Pool of Crimson (24 page)

Candace came up behind him in a slow stalking stride, as if she hunted me. My pulse beat frantically through my veins as a primal fear that humans had felt for millennia echoed in my being, the same fear that made us huddle around fires in the darkness.

Another voice that was just as strong and just as primal whispered to me.
She’s not stronger than us. She has no right to challenge us. She is Beta. We are Alpha.

“It’s yours,” Ethan purred in pleasure.

“No,” Patrick gasped in a whisper that echoed in the stone expanse. The pentagram on the floor hummed with magic and tingled through my feet. They’d brought me to the basement of the mansion, close to the city and people. I wasn’t that far away from salvation, just a few stairs and a door or two.

“Wait!” I shouted out of desperation.

Think! Damned you! Think!

Candace was close enough for me to see the saliva frothing at the corners of her mouth.

“Wouldn’t you enjoy it more if I at least had a fighting chance?” I asked with a coy lilt to my voice. Everyone loved a good old-fashioned gladiator fight, right? “A challenge,” I said with an unfamiliar growl in my voice. “Who knows, I might even win,” I added with a smirk. This all hinged on how badly Ethan wanted to see me get my ass kicked.

“Are you suggesting I allow you to fight Candace for your survival?” he asked, a sudden twinkle in his eyes. The corners of his mouth pushed up and his craggy face lit with anticipation.

“I am,” I said flatly.

“Son, I see why she called to you,” Ethan said, glancing back at Patrick over his shoulder, approval heavy in his gaze.

Patrick’s cool expression was defied only by the small hand that held his arm. The petite vampire with yellow hair held him back with enough force for it to show in her tight grip and the thin line of her lips. “She is powerful in more ways than one,” Ethan continued as he turned his gaze back to me. “Even standing there, broken and battered, she is something to be reckoned with. I can smell the ferocity coming from her skin. It’s quite intoxicating.” He ran his hand through Candace’s hair like he stroked a pet. She pushed against his hand, reciprocating the affection.

“Is that a ‘yes’ or a ‘no’,” I asked belligerently.

He laughed loudly. The sound of his deep, rumbling laugh echoed in the hollow space. “Oh, my dear, that is a most definite yes,” he said, baring his teeth to me. “Let’s see what the Blushing Death is really capable of.”

“At least make it fair,” Patrick said quickly from the wall.

“Not eager to see her dead, hmm?”

“Candace has more strength and is fresh. A knife would even up the odds just a bit, don’t you think?” Patrick said with a cool expression and an even tone, none of the fear I knew he felt evident in his voice.

“It might even be a better fight that way,” Ethan said to himself. “So be it.”

The Ebony Goddess took a few steps toward me and pulled a long Super SOG Bowie knife from behind her back. It had a stacked leather washer handle and looked brand new. The gleam from the blade twinkled in the light from the lanterns on the wall. I didn’t think it was silver but there was only one way to find out. I gripped the knife in my hand and felt the weight of it. I liked it.

I could feel death in my eyes, in my muscles, in my gut and in my brain. The room, my head, and my being were all quiet as the peace of the kill settled over me. I was ready.

“Well, well, my darling girl. You are a killer, aren’t you,” Ethan said as he met my eyes. He took two steps back and out of slashing distance. “Candace, she’s all yours.”

Chapter 18

Candace lunged for me, all hair and snarling teeth like a rabid beast. She plowed into me with the force of a ton of bricks and we both hit the ground. She knocked the wind out of me and air rushed from my lungs, burning my trachea as it passed. I tightened my grip on the knife as I held my neck stiff so my head wouldn’t bounce off the concrete. That’s all I needed was to crack my head open. The stupid bitch would eat my brains out.

Her nails dug into my shoulders as I held her off with my free hand firmly around her throat, my elbow stiff. Since my arms were longer than hers, it wasn’t that difficult to keep her teeth from me. She snarled and snapped at me as if she were in wolf form. In the confined space of the van, Candace had had the upper hand, but the basement was open and I had plenty of free space to move. I pulled my legs up and wrapped them around her midsection. I had strong thighs and had been known to break a rib or two with them in a fight.

I locked my ankles together and started to squeeze. She squirmed for a moment before her body slid into place, right where I wanted her, flat between my legs in a scissor grip. She had nowhere to go with my legs tucked in against her tightly.

“I’ll break every bone in your body,” she growled at me as she tugged at my hand wrapped around her throat. She tried to push on my knees. I locked my legs and squeezed as hard as I could but my hips ached from the tension as she pushed my knees apart. She was going to pry me apart like a wishbone if I didn’t do something. I turned the knife quickly in my hand and brought my arm up hard and fast, sinking the knife in between her ribs through her side.

“Not if I have anything to say about it,” I whispered in her ear as my knife sunk six inches deep into her flesh. The warmth of her blood gushed over my hand. Her pain-filled scream rang out and ricocheted off the walls in the stone basement.

Candace reached her arm back and punched me square in the face. My nose crunched with the impact of her fist.

Shit! She broke my nose.

Blood ran down the back of my throat. I opened my eyes. She brought her fist around again for another shot. I waited until the last possible moment before I moved my head out of the way. Her fist breezed past my cheek by a hair’s breadth and pummeled the pavement behind my head, sending dust and shards of concrete into the air.

I pulled the knife quickly and sunk it into her side again and again and again. She grabbed a hand full of my hair and smashed my head back into the concrete to get me to stop. Stars flooded my vision for a moment, pretty yellow, green, and blue stars. My body relaxed, releasing Candace from the scissor grip between my legs. She jerked away, panting as my arm and the knife still in my hand fell to the floor with a clink of metal on stone. She stumbled away from me on hands and knees, dripping blood and gore as she went.

Blood flowed freely from my nose, and my head throbbed in my skull. I didn’t have time for pain or to regroup. I had to kill her now while she was weak or she’d end up killing
me.
I wanted to see morning again.

I rolled over and pushed myself to my knees, dragging the knife along the floor as I got to my feet. I took one cautious step and then another until I was sure I could stand on my own without staggering.

If only I could’ve woken up in my own bed and all of this have been a horrible, horrible dream. No. I gotta wake up in a God damned basement filled with vampires and a blood thirsty bitch of a werewolf. I have the worst mother-fucking luck.

Candace spat out a mouthful of blood. The entire floor was covered in blood; hers, mine, old blood, and blood from God knows what. The pentagram on the floor looked like a splatter painting of gray canvas and deep crimson paint. I gripped the knife in my right hand and teetered up beside her. She coughed up another mouthful, spit it out, and turned angry eyes up to me. The knife was silver. She couldn’t heal the knife wounds, which seemed to fester and continue to bleed.

“What’s wrong with me?” she gurgled and growled as her eyes filled with tears.

“Silver,” I said with satisfaction as I brought my fist down, still clutching the knife handle in my hand. I punched her hard in the face, crushing her nose and cracking her jaw. She went down hard, blood spilling out of her mouth and pooling on the floor beneath her head. I pushed her over onto her back and straddled her with my knees on her arms to hold her in place. I wasn’t sure that a broken neck would kill her. All I knew was that no one could survive without a heart.

I plunged the knife deep in her chest. Her back arched as her body convulsed against the foreign object in her flesh. She pushed against me weakly, trying to buck me off of her, but she was too weak and at the wrong angle. I sank the knife in again until she was too weak to keep fighting.

Her chest still heaved with each ragged, gurgling breath when I stopped plunging the knife into her body. I waited. Her face, hair, and body were covered in blood.

I forced the knife down as hard as I could under her sternum, piercing her heart and severing an artery, creating a fresh blood pool on her chest.

Candace’s eyes bolted open as she screamed. Her arms flailed and her head shook from side-to-side, thrashing uselessly. Candace’s eyes were wide with shock as they finally met my gaze.

She knew she was going to die.

I turned my eyes from hers and caught a glimpse of the strong but fading beat of her heart in her chest. The blood flow had filled her chest cavity as she bled out and her heart slowed. I sank the knife into her heart in a clean, killing stroke. The hard muscle clung to the sliver of the blade, filling my nostrils with the pungent smell of burning flesh as the silver singed her insides. Finally, after a long silent moment, Candace’s heart stopped beating.

Silence filled the basement.

I turned my eyes up to the peanut gallery watching me. Ethan and the Ebony Goddess stared at me with open-mouthed horror.

I met Patrick’s eyes. His expression was something entirely different. He looked pleased, almost proud and the smallest upturn of his lips at the corner of his mouth gave away his desire I felt bubbling in my womanhood. The beginnings of a malicious smile crested my lips as I scanned each of them in warning. My gaze rested finally on Patrick. He’d taken a few steps forward. He wanted to come to me.

I wanted nothing but to be locked in his arms. All right, maybe a shower, but his arms would be good, too.

I dropped Candace’s dead heart to the floor and got to my feet. I wasn’t up for more than a second before I was knocked back again by the force of strong magic as it surged to life. The jolt of the air changed around me, magic making it static and solid. I staggered a step or two as the air pressure collapsed around me like an airplane door closing.

I was surrounded by a filmy red wall totally encasing me, Candace’s lifeless body, and the pentagram on the floor.

“Dahlia! No!” Patrick called out as he closed the distance between us with only a few quick steps. He placed his hand tentatively on the filmy red wall that had become something solid and
alive
. The wall pulsed with the beat of my heart in a quick thump thump, making the wall ripple from the ground up. It was my blood that formed the circle, mine and Candace’s, but it was mine that still beat.

Patrick pushed his hand against the wall of blood. The connection between us flared to life as if he’d touched me. Patrick met my eyes with desperation bright in his dark gaze.

“Oh, Bravo, my dear girl. Bravo.” Ethan chuckled.

Patrick growled as he turned to face his Liege, his ... father. The yellow-haired vampire from the club stepped up behind Patrick and put her hand on his arm again in warning.

“Patrick,” she whispered in a pixie like tinkle of a voice. It seemed so out of place on someone so dangerous. “She closed the blood circle,” she pleaded with him.

“I’m aware of that,” Patrick snapped.

“Yes,” Ethan said, his eyes becoming predatory and cautious as his brow furrowed. His gaze settled on the two of us. “Yes, she did Alex, so kind of you to notice.” His tone was sarcastic and dangerous.

“What does that mean?” I asked Patrick, almost in a blind panic. I didn’t understand. Everyone else seemed to understand, and it was pissing me off. I knew anger. I knew blind rage. Anger cleared my head and let me think. Anger I could deal with.

Patrick turned and his fear surged through me like an icy winter breeze. He didn’t know either.

“Shh,” I whispered to him to try and quiet his fears. I couldn’t think with his terror as well as mine. I needed the rage to clear my head.

“I don’t know,” he said more calmly as he tried to pull himself together.

“I’ll tell you, my
dear
idiot boy,” Ethan said. “It means that she’s more than you thought she was, and you ruined her with your mark.” Ethan turned to me with a smile, showing his bright white fangs. “I’ll tell you one other thing,” he continued, his eyes focused entirely on me. “If you survive this, I’ll have you for myself, even if I have kill Patrick to wipe his mark from you and put you on a leash to do it.”

“You won’t touch her,” Patrick growled. The woman with the bright yellow hair, Alex, pulled Patrick back again.

“I think you forget who is Liege here,” Ethan said as he turned to the Ebony Goddess with a smirk on his face. “Raise it,” he ordered.

“Raise it? Ahriman? I thought you had to wait for the new moon?” The questions rolled out of me in a blind panic. My heart raced, pumping blood ferociously through me and making every wound on my body throb. The blood wall beat with my heart in quick but steady vibrations.

“That was only when the barrier would be thinner and Dean would be at his weakest,” he said with disdain. “He still mourns that bitch every new moon. We can raise the demon, however, at any time. Now seems quite appropriate since there’s already something waiting for it to eat.”

Smarmy, from against the wall and behind the others, cleared his throat. “Uhm, Sir, we didn’t bring the incantation,” he said sheepishly.

I couldn’t help but laugh. I laughed loud and hard until there were tears pooling in my eyes. I turned and leaned against the firm wall of my own blood and magic, my own power. I slid to the floor as I laughed.

I’d lost my mind.

I was so tired. The adrenaline from the fight had worn off. I ached and throbbed on top of everything else.

My ass hit the floor. I kept my back against the wall of my very own blood circle and pulled my knees up. My arms dangled, lifeless over my bent knees. I still had the knife in my hand. I twirled it in my fingers, reflecting crimson light off the blade as it spun, making soft shadows on the pulsing blood wall.