by L. D. Rose
“You’re infected,” he finally murmured, stroking her lower lip with his thumb. “With me.”
Her brow pinched. “Infected?”
Well. If that didn’t sound awkward, he didn’t know what did.
“Do you know anything about how hybrids were created?” he asked, recouping.
She shook her head. “I know you’re a dhampir and your kind has special abilities unlike vampires.”
“Right.” He cleared his throat, bracing himself. “Hybrids were genetically engineered with retroviruses—viruses that extract DNA from one living creature in order to pass it on to another. As human embryos, we were infected with vampire DNA by these viruses, hence the split. But we’ve all developed side effects from the process, both from the splicing of our DNA and the treatments afterward.”
He idly traced a pattern on the blanket, hoping he didn’t sound like an idiot since he didn’t entirely understand the concept himself. “Problem is, we still have these viruses floating around inside us. And we’ve recently discovered they might, in turn, infect vampires with our traits . . . including daywalking.”
Her beautiful face slackened with wonder. “By feeding on you?”
Dax nodded. He shouldn’t tell her this, shouldn’t reveal such classified information, but how else was he going to explain what happened?
She deserved to know.
“From what we understand, it’s only temporary, and it only affects rapidly-dividing cells, like your skin, bone marrow, and the lining of your gut. So it’s possible you can daywalk, channel our traits, and even eat human food for a while.”
Her eyes grew impossibly wider, glinting with something close to excitement. “Like an apple?”
His lips twitched, despite himself. “Yeah, potentially. Not all vampires acquire it though, and some may demonstrate certain abilities and not others. The only way to know for sure is to—”
“Keep feeding,” she finished, comprehension dawning on her features. “To maintain a steady supply.”
He nodded, dark memories swelling in his brain like a tumor, pushing on the backs of his retinas.
“How did you discover this?”
Blaze’s mutilated body hung against a filthy wall, crucified on a makeshift cross, a bucket of his blood under his soiled feet. Slowly, agonizingly, his brother lifted his head, his face skeletal and beat to shit, his eyelids sewn shut, air rasping from his lungs in a death rattle before he whimpered, “Dax?”
Dax snapped out of it, physically flinching from another macabre flashback. Her hand curled in his sweatshirt, steadying him, concern shimmering in her eyes.
Check yourself.
“My brother. He was hunted for it.”
As if summoned by the mention, Dax’s cell phone shrieked with Blaze’s song, buzzing on the nightstand nearby. Speak of the Devil. Dax flipped the phone over, meeting El Diablo’s pissed-off image.
“What, are your ears ringing?” he answered as he shifted off the bed, motioning for Cindy to keep quiet by pressing a finger to his lips.
“I’m outside.” Two thunderous words that booted him right in the nuts. “Come get me.”
And the line went dead.
Oh, fuck.
Dax spun to face her, and she must’ve seen the terror in his expression, because she sat up and asked, “What’s wrong?”
“My brother,” he said, stupefied. “He’s here.”
The fear that struck her face at that very moment almost severed his spine in half. “What?” She clambered to her feet, taking the blankets with her, a few of them crumpling to the floor. “What should I do? Where should I go?”
His mind struggled to grasp a thread of logic, to pluck a decent solution from the tense air around them. “Just . . .” He raised his hands in an attempt at reassurance, but the hammering of his heart propelled him into panic mode. “I’ll be right back.”
Pivoting, he bolted down the stairs, nearly stumbling on the last few steps as he dashed for the main entrance. Snatching his SIG off the dining table, he shoved the gun into the back of his waistband, hearing Blaze’s shitkickers thumping into the vestibule. Flinging open the condo door, Dax found his brother at the bottom of the outer stairwell, garbed in head-to-toe black gear and armed like a tank.
Blaze looked up from behind his black wraparounds and jerked a thumb at the scrawled outer door, the rotted wood still hanging off its hinges. “Go figure you wouldn’t heed the warning.”
“Is Val with you?” Dax blurted.
Blaze’s dark brows lowered behind his shades. “No, she’s chilling with Deron tonight. Why?”
His brother’s girlfriend, a former NYPD detective and recent addition to the Senary family, wouldn’t take well to Cindy. At all.
Then again, neither would Blaze.
Shit.
Dax stepped onto the top stair and shut the condo door behind him, propping his hands on the cracked sheetrock at either side of him. “Look, B. Now’s not a good time—”
“If you think I’m going to turn around and drive three hours back home, you’re out of your damn mind.” His brother’s sonorous bass rumbled with an edge of irritation as he started up the stairs. “What are you hiding up there, anyway?”
“Blaze.” Dax slapped the walls in a sudden burst of anger, directed at himself more than anything else.
His brother stilled halfway up the stairwell, concern tightening his harsh features and tugging his lips into a frown. “What the fuck is wrong with you?”
Dax plopped down at the top of the steps, shoving his hands through his damp hair as he blocked Blaze’s entry. Staring at the billowing dust motes in the stale air, he murmured, “I can’t let you in.”
Blaze gripped the railing with his big, gloved fist, the wood groaning in response. “Dax.” The word boomed in the space between them, swiping at those dust motes, a clear threat in his tone. “You look like hell. And you’re freaking me out. Tell me what’s going on.”
Dax’s mind whirred, his thoughts slipping from his grasp like sand between his fingers, whisking into the shitstorm around him. How would Blaze react? Would his brother try to hurt Cindy? Could Dax convince him to give her a chance, to trust him in this, to help him figure out what the fuck he was going to do with the leech that had crawled under his skin and crept into his traitorous heart?
“Dax.” Another warning, another step.
Pushing the heels of his palms into his eyes, Dax dragged his hands down his face, taking a deep, shaky breath in a useless attempt to calm down. Blaze removed his sunglasses, staring up at him with the opalescent eyes of a blind man, eyes that had witnessed far more than Dax could ever imagine.
Finally, Dax relented, his stomach churning like a cement mixer.
“I’ll show you. But you have to promise me one thing.”
Blaze abruptly reached out, his lips parting as he grabbed Dax’s jaw and turned his head to the side.
“Holy shit. Have you been bitten?”
Dax nodded. “Yeah. And she’s upstairs.”
When Blaze’s eyes flared with their red-orange sheen of alarm, there was no going back.
~ ~ ~
When Dax’s brother entered the master bedroom, Cindel ceased breathing.
Oh my God.
He was terrifying.
Big, monstrous, heavily tattooed, with ink snaking up his tawny neck and spilling down his scarred hands from beneath his clothing. His features were exotic but savage, carved in rough lines and sharp angles. When his fogged gaze landed on her, it flashed with a fiery patina, his hard jaw softening as he stilled by the entryway.
Pressing back against the headboard as if she could disappear through it, Cindel’s mouth went dry as she fastened her eyes on the threat, even while Dax placed himself between them.
Power radiated off the hybrid in leaps and bounds, hot and ferocious and barely tamed. Fire. The opposite of Dax, but in a sense, very much the same. Another chill shook her and her teeth chattered as she gathered the blankets tighter around her body.
It was over. She was doomed.
Craning his head to look at Dax with his eldritch, milky eyes, his brother spoke in a timbre that could’ve arose from the deepest, darkest parts of the Earth. “Are you fucking kidding me?”
Dax shifted from foot to foot, standing in the center of the twilight, angst and unease etched into his face. His throat worked as he leaned over, fisting a hand in the blanket draped over the window, his eyes connecting with hers in a silent warning. Fear skittered down her spine as he yanked the fleece away, brilliant sunlight slanting into the room and branding a perfect rectangular patch right over her bundled body.
Bright, warm light. Caressing heat. No pain. No burn.
Nothing.
His brother’s jaw dropped, shock and horror—and anger?—battling across his face, every muscle in his big body tense as he suddenly advanced on her. “Jesus fucking Christ—”
Dax lurched forward, hindering him. “Blaze!”
The hybrid sprang back with surprising grace, rearing on Dax. A wave of heat blasted through the room and Cindel inhaled sharply at the abrupt shift in temperature. “Do you realize what you’ve done?” he boomed, veering toward her again with menacing intent.
Dax snatched Blaze’s shoulder, wrenching him back. His brother’s fists clenched, the air blurring around his hands like steam, his arms flexing as if prepared to strike. Their eyes locked on each other, fiery opals and swirling sapphires, the tension in the room thick enough to cut, stifling enough to smother.
“Please, B,” Dax implored, as if all of this pained him. The hurt in his eyes tugged at her heart. “Don’t.”
Blaze stared him down, strong jaw ticking away, his gloved fists slowly uncurling. The steam fizzled, but he didn’t look at her, as if he couldn’t bring himself to do it. After a long, nerve-wracking moment, he murmured, “We need to talk. Alone. Outside. Now.”
Dax hesitantly let him go and tipped his head, indicating the bedroom door. Blaze grunted like an angry bull and stormed out, taking the heat with him as he barreled down the stairs.
Dax cast her an apologetic look, appearing ill and even paler than before. I’m sorry, he mouthed the words and all she could do was nod before he walked out and shut the door behind him with a gentle click.
Listening to his soft footsteps descend after the stampede of his brother’s, Cindel released her breath in a series of choppy gasps, an unexpected wave of tears stinging the backs of her eyes.
Blaze didn’t kill her.
But he would have. Without a doubt.
And when his subterranean voice erupted outside with a rage that shook her to the very core, she knew they had a long road ahead of them.
If they had a road at all.
THIRTEEN
Dax told him everything.
From the moment he set foot in Jamestown to Blaze’s last phone call, Dax’s words poured from him, gushing like a busted sewer pipe into a pristine river, fouling the crisp, spring air. Emotions warred on his brother’s face, anger, shock, pity, and maybe even understanding—or at least, Dax hoped.
Now Blaze paced back and forth, prowling around like a pissed-off panther in a cage, probably unsure of whether to execute Dax for his stupidity or accept what had happened and run with it.
At least he wasn’t smoking like a chimney.
“Rome is going to slaughter you.”
“I thought the same about you.” Dax leaned against the chipped porch post, hands shoved in his pockets. Dusk had arrived in a succession of crimson, violet, and blue hues. Darkness encroached, waiting to devour the sky. “But you didn’t.”
Blaze snorted as he ceased pacing, but he didn’t object. “Have you told anyone else?” His exposed eyes lifted to the windows. Since he’d met Val, his brother hadn’t been nearly as self-conscious about his appearance as he used to. “Kayne?”
Dax shook his head. “I think he sensed something was up, but no. You’re the first and the only one to know about her.”
Cursing softly, his brother’s gaze alighted on him, searching his face before settling squarely on the pulsing wound in his neck. “You need blood. Looks like she almost fucking exsanguinated you.”
The corner of Dax’s mouth curved, but it quickly faded. “I’m all out. Between the fights and, well . . .” He awkwardly scratched the back of his head. “I finished up my stash yesterday. I’d planned on coming back home tonight.”
Blaze’s brow creased. “And you were just going to take her to the compound with you?”
“I don’t know, man. I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing.”
His brother stepped forward. “She might be manipulating you. Using her compulsion to—”
Dax cut him off before Blaze could elicit one of his worst fears. “No, she isn’t. I’d feel it.”
“You don’t know that, not if she’s powerful.”
“She isn’t,” Dax repeated firmly as he pushed off the post, leveling with his brother. “She’s nothing to them. They used her, beat her, sold her to the highest bidder like some kind of prize fucking horse. There’s no power in that. You know it.” When he absorbed the impact of his own words, a pang of regret socked him in the chest and he added, “I know it,” in a hasty attempt to ease the blow.
Blaze’s expression shadowed, his throat working as an uncomfortable silence fell over them. He pulled a pack of Marlboros out from his back pocket, tapped them against his gloved palm, then pushed them into his pants again, as if thinking better of it. Dax could practically see the demons of his brother’s past looming over his buzzed head, wrangling like vipers in the black pits of his mind.
If anyone knew what it felt like to be powerless, it was Blaze.
Finally, his brother nodded, shaking off the phantoms. “Look, man, you know I trust you. You know I’ve got your back, no matter what, but this shit is going to hit the fan back home and it’s going to splatter. This can’t be some moment of weakness, bro. I get it, we all have them, but you’ve got to be one hundred percent sure about this . . . female. This can’t be some spur-of-the-moment fuck, you feel me?”
Anger lit off at the center of him, cranking Dax’s jaw up tight. “It isn’t. She isn’t. She’s not like the others, I swear it. I’ll prove it to you, to everyone.”
“All right.” Blaze pitched a sigh, sliding his wraparounds back on before raising his scarred hands in surrender. “All right. Then we need to figure out a plan.”
A twig snapped in the distance, loud as cracking bone in the dusky quiet. Both men went devastation-still, whipping their heads in the direction of the sound. They drew their guns simultaneously, aiming them into the tunnel of growing darkness beyond the complex.
“Have you run into anyone else here?” Blaze whispered.
Dax tensed his grip on his SIG. “Not once. Place was deserted when I got here.”
Blaze shifted closer as they both bent into a crouch. “Not anymore.”
And the night shattered with gunfire.
Muzzle flashes exploded in every direction as they dove for cover behind the wiry bushes and thin trees. Dax swore as he shot at the strobes, having only his nine on him and nothing else but his sweatshirt and pants. No vest, no ammo, no protection and the use of his traits was essentially null now that he was weakened from Cindy’s feeding. If he tried to channel his chi, he’d no doubt collapse, and if he stayed out here any longer without enough artillery, he was going to lose this battle, fast.
“Get inside,” Blaze roared as he fired a rapid sequence of slugs at their hidden attackers, likely perceiving their heat signatures with
his infrared vision. Grunts and yelps echoed in response, satisfaction rushing through Dax at the sounds of bullets hitting their targets. “We’re surrounded by dozens of them and we’ve got to get out of here, now.”
Spent shell casings flung in brass streaks as Dax popped off another few rounds. “What about you?”
His brother’s magazines emptied, and instead of reloading, Blaze pushed the Glocks into their holsters. “Don’t worry about me.” Another barrage of slugs jetted toward them, some snapping into trees and cedar siding while others kicked up debris in their wake. Yanking off his gloves, Blaze’s hands glowed like miniature suns, his eyes flaring behind his shades as heat steamed in the cool air around him. “I’ve got this. Get out of here, I’ll be right behind you!”
His brother bolted into the cave of darkness, setting off a stream of fire like the breath of a dragon.
Wasting no time, Dax darted into the condo while Blaze worked on burning the entire complex to the ground. He vaulted up the stairs in twos, praying Cindy hadn’t fled in the sudden frenzy. When he burst through the bedroom door, she pointed one of his SIGs at him, now fully clothed and hovering by the open window. With his heavy backpack slung over her shoulder, she held his rifle case in her free hand, the gauzy curtains flapping beside her like frantic ghosts.
His lips twitched with pride. Attagirl.
Recognizing him, she lowered the gun and breathed a shaky sigh of relief. She’d been watching the fiasco, careful not to reveal herself, and had collected his things in preparation.
Elated, he met her across the room, and she offered him the gun and his backpack. “Are you okay?” He gently brushed the nape of her neck and she nodded, appearing far too human with his blood pumping in her veins. She’d thrown her hair up in a short ponytail, wearing a thin down jacket, jeans, and boots.
“Are you?” she asked with a waver of trepidation in her voice.