Now she was only waiting for things to get worse.
Tonight August had broken his protocol and gone hunting in a nearby city. A homeless person wouldn’t be missed and wouldn’t draw suspicion, at least not for one night.
Nicolette was right about one thing, he had to find a way to make her break and give in. Even if he could never do most of what she feared, she didn’t have to know that. He unlocked the cellar door and made his way down the creaking stairs.
Her back was to him when he reached the cages. August sat on the ground next to the bars. “Nicolette, come and speak with me.”
“Why should I?” There were tears in her voice.
“We can’t go on like this.”
“Then let me go.”
“You know that’s not an option.” Maybe he should have chosen a kinder and gentler way with her, shown more patience. But her mind had been set against him from the start.
He could have kept her upstairs and given her whatever her heart desired. But being kind was pointless with the Dominic situation. Bribery would feel like cheating, and it wasn’t in her. He had to force her hand, so she wouldn’t have to carry the burden of betrayal. He’d been prepared to be the bad guy, but his plans weren’t working as he’d hoped. He’d never imagined he’d have to be this cold to her.
He’d thought this would be quicker. He’d been sure she would only have to watch him kill one or two people, maybe a week’s cycle at the most, before she tearfully accepted her fate.
Then he would give her everything, reward her good behavior and do anything in his power to make her happy. Some day she would forgive him. She’d forget Dominic. She’d come to love August, which would make the whole endless ordeal much more palatable. They could carve out something resembling a life together. Somehow.
But she hadn’t followed his playbook. She was an enigma, and the lack of power to enthrall and force her to obey him in any semi-civilized way was proving to be a greater challenge than he’d anticipated.
“So, what’s next?” Her shoulders were hunched away from him, her voice nothing but shattered darkness.
August glanced at the dinner plate he’d brought her, the food barely touched. She’d been eating less each day. She was pale in the cellar light and growing thinner, and the cold panic hit him that he might have less time with her than he planned. If she wouldn’t give herself to him, he wouldn’t have decades to find a way to wear her down at this rate. She’d die down here of malnourishment and heartache. And then what? The thought of her gone, when she was his salvation, was a thousand times worse than anything else he’d done.
As much as he’d hated the history student for planting more fears in her head, it was a simple enough solution. A little quick torture to gain compliance, and then he could proceed with his original plans to pamper and care for her.
“I hunted tonight off the grounds.”
Startled, she turned toward him. “Why?”
“I needed to think. It occurs to me that if you have some natural and rare resistance to vampiric control, perhaps your offspring would as well.”
The horror on her face made it clear he didn’t have to continue with the sordid concept he’d concocted, but he continued anyway. August indicated the man in the far cage. “I could put him in with you. He could impregnate you. If it’s a girl, and she can’t be enthralled, I’ll wait for her to mature, and then she will give herself to me. It’s longer than I’d like to wait, but it’s better than an eternity of this.”
“I won’t hurt her,” the man said.
August stood and walked over to his cage. “Look at me.”
Though he tried to resist, he was unable to keep his face from turning toward August. When their eyes locked, the vampire took full control of his prisoner’s mind.
“When I put you in Nicolette’s cage, you will fuck her until I tell you to stop. And you will continue day after day until she is pregnant. Won’t you?”
“Yes.”
August turned back to Nicolette, expecting her to beg him. If the threat got her to consent to the mating bond, nothing else mattered. But her expression grew more stubborn.
“I’ll stop eating. I’ll starve myself. I’ll die. You won’t make me give you a child, definitely not one for you to feed from and do God knows what else with for eternity.”
August turned back to Nicolette’s cage. He unlocked the door and stepped inside. The move had her backing away. He always stayed on the other side of the bars, trying to give her space, to make her feel safer in spite of her circumstances.
“I will force feed you if I have to. I won’t let you die so easily, poppet. You will be mine. Or your progeny will. It’s your decision which it’ll be and how much you’ll have to suffer until then.” She cringed when he brushed her hair behind her ear.
She was so close to snapping. He was determined not to fill these cages again. And he wouldn’t go hunting each night, either. One way or another, tonight she would give him what he demanded. Whatever he had to do. However much of his soul or hers he had to eradicate. It had to be done. This simply could not go on. If it took her a century to forgive him, eventually she would… for anything, because they would each be all the other had that lasted. Everyone and everything else would grow old and die and leave.
August went to the other man’s enclosure and transferred him to Nicolette’s cage. The vampire stood just inside the door so he could stop things as soon as she consented. She wouldn’t let this happen. He’d seen the way she was crumbling. Another small push and she’d be his.
***
Nicole had run out of room to back up. The other prisoner lurched toward her like some kind of unstoppable zombie. There was no emotion on his face. No anger. No malice. No pleasure. No desire. He was just following orders. But that didn’t dilute her anguish.
She nearly threw up when he ripped her tattered top away. She moved to cover her breasts. “A-August, please… please don’t do this. Stop him. If I mean so much to you, stop him.”
She struggled against the man, but she was no match for the combination of his strength and a direct hypnotic order from the vampire.
“Will you give yourself to me?” The vampire’s voice was steady and demanding. How could he do something so vile to her? And he expected her to give him anything? After something like this?
She was convinced she’d suffer anything he doled out. Rape, torture, anything to ensure she died and never allowed him freedom. The fear of a pregnancy clawed at her mind. A child he could take and twist. He could raise her in luxury, letting her think he was good. When she grew to adulthood, he could reveal his true nature and take what he needed. It would be a much different setup than the one Nicole had endured.
She would have to starve herself before then. She’d have to be too weak to get pregnant, or barring that, too weak to give birth, and pray desperately for a boy as the final salvation from the vampire’s sick plan if everything else failed her.
“NO!” She wasn’t sure if she was screaming at August or at the man who pushed her against the stone wall, his mouth on her neck, kissing her like she was his lover. A second later, all she felt was air as August pulled the man off her and flung him out of the cage.
The vampire made a sound close to a roar and pounded at the wall until his hands bled. But they healed almost instantly. “Goddammit!”
She let out a relieved breath. He can’t bring himself to do it. Thank God. But that was now. What would he bring himself to do in another week or a month?
August leaned against the wall and sank to the ground, his head in his hands.
Nicole moved as quietly as she could toward the cage door.
“Don’t, Nicolette. Don’t make me chase you. I don’t want to hurt you, whatever you may believe. We must seal the bond between us. Then things will be better. I promise they’ll be better.”
How could she trust him? How could she give herself to a monster in the most irreversible way? What he’d shown her so far had be
en imprisonment and desperation. Locking herself into eternity with that wasn’t an option.
She edged closer to August and knelt beside him, pulling his hands from his face. He looked up, so broken that a small part of her wished she could do what he needed, that things were somehow different. That her life was different. That her heart was different.
“Please,” she said. “I’m sorry for what’s been done to you, truly I am. I believe you when you say you were a good man before the curse. But what you’re asking… I can’t give it to you. I love Dominic so much. I just want him back. Please, I beg you, let me go. Won’t you feel remorse for the things you do to me? Am I not of the same value as those you kill each night? Does this crime against me not matter?”
She tried not to pull away when his hand brushed her cheek.
“You’re of far greater value. But I know at the core of my being that you’re the only train coming. I can’t bear the thought of an eternity like this with no hope of the reprieve of death to make it stop. I will do whatever is necessary to have you. Please don’t make me pile more brutality onto my history. Please, Nicolette.”
Nicole wiped the tears from his face. “I can’t. What will make eternity of being a blood sacrifice stop for me? How can you ask or expect or think that I could or would… ”
“Stop,” he said. “Just stop.”
A long moment passed between them, then something lit his face. A new idea?
“I will make a bargain. I’ll undo the thrall on your husband and let you return to him, if you consent to becoming my mate. I will come to you and feed from you each night, but you can have Dominic back for the foreseeable future.”
Nicole searched his eyes for the lie, but she couldn’t find it. She looked down at the diamond bracelet the vampire had allowed her to keep even though he knew what it meant to her. He could have taken it away, but he hadn’t. Did it mean she could trust him?
She could have Dominic back. He could love her again.
“I-I want to be with him until he dies,” she blurted, still transfixed by the sparkling diamonds at her wrist. “A-and… he will die of natural causes, not by anything you do, or I will find a way to make you pay.”
August sighed. “Fine.”
The man from the other cage had been unconscious since August pulled him off her. She’d thought he was dead, but he stirred and groaned.
“Come here,” August said.
Obediently the man rose and went to the vampire.
“Look into my eyes.”
He got that glazed zombie look about him again. Nicole was grateful that could never happen to her—one of the few things that couldn’t.
“You will leave this place and return home. You will not remember anything that happened here or me.”
The man nodded and left them in the cellar. August released the other prisoners and erased their memories as well.
Once they were alone, Nicole began to tremble. Could she still back out? Had she already written that check, or did her consent have to come when he bit her? She didn’t know how this worked. Why couldn’t he take it? Was there something that blocked the bond from completing unless she was willing?
She thought of Dominic, of being back in his arms, back in their bed. Of the past several months being a bad dream. It would finally be true, rewinding things, stepping back into the right universe where her husband loved her again. She would pay any price for that, to feel his strong arms wrapped around her. To hear his teasing jokes. To bask in the way he looked at her as if she were something made of magic.
“Come with me.”
She followed the vampire upstairs. She was finally able to see his house—or maybe castle. The timeless elegance of it. The obvious money that stood behind it. Not that things like that mattered to her. She was comfortable with Dominic. Very comfortable. Past a certain point, more money was frivolity. Still, there was something ancient and awe-inspiring about August’s home. It was something that said time would pass away, and he would still be there in the shadows. And now so would she.
“How do you have all this?” she asked.
“How could I not? Centuries. Compound interest. Only a fool could live so long on this earth in perfect physical health and be poor. I’m not suggesting it happened overnight or that I didn’t have many false starts, but I wasn’t going to have the curse and live in poverty. Determination and wise investments have paid off. It helps when I can use mind control to learn company secrets and know which stocks to buy.”
As tormented as he may be, he’d still had the presence of mind to accumulate a ludicrous living standard. So how bad could his suffering be? Couldn’t he simply bear it and free her to go back to her life without strings?
He led her to a parlor and indicated a chaise lounge. “Sit.”
She couldn’t stop the tremor in her hands, in her body. An icy coldness seeped through her veins, cracking and hissing in her ears as it spread through her, as if it were turning her into a solid block of ice.
He sat beside her, his hand resting on her knee. “I’m sorry you’re so terrified. I wish I could make this easier. Or make it not hurt. You don’t have to do anything except remain in a receptive state. Accept my bite. Don’t struggle or fight me. After I’ve mixed our blood, it will be done.”
She looked away, seeking some form of privacy for her misery.
“You must love him very much to make this sacrifice. I envy him that. Some day you will come to care for me. It will all be okay, I promise.”
She wasn’t going to contradict him. If she’d be trapped with him forever, it was better not to make waves. And she didn’t want to do anything to make him go back on his word. No matter how sincere his pledge might be, once this was complete, there was nothing that would force him to uphold his bargain except the innate goodness he professed to still have. But it was the one remote chance she had of seeing Dominic again.
Nicole started to cry when his fangs elongated.
“Be brave. It won’t take long. You’ll become used to it over time.”
She squeezed her eyes shut as fangs embedded in her throat. She shuddered against the sharp, stinging pain that burned, not just her veins, but her soul. She sobbed as he drank from her, the pain tunneling deeper and deeper until it seemed to claw her skin apart from the inside. She couldn’t take this every night. It was beyond what she was capable of enduring, of what anyone could endure.
Hysteria began to build inside her. She was moments from struggling, shouting no!, doing anything to stop the completion of the ritual, when Dominic’s face floated into her mind. She’d sacrifice anything for a few more decades with him. Anything. She tried not to think of how she would feel when her husband was finally dead and buried, and her enslavement to August was just beginning. This was a devil’s bargain. She knew that. And yet, Dominic had been her weakness from the first sunny afternoon when he’d offered her that crooked smile outside the library.
The guilt of betrayal mixed with the burning agony of the vampire’s fangs until they felt like the same thing. Finally, August pulled away from her throat. She turned to see him bite his tongue, then he licked the wound on her neck, sealing their blood together.
Something unwanted fluttered in her stomach when his tongue stroked over her neck, the glimmer of something she shouldn’t feel. It had to be the bond somehow controlling her. Had she just given him power over her mind? The one thing he hadn’t had before?
Panic curled inside her at the idea that she’d been free of his hypnotic control, and now that she’d accepted his bite, some sorcery beyond her might make her want him.
“Are you all right?” he asked.
She felt the bond rise from forgotten spaces in the void, wrapping around them, creating a link that could never be severed. Deep down she’d feared that once he got what he wanted he would turn more cruel, but his touch on her face was gentle, his hazel gaze filled with warmth and concern… and gratitude.
How long would that last?
“I-I feel weak,” she said, unsure if she could stand, doubting it possible that she could do this every night and survive to tell the tale.
“The changes may take a while to complete.”
Nicole reached to the side of her neck, expecting to feel a wound, but there was nothing. As if it had never happened at all. Not even a scar, just a slight burn under her skin that she worried would never go away. Despite no visible evidence, the rest of her body screamed at her like she’d been hit by a truck.
“Changes?” She didn’t like the sound of that. Her breath came in short, shaky waves, and she couldn’t get enough air no matter how much she gasped for it.
He steadied her with a hand on her arm. “Easy, Nicolette. The changes that make you immortal, that make your blood replenish quickly, that speed your healing time. The changes that make you a god. Believe me, they are nothing to fear, especially without the curse attached.”
The realization of what she’d done crept into her, the memories of the cellar and the death promising to be a constant feature in all future nightmares. She tried not to think about what it said about her that she had been so quick to say yes when Dominic had been dangled in front of her like a carrot, and yet she’d let no less than sixty people be murdered right in front of her and still had refused the vampire’s demand each night—until he’d found the thing that mattered to her enough to sacrifice anything.
She collapsed on the floor, shaking as the sobs bubbled up from somewhere deep inside her.
“Oh, God. What have I done? All those people you killed… What have I tied myself to?”
“I can take it away with the bond.”
“Take what away?”
“The pain you’ve suffered. You don’t have to feel this or be destroyed by it.”