by Laken Cane
The vampires needed their master, my men needed me, and the humans needed everyone.
“Is he hypnotizing her?” a woman asked.
“Tell them,” Amias said.
Alicia took her stare from his to look out at the crowd. “I’m not mesmerized. I just want this to work. I want the vampires to protect us. The youth of our city are open to them. They’re visiting the clubs. They’re safe.” She looked at Amias once again, and her voice softened. “I want to trade blood for protection.”
“That’s disgusting,” another woman said. “Vampires are gross. Like getting sucked on by a lizard.”
Alicia turned up her nose. “Can you truly look at this man and call him anything but…” She blushed, but kept her voice steady. “Hot? He’s the sexiest man I’ve ever seen. I don’t know how you can look at him and think of him as anything less than beautiful.”
She wasn’t lying.
Amias smiled. “Are you ready?” he asked her.
“It won’t change anything if you bite Alicia,” I said, unable to keep my silence. “You need someone who isn’t already convinced.” I pointed at the woman who’d called him gross. “You need to win her over.”
“Not going to happen,” the woman said.
Angus put his arm around me and I leaned into his warmth. “I’ll give you five hundred dollars,” he told the woman.
“I’ll do it for five hundred bucks,” a young man said, and then there were several cries of, “I will!” before the woman shrugged and swaggered to Angus.
“You’d better be good for it,” she told him.
I glared at her. “Go to the master.”
Alicia reluctantly stepped away from Amias and the new woman took her place.
“Later?” Alicia asked him. “I don’t need money to let you bite me.” She smiled, already half in love. “Anytime you want me, come find me.”
Amias looked at me.
“Absolutely not,” I said.
And then, before anyone could say another word, Amias struck. He didn’t give the donor time to waver. He didn’t even look her in the eye. No one could say later that he’d mesmerized her.
She screamed, but it was a scream of surprise, and even before the sound was completely out of her mouth, it changed.
The scream became a wail, tapered off to a groan of delight, and finally, she moaned, and it was the sound of sex. She orgasmed as he sucked, and I shuddered against Angus, my legs trembling, my thighs pressed against the sudden wetness and zings of hot desire that very nearly made me come right there in front of a huge crowd of humans.
Because I knew how it felt.
I felt everything. Smelled everything. I was not the same.
The girl groaned, and a sigh floated from between my lips. The master’s bite didn’t bring only physical ecstasy. It could make the mind float on a sea of bliss. The vampire bite was better than any drug.
Only a master could have such an extreme effect on a human, but the humans didn’t need to know that. The lesser vampires could make it good, as well. Just not that good.
It could also, in a master’s hands, be the most painful thing a human could imagine, but they wouldn’t be shown that, either.
I’d received both pleasure and pain from Amias. I knew well what he could do.
“Trin.” Angus tightened his arm around me. “You okay?”
“I’m a vampire,” I whispered.
There was a world inside my mind that hadn’t been there before. I’d survived the despairing wastelands of the afterlife. I now knew the fear of death, as did every immortal in existence.
So I would live forever.
Amias pulled his fangs from the side of the human’s neck and licked the tiny wound, sealing it. The human tottered away, her cheeks red, her chest heaving, her hand to her mouth.
She was pulled into a little group of her friends. “Oh my God,” she told them. “Oh, my God. So fucking good. He’s…amazing.”
She didn’t have to say it loudly. I heard.
As did Amias.
He shot me a look, a quick glance full of pure male ego and satisfaction.
The joy of that bite would fade for her very quickly, and when it did, she might very well hate him for it. She’d forget the hugeness of her pleasure.
But that was okay.
Those who’d witnessed it wouldn’t forget her reaction.
There was something so taboo in what had just happened—in the city before, a vampire boldly biting a human—no matter what the reason—would have gotten him tortured and staked. In the city before, a vampire wouldn’t have stood in the square talking with humans like he were a regular person.
But Crawford was right. Things had changed.
And Himself had been right. It was time.
We waited, our little group of supernaturals and vampires.
And finally…
“Where did you say those clubs are?” someone asked.
“And so it begins,” Jade muttered. “No human can resist a good time.”
Chapter Sixteen
RIFTER
A week passed, then two, and still the executioners did not come.
Bay Town began to relax.
And I began to darken.
There was enough humanity left inside me to make me dislike that growing darkness.
“Your coldness will continue to grow as your humanity shrinks.”
Jin had been right.
Amias was worried, but we both knew that only time would tell us exactly what I would become.
“You’re part vampire,” he said. “It will balance you. I am sure of that.”
Perhaps he was right.
I missed Shane with an obsessive fierceness that consumed me. I couldn’t let him go.
He wasn’t dead—I’d have felt the absence of him.
He was out there, somewhere, without me. Without us, his…his pack. His crew. His people. He needed us, even if he didn’t want to.
And god, we needed him. Part of us was missing.
“I’m going after him.” I sat around the table with Angus, Rhys, Clayton, and Leo, watching as they ate their dinner, and just that suddenly, I made up my mind. It was time. I stood. “I’m bringing him home.”
They stood with me, at once.
“We’re coming with you,” Angus said.
I shook my head. “I’ll track him alone. I’m running.”
“You can’t go without at least one of us,” Leo said. “I’ll go.”
“I can’t track in a car.” I watched him, unsure and a little wistful. “I can’t take you with me, Leo.”
I wanted to.
He said nothing, just waited for me to make a move so he could follow, no matter what I said.
“Amias will follow you,” Angus said, finally. He grasped my shoulders and leaned forward to give me a kiss.
I could feel his anxiety. “You don’t have to worry about me, Angus.”
He snorted. “I’ve been worrying about you since the day I met you, Trin. I can’t stop now.”
“They can’t hurt me,” I told him. “Not really.”
His frown was deep and held a tiny glint of anger. “You can be hurt, girl. You might heal from it, but I’ve been hurt enough times to know. It will mess you up. Don’t be fucking careless.”
So I promised him.
I couldn’t wait a second longer. Once I’d decided to drag Shane home, I simply had to go. “I’ll bring him back,” I murmured.
Then I strode to the back door, the half-giant at my back, and I ran. I left Leo behind in a matter of seconds.
I didn’t waste time looking for Amias. We were connected. He’d find me if he thought he needed to.
When I ran, it was like becoming a streak of energy that exploded through the air, quicker than a thought. There were no legs or arms or eyes, just a streak of magic that had none of the limitations of a human body. It was magic. There was no other word for it, no other explanation.
I had no idea how I’d
track Shane, until suddenly, I did. I opened myself to him. I followed my senses, and I had no doubt they’d lead me straight to the love of my life. My obsession. As much as I was the master’s obsession, Shane was mine.
I would find him.
I did, and it took me less than three hours.
I tracked him to a club in a town called Chesterton, and I stood outside the bar, my head down, my hand to my chest, trying to control my tears. I was overwhelmed by the nearness of him. By him.
“Shane,” I whispered.
And then, I let go of the softness, because soft wouldn’t get him back.
Soft would get me hurt.
Soft would make me let him go.
The club was bursting with music so loud it hurt my ears. It scrambled my thoughts as my new vampire ears sent it into my new vampire brain. It fucked me up.
But I felt Shane, and I didn’t care about my ears.
I weaved my way through the throng of dancing humans, my senses leading me onward, and when a heavy-eyed human got in my path and slowed me down, I shoved him out of my way.
People were starting to pick up that it was the recently dead vampire Trinity Sinclair in their midst, and that something interesting was about to happen.
What were they going to do?
Not a damn thing.
Shane knew I was there. He knew, just as I knew he was there. He wouldn’t come meet me, but he wouldn’t run, either.
When I finally saw him, he was sitting at a round table, his back to the wall, with two half-naked girls on his lap. Another one was smashed up against his side, whispering into his ear, and two rather large men sat across from him.
He hadn’t fed in a very long time. He would resist feeding, of course, even though it hurt him.
He was so very hungry.
He looked up, unable to resist, and met my stare.
I smiled.
His shudder was completely unintentional and unstoppable, and the girls on his lap glanced at him, then followed his stare to me.
I didn’t look at them, but they were on my list of humans I might need to fuck up that night.
I felt like I moved in slow motion as I walked toward my heart, my vampire, my hunter.
Then I was standing at the table, rage, hunger, and lust screaming through my body. I wanted to kill, to hurt, to fuck, to eat. I wanted all those things, and I wanted them so badly I knew he’d be choking on the scent of them.
I was a feral animal.
Or maybe that was just the rifter in me.
I grasped the edge of the table and leaned over it, never once taking my stare from Shane’s. “Get the fuck up.”
One of the girls screamed in pain and Shane jerked, then looked almost unseeingly to where he gripped her arm. He let go of her and shoved both women off his lap.
“Get out of here,” he told them.
They didn’t need to be told again.
But he didn’t move, just sat watching me with that dark, dark stare.
Two bouncers grabbed me. One pinned my arms to my sides, and the other grabbed me by the throat.
“You need to leave,” the throat-grabber said.
I flung them from me so hard I figured they were dead as soon as they hit the wall. Then I grabbed the table and sent it sailing through the air after them.
It didn’t matter if I hurt them. It didn’t even matter if I killed them.
Not to me.
Not then.
Shane was suddenly cradling a shotgun, but he made no move to aim it at me.
“Are you going to make me carry you out of here?” I asked.
The other men had scrambled away as soon as I’d dealt with the attacking bouncers, and it was just the two of us.
I felt the crush of humans, smelled their fear, their interest, their sweat, but they might as well not even have been there.
“What the fuck are you?” Shane asked.
My grin stretched across my face, fake and deadly. “I’m your one and only.” I took a step closer to him. “And I’ve come to take you home.”
“No.”
“Don’t fight me, Shane. I will kick your motherfucking ass in front of all these tasty humans and in the end, you’ll still be going home with me.”
He shot me.
Lifted his shiny new Betty and blew me away.
He was fast, the bastard. So fast.
It took me a couple of minutes to pick myself up from the filthy floor and shake off the damage, and by then, he was gone.
That was okay.
He couldn’t hide from me.
I should have left him, but I couldn’t.
God help me, but I couldn’t.
The vampire master found me as I ran, and he ran at my back, following me as I followed Shane.
I stopped once to get my bearings. “What are you going to do?” I asked Amias, my voice thick with tears. “Will you stop me?”
“I will do whatever you want, my love. I will help you catch him, I will kill him, I will bury him inside the earth and grow him all over again. I will do whatever you want me to do.”
I grabbed his face and pressed my lips to his, hard, and only for a moment. Long enough to taste him, to tell him without saying a word that I loved him.
To thank him.
There was no right or wrong.
Not among vampires.
“Let’s go get him,” I murmured, and I followed my love for miles. All the way across the city, into the woods, into the bogs. Up hills, through swamps, across lakes.
And in the end, I got him.
Amias and I slammed his frail body between ours, and we held him, silent as he struggled, for hours.
We wore him down.
It was one of the saddest nights of his life, of my life.
Amias, he was old. He’d done that shit before.
When dawn came and we sank into the earth to sleep, Shane was sandwiched between us. And even in my sleep, I continued whispering love into his ear, begging him to accept what he’d become, to allow us to tend him, to let us love him.
To come home.
He knew he had no choice.
I wasn’t giving him a fucking choice.
I was no longer that girl.
And as I belonged to the darkness, Shane Copas belonged to me.
Chapter Seventeen
SACRIFICE
I took away his will.
Maybe he needed me to.
That’s what I told myself on the long walk home. He didn’t try to run. He only put one foot in front of the other, his stare on the ground. And when I stopped in the middle of nowhere and pressed his fangs to my flesh, he drank, tears from his broken sobs mixing with the blood.
“Will you forgive me?” I whispered, once. “Ever?”
He didn’t answer, and I didn’t need him to.
I knew the answer to that question.
I only needed him to know I cared.
He would have died out there, eventually. He would have gone angrily into the despair, but first, he would have suffered unimaginably for a thousand lifetimes.
I’d saved him.
I’d fucking saved him.
Neither Shane nor Amias comforted me when I burst into tears.
We walked on, walked until the sun threatened to set us on fire. Once again, we slept.
The next night he seemed a little less bleak. I looked at Amias, who gave me the tiniest nod of agreement, and my heart leapt.
He was less bleak.
He would be okay, my hunter.
But then he turned to me, as though sensing my hope, and slammed the stock of his shotgun into my face.
Shane had been strong as a human. As a vampire he was a fucking train.
When I fought my way out of the darkness and dashed blood from my eyes, Amias had Shane on the ground and was beating him to death.
Shane was strong, but he was no Amias.
I threw myself at the master and tried to pull him off Shane, but it was as though I wasn’t even the
re.
And despite the urgency, I calmed myself, leaned forward, and whispered into his ear. “You told me you’d do whatever I wanted you to do with him.”
He turned his head to look at me, and I swear there was nothing in those icy eyes but madness. I’d seen it once before, when he’d nearly killed me. A lifetime ago.
It was the same.
And I had no idea how to bring him back.
“Master,” I murmured, and ran my thumb over his lips. “Don’t leave me.”
He sat straddling Shane, his fist raised, madness in his eyes, and God, I couldn’t bear it. I couldn’t bear any of it.
Vampires had a hard fucking life. It was the price we paid for immortality.
I leaned forward, carefully, and pressed my lips to his. I covered his fist with my hand, kissed him, whispered into his mouth, let him feel my love, my need.
“I cannot be without you,” I told him.
He tilted his head and opened his lips, tasting the blood from the injury Shane had given me. When he pulled back to look at me, his gaze was tender. “Do you hurt?” he asked. “Do you hurt, my love?”
“I’m becoming friends with pain.” I closed my eyes and leaned my forehead against his. “It’s the only way I know I’m alive.”
Maybe I was the mad one. How could I not be?
“Your hunter loves you, Trinity.”
We looked down at the fallen, battered vampire who lay healing and agonized and unfinished, and simply watched him as he watched us, with empty, cold stares and overflowing hearts.
“Don’t do that again,” I told Amias, without taking my stare from Shane.
He said nothing for a few seconds. Then, “If he hits you again, I will bury him.”
“Amias, I—”
“No.” He waited until I looked at him, then spoke slowly and clearly, not only for my benefit, but for Shane’s. “If he hits you again, I will wrap him in silver and bury him in the fucking ground for eternity.” He dropped his hard stare to Shane, and Shane, bloody and broken, began to tremble. “If you can’t touch her in love, you will not touch her at all. Do you understand my words?”
Shane parted his battered, swollen lips. “Yeah. Fuck you both.”
And he sounded almost…normal.
Shane had been a hunter, as had I. Perhaps he could have killed Amias by staking him. Perhaps I could have killed Amias by yanking Silverlight off my back and shoving her into his chest.
