Chosen by Blood (13 page)

Neither Knox nor Hunt yelled out again, but their heaving breaths and grunts increased in volume and speed. The hand in which Hunt gripped the knife shook as he struggled to push it forward and into Knox’s chest. Some invisible force was clearly holding him back, and relief made Felicia dizzy. “Keep going,” she encouraged the mage. “It’s working.”

“Don’t distract me,” she snapped.

Felicia pressed her lips together. As she watched, Knox and Hunt slowly began to separate. Knox’s fangs slipped free from the were’s arm, blood dripping from the tips. When several feet separated them, Felicia moved forward, intending to plant herself between them so they couldn’t go at each other again without going through her.

She was almost there when the mage gasped. “Look out,” she said, but it sounded strained and barely audible.

In a blur of movement, Knox had Hunt pinned to the floor, the were’s blade now turned against him and pressed to his throat.

“Damn it!”

Felicia’s gaze jumped swiftly toward O’Flare, who was now kneeling beside the mage. Lucy was sprawled on the floor. Weakly, she lifted her head and explained, “Trying to move a living object . . . hard anyway . . . he’s too strong.”

Felicia cursed when the mage fell back to the floor. “She’s okay?”

O’Flare nodded curtly. “I think so.”

“Good.” She turned back to the fight, prepared to jump on Knox if she had to. What she saw stunned her yet again. Although he still pinned the werebeast down, Knox was literally shrinking, his overblown muscles relaxing until he no longer resembled a vamp on steroids. The red in his eyes faded until they were once more normal, but that didn’t extinguish the anger that radiated from him like a furnace.

It did, however, enable Felicia to breathe just a little easier. In this case, shrinkage was good. It meant Knox wasn’t enraged to the point where he couldn’t control himself any longer.

“Apologize for pushing her,” Knox spat.

Hunt narrowed his eyes, gritting his teeth when Knox sank the tip of the blade into his throat, making him bleed.

“Knox!” Felicia gasped. “No.”

He didn’t even glance at her. “Say it or I’ll shove the whole thing through.”

“I could shift before you did it,” Hunt muttered.

“Maybe, but then you really would have to run away. With your tail between your legs. Is that what you want?”

Several tension-filled seconds passed before Hunt shifted his gaze to Felicia. In a remarkably steady—maybe even remotely pleasant—tone, Hunt said, “I apologize for shoving you.”

Knox grunted, but was apparently not yet satisfied. “Now accede to my leadership.”

“Fuck you,” Hunt growled, but the curse held little heat. In fact, unless Felicia was mistaken, she thought she sensed amusement in the were’s expression, as well as a hint of grudging respect.

“Say it,” Knox gritted.

“Fine,” Hunt finally said. “I accede to your leadership. Can you let me the fuck up now or are we going to waste more of the day?”

After a brief hesitation, Knox withdrew the knife and stood. He didn’t offer a hand to help Hunt up, but when the were stood, Knox held out the buck knife, handle first. Hunt took the knife and replaced it in the sheath at his back.

The two males turned toward Felicia and the three others. She was still taking in their expressions—O’Flare looked amused, Wraith pissed off, and the mage slightly sulky—when Knox stepped up to Felicia. Taking her arm in a gentle but firm grip, he led her out of the room and into the hallway. He backed her into one of the walls and caged her in with his arms, much like he had in her office just days before.

This close, she couldn’t avoid the sight of his bleeding and battered face that even now was rapidly healing. By the time he spoke, all evidence of the fight with Hunt was gone. Once again looking like the ubercontrolled, refined vamp she was used to, he smiled grimly. Lifting one hand, he caressed her throat, pressing his thumb against the spot that she could feel fluttering with her racing pulse. “Now that that’s settled,” he said softly, “why don’t you tell me what you’re doing here?”

Felicia swallowed, knowing that her answer was just going to enrage him again. She forced herself to say it anyway, the vivid memory of his transformation and fight with Hunt reminding her why she’d accepted a position on the team in the first place.

Accusations of racism aside, she and Knox had more than simple DNA separating them. Their values, their interests, their very way of life were worlds—no, galaxies—apart. After the debacle in her office, she’d finally accepted it. Truly accepted it.

Knox wouldn’t force her.

She, and only she, was what would keep them apart.

Just as it was she who would help bring this team together.

“Felicia,” he warned when her silence obviously went on too long.

She tilted her chin and stared into his beautiful eyes. “Haven’t you guessed?” she murmured. “Team Red has been assigned two humans. One a human psychic and the other one . . . not.” She shrugged and smiled. “I’m the not.”

“
Y
ou lied to me.”

“I didn’t lie.” Mahone held up his hands when Knox whipped around, the wrath of Hell in his eyes. “I didn’t. You demanded she stay at the Dome with your kids. She refused. You decided you’d lead Team Red anyway and deal with her on your own. Well, you’ll certainly have that chance now.”

“She was targeted for the team from the very beginning, not just after she refused my demands.”

“She was targeted, yes, but she hadn’t accepted the assignment. In fact, she’d refused it, several times, claiming she didn’t have enough skill to bring to the team. She changed her mind after the two of you hightailed it out of my office. I had assumed you’d managed to persuade her somehow, but didn’t want to take credit for her change of heart.”

“Damn you,” Knox yelled. He slammed a fist into the conference room wall, barely feeling anything even though he left behind a good-sized hole. “I’d never use the power of persuasion on an innocent female, let alone Felicia.”

“And I never said otherwise,” Mahone said mildly. “We both know your power of persuasion isn’t simply a matter of mind control.”

“I can’t serve on a team that she’s a part of. Not this team. Not this mission.”

Mahone shrugged. “Then our agreement is null and void. Because now that Felicia has agreed to join the team, the President won’t allow her to be removed. He was adamant that humans be proportionately represented on Team Red, and right now there are no other humans willing to take the job.”

“She said herself she isn’t trained for these types of missions. She’s a hostage negotiator, for God’s sake—”

“She’s a trained field agent. She spent her early years growing up with a variety of Others, thanks to her parents, and that includes vamps. Lucy’s expertise is communication, as in high-frequency radio versus radar. But being a hostage negotiator means Felicia is an expert with words and relationships. Think of her as part mediator, part damage control. I’d be an idiot, and so would you, to believe your team members are going to embrace you or each other with open arms. But you might at least try setting the right example.” Mahone smirked. “You may have completely healed, but Hunt looks like he walked through a freaking glass door.”

Knox rolled his shoulders, telling himself he didn’t feel exactly how he’d felt when his mother caught him pinching Zeph as a baby. “That was partly just some good-natured sparring—”

“Felicia’s good at her job and she wouldn’t appreciate you questioning her skill.”

“This isn’t about her skill or strength,” he exclaimed, his frustration obvious.

“Then what is it about?” Mahone questioned. “You’re not the only one who has something to gain by the retrieval of the antidote. Or don’t you realize that by now?”

“Why don’t you enlighten me? Because as far as I know, the antidote won’t benefit humans—”

“Felicia’s parents were brutally murdered before the War started. Before you ever met her.”

“I already know that,” Knox said. He’d never specifically talked with Felicia about it, but Noella had filled him in on every detail. Felicia was an only child. When she was a teen, her parents had been agents in one of the FBI’s original Strange Phenom Units, which investigated unexplained photography, debris, and crop circles. Instead of finding evidence of alien life, however, George and Rhonda Locke had discovered a small community of vamps—one led by the then thriving Queen. Knox had been living in France at the time, enjoying his freedom before he was to marry his intended bride, Noella St. Claire. He’d returned home early when things between Others and humans had started to become volatile. By then, he’d heard all about Noella’s friend, Felicia.

Eventually, he met her. Always, he desired her.

Two years before war was declared, someone set fire to her parents’ house. Neither one of them survived and the arsonists were never caught. One year later, he married Noella. And one year after that, war was declared.

“ After Felicia’s parents died,” Mahone continued as if Knox had never spoken, “and despite the weird shit that you two had going on while your wife was alive, Felicia bonded with your family. With your children. With your mother. With you. Your family became hers. After Noella’s murder, who did she have? No one—and don’t interrupt me,” Mahone snapped when Knox opened his mouth, “because
I
don’t count and she doesn’t think she can have you. Personally, I agree with her.”

Knox instinctively wanted to refute Mahone’s words. He didn’t. Felicia was his. His mate. His woman. His soul. He didn’t need to convince anyone of that but her. But first he needed to keep her safe, which meant off Team Red. “Her loneliness doesn’t justify her presence on the team. And—”

“Stop being so dense,” Mahone snapped. “She’s alone, but she’s not without feelings or compassion or loyalty. She’s willing to work with you, the one person she’d give anything to avoid, because she wants to save the exact same people you do. Are you really going to take that away from her?”

Knox stared at Mahone as he ingested his words. He hadn’t stopped to think of it that way, but of course it was true. He’d been too focused on his own anger to see it. His anger at being duped by Mahone. Anger because he believed Felicia had been placed on the team because Mahone didn’t trust Knox to do his job. Anger because he knew Felicia’s participation in their first mission could jeopardize any relationship he eventually—
maybe
—was able to start with her.

And finally, anger that he hadn’t figured out Felicia’s reasons for wanting to join the team himself.

In addition to Mahone and Knox’s mother, there were others who questioned Knox’s determination to have Felicia. More than one elder on the clan’s Vamp Council had spoken to Knox about the female human he lusted after, as well as his duty to marry another vamp. “Fuck her all you want,” Dante Prime had encouraged with no concept of how much danger he was in at the time. “We trust you, Knox. You have led us well during our Queen’s illness. Unlike your father, you’ve proven your human blood won’t affect your loyalty to the clan.”

Knox had walked away from Prime, his jaw clenched, his fingers flexing, his brain struggling to remind him that Prime, like the rest of the Council, had always been prone to the same weaknesses as any other vamp, including fear of change. Given the horrors they’d suffered during and after the War, that would be especially true now. Nonetheless, the Vamp Council had reluctantly consented to Knox joining Team Red—as if their consent would have made a bit of difference, Knox thought crossly—because of the lure of a cure.

Still, if Team Red’s first mission failed—if Felicia was on the team when it failed—would Prime find a way to blame her? Would he accuse her of acting with the FBI to dupe him? Would he accuse Knox of jeopardizing the mission for a piece of human ass, thus forcing Knox to prove once again where his loyalty lay?

Right now, those possibilities were probably the biggest reasons Knox didn’t want Felicia on the team.

“Knox!”

Knox jerked at Mahone’s shout. He blinked at the human male, frowning when he saw the man’s distress. “What’s wrong?”

“What the hell did you do? Go into some kind of trance?”

“I was . . . Never mind that,” Knox clipped out. “What’s going on?”

With one last perplexed look, Mahone gestured to the phone on the table. “I told you about the call I got from the President earlier this morning. He’s agreed to let you see the scientists. That is, if you still feel it would be helpful to read their minds.”

Knox cocked a brow, surprised in spite of himself. President Cameron Morrison had never struck him as the type of man to take uncontrolled risks, and if letting a vamp read the minds of the nation’s most elite scientists wasn’t one such risk, Knox didn’t know what was. “I don’t think its helpfulness is really in question, do you? Will the whole team be going?”

“Just you. And we’re going to have to jump through a number of hoops first, including moving them from their current location. After you see them, they’ll be moved again.”

“Smart,” Knox mocked. “That way I can’t teleport in to grab whatever secrets I miss the first time.”

“That’s right,” Mahone said in all seriousness.

“Of course, if I did happen to discover where they’ve been moved, I can always read their minds from a distance.”

Mahone snorted. “Play someone else, Knox. Or are you telling me you’ve discovered a way to do long-distance mind reading?”

When Knox said nothing, Mahone’s left eye twitched. “Have you?” he finally asked.

“Have I what?” Knox queried innocently.

“Discovered a way to read minds from farther than fifty feet?”

Knox grinned. “I didn’t realize we were trading secrets, Mahone. Before I answer, why don’t you tell me something first?”

With a wave of his hand, Mahone indicated that Knox should ask away.