Bozena and Sveta (Neuripra) (18 page)

Chapter 20

Sveta:

“
Wrap my hands up?”

“
Yup,” he nods, helping me wind the red strip over my knuckles.

“
That's hardly a fair fight Zauran.”

He sits back on his haunches, looking levelly at me. “An alpha fights with his mind, Sveta. Not his fists.”

Hang on.

His serious visage breaks into a wide smile, “Now you understand how Ryan managed to fuck me up so bad. You have zero training to help you. You either have the instinct, or you don't. An alpha is inherent inside you, or not there at all.”

My Adam's apple has suddenly wedged itself into my vertebrae, and I can't swallow.

I am fucked.

We're both stripped down to our boxers now. I thought I had a chance man to man, muscle to muscle. Yes, he has a measly half an inch of height on me and a good couple of pounds of might, but I'm fast, I train... fucking hard, daily.

Blindsided, I stare at the floor, forcing myself to calm, breathe, to harness my plyx into a lasered pinpoint of purpose.

Closing my eyes, inhaling deeply, I know I can do this.

Between the Tai Chi and Yoga, I know I can use the prana and chi combined with my neuri fire, to my advantage. Zauran has no martial training, so he has no clue what a master can do with kyu.

Delving back mentally, I recall the dojo in Okinawa, in the mountains, watching two masters hurl each other across the retreat with chi so powerful it was hot and lethal. All they focused was their minds, their eyes missing nothing, their chi so wide they could feel a threat from fifty feet. Their combat was mind to mind, they did not touch each other hand to hand, or fist to fist.

They are living examples of the power of the mind. And that's what Zauran just said, this is a battle of energy, mind to mind, will to will.

My will is stronger because I'm doing this not for my ego, or to rule a continent, but to save the woman I love from heartache and psychological scars.

I'll do anything.
Anything
. Focus Sveta, focus and be triumphant by staying humble.

Be the air, the water, the universe.

The pre-combat knot twists my solar plexus. My chi is already tightening up, readying, steeling my body for assault, readying my hands to be three times stronger than they are as flesh and bone. Energy is harder than a concrete block when you know how to form it to your will, with your mind, focussing.

Only the calm fighter is victorious. When you let rage rule your mind, or panic, you scatter, your energy goes everywhere instead of blocking for you, and it leaves you vulnerable.

Chi also knows when to be soft, to widen and run around the immovable, closing it in instead of being toppled by remaining rigid. It's the principle of go-ju, hard-soft.

Yes, I can do this.

Clasping my tethered hands together, I pull my aura in, bottling it, letting it build pressure.

Opening my eyes, I focus on Zauran, who is ready, waiting on the blackened sooty stone floor in true neuri form.

Fuck!

The basics. I'm so freaked out I forgot step one. Become yourself, unguarded.

Releasing the stranglehold I have on my body, my muscles pump out, harden, expand, veins running over powerful musculature as I grow seven inches, my shoulders widen, my teeth extend and turn piranha, and my vision contains pure energy.

This is why we were confused for werewolves. We're built like them, our teeth look rabid, our eyes glow, and we exude light as we become half energy beings.

We are the reason the forests contained tall tales of glowing gods living in the trees, who convene and commune with women, making them fall into a deep sleep, which we call today – compulsion.

We had to breed, find mates, forever it's been with human women, but now the slakax are back and that's just so much better. Light to light, power to power, united we will elevate the
spiritually afflicted by joining our higher selves to uplift the vibration of this land. The more slakax appear, the faster we can pull the human race into the fourth dimension and finally rid this planet of fear and violence.

“
Stop stalling Sveta,” breaks my reverie.

Snapping attention to my alpha, I bow in respect, ready.

Stepping forward, neuri vigilance is at my fingertips, plyx ready to launch, and taking a leaf from the book of experience, I attack first.

He won't expect that.

Vaulting high, flipping midair with the immense power and grace which comes naturally to the neuri, I flog him with a pulse of fiery plyx, and don't stop. In the dojo we call these plasma balls
hadouken
.

I'm on the offensive, dancing back and forth, matrixing like Neo off the walls, spinning, rotating, dodging, ducking, pumping an endless semi-automatic magma flare of wildfire.

Hurling fireballs around the room, I focus on each one, aiming at him, forcing Zauran to leap, morph, his body blurring into an endless streaming ribbon of aqua plyx.

Accelerating, the size of my plyx expands until I block his trajectory with a solid wall, edge to edge, blockading myself behind an enormous nebulous barrier.

He responds with ease, blasting my energy with petrol green and peacock blue pulses, aiming true and steady, endlessly in the same zone, until my chi physically aches with the assault.

Dropping my guard for half a second, the blast is a deadlock sidewinder smacking its target, hurtling me like a tumbleweed so hard into the wall, something fractures.

Without missing a second he's on me, forcing compulsion onto me with brutal force.

Erecting a mental buttress immediately, I block the compulsion while wrestling with the incessant aqua flood thumping me in places I didn't know I had.

My vision starts blurring, the colors smearing together in a rainbow of luminescent brilliance, shattering the zen within.

Immediately I resort to might, rolling him, head butting, pressing off in a backflip and running for the wall, using inertia to run up it, arc, and glide back over him to roundhouse kick him in the back of the head.

“Alpha or not, a battle is a battle Zauran!” I snarl, guttural and savage, the beast within raging.

“
Fine, we'll do it your way,” he rumbles, the boom of his voice reverberating an energy ripple across the room and back.

In warfare we use everything at our disposal. Elbowing his neck, I sprint for the opposite wall to avoid the retaliation already coming for me, hurtling with such acceleration I'm flying off the wall, using the gap to breathe in chi, damaging myself internally, scrambling to reclaim the calm I witnessed in those masters in Okinawa.

Landing on my feet, compacting into the spring-fall to absorb impact, I stop dead when I uncoil, staring at him charging for me with his plyx bombing the entire chamber in balls of fire - all rapid-firing at me.

I am a master, be the master.

What would a master do?

Fuck, come on Sveta, hurry up.
Think!

They know they are greater than themselves. They are the universe inside a man.

What would the universe do?

Open up and absorb that energy, returning it by channeling it. Always use the opponent's strength to bolster your own.

Ha!

Widening my arms I funnel my plyx, siphoning his into myself so that it doesn't impact but flows through me like light pouring down fiber optic cable, to my hands, to my eyes, up to my head and pumping out with such ferocity I fear I may pass out.

I'm soldered to the floor, rooted like Yggdrasil, when Zauran slams into me and we both go down, but it's too late, the maelstrom is focused on him, his energy and mine blasting through me like a whitewater underground river in flash flood.

Stuck in the eddy, I can't stop pulling his energy off him to attack him. It feels alien and strange, but oddly familiar too having been around his plyx my whole life.

Concentrating, because I feel a rupturing happening around the base of my spine, I curl the energy, tightening it into a solid laser, finally managing to flatten it and using it to propel him off me.

Zauran flings off me as if my force field repels his, and he slams so hard into the opposite wall I swear to god I just murdered my brother.

Dropping the energy with immediate worry, I leap over the flagstones, pouncing down next to him, concern turning me limp with dread.

I don't see it coming, he uppercuts my jaw and head-butts me in one fluid move, pummeling the fuck out of me before I even have a chance to get my hands up to block.

The plyx battle has ended and Zauran is now handing me my ass with his fighting prowess.

My spine still hurts, so when he knees me in the coccyx as he ricochets off the floor at me in a solid-neuri mass of muscle, the crack bolts pain up to the base of my skull.

The fist meeting my nose shatters it, and I'm instantly blind with throbbing pain and blood.

Flicking back to neuri, I shield myself, hoping to shit I can heal fast enough to leave this room alive.

Chapter 21

Božena:

The tide pulls me under and I'm drowning, fighting against the astral assault.

“Jo, please...” I whimper, my voice watery and faint, my body burning up with the roaring desire injected into my bloodstream and afflicting me with carnal fever. “Stop.”

Pangs of guilt grit my solar plexus into roils of fury.

Sveta showed me how to use my plyx, but it has no effect on Jowendrhan. It doesn't seem to hurt him at all, instead it makes him seem stronger and even more indomitable.

Tears dribble at the shame accosting me on every level. I love Sveta heart and soul, but my bloodstream has its own agenda, and my sob is a hybrid between pleasure and emotional agony.

“Stop!”

Chills are snaking over my body, turning my skin frigid and bumpy, hardening my nipples, concentration difficult to harness with the way his breath in my neck magnifies the bite, churning me into a weakened state of desire.

You love him heart and soul?
bumps into my mind, thick with emotion and laced tight with lust.

I nod, still trying to push him away but all too aware of the hard strength which is muscular and sturdy beneath my fingertips.

Our night together floods my mind when he pours the memory into me, letting me experience it, this time from his perspective.

Opening his soul to me I'm inside him, living the obliterating pleasure of drinking my adrenaline infused blood, caressing soft skin and inhaling my slakax scent.

Instantly faint with the power of his experience, I glean understanding. “This isn't love, Jo. It's lust, plain and simple.”

How did I even a manage to say that? So coherent and composed. I can barely breathe I'm so desperate for sex.

“Stop biting me, you're poisoning me with your desire.”

I need you. The babies need you,
croons inside my head, his grip softening and his touch burning trails over me with delicate gentleness.

“
You don't love me,” I gasp, bucking involuntarily when his thumb snicks over my nipple.

I do
, whispers hot and sexy, his bite deepening in my neck, flipping the switch and licking me with his vampyre magic, licking my plyx in the most inane way, my body throbbing and pulsating, shaking with the orgasm from being inside his head, in his body, sharing his memories, sharing his soul, all while being obliterated with unfiltered lust and desire from his bite.

Just that bite makes ladies puddle and scream.

I never had a chance.

Baby, I have pined for you since you were a teenager. But you chose Darise. I had you for one night and you are the one who abandoned me, asking Venix to change you back to a mortal, aborting our children without thinking twice, without asking for my side of the story, without asking me how your actions would affect me. You judged me unfairly without even giving me the benefit of the doubt. You ripped my heart out and stomped all over it, but still I'm here, needing you, craving you.

I give up pushing against him, slumping weakly into the couch, his body covering me so completely I may as well be in a rubber room wearing a straitjacket.

“
Jo, please stop. I can't discuss this with you fucking me psychically.”

Slowly, carefully, he withdraws the fangs from my neck, halting the aggressive passion scalding me, kissing me when he withdraws the penetration.

Watching him, I'm appalled to witness his tender expression, the vivid blue of his eyes with his hair dark brown highlighting them, and the blood on his teeth and lips. My blood.

“
Yes, your blood. Just like I should have been there to hold you and keep you safe when you brought the twins into the world.” Reaching out he traces my face with his fingertips, exhaling heavily over my face. “I wanted to taste you, to share the moment with you.” His voice deepens, becoming abrasive with anguish, matching the expression in his eyes.

The arousing lust he's experiencing is painfully rigid against my leg.

“You could have warned me. You could have told me I was pregnant and that I'd be full term inside a week. Nothing prepared me for that. I was utterly alone, Jo. The only person there to hold my hand, to slake my thirst and delirium, was Sveta. Love is patient and tender. Not selfish.”

“
I told you sugar, I would never have left you deliberately.” He moves so slightly, but I have no escape, and his tongue is on mine, pushing in, lengthened canines pressing against my bottom lip, the blast of blood thick and rich and coppery running around my mouth.

Twisting my face, I stare across the living room, growing angry, breaking away from the bastard's oppressive lust.

I sense it a second too late. He snaps, gripping my head, shunting his tongue back inside my mouth and diving into my head, giving me vertigo with the images pouring into my head of him and me together, showing me how he feels when he watches me dance at Pravus, sitting at the bar, how hard it was to not grab me and fuck me right there, forced to make idle chitchat, flirting, when all he wanted for years and years, was me.

Phoebe's image flows across the landscape of my mind, blasts of brilliant light, the ache in his chest when love is ripped from him because of his brothers, twice, and now by Sveta.

The rage he has for Sveta rears up, terrorizing me with the vast scope and breadth of it, images spiraling back to him naked with me.

He sees me as his soulmate. The one.

The twins, cooing, growing so fast as is the vampyre way, every time he looks at them he sees me, and the cavern in his chest echoes with a deeper hollowness, emptying out and craving the person to fill it.

Me.

The bastard really fucking loves me.

Jesus! Now what?

“Stay. Be the mother you are. Please Zena, I will show you tenderness, hold your hand, make wishes on stars, spoon with you when you sleep, keep you and them safe. I miss you.”

His tone is tortured, strangled, and he moves off me, slipping to his knees to hold my hand and stare with pleading eyes stark with blue, brown, and silver.

They're like stained glass windows caught by moonlight, carrying prayers to the ears of angels, highlighting a tortured soul.

Sighing heavily, I think about those babies. We're forever locked together now because of those two fragile lives.

“Can I hold them?” I ask quietly.

“
Of course you can hold them...” he trails off, the atmosphere between us so thick with unsaid words, it's suffocating.

He doesn't need to be in my head for me to know that look. He's asking if he can hold me.

Why? Why bomb back into my life the very moment I've found peace and salvation? Why are you doing this to me?

“
Because I love you. It's not hard to understand Zena. I. Love. You.”

“
If you loved me you wouldn't expect me to choose. You'd be happy for me.”

“
How can I be happy when I know one day Trixie and Rion are going to ask me where Mama is? How do I tell them she doesn't want to be with me, or them?”

I'm a glutton for guilt, and right now its swallowing me whole.

*

Zaria:

“Where are they?” nervously pacing, I can take it no longer. “It's been hours!”

A knock behind me spins my thoughts and focus, and I hinge to the sound, seeing my darling Venix at the kitchen door, smiling tenderly at me.

“Venix! Come in,” I beckon with my hand, relieved he's here.

God, my imagination is making me sick while it conjures up Zauran and Sveta lying dead or dying, without help anywhere close. An angel is just what we all need right this second.

Snapping back to Aisyx, I order, “You, go find them right now! Or I'll do it myself!”

Shoving his large hand through his long blond hair, he skewers a glare through Venix, clearly warning him not to touch me when he's not here.

They're both half vampyre, so they're probably having a discussion flying over my head.

“
Don't be rude!' I snap, nerves making me a highly strung bitch.

Aisyx pauses long enough to bend down and kiss my cheek, then vanishes, leaving me alone with Venix.

“Coffee?” I offer, forgetting the rest of the world can still consume alcohol even if I can't.

“
No, thank you.” He comes closer, taking hold of my hands and kissing the knuckles on each individually. “You look fantastic.”

A hot blush creeps up my neck, “Thanks.” Awkward, I scramble for words, “So how is everyone? What's happening out in the big bad world?”

Keeping my hands locked in his, he stares outside, his eyes flaring at the vast yard viewed through the half open back door. “The twins are angels. They've been a real blessing...”

Hot pearlescent eyes engage mine, his hair flickering with streaks of silver, “They give me someone to love.” He leaves the guilt hanging there, noosing me, accusing without saying a word.

“You left Venix, and you brought me to Zauran. Don't second guess your own wisdom, because that decision has made me a very happy lady.”

He nods, “I know, but this war is making them all irritable and volatile. Jowendrhan is torturing himself over the entire chain of events with
Božena. The demons are searching high and low for the perpetrators of these murders–”

“
What murders?” I interrupt.

He drops my hands, his own flexing into tight fists, “You don't know?”

“No!”

Oh god! What if someone murdered Zauran and Sveta?

“They're targeting humans, framing the neuri,” he says, immediately attempting to still my panic.

“
Framing the neuri?!”

“
And framing Ellindt. Whoever it is wants us all to look bad.”

“
Who do you think it is?” I ask, suddenly too weak to stand, slumping into a chair at the kitchen table.

“
Someone who wants the slakax, so badly they're prepared to initiate war with every supernatural male on the face of this earth.” Hot melting eyes swirl with infuriated luminescence, “Which means he's male, and is probably after Božena or Phoebe. They won't touch you pregnant, after that though, none of us can sleep until he's caught.”

“
After the slakax?”
What?

He sits down with me, reaching out and claiming my hand again, holding it, warm and gentle, “This entire attack is a tactic to divert our attention and scatter our defenses. It's to get the powerful guards to leave their posts. And it's working, because Zauran doesn't have enough experience to see divide and conquer when it cums in his face.”

“Do you fucking mind!” booms from the doorway.

Standing at the sound of his voice, I snap to face him, feeling oddly guilty, his wounds near stopping my heart.

“Oh god!” Racing across the kitchen, I reach up to carefully touch Zauran's face. “I thought you were the one breaking Sveta, not the other way around.”

Sveta appears like a shadow of doom in the doorway, blocking out the light, supported by Aisyx, “I give as good as I get.” His nose is so badly broken he sounds clogged.

He notices my focus, and gives me a skew broken toothed smile, “How do you think Zauran broke his nose? That kink in it comes from his initiation. It must be a rite of passage.”

Venix speaks from right behind me, “Let's get this healing show on the road.”

“Yeah,” mutters Sveta. “I have a date at three-thirty and I'd better not be fucking late. We wouldn't want the red-eyes finding her stranded.”

His gaze flicks to the gathering clouds, a frown scarring his bruised and swollen face, his purpled eyes are shiny and puffed.

Did Ryan really do this to Zauran? It's instinct to reach up on tiptoes and put a soft kiss on Sveta's cheek. I feel awful that they do this to each other just to become alphas. Why become an alpha at all?

Sveta winces when he smiles, “I'll do anything for her. That's why.”

Venix clears his throat, breaking the emotional confession.

*

Božena:

I have an hour to get ready and meet Sveta at Pravus, but I'm stuck in a mood as glum as the sky outside.

When Jo brought me home the perfect day was tucked under a dove's gray wing, blocking out the sun and bringing with it a chilling gloom.

I'm torn. The babies, Trixie and Rion, are beautiful. It tugs inside me, leaving me ruptured and in conflict. When Rion wrapped his fist into my hair and tugged, he reminded me so much of his tata. Of the night his tata wrapped his vampyre fist in my hair and pulled me up tight against his body, biting down my spine with fangs, destroying me, marking me, singeing me with the passion and pain.

Rubbing tiredly at my eyes, I pinch the top of my nose, trying to get the headache to recede. I wouldn't even be entertaining these thoughts if it wasn't for what Sveta showed me last night. He broke the chains that have kept me bound my entire life, freeing me for the first time and finally sweetening the bitterness that curdled my blood.