Surprisingly, I’m not killed.
Ah, you trust me, Riley. That touches me deeply. It truly does. So to show you my good faith and word, I’ll send your beloved surrogate grandmother back to the mainland with a trusted servant. You’ll remain here. With me. Understood?
“I want to see her,” I say, and I glance around, searching for Valerian. Instead, a newling emerges from the palm fronds and scrubs, leading a slow-walking Estelle.
“Baby, why you come here?” Estelle says angrily. “I told dat evil boy you wouldn’t do it.”
I struggle against my attackers. I have to stop and think about what’s inside of me, what grows and changes daily. I’m strigoi. I’m Arcos. I’m Dupré. I’m Gullah.
A deep breath, and I summon all of my strength. Although it takes four newlings to hold me, I knock them all in different directions. I take off, send the last newling sprawling, and pull Estelle into a fierce hug. “Grandmodder,” I say, checking her over. “Are you okay?”
“Yes, girl, yes,” she says, and I can hear the relief in her voice. “I’m fine, now, stop all dat.” She looks at me, her ebony face smooth, her eyes searching mine. “You shouldn’t have come here, dat’s right. You shouldn’t have.”
I hug her again, drawing in the familiar scent of Downy and Gullah herbs. “No way would I let them keep you out here, Grandmodder. No way.”
I’m waiting, Riley. I don’t like to wait.
A newling appears—young, no more than nineteen, wearing ripped destroyed jeans and a leather jacket. Although not morphed completely, his eyes are white, pupils pinpoint and fire red. He looks to be in a trance as he moves toward the skiff.
“No way am I letting my grandmother get into a boat with him,” I say out loud. “Hell no, Valerian.”
He’s perfectly capable, Riley. Trust me. I’ve instructed him to take her straight to River Street. He’ll help her up the dock and off to her home she can go. I give you my word.
“No, baby,” Estelle says. “Come with me.”
I kiss my surrogate grandmother on the cheek. “I can’t.” I smile at her. “But it’ll be okay. I promise. Now go quietly, please. I’m begging you.”
Without another word, the newling grasps Estelle by the arm and leads her to the skiff. As though he’d been around boats all his life, the newling pulls the anchor, plugs the drain, and starts the motor. Estelle’s gaze stays on mine until they’re out of sight.
The moment I let down my guard, something plunges into my neck. A pinprick. A needle. A dart. I don’t know. But in seconds, I’m slipping to the ground…
Part Ten
REDEMPTION
I think Riley’s tendencies have surpassed my own abilities. Doesn’t bother me. I like how strong she is. The control she’s learned in the short time we’ve been back from Romania blows my mind. It takes everything I have not to interfere. Her reflexes are scary fast. And the mind manipulation she exerts? No one is unaffected. Not even me. Especially that bastard Arcos. It’ll be interesting to see if Riley can keep from killing him. For the sake of all of us, I hope she can. A war between the Duprés and Arcoses wouldn’t be pretty. And I’m not willing to risk losing Riley. Without her, my existence is meaningless.
—Eli Dupré
Something hot and wet trails my cheek and rouses me from a drug-induced slumber. Forcing my eyelids to open, I squint into the near darkness. I try to move, but I’m shackled to a cot. The room is cold. Damp. Smells moldy. I turn my head.
And stare into a pair of dark eyes. Human. With tendencies.
“Awake now, are ya?” the man, apparently a guard, whispers in my ear. “‘Bout goddamn time.”
My first reaction is to bite off his damn ear, then head-butt him into oblivion. He can see me in the moonlight, but I can see only his shadowed shape. With my arms and legs bound, I can’t budge.
Instead, I slide him a slow, sexy smile. I trace my bottom lip with my tongue. “God, you smell good,” I lie. “Come closer.”
The guard pauses, probably stunned from what I’ve said, but then his brain cells rush to the winning muscle and he leans over me, just like I ask. “Yeah? You think I smell good?”
“Um-hm,” I croon, thanking God above that the man indeed didn’t smell overly stinky. “I bet you taste even better.”
Again, he pauses—but only briefly. His mouth moves to mine. “Why don’t you find out?” Moving a hand to my breast, he squeezes it hard and shoves his tongue in my mouth.
Biting back the urge to barf, I kiss him back, a furious, fast kiss, just to turn him on. It does. He gropes at me then, lifting my shirt and pushing my bra up, ignoring the tape wrapping my ribs, and grasping my bare breast and squeezing. He moans, and starts to climb on top of me. “You’re gonna like this, baby,” he grunts.
Fighting back the urge to kill him now, I move my mouth to his ear. “Wait,” I whisper, licking his earlobe. “Slow down.” I bite the shell of his ear to get his attention. “This would be a lot more fun if I weren’t tied up. Don’t you think?”
The guard, silhouetted by the light coming down from the ceiling, grunts. “You might get away. Then my ass is fried.” He bends his head and tries to kiss me, but I move my mouth.
“I’m just a girl. I can’t possibly get away from you. Besides,” I say, breathing hard, “why would I want to? I’m wet and horny as hell.” I move to his ear once more and give a whispered moan. “And I want to fuck your brains out.”
“Jesus God, woman,” he says after a second. Fast as he can, he pulls something out of his pocket. “Hold still.”
A pair of cutters clips through the thick plastic tie-wraps binding my wrists and ankles. As soon as I’m free, he throws them to the floor and falls upon me. Again, I give just enough to keep him interested, then push him away.
“Wait a minute,” I say in a fake, excited breath. “Not so fast.” I reach between his legs, grab his arousal, and give an even faker moan of sexual impatience. “Let me get on top.”
“Kinky bitch, ain’t ya?” he says. “With that weird tat on your face. What other tats you got, babe?” He chuckles. “Okay, whatever you say.” He rises, allowing me to move out from under him, then he takes my spot, on his back. He gropes himself impatiently. “Hurry up. I’m about to spurt in my goddamn pants.”
The moonlight spreads over him now, illuminating some of his features. Crew cut, mid-forties—an average-looking man. A pervert. A pervert with tendencies.
Internally repulsed by the disgusting threat of spurting, I sling one leg over his hips and straddle him, wriggling against his rising erection. He grabs my hips, shoving me harder against it.
“Yeah, baby, do me,” he says, his voice thick with excitement. “Take off your shirt so I can see your tits swinging in my face.” Apparently, junior here has watched one too many cheap pornos.
Grabbing the hem of my shirt, I slowly pull it off and drop it on the floor. His eyes glaze over as they lock on my dragons. “Goddamn, baby, that’s hot as shit.” He lifts a hand and fingers the ink markings on my arm.
Just to give the situation an added extra, I palm his crotch. “Oh, you’re so hard,” I say. “Are you ready for me?”
He presses my hand hard against him. “Oh yeah, bitch, I’m ready all right.”
“Good.”
He grunts with what I suspect is a sexually excited moan of pleasure.
Then I rise off him, stand next to the cot, and slowly unbutton my jeans.
“Hurry up, baby,” he says, yanking his zipper down and groping himself. “I’m gonna come all over my–Humph!”
The wind leaves his lungs in a painful, gurgling gush as I raise my leg and slam the heel of my boot down hard on his crotch. He gasps a few times, ineffective little puffs of wind as he curls into a ball, hands cradling his privates.
Wasting no time, I rear my foot back again and catch him full force under the chin, sending him sprawling off the cot.
“Bitch!” he wheezes, spitting.
Another stomp to the
groin sends the guard into a spasm of air sucking and cussing.
Dropping to my knees, I fish in his pocket for the tie-wraps I’d felt while straddling him. Grabbing a handful, I quickly bind his feet.
The guard reaches for something, and knowing he has tendencies makes me not trust him for a single second, or waste a single move. I dive in the same direction, my fingers brushing the cutters, knocking them across the room where they ping off a wall. “Ah-ah, shithead. No getting out of the wraps.”
I stand and put my boot to his throat. “Turn onto your stomach or you’ll be whistling out of a brand new hole in your neck. Now.”
He curses, then turns over.
I drop a knee right between his shoulder blades, wrench one of his arms behind him and pin it with my weight. Quickly, I grab the other arm, then tie-wrap them together. I kneel over him, close to his ear.
“You’re going to tell me a few things,” I say, barely above a whisper. I concentrate, envisioning in my head that I can make this prick do anything I want him to do with no resistance. “And you’re going to do it quietly. Now roll over and be still.”
He does and goes completely motionless. Says nothing. Doesn’t move. But his eyes stay fixed on mine.
“Good boy. Now tell me where we are,” I command.
“The research center,” he mumbles. “Lab.”
“What research?” I ask.
“Experiments,” he says. “On blood.”
“Whose?” I demand.
“All of ours,” he mutters. “Yours. Mine. Those like us.”
The picture became clearer. “Vampires.”
He shrugs.
“Where’s Valerian Arcos?” I ask.
The guard remains silent. I give him a mental shove without even realizing how I’ve done it. Apparently, it doesn’t feel too good to have your brain pushed.
He screams.
I quickly back off.
“I’ve never seen him,” he says, whimpering. “He only talks to me in my mind. Tells me what to do, whose blood to collect.”
“How many others are here?” I ask.
“Not sure,” he answers. “Could be two dozen, could be one. They come and go.”
Just that fast, I’m tired of playing the game. I want answers.
“Where’s the lab?”
“Out and left.”
I pull my shirt back on and take off running, pushing through a single door that leads from the room and into a corridor. It has the feel of an old high school built in the fifties, with long halls and rooms on either side. The doors are closed, and only every other overhead light burns. Throwing open door after door, I find nothing. No one. It’s like the facility is abandoned.
I’m hit from behind.
Not so abandoned.
I fly—not literally, but my body leaves the ground and smashes against the wall. I drop, roll, and leap up. My hand feels for a blade down my waistband. I palm it and look.
Four young vampires. Three males, one female.
All four leap at me at once.
With two quick releases, I fling blades and down the two closest to me. I can tell I won’t make it far—they’re quick and almost on me. So I take off.
I know they’ll have a hard time catching me.
Down the corridor I run. It’s dim—almost pitch-black. I see a stairwell door and shove through and tear up the steps. In seconds I’m on the third-floor landing and I slam against the metal bar and open the door.
Six more young vampires are standing there, waiting.
“You ain’t goin’ nowhere, Poe,” the one in front—a male with blond spiked hair—says. “He called you here for a reason.” He takes a step toward me. “You’re stayin’ a while, darlin’.”
I’ve had enough. Valerian Arcos is a danger I no longer care to have lingering in my life. He’s been able to snatch Estelle right out from under our noses.
He’s capable of anything.
He has to be stopped.
I leap at the leader. His jaws extend and teeth drop. The others follow. I ignore them all. I plunge a silver blade into his chest before my feet bound off his shoulder. As I land behind the group, they turn and descend on me. In one move I crouch, sweep out with one leg and take down the next. The blade I have palmed is buried into the newling’s flesh. She screams and falls with the others.
Three more to go.
Use your other tendencies, Riley. You don’t have to fight so hard.
Victorian’s voice echoes inside my head. For a second, it throws me off. Another newling gets close—almost too close. My reflexes are fast and I take it down, land in a crouch. I don’t wait.
I kill them all.
Their screams as their bodies break down chase me down the corridor as I start slamming open doors, searching for Valerian.
I know you’re here, Arcos! You might as well come out! I yell in my mind to Valerian. A panic grips me—a desperation to find him, to punish him, to send his ass straight to Hell. But each room I find is an empty shell, with peeling walls and broken metal furniture. It reminds me of the tuberculosis sanatoriums they used to have at the turn of the twentieth century until the forties and fifties. An unsettled sensation creeps over me as I slip through the halls. I’m alone, frustrated, frantic. Innocent people have died at this place; I can sense it. Smell it.
Taste it.
As I move, I barely notice the speed at which I’m flying through the halls. I hear the eerie echo of my feet through the emptiness, but it’s hard to register that I’m the one making the noises. I’m so goddamn fast, the walls and doors blur past me. My tendencies are many, and apparently they are as close to vampiric as a human can have.
In the next second, no fewer than a dozen newlings burst from the stairwell. They surround me, and I know then I’m beaten. No way can I concentrate long and hard enough to manipulate all of their minds; just like I can’t possibly fight them all. They descend upon me.
I let them.
One grabs me by my arm and pulls me along. We leave the third floor, down the stairwell, to the second floor. At the end of the corridor, a door stands open. I’m shoved inside, and even though I stumble, I catch myself upright.
The door slams shut. The room is dark. Not one light is turned on.
I immediately sense his presence.
“I need something from you, Riley,” Valerian’s voice speaks from the shadows. “You have something that even I don’t possess. As a matter of fact, I’m positive there isn’t a soul alive—or not—who possesses it. You are…unique that way. Highly desirable.”
I peer into the darkness until a shape, still as stone in the corner, moves. My hand palms the blade sheathed just below the waist of my cargo pants, at the back.
“All that silver won’t do you any good with me,” Valerian says.
“What do you want with me?” I ask. I still keep my fingers wrapped around the blade.
Valerian laughs lightly. “Ah, it’s so refreshing to experience a human with tendencies who is still so…naïve.”
His voice is closer to me now, although his shadow hasn’t budged. It’s almost like he’s inside my head, speaking against my eardrum. I inch slowly toward the far wall, the sheath of my knife brushing my fingertips. Confidence races through me. “Why don’t you come out of the shadows and see how naïve I am?” I say. He doesn’t scare me.
I want to kick his ass.
Or, kill his ass.
Again, his low laugh resonates through me.
“Oh, I will certainly come out of the shadows,” Valerian says. “I’ve been looking forward to this for far too long.”
The shadows shift, and by the time I blink, and my lashes lift from my face, he’s standing before me.
He looks strikingly like Victorian.
Dark, wavy hair brushes the collar of a black silk buttoned-up shirt, tucked loosely into a pair of equally dark pants. Eyes the color of espresso stare at me, weighing, calculating. Full lips and flawless skin make him appear Godlike. H
e grins.
I ease my blade from its sheath.
“Tsk, tsk,” he says, and wags a finger at me. “Play nice. I’m not here to kill you, and we both know how easily I could have done that, had I wanted to.”
I keep my eyes trained on him. Waiting.
“My brother has always had a severe obsession for you,” he continues. “I have always hated him for that. You understand, don’t you? Our kind should remain with…our kind. Uniting with a mortal just isn’t feasible.”
“Why not?” I ask. My guard is up, every nerve ending on alert.
He smiles a long, slow smile and holds out his hands. “You see,” he begins. “Our kind exists forever. We’re strong. Capable. We understand our affliction. But with you? Even with tendencies, it’s not feasible to risk. You’re…weak. Vulnerable.” His smile is wistful. “I’ve learned too vulnerable.”
My interest is piqued, but I say nothing.
He notices.
Valerian paces. Slowly. Predatorlike. “You are an exception, though,” he says, and rubs his finger over the flat surface of a discarded metal cabinet. “You always have been.”
My insides lurch.
He stops behind me and smells my hair, then rounds on me. “You know, Riley,” he says, dragging a knuckle across my cheek. “You look very much like your mother. Well,” he says, smiling. “Like she used to. Before.”
Frozen inside, I lock my gaze to his. “What do you know of my mother?”
Valerian shrugs, but doesn’t break his stare. His words are slow and calculating. “I know that she was fiercely protective over you, even when you rebelled.” He steps away from me, then turns. “I also know she put up an impressive fight when your boyfriend killed her.” He shakes his head. “Stupid boy.” Then, his gaze turns white, his pupils pinpoint red. “Couldn’t follow simple directions.”
Inside of my body, my oddly mixed blood turns to ice.
A slow smile lifts Valerian’s mouth. “Ah, I see you understand now. What you might not know is that I did it for you, Riley.” He sighs. “All I ever wanted was you.”