Cake (22 page)

“
I’m not claiming anything,” I spat out.

She let go of my arm, shoving me hard into the wall once again, and as she stepped back, she said, “I cannot allow these charades to continue.”

I turned around, twitching my shoulder back into alignment, wondering what she’d meant, when she attacked, stabbing me.

I’d barely got my hand up in time to block her when she’d charged at me. I choked off a scream as the spike she used impaled itself right through my palm, and I stared at her in shock and amazement, noticing for some strange reason that her eyes seemed a darker red than Claudius’.

Tugging and pulling, the councilor yanked out the embedded spike, and this time I did scream because, lifting up my injured hand, I saw that I had a gaping hole right through the middle.

Fuck, she was going to kill me.

T
hirteen

Red Angel

Councilor Armanita lifted her arm back to strike again, and so I quickly turned and kicked her in the side of the knee. If she couldn’t stand, she couldn’t chase me down and kick my ass. Well, that was my theory. I swear I heard something snap in her leg, and she screamed out, crashing to the floor.

I actually made about five steps before she was on me again, and this time she was ramming my face into the wall. Where the hell was Claudius?

Gripping me by my clothing, she spun me around, backhanding me hard. My head snapped to the right, and I felt blood explode in my mouth as my new fangs extended and cut into my inner cheek and tongue, and my eyes began to burn as the weird crystal vision slammed down into place.

Armanita hesitated as she stared at my eyes, my strange, blue Flame eyes. I took advantage of her inaction and shoved her full force in the chest, causing her to fly backwards over a couch, her fingers gripping and clawing at it, making the whole thing tumble over with her.

Damn, my injured hand was killing me. I glanced down at it and almost threw up at seeing the perfect hole going right through, from front to back, and though I tried, I couldn’t move my middle fingers. I sobbed as I bolted for the open door, cradling my hand to me.

Don’t look at it. Don’t look at it.

I’d made it to the entrance of the playroom when she screeched, “Pretender!” And stupid me, I stopped. I paused and turned towards her just in time to see her flick that bloody spike at me.

Oh God, there’s no place to go.

There is a moment in time when things seem to slip into slow motion. It happened to me once before when I’d been sixteen and had totaled the family car that I’d had no business trying to drive anyway. I’d watched the dim and shadowy outline of the telephone pole getting larger and clearer, until it had smashed through the windshield. And now, I was watching the spike tumble, end over end, getting closer and closer…

Marcus jumped in front of me.

I heard the impact of the spike, hurled with a vampire’s full-strength, hitting his chest, and I heard his groan as he fell back into me, knocking both of us to the ground. He landed heavily on top of me, and I had to shove hard to get out from under him and scramble up to my knees.

“
Marcus!” That gruesome spike stuck out of the middle of his chest. Oh God. Oh God! Oh crap, had it hit his heart? “Marcus?” I cried again, grabbing his body and pulling him to me, cradling his head against me. The big vampire lay heavily on me, his apple scent filling the air. I pulled my hand back to touch his face and saw that my fingers were covered in blood. His blood. It was everywhere.

“
Marcus…” I couldn’t stop looking at the spike that stuck so obscenely out of his chest. And then my attention was caught by the sound of a gurgle in his throat. She’d hit a lung. “Pretty? Why did you do that? Why did you jump in front of me, eh?” I asked, softly.

Marcus’s hand came up, and he slapped it against my face. I don’t think he meant to do that, I think he’d been intending to pat me. “I said I would protect you, my Little One,” was all he had strength to say before closing his eyes and laying still, breathing shallowly.

“
Marcus? Marcus!” I felt a rage build up inside of me. It was rolling off of me in red waves of rage. “What did you do, you bitch?” I scowled, lifting my head and staring out an accusation across the room.

The blonde woman stood there and cleared her throat, as if she had something to say, but I didn’t want to hear it. Grabbing hold of the spike, Marcus screamed as I ripped it out of his chest and hurled it at the woman as hard as I could throw. It hit her high in the shoulder and with enough force to drive her back against the far wall, embedding itself into the concrete, pinning her there as if she was an insect for display.

I turned back to my…what? What was he? My lover? My rapist? My father? There was a bloody stain that was getting larger and larger beneath him. I was kneeling in his blood. I pressed my injured hand against his wound and found his chest barely moving. I don’t know what he meant to me, but I knew he was an important figure in my life. If it weren’t for him, I would have been dead a year ago.

“
Marcus!” I screamed.

Pain hit me hard; a pain that was deep and agonizing. I let out another broken scream and I arched backwards, as if I were trying to fold myself in half by snapping my spine. It felt as if my flesh had caught fire as an intense burning erupted on my back, a burning so severe that I was sure it burned hot enough to expose the gleaming bone beneath it. My back was on fire, and I was sick to my stomach, and yet I still fell over Marcus’s body, instinctively trying to protect him from any more attacks from her.

And then suddenly it was dark, as if a safety blanket had been thrown over us. Me and Marcus. Hidden away like this, my mind began to clear, and I realized I had to give Marcus some blood. He was losing so much of his own. I was surrounded by the scent of an apple orchard, and it wasn’t the smell of good apples, these smelled sour, bitter.

Exposing my fangs, I bit into my wrist and pressed the bleeding wound up against his lips. Nothing. I pushed his jaw open with my bad hand and set my wrist against his lips again.

“
Please…drink…”

Slowly, he began licking at the blood dripping into his mouth until he was able to begin sucking, gradually drawing strength from my offering.

Though we were underneath a dark blanket, my eyes were still in that crystal vision mode, and I could see clearly as I pulled at his shirt, exposing his chest, and I was grateful to witness the stab wound closing up.

Each breath I drew was making my back sear in agony, and I could feel something hot running down my spine and into my pants. All I could think was that I must have somehow been assaulted by that crazy woman. Both of my shoulder blades were heavy, and it felt like something was pulling them away from my body. It was sheer torture.

“
Xavier!” Claudius’s voice was right beside me, on the other side of the blanket. “Open up. Xavier, open up.”

What? What are you saying?

The blanket lifted on one side, and as it did so I groaned as I felt something tearing on my back. It was like someone was pulling a layer of skin off me. I winced and tightened my hold on my still vampire.

“
Give me Marcus. Let him go. Xavier, let him go. I have him. Let me check him over.” Claudius ran his hand on the back of my head soothingly. “Let me help him, Xavier.”

I pulled my wrist away from Marcus’s still-sucking mouth, pressing it against my stomach and cradling it to my body as Claudius slid Marcus’s prone figure from the darkness of the blanket and away from me. I went to follow after him but it hurt too much to move, so I just knelt there, grinding my teeth together, fighting against the pain.

“
Armanita, get down from there. They need help. Xavier is bleeding badly.” Claudius’s annoyed voice sounded far away.

“
I’m stuck.” The bitch’s voice sounded even further.

“
Honestly Armanita. This could have been handled so much better.”

I heard Claudius’s footsteps as he walked off, and I could hear Marcus’s soft moaning as he was carried away. My own breathing was unnaturally loud in my ears, and I found I was getting too hot in here, under this blanket. I reached up and tried to move it, but my fingers touched…what? What was that? Feathers? I pushed at them and bit back a scream as I felt something move on my back at the same time.

Tentatively, I reached a hand up behind my neck and found something hot and sticky protruding from out of my back. Following the line of my shoulder blade, my fingers followed the structure up to discover…I had wings?

I started to hyperventilate, thinking I was going delusional. I held up my injured hand. Yup, the hole going right through my palm was still there, though it looked to be a little smaller, and…I had wings? Yes, I had wings. I had red wings. I touched my back again, just to make sure that I wasn’t dreaming, but I could still feel them there.

One of my wings was suddenly pushed back from around my head, and I cried out as the cool air of the Great Room rushed in around me, filling my feathery cocoon and diluting the scent of Marcus’s blood that was still in my nose, still on my hands, and drying out on my pants. There had been so much. The tips of my wings were soaking in it.

“
I am sorry, Xavier, but we had to know.” Armanita was kneeling in front of me, nursing her pierced shoulder while gently pushing my wing over my shoulder, folding it across my back. “Forgive me, Lord Emperor.”

I scrambled to my feet. I wanted to kick her head in, to hurt her as much as she’d hurt me. Instead, I stood upright and immediately felt light-headed and stumbled sideways until I hit a wall. I barely bit back a cry as my wings tore at my skin from the jarring movement, and I gritted my teeth as I staggered forward, completely losing my balance and landing on my ass. This jarred the wings upwards, pulling on my spine, and I rolled onto my stomach, the feathers stretching out on either side of me on the floor, wet and sticky with Marcus’s blood,

It hurt to breathe. Each inhale shifted my rib cage which in turn pulled at the muscles in my back. I would have wailed, but it hurt too much, so I lay still, letting silent tears stream from my eyes.

Claudius stepped over my bloody form, moving behind me to open the Blood mark intercom system. “Chesterton!”

“
Yes, Master Claudius?”

“
We need five blood packs, now. Both Marcus and Xavier have been injured.”

The sound of the dumbwaiter starting up was abnormally loud, and I held my hands over my ears. I gave a mental laugh as I realized my spiked palm was useless at blocking out the noise.

“
Will they require a transfusion, sir?” Chesterton’s calm voice was a balm to the chaos that was going on in the Great Room.

“
Some of the packs will do for Marcus, but I fear it will take more than a transfusion for Xavier. Have the car ready, I will have to go hunting. I will be down in five minutes,” Claudius instructed, gathering up the blood packs when the dumbwaiter stopped. Giving two bags to Armanita, he then came to kneel beside me. “Come on, my little brave one, it is time to eat.”

I felt him pushing the bag up on my fangs, and the taste of the cold blood that invaded my mouth made me want to retch. I was so sick to my stomach with pain that I didn’t want to eat.

Just leave me alone until the pain goes away.

“
You have lost too much blood, and you also fed Marcus. You need these bags, Xavier!” Claudius admonished.

Spitting out the bag, I turned my head away and caught sight of Armanita attempting to feed Marcus from a similar blood pack. I blinked, watching as she held the blood pack onto Marcus’s fangs. I could see that he was slowly growing stronger and stronger with each swallow that he took.

Claudius tried to move me, and I yelped as he succeeded in shifting me onto my side and began pressing the ice cold pack onto my fangs again. I pulled my mouth from it, closing my lips with determination.