by Tina Donahue
“Kill the bitch,” Carreon cried, his words gargled with blood. More poured from his mouth. He coughed, choking on it.
“It’s okay,” Kele murmured. She slipped her arm around the woman’s narrow shoulders and made certain the other man still hadn’t moved. “What’s your name?”
“Trinidad.”
“Do you have a safe place to go tonight?” Kele asked. “Relatives you can stay with who’ll protect you?”
“No…I’m all alone.”
“Shhh,” Kele said to Trinidad’s whimper. “It’s okay. I’ll bring you to our stronghold. No one will harm you there.”
“How can you say that? Carreon will—”
“He won’t hurt you. He won’t hurt anyone ever again.”
“Yes, he will.” Trinidad shivered violently. Her naked breast pressed into Kele’s side. “He told me that Liz and her father can reanimate. Even after he dies, all they’ll have to do is—”
“They won’t with him,” Kele insisted. “Even if they wanted to, I’ll make certain that doesn’t happen.”
“How can you stop it?”
Kele hugged the young woman reassuringly, not wanting her to become hysterical. “Fire,” she said, seeing the solution in her mind. “By the time the authorities get here, his body will have burned beyond recognition or the possibility of reanimation.”
“Oh God.” Trinidad bent at the waist as though she were going to be sick.
Kele swallowed, fighting her own nausea. When she’d decided to come here tonight, she hadn’t thought past killing Carreon. She’d needed to make certain he never harmed another of her clan again or anyone else. Now that he was down, helpless and writhing on the floor, she wasn’t certain she could go further.
You have to.
If she didn’t destroy his body completely, there was always the chance someone in his clan would reanimate him, and then he’d—
Abruptly, Trinidad straightened.
Kele’s thoughts stalled with the movement. She inhaled sharply at the sudden sting in her gut, Trinidad hitting her in the belly. Why?
Kele looked down, not understanding the blood spreading over her tee, Trinidad’s hand fisted around the handle of a knife. Where had it come from? Her boot? Yes. Kele saw the small sleeve inside of it. Why was she doing this?
Trinidad twisted the knife sharply, then jerked it up.
Kele gasped at the intense pain, still not understanding. She tried to fight, but wasn’t able. Already she was lightheaded from loss of blood.
“I’ll take that,” Trinidad said, grabbing Kele’s assault rifle. After another forceful jab, she removed her knife.
Like Carreon, Kele fell to her knees. Tears welled in her eyes. “Jacob,” she whispered, her bloody fingers growing slack.
She’d only wanted him to love her. Was that so wrong? She tried to say his name again, but was unable.
Trinidad stepped back, not wanting to get Kele’s blood on her boots. She went to Carreon.
Blood dirtied his shirt, pants and the floor surrounding him. She stayed clear of that too.
He blinked slowly, his blue eyes dazed with pain. “Heal me.”
Trinidad regarded his belly, crimson and wet. She recalled how easily he would have traded her life to ensure Liz’s return. She didn’t move.
“Heal me,” he ordered.
Without comment, she turned her back to him. “You take one step out of here,” she said to Ernez, “and I’ll kill you.”
He stopped at the back door.
As Kele had done with her minutes before, Trinidad gestured him closer.
He held his hands in front of himself, as though that would protect him. Gone was his previous arrogance, him treating her as though she were less than scum. He pleaded, “Please don’t shoot me.”
“In the club,” she ordered, using the barrel of the assault rifle to direct him. He backed into the room, long empty of tonight’s patrons and staff. “Get three of the largest bottles of liquor,” she said from the doorway.
Hurriedly, he did as she asked.
Once he returned to the office, she said, “Splash the booze around the bodies.”
Carreon’s mouth formed the word no. Speaking appeared beyond him now, his bronze complexion pale and sickly.
Ernez did as Trinidad directed. When the place reeked of vodka and whiskey, she asked, “Where’s the stronghold?”
“Carreon’s?”
“Not any longer,” she said, then told him what to do.
By the time flames engulfed the office, destroying Carreon for good, Trinidad was already in his Escalade. She kept the assault rifle pointed at Ernez as he drove them away.
Chapter Fifteen
Carreon was gone. So was Kele.
Liz had witnessed the horror of it all, along with Zeke and Jacob. He’d restored the transmission Carreon had previously cut off. When the picture flickered onto the monitor, Kele had her arm around the young woman Carreon had threatened to kill. He was already on the floor, gravely wounded. With frightening speed, the young woman stabbed Kele without warning and for no possible reason that Liz could determine. Stunned, she’d watched Carreon’s lieutenant splashing liquor around the bodies, then setting them on fire.
Carreon hadn’t cried out. When the flames touched Kele’s foot—as they had in Zeke’s vision—she hadn’t moved.
Jacob now sat at the table, his head in his hands. Liz had no idea how long he’d been like that. Time seemed to keep slipping away from her. The other men conversed with Zeke, their voices low, trying to decide what Carreon’s death meant to their clan. Would his lieutenants scatter in fear as Liz had believed, or perhaps hoped? Or would they regroup?
During the exchange, Isabel came into the doorway. Liz noticed how Zeke tensed at the woman’s presence, as though he were afraid of her. Why? What had she threatened him with when they’d spoken?
“Is it true about Carreon?” Isabel asked Zeke.
“He’s dead,” Zeke shot back. “His body destroyed by fire. He’s beyond reanimation. You have what you want.”
She stepped into the room.
Zeke immediately went to Liz and pulled her back, away from the woman.
“What’s going on?” Liz whispered to him.
He didn’t answer. His focus remained on Isabel.
The older woman went to the computer monitor, its image frozen on the flames in the strip club’s office, the last communication sent before the fire had destroyed the lines and cut off the transmission.
“Do you want me to play it back for you?” Paul asked Isabel.
She regarded Zeke and said, “Kele’s also gone.”
Jacob made a pained sound.
“She died protecting her clan, her people,” Zeke said, fury lacing his words. “Not this stronghold. Not the damned land. People matter, nothing else. I’ll fight for my kind too, those I love. And I’ll win.”
What was he talking about? What was going on between him and Isabel? Liz glanced from Zeke to the woman.
She nodded once as though to say she’d heard or believed what he’d said, then left the room.
“What was that about?” Liz asked.
“Nothing.” Zeke hugged her hard. “Everything’s all right,” he promised, “just stay in this room. Don’t leave without me.” He watched her for a moment as though making certain she’d obey, then went back to his men.
Liz watched them as her worry moved from Isabel to Diaz. Where was he? Had the young woman and Carreon’s lieutenant seen him when they’d left the strip club? Had they taken Diaz prisoner? Was Roberto torturing him for information on this stronghold or threatening to kill Pedro if Diaz didn’t talk?
Oh please, not that.
Liz covered her mouth with her hand, quieting her whimper. Zeke glanced over, checking on her. He seemed to have aged several years in the last hours. Liz wanted to tell him she was all right, at least physically, but couldn’t manage it.
She sat next to Jacob and rubbed his back. He grieved q
uietly over Kele, having loved her in the end even if it wasn’t in the way she’d needed.
Liz prayed Kele hadn’t suffered, that she was with her parents now. At peace and safe at last. Be happy, please, she thought and fingered tears from her cheeks.
More time fled by. Liz had no idea how much. Men came into the room, then left, only to return later. Everyone looked bone tired, but no one slept.
Was it dawn yet?
“Hey,” Paul suddenly shouted from the hall. “They’re back and headed this way.”
Liz exchanged a look with Zeke and Jacob.
“Kele’s back?” Jacob hollered, his tone incredulous and hopeful.
“Diaz and the boy,” Paul called out.
Zeke left the room immediately, followed by several of his men. When Liz tried to follow, Ike stood in her way. “Zeke wants you to stay in here.”
“I need to heal Pedro.”
“You’re not leaving,” Ike said. He was a mountain of a man, his determination as powerful as his physical strength.
Liz backed away from him and paced the length of the room.
Jacob pushed back in his chair. “This is all my fault.”
“No, it’s not,” she said.
“If I’d only given Kele what she needed, she wouldn’t have done this, dammit.” He hit the table with his fist. “She wouldn’t be gone.”
“She wouldn’t have been happy either. She would have known your feelings weren’t genuine. It would have been a slow death for her, knowing that pity more than love was behind what you did. Do you honestly believe she would have wanted that?”
He continued to frown even as his shoulders sagged. “I don’t know.”
Oh, Jacob. “Kele did what she wanted to do,” Liz murmured. “What she had to do. In the end, she—”
Footfalls sounded down the hall, stalling Liz’s words.
“I’ll take him to the next level,” Zeke said. “There—”
“No, here,” Diaz insisted. “He’s already too weak to be moved any more than he has been.”
Zeke said something Liz didn’t catch. Diaz continued to argue, his voice also lowered, his words indistinct.
Seconds later, Zeke carried Pedro into the meeting room and put him on the table.
Liz leaned against it for support. She stared at the wounds Carreon’s men had left on the boy’s lanky body. Many were infected. Sweat matted his dark brown hair and bathed his face, no doubt from a fever.
“You’re going to be all right,” she said.
“No.” Zeke grabbed her wrist to keep her from touching Pedro.
She twisted her hand, trying to get free. Zeke wouldn’t let her. “I have to do this,” she insisted.
“Get her father,” Zeke ordered Jacob.
“No,” she said. “His power’s stronger than mine. If he uses it on someone this young, it might cause more harm than good like it did with his sister. He finally told me about her. What happened.”
“What are you talking about?” Diaz said. “You can heal. You can reanimate. Dammit, do something to help him before it gets that far.”
Pedro moaned.
“Don’t let him suffer because you want to protect me,” Liz begged Zeke. “I’ll be all right. You and Jacob saw to it earlier. You can see to it again. Please, you have to let me do this. I’ll never forgive myself if I don’t do something.”
Zeke glanced at Jacob. His brother looked as unsettled as he did.
Pedro stiffened as though he were about to convulse. He gasped.
Zeke’s hand fell away from Liz.
She murmured to the boy, “You’re going to be all right. I’ll take care of you. Carreon and his men will never harm you again.”
Diaz stayed close to his cousin as he spoke to Zeke. “I swear I didn’t know what Kele had planned. She left me in the Jeep and ran toward the strip club. I should have followed sooner. Maybe if I had…” He shook his head and continued, misery in his words. “By the time I could see the building, it was on fire. The man and woman we saw during that earlier transmission drove away in Carreon’s SUV.”
“It’s all right,” Liz said when Zeke didn’t comment. “We don’t blame you.”
A strangled noise poured from Zeke as Liz laid her hand on Pedro’s forehead that burned with fever. Gently, she stroked it, doing everything she could to control her power so she didn’t pour too much or too little into him.
Within seconds, his forehead cooled. His color returned.
She worked on his wounds next, healing the deep gouges left by Roberto’s torture.
Within minutes, Pedro opened his eyes and looked around, confusion on his youthful features.
Liz moved aside as Diaz went to his cousin. He pulled the boy into his arms.
Zeke touched Liz’s shoulder. “How do you feel?”
She couldn’t lie to him. “A little tired—but only because I haven’t slept, the same as you.”
Zeke didn’t appear convinced. “Jacob, take care of things here, all right?”
His brother looked as though he wanted to join them. After a moment’s pause, he didn’t argue the point as he might have in times past. He simply nodded. His expression said it all. This wasn’t about passion…it was about making certain Liz was all right and accepting that she belonged to Zeke first.
Despite her insistence that she wasn’t an invalid, Zeke carried Liz to their bedroom and wouldn’t allow her a moment free of his touch. His lovemaking was tender and desperate, betraying his love, his worry. Through the coming hours, he took her repeatedly, burying his cock deep within her cunt. With his mouth on hers, he quieted her pleased cries with his tongue.
They made love as if this would be their last time…or as though it were their first. Unruly desire made their actions and responses fevered, out of control.
Even as Zeke rested, he wouldn’t pull out of her. Liz slept so deeply at times, he strained to hear her breathing and kept checking her pulse.
It beat steadily.
How long would it last?
He ached for sleep, but didn’t dare surrender to it. When the time came that he couldn’t keep his eyes opened any longer, he’d have Jacob come in here to hold and protect her…to mount her if that proved necessary.
For now, Zeke ran his fingers over her arm and back. He kissed her cheek and buried his face in her hair, pouring his love into her, strengthening their bond. It didn’t matter that they’d come from different clans. That they’d once been enemies. No one would separate them now.
Not even Isabel, or whatever her real name was.
Zeke fought panic as he wondered what her next demand might be and how he could fight it without her removing Liz from his mind. Maybe it was an empty threat. Maybe not. When Isabel made her move, would he have time to flee this stronghold with Liz, Jacob and her father? What if he wasn’t able to do—
His thoughts halted at the hissing he heard. Accompanying it was dazzling white, signaling his newest vision. He tried to fight it, didn’t want to know what new horrors the damned future would bring.
Relentlessly, his mind focused on the images that bled through the intense glare. He saw the young woman Carreon had threatened to kill earlier, her dark hair and black nails. She stood next to a man Zeke couldn’t see. Shadows fell across his face, obscuring his features. Lust and violence radiated from the two of them, no different from Carreon.
Zeke blinked rapidly, suddenly straining to see more, to determine what the vision meant.
Impossible. The images evaporated as quickly as they’d arrived, leaving him unsettled, uneasy about his clan, Jacob, Liz.
As though sensing his distress or having felt the tension in his body, she awakened. Her eyes were clear, her color good. “I love you,” she said.
Zeke held her so tightly he feared he’d crush her but couldn’t help himself.
Liz didn’t complain. She hugged him in return and whispered, “Carreon’s really gone.”
She sounded astonished as many did when a worl
d leader was assassinated or a film star met an untimely end. Some people are so much larger than life they seem immortal.
Not Carreon.
“Yes,” Zeke said.
“It’s over, then?” she asked.
He wanted that more than anything else, but sensed it was not. The evil that was coming would be even deadlier than it had been with Carreon.
Again, he recalled his vision. The woman’s dark nails, her blue-black hair and a detail he’d forgotten.
Her smile—empty, predatory.
Epilogue
Trinidad leaned against an arm of the leather sofa in what had once been Carreon’s penthouse suite. Soft lighting glowed beneath the lamps’ bronze shades. Coppery pavers and beige walls gave the space a Southwestern feel.
Carreon owned—or had owned—the entire building. His most important lieutenants and their families lived here so he’d always been able to keep an eye on them. On the night Carreon had died, Trinidad went to his stronghold, her intent simple. To steal as much as she could—money, weapons, the priceless art and drugs she’d heard he had there—then disappear with the treasure, selling and using it someplace else. Perhaps Vegas. Maybe New York. Even Mexico had crossed her mind.
Roberto Amo, the man who’d made torture his specialty, had been waiting for Liz and her father at the stronghold. He stopped any hope Trinidad had of escaping despite the assault rifle she held. He had his own, along with several armed men who would have killed her in a moment on Roberto’s orders.
“I should make you scream,” he’d said upon learning of Carreon’s death from Ernez. How Trinidad had ordered him to burn the body. “Then I should kill you slowly.”
“But you won’t,” she’d murmured. She’d seen the lust in his dark eyes, the sexual tension building in his large body.
He’d smiled at her audacity, then took her in front of Ernez, mounting her from behind, demanding she submit to him. During the following days, he’d enjoyed her repeatedly, their coupling wild, just as Trinidad liked. She left scratches on his back and ass. Marks from his belt crisscrossed her buttocks, his punishment meted out not only to arouse her but to make certain she obeyed his every command without hesitation.
