by L E Royal
“You wanted someone to work beside her, to take some of the weight. I don’t want to work with her, I want to replace her.”
He must have liked my words as his eyes darkened and he leaned forward ever so slightly, listening.
“I don’t care about the Government, or the bunker, or you, but I will do what you ask, and I’ll do it better than she ever has. You need an insurance policy—well, she’s mine, she lives, she will stay quiet, and we will all get on with our new lives. For Scarlett, that will be as my pet.”
I spat the last words, a smile I was sure was terrifying twisting onto my mouth, as I realized she was inside my head, and she was directing.
“All my life I was broken, and now, I’m ready to break. You can teach me.”
That line was all my own, and he nodded, though something in his expression told me he had not quite swallowed it, yet.
“I like you, Rayne, I like what we could accomplish together. You have an affinity for darkness; you fell in love with my darkest creation after all. I believe you could fall in love with it all by itself, but first, a test, to be sure we are on the same page.”
I lifted my chin at Scarlett’s bidding. The fight was slowly leaving me, but buoyed by my distraction, maybe inspired by my plan, she was with me again, pushing me through this, forcing me to believe just a little longer that somehow, even with her broken and bleeding on the kitchen floor, we could still win.
I watched as she yanked the knife out of her body and out of the wood, with a gargantuan effort. The pain I felt for the flash of time she lost control sent bile spilling scolding up my throat and into my mouth, and I was scared I would vomit.
She slid down the cabinet, leaving a bloody trail behind her, crying softly.
“Pathetic.”
Wilfred hissed the word, his attention turning back to me.
“If we are going to do this, prove something to me.”
Scarlett was crying still, but I could feel her will inside my head, holding me in place, fortifying me when I was ready to shatter.
“If you are to obey me let’s begin with this. Take your pretty little gun and shoot Scarlett, now.”
I balked, bidding Scarlett to take the reins because I had run as far as I could go, ridden this bluff all the way to its end, and I couldn’t go any further.
I spun around, and pulled the trigger, stumbling back two steps from the recoil before Scarlett was hissing in pain.
I tried to drop the gun, desperate, frenzied, frantic, panicking so hard I was struggling to breathe. She held me still with iron focus, my face impassive and the gun held tight in my hands.
She was inside me, and I was powerless to fight. I couldn’t look away from Wilfred’s dark eyes. They held me, enchanted. I couldn’t even check to see where the bullet had hit her.
“Welcome to the family, Rayne.”
I slicked my tongue across my lips and smiled, though inside I was screaming.
“Thank you, Father.”
I lowered the gun and let it fall to the ground with a clatter. We stepped closer to each other. I was unsure if we were going to embrace, or if he was going to break my neck right then and there.
His eyes were obsidian, his breath was cool on my face, and as he reached for my throat, I closed my eyes.
The minute Scarlett’s will released me, I flopped, falling back onto the floor, landing hard on my backside, a whoosh and a thud. I looked up to see Scarlett with the butcher knife. Blood rained down over me, stinging my eyes and staining my lips. I wiped it away as more fell down, a bloody crimson tide as she sawed off his head.
Her broken arm hung bizarrely, her legs wrapped around his waist as he bucked and jerked and tried to dislodge her. When he fell forward we were at eye level, and then his head was gone.
I screamed and screamed, the edges of my vision already spilling into black when she crawled off him and descended on me.
“You are mine.” She was growling, hissing, still crazy, covered in blood. She half crawled half dragged herself atop me, and bit me hard, harder than she ever had. Tears spilled down my cheeks, but with her mouth around my throat I was powerless to move.
She was too dark. I tried to push her off, but she pinned me easily, even broken as she was. The wound from her shoulder dripped onto my chest, coating me in a cool, thick, sticky liquid that for once held no appeal for me. She scared me in that moment more than she ever had.
“Scarlett, stop… Stop… Please…”
She was too far gone, I could feel it pouring off her like smog. She was too hurt, too broken, too deep into a place in her psyche where even I couldn’t bring her back. I cried, truly, genuinely terrified of her for the first time. She had lost herself, and she was going to kill me.
“Scarlett!”
Another voice joined mine and then another. I saw the flash of feet passing by my head and then they were trying to haul her off me—a snarling, spitting, growling mess, eyes wild and blood matted into her dark hair. It hurt when they pulled. She clung tighter, bit down harder, and when she finally let me go, I was dizzy and sick and too lost to scream.
My vision swam but I could see Camilla holding Scarlett tight. Jade appeared in front of me.
“She needs blood to heal, Jade, now.”
Camilla’s voice was urgent, and Jade fumbled.
I tried to open my mouth to tell her I was fine, but I couldn’t move, realizing she was the only thing holding me up.
Scarlett roared and Cami yelled back.
“You’re going to kill her, you fucking idiot. You’re going to kill her, Scarlett.”
Jade was busy trying to position herself so that I could bite her neck, my own neck too limp, my head rolling to the side when my muscles no longer had the strength to hold it up. I watched Camilla press her fingers deeper into the wound in Scarlett’s shoulder, the only reason she was able to hold her.
“Scarlett, stop, come back to us. Fight, for God’s sake.”
Jade’s neck bumped my lips, her dark hair tickling my cheek.
“Go ahead.”
It was all-wrong, and I struggled to move away from her, wanting to keep my eyes on them instead. The darkness wafting off Scarlett made me irritable and I knew I would shove Jade off me if I could.
“Cami, she won’t…”
“You have to cut yourself… Scarlett, please, come on, please, she needs you, she is dying. Scarlett, do you understand me? She’s honest to God dying.”
There was a thump and another and then Scarlett was standing over me again. When Jade’s cool weight left my back to be replaced by strong arms around me, for the first time since she tried to say goodbye to me, I could breathe.
“Princess?”
She studied me with frantic eyes, and I watched sharp teeth rip open the skin on her wrist, fascinated. She hissed her pain when I grabbed her broken arm but said nothing. Cool liquid rust filled my mouth, slicked through my insides, coating me, fixing me, replacing everything she had taken, and I took it back, greedily.
I drank until I couldn’t force myself to swallow more, but still I clutched her arm to my mouth, enjoying the drip of her blood onto my tongue, the relief, the contentment she was feeding me.
“Scarlett, are you okay?”
Jade’s voice was quiet, hesitant, and I watched her hover beside us. Suddenly aware that Scarlett was still hurt, even with the huge volume of my blood she’d taken, I reluctantly let her arm go.
I groped around my neck while the others watched. I found the bloody mangled bite, gathered some of the blood on my fingers and pressed them up to her ruined shoulder. She had to guide my hand after I missed the first time. Jade screamed when she jerked her arm hard and it reset, and my stomach rolled as she dug the bullet out of her leg.
After her wrist was pressed to my neck and neither of us were bleeding anymore, the room stayed silent around us for a long time.
“I almost killed you…”
I surged up and kissed her, tired but strong again with
her blood inside me.
“You saved me.”
I forgot about our audience, lost in the feedback loop we shared.
“You saved me first.”
She kissed me desperately like it was the first time and the last time, and I clung to her tight.
Her fingers were rough in my hair. I was debating taking off my shirt, wanting to feel her blood-encrusted skin on mine, when someone finally cleared their throat. I growled, realizing what I had done when Scarlett snickered. Camilla sighed.
“Not that you two don’t deserve this, but there’s a dead body in the kitchen, a dead very important Delta vampire body. Probably ought to fix that first?”
Chapter Fourteen
THE WALK TO the bunker felt like a death march, and like a parade. Crowds in the square parted for us, eyes followed us, Scarlett and I still covered in blood, her leather jacket torn through from the knife, her dress ruined by a small bullet hole in the thigh and soaked dark with blood.
Jade and Camilla trailed along behind us, hands clasped together. It hadn’t taken us long to convince Scarlett that we were going with her. I wasn’t sure if excitement or exhaustion made her agree, but as we marched through the square, her anticipation was making me giddy. In her mind the long coming battle was fought, and won, and she was ready to be crowned queen.
After the sweetness of our reunion, of the realization that we had survived, the reality that she had almost killed me had crashed around me hard. The memory of her darkness, and the way she had totally lost herself to it, was salient. I resolved to talk to her about it later, but as we entered the bunker, I feared what was to come if she succeeded in overthrowing the Government and becoming the ruler of the city, and I feared what would come if she failed.
The sack on her back bounced, thrown together haphazardly from Jade’s light gray bedsheets. They dripped a bloody crimson and I walked over the trail uncaring. The cargo Scarlett carried was no secret to anyone who dared to look.
She reached back for me and took my hand in her cold one, pulling me closer to her as we walked deeper into the structure that had been my home those first days or weeks in Vires. Guards watched us as we passed but no one interfered, and we descended deeper, the air taking on the same heaviness that still haunted my dreams.
We entered the council chamber without knocking, the click of Scarlett’s heels ringing us in, the pad of our boots and sneakers following behind her.
Five hooded figures greeted us, sitting in their places across the platform. My cheek burned at the memory of the last time I was here. Scarlett dumped the sheet onto the floor with a thud. She yanked it open without preamble, leaving the contents on display, before she stepped back, close to me.
“The game’s over. Take down your hoods and let’s put an end to this sham…”
There was a flurry of motion and I jumped back, finding safety huddled close to Camilla and Jade. When the room stilled again two of the figures were on the floor, presumably dead. Scarlett wiped fresh blood from her mouth. It dripped, black as tar in the dim light.
“And you three?”
One stood, throwing back his hood.
“Good to see you, Scarlett. I had wondered when you’d finally overthrow him.”
That voice, the day in the market, the man who was so familiar and the time in the bunker when he had put the long scar across my cheek. She remembered it too, apparently, because she lunged forward. Luke screamed and when she stepped back, his right hand hung limply in her left, detached. His ragged breaths filled the silence.
“Never touch what’s mine.”
She was a goddess, a dictator, giving her commands, and I felt a horrible sense of foreboding for what lay ahead now it seemed she would indeed succeed in taking control of the city.
“Now. Will you join me or be the next to die?”
He bowed low in front of her, though resentment still burned in his eyes as he cradled his gushing wrist to his chest.
“It would be my privilege.”
I tried to ignore the satisfaction, the thrill wafting off her at his agreement.
“And then there were two…”
Another hood was thrown back and I recognized the scientist who had conducted the tests on me the last time I was here.
“River.”
“Scarlett.”
They appraised each other for a moment.
“We were figureheads, nothing more. Your father ran everything, he consulted us for some things. For example, I made many of the decisions for the city’s agriculture and tried to advise him as best I could on matters of science.”
She was cold, logical and rational but not unkind. Honestly, I was sort of relieved this was going so well, and relieved that it seemed Scarlett would have help from people who knew about keeping Vires running day to day.
“Would you do the same for me? I assure you, I’m a much better listener.”
The scientist nodded, and they exchanged a look I couldn’t understand, before the woman took her seat.
“And you?”
The final figure lowered their hood, and the betrayal Scarlett felt shot through me.
Shikara held her eyes, unblinking, and Scarlett faltered for the very first time.
“It’s not what you think.”
Scarlett swallowed and any trace of the emotion that had played on her face at the reveal was gone.
“It rarely is, my friend. We have a lot to discuss, but for now, will you pledge yourself to my cause, or will you die for his?”
Shikara laughed, a dry, humorless sound.
“I have loathed your father for years. I will join you, and perhaps one day you will come to understand that I haven’t betrayed you as you believe now.”
Scarlett tipped her head, her eyes still wary.
“Vires is mine. My family will be protected at all costs. Disobey me, try to cheat me or move against me and you will die. Help me as I learn how the city is run, work with me, and you will be rewarded.”
Luke was the first to recover from that space.
“Perhaps an announcement then, if I may suggest such a thing?”
He was still clutching his arm to his chest, and I hated how he simpered, catering to Scarlett in a way I felt stroking her ego. Camilla and Jade were silent beside me and I wondered if they shared in my dread of what this would mean for her.
“Perhaps.” She neither agreed nor contested. “But first, how long have you been the council, how long has my father been running the Government?”
Shikara was the one to answer her.
“Since before you were born. The five of us, three now, were his original placeholders. Before us there was an impartial council, they were old and tired, and as Wilfred dismantled them, we took their places. He planned everything, the icing on the cake being raising you as the ultimate enforcer for his law.”
I noticed that Scarlett still couldn’t look her in the eye.
“And the guards, will they obey me?”
Shikara nodded, dark hair brushing her elbows.
“They are duty bound to the bunker, most of them leveraged one way or another. Most of them want to keep the lifestyle their work affords them. You shouldn’t have a problem.”
Scarlett glanced back at me. The ghost of her longing kissed my skin before she spoke again.
“Call four of the best and have them escort my family home. We have much to discuss.”
Luke flitted forward to talk with Scarlett, stealing her attention just as I was about to storm over and tell her we were not leaving her here.
“Rayne…” Camilla pulled me back. “We need to let her do this. They need to respect her, and she still needs to set the board, or this could all still play out horribly. We need to go home, for now.”
I heard Scarlett giving her permission before Luke disappeared to go feed and heal, taking his severed hand with him. Morosely, I wondered if it could be reattached. Shikara too disappeared after excusing herself.
“Scarlett…”
There was so much unresolved between us, so much left to work through, but as much as I hated it, Camilla’s words made sense. She had to get things under control here.
“Come home tonight?”
She tipped her head, the only concession I was going to get, and anger bubbled beneath my skin. I ached to kiss her hard just to let her feel it, to remind her that I wasn’t going to lose her to the dark.
She crossed the space between us in two long strides, and her lips crashed into mine. Realizing I had compelled her I tried my best to undo it. Even when I was counting frantically in my head to distract myself from compelling her, she was still kissing me, her lips bruising. When she pulled away my body burned. I could taste the promise of more on her lips. She was dark but she was still mine, for now.
Camilla cleared her throat, and when I looked to my left, both the other vampires were staring at us, Jade’s cheeks beet red.
“Wait here for the guards?”
Her voice was rough with something that did nothing to quell the fire burning inside me.
“Okay…”
She moved back to the scientist who had watched our entire exchange with eager eyes. They talked quietly about something I couldn’t hear before they were moving away, leaving Jade, Camilla, and me alone in the room with the strange stage and Wilfred Pearce’s beheaded body.
“I hate this place. Do you think she’s going to be okay?” Jade asked.
Cami shook her head, telling her silently that here was not the place to talk. Seconds later, the thud of boots announced the arrival of the guards.
“Ma’am?”
They addressed Camilla who treated them as nothing more than her staff and asked them to lead the way. As we walked, flanked on all sides by armed vampires dressed in black, I was glad I had upgraded from the bag-over-the-head treatment I had enjoyed from them in the past.
The walk back to Pearce Tower felt long, much longer than the victory march to the bunker had been. With every step between Scarlett and me, I grew tired, and I ached for her more.
