Eternal Beast: Mark of the Vampire, page 24
She kicked at him, tried to get her knee up between his legs, but he squeezed her too tight. Panic blurred her vision, and she forced herself to breathe, forced herself to think. Begging didn’t work, strength—she did have enough—maybe if she acted above him, reminded him of who he was hurting.
“You dare touch a veana, Impure,” she rasped, flashing her own set of fangs and lunging for him. “The Order will cage you for just looking at me wrong.”
“A veana.” He laughed as he hauled her up and tossed her on the metal table. “You are a mutore, sweetheart—a Beast, little better than an animal.”
“You’re the only animal in this room!”
He hit her hard across the face. So hard she passed out for a moment. When she came to, her pants were off, her underwear was ripped and hanging at her waist, and the guard was pushing into her. Blinding pain stabbed at her lower half, and she tried to get up, tried to slap and push and get away, but he slammed her back down. Her head hit the metal table and one second after it did, she shifted into her jaguar form.
Gray pulled out of her temple as gently as he could manage, but not before he saw what her tear-heavy cat eyes did: Cruen, standing at the entrance to the laboratory, watching—curious, clinical, as though she were nothing more than a scientific experiment.
His rage barely contained, he gathered Dillon up in his arms and rocked her.
“Baby…” he uttered, the urge to kill so ripe within him he could hardly breathe.
“You promised me,” she whispered.
Oh, fuck, I don’t know if I can keep that promise, he heard his mind scream as his hand burned with the need to hold a blade—the very hand that held her mark. I don’t think the jaguar within us both will let me.
Blood ran from Alexander’s wrist as he moved through the gates of his old credenti and headed down the path toward town. He wondered if his blood would still be welcome in this place if the community members had decided to station guards at the entrance.
He imagined not. His mother and her mate had a shitload of pull in here, and there was nothing they despised more than seeing him—being reminded that a son of the Breeding Male had once been forced upon them all.
Darkness ate up the pathway inside the forest, but it was a good thing. Most members of the credenti would be inside at blood meal and family reflection.
The scent of the village pushed into his nostrils, and he growled in disgust. “I shouldn’t have come,” he grumbled. “With Cellie locked up and Sara—”
“Nicky swore he’d contact us the second he has a way in,” Lucian said, keeping pace beside him, his white-blond hair reflecting the light of the moon overhead.
“Yeah, I know.”
“And with the Eyes doing that bullshit avoidance dance, it could be a while.”
“I know,” Alex snarled.
Lucian turned to glare at him. “Then stop being a pussy and let’s get this done.”
“Maybe I misspoke,” Alex said, sidestepping a fallen tree. “What I meant to say is, I should’ve come alone.”
Lucian smirked. “Yeah, right. What fun would that be?”
“You keep your nose clean, Luca, seriously.”
“Sure, sure.” He pointed his chin in the direction of the town, which was only a few yards away now. “Think we’ll run into that winner set of parents of yours? I’d love to introduce myself, then introduce them to my fangs.”
“We’re not here for a reunion,” Alex said, though the idea wasn’t half bad.
Lucian shrugged. “Just sayin’. If it comes to that.”
“If it comes to that,” Alex said in a low voice as they maneuvered to the back of one of the shops, “you can’t do anything, especially draw blood. Not with how close to the change you are and will always be.”
“Shit, Alex,” he hissed, annoyed. “It’s not menopause.”
“No, it’s a thousand times worse. Bronwyn’s blood inside you keeps you sane and moderately calm, but there’s no way of knowing if something could set you off. And she isn’t here to haul you back.” He shrugged. “I’m just sayin’, be careful.”
A sound drifted over to them then, a soft whistle that could’ve been a bird in one of the trees overhead if they hadn’t planned the signal themselves.
“Over here,” came a sharp whisper.
Alexander and Lucian followed the sound and the scent and found the Impure female they’d been told would be meeting them behind a small, dark house a couple of yards down.
When they approached, she retreated from the shadows and met them solidly, her chin raised. She was little more than a girl, maybe nine or ten, and Alexander felt a pinch in his side.
“You’re the Roman brothers,” she said, her dark eyes large and curious. “Sons of the Breeding Male.” She looked at Alex. “I wasn’t yet born when you lived here.”
Good thing. She would’ve been visiting him in a cage, not under a star-clad sky. “What can you tell us?” he asked, trying to keep his tone gentle, though he was pretty sure a trace of impatience needled through.
“There is a structure far out in the old pastures,” she said, pointing to the right. “It’s very hard to get to, and it’s abandoned.” She paused, chewed her lower lip. “Or they think it is.”
Alexander wasn’t altogether convinced that Cruen had a hideout here. It was just too irrational, too arrogant. Then again, both attributes ran thickly within that paven’s veins.
“You’ll show us,” Lucian said, no question in his tone.
She nodded. “But payment first.”
Alexander took out a small bag. It was filled with credenti gold. “Here you are.”
She looked at the bag of coins and frowned. “I don’t want that.”
“Why not?” asked Lucian, confused.
Her voice dropped even lower. “The elders here will know I’ve done something bad to get that gold. I won’t be able to spend it on the one thing I want.”
“And what is that?” Alexander asked.
Her large eyes met his. “Blood. Pure blood.”
“You get that from the Order. Why would you—”
“Not enough,” she interrupted, a sudden passion in her voice. “Never enough. And it has been worse lately. More work, less blood—more being rounded up and taken to the Paleo.”
Alexander glanced at Luca, who shook his head and cursed under his breath.
“Take it, whatever you need.”
As Alexander put his wrist before the veana, felt the unremarkable prick of her young and unsteady fangs, he thought of all that was collapsing within their breed.
Gray Donohue’s fight didn’t seem trivial anymore. This inequality, overly strict rule, and forced sterilization within the Eternal Breed was wrong and vile, and something Alexander was determined to see changed before his own little Impure entered the world.
20
The small wound in her temple stung, but the one that had just been unleashed inside her threatened to crush her flat. As she stood at the edge of the bed, the darkness of night still coating the room and the scent of sea, blood, and climax in the air, she watched her true mate sleep.
This wasn’t running.
She was going to get his mother and bring her back to him. She knew Mondrar well. She could take the risks. As a Pureblood, she wouldn’t be detected by the Order.
He shifted his weight, one heavily muscled arm reaching for something across the bed. Her skin prickled. Her mind whispered for her to take off her clothes and get back in bed.
But instead she crept out of the cottage and into the deep night.
This wasn’t running, she told herself again as she flashed away. This was proving that she understood Gray’s purpose and that his fights were now hers.
He was weak, so weak that when Cruen called for him, he came without a second thought.
The ancient paven’s favored reality was an endless strip of sun-warmed beach. To the untrained and virginal eye it seemed tranquil, harmless, but to anyone who’d ever been there for any length of time, they knew the ocean, sand, and palms beyond were a never-ending trap.
Cruen’s fire-blue eyes moved over Titus piteously. “You appear weary, Brother. Hungry.” His mouth tipped up at the corners. “How about you tell me what you need and I will tell you what you will give me for it?”
“I cannot revert back to Breeding Male status, Cruen,” Titus rasped, looking for something to catch his weight but finding nothing.
Nothing but Cruen’s outstretched arm.
He turned so that his pale wrist was exposed. Titus’s fangs extended and his mouth watered.
“I cannot become an animal, a rutting monster that is reviled and feared,” he continued desperately.
“You will go to Mondrar,” Cruen said flatly. “You will make sure the mutore female…”
My daughter.
“…finds and removes Celestine Donohue from her cage.”
Through his haze of blood lust, Titus tried to make sense of such a request, but it was impossible. Hunger clawed at his insides, roused the Breeding Male.
“Yes, Cruen,” he cried out. “Yes.”
Only when his fangs were an inch deep within Cruen’s vein and suckling down his wondrous, magical blood did Titus recall the evil paven’s final words.
“Then bring the mutore to me.”
“Hey, sleeping beauty.”
Gray opened one eye to the sun pouring in from the skylights. His head was pounding jackhammer style. What the hell? Then he remembered taking Dillon’s memories—then he remembered those goddamn memories themselves, and a fresh wave of vitriol battered him.
“Dillon.” He reached for her.
“She’s gone.”
Piper’s voice. He sat up, his eyes narrow slits through the slamming of his brain and realized it wasn’t the sun at all. It was still night and all three Warriors stood at the end of his bed, one of them holding a flashlight.
“Get that thing out of my face, Rio.”
His own face a mask of disgust, the military Impure eyed the bed. “Don’t need to ask what you’ve been doing.”
Gray turned his gaze to Piper. “Do you know where she is?”
Piper shook her head.
“I can’t fucking believe that veana,” he grumbled.
“Really?”
Piper jabbed the male in the side with her elbow. “Shut up, Rio.”
“So you had one hot night,” Rio amended, his tone a little more sympathetic. “It’s not like you—”
Gray flattened him with a look. “Love her?”
The male shrugged.
“Love doesn’t solve the big problems, G,” Vincent said coolly. “Trust me, I know.”
Piper sideswiped him with a glare. “No, Gray. Trust me. I know.”
Gray wasn’t in the mood. For their jokes, their bitching, or their advice. Last night had been one of the greatest fucking nights of his life. He’d made love, straight up and real, to the veana he loved; he’d heard her tell him that she loved him too; and he’d finally been allowed inside her head, her heart, and her past.
How could he have possibly known she’d regret it all, cancel out everything they’d built together in the last several hours, and bolt?
He got out of bed, nude and head pounding, and went into the closet. He flipped on the lights. “Tell me you have something for me, Pip,” he called out. “I need to get my mother out of that bullshit hellhole, bring her here, and then we’ll get back to work.” He pulled on his clothes with far too much venom, then walked back into the bedroom. “I won’t be deterred again after this.”
“I’ll go with you, if you need a second.”
About to pull on his shoes, Gray eyed Rio. “You’re serious.”
His face contorted with irritation. “’Course I’m serious. Fuck you.”
“Well, I appreciate that, man. I do. But I’m going to go in quick, quiet, and solo, just like at the Paleo.” He nodded at the male. “I’ll contact you if I get into trouble.”
“You do that,” he said. “And, you know, I hope your mom’s okay.”
“All right. All right,” Piper said loudly. “One more word from the penis gallery and I think I’m going to stick something sharp in my eye.”
Vincent turned to stare at her. “Penis gallery?”
“Yeah, I said it.” She nodded at Gray, pulled out a piece of paper. “Finish up with the shoes there, and I’ll show you how you’re going to get into Mondrar.”
Mondrar was truly hell aboveground, which made Dillon feel oddly at peace there.
She had been inside the six-floored domed structure with its open, forget-about-privacy cells and aniselike scent twice. Both times she’d gone undercover as a guard looking for criminals who’d had political connections to her human senator. She’d paid killer bank to learn about the secret tunnel that had been dug by two former inmates over a fifty-five-year span. Granted, it was blocked up with four feet of moss and a metal container, but the thirty-minute dig to get inside was worth it. She would locate the veana and get her out, bring her back to her son—to Dillon’s true mate.
Prove to him that she loved him.
Jesus, she really had become a pussy.
As the sky outside turned a steely gray, Dillon slipped on one of the sets of Mondrar inmate clothing hidden inside a metal box within the floor, grabbed the other and the heavy broom beside it, and began her search.
She moved quickly and quietly, inspecting one floor after another, careful to keep her eyes down. She acted as if she was just another one of the low-risk prisoners assisting in maintenance. But by the fourth floor she started to grow concerned. She’d been inside Mondrar for thirty minutes and she hadn’t found Celestine. The longer she stayed, the more dangerous it became.
Just when she was about to change her plan, head up to the top floor and work her way down, a voice called out to her from one of the cells.
“This way,” the male voice hissed. “The one you seek is here.”
Dillon couldn’t see where the voice was coming from, but she followed it, moving down a long row of open cells, her hackles raised. She wasn’t about to trust anyone, but information from a fellow prisoner could yield something new.
“She is at the end of the cell block,” the male voice uttered, but from where, Dillon could not see. What the hell was this? And who was this?
But then she spotted the veana at the far side of one of the wide hallways, just as the voice had said, and she broke into a relieved grin. She looked around, her eyes darting from cell to cell, searching for the voice, the face. Her jaguar was on edge, claws out, ready to strike. Who was he? And why would he want to help her?
“Go to her,” said the voice, strong, older. For a moment she thought she’d heard it somewhere before, but then he uttered more forcefully, “Now, Veana. Before they come for the morning meal.”
Damn it. Dillon had a choice to make and fast. Still vigilant, she left the mysterious voice and ran down the hallway, straight to Celestine Donohue’s cell. Supplied inside the container, she had the key that opened every cage on this floor and she quickly used it to open the door.
The older veana was alone and curled up on her pallet. Dillon raced inside and gave her a shake. “Wake up and put these on. We need to go. Now!”
The veana looked up, her eyes tired and confused—and startlingly like her son’s. “Who are you?”
“A friend of Gray’s and Sara’s. I’ve come to take you home.”
Cellie’s gaze flickered to the open cell door, then the set of work robes Dillon had tossed on her lap. In seconds, she was on her feet, robes on, following Dillon out into the hallway.
“I hope you know what you’re doing,” she said, her gaze flickering every which way.
“Me too.” She handed Celestine the broom, and the two of them kept their heads down and slowly made it to the stairwell. Once inside, they took off, racing down the steps. At the bottom, Dillon motioned for her to follow and they headed toward the metal plug and the moss. But just as they rounded the corner, a figure dressed only in a black robe and hood flashed in front of them.
Dillon shoved Celestine behind her, dropped into fighting stance, and hissed.
“I am not here to stop you,” the figure said.
Dillon recognized the voice at once. “It’s you. You helped me find her, get her out. Why?”
The robed figure shook his head, raised his arm. Dillon braced herself for something—she wasn’t sure what. But once his arm was above his head, he froze.
“What is this?” Dillon demanded, ready to rip the hood right off this male. “What are you doing?”
“I am sorry,” he said, dropping his arm. And as he did, the metal plug opened to reveal the strange blue light of a nearing dawn. “Go. Just go. Quickly.”
Dillon didn’t ask anything more, didn’t even give him a second thought. She grabbed Celestine’s hand and ran through the opening.
21
“Holy shit.” Lucian let out a low whistle to accompany his curse.
“How many know about this?” Alexander asked, taking in the lavish interior of a cabin that, from the outside, appeared to be falling down.
“Only my father,” said the young female. “He assists Master Cruen in exchange for blood and…other things.”
“Master Cruen?” Lucian uttered with a sneer. “That’s what you have to call him?”
The female looked surprised. “It is how many Impures refer to the Purebloods who employ them.”
Not my little Impure, Alexander thought blackly as he moved to the far end of the room where a small laboratory was set up.
“When was he here last?” he asked the female as he picked up a glass jar and examined the contents.
“Hasn’t been this month at all.”
“Does he come frequently?”
“Varies,” she said, her nervous gaze continually checking the window. “There’s never a pattern to it.”
Frustration built within Alex. Without a pattern, it was going to be difficult to lay a trap. It wasn’t as though they could camp out here and wait for the paven to show up.
