by Tijan
“Try something more elemental than that. Those are species. Look at yourself.”
I glanced down to my arms and lifted them high. I still saw the silver color pumping through my skin. I saw the tendons and ligaments attached to my muscles and bones. The silver ran through it all. I was a little unnerved, but I gritted my teeth. There had to be a message in all this nonsense.
“You’re life.”
“I’m Davy.”
“That’s what we can call you, but that’s not what you are. Not anymore.”
“I’m…” I looked up, somber. “Jack and Jill don’t exist. You’re the Immortal. You’re life and you’re in me now. It’s not about Jack and Jill. It’s about running up the hill and falling down. It’s about fetching the pail. They wouldn’t have to run up the hill if they didn’t need to fetch a pail of water.”
“You’re starting to get it. She never got it.”
“The hill is…”
“The hill is the pursuit. You’re the golden prize.”
I was going to wake up. I felt it slowly coming…. My other self disappeared in a flash, but the voice haunted me, “You’re the Immortal now, Davy. Welcome to the Land of Never Death.”
Then I gasped as the dagger flashed towards me. Blood dripped down and it was mine this time. The dagger swept closer and embedded itself in my chest. I opened my mouth to scream, but no sound came out.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
My eyes snapped open and I let loose a shrill scream. My hand clamped on my chest, but it took a moment before I realized that there was no dagger. There was no blood. My hand shook as I held it out and saw there that was no silver blood. My hand was normal. Pale. I looked around and there was no Alice’s Wonderland. I breathed a sigh of relief.
“You’re awake.”
I turned towards the voice and was dazed to see a hooker leaning against a grand oak door. She wasn’t really a hooker, but she looked like one. She smiled coolly and straightened from her post, then stalked towards me with one precisely placed black boot in front of the other. She was a vampire. That was obvious, but she wasn’t like the other vampires around Benshire. They dressed like regular folk. She wore a black leather corset held together by silver safety pins. The leather looked like it cut into her skin, but I doubted she cared. It’s not like she really needed to breathe. It gave her some massive cleavage.
The corset looked like it was tucked into her pants. The ends were tucked inside those high-heeled black boots that started below her knees.
Uncomfortable. Dangerous. Sexy.
Her dark eyes flickered and I almost expected to see a drop of blood at the corner of her mouth. It would’ve blended with her lipstick and the auburn curls that hung down to her waist.
“So… welcome back.” She clipped those words out.
“You say that, but I don’t think your heart’s really into it,” I replied with a raspy voice. I frowned and glanced down—that’s when I saw where I was. Black satin sheets. I was in a massive bed placed on a pedestal in the center of the room. The bed was… whoa. That’s all I could say and the rest of the room…. I took a second look at the doors since they were my only exit. They were massive too and made of oak with little swirls in the frame around the doors, like an artist had custom-made the frames just for the room. The swirls in the frame matched the two window frames, bed posts, and headboard. Someone was more decorative than me. Then I looked at myself and saw I was dressed in my jeans with only my thin camisole. That was it. No socks. I always wore socks. I loved my socks. “Where am I?”
“Lucas wanted to make sure you were safe.”
“What happened to me?”
Her body is changing… My body shook as I remembered those words and I focused on her again. “You know who I am? You were there. You said—” I fell silent, confused. How had she known? I hadn’t even known.
She was smug. “Do I know who you are? Yes. I’m one of three who knows. And yes, I was there when your body started changing. You were seizing. I had to put you out of your misery.”
I sat further up in the bed. “You told Roane to do it. You told him that I needed ‘to know.’” My throat was sore so I started to massage it.
“Now you know… don’t you?” I saw a flash of dislike in her eyes and knew this vampire really loathed me.
I threw my legs out from underneath the sheets and stood weakly.
“He’s not going to want you to leave. Lucas said to keep you here no matter what.” There was a warning in her dark eyes. So I made sure there was a wide berth as I rounded to the door. When I reached it, I held her gaze. That’s when I saw that she had no intention of stopping me. Why? Did she really hate me that much? Was it about Roane?
As those questions formed in my mind, I was inside her. Her shields were like air for me. She had no idea. She was frozen in place, like I had paralyzed her. I could easily slip through now whereas I would’ve broken a sweat before.
“No, Davy.” A hand wrapped around my arm and jerked me out.
So many things flashed through my mind, but I watched as she blinked. She was slowly coming out of her trance. Then comprehension flashed and loathing quickly followed. It had been there before, but this time it was tenfold and she bared her fangs. If Roane hadn’t been there, she would’ve killed me.
Roane pulled me against his chest and tucked me to the side at the same time. He moved and stood between the two of us. “Wren, walk away. She doesn’t know her powers yet. Go.”
Wren straightened to her full height. She didn’t spare Roane a glance, but she promised so many lethal things in her eyes. If Wren had been at Kates’ bar, I knew I would’ve tucked tail and just left Emily to fend for herself. Not now. I felt something in my gut. I held a hand over my stomach and the feeling instantly speared to my skin, like I had called it there. It on the other side of my skin and I watched horrified and amazed as a spark came out of it. “Oh my god!”
“She’s going into shock again. She can’t handle it.” Take a guess at who said that.
“Not now, Wren,” Roane snarled as he swept his arms underneath me and I felt myself being lifted in the air.
“Put her out again. She can’t handle it, not yet. It’s too soon. Her body changed too fast, Lucas. Put her out.”
“No!” I struggled in Roane’s arms, but he laid me on the bed and held me down.
“Calm down, Davy. You have to calm down. I know it’s hard. I know the adjustment is disconcerting, but please stay with me.”
“She can’t handle it. She’ll be another kicker before the week’s end.”
“Out!” Roane roared this time.
I slammed back into reality and felt Roane’s body on top of mine. I heard his ferocity. He was tense and hard like a rock, but his attention was focused on her.
My palm itched. I looked at it, detached from myself, and saw it jerk. It was like it knew I watched it, like it had something it wanted to do. I wasn’t sure what was going to happen, but I knew something was going to happen. It closed on itself and I felt a searing heat flare through my body. My hand trembled, but it remained fisted and then the heat surged through my body again and soared to my hand. The heat burst out of my body and shot through the air. It aimed perfectly.
Wren saw it coming. The heat slammed against her chest and she crashed backwards through the doors. She was there. She was gone.
“Where did you send her?” Roane scrambled off the bed and looked through the opened doors.
“I wanted her gone.” We still hadn’t heard her fall.
“Gregory!”
“She’s okay. She landed in the lilies.” Gregory’s voice echoed through the house.
Roane swung his impenetrable eyes my way from the doorway. “Wren hates lilies. Did you know that?”
My eyes went wide as I realized that when I’d been inside of her, I’d done a quick scan. It was like I was some ultra-charged empath now and I was the internet inside of humans, well, vampires. I shrugged. “Lucky guess. She didn�
�t look like the flower type.”
Roane studied me intently. The silence stretched out. One second. Five seconds. Thirty—a minute—five minutes. Ten minutes. That’s how long we stared at each other. Ten freaking minutes. Then, “You don’t even need a shield anymore.”
“That’s all? I heat-rayed your girlfriend out of this house. All you say is that I don’t need a shield anymore?”
Roane didn’t change expressions. “You’re changing, Davy. You know that you’re changing and you know what you’re changing into.
