Amplified (Reign of Blood #3)

by Alexia Purdy

  Rick turned the handle on the steel door leading into the room and entered, syringe poised and ready. I wondered how cautious he should be with the sleeping feral. He seemed awfully confident walking in there without extra protection. Maybe those chains were capable of holding King Kong.

  Even so, my stomach flipped as I pressed my hands against the glass and watched him get closer to the sleeping beast.

  It still hadn’t moved. The soft movement of his breath lifted his shoulders in a rhythmic repetition. Was he still sedated? His hair was slick with dirt and oil from the lack of a wash, and it hung down over his face, hiding his features. It could be dark blond or light brown, the dirt made it difficult to tell. The same went for his skin color. Underneath the grime and dried blood, he could be Caucasian or possibly Hispanic. My impatience had me wanting to tap my fingers on the glass to know where I’d seen him before. Rick couldn’t wake him up fast enough.

  As if he’d heard my thoughts, Rick reached out and stabbed the feral in the thigh muscle. He yanked the needle out just as fast before he jumped back as the feral roared to life. It thrashed, sending the chains rattling, and Rick backed out of the room, hurrying to open the metal door before slamming it behind him. I glanced at Christian, who shrugged. What the fuck had just happened?

  “What the hell?” I put my hands on my hips, but a thump made me turn back to the room as I also stepped back. Rick was busy setting the deadbolts on the metal door before another thump slammed the door, and he jumped back.

  “I’m not exactly sure what’s going to happen.” Rick bounced on his feet, staring through the window, excitement spreading across his face.

  “What?” I stared in horror and turned back to the feral since he’d stopped thumping against the wall. Instead, he stood at the window, his hands pressed against the glass, wrists still in chains where his blood was streaming down his forearms. He was huffing and puffing, with a snarl stamped into his features and his eyebrows furrowed so deeply, I wondered if his skin would burst from the pressure.

  But that wasn’t what worried me the most. He was staring at me, his eyes still rimmed with red, but one of them was morphing into an orange blue like the color of the sky at sunset. He hissed as I stepped forward, his face calming the closer I approached. The one partly blue eye narrowed at me, flicking between my eyes in some sort of repressed recognition.

  “What’s wrong with his eyes?”

  “He’s morphing.” Rick stepped closer to the window, obviously calmer but rubbing his fingertips together as he also observed the creature.

  “Morphing into what?” I never looked away. I couldn’t. It was like watching a car accident pile up, with each car tumbling into the next until it was nothing but a mass of blood, guts and twisted metal.

  Rick turned toward me and smiled.

  “Into a human.”

  My eyes widened, and I stepped closer and pressed my palms to the cool glass. The eyes blinked at me, no longer filled with rage, but with desolation and a memory of something I should have seen before. But now it was easier. His face smoothed out and the eyes cleared into a blue I remember seeing a lot of with my mother.

  “Randy.”

  “What?” Rick muttered, bouncing on his feet as he watched the feral morph.

  “His name is Randy.”

  Both Christian and Rick turned toward me in disbelief. The scientist’s mouth was dangling open.

  “You know him?” Christian was at my side now, glancing between the ruined monster before us and me.

  “Yes,” I leaned my forehead against the glass, my gut twisted into a tight ball. Thank goodness I’d yet to eat. “He was my mother’s boyfriend. They were dating when this all happened.” My breath caressed the glass, fogging it up some, making Randy touch the soft mist as if he could wipe it off.

  I hadn’t cared for Randy at all, even though he’d done nothing but nurture and support my mother. Helen had loved him, but she had never shown it much around us. She was tough as nails, but I knew she’d had soft spot for this man. I’d tried to convince her he was nothing but trouble, but my argument had slid off my mother like oil to water. My motive hadn’t been all unselfish, though. Randy’s attention toward my mother meant sharing her with another man who wasn’t my father, already dead for three horrid years.

  That reason felt childish to me now, stupid even. Any tie to my mother would’ve been welcomed at that point. Even if it was Randy. He’d never treated me like anything other than another adult. He’d been respectful and had even taken my side on several arguments when I’d fought with my mother. He’d been good for her—for us—and yet I had rejected him as a father figure no matter what he did.

  Now there we were once more. He knew me and I him. I balled my fist against the slick glass, sweaty from my damp palms, and I wanted to hit the slab of window. What would he turn into now? Would it return him to a natural human state, or would it leave him as broken as my mother had been? I couldn’t bear to see him suffer if this didn’t work. Or what if it killed him? What if this was toying with fate and would just hurry up the inevitable? Another death of someone close to my family would not be good.

  I swallowed down as the cool glass felt slick under my skin. He howled inside, scratching at the glass and fingering the chains digging into his wrists. Agony ravished his body as he collapsed to his knees, breathing hard and wincing from the changes occurring all over his body. His hair began to fill in where it’d been torn out. Missing pieces of flesh filled in with scar tissue, and his fangs retracted back into his skull, as if they had never existed.

  Would this work? The miracles that could occur…. And if it didn’t? The horror it could unleash….

  No matter where I turned, this virus was still tearing at my flesh and mind bit by tiny bit. It was like a pool of piranhas, ripping into my life without remorse, just wanting to satisfy the never-ending hunger.

  Chapter Thirteen

  A Primal Need

  The day wore on, and I felt increasingly restless. How long were they planning on keeping me prisoner? I was already feeling better after a few meals and knew I’d be healed up very soon. Christian had made frequent trips to see me, trying as he must, to pacify my impatience and growing anger. But I had tired of the situation, and no soothing words or attempted friendship from him now could change that.

  Knowing Randy was recovering in a barred cell near the lab made me impatient to get out of there and release him, too. He may have not had time to marry my mother, back when they were together, but I knew he would’ve if she’d have said yes to him. He was family, and I couldn’t leave him to rot.

  As daylight approached, the hallways dimmed so the vampires could rest. They even dimmed the cell blocks. There was a cot just outside my room where Christian slept. I wondered why he’d been chosen to guard me. Maybe they didn’t trust anyone else. Maybe he’d volunteered because he didn’t trust anyone either. All I knew was that I wanted out of there, and sleep wasn’t an option.

  “Hey,” I whispered through the bars. I hated being locked up. It reminded me of my time in Vida, waiting to die at the hands of this very same vampire. “Christian, wake up!”

  He must’ve been exhausted, because he’d been asleep without moving for almost three hours.

  “Yeah?” He finally rolled over and squinted his eyes at me, groggy and slightly disoriented. “What is it, April? Need anything?”

  “Can’t sleep.”

  He swung his legs over the edge of the cot and shoved back his long, straight auburn red hair. Seeing him look so tired and waking up made me feel confused inside, and the familiar longing that the damned bond made me feel swelled up within my chest. I pulled away from the bars and sat on my bed as he stood up and opened the door, pressing the electronic lock behind him. We were locked in, but I had seen the code.

  It made me wonder if he’d purposely shown it to me or if he’d let it slip in his sleepy state. This thought alone made me watch him as he settled into the bunk next to mine an
d stretch out. He would be asleep in no time if I didn’t speak. Why he made me choke on my words mystified me and didn’t let me relax whenever he was around. You could say it was fluttering butterflies like having a high school crush on someone, but I didn’t like it. Not one bit. It had been forced upon me when he’d bound himself to me down in the bowels of Vida where we’d been left for dead by Katrina.

  It was all her fault I had these uncontrollable feelings overtaking me every waking moment. Even though she was long dead, the resentment I held for that raging vampire anomaly still caused my blood to boil. If she hadn’t stuck me in that cell, I wouldn’t have had this problem.

  I chewed on my lip. I had to keep him awake. Maybe if I could keep him from sleeping now, he’d be knocked out later, and I could sneak out.

  “You’re sleeping in here?”

  “This bed is more comfortable than that piece of crap cot out there. You don’t mind, do you?”

  “No.”

  “Good. Now try to get some sleep.”

  “I told you I can’t sleep.”

  “Why not? What’s bothering you?”

  “Why are you being nice to me when I know Mercer wants me dead?”

  “He doesn’t want you dead.”

  “Now who’s full of it?” I huffed. I was tired of these mind games and wanted to finally get the story out of him. “Look… I haven’t asked you this before, but I need to know. Why did you betray me? I thought you were my mate. I thought you were supposed to be on my side.” I rubbed my eyes and turned to face him, cradling my head in my arm. The dim light seeping in from the hall lit up his haloed eyes, and they glowed like cat eyes in the darkness.

  Christian let out a long breath, knowing he wasn’t going to be sleeping any time soon. “Okay. I’m sorry you think that way. We haven’t exactly been ‘mates.’ You told me to leave you the hell alone. I did. What do you want, April? I can’t hide these feelings I have for you, and you’ve forced me into this misery. I won’t let Mercer hurt you. We need you. And I never betrayed you. It’s not what you think. Your blood is the solution to this epidemic that has us enslaved… drinking blood, living in the shade. He’d never jeopardize that. He wants it even more than I do.”

  “How do you know that?” His argument hadn’t convinced me just yet.

  “Because those ferals out there, those beasts you put down like they are nothing but the rot beneath your feet, they were people once. Wouldn’t you want to save them if there was a chance you could? Wouldn’t you want to be a part of the cure, the savior of all mankind?”

  “I… I don’t know.”

  “April….” There was no reasoning with him about it. I had never wanted to be part of any revolution. Yes, it would be nice to save those who were lost, turned into wild savages—that’s why I had tried to get the antidote from Rick—but the past few days had made me reconsider that idea. What if it didn’t work? What if the cure turned out to be worse than the disease? They were going about it the wrong way, too. Kidnapping wasn’t exactly diplomatic.

  “I want my mother back. I want my family back. That’s what I want. And because of your meddling−Rick’s experimentations….” I said his name with disgust. “I have nothing. How’s that for a cure? How do I cure death? Tell me how to do that!”

  Christian waited for me to finish my rant, which was probably the wisest thing I’d ever seen him do. I could see why he’d been a leader once. His quiet observations and ability to listen was superior to Blaze’s. This small detail filled me with the fear that this hive was more together, more united in their cause than ours. That could be costly if both sides went to war again.

  “I’m sorry about your mother. Truly, I am. I didn’t kill her. She chose her path, and no one can undo that for her. Rick may have tampered with her sanity, but I didn’t kill her, April.” He was on his knees before me now, scooping my hands into his while I sat up on the bunk, shocked to have him so near, so close. I held my breath. “I didn’t kill her, but you blame me all the same.”

  He looked defeated, his frown making my heart race to correct his misery. Why did he make me feel that way? I forced back the spill of emotion and gritted my teeth. I had to stay together, or everything would collapse in upon itself.

  “Please don’t touch me,” I whispered, and he dropped his hands onto his knees. The effect of the touch has not left him unscathed, either, and we now both fought to keep our positions. How could he have lapsed so easily? It only took a touch, one caress of his skin, one unguarded bump to ignite the fire within that claimed me as his and him as mine. I prayed that such a connection would fizzle out after so long apart, but time had done nothing to stifle this urge. I swallowed the dry knot forming in my throat as I searched for the words to say, to make this end tonight.

  I loved Rye. If only we had this sort connection, if only the man standing before me was Rye, I would have been all right.

  But he wasn’t Rye. He was the enemy no matter which way I looked at it. Still, the desire burning in his dual colored eyes had me struggling for control with every gasping breath.

  “Why is it so hard to push you away?” I closed my eyes, my heart pounding hard enough under my lids that I could see starbursts under them. His scent filled my nostrils and pushed at my own longing, snaking into my head and stirring it up into a mush. I hated it, but the more I fought it, the more it hurt to move, like a knife embedded in my side.

  “Because we’re meant to be together, April. I know you’d sever this in a moment if you could, but only death can undo it. We are bound for life.” He reached out and slid his hands over mine again. “Why fight it?” He inched closer to the side of my bunk, and I began to shake, fighting the urge to skitter back and press my spine against the wall. Anything to run from his scent, his gorgeous eyes and long, silky hair. I’d never really looked at him as I did now, and I found each angle, every tuft of hair and patch of smooth skin alluring. Why, if he was right, did it feel so wrong?

  “Christian….” I licked my lips, my eyes trained on his. Damn this unnatural attraction. It was exhausting to fight it, but I kept at it. Eventually it felt as if that side of me, the opposing part that disagreed with everything involved in this bond, was hidden behind a thick plate of smoky glass. That April was screaming and pounding on it to no avail as her voice faded away.

  “Yes?”

  I blinked at him, feeling the fight slip from my grasp and the protesting in my head silence. “Kiss me.”

  The confusion played across his face while his eyes searched for truth in mine. I wasn’t sure what he’d see there. For once, I wasn’t the girl I’d once been, full of confidence and ready to kill everything in sight. No, this girl had just had her entire foundation pulled from underneath her leaving nothing but a wide abyss she had to cross, one uncertain step at a time.

  My heart was going to burst from the excitement. If I could just get a taste of him once more. One little taste, maybe I could satiate the hunger until I got out of that place. Maybe he’d give me the much needed blood I needed to gain my strength back. Maybe if I relented, it’d give me what I needed to push the thought of him from my mind until later, when I could think without him being so close.

  Just this once….

  “I… I can’t fight it.” My words softly escaped my lips, sounding so far away, it was as though another April had spoken them.

  He closed the gap between us, his lips slamming into mine in a voracious attack. I felt his fangs extend and nick my tongue. The pain was pleasurable, and I relished the taste of blood swirling around our tongues. The taste of him was a rush I’d been seeking for an eternity. It was the ultimate high.

  “April… I’ve needed you for so long. You have no idea how torturous it’s been without you.”

  His kiss deepened, and he pushed me back so that we were both on the bed. I let his desire ignite my own, and it was impossible to escape. It wasn’t blood that I wanted anymore, which I found curious, especially since that had been the initial trigger f
or touching him. No, this time it was whatever bound us filling me up with pleasure and singing its happiness. It was where it wanted to be, in the arms of this man. As the clothes slipped off and the minutes wore on, his kisses sent fire across my body, and running my fingers across his skin and the scars I had made on his abdomen, I felt safe, happy even.

  Even the screaming inside my head wasn’t missed as we each took what we wanted from the other. Each touch felt like flames, licking across my skin in hot pleasure. I wanted his lips to kiss me and his fingers to pull me even closer, until there was no separating the line between us. And so we did, until the fire flickered down to embers and our hearts quieted down into a slow, steady rhythm. As we lay there in the quiet of the daytime while the sleeping vampires were tucked away and the world was silent, I fought to keep the happiness afloat. I felt loved as he twirled my hair and stroked my skin until his energy ebbed away and sleep overtook him.

  I didn’t leave right away. I couldn’t, with everything that had happened. I touched his sleeping face, sliding my finger softly down his cheek and feeling the pleasure seep into my skin from this one simple gesture. This bond was some sort of magic, a trick of mutated DNA that I had finally given into. Though I planned to never let it happen again—I wasn’t expecting to see Christian ever again after that day—I felt a tiny sliver of sadness at the thought of losing him.

  Once I was sure he was completely asleep, softly snoring and unresponsive to my movements, I slipped out of bed, pulled my clothes and boots back on and entered the code on the finger pad. Holding the bars so that the click wasn’t overly loud, I pushed at it slowly and it opened wide enough just for me to squeeze through. I closed it behind me gently, making sure Christian was still gone to the world. I watched his slow, deep breaths of slumber, and it warmed my frigid heart to see him so vulnerable.

  I turned and headed toward the future. Back to Rye, to Sarah, Elijah and Jeremy. I needed to leave this place so far behind, I would never be able to turn back. I searched ahead to find the armory and carry out my plan. I needed bombs. Lots of them.