Crimson Covenant

by Samantha Whiskey

  The monitor’s beat shifted, and Lyric inhaled deeply.

  I jolted to my feet, leaning over her. “Lyric?”

  Her eyes fought off sleep, opening quickly only to shut again before she could keep those emerald orbs focused on me. “Alek?”

  “Hey, love.” I grinned, relief stealing almost all my energy in one push. “How are you feeling?”

  “Not—” Her face scrunched and she hugged her midsection. “Sick. I’m going to be sick.”

  Gabriel lunged across the room with a pail just in time for Lyric to wretch up every ounce of human sustenance she’d taken in. She heaved over and over until I was certain she had to have thrown up a kidney in there as well.

  My eyes jumped to Julian, whose face had gone tight.

  “It’s beginning,” he said softly. “She’s transitioning.”

  If the sickness had been the worst of it, it would have been an easy day…or night…whatever it was. But then I heard the unmistakable sound of bones cracking—similar to when a vampire came into their powers, leaving behind the fragile shell that made childhood so dangerous for our younglings, and Lyric’s body convulsed on the table.

  “Oh, God,” I whispered, my eyes pricking with the pain she must have felt at being remade. “Please let her live.”

  Lyric started screaming…and didn’t stop for hours.

  14

  Lyric

  Thick, gray fog clung to the edges of the pillared room. It crept in through cracks in the stone and lingered, dusting along the marble floor.

  Five chairs rested in the center of the room.

  Empty.

  Blood dripped from four of the seats, crimson liquid splattering upon the floor beneath.

  One chair remained pristine, clean.

  My heart raced against my chest, my head splitting with blinding pain.

  I moved through the room, my limbs heavy and aching. Each step stung like a thousand syringes pierced my flesh, but I had to walk toward the chairs. Something deep inside me compelled me to go forward, to push through the fog that zapped my skin, and look.

  See.

  Ice replaced the searing fire in my blood.

  The fog wafted backward in rolling waves, revealing the bloody floor beneath the chairs.

  Bodies—four of them.

  A female with beautiful white hair, a muscular man with silver eyes that stared upward, lifeless. An exquisite male, long and lithe, his perfect face contorted in rage, defiant even with his throat slashed open.

  The fourth body—

  My heart stopped.

  I sank to my knees beside him, cradling his head in my hands. My fingers were instantly soaked in his blood.

  “Alek,” I tried to scream, to get my mate to open his eyes, but I was so weak. So heavy. As if invisible hands clawed at my shoulders, my ankles, yanking me back with a force I had to fight with every breath against. “Alek, no,” I sobbed, pressing my forehead to his. Tears streamed down my cheeks, splashing upon his white shirt. Blood seeped from his chest, pooling and growing with each second.

  He didn’t stir.

  Those beautiful blue-gray eyes didn’t open.

  And when I reached inside me, the bond between us…it wasn’t there.

  My soul, hollow. Empty.

  I screamed, but only a wisp of air escaped my lips.

  I clung to him, clutching his lifeless body against my chest.

  Pain ebbed from my soul as if it had been ripped from my body by force.

  Fire so hot it seared and writhed and cracked.

  The weight of Alek’s body lessened in my arms, and I snapped my eyes open. Slowly, he dissolved into ash, slipping through my fingers like grains of sand.

  Hissing erupted around me as the others disintegrated, leaving me kneeling in piles of dusted bodies.

  My body shook, my hands trembling.

  “You need to look, Seer,” a masculine voice echoed from directly behind me.

  I whirled around. Landed on my feet before I’d even blinked.

  The fog curled away from the man, one I’d seen seconds ago on the floor. I glanced over my shoulder, my mind jolting as the room was now empty. No chairs. No blood. No dusted bodies.

  “Look!” he screamed, and I snapped my attention back to him. He was tall, devastatingly beautiful, and a darkness caressed the edges of his skin as if the night itself adorned him. He tilted his head, a predator’s gaze as he waved an arm between us. “If you don’t open your eyes, this will all come to pass.”

  I jolted back a step, the bodies that had disintegrated before my eyes appeared in a pile between us. Even his.

  He gazed down at the horrid pile and sucked his teeth.

  “Tragic,” he cooed, staring at his own corpse. “That our destinies lay with your past.”

  “What do you mean? What do you want?” My mind spun, questions and pain and blistering doubt.

  “I want you to wake up!” he screamed, charging toward me with the speed of a shooting star.

  A surge of lightning struck me, my body going rigid with the pain. My knees cracked against the floor, and I convulsed against the onslaught of the white-hot blaze.

  I reached for Alek’s lifeless hand, wanting to touch him even in death.

  The man’s laughter, dark and cold, filled the room, swallowed my agonized screams—

  The floor disappeared.

  I free fell, swinging my arms to try and stop my fall.

  But the pit of black was endless, the room disappearing. The man, the bodies. All of it. Gone.

  Empty.

  Like my soul.

  Nothing but the black.

  Nothing but the fall.

  The pain coursed through my blood like acid.

  I gnashed my teeth as I toppled over and over, the pain ratcheting, searing my skull. The very marrow in my bones groaned in protest, screaming, gnawing, threatening to crack against the pressure.

  I fell for so long I begged for the end.

  A quick snap of my neck on whatever bottom laid at the end of this pit.

  Anything to stop the pain. Stop the splintering of my heart, my soul.

  “Alek,” I sobbed, spinning head over feet as I fell and fell and fell—

  “Lyric,” Alek’s voice called to me from the dark.

  A cool, soothing tingle washed over my body like the first rain after a fire.

  My mind pulsed behind the darkness of my closed lids, but I felt something soft beneath me.

  Not a hard marble floor covered in blood and ash.

  No taunting echoes of a man I’d never seen before.

  Nothing but the sweet, comforting silence, and the smell of—

  Acid licked up my throat, and I hissed as I bolted straight up, my eyes snapping open.

  “Lyric,” Alek breathed my name, and instantly I was on my feet.

  In our room.

  I tilted my head, feeling like I’d missed something. Lost something. But what?

  I swallowed hard. My throat was raw, aching like I’d screamed all night.

  The nightmare? Had I truly screamed in my sleep?

  “How are you feeling?” Alek asked, his eyes wide as he stepped toward me, hands raised as if I were pointing one of his glocks at him.

  “I had a bad dream,” I said, nearly in tears as the images of his lifeless body rose up in my mind.

  That quickly, I had my arms around his neck. Barely a thought, and I’d crushed my body to his. “You were dead,” I gasped into his shoulder. His arms snaked around me, holding me to him, gently, carefully.

  “I’m here. I’m fine,” he said, smoothing the back of my hair.

  I turned my head, nuzzling his neck. “God, you smell good,” I moaned against his skin. His intoxicating scent of dark chocolate and cayenne and earthiness had magnified to the point that I wanted to devour him—

  A muscle twitched in my mouth, and I jolted out of his embrace. My fingers flew up to inspect the new pulsing, aching sensation—

  Fangs.

/>   Omigod, I had fangs.

  “You were dying,” Alek explained, eyes pleading as he watched me. “I couldn’t lose you.”

  “My love, you’ve lost too much blood, and the only way you have a shot of making it is if I turn you.”

  “Then turn me.”

  Broken memories flashed in my mind—the whisper of a gunshot, Lachlan’s roar, Alek’s hand in mine explaining everything, giving me a choice, a doctor…

  “Lachlan,” I gasped, my mind whirling. “Is he all right?”

  The smallest of smiles shaped Alek’s lips. “You realize you’ve been made vampire, and you ask if my second is all right?”

  “He’s your best friend,” I said. “He was shot—”

  “So were you,” Alek cut me off. “But yes, after a few…complications…Lachlan is fully healed. He’s torturing himself for not getting to you fast enough.”

  “That wasn’t his fault, Alek. It happened so quickly. He was by the car.” I shook my head. “Please don’t blame him.”

  “I don’t,” he assured me. “I told him as much. I blame the bastards that keep trying…” His jaw clenched, the muscles in his body rippling as anger churned in his eyes. Power radiated off of every inch of him, but this time I could feel it in a whole new way. More potent, almost as if I could taste the depth of it—as endless as that pit I’d fallen through in my nightmare.

  “You turned me,” I said, swallowing hard. A fiery thirst licked my throat, begging to be quenched. “It burns,” I rasped, fingering my neck.

  Alek took one step toward me, then two. He sank to his knees and tilted his neck to the side.

  That quickly, I wanted him. My thighs clenched, my core filling with a need so much I ached.

  “Feed,” he said, the demand in his voice primal as his hands gripped my waist.

  The fire in my throat intensified, his scent swirling around me in a crescendo of pulsing hunger. Instinct, ancient and steady, roared in my very soul. The new fangs throbbed in my mouth.

  I peeled back my lips, everything inside me screaming mine, mine, mine.

  I stopped an inch above his neck. “Will I hurt you?”

  Alek smirked, a confident male gaze as he cocked a brow at me.

  I narrowed my eyes and sank my fangs into his flesh.

  They slid in like knives through warm butter, and his flavor gushed over my tongue in a rush of pure bliss. Warm and rich laced with love and lust and power. I drank and drank, moaning as I devoured his very essence.

  “Fuck,” Alek hissed, sliding those hands along my hips and lower, skimming the inside of my thighs.

  I drew my mouth back, lapping at the two tiny puncture wounds I’d left in his skin as he had done to me so many times. The holes sealed immediately, and my head swarmed with the power flowing through my body. Tons of it, eons of it. The ultimate drug, the ultimate high. I licked my lips, moaning at his flavor.

  “Alek,” I said and tackled him to the floor. I ripped off his shirt in a blink. His pants were next.

  Alek laughed, the sound like music to my ears as I shed him and me of the barriers between us. Now that my throat wasn’t on fire, every other piece of me was.

  And I burned for him.

  I pinned him to the floor, shocked at the power in my muscles, in my body as I glided over him. My slit slick and aching as I rocked over his hard cock.

  He hissed, clenching my thighs as I moved on him. Teasing, torturing us both. Relishing the new sensations rippling through my body. Sex had always been phenomenal with him, but this? The mere brushing of my skin against his had tremors of pleasure tickling up my spine.

  More.

  More.

  More.

  I shifted, drawing his hard length inside of me in one easy move.

  He growled, and I sank atop him again and again.

  Each time I sank a bit harder, needing more. He met me with powerful thrusts of his own, his fingers biting into the flesh of my hips with the most delicious tease of pain.

  “Alek, God,” I moaned, rocking against him. I yanked on his neck, drawing him up to be with me face to face, chest to chest.

  “My queen,” he growled, claiming my mouth. “I thought I’d lost you,” he said between kisses, between thrusts.

  “Never,” I said, breathless as I rocked against him. “You’re mine,” I said, the primal claim ricocheting down our bond.

  A rumbling growl vibrated from his chest, and in one motion he stood without breaking our connection. In a blink, I was against the wall, smashing into it so hard the stone cracked. A burst of pleasure barreled down my spine from the sensation, and I fluttered around his hard cock, coming in waves like I’d never felt before.

  “You’re mine,” he growled, pumping into me faster and harder than he ever had before.

  I gasped, drunk with pleasure, with power, and pushed back.

  The speed of my new body was unbelievable. One second, I was against the wall, and the next? I’d moved him to the bed, sprawling atop him once more.

  His eyes lit with a churning fire, pride and desire and love shining through as I gripped his wrists and shoved them above his head. I rolled my hips, using the momentum from his pinned position to sink atop him over and over until he tensed and growled beneath me.

  Until I felt his release soar down our bond which clenched and sighed and purred as we came together.

  I collapsed atop him, inhaling the way his desire drenched the scent of his blood.

  Instantly, I was hungry.

  “You need more,” he said, shifting to pin me to the bed. “Take it. Take what you need, my queen, my mate.” He settled between my thighs, and my body quivered from the delicious weight of him atop me. He lowered his head, teasing his neck over my lips.

  My fangs descended again, this time not as jarring, and I gently, lovingly bit into his flesh.

  He moaned as I drank, and I writhed beneath him, taking him inside me once again as I lost myself to the pleasure of his blood and his body.

  15

  Alek

  I lifted my head and released the man from both my grip and the compulsion that eased the pain of the feeding. The man walked off, exiting the alley with a shake of his head.

  I’d always chosen my sources with care, but now that I had Lyric to feed, I’d gravitated toward a bigger man who could afford the blood loss. Scenting those sources prior to the feed was now at the top of my priorities, too. There was no chance I was taking blood that had been laced with any kind of drug or alcohol back to Lyric.

  Across the alleyway, Lachlan released a female, who looked up at him with post-orgasmic bliss. “Off you go, lass,” he said with a wink, and off she went to join her date. “You’re right, we should go out to eat more often.” He grinned, which eased some of the guilt I felt about yanking him off his sickbed. It had only been two days since he’d been shot…since I’d almost lost my mate, but he’d recovered as though nothing had happened, as though he hadn’t been unconscious for the better part of twelve hours.

  “Let’s go.” We walked out of the alley along the sliver of territory where all humans knew exactly who and what we were. The Butcher’s Block wasn’t only about the feeders who chose to live at our beck and call at the estate. They were a thriving community within the larger species of humans who just happened to abide by two sets of laws: the human and the supernatural.

  I sensed my bond with Lyric, bright and strong, but that didn’t lessen my anxiety caused by the physical distance between us.

  “You okay over there?” His tone teased, but his eyes scanned the street as we headed toward the opera house. “You seem to have a bit of that newly mated male madness.”

  I grunted in his direction and led us down a set of stone steps off to the side. Just because the humans knew we could wend didn’t mean it wasn’t freaky as hell when they saw it in real life.

  “Took you long enough.” Benedict was already waiting for us, lounged against the railing with his arms crossed over his chest.

/>   “Fuck off.” I embraced the dark ice of between and wended into the hallway just shy of our door.

  Benedict and Lachlan followed, both grinning.

  “What?” I snapped.

  “Told you, he’s all twitchy,” Lachlan raised his eyebrows and smiled shamelessly.

  “Mark me down on the ‘never mating’ column,” Benedict added, flashing a dimple.

  A growl rumbled through my chest. Newly mated males were never far from their females in the first week or so, and I was miles away from mine. It was perfectly understandable that I was agitated.

  Benedict put his hands up. “Let’s just get this over with so you can get back to Lyric.”

  “I couldn’t agree more.” Fuck, I didn’t even like the sound of him saying her name.

  I pushed open the steel door and walked in the Conclave with Benedict and Lachlan coming close behind me. The mood was undeniably tense, but at least no one was screaming at each other this time.

  "You call an emergency session and then show up late?" Genevieve arched an eyebrow at me.

  I sank into my seat and cocked my head to the side.

  "Since he sits at the head of Conclave, he could call you here as many times as he wished and simply not show up." Benedict drawled.

  Genevieve's eyes narrowed.

  Luka laughed, his voice booming through the chamber.

  "Benedict, mind your manners," I said over my shoulder. The guy was usually on his best behavior, but sometimes his centuries-old grudge with Genevieve reared its ugly head. "We have business."

  The entire chamber, minus Xavier, of course, sat up straight.

  "Two days ago, my mate and my second were attacked," I said it as dispassionately as possible, even as wrath charged through my veins. "As you can see," I said, motioning toward Lachlan’s hulking figure. "My second is unharmed. Lyric, however, sustained a fatal injury and is now a full vampire."

  Now, even Xavier's jaw dropped.

  "You turned her?" Jocelyn asked quietly, something like awe shining in her face.