by Skye Jones
He begged Ben as he spoke, and from the grim set of Ben’s jaw, he was going to do just that.
“We could go and get the cure tonight. Now.” Doc paced the room. “It should work. He’s newly turned.”
“What, leave now? With Jackson down. Slim half turned. Right.” Ben shook his head. “No fucking way.”
They started a heated debate about the best course of action.
“Gentlemen.” Ivan didn’t raise his voice when he spoke, but the deep bass of the one word carried over the room and shut Ben and Doc right up. “There is an alternative. I am a true vamp. I can turn anyone I wish. Of course, we were barred from doing such a thing for a long time due to the treaty with the humans, but that’s irrelevant now. I can turn him.”
Alex nodded. “He can. It should stop the virus in its tracks; we know because we are immune to it, and they tested this on people in one of the research facilities.” Alex scrubbed a hand through his hair, messing it up, and for once not looking suave and sophisticated. “From what Sienna told us, back before she went off the reservation, one of the testing labs used to turn people who were infected on purpose to see if it saved them, and it did.”
“Let me get this straight. You want to turn a sicko bastard into a creature more powerful than any Altered?” Ben stared at Ivan, his hands bunched into fists.
“Except he won’t be. At least not at first. It will take time for him to acquire the skills of his new body. Also, if I turn him, he’s mine. Not in any sexual sense, perish the thought, but in the sense of being my creation. I will be his master. In all the important things, he will have to defer to me.”
“When a vampire turns another, they are in control of that other for a long time. It takes decades and, most often centuries, for a turned vampire to amass the kind of power that could defeat their own master. In the case of Ivan here, Slim isn’t going to be going against him for hundreds of years, if ever. I can guarantee it.”
“When were you turned?” I asked Alex.
He gave me a sad smile. “That’s a story for another time, my lovely. Suffice to say, my mistress was cruel and nowhere near as powerful as Ivan, and it still took me over a hundred years to escape her grasp.”
“You’ll have control of him?” Ben asked.
“Yes.”
“No.” Slim ground the words out. “I don’t want to be a blood-sucking corpse. Just fucking kill me.”
Ivan knelt beside Slim, reached out, and smoothed back the other man’s hair. “Slim, don’t you want vengeance for your sister? We can get the cure and she might still be saveable; there’s a small chance. If so, then you need to be here for her. If not, as I sadly fear the case may be, you deserve vengeance. Those who made her this way, who horded that cure. Those who turned on their own and caged my own.” He thumped his chest, and I shivered. Ivan wanted revenge. And I’d hate to be one of the people he was gunning for. “Don’t you think those utter bastards deserve to die?”
“Yes, but I don’t want to live. I failed. I’m tired. I ache.”
Ivan continued to pet him. “Some of that is the sickness talking. Don’t give into it. If you let me turn you, we can work together. We will be powerful. I have two friends en-route to join me. Altereds like Jackson and his men. They were with me for a long time, all through the collapse. We were together in one of the facilities, a different one from the place you found me.” He turned to Alex. “They are extremely powerful, shape-shifters.”
Ben gasped, and Ivan gave him a grim nod. “Oh, yes, they could teach you much, my friend. The thing is, they want their revenge too. One of their group, a female was killed by the men experimenting on her. My friend, Leon, he loved her like a sister. You, me, both vampires, two powerful Altered males, and Angel with her gift… Think of what we could do. Don’t let your sister die in vain. Join me, and we can avenge her.”
Slim groaned again and convulsed.
“Me?” Angel’s voice faltered.
“Oh, I have high hopes for you, my beautiful.” Ivan shot her a predatory grin, fangs gleaming.
She swallowed hard but held his gaze.
“Gah,” Slim bent double, and his eyes rolled back.
“You know what? He’d rather die than become one of you, so change him. Do it against his will. I want to see that fucker suffer and spend the next few decades in thrall to you.” Ben spat at Slim and stalked out of the room.
Wow, sometimes Ben was harder than Jackson.
“I can’t change him if he doesn’t want it,” Ivan said to no one in particular. “It’s not like in the horror movies. He needs to drink from me. I can’t force him.”
“Slim,” Doc said. “You need to decide. In about an hour, you’re going to be too far gone, and I’m going to have to either kill you or chain you next to your sister, and you’ll have to pray the cure works on you. Or you can let Ivan turn you. Even if you lose Emily, you can keep her memory going, you can get vengeance for her against those who made the world this way.”
“You’re a warrior, Slim.” Alex walked over to the man shivering hard on the sofa, his teeth clacking. “You lost your way, big time, but you’re a warrior. You need to find the fighting spirit you’ve always had and fucking fight. Do it in Emily’s name.”
“Shit.” Slim coughed and spluttered. He gave another low, agonized groan.
“Fuck. Do it. Turn me.” He turned wild eyes to Ivan. “Do it now.”
“As you wish.” Ivan bent his neck, pushed Slim’s head roughly to one side, and bit down.
He drank and Slim convulsed, and then Ivan stopped. He’d only taken a little and he looked sick to his stomach. “I hate changing the males,” he said to Alex.
Alex turned to me. “Because we don’t feed from males, only females, a male turning a male is not a pleasant experience. Their blood tastes all kinds of wrong.”
Ivan bit down hard on his wrist and shoved it to Slim’s mouth. “Drink,” he said.
Slim put his mouth around Ivan’s wrist and took a tentative sip at the blood pooling there. He gagged, and Ivan put his fist in Slim’s hair and pulled his head up. “You. Must. Drink.”
Slim went back for more, gagging twice, but then he seemed to get somewhat used to it. He drank and after a few moments, he pulled Ivan’s wrist in tighter to his mouth, and took great big pulls.
Ivan let him, and then tightened his fist in Slim’s hair once more. “That’s enough. Stop.”
Slim slumped onto the sofa, and Ivan stumbled back.
He licked his wrist and the wound began to seal. “He’ll live now. But he’ll need to be put downstairs with us.”
I glanced at the clock on the wall. Dawn was approaching.
“I need to sleep now. I’m drained.”
I shot Ivan a worried glance. Would he die from lack of blood?
“Figuratively, not literally, little one.” He smiled at me.
“I’ll help you bring Slim downstairs,” Alex said.
“I’ll come too.” Angel went to follow them.
Ivan turned to her. “Now I have done this. I will need to drink soon.”
She nodded, and they opened the door and headed down the stairs.
I sank to the floor. Utterly wiped out by the dramatic events of the day.
Who knew where we all went from here, but at least we had something. A vaccination at worst, and a cure at best. We also had Slim, who knew enough information for the resistance to reform and fight back hard against those in London.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Milly: The Cure
Jackson slowly recovered as the hours passed by. He’d slept the whole day and seemed more himself.
Thank God, he’d gotten most of his memories back, but not of the raid. Those memories didn’t come back to him. He also seemed quiet, not himself.
Slim, Ivan, and Angel had taken over the downstairs and slept all day. Now it was night once more they were up, and Slim… Slim was odd. He walked about like a newborn foal, he kept bumping into things. Ivan said it woul
d take time for his senses to realign to his new body. For his brain to handle being able to compute all the new sensory information it was bombarded with. A few times, if someone laughed loud or dropped something, he clapped his hands over his ears as if a rocket had gone off.
Heading up the stairs to Jackson’s room with a bowl of soup, I pushed open the door to find him pacing, talking on his phone. I sighed. I should have known he wouldn’t stay resting for long.
“And this info is solid?” he asked. He nodded and added on a grunt, “I owe you one. I won’t rest until that bitch is dead. She’s fucked us all one way or another. The resistance can’t fight with this new intel until untrustworthy people like Sienna and her goons are gone.”
“You aren’t going to kill her, are you?” I stared at him as he hung up.
“Oh, baby, I love you, but please don’t give me the bleeding heart stuff now.” Jackson walked to the bed, wincing as he sat down and automatically touching where the bandage lay over his hastily stitched wound.
I stared at that spot pointedly. “I don’t care what happens to her. I care what happens to you. You’re in no state to go out fighting.”
He patted the bed beside him and I went to him, sitting down.
“Milly, I need to know you’re going to be safe. As much as I hate that piece of shit Slim being here in this house, I know what he did wasn’t personal. He doesn’t have it in for you, and he doesn’t want you. I’ve seen the way he looks at Angel. That’s personal. That girl is going to end up a blood sandwich between him and Ivan.”
“You have the nicest turn of phrase.” I patted his arm.
He scoffed.
“Thing is, baby, with Sienna, it is personal. She hates you. I had no idea how she felt about me. I couldn’t get into her head; she knew the one time I did. And, to be honest, unlike with you, I didn’t care to. There was no feeling on my side, and I thought it was mutual. I’ve been finding out she’s a lot more duplicitous than I had ever imagined.”
He turned to me, face tight. “I’m a fucking idiot. Did you stop and wonder how come she was working out of the lab we’d been held in? I did, and I assumed she and her men had simply taken it over when it was abandoned. Turns out, she used to fucking work there. I never saw her because the place is big, and she wasn’t involved with us, but she worked there. For the bastards doing experiments on people and creating Altereds. The woman is dead, and I’m going to be the one to look in her eyes when it happens.”
“I don’t think you should. Why don’t you let Slim and Ivan do it?”
He sighed. “I’m getting better every hour that passes. I recover quicker than any normal human.”
“Jackson.” I touched him, placing my hand on his heart as I turned into him. “I know you’re livid with her. But you and your guys spent time with her. I don’t think you can kill her and simply walk away. Let Ivan and Slim at her.”
“I don’t trust them to do it.”
“I think Ivan is trustworthy, and Slim is under his control now.”
A smile tugged at Jackson’s mouth. “Does he order him about all the time? I need to come down tonight to see this.”
I giggled. “No, silly. He doesn’t do anything like that. We were talking, and Ivan says Slim has full autonomy in most things, like what he wears and stuff. But when it comes to the big stuff, he can’t go against Ivan’s orders. Say Slim decided he wanted to kill someone, if Ivan didn’t want them dead, he’d simply be unable to do it.”
“Are you okay?” He gave me a penetrating look.
The vampires were going to get the cure, and I was worried. They’d made the decision, Ben told me, that the vamps would go because they were strong at night, and Jackson wasn’t well enough to do it. That meant Doc and Ben would be here with Angel and I to protect the house. Jackson could keep on recovering, and Ivan, Slim, and Alex would go for the cure.
I hoped they would be okay. The idea of not seeing Alex again if something happened tore me apart. The idea of not seeing any of the men tore me apart. And once we had the cure, what then? Would the guys want to start distributing it? Fighting the powers that be in London?
I’d been all for the fight, but seeing Jackson badly hurt had terrified me, and now I wasn’t sure. Part of me felt we’d done our bit. Getting the cure was huge, having information on who the traitors in power were, even bigger. But did we have to be the ones to do the fighting?
“I’m fine.” I didn’t tell Jackson any of this. I was sure once he’d seen Sienna dealt with, he’d want to be back in the fray. After all, hadn’t Doc said this was his reason for living? To fight the bastards who had brought the world to its knees?
“Sun will be setting soon, and the guys are going to get the cure,” I said instead.
“I should go.”
I tried not to roll my eyes. “No, you’re…” I paused. I had been about to say you’re not strong enough, but that argument wouldn’t work on a guy like Jackson.
I smiled at him. “You’re needed here. If Sienna comes after us here, then Angel, me, and my parents will be in danger. The guys thought if Ivan, Slim, and Alex went for the cure that leaves you, Doc, and Ben to protect us if needs be.”
He considered my words, and I let my gaze roam over his face. All angles and dips, sweeping planes, and then those burning bright eyes. Harsh, but beautiful, that was Jackson, inside and out.
“If I stay here, I’m not staying in this room a minute longer,” he groused.
“Fine,” I replied. “Come downstairs and sit with us while we wait.”
I glanced outside and swallowed as the moon rose higher. Shit, not long now and the three males would be setting off to the storage location for the cure. I hoped against hope there wouldn’t be armed guards there. The thing in their favor was how many of the secret locations there were dotted around the country. They couldn’t guard them all. Once we gained the cure and distributed it to people in the compounds a real resistance could form.
Those people would be immune. Safe to travel about when the Foamers roamed. They would need to focus their all on taking down the evil people in London running the show, but this was the best chance the people of Britain had of doing that.
Instead of a sense of excitement, I felt only exhaustion. It had been a draining couple of days. I almost wished we could walk away now. Say, hey, here you go, we got you the cure, now go and fight back. But how could I ask the guys to do such a thing? Make that sacrifice, and it was inherently selfish. Seeing Jackson vulnerable though, it changed something in me, and maybe he was protective of me, but I was as protective of him.
“Come on. You go downstairs and see the vampires on their way, and I’ll get myself washed and dressed and meet you down there in a while.” Jackson smiled at me, and then reached out, took my hand, and squeezed it.
I knew it would be hard for him to shower and not get his wound wet, and his head must still be hurting because every now and then I’d catch him wincing, but I also knew he wouldn’t want me to witness him struggle. Jackson was a proud man, and so, despite wanting to stay and help, I smiled back, leaned in and kissed his cheek, and left.
Downstairs, the hallway was a hive of activity. The three vampire males were getting tooled up, draping themselves in weapons as if the damn things were jewelry. I tried to swallow down the fear I felt seeing them do so. I told myself they were fearsome. Hard to kill, deadly, and Ivan could do all sorts of things. Get into peoples’ minds, make them freeze, forget things, even force them to do what he wanted. They would be okay, I was sure of it. But after seeing Jackson, someone I’d viewed as super human, injured, I found it hard to be chill.
“Come here,” Alex said, pulling me to him with one hand around my nape. He kissed me, long and hard and demanding. “When I get back, I’m taking you to bed and wiping that worry from your face.”
I flushed and pulled away swatting his arm. Angel giggled, and Slim rolled his eyes.
“Be careful out there, all of you.” I kissed Alex again, t
his time on the cheek, and turned and walked away. I couldn’t bear to watch them leave.
I wandered down the hallway and poked my head into a couple of rooms until I found Ben in the library. He was sitting with a book open but staring into space.
“That gripping, eh?” I pointed to the book with a smile.
He gave one back, but it was tight.
“What’s wrong.”
He sighed and rubbed at his jaw. For a moment, I thought he was going to tell me to leave it. Instead, he said, “I failed you.”
“What? When?”
“When Sienna came. I wasn’t there, and I wasn’t able to change because I didn’t know I could fucking control it. If I had…”
“You can’t be angry at yourself because of something you didn’t know, Ben.” I went to him, took the book out of his hand and climbed onto his lap, wrapping my arms around his neck.
“You’ve never been scared of me. Not even when I’m being a bastard and not when I was in that awful half changed form. You’re the reason I shifted fully when Jackson got hurt.”
His words shocked me. “Me? How?”
He kissed my neck, making me shiver delightedly. “Because before you, I feared the beast. Terrified of it. I tried everything I could not to let it out. I didn’t know what it might do. I believed the guys would stop me from being part of their group if I let the beast win. I spent so much fucking time trying not to let the wolf out, it never occurred to me I could be the wolf, you know? As in, fully change form. What a powerful weapon he would have been if only I’d known. You showed me not to be scared of that side of myself, Milly.”
