on to say in order to be educated, to be a philosopher as he would call it, is to escape your cave and see those shadows for what they are—falsehoods. Those people have no idea they should want to leave the cave, but when they do, they discover the fire. Yet, even in freedom, we are forever stuck knowing things through the lens by which we see them.”
Was such a thing possible? Could any of us actually ever really know the truth, or was our existence already shaped and therefore determined by where we sat in life? Deacon’s wife hadn’t known anything except for her small town of Geronimo until we arrived at her doorstep. We had accepted the truths Icahn gave us because we had no reason to doubt. And we’d never had any idea Vampires lived in memory and were sad.
Could I accept the new reality as it was, or was I going to be stuck in my cave?
“What are you thinking about?”
I blinked. I guessed I’d gone quiet for too long. Embarrassment never sat well with me. I smirked. “Nothing. What you were talking about, it’s all way above my head.”
She chewed on her lower lip. “Somehow, I don’t think so.”
“Then you’d be wrong.”
I expected her to snap at me. People usually did when I dismissed them or their opinions. Instead, she leaned her head on my shoulder. “Is this okay? I don’t have to touch you if you’d prefer.”
I liked it. “I’m going to close my eyes.”
“I don’t think you should. Isn’t that one of the concussion rules?”
She might have been right, but that wasn’t what my exhausted, nauseated self wanted to hear. “You know your almost degree in comparative literature that didn’t send you to medical school?”
“Grouchy when you’re hurt. Got it. Close your eyes. Fine by me. If you never wake up, at least they can’t say I killed you.”
I forced my eyes to stay open. “Fine. Passive-aggressive much?”
“I can guilt with the best of them.” She was silent for a second. “Thank you. I haven’t talked to anyone like this since I came back to myself. It was all medical, and abuse, and trying not to die. Then escaping. I’ve been alone. And… touching someone—hanging out with them. Thank you.”
I didn’t like her gratitude. I’d never been comfortable with simple thank yous, and Brynna doing it made me even less sure of myself. “Stop saying thank you. I haven’t done anything.”
“Okay, if you say so.” She gasped, covering her mouth and darting away from me.
I sat up. “What’s wrong?”
Tears streamed down her face. “It’s the need for blood. I have it now. I need it. I don’t know what to do. I’m…”
I held out my wrist. “If it won’t kill me, then take what you need.”
The second my words registered in her dark eyes, she swallowed hard. “You’re sure?”
“Well, it wouldn’t be my first choice of what to do, but yeah, let’s do it. You have to eat. I’m the only available source of it here. Have at it. My blood is your blood.”
As she’d done before, she moved so fast I could barely watch her. Brynna took my wrist in her hand. Fangs descended in her mouth. I was transfixed. It should be gross and horrifying, only it wasn’t. This was different than most Vampires. Her face was human. She was beautiful. There was a glow to her eyes that hadn’t been there before.
She brought my wrist to her mouth. Could she feel how fast my heart beat? My pulse raced in anticipation.
Brynna bit down, breaking the skin fast. I sucked in my breath. The slight pinch lasted only seconds, but no pain followed. She drank, and I closed my eyes. My cock hardened fast. Well, that was unexpected. Pleasure pushed through me. I moaned like I was deep inside of her. This felt personal, maybe more so than any sex I’d ever had.
She touched the side of my face, and I opened my lids to meet her gaze. There was heat in it. Was she turned on, too? Did this happen every time? Fuck, I didn’t want to know. I just wanted this. I wanted her.
I extended my neck, pointing to it with my free hand. “There instead. Please.”
It would be… closer.
She released my wrist, then slid closer until she pressed against me. Once. She licked my neck once. My hips lifted off the ground against her groin. Brynna moaned before she bit my neck, sucking on my blood. Yes, that was what I wanted. My head didn’t hurt. There was only pleasure. There was only Brynna.
I. Was. So. Fucking. Hard. How was I going to live through this? My cock throbbed in my pants. She pulled back, panting. “If I take any more, I’m going to hurt you.”
I rolled her under me, practically tearing at her shirt. “If you don’t want me, say so. I’m out of my mind with need for you, desire. Is it a blood thing?”
She nodded. “Yes, to wanting you. No, to a blood thing. Never this way before. Trust me.”
I did, which was so weird because I didn’t even know her at all yet. Fuck, I couldn’t think when I was this hard. Instead, we undressed each other, slowing down from the frantic need to touch and kiss. Brynna smiled at me, and suddenly I became twice the man I actually was. Did she like how I looked naked? Was I… good looking to her?
Her breasts were round and perfect. I held them in my hands, feeling the utter luckiness every bastard who ever got to do this with a woman should feel. Somewhere along the way, I’d forgotten how lucky I was I got to do this. And as it was, I couldn’t remember ever having done it before.
I kissed down her body until I was at her pussy, and she writhed beneath me. “I love f
oreplay, Micah, but now I just want you. Please. Fuck me like I mean something to you.”
You do. I needed to tell her, but words had gone away. Instead, I grabbed a condom from the bag next to me, somehow got it on with shaking hands, and pushed inside of her waiting warmth. I cried out, the sound mixing with hers. I kissed her, I had to.
In and out I moved until we both panted, and I could hardly breathe. She squeezed me between her legs, and I was done. Thankfully she was, too, because I couldn’t hold back. This was pleasure. This was… everything.
The world exploded between us. Or maybe it only felt like it.
Chapter 5
Lying on the ground shouldn’t have been comfortable, but I was too sated to care. Brynna rested against my side, her eyes closed. My neck throbbed, which was better than my head, and now that I thought about it, so did my wrist. I lifted my arm to look at the wound. It had closed up. No one would know she had bitten me, one time because I’d practically demanded it.
Brynna was out cold.
What in the hell had all of the madness been about?
I stared down at her. She was lovely, pale skin and dark lashes displayed so clearly through… How come the light shining through the cracks was so bright? So visible? And why hadn’t I thought of it before?
Well, because I was concussed and horny.
I eased her away from me, but she didn’t stir. Maybe giving into the bloodlust exhausted her. Or maybe I’d fucked her into oblivion. Oh, screw that, she’d fucked me into oblivion. I threw on my boxers and walked in the direction of the light. We weren’t in the pitch black. There was a fluorescent glow to the room like the stupid ones in all the hallways. Where was it coming from? Couldn’t just be the cracks.
I walked forward, my eyes on the ceiling. How had having sex with Brynna cured my concussion? I thought I might solve the light question more easily. I stopped as soon as the reason occurred to me. Several of the rocks above our heads were loose. That was bad in the sense that they might come down on us, but it was equally good news, since I could probably get us out of here doing the same thing.
Micah Page 5