“What a shame for you both.” He chuckled to himself. “In that case, he wouldn’t have abandoned you. Why go through all that trouble to keep you alive?” Leaning back, he called to one of his assistants, who came in and bent down so he could whisper in her ear. She nodded rapidly and rushed from the room, but not before she told him something that made him curse.
“You see, Violet,” he continued, shaking his head. “If he feels some emotional attachment toward you, he’ll come rushing if he learns where you’re held.”
“So, I’m bait,” she said, lips pressing tightly. She knew he was about to offer a trade—if they got Alex again, they’d let her go free and try to clear her name. But he didn’t get the chance to say it before the door was kicked open and a woman sauntered in on mile-high heels.
“Willlllliam,” she sang, bending down behind his chair to press her cheek to his, drawing blood-red nails over his vest.
“What are you doing here?” His voice held a scowl as Violet risked a glance at the woman.
She was a beauty, heart-shaped face complimented by a fall of wine-red hair. Straight from the pages of a gothic magazine, she wore a tight, corseted gown that showed ample cleavage from her pose behind him. While she would have assumed the man, William, could’ve been a human, there was no second guessing that she was a vampire.
“Am I not allowed to be here?” she asked, putting a hand to her chest.
He spoke through gritted teeth. “No, you are. As long as the rumors aren’t true. You haven’t been tagged, have you?”
“Oh, well, I have.” She had a cackle for a laugh as she waved it off.
“Coven Rehnquist is going to follow their Bloodhound straight here. You have to go.” He flinched away from her, jumping to his feet with a new shot of urgency.
She sidestepped him, having noticed Violet with a vicious smile crossing her face. “Oh, don’t be such a stick in the mud. Look at this cute girl.”
“I was handling it—”
“Now I’ll handle it.” She patted his cheek as if speaking to a child.
“I was making progress, Kim,” he protested.
She looked him in the eye, and, to Violet’s surprise, he backed down, sitting without another word of complaint when she told him to do so. The hair on the back of her neck rose as the woman approached in a fluid sashay. “Alex’s new plaything,” she purred.
Grasping Violet’s chin, she jerked her head up for them to make eye contact. “Relax,” the vampiress ordered. Kim’s eyes were a burning red, fangs standing out behind painted lips of black. If she wasn’t suddenly frozen, Violet would’ve thrashed in terror. “William, be a dear and get me a bucket of water.”
She stroked Violet’s cheek with the edge of her nails, leaving stinging trails behind. Curling her hand around, she licked a few beads of blood from them. “He does have good taste. You seem like you clean up well,” she remarked. “Sweet blood, too. Are you a virgin?”
Violet’s eyes bugged wide, but she was unable to speak until Kim told her it was all right. “Go to hell,” she muttered.
“Oh, what happy happenstance. I’m not going there today, but you will.” The vampiress grinned. “My bloodline specializes in it, in fact. I’ll show you horrors you didn’t know existed.” She leaned in so Violet could smell the blood on her breath. “And when it’s over, we’ll deliver your broken body to Alexander so he knows exactly who he’s playing with.”
“H-he won’t care. I don’t even know the guy,” she stammered, trembling and pressing herself back into her restraints. She could only squirm as Kim sat astride her.
“Aw, poor thing. It doesn’t matter, you see? Innocent blood spilled,” she purred. “He’ll live with the guilt that he caused your death for the rest of his limited days.”
“William was saying you would let me go if I helped you.” She was hedging and knew it, but he’d suggested as much.
Kim slapped her thigh with a laugh. “William is still young. He’s got a little human left in him.” She turned and beckoned when the man in question came back, his expression perfectly blank. Offering her a sloshing wooden bucket, he sat after his task was done. “See how obedient he is? Such a good little boy.”
She turned back to Violet, red eyes full of manic energy. Whatever came next would be the promised magic, and she saw clearly that nothing, not even one of her underlings, would stop this woman. Violet decided she wouldn’t go out whimpering for mercy she wouldn’t find. “Are all vampires freak shows like you, or are you a special case?” she snarked, proud that her voice didn’t shake.
“Oh, so brave.” Kim laughed, leaning in with an open mouth. She changed course from Violet’s jugular, instead pressing a kiss to her forehead. There was a lash of lightning behind her eyes, and she felt herself tumble face-first into an abyss of darkness.
Violet couldn’t breathe. Water choked her senses as she gasped for air just to find none.
Inside her head, Kim showed her snippet after snippet of horrors, as promised. Every breath of air was punctuated by terror, knowing more scenes of bloodshed and screaming would pile up in her mind’s eye. Kim’s voice narrated it all, pointing out exactly what evil vampires were capable of. Specifically from Alex and the friends he called his coven.
She had no time to process it all, her head heating with splitting pain that jerked through her body from her agonized brain. Was this what death felt like, the seizing of muscles past their limits, jerking uncontrollably as if to a demon’s dance?
Her eyes blinked open, pink froth dripping from her lips as she took another raw gulp of air. The screams continued, and it wasn’t until Kim ordered William to investigate that she realized those sounds belonged to reality instead of the nightmares forced into her head.
Black spots winked through her vision as the world swam around her. Kim was on her feet, posing to leap at anything that came through the door.
It flung open with enough force to knock it from its hinges. Bang! A body hurtled through, propelled by an unseen force to throw Violet’s chair onto its back. She cried out hoarsely as her whole body throbbed in agony from the impact.
“What the—? What are you?” Kim’s voice drifted to her, followed by a scream and the rip of flesh.
Violet fought her body to stay conscious, aware that if she closed her eyes, they probably wouldn’t open again. She felt herself starting to drift away, too full of nightmares to continue on. Pattering irregularly in her chest, her heart counted down the moments as it struggled to keep her alive.
It slowed as she felt air flow past her cheeks. Someone was righting her chair with surprising care. Her world narrowed down to a tight band as her lids hovered millimeters from closing. “Poor thing,” whispered an unfamiliar, female voice belonging to the pale, unfocused figure in her line of sight. A cork popped, followed by a fizz, as if opening a champagne bottle.
“Such a victim. Fated to die so senselessly.” The woman’s voice was smoother than silk. An angel, Violet thought, hardly able to understand the words she spoke.
“Take this. Take my blessing, and live. No one shall victimize you again under my protection.”
Gentle fingers pulled Violet’s lips apart. It wasn’t difficult with her lying slack and near gone in her restraints. She coughed and gagged weakly as the first drop touched her tongue.
Coppery blood.
Nasty. Musty. Old.
Her vision sharpened and focused on a white glove and the glass vial it held. Viscous orbs of liquid dropped into her waiting mouth until it was about half full.
“Now rest. I will call for you when it’s time.”
Darkness embraced her, sweeping away the pain.
Chapter 8
Alex
ALEX SPENT MOST of the daylight hours napping and fighting his inner beast for control of his own body. The cat wanted its solitude and peace and went far up a tree to achieve these things. It cleaned its fur with distaste at the blood and dirt that had matted it, content with its simple thoughts
and wants. They hunted a mouse. A search party combed the forest, passing under the tree bough he’d settled in. He watched them from that vantage, lazing in a small patch of shadow.
As night started to fall, he started to acknowledge that this might be it. He may have permanently lost his mind, just as Bryant Collins had wanted. But instead of spending his immortal existence being shamed in a cage for mortal entertainment, he’d suffer the crushing guilt of what could possibly become of the mortal who’d had the misfortune of meeting him in his final days, whom he’d failed to protect.
It came as little surprise when a different kind of search party started combing the forest, wielding guns and blades instead of tranquilizers. They didn’t think to look for anything other than a lion, and he watched them circling from dusk until late at night. He yawned, brooding, when the team put on their silencers and started shooting into the night. An owl thumped to the forest floor, dead. A booted foot crushed a vole as it scurried back to its nest. He watched with a cat’s dispassionate stare, but on the inside, he felt the elemental fear of a cornered beast. Someone had figured out that he was no longer a lion.
Alex hissed angrily as a hand shot out of nowhere to grasp him by the scruff. He was hauled from his safe haven by none other than his Italian friend, Julian Fairfax. Julian was the only blood tracker in the whole of Coven Rehnquist, able to sense someone’s location after one sip of their blood. Dubbed “Bloodhound” for this uncanny ability, he often used it for situations like this one.
While Alex was relieved to see him, the beast in charge snarled and scratched Julian in an attempt to free himself. “Stop,” Julian muttered, shaking him hard enough to rattle his brain. The cat side of him didn’t listen, needing to be muffled to stop from yowling a battle cry. He ended up chewing on his hand hard enough to draw blood. Alex was hopeful for a moment at the taste of his friend’s blood, but it brought him no extra power or control.
Julian slipped through the trees with silent grace, outwitting the fledgling Haven vampires that had been sent to massacre animals. He dashed to a car idling just off the side of the interstate where Julian’s patrol partner, Armando Nizzola, sat looking bored. Only Armando would look bored at a time like this, Alex thought, wishing he could roll his eyes. “Go,” Julian said, slipping into the back of the vehicle.
“You got a cat, man,” Armando noted, looking back at the struggling Alex still gnawing on Julian’s hand. He took the pain with a stoic frown.
“It’s Alex,” he said.
“Seems like the wrong cat.” Armando idly stroked his shoulder badge of a lion’s head. He and Julian were enforcers, a type of police for immortal covens. Both wore the badge and black clothing of the Blackguard, Alex’s elite team of fighters.
“I don’t make mistakes,” Julian replied, as cold as a winter’s storm. Alex’s fur bristled at the sudden chill.
“I’m just sayin’. I expect some pip pip, cheerio, not animal noises,” he said, shrugging. Both Alex and his inner beast growled. “Oh, you in there, boss? Sorry,” he added more sheepishly.
Julian sighed, a long-suffering reaction to Armando. “We need you back. I found out a lot about the drug they hit you with.” Alex tried to show some flicker of recognition, a twitch, anything but animal growls. But he firmly did not have control of himself. Julian’s glacier-blue eyes glimmered with disappointment.
“Do you think you should just… talk to him? Maybe he’ll come back to himself,” Armando suggested.
Julian nodded slowly. “They hit me with the same stuff. Armando as well. Neither of us lost our blood abilities or any hint of control.” He waited, as if expecting some sort of response. “When I caught up to Kim Cox, she dropped the antidote vial right in front of me. It was water.” Alex’s heart sank immediately. “We followed her to see if she’d take us to Haven headquarters. I figured it would be there, if anywhere. But instead, she led us to a warehouse very close to you. We came to get you instead.”
“You’re forgetting the part where the Haveners were napping,” Armando said.
Julian tapped his knee, considering. “I still don’t know what to make of that. Most of the people inside the warehouse were…asleep, I suppose. Laying around.”
“They all got up to fight us, though,” Armando put in.
“Most of the ranking members used it as a cover to escape. We found your new mortal friend tied up in a bathroom next to the corpse of Will Jaxom. We torched his body and took her to see Melanie, but it’s unlikely she will survive the night.” He shrugged, distracted by his own thoughts. Alex wanted to reach out and shake him for more details. His friend had been born a vampire just like him and had little care for mortal kind. Alex tried hard to avoid the same jaded outlook.
Either way, he didn’t understand their strange testimony. But if it resulted in Will Jaxom, a ranking Haven member, dying, there was a glimmer of hope in this dark night. He just hoped they were taking him to Violet, though he didn’t know what he’d be able to do for her.
“But, yeah. We don’t have an antidote for you,” Armando frowned. “You gotta shake it off on your own, man. It wasn’t so bad. I barely noticed it, really. Kinda like a bee sting. You know, a really annoying one…” he kept talking, but Alex tuned it out.
“It seems your theory was right, old friend,” Julian murmured, quiet enough just for Alex’s ears. They perked, folding back to indicate that he was listening. “But we will do whatever we can to reverse your condition. You’ll be right as Rainey again.” Alex wanted to groan, even though he knew it was bad if Julian was telling Rainey puns. He may never come back, a prisoner within his own body. He hoped his friends would have the proper mercy upon him and end an existence like that.
“Here we are,” Armando said, parking the car at a shabby old motel. Julian hauled Alex’s struggling self from the car, rolling his eyes as he set off a fresh chain of yowling. He walked right up to one of the rooms, the door opening before him from an effortless push of mental energy. Samuel and his mate, Melanie, sat together before a muted television, grim-faced. “Look, we found Alex,” Armando said with more cheer than any of the other vampires felt.
Sam got to his feet and held out his hands. Alex found himself being shaken vigorously. Mighty fine to see you too, Alex thought, going limp and hoping for mercy. Sam held him by the scruff, eye to eye. His hazel eyes were narrowed to catlike slits, his own inner beast close to the surface. Alex bowed his head, immediately cowed by the current stronger predator of the two of them. “Snap out of it.”
Alex barely twitched, feeling the weight of his stare and staying hunched to show he was no threat. Sighing, Sam held him to his chest instead, carrying him to Melanie. “Maybe he just needs a push to get his shapeshifting working again,” he suggested, handing him off.
Melanie was gentler than the men, which set his inner beast at ease as she inspected him closely. As a Gifted, her vampire ability was healing. He, too, was full of hope as her magic rippled from her fingers, setting his skin to tingling.
Breathing out, he felt control shift within him with a great mental wrench. He turned his head of his own volition, whiskers splaying forward. “Thanks for the save.” He spoke to Julian, his voice high and squeaking from a cat’s vocal cords.
“Bloody hell,” Sam said, sighing tensely.
“I was afraid for a second there!” Armando blurted.
“Now, heal yourself. Shift back.” Melanie frowned.
Alex put a paw over his eye, the closest thing he could do to a salute as a cat. “Bloody hell, I missed you all. Truly. I’m glad I can tell you my final wishes, should I lose myself permanently.” Armando opened his mouth to say something just to get a sharp jab from Julian. He muttered an apology.
“If I try to shift, I might become a beast again for another full day or longer. These… episodes of me losing control. They’re getting worse.” He flicked his eyes to Sam, who shook his head in dogged disbelief. “Every time I use my mental influence or try to shift, it sinks its claws
in me. So, I want you to know I love every bloody one of you. Please treat Violet like one of us. She saved my life.”
“It sounds like you’re trying to say goodbye, but I’m not ready for that.” Melanie hugged him closer. “Why don’t you try shifting back? I’ll run some of my Gift through you at the same time to help.”
While his friends looked hopeful, Alex doubted this would work. He could already feel that mental block in place, a brick wall of sorts that he would run into if he tried to approach his human form. Waiting for the familiar, warm feeling of her healing, he prepared and pushed all his limited energy into forcing a shift.
Talons of pain seized his skull. Not yet! his inner beast screamed, dragging him back from the edge of a shift. He slammed back into Melanie’s chest, howling as the bones shifting under his pelt cracked and reestablished a cat’s fragile skeleton.
“No?” Sam watched with a wince of sympathy, the only one in the room to understand how painful an aborted shift could be.
“Not yet.” Alex echoed the words as Melanie’s magic soothed the worst of his aches in a consistent flow.
Well, at least that side of his magic was still talking to him. He didn’t feel malice from it holding him back but instead a deep worry. Something’s wrong, it whispered.
Melanie placed him on the ground as she turned to Sam. “Why don’t you shift so I know what part of it he’s getting caught on?”
He padded away while they experimented, his paws steering him on that kernel of instinct. The bedroom was saturated with blood scent, stinging his sensitive nose as he hopped up on the bed. Something was wrong, that much his eyes told him.
Violet lay across the bed, bound tightly in on herself. He realized why quickly, seeing the bandages around her fingernails and the bloody lines over her exposed skin. She wore a blank, empty stare while she bit down on a belt someone had threaded in her mouth. Her body twitched, caught in the horrors of a daymare.
Hellscape. Alex recognized the stare and the maddened reaction all too well. Violet had met Kim Cox then, whose blood ability was reviled by most immortals. Even the most minute touch from the woman could bring terrible, realistic nightmares that would haunt for years. A mortal mind could not tolerate such things without breaking.
Dream Walker: Blood Legacy Series Book 1 Page 4
