by Pam Godwin
“That’s just it. I’ve been talking and searching and wracking my brain for years. I still don’t know what makes me special or what I’m supposed to do about it. I’ve fought, and I’ve lost. I fucking lost my heart.” Images of Salem shot a fiery burn through my chest, the pain unbearable and never-ending. “There’s one thing I haven’t tried.”
I dragged my boots through the sand, my fear alive and crawling across my skin as the surrounding shadows grew darker, thicker. I’d left my bow in the truck, but I didn’t need it. The dagger hung on my belt.
Stay alive? My mother had broken her own rule.
“I don’t know what you’re doing,” he whispered. “But you’re making me fucking nervous. Salem will rip—”
“Then leave.” I wrapped my arms around myself, my entire body shaking beneath the frightening weight of what I was considering. “Or stay. Tell him you dropped me off, but stay. I need your help.”
Something scratched in the surrounding darkness, the vast terrain echoing every sound. A rustling footstep. Then more. They might’ve been fifty feet away or a mile, but they were coming.
Erebus quietly charged toward me, his hard gaze locked on the pitch-black landscape.
“Stop.” I freed my mother’s dagger and pressed the tip against the inside of my wrist as terrified tears flooded my eyes. “I’m not going to fight them.”
“Are you insane?” He reached for me.
I swiped the blade across my forearm, a small cut, but painful enough to steal my breath. And deep enough to bleed.
He slammed a hand over his nose and stumbled back, his eyes hard and furious.
“Run!” His fangs elongated from beneath that huge hand, his breaths seething as his tenuous control unraveled. “Get in the truck and lock the doors. I don’t want to bite you.”
“You can’t infect me.” Blood pulsed through my veins, hammering in sync with the frenzy of my heart. “No more running. No more resisting.”
I turned the blade toward my other wrist and pierced the skin. Fire blazed up my arm, and I sobbed from the pain. From the almighty fear. I was so fucking scared my legs gave out.
I dropped to my knees and stared at the rivers of blood, fingers squeezing the hilt of my mother’s dagger. The same dagger she’d used to bleed her own wrists and cure the nymphs. My gut was rock hard with terror, but there was no conflict there. This felt horrifyingly right.
Erebus pressed the back of his arm against his nose and paced stiffly, angrily, ten feet away. Axes and blades clanked on his belt, but he didn’t reach for them. He didn’t want to kill the hybrids, and neither did I.
“Your blood doesn’t cure us,” he growled.
“No, it doesn’t.” The rise of my tears strangled my voice. “But my death will.”
“What?” His eyes blazed with rage. And hunger. “How do you know?”
My mother hadn’t wanted to get pregnant after the virus hit. She’d fought the notion of bringing life into this miserable world. But the moment she became pregnant and sealed her fate, she was able to wipe out the aphids. In the end, it was the promise of her death that had exterminated them.
I’d tried killing hybrids with weapons. Tried to stop their breeding. Tried to bite them. Tried to bite Salem. Tried to conquer it all with love. “My death is the only thing I haven’t tried.”
His face contorted, seemingly warring with biting me, stopping me, and killing me himself.
The approaching footsteps grew louder, and my pulse roared faster.
My fathers were going to be devastated, but they understood the predictions better than anyone. The prophecy was all-knowing, all-powerful, and couldn’t be circumvented. It took my mother, and it intended to take me. It already had. I died the day I lost my connection to Salem.
Salem.
A sob rose up, violent in its attack.
He would’ve spent the rest of his life waiting for me. Alone and miserable. But he didn’t have to. He could move on. He’d set me free, and I wanted to do the same for him.
My heartbeat exploded, shooting tremors of panic through my limbs. I held firm in the sand and forgave myself for my weaknesses. I forgave myself for everything.
Silhouettes emerged from the darkness. Fangs. Snarls. Raving, feral hunger.
It was time to do what I was meant to do. Time to show mercy, forgive Salem, and offer my blood.
It was time for me to die.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Nightfall pressed in from everywhere as I knelt in the sand, shaking with the compulsion to run. Dizziness swept through me, and the sound of my heartbeat thrashed in my ears.
Four hybrid males raced out of the darkness, eyes wild and fangs stark in the moonlight as they arrowed directly toward me.
Whenever a hybrid came across a human woman, his instinct was to fuck and impregnate, bite and infect. But I wasn’t a normal human woman.
Forty feet away, thirty feet…they slowed. The moment they recognized my red hair, they stumbled to a halt. Their shock at seeing the daughter of Eve on her knees and without her bow stunned them to a halt. But the hesitation wouldn’t last long.
They believed I was the single biggest threat to their species. They wouldn’t bite to infect me. They would bite to kill.
“Erebus…” My terror was so acute I no longer felt the throb in my wrists.
He stood to the side, breathing rabidly through his mouth, eyes locked on my bloody arms.
Violent shivers raced through me, my skin sweating and chilling. I don’t want to die. “Don’t let them rape me, please?” Tears filled my eyes. “Let them drain me, but don’t let them…remove my clothes.”
He growled low and pained, slashing his fangs like twin blades. “I can’t come any closer. I can’t!”
It didn’t matter to me if he bit me. Why did he care? Maybe he didn’t want to be part of this, even if Salem never found out.
One of the hybrids crouched, head cocked, sniffing the air.
“This is a trick.” The hybrid’s voice was thick with hunger, expression feral. “You’re hiding something, Daughter of Eve.”
They feared me as much as I feared them, but their instinct to bite would win.
“My blood isn’t poisonous. Those are just rumors.” I dropped the dagger and held out my blood-slicked arms as tears coursed down my cheeks. “I want to save you.”
Distrust rippled through them, but it only lasted a moment. Their resistance snapped in a crash of guttural roars, and they launched.
There was no slow-motion play-by-play, no breathless suspension in time. The attack was lightning fast and brutal in its impact. They slammed into me. My back collided with the ground, and air whooshed from my lungs. Their fangs were everywhere, ripping into my wrists, puncturing my thighs through the trousers, and piercing my neck. I screamed against the pain of violent repeated stabbings, my entire body a fiery conflagration of agony.
Instinct propelled my arms and legs to thrash, to fight. Uselessly. It was too late to change my mind. Too late to run. OhfuckOhfuckOhfuck. I’m going to die.
I should’ve told Salem I forgave him. Should’ve told him I loved him. I would never see him again, and that overwhelming regret added a rush of manic desperation to my fear.
Heavy sobs choked my screams. I couldn’t see past my tears, couldn’t breathe through the unholy pain. My back bowed off the ground, every muscle taut and shaking. It was death I feared, so much more than this physical torment. What if this was a mistake? What if I wasn’t supposed to die? I hated the doubt. Once I was gone, I would never know if I’d done the right thing. It was a torture worse than the brutal teeth tearing the flesh on my throat.
The scent of iron soured the air. My body grew cold, my skin clammy. My breathing shallowed, silencing my cries. Strength drained with the loss of blood, and the ferocious sounds of snarling and sucking dimmed. When hands began clawing at my clothes and exposing my lower body, I silently begged for death.
No no no. I cried without sound, too
weak to fight. Please don’t hurt me there.
The hybrids fed in a haze of senseless hunger. They were beyond reasonable thought and wouldn’t be able to stop themselves from fucking me.
Erebus’ growl sounded somewhere near my feet. A struggle broke out on top my legs. Heavy weight shifted and rolled. But I couldn’t lift my head. I lay listless and broken in breathless horror as bladed teeth sundered my flesh and emptied my veins. I ached for total numbness, petrified that the last thing I’d feel would be the utter devastation of being raped to death.
But nothing touched or penetrated between my legs. Erebus seemed to be fighting them off, even if he couldn’t overpower his own need. At the blurry edge of my periphery, his blond head hovered over my thigh, his fangs lodged in my skin as he fed with angry agonized noises.
Another mouth returned to my throat, ravenous in its assault. I no longer felt the blood soaking my neck. But I knew the moment he punctured something vital, felt the snap of one or more arteries in my throat. I lost the last of my muscle control. My head lolled. Breathing became a full-body effort until there was no more air, no sound of my heartbeat, no pain, no sense of anything.
Had the hybrids stopped biting? Something had happened, something big, but I floated away from it, drifting in desolate nothingness. Dead. This was what death felt like?
A pulse of golden light swelled in the darkness, moving closer, brighter. This was it, and I wasn’t ready. But I couldn’t look away. The glow was all around me, enveloping me in phantom arms and extraordinary warmth that couldn’t be measured or physically felt.
Particles of transparent yellow gathered inches before me, and slowly, enchantingly, formed an image. Waves of gilded hair cascaded around an exquisite feminine face with delicate bone structure, lips bowed into a graceful smile, and golden eyes. My eyes.
I recognized her, not from the carved statues and paintings created in her image, but with a fundamental part of me that loved her innately and unconditionally.
“Mom.” I spoke without voice or breath, the soundless word reverberating in a realm I didn’t understand.
“My beautiful girl.” Her hand was a strobe of light, pulsing with power and blinding my senses as she touched my cheek. “I love you more than life.”
I couldn’t move, didn’t feel my body. “Am I dead?”
“Yes.” Her voice was a booming heartbeat, but neither of us was breathing.
“Was I enough?” I searched her face, enthralled. “Was I enough to save them?”
“You’ve always been enough. So much more than enough.” Her aureate eyes burned impossibly brighter. “You saved them.”
A blissful sensation of peace radiated from her ambient light. But something vibrated at the edges, scraping against the perimeter of growing darkness that shrunk my mother’s aura.
“I love you.” I ached to reach for her and hold her to me, but my arms wouldn’t work.
“I’m so proud of you.” She flickered, her face blurring and dimming.
Wetness dripped over my lips and filled my mouth. Thick. Dark. Richly flavorful. There was so much of it. So much…blood? Why did I taste blood?
“Bite.” Her face faded, and the warmth of her glow lifted away. “Bite him.”
“No!” My heartbeat exploded to life. “Mom, please don’t leave!”
“Bite me.” Another voice replaced hers, a deeper, more familiar resonance of sound. “Fucking bite me!”
Freezing cold swept over me, and her beautiful face vanished in a blanket of darkness. In its place was a different face, paler, sharper, masculine. Salem.
Soul-deep elation warred with a horrible stab of fear. Why was he here? Did he die? Where was my mother? What was happening?
I coughed up the coppery fluid in my mouth, choking as more pooled in my throat. Where was all the blood coming from? The night sky pressed against me. I was still in the desert. Why was I so cold?
“You’re dying!” he screamed, eyes furious and teeth snapping. No fangs. “I won’t be able to bring you back again. You need to bite me. Right now!”
I lay numb and lost in a cloud of confusion, watching his mouth move. Where were his fangs? What happened to Erebus and the other hybrids? I tried to ask, but the words gurgled beneath a river of blood.
Was Salem cured? Or dead? My vision was so distorted I didn’t trust it.
He turned his neck and held the tip of my mother’s blade against a cut in his throat. More blood splattered my lips, and a rushing sound thrummed through my ears. My heartbeat?
Lub-dub, lub-dub, lub-dub.
The echo amplified, pounding a frantic drum in my head.
His heartbeat.
Blinking rapidly, I tried to clear my vision, and there, shimmering in the darkness was a tracery of glowing branches, bulging and throbbing beneath his skin. The silver ribbons of hybrid venom swam through his veins, beckoning me. Bite, bite, bite.
I licked my lips with a heavy tongue and caught the tip on something sharp. I did it again, and that was when I felt it. The ache in my gums. The razored points of my fangs. And the vigorous spark of our connection. It didn’t just spark. It ignited, blazing a scorching charge along the live wire between us.
I wanted to cry with happiness, but my eyes weren’t working. My body wouldn’t respond. His bare chest slid against my soaked shirt, and a soft material wadded against my throat. Was I alive? If I had a pulse, it was weak. Too weak to come back.
He pressed his neck against my fangs. “Bite me, goddammit!”
No! My mother had died for me. I wouldn’t let anyone else exchange their life for mine. Especially not Salem.
I forgive you. My voice carried no sound, my lips refusing to move. I love you.
The connection between us flared with so much heat it penetrated the coldness of my body. I clung to the sensation.
“Bite me!” he roared, a vicious echo of my mother’s words.
Bite him.
Why? My mother had said the hybrids were saved, and Salem didn’t have fangs. He was cured!
He gripped the back of my head, pried my mouth open, and shoved my face hard against the wound on his neck. The instant my fangs broke his skin, the urge to drink overtook me, the flavor of his blood too tempting. I couldn’t stop my jaw from moving, from pulling the life-giving essence of those silver ribbons into my body.
I sucked hard, harder, suddenly ravenous to consume him. Searing heat coursed through my veins. My lungs filled with nourishing air, and my nerve-endings stirred to vivid life. As I fed with delirious desperation, I became more aware of his weight on me, the length of his body entangled with mine, and the deep sound of his groans. He grew heavier, tenser, breathing, and giving me breath.
He tasted like survival and love. Each drop energized me, thrusting me into a dreamscape where I was stronger, blindingly happy, and whole.
The hammer of his heart began to slow, and mine sped up, strengthening and stretching. My insides sang with euphoria, and every molecule in my body pulsed with vitality as the healing properties of the hybrid venom hummed through my blood.
Afraid to drink too much, I slowed my feeding to a lazy suckle, swirling my tongue across his skin. Strength returned to my arms, and I clutched his back and head, hugging him to me. Sweet mother, I loved this man. I loved him so fucking much and never wanted to let him go.
He held me just as tightly. His hips rocked against mine, and his shallow breaths trickled into a raspy groan. His cock swelled in the confines of his pants, and he lifted his lower body away.
I grabbed the hard flex of his ass and pulled him against me, aching to feel how my bite affected him. The potency of our connection and the feverish fusion of our love curled around my soul, stitching and healing the broken pieces.
His muscles tightened, and he tried to push away, seemingly fighting his climb to orgasm. I wasn’t aroused, my insides too over-stimulated as I continued to heal. But I wanted his relief. Craved it. So I continued to pull on his vein, each hard suck coiling hi
m tighter against me.
He dropped his hands in the sand. His entire body locked up, and he released a hoarse grunt that shot electricity along our connection, jolted my heart, and stole my breath.
Then everything blinked out in an explosion of light.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
The first thing I felt was peace, calm and warm in the stillness of the air. I lay on a mattress and slid a hand across soft fabrics, seeking Salem. The sudden intake of someone’s breath snapped my eyes open.
Huge brown eyes stared back, followed by a soft smile. “Baby girl.”
“Shea!” Warmth spread through my chest. “I missed you so much.”
She engulfed me in a tangle of long black curls and strong arms. “Oh honey, you had me worried out of my mind.”
“I’m sorry.” I breathed in the comforting scent of her skin.
She smelled like safety and family. I was home, and that realization brought a thousand pressing questions.
As she hugged me, I didn’t feel a twinge of pain. Someone had dressed me in cotton pants and shirt. Probably Shea. With a swipe of my tongue, I probed my teeth. No fangs. I touched my neck, and the skin felt smooth and soft. No wounds or scars marred my bare arms. The hybrid venom in Salem’s blood had well and truly healed me.
“Where’s Salem?” I asked.
“He’s here.”
Arrows lined the concrete walls, and a black and white painting of my mother hung over my bed. I never spent much time in my room, and now it felt spartan and empty.
“I need to see him,” I said. “Is he—?”
“Alive and safe.”
I released a heavy breath.
“He drove you here last night.” She ran a gentle hand through my hair. “He and a blond man.”
“Man? You mean Erebus? Do they have fangs? The hybrids…are they—?”
“Slow down.” She caught my face in her hands. “I know you have questions. Just…let me look at you before your daddies storm in and take over.”
