by HELEN HARDT
She smiled. “I like the way you think.”
I considered Erin my equal, but that wasn’t why I suggested walking together. If she was in front of me, anything in our way would get to her first. If she was behind me, I wouldn’t be able to see her. Together was the only way.
I took her hand, so warm in mine, and together we ventured into the dark hallway. Were River and Uncle Brae still in the fighting pit? That seemed the logical place to start. I didn’t want to take Erin anywhere near that horrible place, but she was determined to stay by my side.
The thought warmed me.
She would always be by my side.
Once bonded, never broken.
Those words no longer angered me. Perhaps I’d heard them first down here, but I didn’t know their true meaning until Erin Hamilton had come into my life.
So random, it seemed, that she’d be a nurse on duty the night I broke into the University Hospital blood bank. But was it random at all? Was it fate? Destiny?
A blood bond?
The bond between us was so strong. Why had such bonding between humans and vampires ceased?
Evolution, I guessed. It was no longer needed.
But I needed it. Needed it like air. My bond to Erin went beyond love, beyond devotion, beyond anything conceivable in the universe.
It even went beyond the spiritual.
“I love you,” I said.
“I love you too, Dante.” She squeezed my hand. “Can you get us to the fighting pit?”
I hadn’t paid attention when I left the arena. My nose and my instinct had guided me to Erin. But I’d been here before.
I would remember.
“Yes. I can get us there.”
“How did you get out?”
I shook my head. “I…rose.”
“Huh?”
“We’re dropped into the pit. There’s no other way out. When your blood called to me, I got out the only way I could.”
“You levitated.”
“Yeah.”
“With River and your uncle just watching you?”
“I guess. I don’t think about anything else when you call me with your blood. It’s like a blind devotion, you know? I’m acting on pure instinct to get to you.”
“I’m sorry, Dante. I didn’t mean for you to leave them.”
“You needed me. That’s where I’m supposed to be. With you. Being there for you when you need me. The book wouldn’t have told you how to summon me if it weren’t necessary.”
“I get that. But still.”
“We’ll find them, baby, and we’ll get them out of here.”
She pointed to my pack. “The book still has plenty to tell us. Don’t forget that.”
“We can’t depend on the book,” I said. “It’s being pretty stingy with its contents.”
“It hasn’t let us down yet.”
I didn’t answer. I didn’t want to rain on her parade, but if it had told us what Bonneville’s weakness was, we’d be in much better shape.
Then something struck me like a lightning bolt.
Her weakness.
She thought she controlled me, but my strength had outgrown hers. I’d controlled her several times now.
Maybe that was her Achilles’ heel.
Maybe I was her Achilles’ heel.
She’d made me by forcing me to drink from her, by training me and strengthening me, by torturing me to bring out my rage and my darkness.
Darkness rising.
But the consequence was that I’d become more powerful than she was.
She’d placed her trust only in the science of vampires, in what the Texts told her about consuming vampire blood. But I… I knew there was more to the universe than pure science. Science had its place, but faith…
Faith was more important than science.
Faith and energy and love.
And the blood bond.
Her blind allegiance to science—the science behind the consumption of vampire blood—was a big part of her Achilles’ heel. She didn’t believe in ghosts. She didn’t believe in demons. She believed only what she could see.
And she’d seen darkness rising in me.
Indeed, darkness had risen in me, had become part of me. Perhaps it would have controlled me…if not for the blood bond with Erin.
This woman had saved me. Saved me from her. Saved me from the darkness.
Saved me from myself.
I didn’t for one minute think I’d figured out the secret of the Texts, but I knew I’d figured out something important. Something profound.
Something she hadn’t considered when formulating her hypothesis.
The blood bond.
It wasn’t an old wives’ tale, as she thought.
Had she read the Texts in their entirety? Did she know their secrets?
Maybe she did, but that didn’t matter. As a woman of science, anything she couldn’t explain she’d consider pure orthodoxy or dogma.
Now she would pay for her blind allegiance to pure science.
Dante…
I smiled.
Get in my head if you want, my queen. You no longer control me. I control you now.
Fine. I surrender to your greatness. I acquiesce. You may control me, but I still have power over you. I still own your uncle and your cousin. You will not find them here.
“You’re bluffing,” I said aloud.
“What?” Erin asked.
“Sorry, baby. Just talking to myself.”
“Oh. Okay.”
Maybe I am. Are you willing to take that chance?
I didn’t respond in my head or otherwise. I simply wiped her away. I could do that now. I had control.
If she still had power over me, I might be concerned. But I knew now the value that Braedon and River had to her. She wouldn’t harm them. Still, I needed to hurry. The thought of River going through even a fraction of what I’d gone through made me sick.
I let my body lead me. We’d been searching for a half hour or more when I finally came to the door I now could recall with certainty.
The door to the arena. This is how I got in. Inside was a long staircase leading upward, where fighters were dropped down into the arena.
It was locked, of course, but I picked it quickly with a bobby pin from Erin’s pack. “Come on.” I tugged on Erin’s hand and walked through the door.
“Ouch!” She fell back, landing with a thud on her behind.
“What is it baby?”
“I… It shocked me!”
“My father’s ashes— Oh.” The shield. I could get through with the fleur-de-lis pin tacked to my boxer briefs, but Erin…
“What?”
“The ashes will get you out of here, protect you from vampires meaning to do you harm. They don’t let you in.”
She couldn’t get through.
And I couldn’t leave her.
Where did that leave us?
“It’s okay,” she said. “Get in there. Find them and get them out of here.”
“I won’t leave you.”
“Dante, you have to. Nothing will happen to me. I’m too important to her. Well…at least my eggs are. I’m safe until she tries to take them.”
“No, absolutely no—”
A roar interrupted me. “Leave my father alone, you fucked-up son of a bitch!”
River.
“Did you hear that?” I asked Erin.
“No. What is it?”
“River. He’s yelling. They’re not in the pit anymore.” I walked back through the door and grabbed her hand. “Come on.”
Chapter Nine
Erin
Dante’s hand in mine warmed me and gave me comfort, though my skin was still prickled from the shock—or whatever it had been—that had kept me from entering the door that led to Dante’s fighting pit.
“Where are we going? Is River okay?”
He didn’t answer, just dragged me along the dark and dank hallways. I listened intently, trying to hear what he heard, but to no avail. I d
idn’t have vampire hearing.
Minutes later, we came to another wooden door. Dante smashed it open.
“You vile piece of garbage! God, your stench is unbearable!”
River’s voice. What was going on?
Dante raced into the room, and I tried to follow.
Zap!
Again, I could not. But I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. A masked man hovered over a table where a large—very large—man was tied down. He was attaching electrical probes to—
I clasped my hand over my mouth.
“Wh…” I cleared my throat, attempting to clear the nausea. “Wh-What kinds of things did you do to hurt him?”
“Did? Erin, I do it. I’m still doing it.”
“No!” I screamed. “Logan, stop it!”
“I knew I recognized that stench!” River said from somewhere else in the room.
I couldn’t see him, but he was obviously incapacitated or he’d be helping his father.
“It’s gotten worse since that day in the car,” River continued.
Logan was masked, but it was him. His shoulders shuddered slightly when I said his name, but he didn’t turn toward me.
Of course he didn’t. Because he was not Logan. He might share the same body, but this was the second personality, the result of his dissociative identity disorder.
This was a personality that could be manipulated.
So I would manipulate him now.
Dante stalked toward Logan. “You bastard,” he growled.
Logan’s eyes turned to circles outlined by the black mask.
“Dante, he doesn’t know what he’s doing,” I yelled from the doorway.
“The fuck he doesn’t,” River said. “He’s electrocuting my dad!”
Braedon—I assumed the muscular man on the other table was Braedon—said nothing. Didn’t move a muscle. Was he unconscious? Or simply resigned to his fate?
He was muscular and huge, as far as I could see, but Logan had called him a monster. Perhaps that was how this personality perceived him. Or more likely, Bonneville had convinced him Braedon was a monster.
“Logan,” I said. “Please. Stop this.”
Again he shuddered slightly at the name. Logan was in there somewhere. If only I knew the name of this personality, but I didn’t. Logan was my only shot.
First I had to deal with Dante.
“He doesn’t know what he’s doing,” I said again.
“Erin, with all due respect,” River said, “fuck off!”
Dante didn’t listen to me either. Instead, he bared his fangs, roared, picked Logan up, and tossed him out the doorway. I moved quickly to avoid a collision.
“Uncle Brae, are you all right?” Dante asked.
Braedon grunted.
“He’s had God knows how many volts of electricity jolted into him,” River said. “Of course he’s not okay.”
“He’ll live,” Dante said. “I did.”
Since I couldn’t get through the door anyway, I turned to Logan, who was crumpled on the hard floor in the hallway. “Hey. Logan.” I patted his cheek. “Wake up. It’s over.”
He shuddered again and then opened his eyes. “Erin?”
“Yeah, it’s me.”
“Was I…”
“Yeah, unfortunately. You were.”
“Shit. I’m sorry.”
“You need to stay in your right mind now. Where she can’t control you and make you hurt other people.”
“I don’t know why I do it.”
“I know you don’t. It’s another personality. Something happened in your life, and a certain part of you split off.”
“I’m a doctor, Erin. I know how it works.”
I resisted the urge to roll my eyes. Logan wasn’t the only physician in the world to think he was above a nurse. This was the first time I’d encountered this side of him down here, though.
I let it go. If my diagnosis was accurate, and this was an additional identity, Logan had most likely suffered a horrible trauma during childhood. Now was certainly not the time to delve into that.
“Easy,” I said. “Just breathe. Are you injured?”
“No. I think I’m okay.”
“Can you stand?”
“I’ll try.”
I rose and gave him my hand to help steady him. While I was sorry for any trauma he might have undergone, I found him truly fascinating. If I ever had the chance to go to medical school as I wished, I’d be studying psychiatry for sure.
He stumbled a little but got to his feet. A flash of gold caught my eye. On the inside of Logan’s black collar, barely noticeable, was a small lapel pin, identical to the one Dante found in Emilia’s apartment.
Before he could stop me, I grabbed him by the collar, took the pin, and attached it to the waistband of my leggings. Then I walked through the doorway into the room where Dante was.
“How is your uncle?” I asked, approaching.
“He’s okay. He’s been— How did you get in here?”
“Logan had a pin like yours. He’s a little out of it, so I took it. I figured I could do more good in here. Let me examine your uncle.”
Dante stepped aside. I didn’t have a stethoscope or thermometer, so I was limited, but I felt his forehead with my cheek. “He’s a little warm for a vampire.”
“Of course he is,” River said from the other table. “He’s just had high voltage pumped into him. Uh…and by the way. Could one of you release me please?”
“Yeah, sorry Riv.” Dante walked over to River.
I palpated Braedon’s lymph nodes. No swelling. Then his abdomen. He didn’t react, so I had to assume I wasn’t hurting him. “Can you hear me?”
He nodded slightly. His face was lacerated and his eyes bloodshot. He was indeed muscular. More muscular than Dante even. The muscles looked manufactured. He was definitely on steroids or something else that produced this effect.
“He’ll have a hard time talking,” Dante said. “Trust me. I know.”
I shivered.
Dante had been through this. He’d been subject to this kind of torture. I knew it, but looking at his uncle, tied down in this place, made it really and truly real.
“Let me unbind you.” Try as I might, though, I couldn’t. “Dante, I need your help when you’re done with River.”
“Almost there.”
I turned. River was rubbing his wrists.
“Did she do anything to you?” Dante asked him.
“No. Well, yeah. She forced me to watch that human stink bomb torture my father. That’s something I won’t soon forget.”
“I know, cuz. I know.”
“Ouch! What the hell?”
I turned at the sound of Logan’s voice. He was on the ground again.
“What is it?” I asked.
“I can’t get back in.”
“No, you can’t,” I said. “Which is just fine.”
“But I—”
“No, you don’t. It’s over, Logan. We’re getting you out of here, and you’re going to get the help you need.”
“She’ll kill me.”
“She’s rapidly losing her power,” I said. “Dante can control her.”
“Dante won’t help me.”
I looked to Dante. Indeed, the raging expression on his face didn’t indicate he had any interest in helping Logan.
“You’re damned lucky you’re not one of the goons who tortured me,” he said, snarling. “You’d be dog shit by now. In fact, you’d be dog shit for torturing my uncle, if not for Erin.”
“It’s not his fault, Dante. She’s exploiting him.”
“Yeah…whatever.”
I went back to Braedon to continue my examination. He was naked but for a pair of boxer briefs that stretched taut over his muscular glutes and thighs. “Whatever he’s on, we need to get him off it. He’s probably already infertile.”
“Which means she already has enough of his swimmers on ice,” River said, glaring. “That bitch is going down.”
“She could be centuries old,” River said.
“She could be,” Dante agreed, “but Erin and I believe she’s only about a hundred and fifty. She’s the woman whose fingerprints are on the little vodka bottle.”
“That explains how she glamoured an entire hospital,” River said. “She’s a fucking elder.”
“Zarah Le Sang. Dr. Blood,” I said, more to myself than anyone else. “The woman who could be her twin but is much older. It’s her. They’re one and the same.” I tapped my palm on my head. “It’s so obvious. Why didn’t I see it?”
“You had a few other things on your mind,” Dante said.
“Makes perfect sense,” River agreed.
“I wonder how many times she’s had to change her identity,” I said. “And why? Mrs. Moore said Dr. Le Sang saved her son. Plus, I’ve seen Bonneville save many lives in the ER. How can she be such a good physician yet put so little value on human life?” I shook my head. “I don’t understand. I’ll never understand.”
“She shouldn’t have had to change her name at all,” River said. “She could have just used her glamour to keep existing with her original name.”
“What are you getting at, Riv?” Dante asked.
“I’m saying that, if she changed her identity, she had a reason. We need to figure out what it was. It might be what takes her down.”
I continued to examine Braedon. Sure enough, several puncture wounds graced his muscular thighs. “She’s been feeding on him.”
“Fucking bitch,” River growled.
“Easy,” I said. “We don’t want her running in here.”
“Let her,” Dante said. “I’ll make short work of her.”
“Wait.” I held up a hand. “We need to keep her out of the way. There’s a lot more to do here.”
“What is more important than getting rid of her?”
“Finding the cryolab, for one. If she has your sperm or Braedon’s, we need to destroy it.”
“I don’t know,” River said. “Isn’t that morally wrong or something?”
“Destroying frozen sperm?” I said. “I’d say it’s no more morally wrong than you jacking off and letting that sperm die.”
“Yeah, Riv,” Dante said. “Jesus.”
