Fight!
"Fight!" I yell, just as a roar sounds through the trees. A blur of brown fur races by as a massive lion slams into the vampire who bit her. Giant jaws snap around his neck and tear off his head. The beast sends it flying and flings the headless torso the other way. He steps over Tara's prone body, guarding her.
His amber eyes meet mine.
I recognize the lion shifter who saved us earlier.
As the last remnants of light ebb out of me, I reach out to her with my soul; with that core of me that makes me immortal. With a final burst of adrenaline, the energy surges out of me.
She needs to live!
I pour my life force into her and shove aside the venom that's already starting to taint her cells. I watch as the silver cuts a swath through the black creeping in through her blood.
I’m pulled away from her, as my legs sway and my vision tilts, fading. Then…silence.
18
Tara
The vampire's fangs rip into me. Then an explosion of pain follows, like molten lava burning through me, through everything in its path. Ashes, white-hot, red. Fragments of me shatter as my skin seems to cave into myself.
I scream and try to pull away, but the vampire's fangs only bury themselves deeper. It feels like he’s biting through my neck, severing it. The crimson flow of blood oozes out of me, staining my skin. Every part of me throbs, like live coals poured over me.
Can you feel this much agony and still remain conscious?
But I know I'm alive. For I hear him. I sense Kris trying to get to me. Through the muddy shadows in my head, I hear him scream to me.
Then the tendrils of darkness ooze into my blood stream. The vampire venom burns into each cell it comes in contact with, turning it, twisting the DNA into unrecognizable shapes. Transforming my human essence into something hybrid.
One, two, three…five beats before a flash of silver flares. A turquoise light pours down a psychic pathway that connects me to the outside world. A light that tastes of peppery woodsmoke and pine. There's no other way to describe it, really.
It's him. He's pushed his essence into me. And now his life force cuts a swathe through the darkness, shoving away the black, beckoning me back to the surface.
I gasp. I know it's him. It's the devil who touched me, brushing up against my mind, telling me to hold on, to open my eyes.
Open them!
My eyelids fly open in time to see Kris's big body slump. He's dragged away by two vampires. A third follows, holding Ruby's sword.
Chills wrack my body, and I gasp again, trying to breathe through a throat swollen with pain and blood. Only then do I become aware of the scent of fur.
The air over me moves, eddies, flows with sparks of silver and gold; and then Cain leans over me.
Golden brown eyes sparkle, flowing with emotions. Anger and fear. I feel myself being lifted, the trees and skies above me whirling as I'm sucked into a vortex of darkness.
Part II
19
Tara
It feels like I’m being torn apart, pulled at both ends, stretching, elongating, re-forming. My entire body is rewiring itself.
The taste in my mouth is like that of dry ice and ozone. The smell gags me, pushing in on my chest as I try to breathe. I try to draw in a breath, only to find I can't.
And that makes me panic even more. I flounder, trying to move my hands and legs, but I find I can't move. My muscles ache so much that I can't fight anymore. I go slack, letting myself be pulled under.
I let the cool stillness wash over me.
There's no pain now.
No love or hate.
Just a nothingness. I’m not empty but not full. I just am. There's only me and a wisp of awareness, that last remaining slender strand of consciousness that binds me to this earth. To him.
My devil is still here. He's alive.
I can't leave.
With that realization comes a rush of pain so intense it almost snaps the thread tying me to him. But I grab it and hold on. I cannot let go, not until I see him again. Just one more time.
I open myself to the pain, to that feeling of what it means to be alive, and to the harsh reality of being weighed down by my body. With a last regretful look at the white light ahead, I’m yanked right back. A silver-green psychic thread draws me down, down, back into my body. I slam into my skin, the agony stabbing right through me, my heart and soul anchoring me.
A scream boils up, and my eyes fly open.
20
Tara
Tawny eyes hover over me. Flecks of silver remind me of what I left behind in that other dimension, remind me that I’m alive. The face blurs as my eyes try to adjust. I blink.
When I open them again, it’s to see a different face with warm eyes set below a forehead furrowed with lines.
"Leana?" I form my lips around the word, but my mouth feels funny, causing it to come out all wrong.
A smile tugs her lips. "You're awake." She grips my hand.
"Kris…" It's all I can do to say his name before the fragile control I’m holding onto begins to crack.
Worry slices through me, and I gasp.
I sit up, the movement so abrupt that a burst of white-hot pain slashes through me.
The world spins again; and when it clears, I’m lying back in bed, sweat pouring down my forehead. It’s like my body is burning up, the skin scorched and peeling off.
"You need to stay calm, Tara. Stay strong."
Something in her voice draws my gaze to her. Her skin is pale, lips bitten. She's been at my bedside for a while.
"They'll hurt him. I must go to him," I insist. I try to rise again, but my body has a will of its own. It refuses to obey.
"Tell me," my voice dribbles out. I hate how weak I sound. "Where is he?" I whisper again. When she doesn't reply, a sick fear twists my gut.
"Kris is immortal." Leana's voice is soft. "He can't be killed that easily; you know that."
A breath of relief wheezes out, only to turn into a cough. Damn! It hurts even to breathe right now. Still, I push on. "Have they found him yet?”
She shakes her head. Concern bleeds out of her fingers.
I wince, gripping her hand harder. "What are you not telling me?"
This time she doesn't meet my eyes. "You must get stronger first," she mumbles.
"No!" a new voice rings out. "Tell her. She can deal with it," Cain growls, his voice authoritative enough to push out any remaining breath from my lungs.
"Tell me what?" I ask. Then in a flash of recollection, I add, "You saved me from the vampires. Twice."
He inclines his head but doesn't reply, his gaze steady.
"Twice?" Leana's eyes dart from me to him.
"The lion shifter who helped me and Kris," I mumble, nodding to him. Before she can ask anything more, I plead, "What are you not telling me, Leana?"
Jaw hardening, she nods.
Taking a handheld mirror from the bedside table she hands it to me.
I look to her and then back to the mirror. The face that stares back is pale with hair matted and lying in coils around it. Some of it is plastered with sweat to the cheeks. A bandage circles around my neck where the vampire had drawn blood from me. A still functioning part of my brain insists I recognize what that means; but I push it away, not ready yet to face the reality of what had happened.
"How long have I been unconscious?" I ask.
It's Cain who replies. "Five days."
"Five—?" My hand trembles, and the mirror almost slips from my fingers. He walks over to me and steadies my arm, bringing the mirror up.
"No." I don't want to. My heart begins to thud, pulse racing. I fling away the mirror, already knowing what I’ll see.
I want to rage at what happened to me, to cry. But I can't. All I feel is a numbness, like all the emotions have been sucked out, leaving a nothingness in my chest.
My heart…I can't feel my heart, only a crisp stillness where it used to be. And within me is a dark
pool of grief. Trapped within my subconscious mind, it's a feral animal that feeds on itself. A dark shadow that grows with every second, eating away at me, until it feels like I’m going to cave in on myself.
Air! I need air; I can't breathe.
Hands and legs quaking, I throw off the cover.
I stumble to the window and throw it open. My legs are so weak I fall to my knees. There’s a shuffle behind me as I hear a gasp of surprise from Leana, but I ignore it. It feels important I do this on my own, stand on my own. Grasping the window sill, I pull myself up, the sweat running down my forehead, my neck, stinging as it seeps into the bandage around my neck. I ignore it all and lean out.
Letting the heat of the evening wash over me, I shut my eyes and reach deep inside, searching for something…something. Then my senses flower open.
The scent of sea salt and rotting vegetation: I can separate each individual smell now like the strings of a violin.
The sweet, pungent zing of ozone signals the vampires on the grounds; the earthy, woodsy smell of shifters…so many different scents wash over me, making me feel like I’m drinking in the very earth itself.
A human passes below the window, his whistling clear enough to echo through my head. His scent is lighter than shifters, mellower than vampires. My senses stretch further.
I hear the sound of the wind through the palm leaves. Beyond that, I listen to the hiss of waves breaking on the sand, the voices of people on the beach, the sound of their footsteps as they crunch on a seashell. It’s as if my senses telescope in, zoom in on individual nuances to the noise. It gushes through my head, filling it with the stories, the echoes of the lives out there…overflowing until I can't take it.
And yet I can't stop.
My body absorbs the new experiences, hungry for more, as if deprived for so long. And now, it must have it all, must take it all in. Absorb it. More. More.
No!
My thoughts twist, turn, protest. Enough!
I search for something to break through the ambient noise threatening to overwhelm and drag me under.
I search for him. Him!
Then I sense it. At the edge of my consciousness, I see the silver-green psychic thread that yanked me back. It shimmers, cutting through the darkness inside.
I grab it and hold on. Feelings stifled since my mother died break loose. My control shatters, except I can't cry. All I can do is let the feelings flow: the pain, the anger, all of it. Down the psychic pathway, I let the emotions pulse through. All the way to him.
The connection formed when he poured his life essence into me. He's there on the other side; I know it. I feel him, my devil. A slight whisper of his presence.
Kris, I whisper down the silver-green thread.
A touch on my shoulder has me jerking around, to see the lion shifter.
His palms are raised, his eyes wary.
Behind him, Leana's voice rings out. "Cain saved your life. If he hadn't brought you to us so quickly, you wouldn't be alive."
"I may be alive, but what am I? What have they made me into?" I force the words out, knowing I sound ungrateful. Yet I must speak. Anything is better than the lack of feeling inside me.
Anything other than the suspicion that grips my heart…that insists I've become the very thing I've hated my entire life.
"I'll tell you what you are." A voice speaks up from the doorway.
Ethan walks in with Mikhail right behind.
21
Tara
"You are half vampire," Ethan says. "The transformation stopped before it took hold fully."
Kris. I recall the flash of light that pushed away the dark tendrils of venom as they tried to take hold. And then the silver-green thread had bound me to him.
In helping to combat the vampire venom, he formed a nascent mating bond. But was it against his will?
I push myself against the wall, wishing I could go right through it.
With my palms flat against the hard surface, my nails try to gain purchase…and fail. It's the last straw. I look at all the faces in the room, from Leana's concern to Cain's lack of expression.
"I know what you're going through," Ethan says.
"Do you?" I say. "My mother was killed by vampires. And now I'm part of the very species who killed her." My voice comes out hard, almost monotone.
The thoughts bounce around in my head as I stand there, wishing I could shatter, fade away...that I could feel something more than just this nothingness.
Ethan walks up to me and pulls me into a hug.
For a vampire driven by the rational side of his brain, he always knows how to do the right thing.
I let myself draw on his strength for just a second. When my face brushes his shoulder, I smell his scent. Citrus and tangy junipers. A comforting scent. Confusing.
"You don't smell like a vampire," I say, words muffled against his shirt.
"Neither do you."
What?
"How is that even possible?" I pull away.
"Some of our bodies react differently to the vampire venom. We don't carry that characteristic smell of dry ice. The only outward signs are the fangs and the red around the iris." He points to his own eyes.
I look into them, and around the hazel of his eyes is a ring of pale pink, so faint it's almost non-existent.
Oh!
I push past him, stumbling to the far side of the room where a mirror is pushed up against the wall.
"Tara, you're too weak." Leana rushes to me, arms outstretched. She stops when I shake my head.
My legs are unsteady, but they still support me. I walk over to the mirror at the far end of the room and peek into it.
I still look like myself.
Except…I lean in closer. Except for my eyes. A tinge of darkness around the pupils bleeds into the green, deepening the colors. It's like the transformation was stopped halfway before the color faded to pink.
I look the same, yet not; like I've been torn apart and put back together.
The essence of me is still there…just a little different.
I look fiercer. Stronger. The girl from the slums is broken completely. In her place is a woman.
One who intends to fight for her devil and will go after those who took him. Who better than a vampire to face his captors?
The thought runs through me. I smile then, baring my teeth. Tiny fangs on either side of my jaw break through the skin, the pain just a pinprick. They look just dangerous enough to add a lethal edge to my presence, enough to show I have vampire blood…that I’m not human anymore.
Not human.
I laugh, and the sound bounces off the walls. It bounces right back at me and is so loud I wince and fling my hands over my ears, bending into myself until it fades.
I feel a touch on my shoulder, and I peer through half-open eyes. "Your senses are a lot sharper, almost as keen as shifters now." Ethan's glance slides to Leana, who tilts her head.
"You must learn to cope with it," he adds.
"How?" I despair, twisting my fingers together in front of me.
"Focus inside yourself. Imagine a wall coming down between you and the world, a discerning one which filters out all unwanted sounds, scents, and feelings from others. One that only lets through what you need at this moment."
I stare, unsure what to do.
His grip tightens on my shoulder. "You must try."
I close my eyes and allow myself to fall inside, deep inside, zooming into that part of me that feels different, the part where my heart had once been. Now it's still, almost motionless, except for a slight heightening of awareness as I tune into it.
Drawing on its stillness, I imagine a wall between me and the atmosphere around me: a living, breathing, organic wall that filters through only that which is needed. I reach out through the glowing shield that pulses with an energy all my own.
For a second there’s no change. All the noise, sounds, and scents still bathe me. Then it fades, except for the heat and emotions from Leana; the
strong, steady, lethal beat that is Mikhail; the still, cold, yet somehow gentle flow of energy that is Ethan; and Cain—a swirling mass of gold and silver and a red so shocking it almost slaps me in the face.
Oh!
My eyes fly open. Some of the surprise must show, for Ethan nods. "You learn fast. Soon you'll be using your senses when you fight. It makes you far more agile, focused.
"The most emotional humans make for the most extreme transformations. It's almost as if sensing the entire range of emotions primes your body to balance it out with more than your share of logic."
I straighten, hands falling to the side. "So this will make me a better fighter?" My voice emerges stronger than what it was.
He nods.
"Good. It will come in handy." Once more my voice comes out hard. Resolute.
"You’re leaving to rescue him," Cain states.
This shifter saved my life, but something about him throws me off balance. Is it because he's seen me at my most vulnerable?
"How did you appear on the scene, not once but twice, to save me?" I demand.
Leana gasps. She comes toward me and takes my hands in hers. Her fingers are warm enough to pulse sensation into my fingers gone ice-cold with tension.
"You still don't get it, do you?" Her voice, soft and cajoling, makes me pause.
"What?" I ask, forehead furrowing in confusion.
"He killed the vampire who hurt you." It's Ethan who replies.
"We vampires suck the psychic essence from victims. It's how we replenish our emotions and balance our cold, logical side. If the victim lives, it also results in a lasting connection between the two, a psychic leash of sorts. The vampire could’ve used it to control your mind. And that would have been worse than death. A fate I know too well." Ethan's lips twist in the semblance of a smile. "I was Daniel's slave until the day he died. But you are not, thanks to Cain."
Claimed: Paranormal Romance (Immortals, Vampires and Shifters) (Many Lives Book 4) Page 8