by Kiersten Fay
“A favor from one of the Cortez clan is nothing to sniff at,” Lex replied.
“I’ve already experienced your annual masquerade, as well as the hottest shows and parties thrown each year. I want to experience something new, something I’m continually denied.”
“And what’s that?”
“I want a full night with that girl, Kenzi.”
Lex went quiet for a moment. “You know we don’t deal in that. Never have. Never will. If the girls are so inclined, they can be negotiated with one-on-one, but Kenzi has no need to sell herself, to you or to anyone else.”
“Yes, but you could make her more…amenable to the idea.”
Lex’s expression darkened, and Kasima suddenly felt nervous for Mr. Dixon. Rising to his feet, Lex dug his knuckles into Mr. Dixon’s desk and leaned forward. Mr. Dixon leaned back, eyes going wide.
When he spoke, there was something in Lex’s voice that Kasima had never heard before. “You will never speak of this subject to Kenzi. In fact, you will not speak to her at all unless she speaks to you first, and you will show her nothing but respect.”
Mr. Dixon nodded, but his gaze had gone slightly vacant.
Lex stood to his full height, looking disgusted. “You will also give Kasima the day off as requested, but with full pay.”
Again, Mr. Dixon nodded.
Brian shut off his phone, giving her a pointed look. Kasima didn’t know what to say. Lex had compelled Mr. Dixon, yet had denied it so effortlessly. Although, Mr. Dixon’s behavior had been deplorable, how could she trust Lex after this? He’d compelled Mr. Dixon, and it had looked too easy. Had he really never compelled her?
“You see,” Brain said, reading her expression. “You can’t know for sure, can you?”
No, she couldn’t.
The first explosion drew her from a restless sleep—the ground shook from the force. The second shipped terror all over her body. The blasts had come from outside.
In seconds, Brian was on his feet, shotgun in hand.
She yanked uselessly on her cuffs. “Undo me,” she whispered.
When lightning flared, she flinched thinking it was another bomb. The rain was falling even harder than before, slamming like a billion little drums on the roof.
Ignoring her, Brian tilted his head, listening. She did too. Had Lex found her? Or had some poor little critter just decorated the front of the building? What if Mack had returned? How many bombs had Brian planted?
Someone cried out in pain. Then came more yelling, from several men by the sounds.
Brian cocked his weapon. “They’re here.”
Through the gushing wind and pounding rain, she heard someone holler, “He’s badly injured! Get him out of here!”
Oh, God, had Lex been hurt in the blast? “This has gone too far, Brian. Let me go before anyone else gets hurt.”
“We can’t keep letting them win.”
“Them? Who are you talking about?”
“Vampires. They’ve already infiltrated our government. Our leaders are only figureheads now. They let us believe we still have some power, but the vampires make all the decisions. They take our jobs. Our women. We have to take back control.”
“You’ve never felt this way before. You’re using rhetoric from decades ago.”
“I’ve been interviewing veterans for an upcoming exposé. There’s more to it than we ever knew. So much more. The war isn’t over, on either side. There are humans who still want to fight. They’re getting organized.”
“We can’t go back to that. The wars nearly decimated the country, Brian.”
“Kasima!?” Lex yelled from some distance away. Relief flooded her at hearing his voice.
“I’m here!”
“Are you okay?” He couldn’t fake the concern in his voice.
“She’s fine!” Brian yelled, sounding offended. “No thanks to you.”
“He has a gun with illegal ammunition!” Kasima said.
Brian bared his teeth at her. “Goddammit, Kas.”
“Brian!” Another voice called. She thought it sounded like Cortez “Are there more bombs?”
Brian hesitated. “No.”
Kasima didn’t buy it. Apparently neither did Cortez. “Where are they?” After a silent moment, Cortez let out a string of expletives. “The whole place is wired.”
Several others cursed, Lex included.
“How could he know?” Brian muttered, beginning to pace.
Kasima suspected there was more to Cortez than merely being able to read people well. “You can’t win this, Brian.”
“Maybe not,” Brian’s gaze went vacant, “but I can take them all out with us. The entire nest.”
“What?”
He tapped the gun against his head, then fished something out of his back pocket. Was that a…detonator?
A razor’s edge of terror serrated her gut. “Oh, God, Brian. Don’t do this.”
As if he knew what was about to happen, Cortez hollered, “It’s going to blow! Get back!”
From outside came Lex’s agonized bellow.
Brian pressed the trigger.
28
A hot wave of solid air slammed into her, punching the breath from her lungs and pile-driving her into the ground. For a frightening moment, suffocation burned in her every cell, her vision dimming. Pain accompanied each desperate soot-filled gasp. More pain bloomed in her chest and there was a loud ringing in her ears, dampening all other noise. A metallic wetness coated her mouth, dripping down the back of her throat and threatening to fill her lungs.
Next to her, someone was coughing: Brian. He cursed as a great wind rushed in and swept away some of the dust and particles, revealing a massive chunk missing from one side of the mill.
She saw movement behind the smoke and ash. Bodies rushed in, climbing over dunes of burning debris. Brian fiddled with that detonator, turning it this way and that, slamming his thumb down on that button as if it might have malfunctioned. Frustrated, he threw it aside and raised his shotgun. She tried to scream, but could only gurgle painfully. Hot liquid dripped from the side of her mouth.
Another explosion had everyone ducking for cover. More debris took flight, football-sized missiles crashing all around.
The building let out an ominous groan. For a split second, everyone froze with a hive-mind-like alarm. The building was about to collapse on top of them.
Terror kick-dropped adrenaline through her bloodstream. She frantically eyed her cuffs and the metal baluster they were attached to. Bringing her leg up, she kicked at the bar with her heel. Only then did she notice the glass deeply embedded in her inner thigh. She could deal with it later. She kicked again, praying she could loosen the baluster.
Lex was still fighting the landscape to get to her when yet another explosion erupted to his left, shaking the earth and tossing bodies. She ducked her head, using her arms to shield against projectiles. Something sliced across her forearm.
Then, like a beast in its death throes, the building howled and screeched. Heavy metal beams broke free of the rafters. They slammed to the ground with stunning force, turning more fiery debris into killing weapons. She kicked that bar harder, no longer feeling the pain in her body, fueled by pure panic and adrenaline. Her lungs filled with liquid, and she gagged and coughed. Blood spurted from her mouth. Was she bleeding internally?
One last kick. The baluster snapped at one end, and she slipped the cuffs free just as all hell broke loose.
With a deafening shriek of metal on metal, the building listed to one side, like a capsizing ship ready to go under. His face twisted in a wild-eyed snarl, Brian lifted his gun, aiming for Lex, who was still several yards away and racing toward her. He wasn’t even looking at Brian, eyes trained only on her. Did he not hear her warning? Did he not know the danger?
The gun went off. Lex’s right shoulder reared back, the bullet ripping a gaping wound in his flesh, but he kept coming. Brian aimed again…straight at his skull!
“No!” She push
ed off the ground, slamming her shoulder into Brian’s gut. They both crashed to the ground. Once again, she was lacerated by pain, struggling for air. Part of the roof above torpedoed into the ground right next to her head. The force of the landing shot tiny rocks at the side of her face. She coughed and sputtered. Brian scrambled for his gun.
He would never stop.
Mustering the last of her strength, she yanked the glass from her leg and slammed the shard into Brian’s jugular.
He scratched at his throat, eyes stretched wide in panic. With the mix of her blood and his, the shard had become too slippery for him to grasp, and his struggle was rendered useless. She saw in his eyes the moment he realized he was about to die.
Lex reached her then, grabbing Brian by the scruff and tossing him aside like a rag doll. Then he knelt beside her. Haloed by an orange glow, sparks dancing behind him, his expression was a mask of misery. She could only imagine how she looked. Instinctively, she knew that shard of glass she’d pulled from her thigh had sliced a major artery. That same shard had sliced a deep gash in her palm when used it to stab Brian. She was losing too much blood too fast. Already she was growing chilled in spite of the raging fires all around.
As exhausted as she was, she managed to raise a shaky hand to his face and gurgle, “Love you.” Strength sapped, her arm dropped, leaving a swatch of red along his cheek.
“Don’t you dare say goodbye. Don’t you dare leave me!”
But he was the one leaving, moving away from her, farther and farther toward the end of an ever-darkening tunnel. “Love you,” she repeated, before her vision turned dark.
A steady percussion of falling debris boomed nearby, vibrating in her bones.
Then she was floating, moving, a new kind of agony radiating through her. She was a live-wire of pure suffering, her mind screaming for death even as her lungs stubbornly fought to purge thick, sticky fluid so she could take just one more breath. Yet, after every harrowing inhalation, more fluid rushed in.
“Hold on, love. Hold on for me.”
For Lex, she would try, but already she felt herself slipping away.
He called out for Cortez, his voice sounding so desperate she wanted to weep for him. Through bleary eyes, she could see his heart was breaking. He’d truly fallen in love with her. Now he was about to lose her.
With her last thought, she regretted every tender moment, every heated kiss they shared, because once she was gone, every one of them would be a festering scar on his memory, a medley of wounds he would carry with him forever.
29
A hushed conversation echoed as if from beyond a veil of water, drawing Kasima to the very surface of her subconscious.
“…past the worst of it,” a man said. “Her wounds are finally beginning to heal.”
There was something wrong with her body, but she couldn’t tell what it was.
“Are you sure you did enough?” This second voice was familiar and seemed to vibrate through her. She thought she felt strong arms around her.
“Do not worry. The change is imminent.”
There was silence for a moment. “I know you vowed never to turn another vampire. You made the exception for Naia, saving her brother, and now for me. How can I ever repay you for this?”
“Naia is everything to me. She is my soulmate. My heart made flesh. For her, there is nothing I would not do. And without her…well, there would be no life without her.” There was a slight pause with that. “Naia is to me everything that Kasima is to you. I know you have realized this.”
“Mm,” came a guttural response.
“Had you lost her, we would have lost you, and I plan to lose no more of my family. If you must repay me, do it by living a long and happy life.”
She must have made a sound when a sharp current snapped along her nerves.
An anguished voice moaned, “She’s in pain. This is my fault.”
After a moment, Kasima’s head swam, every part of her going blissfully numb. Was she on a morphine drip? Her body relaxed as her mind began to dim.
“There. Now she should sleep for a while. At least until the process begins.”
“Thank you.” The voices began to grow distant. “How is Dane doing?”
“Healing well. Almost back to his usual colorful self.”
“Meaning he’s back to being a pain in the ass.”
The last thing she heard was two endearing chuckles before she succumbed to unconsciousness. For how long, she didn’t know, but at some point, the morphine must have run out, because she registered a terrible burning sensation. She feared half her body had been fried away by the blast.
The pain only grew worse.
It was as if someone poured concentrated acid straight into her bloodstream, turning each vein into flowing shards of razor-sharp glass. The terrible sensation yanked her violently to the surface of consciousness. She heard a guttural wail and realized the sound had been ripped from her own lungs. Her muscles twisted and strained, contorting uselessly against the torture. She tried to open her eyes, to see what was happening to her, but the brightness burned her retinas, and she was forced to keep them tightly closed. Then, all at once, her body seemed to catch fire, and she screamed.
Someone was nearby, muttering in her ear. “I’m here. I’ve got you. It will end soon. I love you.”
She wanted to focus on those beautiful tender words, and to the sweet voice that offered them, to hold him close and never let him go, but the unending torment made it impossible. It seemed to go on for hours and hours. She felt as if she was still in the mill, burning in the aftermath. Her charred husk clinging to life when death would be so much easier.
“Don’t say that,” a voice muttered. Had she spoken aloud? Yes, she realized. She was begging for mercy. For death.
On and on her suffering continued. Hours? Days? Weeks? She could only guess at the passing of time.
After what seemed like eons, she began to regain other sensations. She managed to decipher she was, in fact, not at the mill. She wasn’t burning on a pyre of ash, though her every nerve ending might beg to differ. She was in a nondescript room. Though the lights had been dimmed, she couldn’t open her eyes long enough to survey her surroundings more than that.
When the fire within blazed even hotter, and the agony grew excruciating, she realized it was Lex who murmured in her ear and stroked her hair. He was with her. Watching over her. Unable to help, he was suffering alongside her.
At last, she understood what was happening.
Her wounds had been too extensive. She’d been on the verge of death. To save her, Cortez must have agreed to turn her.
She was experiencing the traumatic change from human to vampire. It was so much worse than she had ever imagined. It was like being dropped straight into hellfire with no way out.
More acid-fire assaulted her, eating away at her organs. She wanted to curl in on herself, but feared moving. Her bones, brittle as they felt, might shatter.
All the while, Lex held her, comforted her with his voice, telling her it would be over soon.
She must have passed out at some point, because when she came to again, still burning, Lex and Cortez were in the midst of another conversation. She struggled to keep quiet and not interrupt. Listening to them speak distracted her from the pain.
“…has a natural intuition, one she may rarely have tapped into, if ever. I caught something of it the day of my wedding. As I read her mind, it was almost as if she sensed it. I felt like she nearly saw into me as I did her.”
“You think she might read minds one day?” Those strong arms tightened around her. Read minds. Was that what Cortez did?
“It’s hard to say. We cannot predict how her gifts could manifest, if at all. Many of you have exhibited no extraordinary gifts thus far. But I inherited my ability from my sire, and Marco inherited it from me.”
After a while, Kasima figured they were finished talking, but then Lex said, “You were so selective with me. You made me wait years,
made me prove myself again and again. I never asked you why?”
There came a soft chuckle. “I never needed you to prove yourself. You may not believe this, but I had decided to change you the very first day I met you, little shit that you were.”
“Then why not change me that day? I know you could have.”
“First, you were far too young. Second, you didn’t know what you wanted. To die a human or to live as a vampire. For someone at the edge of death, it might seem like the only option, but it’s still a big decision.” —pause— “It’s a decision she never got to make.” He sounded regretful over that, almost tormented. “Twice now I have turned an individual without their approval. Perhaps it is time I make amends with my own sire.”
Had Cortez been turned against his will?
Lex said, “You wanted me to have the choice.”
“I didn’t want your illness to be the deciding factor for you, so I did everything in my power to make you healthy. Once you were, I simply awaited your decision.”
“So the day I came and demanded to be changed…?”
“It was all I needed to hear.”
Silence. Then came laughter, and Kasima could almost smile through the pain. When their humor died down, Lex asked, “So what made you decide you would change me? That first day?”
“I looked into the mind of a child and was surprised to find a wise man buried in there. There was anger, yes, but no fear of death. No self-pity for your tragic life. Only acceptance. And the love you had for your parents. You wished only to spare them the pain of watching their only child die. I saw a man who loves very deeply,” Cortez told him. “That is a gift not many possess.”
Once more, Kasima felt time slipping away. Her pain now came in erratic spurts rather than hideous gushes. But then a new kind of agony developed: a horrible dryness in her throat and a terrible hunger. No a thirst. A ravenous thirst. The kind that only a man who’d spent weeks scouring the desert for water might understand.
