by Jackie May
I freeze. In my panic about work, I’d momentarily forgotten who and what Henry is, and how I got here. “Why are you holding me hostage?”
Henry walks toward me again, and my stomach leaps into my chest. I glance at the window behind me. There’s a thick dark curtain blocking out all the light, so I have no idea if I could use it to escape. Even if I tried, Henry would catch me. Still, my brain can’t stop trying to come up with a solution.
“We have a bit of a situation,” Henry says.
I nod quickly, remembering last night’s conversation with Parker outside the club. “Yeah, your missing vampire. I’m sorry for you, but I really don’t know anything about it.”
“I do hope for your sake that’s true.”
He smiles as if we’re having a cordial conversation, while shivers race down my spine at the threat. He’s being pleasant, and using the manners and grace of a gentleman, but he can’t mask his underlying aura of danger. This man can and will kill me if he wants to.
My face pales, and my voice escapes me. I can only whisper as I shake my head. “I swear. I don’t have the answers you want.” My eyes flick quickly to Parker. “How many times can I say that?”
Henry comes to a stop at the end of the couch. He’s maybe four feet from me now. My pulse spikes even higher, and Henry pauses, cocking his head to the side as if he can feel it. Or hear it. “I believe you may be genuine,” he says, as if he’s surprised by his own faith in me. “However, I need to know for certain, and there are other things that don’t add up.” His eyes narrow. “Parker seems sure that you are hiding something, even if it’s not information about Nadine.”
I glare at Parker. He stares right back. “How do you know about the underworld?” he asks. “I swear you read my mind last night.”
The spike in my pulse confirms his suspicion. Henry nods as he files away that truth and takes a step closer to me. He rests his hand on the back of the couch and smiles again. The grin is slightly more predatory now. “How do you have such an extraordinary gift? And how is such a frail little thing like you involved in the underworld?”
He uses that same calm voice from his vision, as if he’s attempting to seduce me. His eyes are penetrating as well. I’m afraid he’s going to try to compel me. I drop my gaze to my feet and shake my head. “Believe me, I wish I wasn’t.”
In the blink of an eye, he comes around the couch and gently lifts his hand to my face. I flinch away from his touch, but his skin comes into contact with mine anyway. “I am not a monster,” he whispers, stroking my cheek with the back of his hand. “But I do need to know what you know of our world. I need to know how you’re involved with my missing vampire. I need to know what you’re hiding from me. If you will cooperate and try not to fear me, then I shall try to control my needs and desires.” His eyes rake over my body, and he swallows. “Though you tempt me so greatly.”
I don’t trust him, but hope explodes within me anyway. “Cooperate with you how? I already told you I don’t know about your vampire. What else do you want from me?”
He crowds my personal space again. I begin to tremble as fear twists my stomach into tight knots. I yelp when he suddenly grips my head in his hands. “I just need the truth, but I’m afraid I can’t trust your words. I will have to use my gift.”
Fear keeps my voice a whisper. “Your gift?”
“Don’t be afraid, Nora. If you don’t fight me, I won’t hurt you. I’m simply going to take a look at your memories. Memories cannot lie.”
He intends to sift through my memory? I’ve heard rumors of stronger vampires who could do amazing things with their compulsion powers. Clan leaders—masters—usually have extraordinary gifts that set them apart from other vampires. Make them stronger. I’d always hoped those stories weren’t true. But they are true. I can feel it in his thoughts and intentions.
Henry is going to get in my head and look at my memories. He’s very excited to do it. He’s curious about me—a human with the power to read minds who walks among his world.
I know the moment he accesses my mind. I feel his presence slip inside my head. The invasion of privacy is unbearable, and I automatically try to kick him out. Pinching my eyes shut, I mentally push against the unwelcomed presence. He fights back, pushing hard against me. “Do not resist me.”
“Get out of my head!”
Pain pounds behind my eyes, crushing against my brain and my skull. It hurts so badly I have to fight the urge to vomit. My nose begins to bleed. A tortured scream rips from my lungs. Still, every instinct I have propels me to eject him from my mind.
I fight as hard as I can. I’m strong, but Henry’s stronger. He breaks through my mental barrier, shattering my will. I collapse in his arms.
Parker dashes toward me. “Nora!”
“She’s all right,” Henry reassures Parker as he lays me on the nearby sofa. “She will not resist me anymore.” He smiles at me, swiping my hair off my forehead. “Will you, love?”
I want to shout and curse and scream at him, but I don’t have the energy. My brain is mush, and I’m barely hanging on to consciousness.
Henry wipes the tears from my cheeks and places his hands on my head again. “No,” I croak.
“Forgive me. I must.”
He enters my head again. I try to fight it, but I can’t. My memories surface against my will. While Henry absorbs them, he’s still touching me, and so, gives me a running commentary of his own thoughts at the same time. He starts with my most recent memory, because he’s curious as to why I’d screamed. He sees me wake up, sees me touch his bedpost, and gasps when he watches me fall into my vision.
I’m stuck in the memory, but I can hear Parker close by our side. “Sire, what is it?”
Henry can see my vision. He watches the scene of him and his lover play out, standing, as I did, like an outsider. “My, my,” he rasps. As shocked as he is by my ability, he’s aroused by the vision. He likes watching himself. “So it’s not just mind reading that you are capable of. You are an extremely powerful human, aren’t you? How does it work, exactly? Have you always had this gift?”
“T-that’s n-none of y-your b-business.”
Henry chuckles. “Actually, this vision is very much my business, don’t you think?”
I refuse to answer that and pray he’s watching the vision and can’t see my blush.
“Sire, what’s happening? What do you see?”
Henry chuckles. “Would you like to describe it to him, Nora?”
The tone of his voice makes me wish I could punch him in his smug face. There’s nothing I can say right now that wouldn’t sound pathetic, encouraging, dirty, or like a denial of attraction, so I keep quiet.
Henry sighs, sad that I’ve not taken his bait. “Nora has been gifted with a form of psychometry,” he explains to Parker. “She can see visions of the past when she touches objects—such as my bed. Isn’t that right, Nora?”
Parker gasps. “With a gift like that, she could help us find Nadine. We could take her to—”
“All in good time, Parker. Allow me to concentrate, if you will.”
“Forgive me, Sire.”
Parker goes quiet, and Henry’s attention shifts back to the vision we’re both stuck in. His arousal increases. He sees me watching the scene and likes the thought that I saw him—as if I’d had a choice in the matter. But, whether I’d wanted to or not, I had been turned on by it when I saw it, and he can tell. He feels my attraction and groans. “Nora.” He sounds agonized. “Sweet Nora, you torture me. I can feel your desire.”
As the words escape his lips, he reaches the part of the vision where he’d bitten the woman and feasted on her blood. He watches me scream. Just as he’d felt my desire before, he feels my revulsion now. He feels my memories just as I’d felt them when I experienced them. My stark terror over what is the most intimate treasured act among his kind hurts him. It’s the closest that two vampires can get to one another, and he’s desperate to share that bond with me.
&n
bsp; Henry lets go of me and pulls out of my head. The look in his fevered eyes screams of his hunger. His desire. “I could give you pleasure like you’ve never known,” he says.
I’m not sure if he means the sex or the biting, but either option terrifies and repulses me to a state of panic. I shake my head. “No thanks.”
He smiles, as if my declaration amuses him. “Don’t be so hasty, love. I felt your arousal as you watched us. You’re attracted to me.”
“My body responded instinctively. That’s all it was. You’re hot, but knowing what you are, you lost any attraction I might have felt.”
He gives me a knowing smile, as if he doesn’t believe me for a second, and places his hands back on my head.
“Not again.” I groan.
“I must. I don’t have the answers I need yet.”
I know there’s no point in arguing this time. Fighting him before did nothing but give me a horrid migraine and make me physically collapse. I really don’t want to lose consciousness, with Henry so close.
He dives once again into my memories. My attempts to fight him do nothing. I’m too weak, and he isn’t being gentle anymore. He works faster now, watching the night that Parker found me with shock and wonder. He’s amazed by how a human could know about the underworld, fear it as much as I do, and still face it head on.
He’s curious about Xavier and what kind of man he is that I would be desperate enough to face my greatest fear just to be rid of him. He skims over my memories of the months I lived next door to Xavier. As he swims through my past, I feel his anger. He works himself into a rage watching all of Xavier’s attempts to spy on me and drug me. He can barely control himself as he witnesses the visions I’d witnessed. Feels the things I’d felt. Hears the thoughts I’d heard. He wants to kill Xavier.
“You see?” I say, trying to change the direction of his thoughts. “I don’t know anything about your missing vampire.”
“No,” he agrees. “You are as innocent as you claim, though you are so much more than you pretend to be. Your gifts are remarkable.”
“Look, you got what you wanted. Stop invading my privacy now.”
“I’m afraid I can’t do that.”
I try to yank myself away from him, but I don’t have the strength left. My head is pounding. “Why the hell not?”
He doesn’t answer my question, but he can’t hide his thoughts from me. He could stop now, but he doesn’t want to. He wants to know everything about me. He thinks he’s been given a miraculous gift and that he would be a fool to not learn everything he can about me.
I try to push him from my head again, but the effort is almost nonexistent now, and my stomach rolls. I’m helpless to do anything but lie there while he delves, unwelcome, into my past.
At first, he analyzes everything. He tries to think of how he might be able to gain my trust, but soon his thoughts trail off, and he simply watches. He sees my lonely life and is starting to recognize a reoccurring theme—men.
All my life, I’ve been sought after. There’s something unnatural about me that puts men under a spell. I mean that literally, as in, magic is involved. I call it a curse. I’m cursed to attract men to unhealthy levels. I can’t explain why, but I know I’m not imagining it.
Henry watches me bounce from foster home to foster home, always having problems with my foster fathers or brothers. He sees school after school and all the boys that never leave me alone. His anger rises each time I am harassed or assaulted. He roars, furious with what he’s seeing. That he’s angry on my behalf doesn’t make me feel any better. “Please, stop!” I scream. “Once was bad enough. Stop making me remember! Please stop this!”
“I am so sorry, Nora,” he coos in my ear. His hand strokes my head over and over. “You’re safe now. You have my word. I will protect you.”
His promises bring me no comfort. Who will protect me from him?
My curse hits Henry hard. Seeing everything I’ve been through, he doesn’t just become drawn to me; he instantly becomes protective of me. And possessive. I’m his now, and he plans to take care of me. He vows to himself that I will never be put through that again. No one else will ever come near me. He’ll make sure of it. He thinks he understands why I hadn’t wanted him to touch me. He wants me to see him differently from all of the past men in my life. He wants me to long for his touch, not abhor it. Fat chance of that.
When I realize just how far back in my memory he’s going, and I recognize what else I’m about to have to relive, I panic. “No!” I scream. “Get out of my head!”
“Nora, what is it?”
“Stop. Please.”
“Stop fighting me, love. You’re too weak right now. You will hurt yourself.”
“Then STOP!”
“Shh,” he whispers, wiping the tears from my face. “What are you hiding from me?”
He pushes harder, and I try to match him. I’m fueled by desperation. I can’t watch them kill my mom again. Seeing the memories like this makes them feel too real. They’re too vivid. I can’t go through that again. I just can’t.
The premonition hits, and my child self jerks up in bed, crying for my mom. She enters the room, and my heart aches at the sight of her. For a moment, I’m powerless to do anything except take in the memory. I can feel her arms around me. Hear her voice. It’s so real. I begin to sob as she holds my younger self. And then they come. I can’t watch this, and yet I can’t help it.
“Stop!” I cry. I can feel her pain and her fear. Worse, I can now feel the monsters’ excitement as they attack my mother. “Please,” I beg. “Why are you making me relive this? I hate you, you sick bastard!”
Unable to take the torture anymore, I tune Henry out and break down into gut-wrenching sobs.
It’s the crying, I think, that finally makes Henry extract himself from my head. With everything he’d put me through, I hadn’t shed a tear, but now I’m sobbing like a baby. My grief and fear are so fresh it’s as if it all happened yesterday.
My nightmare stops, and the pressure in my head goes away, but the aftereffects are a bitch. I blink my way back to reality, feeling as if my brain has been shredded by a set of sharp claws. But that’s nothing to the feeling in my chest. My heart has been ripped to pieces far worse than my brain.
I sit up, ignoring the throbbing in my head, and take a deep breath. My sobs quiet, but I can’t stop silently spilling tears. I close my eyes and sniff as more shudders wrack my body.
“Sire, what’s the matter with her?” Parker whispers, kneeling beside Henry now, and biting his bottom lip as if it pains him to see me crying.
Henry shakes his head, and his eyes fasten on mine. “They were rogues,” he murmurs. “Those who attacked you and your mother. The worst of our kind.” Parker gasps. Henry looks like he feels sick. I hope he does. “They were monsters, yes, but they were the exception, Nora, not the norm. I promise you. We do not condone such actions. I am so sorry that happened to you.”
His apology doesn’t make me feel any better. I’ve been trying to forget what happened all my life. And now, thanks to him, the memories are so much worse. I’ll never forget the feelings those monsters felt. I’ll never forget their faces, or the looks of pleasure on them. I’ll never forget my mother’s pain.
Unable to look at the monster in front of me any longer, I turn my face into the sofa and let more tears fall. Behind me, Henry sighs. “Bring the car around, Parker.” A hand falls on my shoulder. “Come, Nora. Some fresh air will do you good.”
Henry ushers me into the back of a sleek black Mercedes sedan and then slips in beside me. When Parker climbs behind the wheel, I can’t help but think of the similarities between this moment and the night before when Xavier forced me to go out with him. The only difference is that the premonitions of someone close by meaning to do me harm are missing. Oddly enough, I haven’t felt the warning feelings since ditching Xavier. The vampires truly don’t mean me any harm. Right now. That doesn’t mean that I’m safe by any stretch. Vamps are
moody, and I’m sure their definition of bringing me harm would be different than mine.
“Where to, Sire?”
“Underworld. That was the last place Nadine was seen, was it not?”
As Parker nods and puts the car into gear, I lean forward, trying my best to keep my temper in check. “Uh, you’re going to take me home first, right?”
Henry gives me a long look that says so much. The bastard has no intention of ever letting me go home.
“Oh, this is bullshit. Take me home, now. You got your answers. I didn’t take your missing vampire, and I’m not a threat to you. I’ve never told anyone about the underworld. Plus, you know about my gift. You keep my secret, I keep yours. Those are the rules of the underworld. You have to let me go.”
“You want to go back?” Henry asks. “To that hole of an apartment next door to that loathsome human?” He sounds like he’s insulted that I’d pick my home over his.
I shrug. “It’s my home. I have responsibilities, a job—maybe. I probably got fired for not showing up to work today, thank you very much. But still, it’s my life. You can’t just take it from me.”
Henry gives me a rueful look. “It wasn’t much of a life, Nora. You lived alone with no family, no friends, no lovers…”
My chest clenches like Henry is punching me with each word he says. As an orphan who grew up in foster care, I’ve never wanted anything more than a real family. Being a scrawny little white girl in Detroit was bad enough—I never fit in and was always picked on—but add having to hide my gifts, and I never had a chance at having any kind of real relationships. I’ve grown resigned to my lonely life, but I’ve never wanted to be alone. Henry’s hitting below the belt, and he knows it. He waits for a response from me, but I can’t give one without sounding emotional, so I turn my head and stare stoically out the window.
“You’ll have all of those things from now on,” Henry says. “I’ll keep you safe. Provide for you. You will be well taken care of, I assure you.”
