by Lara Adrian
God. The police-arranged hotel suite seemed like a hundred years ago now. Everything that happened since that night seemed like it had occurred over the span of a lifetime. All she wanted was to put it behind her and get on with the life she knew. This life, the only one she wanted.
“You’ve never lied to me before, Tavia. It’s going to break my heart if you’re keeping something from me now, after all these years …”
“No.” Tavia took her aunt’s nervous hands in a light grasp and guided her to the chair next to her at the little table. “I wouldn’t lie to you, but a lot of very strange things have been happening lately. Terrible things, Aunt Sarah. The gunman from the senator’s holiday party—he broke out of police custody and killed Senator Clarence.”
“I know,” the older woman murmured. “It was all over the news. There’s a manhunt under way for him all across New England.”
Tavia shook her head at the futility of that notion. “They’ll never get him. Even if the police find him and take him in, they won’t be able to keep him behind bars. He’ll just break out again. He’s more dangerous than anyone can possibly imagine.”
Aunt Sarah was frowning now, her gaze searching. “Where did you get these clothes? And where’s your pocketbook? I was so relieved to see you, I didn’t even think to ask why you didn’t have money to pay the taxi driver …”
Tavia kept talking, even as her aunt’s voice trailed off. “He can’t be dealt with like a normal criminal. He can’t be dealt with like a human, because he’s not. He’s not human.”
“You look positively peaked, dear.” Aunt Sarah reached out and touched her fingertips to Tavia’s forehead, then clucked her tongue as she picked up one of her hands and clasped it between her smooth, cool palms. Her skin felt like wax against Tavia’s significantly warmer touch. “Are you feeling queasy right now? When was the last time you took your medications?”
“Goddamn it, will you please stop fussing and listen to me!”
The older woman went immediately silent, her eyes fixed on Tavia now. Guarded and uncertain.
“That man, he broke into the hotel suite just a little while after I called you, Aunt Sarah. He killed a police officer and he incapacitated two federal agents. Then he came into the room where I was, and he took me away.”
Aunt Sarah seemed somehow stony now, not breaking into the hysterical fretting that was her usual reaction to everything where Tavia was concerned. Her brown eyes unblinking, scrutinizing, she was serious and contemplative in her calm. “Did he touch you, Tavia? Did he do … anything to you? Did he hurt you?”
Tavia had a hard time answering that. He didn’t physically harm her, even though the threat had seemed very real when it was happening. “He brought me someplace—to where he used to live, I guess. He tied me up. He kept asking me questions about who I was. He didn’t seem to believe anything I told him.”
There was a long silence as her aunt watched her speak, absorbing the weight of her words. Then: “What did you tell him, Tavia?”
She shrugged, gave a slow shake of her head. “I told him I was no one, that I just wanted to go home. I told him I was very sick and that I left my medicines back at the hotel—”
Aunt Sarah drew a sharp breath over that bit of news. “You haven’t taken them since two full nights ago?” She stood up. “I have to call Dr. Lewis right now. He’ll need to come here to the house and give you an emergency treatment.”
Tavia grabbed her hand and held her in place. “Aunt Sarah, something very strange happened to me today. I can’t begin to make sense of it …”
She pulled up the long sleeve of her hoodie, baring her forearm. The markings there were back to their normal color now, just faintly darker than her own skin tone.
“What is it?” her aunt asked, peering at her uncovered arm. “Tell me what to look for. Are your scars giving you pain? Because Dr. Lewis can prescribe something for that, I’m sure—”
“They’re not scars,” Tavia murmured. She ran her fingers over the webwork of swirls and arcs, feeling nothing unusual. “I don’t know what they are, but just a little while ago, these markings were all different colors. They were … I don’t know how to explain it. They were … alive somehow.”
Aunt Sarah was staring at her, not at the markings on her arm but deep into her eyes. “They look perfectly ordinary to me, sweetheart. I don’t see anything wrong.”
“No,” Tavia said. “Neither do I. Not anymore.” Which made her wonder once again—made her hope desperately—that the transformation she thought she’d experienced had just been a bizarre hallucination. “What about my eyes, Aunt Sarah? How do they look to you?”
“The same pretty green as always,” she answered gently. “But those dark circles under them concern me very much. You need rest and you need your medication.”
“And my teeth?” she pressed. “Nothing strange there?”
As Aunt Sarah’s look turned pitying, Tavia ran her tongue over the line of her teeth, finding only her usual slight overbite. Her canines were in alignment with the rest of her mouth, no fangs jutting down from her gums.
“I’m going to call Dr. Lewis now, okay?” the older woman said, speaking to her like she was a moron. And really, that shouldn’t come as a surprise, given the outlandish things that had just come out of her mouth. “I have more of your medicines in the hall closet. You stay right here, and I’ll get you some to take while we’re waiting for the doctor. Does that sound all right to you, Tavia honey?”
She nodded as she was left alone in the kitchen, weary of all that had happened, whether it was some jarring new reality or manufactured completely in her mind.
She wasn’t about to bring up the sex. That, she was sure, had happened. And she thought better about mentioning the blood on her body too, even if some of it might help substantiate her ordeal. Telling Aunt Sarah about that would only prompt a full body scan—or worse, an examination of her person by Dr. Lewis and his icy hands and implements.
“Here you are now.” Aunt Sarah hurried back in with a handful of brown prescription bottles. She set them down in front of Tavia then went to the sink to fill a glass with water. “Go on, take them. You’ll feel better; you know that.”
Tavia shook out the various tablets and capsules that made up her thrice-daily meds regimen. She washed them down with a big gulp of water, shuddering as the knot of pills and the cold liquid cascaded into her body. “I need a shower,” she murmured, winding down quickly now that she was back on familiar ground. “I’m so thirsty and tired.”
“Of course you are.” Aunt Sarah helped her get to her feet. “You freshen up and get some rest. I’m calling the doctor right now. I’m sure he’ll be here within the hour.”
CHASE CLEANED THE BLOODSTAINS from the bedroom floor as best he could, although he didn’t know why he bothered. The Darkhaven hadn’t been lived in for more than a year, and he sure as hell had no reason to step foot in it ever again. Nothing but bad memories and shame within these walls.
And today, with what happened between Tavia and him, he’d added the cherry on top.
Figuratively, if not literally.
“Jesus, way to fuck things up.” He bunched up the wad of wet paper towels, taken from a yellowing roll he’d found in the kitchen, and pitched them into the bathroom trash with the bandage wrappers and bent needle from his earlier self-stitchery.
As he passed the sink, his gaze snagged on the silver vial of Crimson. He picked it up, held it for a moment. Rolled the slender container in his palm. Considered ripping out the wax-sealed cork and flushing the poisonous contents down the toilet.
But his hand refused to give the damn thing up.
Less a lifeline than a swift means to a certain end, this last existing dose of Crimson was a crutch he dreaded he might need—maybe sooner than later.
Still midafternoon and his blood thirst was clawing at him already again, if it had ever truly left him. He wasn’t sure anymore. The cold, constant ache was becoming a pa
rt of him. How long before it owned him completely?
Considering how close he’d come to taking a bite out of Tavia’s neck today, his descent into Bloodlust was getting slipperier all the time.
Just the thought—and the reminder of how incredible it had felt to be inside her—made him hard all over again, his blood surging through his veins like lava in its rush to head south. All the worse when he was still torqued from the release he’d interrupted in order to prevent himself from sinking his fangs into her throat as his orgasm had begun to crest.
The urge to free himself into his hand now and work her out of his system was one he didn’t even attempt to resist. The vial of Crimson fisted in the hand he braced against the black granite countertop, he took his shaft in the other and furiously pumped it off into the sink. He came on a rough shout that was more about relief than pleasure.
With his release went some of the edge that was riding him, but the greater need still lingered. And now that he’d had a small taste of Tavia Fairchild, he knew better than to think he could be trusted anywhere near the female.
There had been a time—a million years ago, it seemed—when he’d been all about restraint and honor. He’d held himself to exacting standards and high ideals, dismissive of anything less than perfection. Like his father and brother before him, he’d been an impeccable enforcer of Breed law, merciless when it came to those who could not keep themselves or their own selfish needs in check.
What he’d been in truth was a self-righteous prick who’d considered himself leagues above the rest of the unwashed masses, his own kind and human alike.
What a fucking joke.
He had somehow become the thing he’d despised the most. And even worse, he’d dragged an innocent, frightened young woman into the mess along with him.
She was probably spilling everything to the cops by now. Maybe the news outlets as well. Just another mess he’d made that would have to be cleaned up quickly. He shouldn’t have let her run out like she had. There was too much that needed explaining. Too many things that she needed to know in order to understand what she truly was.
A Breed female.
Not only that, but a Breed female with Gen One dermaglyphs and the inexplicable ability to walk unharmed in broad daylight.
Holy. Hell.
The thought hadn’t lost any of its impact on him. If anything, it was more astonishing to think that she actually existed. Deeply disturbing to imagine the only way that could be possible.
Dragos had made her.
The bastard had to have created her in one of his labs, playing God with genetics—something the Breed had long decried as the worst kind of blasphemy within the race. Babies were sacred, not science. Everyone knew that. Everyone within the Breed subscribed to that simple tenet.
But not Dragos.
His secret breeding labs had produced a Gen One army of homegrown assassins, so why not this?
But what was his intention with her? It seemed obvious now that Tavia had been unaware that she was anything other than human. Her true nature, and its physical manifestations, had been somehow suppressed. By medications? Was her professed “sickness” actually her body struggling to deny the part of her that was Breed?
“Jesus Christ,” he hissed, making a quick cleanup of himself and the basin.
The Order needed to be informed ASAP.
The problem there was he didn’t even know where they were, or how to reach them. He’d made himself persona non grata with Lucan and the rest of the warriors. Worn out his welcome, possibly for good.
But he did know someone who might be willing to intervene. Someone who might be willing to take Tavia Fairchild under his protection as well. God knew Chase was a poor candidate for that duty.
Which meant he was going to have to call in a big favor—possibly the last he had coming to him—from his former Enforcement Agency colleague Mathias Rowan.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
SHE COULDN’T SLEEP. After a long, hot shower, Tavia dressed in her own clothes, then lay on her bed staring up at the ceiling in a state of quiet anticipation. Of what, she couldn’t say. But no matter how she tried to close her eyes and take a much-needed rest, her body seemed to be running at a strange new calibration.
Her blood rushed in her ears and through her veins. Her muscles were tense with power, everything prickly and twitching with idle, unspent energy. She was about to sit up and work off the feeling with a brisk pace around her room when she heard the front door open.
Voices in the foyer: Aunt Sarah bringing Dr. Lewis inside and giving him a quick summary of why she’d called him to the house. The two of them spoke in hushed tones, from all the way up the hallway and around through the living room, but Tavia caught the basics of their conversation.
“Two full nights since she last took her medications,” Aunt Sarah informed him, stress in her quiet voice.
Dr. Lewis’s usual baritone was subdued, little more than a rumble that carried through the walls and into Tavia’s room. “Any outward indication of systemic distress?”
“No. But she said she noticed … changes.” This last word was whispered, yet heavy with significance.
Tavia sat up on the bed, concentrating on catching everything that was said.
“These changes occurred while she was with him?” Dr. Lewis asked.
“That was my assumption, yes.”
A pause. “Was there contact with him, physical or … intimate in nature?”
Oh, God. Tavia winced, hating how every aspect of her life was open for discussion and dissection by everyone around her. She hated her prolonged medical condition the most for that reason alone. True privacy was something she’d never known.
“I don’t know precisely what occurred between them,” Aunt Sarah replied. “She said she was physically restrained. He asked a lot of questions. She mentioned nothing more than that.”
“Mmm-hmm. And how did she present to you when she arrived back here today? Anything peculiar?”
Floorboards creaked softly as the pair began to move through the house, farther inside, still careful to keep their voices low. They stood near the head of the hallway, if Tavia could trust her hearing.
“She was warm to the touch but not fevered. And flushed in the face. As for the rest, I noted nothing unusual.”
“Nothing else?” Dr. Lewis grunted. “That in itself is unusual. Forty-eight hours without medical suppression of the condition should have produced some kind of marked reaction. We’ve seen it in all the others.”
All the others? Tavia held her breath as a jolt of alarm went through her, as cold as ice. What is he talking about? What others?
“She complained of being tired,” Aunt Sarah added. “I sent her to take a shower and rest a while.”
“Is she still asleep?”
“Yes. In her bedroom down the hall.”
“Good,” Dr. Lewis said. “I’ll go in and have a quick look before we wake her to assess her for in-clinic treatment.”
Every tendon and nerve ending in her body was firing off like small explosions inside her as the footsteps neared her closed bedroom door. Her senses were hyperacute now, skin tingling as though rained upon by thousands of tiny needles. She jumped as the knob twisted and Dr. Lewis appeared in the slowly widening wedge of space behind the door.
“Oh. Tavia, you’re awake.” He smiled, a faint curve of his mouth, which was partially hidden within the whiskers of his graying beard. “Your aunt told me you had gone to take a little nap. I hope I didn’t disturb your sleep.”
She was too uptight to bother with being polite. “What’s wrong with me, Dr. Lewis?”
“Don’t you worry. That’s why I’m here,” he said, stepping inside. He carried the big leather case that held his house-call medical supplies. Tavia had seen that bag of cold instruments and bitter medicines more often over the course of her lifetime than she cared to recall.
“No, no. Sit,” he said when she started to get up from the bed. “No nee
d to trouble yourself with a thing. It’s all under control now. You’ll see, I’m going to fix you right up.”
Tavia eyed him warily. “Something’s happening to me.”
“I know,” he said, nodding soberly. “But there’s no cause for alarm, I assure you. I’m going to administer a small booster treatment that’s going to make you feel good as new. Even better than a week at the spa. How does that sound?”
Tavia barely resisted the urge to tell him she’d never stepped foot in a spa. Things like that were off limits to her on account of her delicate physiology and her extensive skin issues—a fact he well knew, having been her sole care provider since she was an orphaned infant. He was trying to be light and humorous, but there was a flatness to his voice. A dull gravity to his gaze. It made her shudder a little, deep in her bones.
He came over to where she sat on the edge of the bed. “Lift your sleeve, if you would, please?” She hesitated, then complied, slowly inching up the long sleeve of her sweater. “Everything looks all right with your skin,” he told her. “That’s marvelous, Tavia. Very encouraging.”
He ripped open a sterile alcohol packet and dabbed the cold pad over her bared biceps. “How many others have you treated like me, Dr. Lewis?”
He looked up, clearly startled. “Excuse me?”
“Are there a lot with my condition?” she asked. “Who are they? Where do they live?”
He didn’t answer. Crushing the used alcohol wipe and foil packet in his fist, he pivoted away and tossed it into the nearby trash bin.
“I thought I was the only one,” she said, unsure why this revelation was making her breath come so rapidly, her pulse kicking with a note of apprehension. With dread for an answer she suddenly wasn’t all that certain she wanted to hear. “Why didn’t you tell me there were others?”
He chuckled lightly. “Somebody’s been listening through the door. You always did have an overly inquisitive mind, Tavia. From the time you were a child.”
He busied himself in his medical bag now, his voice coy, mildly patronizing. And frankly, it was pissing her off. “How many, Dr. Lewis? Have any of them died from this … illness I have?”
