Everafter Series 2 - Nevermore (27 page)

I backpedaled, but not fast enough. Darren’s knuckles caught me just under my left eye, and as I staggered backward, tasting blood in the back of my throat, he kicked me in the sternum. I went flying down the hallway, landing hard on my tailbone and gasping for air. My stomach and chest cramped and my lungs refused to fill. I would faint soon if I didn’t manage a clear breath.

He advanced deliberately, and even through my blurred vision I could tell he was gloating. Fortunately, that bought me some time, and I focused on taking shallow breaths until my muscles relaxed.

“I have no idea what Helen sees in you,” he said as he loomed over me. “You’re pathetic. A shadow of what you could be. Blood prime, and a member of the Order, but I don’t even have to shift to tear you to shreds.”

“Why?” I choked out, needing to keep him talking. Gradually, my strength was returning. The pain in my face was sharp, but my chest felt worse, and I suspected a bone might be fractured.

“Why?” He crouched down to snarl into my face. “Your kind should have died out centuries ago. Why the Consortium was ever created is a mystery to me. And to
him.
It’s survival of the fittest, Valentine. And we are the fittest.”

When a cruel grin spread across his face, I realized just how good an actor Darren had been. In all the time I’d known him, he had seemed reticent. Taciturn, even. His loyalty to Helen had been automatic and unquestioning. And a total farce.

“When I’m finished with you,” he said, “I’m going to do our entire community a favor and put your bloodsack of a girlfriend out of her misery. She’s a disgrace to all of us.”

Darren’s words were like his fists, hitting me precisely where it hurt the most. Streaks of red shot through my vision at his threat, and at the adrenaline surge, I could breathe freely again. How dared he appoint himself the arbiter of who lived and who died?

Tensing every muscle in my battered body, I pushed off the floor as hard as I could when I saw him reach down to grab me. I darted beneath his grasp and spun behind him, then leapt onto his back, wrapping my arms around his thick neck to close off his windpipe. Pain spiked through my chest as my injured breastbone clashed against his shoulders, but I didn’t let go. Roaring in outrage, he reached over his shoulder and yanked at my hair, trying to pull me off. Beneath my hand, his pulse beat a furious staccato.

The last time I had fought a man hand-to-hand, that man had been the Missionary. Like Darren, he had threatened to kill Alexa. Like Darren, he’d had superior strength—delighting in pummeling me and breaking my bones before moving in for the kill. Then Alexa and I had worked together, alternately engaging and distracting him until I’d been able to fire a kill shot. Now I was alone. Now I was weaponless.

But now
I
was the Missionary.

Darren crashed backward into the wall, smashing me into the plaster. My grip loosened at the dizzying spike of pain that pierced my chest. Scrabbling for purchase, my nails raked furrows into his neck, and he bellowed again, taking a step forward in preparation for another pass against the wall. Beyond thought and reason—beyond anything but the instinct to preserve myself and defend Alexa—I bent and sank my sharp teeth into his jugular. He howled in pain and rage, slapping and scratching and pulling at every inch of me that he could reach. But I didn’t let go.

I drank.

His blood was hot and thick, liquid strength sluicing down my throat. I was always careful with Alexa, but I didn’t have to be cautious now, when my thirst was also my greatest weapon. I delighted in gorging myself—in the coppery tang that liberally coated my throat; in the temporary cessation of the thirst that was my constant goad; in the power, the raw potential, that seeped into my starving muscles.

I felt the moment when his wolf began to enrage; Darren’s movements became clumsy, and tremors crawled up his spine like the shocks of an earthquake. He fell to his knees, his entire body shuddering as his wolf surged to the surface. Reluctantly, I withdrew my teeth from his skin. Helen had said that the blood prime’s appetite was enhanced, and I wondered if I could have drained him entirely. I would never know. There was only one imperative now: to put him down before he could change.

Shifting the position of my hands on his neck, I called upon my new reserves of strength, and then I twisted. The audible snap was satisfying. Darren’s lifeless body crumpled beneath me, but I didn’t so much as stumble, leaning forward into the pitch of his corpse to land on the balls of my feet. Blood still trickled from his neck, and I watched the flow grow sluggish, then stop. His heart was motionless, his spinal cord severed. He was dead.

Alexa.

I threw open the door, barging in on a scene of chaos. Both Sebastian and Alexa were convulsing in their beds, writhing like creatures possessed. Alexa’s heart rate was pushing two hundred already. Kyle had taken the line from her arm, but clumsily. The crook of her elbow was covered in crimson. He knelt next to Sebastian, frightened but trying to concentrate on disengaging the line from the third bag, which was almost full.

When he saw me, he jumped up. “Oh my God, Val! Are you—”

I ignored him. I had no doubt that I looked terrible, but I felt
strong. Already, the pain in my face and chest had eased, muted by the high I had found from Darren’s blood. My vision was clear. Even the metallic grays and blues of the room’s décor seemed vivid.

As quickly as my sharpened eyes took in the facts, my brain was processing them. Alexa would die soon if she couldn’t shift. Sebastian was on the verge of the change himself. Only his blood could free her panther. In an instant, I was next to Kyle, bending to detach the line from the final unit of his blood. I pointed to a package in the box of supplies next to the bed.

“The syringe. I need it.”

Kyle fumbled with the plastic but finally ripped it open, handing me the barrel. I connected it to the line, and when it had filled, jammed a needle onto the threads. “Now. Help me hold her.”

I was at Alexa’s side in two seconds. Her convulsions were increasing in magnitude now, and her eyes had rolled back in her head. My heart contracted painfully, but my head remained clear. Kyle’s human movements were ponderous, but finally he was next to me, pressing down on Alexa’s shoulders as I found a vein in her unbloodied arm. “Stay with me, baby,” I said, pushing down steadily on the plunger.

The seizure that shook her as the syringe emptied was the strongest yet, and would have broken the needle off in her arm if I hadn’t been able to react so quickly. She threw off Kyle’s grip, but when he tried to restrain her again, I waved him away. Her body was starting to blur around the edges.

“Get out of here!” I shouted, tossing the used syringe to the floor. “Before they both change!”

He ran for the door as I gathered her into my arms, praying I hadn’t been too late and that a vial full of Sebastian’s blood would be enough. Alexa thrashed against my chest and her fingernails scratched my face, but I clung to her and darted for the hall. I had to get her away from the wolf that Sebastian was on the verge of becoming.

Once outside, I dropped to my knees and released her. Her face was a mask of agony as the seizures grew stronger. “Come on,” I said, clenching my fists hard enough to break skin. And then, a memory intruded—dusk falling on the Serengeti, the scent of blood on the air, and Alexa summoning her panther to fight the threat. Calling her forth, with a single Swahili imperative.

“Uje!”

Her body stilled. No breath, no heartbeat, not even a muscle twitch.
Gone.

As the seconds ticked by, despair sliced me open like a blade. I had killed her. Again. As I stared at her twisted, motionless form, I returned to the night, nearly a year ago now, when I had taken too much of her blood. When I had believed her dead. And now she truly was.

The air suddenly shifted as her body arched into a perfect, impossible bow, like a marionette wrenched up by its strings. Her mouth opened in a scream of primal pain and rage, only to be choked off as her limbs collapsed in on themselves, giving way to the panther. Dark fur bristling, she rolled fluidly onto her paws and loomed over me, snarling.

Gleaming, white teeth curved over her crimson gums, but I felt no fear. She could tear me to shreds in the next moment, and it would be no more than I deserved. She was alive. That was all that mattered.

But then I heard the growl. Low and canine, it rumbled from behind me, and I knew Sebastian had also transformed. Tearing my gaze from Alexa, I took in the sight of the huge black wolf crouched just beyond the threshold of the doorway. Hackles raised and trembling, his red-gold eyes gleamed under the harsh artificial lights. He was truly formidable. And he was fixated on Alexa.

As she focused on this new threat, her belly brushed the floor and her tail lashed dramatically. When the muscles beneath her sleek fur quivered in anticipation of the pounce, the rumble in Sebastian’s throat grew louder. His hind legs flexed, and I knew what would happen next. They would meet in midair, snapping and snarling in a fight to the death. A battle that Sebastian, a born Were and powerful alpha, would undoubtedly win.

I lunged for the door, slamming it home just as Sebastian leapt forward. The force of his impact made the hinges groan, but they held. As I watched through the small window, he lay on the floor panting heavily, ears flat against his head. He would recover soon enough, and I had to get him tranquilized before he tore the whole room apart—including the units of his own blood.

Turning so that my back was against the door, I faced Alexa once again. Her tail still quivered, but now her attention was divided between me and Darren’s corpse, several yards away. I smiled grimly. The thought of her tearing into his body to gain the energy necessary to make the change was satisfying. Poetic justice.

“That’s right,” I said, hoping that my voice would penetrate to wherever Alexa’s human consciousness resided. “Take him. And come back to me.”

She padded on silent paws to where Darren lay prone. The sounds of her feasting didn’t turn my stomach, and I watched dispassionately as she rent the meat from his bones. I had taken my own sustenance from him, after all.

But at that thought, the first trickle of guilt seeped into the front of my mind. Twice now, I had taken blood from someone other than Alexa. The first time had been Clavier’s doing, but drinking from Darren had been wholly intentional. Entirely my decision. And I hadn’t so much as hesitated.

What did that mean?

“Valentine.”

I blinked. Where moments ago the panther had crouched gorging herself, now Alexa stood naked. My mouth went dry as I took her in—jet-black hair brushing her shoulders; the delicate arches of her collarbone that gave way to perfect, rose-tipped breasts; the pale expanse of her stomach enticing my gaze lower to the dark triangle of hair between her shapely runner’s legs. A wash of heat engulfed me, rising from my gut to set my throat aflame.

Exquisite. Alive.
Mine.

“You’re hurt,” she said and quickly moved forward, her hands closing around my forearms as she inspected the damage Darren had inflicted on me. My whole body trembled at her touch.

“It’s not as bad as it looks.” I freed one of my hands to stroke the curve of her cheek. “You’re alive.”

She smiled. It felt like forever since I’d seen her smile. “I feel wonderful, actually.”

The memory of her motionless body intruded, making me flinch. “You almost died again.”

“But I didn’t.” She rose to kiss me and my arms automatically threaded around her waist. I could feel the flutter of her heartbeat against my own chest. So warm. So vital.
Alive.
A groan escaped me at the softness of her mouth over mine, and I pulled her against me, ignoring the flare of pain in my chest. I returned her kiss with everything in me, needing her to claim my very soul.

Behind me, a throat cleared. I spun to face the sound, shielding Alexa’s body with my own.

“I thought you said they were in danger, Kyle.” Karma’s expression was serious, but her voice was rich with amusement.

“I…but…” Kyle’s jaw worked soundlessly.

Trailing them, Helen and Malcolm looked wary. Leon Summers stood close to Helen’s side, his palm resting on the butt of his gun. In the ensuing moment of silence, our collective attention was drawn to the sound of scrabbling at the base of the closed door.

“Darren is dead,” I said, maneuvering myself and Alexa to the side so that our visitors could have a clear glimpse of the mangled corpse. I heard Kyle swallow hard. The others didn’t so much as flinch.

“Sebastian?” Malcolm’s normally smooth voice was tight with anxiety.

“He seems fine,” I said, “but he needs to be tranked so I can get to my supplies.”

“What supplies?” Even in the midst of utter chaos, Helen managed to look and sound like a queen.

“Sebastian’s blood will form the basis of a cure. I was able to take three units before he turned. The bags are inside, with him.”

Malcolm waved Karma toward the door. “Take care of it.”

Drawing a small gun, Karma headed for the door. “You may want to move away,” she said, and I tugged at Alexa’s hand to pull her flush against my back as we took several steps toward the group. I didn’t want them to see her nakedness.

Karma trained her gun on the door, then flung it open and fired in one smooth movement. Sebastian collapsed at her feet, his massive paws twitching as the sedative took effect. Karma stepped over him and returned a moment later with the blankets from Alexa’s bed.

“You’re all right?”

“I am.” Alexa’s gaze shifted to the unconscious wolf as she covered herself. “Thanks to Sebastian.”

“Thanks to you both.” I pressed a kiss to her temple, then made my own foray into the room. It was a mess. Streams of blood adorned the floor and most of the furniture had been upended. The cooler had been knocked onto its side, but when I opened it, all of the units were intact.

“The blood is fine,” I called over my shoulder before sealing the cooler and returning to Alexa’s side.