They’d been on the off part of that relationship, and since she was certainly not thinking about him tonight, they must still be in that off zone.
“Marilyn, I’m involved with someone. Okay? I’m not free. Please, stop. Just go.” I realized as I said it, I meant it. I was, at least at present, mated to Brynna, and I wasn’t at all interested in this extremely willing woman in front of me.
The air moved in the way it did whenever Brynna arrived anywhere. The slightest change in the atmosphere when she was near.
“I think he told you to go.” Her voice sounded low, different than I was used to hearing. She moved slowly, almost gliding. I knew that look. I’d seen it night after night with the Vampires.
I took a deep breath. She didn’t like Marilyn in here anymore than I did. The only difference was Brynna had fangs. I pushed the unwanted Marilyn behind me. “She was leaving.”
“Oh, I don’t think so.” Brynna tilted her head to the side. “She means to have you.”
I grabbed Marilyn with the wrong hand and hissed out a breath. Damn, I’d had less trouble dealing with being stabbed in the abdomen than remembering to not use my bad hand. “She can mean anything she wants. She’s leaving.”
I dragged-slash-helped Marilyn out of my tent before I whirled around to face Brynna. “She’s gone.”
She flared her nostrils. “Micah, I want to kill her. I want to drain her blood until her eyes go blank.”
Wow. Okay. “There’s no need. I get it. Whatever has happened here between us has made us attached. I’d want to kill a man for getting near you right now. You need to know nothing was going to happen, period. Until we can figure out how to get you separated from me so you can go on with your life, we’re both going to act like the taken people we are. Deal?”
She put her hands on her hips. “Micah, I think in this scenario, you are likely the one who is stuck. Margot was less than helpful. I know she can fix us like I know she can fix the other Vampires. Yet, she’s over there insisting to me she can’t.” Brynna looked down at the ground. “You’re in pain.”
“Aw now, honey, I’ve been in pain before.” I went for flirty. Hopefully, it would defuse some of her anger. A mad, out of control Brynna wasn’t going to be good for anyone. “And you don’t know me well enough yet. Trust me, former Vampire with Werewolf DNA, I still got the better end of this deal.”
She jumped me. I didn’t see it coming, and we both fell back on the bed. Heat rushed inside of me, and I was instantly hard. Brynna kissed me. The time for talking was gone.
I pulled her against my side tighter. She was awake, but weaker than I had known her, and considering she’d sampled my blood quite a bit, she should have been feeling stronger. “You okay?”
She nodded. “Sated.”
Good word choice. I’d take it. My hand was fixed. In fact, every ache in my body seemed to be gone. I yawned. “Do you suppose we can have sex without me being injured sometime?”
“How about in the morning? Can you manage to not get hurt between now and then?”
Yeah, I supposed I could. “Sure. Want to talk or sleep?”
She rolled her eyes at me. “As you are talking, I am probably not going to sleep.” She paused for a second. “Micah, I’m sorry about all of this. I was going to kill that girl. I am so glad you got her out of here when you did. And this is my fault. All of it. I was attracted to you. Obviously, everyone is. The difference being I bound you to me.”
“I’m not upset about it.” That didn’t make a lot of sense, but it was true. “Maybe it’s a mating thing. I feel pretty fine with things today.”
She shook her head. “That’s just your body getting adjusted to this new… thing between us. I can feel it, too. You didn’t choose it. I’m not going to be what you got stuck with. We’ll figure out how to get rid of this.”
I hated the idea of losing her. Still, she was probably right that my general lack of anger about this had to do with the fact we were now linked or whatever. “Well, I guess we’re going back down tomorrow to find out things from those scientists.”
“Sounds like a plan.” She drummed her fingers on me. “All of the scenes I’ve seen over the years in memories and my own minimal experience, I have to say this is the strangest post-coital conversation I’ve ever witnessed.”
I leaned up on my elbow. “So is it like the Borg?”
She blinked. “Star Trek?”
Had she watched it? I used to stay up all night, watching it on the Sci-Fi channel in reruns. “Yes.”
“I’ve seen it through others’ memories. Um, yes. I guess it’s like the Borg, sort of. It’s more like touches of every other Vampire’s memories eventually move through my mind. I can’t touch it like I used to. Only if it is specifically designated to me. Like they’re making me see on purpose. That’s what they did when you were in the Med Bay. It moved from them to others, but they were all trying to reach me. It used to be more universal.”
I wasn’t sure I’d ever understand, but I’d go with Borg. My limited intellect could only handle so much. “We’d never have known each other. If Icahn and the others didn’t take over the world. Isn’t that weird to think about.”
“Oh, we might have. I mean, eventually I’d have been in graduate school. You’d have come to New York City, maybe for Fleet Week. You’d have been in that uniform…”
I liked her imagery, so I let her tell me the fairy tale about how we might have met. It was better than listening to the sounds of the Werewolves outside.
Chapter 7
I woke up in the morning feeling better than I had in days. Brynna lived up to her promise and made love to me even though I wasn’t hurt. She sucked my blood from the spot on my neck we both liked, and I came inside of her, hard. I hadn’t used a condom with her, and while I wasn’t worried about protecting myself, the guilt of knowing I might have left her pregnant seeped into my general feeling of post-sex bliss.
I kissed her temple. “Brynna, we have totally taken no precautions. This is all on me. Do you want to go see Margot?”
She shook her head. “Not fertile. I haven’t had a period since I came back to myself and stopped wanting to kill everyone.”
Well, that was good. We took our time getting out of bed, and I watched as she dressed. Brynna was everything I loved about women. The curves. The long lines. The graceful movements. The way she was small yet strong.
I tugged on my shirt and had the benefit of seeing her blush at my admiration. We were heading back down to get to the scientists. This easy morning wouldn’t last long. I intended to enjoy every second of it.
We’d left the tent and were headed back to the underground entrance when Deacon’s shout stopped me from going any further. I turned to see my best friend and his wife running toward us.
“Do you need help? Lydia and I can sneak away.” Deacon panted. We all had to work on our cardio. This was getting ridiculous. Sometimes, we had to run for our lives.
Brynna went stiff beside me. I glanced at her and then Deacon. “No, you’re in charge now. You can’t go sneaking off.”
I smiled at Lydia. She had been just what Deacon always needed but hadn’t known he’d needed. “I think we’re okay. Lydia, have you met Brynna. Brynna, Lydia.”
My mate—and it was weird to think that—extended her hand, and Lydia shook it. “Hello,” Lydia remarked and Brynna returned. I didn’t know what was going on, but there was tension.
“Deacon,” Brynna finally said, “it’s so nice of you to offer to help us. I wouldn’t think you would want to be anywhere near me.”
Why? I turned to ask her when a memory hit me. It was what Brynna described. I suddenly picked up a vision—a memory—as though it floated through the air to reach me. I saw Deacon. He was a baby, yet I knew it was him. He rolled a truck to another toddler and laughed. It must have been Brynna’s eyes I viewed this through. She was so unbelievably sad. Bad things happened in the world. She couldn’t save anyone from the bloodlust when it came.
Inside her mind, she screamed at the top of her lungs.
I blinked, and I was back in my body. My heart raced. How did Brynna live with memories like that? How many did she hold on to with so much guilt? I turned to her, uncaring if Deacon and Lydia were present. “It’s not like you could control it.”
She visibly swallowed. “I wanted to. I wanted to die, okay? I’d have done anything not to be a Vampire.”
Deacon looked between us. “Look, since I’ve had time to sit with the idea you’re sick, that people who are Vampires are sick, I’ve had some time to consider none of it was any of your fault.”
“That’s very big of you, Deacon. I blame myself for a lot of it. See, the thing is, I don’t really remember becoming a Vampire. I wasn’t. Then I was. I have this vague recollection of news reports. I don’t know what happened to my family. They’re not in Vampire memories, so they’re dead not changed.”
I shook my head to Deacon. I wasn’t going to explain what she meant right then. She continued. “I was one of the beings that hurt all of you. There’s no making up for it. Even if I wasn’t really me during that time. I can remember it. I’m sorry.”
Lydia put her hand on Deacon’s arm. “You saying you’re sorry and giving us a sense of things is more than we expected. It’s okay, Brynna. You’re forgiven.”
“No.” She shook her head. “I never will be.”
Her pain was my own, and all I wanted was to get her away from it. “Thanks, guys. We’re going to go.”
How much could she blame herself? I wasn’t in her head. I couldn’t know how much she could have prevented, if anything. All I knew was the past was past. She was as much a victim in this as the rest of us.
I held her hand tightly, and we didn’t speak until we got to the hole. I stared at her. “What was it like to need to feed like that? The bloodlust?”
“All encompassing.” She didn’t hesitate. “It was like I was always lost in a wave of memories, they weren’t a bad place to be, and then you’re rushed back into your head. You have a few minutes of clarity, to know who you are, where you are, what you are, and what you’ve been doing in the time you’ve been lost to reality. Somehow, your body did things while you weren’t conscious, and then boom! The bloodlust hits and suddenly you have to get your hit of the blood, and it has to be the stuff with the addictive properties in it, that the scientists see to it that all humans have one way or another, and you’re running through the dark. Conscious, aware, and out of control.”
Well… didn’t that sound like a special kind of hell?
Chapter 8
We didn’t encounter anyone this time. Lights flashed on and off in rapid succession. A nagging headache clung behind my eyes. I didn’t care. We had to do this, and I was sick and tired of getting waylaid.
The scientists hung out in an area of the underground, that turned out to be quite a distance to travel. Brynna and I didn’t speak much, and I couldn’t say it was because I was lost in my own thoughts. The truth was there was so much to think about that I really didn’t find myself able to focus on anything. I’d get waves of clarity on a subject, and then boom, it was gone. I was mated… and then whatever I’d wanted to say would float right out of my head. Maybe it was exhaustion, or maybe there was simply nothing more to think about.
Brynna dropped my hand, and I almost snatched it back like a lunatic. Instead, I managed to resist the urge and kept walking. Seconds later, she linked our hands again. “I thought maybe you were getting tired of holding it.”
I tried not to smile and maybe looked deranged with the effort. “If I was sick of holding it, I’d let you know.”
“I… Do you think this is going to get worse? The need for each other? Or better? Oh, it doesn’t matter. We’re fixing it anyway.”
She tugged me in the direction she wanted to go, and I didn’t object. She knew our destination and the area, whereas I didn’t. Besides, her words irked me, and it was ridiculous. That was the thing with my long term issues, I had very little control when it came to dealing with them. In the old days, I could probably have used a good long dose of talk therapy. The sickest part of the whole thing—I recognized abandonment and feeling unwanted were huge triggers for me, and the knowledge didn’t free me at all.
“So when it comes to this mating with me, is it the mating you object to in general or being stuck with me specifically?” There. I’d asked the question in a nice, rational manner. I hadn’t yelled or insulted her. Go me.
Brynna stopped. She raised one eyebrow. It was kind of a sexy, angry look on her. “You can’t be serious.”
I didn’t follow her statement. “About what?”
“You can’t in any world want to be stuck here with me in this mating. You’re Micah Lyons. You don’t have one girl, you have hundreds.”
A muscle ticked in my jaw. It felt like a jolt of electricity moved from my cheek up my head. So much for my earlier success. “That’s what you think? That I’m going to just go fuck someone else? That’s what you think of me. Okay, good to know.”
She dropped my hand, which was good. I was about to tell her I was sick of holding it, which would be a damned lie, but I’d say it anyway. Forget my issue with lying. I’d live with the guilt.
“Micah, you’re not being reasonable. You don’t want to commit to me.”
I leaned over until our foreheads touched. “What’s clear to me is you don’t. That’s fine. We’ll get ourselves unmated, and you can get on with being holier than thou or whatever it is you do with your time.”
She gasped, and I left her behind as I stormed through the door into what had to be a working lab. All right, at last we were getting somewhere. There weren’t any humans around, which was both good and bad. We could search without having to fight anyone, but it also meant they weren’t actively using this area and, therefore, it could be a huge waste of time.
Brynna was suddenly right by my side. I’d almost gotten used to her moving like that. “Days ago, you were calling me a monster.”
“You asked me not to, and I said I wouldn’t anymore.” I walked over to an old looking computer. “They don’t seriously use this stuff? This tech was old when we were living in the correct timeline.”
She sighed loudly. “Are you going to just end this conversation?”
This was so typical. “You’d fit right in with my family. Criticize me, say shitty things, get angry when I respond and passive aggressive when I want to move on.”
She pointed her finger at me. “There is nothing about how I am feeling that is passive, Micah, and I am not your family. You would never have actively chosen this, and neither would I. So get over yourself.”
Yep, she’d fit right the fuck in. And if she was correct, too, then what else was new? We searched in silence. I pulled every file that said Vampire cure, and she managed to get the old computer working. As if to answer my much earlier statement, she talked about the computer. “You can’t keep massive tech working without infrastructure. Old computers proved sturdier than the newer stuff. Back when they made things not to break.”
I almost asked her how she knew. Then it hit me, she saw memories. Someone who knew this stuff had become a Vampire, and now she knew it, too.
I scowled. There was nothing I’d run across that said mating. I bet this stuff was old. I took the files and set them aside on a medical table, then headed into a second room.
After I flipped on the lights, I stopped abruptly. Across the room sat a cloning machine. Brynna had said there were a ton of them. I almost called to her and then rethought it. She was busy, and I was… raw. Even if I was being manipulated by the mating, the last thing I needed was another person in my life who’d prefer I wasn’t around.
I walked to the machine and stared at it. A green light indicated it was on and had a power source. I touched the cool metal, as if it might reveal its secrets to me. A sister to this device was the reason my brother lived and breathed. What might they have done with something like this back in th
e early days if they’d used it to help people instead of control them? Throat cancer? No problem, they’d grow you a new one and replace the one you had. Why hadn’t these geniuses with unfathomable minds done helpful things?
I wasn’t smart, and even I knew there had to be better purposes for this kind of innovation than what they’d done with it.
Behind the cloning machine was an empty tank that looked like it should have been filled with water, like at an aquarium. I tapped the glass.
I really was wasting time. We had to move on from here and find more useful stuff. I wasn’t cut out for this. Killing Vampires? Yes. Making sense of science? Not so much.
The cloning machine seemed harmless. I pressed the up button on the device to scan up. The monitor showed a jumble of numbers and letters. Twelve letters to be exact, written with small changes in each sequence. AAGCTAGCTAGC. What was this? I didn’t know, but I kept scanning through.
Brynna’s voice was tight. “Do you think it’s a good idea to be touching the cloning machine?”
I shrugged. “I’m not going to hit anything that could cause a problem. I’m only looking. None of it makes sense. Mostly letters, numbers here and there. I think this one is broken. When we broke the cloning machines Icahn was using, he had big tanks filled with water in the room. This one is empty.”
“Fair enough. I don’t know how to work it.” She strolled toward me. “None of the scientists who worked on this mess have ever been made Vampires.”
“And doesn’t that speak volumes to the bullshit of this entire thing.” I stepped away from the machine.
My body went cold, and I doubled over. I knew the sign. “Werewolf. More than one.”
She whirled around. “I don’t hear it.”
“Doesn’t matter. It’s here.”
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