A cold front was moving in. The wind had picked up over the last few hours and as Aiden walked through Washington, it easily pierced the cashmere coat that he had stolen yesterday. It bit at his skin, numbing his ears, nose, and fingers, but it did nothing to numb the pain inside.
The road had changed very little in the last nineteen months. Some of the stores had been renovated, some of the potholes filled, but he had walked this way so many times in the past that he still knew every step, every crack in the sidewalk. This was the route that he used to take through Georgetown down to Arlington—to Angie’s penthouse. It would have been safer for him to take a cab in those days, to give him some anonymity, but Aiden hadn’t really been worried about anyone in Circle Daybreak connecting him to Angie. He had been in the organization too long by then for them to suspect him. He had served them too well.
Until he’d betrayed them, of course.
He wasn’t sure why he was walking this way. Angie was dead and the vampire who had taken her place—some incompetent fool whom Aiden had advised Angie to fire—worked out of Adams Morgan. His old life was gone; there was nothing for him in this city any more. But he had nowhere else to go.
It reminded him of the last time he had taken this route—the night that he had tried to kill Eve. Through the pouring rain, he had walked as emotions he never felt before stormed inside of him. Part of him had wanted to go back to her to beg for forgiveness. Part of him had wanted to go back to finish the job. In the end, he’d gone straight to Angie. He could barely stand that bitch, but that night he couldn’t help thinking of her as some sort of savior. She would make things right, make him cold, take the pain away. She would help him reassemble the shattered pieces of himself.
He could laugh at that now. God, he’d been delusional, believing that Angie would ever do anything for anyone else. She only ever cared about herself. Aiden was just a pawn in her games, a pretty plaything that she would discard after he had served his purpose.
That was all he had ever been to anyone.
Now that Lex had cast him off, he was alone once again. Walking this same path toward the Key Bridge. Still foolishly believing that he would find himself on the other side.
It was better this way, he told himself. She had done him a favor, really. He had never wanted to be tied to anyone and now for the first time in years, he was finally free. There was no one to answer to, no one nagging him or trying to change him, no one depending on him, no one expecting anything of him at all.
Not that Lex ever had. He could still see the look on her face when he had sworn that he wasn’t going to help her save Reece. It was the same way she had looked at him after he killed the two humans in the convenience store—she hadn’t been surprised or disappointed in the least. Hell, she hadn’t even been angry with him when he admitted to helping Zarek capture her soulmate.
Aiden gritted his teeth as a bewildering wave of bitterness consumed him. He couldn’t understand why this was bothering him so much. So what if she had never believed that he was anything more than a ruthless, driven killer? He was a ruthless, driven killer. Wasn’t that the whole point of his rampage this morning? To prove to Lex that her assumptions were right and that Eve’s were wrong? And wasn’t he the one who had insisted that there should be no trust or promises in their relationship? Why should he be so angry that she had treated him exactly the way he wanted to be treated? That she had accepted him for the fucking car wreck of a person that he kept insisting he was?
This was ridiculous. As soon as he crossed the bridge into Arlington he was going to boost a car and get out of this city before Alexandra screwed with his head any more. He had been stupid to go to her in the first place. Whatever higher power had yanked on the soulmate link that night in New York was probably getting good laugh out of this.
Because he hurt, damn it. After losing Eve, he thought that he would be used to hurting, but this...this was different, somehow. This was a grinding pain in his stomach. This was a crushing ache in his chest. He couldn’t stop seeing the love in Eve’s eyes, the acceptance in Alexandra’s face, the vomit at Reece’s feet. He couldn’t stop hearing Lindsay’s pleading voice in his head. The soulmate link was like an anchor around his heart, weighing him down, slowing his steps as he approached the bridge.
Don’t look back.
But if he looked ahead, there was nothing there but an empty road. An empty city. An empty life.
Suddenly he wondered what would have happened if he had gone back to Eve that night. What would have happened if he had been able to stop hating her for making him feel? Where would he be now? What would he have?
He sneered at his own idealism. In all likelihood, he would still have nothing. Eve would have forgiven him, but she wouldn’t have wanted him—not the real him. Not even Lex had wanted that.
It cut him to the quick. It made him block out the call of the soulmate link, made him carry on when it would be so easy to turn around. He told Lex that she wasn’t worth his time, but the truth was that Aiden wasn’t worth hers. So he didn’t fucking care if she killed Zarek or not. Didn’t care if she wound up under that sadistic psycho’s thumb or if she and her soulmate lived happily ever after. She had made her choice and he didn’t owe it to her to turn back now.
He owed it to Reece.
The thought was so baffling, so utterly out of the blue, that he froze mid-stride.
What the hell did he owe Reece? That fucking goodie-two-shoes witch already had everything. He had friends, a team, a life, a purpose, and of course, he had Lex. Reece had never done anything for Aiden.
Except call for help after he was blasted with blue fire. Except save his life after Angie shot him. Except let him go even after Aiden taunted the witch about sleeping with Alexandra.
But Reece had done all of that for his soulmate, not for Aiden. That bastard hadn’t even wanted to save him...
“Fuck,” he said aloud. He rubbed his face roughly. Pressed his cold fingertips into his closed eyes. Now that he was standing still, the pull of the soulmate link was even stronger.
He shook his head, trying to clear his mind. This was a simple matter of will power. All he had to do was keep walking, just put one foot in front of the other until he had left all of this far behind. He was Aiden St. Helen and he had no sense of honor or decency, no concept of obligation or responsibility. Reece might have been foolish enough to help him, but that didn’t mean that Aiden would return the favor.
No.
Hell no.
So why wasn’t he moving?
“Oh no,” he whispered. As he stood before the Key Bridge, his future stretching out before him, he finally recognized the strange pain that was overwhelming him. He knew why he felt sick when Zarek had taken Reece away. Why Lindsay’s words had irritated him so much. Why he was so hurt that Alexandra hadn’t expected him to help her.
It was guilt. And it wasn’t being inflicted upon him by Eve or the soulmate link, it was coming from inside of him. He had actually grown a conscience.
How far the great and untouchable Hellraiser has fallen.
Oh Angie, you have no idea.
Patience.
Humans believed they understood the concept. They advocated freedom of choice, urging their youth to never relinquish their dreams or settle for anything less than their heart’s desire. In truth, however, every last one of them was forced to compromise themselves and their aspirations in some respect. Their lives were too pathetically short to wait for decades—centuries, even—for perfection. Feeling the icy breath of Death on the backs of their necks, they hastily mated with the first person that provided them with the slightest inkling of the ever-elusive dream of happiness. They did not know how to restrain their desire, to let it grow inside of them until every fiber of their being was saturated with pure, unadulterated want. They did not know, therefore, how it felt to finally slake that unbearable hunger. They could not fathom the ecstasy, the rapture.
Fools. Zarek pitied them almost as much as he despised them. After living as a vampire for over four thousand years, he could hardly believe that he had once been a human. His mortal life was one of weakness, coldness, and starvation, and it was not an experience that he cared to remember. Though he had prayed for death countless times, the gods refused to grant his wish and Zarek had been too cowardly to end it himself. Even though he was considered an old man by the time that he was made into a vampire, he had never truly lived.
On the night he was changed, his maker had said to him, “Pain is not merely an inevitability of life, my son. Existence is pain. It is in the air you breathe, the water you drink, the ground on which you walk. So many people deny it or lament it, but when you accept this and learn to find the beauty in it, you will see that the world around you is breathtaking.”
How Zarek had worshipped that man. For years, he’d hung on his every word, believing him to be the wisest being on earth. Rather than raising him up, his maker had taught him how to flourish in the depths of hell and how to revel in physical pain.
Eventually Zarek discovered that breaking one’s mind was far more enjoyable than simply breaking their body. When you have a musician in your grasp, instead of feeding from him, why not cut off his fingers and then let him live with the knowledge that his life is effectively destroyed? Why just kill a family when you could force a mother to slit the throat of her child, or a brother to cut the still-beating heart from his sister? By making their greatest fears come to fruition, the power of God is at your fingertips.
His maker had disagreed, chiding him about wasting time and blood. So Zarek had hunted down the vampire’s lover—a pretty lamia who had chosen to stop aging at the age of fifteen—and defiled her repeatedly before gutting her. When his maker discovered her body, Zarek had laughed at the tears in the vampire’s eyes, shuddered at the sound of his agonized roar, and soaked up all of his anguish as if it were the elixir of life. Then he’d beheaded him.
Even though he been perfecting his game and refining his tastes for centuries, that night was still perhaps the greatest one that he could remember. It was the night that he realized just how powerful he was and how much more powerful he could become. The meaning of life and death became abundantly clear to him for the first time. In many ways, he felt like an addict doomed to spend the rest of his life searching for a fix that would surpass that initial one.
As he paced the floor of the warehouse, waiting for Alexandra to arrive with Lindsay, he believed that he might have finally found it. Tonight he would have in his possession his most beloved slave, her soulmate, and the young girl in whom both Alexandra and Reece saw the best of themselves—the soul that each of them felt they should have. They were connected, the three of them, by bonds that could never be broken. They would feel each other’s pain in a way that he had never before dreamed. There would be no end to his game this time.
Eternity began tonight.
The wait was unbearable. Though he was sure that he had firmly planted the knowledge of his location in her mind, Alexandra was taking longer than he’d originally anticipated. So long, in fact, that he was beginning to wonder if perhaps he had overestimated the level of his control over her. He wondered if the witch had been correct in his assertion that Alexandra would run now that Zarek had made contact.
She was different than he remembered. More—open, he supposed. More expressive of her emotions. Less willing to believe that she was responsible for all that had happened to her. It was the witch’s doing, of course, and Zarek was glad for it. If she was still the same broken, hollow shell of a girl that she’d been when he had tried to kill her, then he would have no use for her. If she hadn’t healed, then there would be nothing for him now to break.
But had she healed more than he had expected? Did she have the strength now to defy him? Part of him almost wished that she did because then when he hunted her down and took her by force, she would fight him. And gods, it would be incredible to feel that fire within her again. At the same time, Zarek knew that if she decided to run with her lover—that strange, fractured vampire who was so infatuated with her—it would likely be a long time before he finally found her.
Those few minutes he spent with her earlier had not taken the edge off his appetite, as he had hoped. Instead, it made him all the more desperate for her. It took all of his determination to keep himself from seeking out her mind so that he would know for sure that she was coming.
Patience, he reminded himself. She will be here. Just wait a little longer.
In the mean time, Zarek decided to go back down into the basement to check on his newest fledgling. Reece Cahill was still unconscious, his body hanging limply from the chains that held him shackled to the damp, stone wall. All in all, he had endured the change even better than Zarek had hoped. Some color was returning to the newborn vampire’s cheeks and his skin was no longer clammy to the touch. The wounds in his shoulders as well as all of the deep lacerations across his stomach had already healed. It wouldn’t be long now before Reece awakened, his body burning with an indescribable hunger the likes of which he had never known. His jaw would ache and his head would throb and he would intuitively know that there was only one thing that could help him: Blood.
The newborn groaned softly, his head lolling slightly before falling forward once again. It seemed as if he was reacting to a sound or a touch and Zarek frowned in confusion. Then understanding dawned on him in the next instant as he too felt the glimmer of Alexandra’s presence nearby.
His breath caught in his throat as he realized that she was less than a block away. He nearly dove into her soul right then and there, but somehow he managed to hold himself back. He wanted to see her first—to see the fear in her eyes. It would be better that way.
But wait. Where was Lindsay? He reached out with his mind, but he couldn’t feel the little girl anywhere. It seemed that Alexandra had defied him after all.
Slowly, he walked back up to the ground floor of the warehouse. He could feel her coming closer and closer to him and when she reached the door, he telepathically flung it open.
She stood in the doorway, even more ravishing in the flesh than she’d been in his mind. He had forgotten just how lush the curves of her body were; when he had first seen her as a human girl, that feature had almost been enough to deter him from taking her, but now they were as beautiful to him as her azure eyes. Her pale, porcelain skin seemed to glow in the dimness as the cold winter wind blew her spiraled curls back from her face. One of her needle-sharp canines was nervously pressed into her full lower lip so hard that it drew blood and the scent of it was intoxicating.
“Kyrios,” she whispered on a trembling breath.
Gods, how he loved the sound of that word on her lips. “Alexandra. I knew you wouldn’t be able to refuse my invitation. But where is Lindsay?”
She clenched her jaw. “I sent her away.”
He tilted his head slightly to the side. “Why would you do that?” he inquired. “I know you want Copenhagen as much as I.”
“I’m not your slave,” she bit out. “Not any more.”
Zarek smiled in spite of himself. Alexandra may have disobeyed him, but he had to admit that this boldness in her was exciting. It wasn’t something that he had expected to see again. “Is that so?” he asked silkily. “Then why, pray tell, are you here?”
She lifted her chin. “To kill you.”
A loud, crass laugh burst from him. Suddenly he did not care that he had lost Lindsay; he could easily find her again later. For now, this game with Alexandra was simply too good to resist. “Perhaps I would be afraid of that declaration if your voice wasn’t shaking so badly.”
A pang of fear reverberated through her. He felt the vibrations of it as he let his mind dance around hers, prodding and poking, but not yet piercing. Save that for later.
He started to circle her and she stayed rooted to the floor, her eyes cast downward even though her chin was still raised. “You have no weapons, my love,” he noted. “How do you expect to kill me?”
“I don’t need a weapon,” she said softly, almost demurely. “I am a weapon now.”
“A Wild Power,” he said, his voice bathed in boredom. “I know. I can feel the blue fire heating your blood. It is a loaded gun, true enough, but the fact of the matter is that you are still the shooter. And you don’t even know how to pull the trigger.”
“Yes, I do. Reece taught me.”
Zarek skimmed the surface of her subconscious and she literally jerked back from the contact. Oh, she was not as courageous as she wanted to believe. “No. He worked with you, but even so, whenever you were able to ignite the fire, you never actually knew how you’d done it.” He gave her an amused, confidential smile. “And three times out of ten is hardly a success rate that would give me cause for concern.”
He moved behind her, pulling her delicate body flush against his own. She was rigid in his arms, but she didn’t struggle. Her terror was like honey as he bent his head, letting his lips graze her ear, and he laughed softly. How could she ever be foolish enough to believe that she could stand up to him? She was his child—her every word, her every action was his doing. He had created her and he would always have that power over her.
“Besides,” he murmured, “we both know that if you use that fire, the Night World would be here to kill you in a matter of minutes. The fate of the world would be sealed. And your precious soulmate would most likely die, fighting on the losing side of a hopeless war.”
“You’re lying,” Alexandra breathed. “You don’t know that. You only know that that is what I’m afraid will happen.”
Zarek held his smile, but he was glad that her back was turned to him because he was sure that his irritation was clear in his eyes. It had been so long since he had interacted with someone who shared his telepathic powers—who truly understood its limitations. Most people were so awed by his abilities that they automatically believed his every word was true, and that was a misconception that he often used to his advantage. But Alexandra knew better.
He twisted her around in his arms and held her face in his hands. She had challenged him, so it was up to him to raise the stakes. To put her in her place. “Let’s find out, then, shall we?” he suggested.
Her breath stopped as she looked up at him and he could hear her heart racing. “What?”
Doubt was starting to seep into her resolve, he could feel it. He spun his mind around hers, holding her captive in his web. She may know the limits of his power, but he knew hers as well. After systematically breaking her down nearly thirty years, he knew exactly how to manipulate her. “Set me on fire, Alexandra,” he dared. “This is what you came for, isn’t it? To show me that I have no power over you, that you are not the girl that I created those long years ago. So let’s not waste each other’s time. Your lip is already bleeding. Figuratively speaking, the gun is loaded. So go ahead and shoot me. Do it.”
She stared at him for a moment and then clamped her mouth shut angrily. Biting down hard on her lip, she tried to gather the power inside of her and focus it on him, as her witch had taught her to do. As soon as the power coalesced, like a gust of wind her fear blew it apart.
Zarek chuckled. He touched his finger to the blood on her lip and brought it to his mouth. The taste of her was so different now. There was something elemental about it, something that was reminiscent of the flavor of her soulmate. There was witch blood running through her veins, but it was laced with something older. Something ancient and primal and powerful. And he knew that he had to be careful; one taste was enough to make him ache for more and it would be all too easy to get carried away if he allowed himself to drink from her.
A frown marred her face as she tried once again to summon the blue fire, but she couldn’t hold on to the power. It kept scattering away, as he had known it would.
“You can’t do it,” he said to her. “You can’t kill me.”
“Yes, I can,” she seethed. She dug her fingernails into her palms, believing that she needed to draw more blood.
Zarek gave her a knowing look. He reached down and took her hands in his, holding her palms up while he unfurled her fingers. “That won’t help you. Nothing will. You can’t kill me because you don’t want to do it.”
“That’s not true.”
She tried to break her hands free from him, but he held her fast. “Ah, but it is. Perhaps you believe you want me dead when there are others around—your soulmate, your lover, Lindsay. But it’s just you and I now, my love, and you can’t lie to yourself. When we are alone together, you remember who you are. You know that you deserve no better than an eternity with me. You know what we have together and you want nothing more.”
“No,” she whispered, but Zarek knew that he had won. Her confidence had weakened and her will was crumbling.
He leaned forward to rest his forehead against hers as he finally allowed himself to fully penetrate her mind. As her essence surrounded him, he could feel her fear, hate, guilt. Her soul was dripping with it and he lapped it up.
Gods, the memory of him had plagued her these last five years. Always lurking in the back of her mind, he cast a shadow over her life that lingered even after she had found her soulmate. She had dreamed of him as often as he had of her and her screams were so earth shattering that it was almost surprising that he hadn’t felt their vibrations in all of this time. They were like a siren’s call, a desperate plea for him to find her.
We are together now, my love.
Panicking at the sound of his voice in her head, she fought him again. Her arms came up around his neck, pulling his head down as she tried to knee him in the stomach, as she had once seen Reece do while he was sparring.
Zarek easily lifted her off her feet, holding her tightly against him. As she shrieked and struggled, a memory flickered inside of her mind. Hastily, she shoved it out of her awareness, praying that he hadn’t noticed her slip. She fought him harder, but he knew that it was just an attempt to distract him, to keep him from delving into her subconscious to find what she was trying to hide.
Silly girl.
He dove down into her, feeling out her anxiety as he sifted through her memories until he had uncovered the one that she so badly wanted to stay buried. Concentrating on it, the images began to flash before his eyes.
He saw Alexandra standing outside of the warehouse with Lindsay at her side. “Reece is in the basement,” she said. “Go around the side of the building and find some way in. Your mind is still blocked by the spell, so Z—my maker won’t be able to feel you there.”
“What are you going to do?” Lindsay asked.
“Confront him.”
“But if he can read your mind, won’t he know that I’m here because you know it?”
Alexandra shook her head. “He won’t do that right away. He likes to play too much. To draw things out. Hopefully, I’ll be able to kill him before he even tries.”
The human girl opened her mouth to protest, but Alexandra cut her off before she could speak. “Don’t worry about me. Whatever you see or hear, don’t come up to help me. Your job is to get Reece out and get as far away from here as possible. Do you understand?”
Zarek wrenched himself out of her mind. Looking down into her blue eyes, he saw the dread there. She knew that he had seen everything. “Kyrios, please—”
“You lying whore,” he snarled. Then he backhanded her across the face, hitting her so hard that she fell to the side. While she was still dazed and barely clinging to consciousness, he fisted her spiral curls and dragged her to the stairs. “I thought you knew the consequences of trying to trick me, Alexandra, but it seems that you have forgotten. Don’t worry, though. I’ll remedy that, I promise you.”
He let her body slam against every step as he pulled her down into the basement and when he reached the bottom of the stairs, he pitched her into the wall. It was an oafish thing to do, but she always did have a talent for making him so angry that his patience and finesse were superseded by the rash, savage need to hurt her. He hated her for reducing him to this.
In disgust, he turned away from her. As soon as his gaze fell on Reece Cahill, however, he drew up short. He blinked, unwilling to believe his eyes, but the scene before him didn’t change. Rage spread through him like wild fire, consuming all of his grand plans until they were nothing but ash.
Eternity be damned. Zarek was going to kill him now.
Lindsay eyed the small, ground level window. Nervously, she looked up and down the side of the building, but she already knew that she wouldn’t find anything. She had already circled the warehouse twice, pulling on every door and trying every window, but they were all locked. There was only one way she was going to get inside: she was going to have to break in.
She had never done anything like this before. What if a policeman caught her? She could go to jail. And if Zarek caught her, he would probably hurt her so badly that she would wish she were in jail. This was just too risky.
But she didn’t have a choice. Reece needed her. He was down there suffering through God knows what because she had made the mistake of not trusting him. It didn’t matter what happened to her, as long as she got him out of there.
After taking a deep breath, Lindsay wound up and kicked the window as hard as she could. And then she clamped her hand over her mouth to cover her yelp after her foot slammed uselessly into the pane. The glass hadn’t cracked, but she was pretty sure that a few of her toes had.
“Aiden made it look so easy,” she grumbled to herself. But of course, he was a vampire, so he was probably a lot stronger than she was. She really wished that he were here right now.
Well, he’s not, her mind snapped. This is up to you. So stop standing around and find a way to break that window!
She limped quickly around the back of the warehouse, where she remembered seeing a pile of dirty old bricks. Taking one in both hands, she headed back to the window. After a few good bangs, the glass cracked and shattered.
Lindsay crouched down and waited there for a long moment, just to make sure that no one had heard her. Then she turned over and slid inside, feet first. The window was so narrow that the edges scraped her stomach as she squeezed through. Once she had gotten her arms and head inside, she let herself fall onto the floor.
It was as cold inside the warehouse as it was outside and she shivered as she took in her surroundings. It was almost pitch black, but through the darkness she could tell that she was in a huge, open room that was maybe half the size of the whole building. And it stank. She couldn’t identify the smell, but the air seemed almost greasy as she slowly walked across the room.
Suddenly she heard a soft, clinking sound behind her and she froze in place. Her eyes were finally starting adjust and when she turned towards the sound, she was able to make out a shape against the wall.
“Reece,” she gasped as she hurried over to him. When he didn’t respond, she gave his arm a shake. The clinking sound echoed through the room again and she realized that it was coming from a set of chains that held him to the wall. “Hey, Reece.”
He still didn’t answer.
Lindsay let out a breath and straightened up. She tugged on the shackles that were clamped around his wrists, but they wouldn’t budge. The heavy metal chains were locked with an old padlock that was a lot sturdier than it seemed.
Quickly, she went over to the table in the middle of the room and fumbled through the knives and other weapons that were strewn over it. Her stomach turned as her fingers came back wet and sticky with blood, but she forced herself to keep searching until she found a key. She just hoped to God that it was the right one.
Standing up on her tiptoes, she reached for the padlock and was relieved to find that the key fit perfectly. The lock was rusty and her hand cramped as she tried to turn the key, but after a moment, it finally popped open.
Once Reece’s wrists were loose, he slumped onto the floor like a rag doll. “Oh, sorry!” she exclaimed as quietly as possible. After pushing him over onto his back, she kneeled down and shook him again. “Reece?”
He groaned softly and his eyes fluttered open as he lifted his head. “Lindsay?”
She was so happy to see him awake that she almost laughed. “Yeah, it’s me,” she replied. “Are you okay?”
“How did you get here? Did Lex bring you?”
Lindsay nodded.
He let his head fall back tiredly as pain twisted his expression. “Goddess, no,” he whispered. Then he looked back at her. “Where is she? Where is Zarek?”
She hesitated. It was her job to get Reece out of this warehouse, but if she told him that Lex was here, he wasn’t going to leave. But she didn’t know what else to do. “Upstairs, I think.”
Reece winced as he turned over onto all fours and slowly sat up. By the time he was on his knees, his breathing was loud and ragged. He pressed the heel of his hand into his forehead, like he was trying to force away a migraine. “That sonofabitch is dead,” he hissed.
Lindsay smiled. “You mean she really did it?” she asked excitedly. “How can you tell?”
He lowered his hand and stared at her. “What are you talking about?”
“Lex,” she replied. “She came here to kill Zarek.”
“What?” Reece snapped.
She flinched at his tone. “You just said that he was—”
“It was a figure of speech,” he explained. “What do you mean, Lex came here to kill Zarek?”
Lindsay started to answer, but Reece lifted his hand in a sharp gesture for quiet. Then he cocked his head to the side, as if he was listening for something. “Shit, she’s in trouble,” he breathed. Grabbing onto the wall, he tried to pull himself to his feet, but his legs were too weak and wobbly to support him. With a grunt, he fell back down to the floor and gasped for breath.
She moved to his side and put her hand on his shoulder. “Are you okay?”
“Fine. I just...” His words were lost as his eyes moved over her face and drifted down to her throat. He shuddered and swallowed hard. “Lindsay,” he said in a strange voice, “you have to get out of here.”
“Why? What’s the mat—” she started, and then her voice caught as his green eyes flashed in the darkness. They had always been an unnatural color, but now they were glowing like laser beams. For the first time she noticed that his canines were long and sharp. “What happened to you?”
“Zarek,” he replied hoarsely. “He changed me into a vampire.”
Lindsay pressed her lips together. How awful to have something like that done against your will. It should have been her that was changed, not Reece. Her heart swelled with guilt and admiration. “It’s okay,” she said soothingly. “I’m not afraid of you. I know that—”
“You don’t understand.” He captured her hand that was on his shoulder, his grip so tight that it hurt. It seemed like he wanted to scare her away, but at the same time, he couldn’t bring himself to let go of her. His gaze was fixed on her neck in a way that made her skin crawl in spite of herself.
“You need blood,” she realized aloud.
Reece didn’t need to reply; she could see his answer in the tremor in his hand, the feverish flush in his cheeks, the intensity of his stare, the way his lips were pulled back from his teeth. He peeled his fingers off her hand and pried his eyes away from her throat to look at her face. “Please go, before I do something...”
There was a loud, high-pitched sound from upstairs—something like a squeal or squeak—and Reece instinctively tried to stand up again. Still, he wasn’t strong enough. “Lex,” he groaned through clenched teeth.
Lindsay anxiously glanced up at the ceiling and wet her lips. If Lex were really in trouble, then Zarek would probably be down here soon. And with Reece in this vulnerable state, there was no hope of any of them getting away. Unless she did something, they were all in big trouble.
Without pausing to think about it, Lindsay threw her arms around Reece’s neck and tipped her head back slightly.
“What are you doing?” he demanded breathlessly. His hands cupped her shoulders, but he didn’t push her away.
“Go ahead,” she replied. “I know you won’t hurt me.”
He shook his head. “You’re right. I won’t hurt you, Lindsay. I’ll kill you.”
“No, you won’t.”
“You can’t know that. I’ve never done this before. What if I can’t stop?”
Lindsay drew back slightly to look into his eyes and she gave him a small, confident smile. “I trust you, Reece.”
He managed to resist for another second before he lowered his head. There was a brief sting as his teeth punctured her throat, but then the pain was swept away by a strange, dizzying rush. It felt like she was on a roller coaster, plummeting down the first, steep hill. Down, and down, and down. Through the ground. Into space. Weightless. Floating. Free.
“Well, well, well,” a deep voice said. It sounded familiar, but so far away. “I knew you would make a good vampire. I just hope you left enough blood for me.”
She crashed back into reality as Reece shoved her onto the cold floor. She would have cried out, but her voice didn’t seem to be under her control. None of her body did. She felt like a puddle of water, spreading over the ground.
“Afraid not,” Reece replied coldly. “She’ll be dead in a minute. Just like you.”
Stupid.
Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.
Stupid, weak, selfish, useless bitch.
She had failed. Of course, she had failed. Any idiot would have known right off the bat that there was no hope of her ever defeating him. She would never have the strength or the will. She was just too damn stupid to live, and yet he would never let her die. Not again. This time, she would be his forever.
Lex huddled against the wall, her head feeling swollen and cracked. The taste of blood was in her mouth from when he had backhanded her, but it wouldn’t do her any good. He had been right—she didn’t really know how to use the blue fire. Without Reece, she couldn’t consciously harness the power or direct it. The world was screwed; she couldn’t do anything right. She couldn’t do anything.
Her maker’s laugh, dark and dangerous, penetrated the fog in her head. He was angry in a way that she had rarely seen before. Her betrayal had irked him, but discovering that Reece killed Lindsay sent him over the edge. He liked things neat and controlled and when someone disrupted that, he razed them to the ground.
“Haven’t you figured out yet that you can’t lie to me?” he said to Reece. “I may not be able to see into Lindsay’s mind, but I can still see into yours. And I know that you didn’t take enough blood to kill her.”
Reece’s lips tightened. But really, what had he been expecting? Kyrios would find a way around any obstacle in his path. He would always have the upper hand, always win.
“It doesn’t matter anyway,” her maker continued. “I have decided that the two of you aren’t worth the trouble. I have Alexandra now and she’s all that I need. So I think it’s past time that you and Lindsay die.”
“Let’s have at it, then,” Reece suggested. His voice was calm and reasonable, but she knew the fury that lay beneath the surface.
And of course, Kyrios knew it as well. He stepped back and pasted a smug smile on his face. “You almost seem to be enjoying being a vampire,” he noted. “How did it feel to tear into Lindsay’s throat? To taste her blood spilling over your tongue? To feel the power surging inside of you as you stole her life-force ounce by ounce?”
Reece didn’t reply, but a tic worked in his jaw. Through the soulmate link, she could feel that he was trying to block out that memory and stay focused on the present moment. But that trick hadn’t worked for Lex upstairs, and it wouldn’t work for him now.
“You loved it, didn’t you?” her maker asked. “And you hated yourself for loving it. You are a healer by nature and yet it felt so natural to be hurting her. The vampire in you reveled in the bloodlust, but the witch in you wouldn’t stop screaming.
“This is your existence now. If you kill me, you will spend the rest of your life at war with yourself. And it will only be a matter of time before the battle tears you apart.”
Lex felt her lip twitching as her eyes filled with tears. God, he might as well have been talking about her because that was how she felt every time her power took her over. Of course, he had to know that. He was intentionally taking down both her and Reece with the same shot.
Reece lunged at him, catching her maker in the stomach with his shoulder, and they both toppled to the floor. With a deep laugh, Kyrios thrust his feet up, effortlessly kicking his fledgling off of him. Reece landed on his back, but he was up half a second later, ready to attack again.
It was no use. He hadn’t really adjusted to his new strength and speed after the change, so his movements were clumsy and awkward. It was as if he couldn’t quite find his center of gravity. And he was so easily distracted by the smallest noises that he had never before been able to hear—the sound of blood rushing through the veins of every person in the room, the cacophony of their beating hearts and uneven breath. Not only that, her maker was simply better. His perfect command of his body kept his movements small, quick, and efficient. The instant that Reece tried to punch, her maker was already blocking him and seizing the chance to throw a counter-punch. When the newborn vampire kicked, Kyrios moved like water, dodging the blow so fast that Reece spun completely around.
All in all, he made her soulmate look like a clod.
Lex knew that she should help Reece now, but she couldn’t. Her maker’s words had coated her skin and hardened into a thick shell of despair, leaving her paralyzed. There was no point in trying to fight him—he had drilled that lesson into her for thirty years and tonight he had done it once more.
This really was Copenhagen all over again—this was exactly how helpless and hopeless she had felt that night. As soon as her maker had gotten Reece and Lindsay under his control, he would most likely force Alexandra to skin the both of them alive, just as she had done to that girl those many years ago. She would cry and scream this time, but inevitably, part of her would probably enjoy it.
Stupid, sick, disgusting bitch.
Reece was tiring. His movements were becoming more sluggish and laborious with each passing minute. He must have taken enough blood from Lindsay to give him a small burst of energy, but he had already burned through it. She had the sense that he knew how pointless this fight was, that he had known from the beginning that he was going to lose, but he wouldn’t let himself give up.
It made it all the more heartbreaking when Kyrios somehow pretzeled Reece’s arms between them and forced his head down, leaving the newborn vampire open to attack. Then her maker glanced down at Lex and gave her a smile, as if to say, Are you watching, my love?
As he moved to knee Reece in the face, however, Kyrios was suddenly pushed from behind. The vampire lost his grip on his fledgling as he pitched forward onto his knees.
Lex slowly lifted her eyes and gaped at Reece’s rescuer. It was the last person she had ever expected to see here—or anywhere else, for that matter because he made it clear during their fight that he had washed his hands of her.
Aiden St. Helen stood over her maker, the corner of his mouth turned up in a wry smile that warmed her heart. He glanced at Reece, who had staggered back to rest against the table of weapons, and then turned to the older vampire. “This isn’t exactly a fair fight, is it?” he remarked. “You, a centuries old vampire, against one who was made only a few hours ago.”
Lex’s maker got back to his feet and his laugh rumbled throughout the room. “I should have kept a closer eye on you,” he said.
“Yeah,” Aiden replied. “With all your power, you should have known that I’m always a wild card.”
“True,” Kyrios conceded. “Not even your own soulmate saw you coming.”
Lex cringed at that comment, afraid that Aiden would blindly lash out. The vampire just shook his head in amusement. “Your psychoanalysis attacks aren’t going to work on me, old man. Unlike Alexandra and that asshole—” he nodded to Reece “—I’m not afraid of your power. I worked with a sluttier, more obnoxious version of you for years and I’ve heard it all.”
Her jaw dropped. Lex had never heard anyone speak to her maker like that. She had never imagined that anyone could. He always knew what to say to strip you bare, to leave you shattered and bleeding and utterly at his mercy. You had to be crazy to antagonize him like this.
But Aiden was nothing, if not crazy.
Kyrios seemed annoyed and discouraged, but not defeated. Not by a long shot. Impossibly, his black eyes seemed to darken as he stared the other vampire down. “Why are you here anyways, Hellraiser?” he asked. “You know that she doesn’t love you. She won’t give up her soulmate for you. When this is all over, Reece will have her and you’ll still have nothing. You’ll still be living on the run, so unbearably lonely that you have to pay hookers to listen to you talk. Except this time, you won’t even have those hallucinations of your own soulmate to keep you company. She left you, remember? Body and soul.”
“This is all you’ve got, isn’t it?” Aiden countered heedlessly. “An arsenal of words. You’re just like Angie. You keep talking because you’re afraid that if you fight, you’ll lose.”
Amazingly, Lex saw blood rushing into her maker’s face. He was furious; Aiden was actually getting to him.
“I know how to fight,” he snapped.
Aiden raised an eyebrow. “Then you won’t mind if I call your bluff.”
And with that, they were both in motion.
Alexandra couldn’t watch. She knew that Kyrios hadn’t been lying; he was an expert at inflicting pain. Her soulmate was still leaning on the table, unable to support his own weight after the beating he had taken. His face was badly bruised and he was holding his ribs as if they were broken. Her maker had easily decimated him and the fight with Aiden wouldn’t turn out any different.
A she kept her eyes on Reece, though, she saw his expression change. At first, he seemed as grim and pessimistic as she felt, but after a minute, something like awe lit up his face. He stood up a little straighter, as if a weight had been lifted from his shoulders, and through the soulmate link she heard him say to himself, I’ll be damned.
Unable to contain her curiosity, she turned towards the fight just in time to see Aiden’s fist connect with her maker’s jaw. Blood blossomed from the older vampire’s mouth, spilling down his chin and onto his shirt. He had barely recovered from that blow when Aiden struck again, catching him this time in the nose.
Lex was astounded. Kyrios was losing. Badly. And it turned her world on its head. She had long ago stopped thinking of her maker as a flesh and blood being. To her, he had seemed like an invulnerable monster. A nameless, shapeless fear. A god. But as Aiden riddled him with shots to his body and head, for the first time in her life she saw that her maker was just…a man.
She brought her gaze back to Reece and she was surprised to find a breathtaking brightness in his green eyes that had been missing for months—maybe since they had met. He smiled at her conspiratorially and she knew that he was realizing the truth as well: her maker wasn’t some all-powerful being. He was an act, complete with smoke and mirrors. He was a lie that Lex had accepted because she had been too young to know better. And Reece, she was startled to discover, had been too traumatized.
She didn’t have time to think about that. Just then, her maker—Zarek—got in a lucky shot to Aiden’s gut that knocked the wind out of him and sent him reeling back a few steps. Before she knew what was happening, Reece had vaulted over the table, putting himself between the two vampires. His head finally clear, he was able to throw punch combinations so fast that his arms were nothing but a blur. By the time Aiden had caught his breath, Reece had backed Zarek up against the wall.
Aiden came around and grabbed the older vampire’s arms, holding them behind his back. “Get a stake,” he said to Reece with a nod towards the weapons table.
Zarek thrashed, but he couldn’t shake free. As he grunted and gasped, cursed and cried, Alexandra saw the terror in his dark eyes. Dipping below his surface thoughts, she saw that this was his greatest fear—being helpless. That fear was at the heart of everything he was, everything he had done. For thousands of years, he had victimized others to prove to himself that he would never be a victim. He enjoyed rendering people powerless because he knew that he had no power of his own.
Reece grabbed a stake off the table and went back to Zarek, who paled at the sight of the weapon. As her soulmate drew his arm back, winding up for the fatal blow, Alexandra finally stood up and shouted, “Wait!”
Aiden looked at her as if she had lost her mind, but Reece knowingly turned and held the stake out to her. “It’s all you, Lex.”
As she gripped the weapon in her hand, Zarek smiled and gained back some of his composure. “You know you can’t do it, Alexandra,” he purred arrogantly. “You’re a part of me. You’re my—”
She thrust the stake into his heart.
In shock, her maker looked down at the piece of wood protruding from his chest and then he looked back at her. He tried to say something, but the words died on his lips as his eyes rolled back into his head.
Aiden dropped Zarek’s body unceremoniously. Then he stepped over it to come to Lex’s left side while Reece stood to her right. Silently, the three of them stared at the lifeless man on the floor. It was hard to believe that this one person had caused so much damage, so much pain.
“Just another vampire,” Reece murmured.
“Not any more,” Aiden replied.
Lex took a deep breath and smiled in wonder. “Not any more,” she agreed.
Part 17
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