The Last True Vampire (35 page)

The slayer’s silver blade caught Mikhail in the ribs and he hissed in a sharp breath. He lashed out, striking the bastard in the side of the head, and the slayer reeled backward, blood pouring from the newly made gash. Bloodlust clouded his vision, but he pushed the thirst to the back of his mind. He lashed out again, sweeping the slayer’s legs out from underneath him, his skull striking the concrete floor with a satisfying crack.

“Kill the bastard, Gregor!”

The name gave Mikhail pause and his misstep earned him a slash of the blade across his torso. His back bowed with pain and he swung the heavy length of chain at the slayer’s face, missing him by mere inches. “Gregor the Black?” Mikhail ventured with another wild swing of the chain as he pushed himself to his feet.

Now it was the slayer’s turn to lose a step. His eyes narrowed at Mikhail’s words and his lips pulled back in a snarl. The Sortiari had been crafty indeed in enlisting this particular slayer into their service. Centuries of hatred fueled his actions. Revenge was a wound that never healed, and Gregor’s had been festering for quite some time.

An eye for an eye. A clan for a clan. “You petty bastard,” Mikhail ground out. He stomped down on Gregor’s midsection. The slayer caught the chain secured to Mikhail’s ankle and yanked, sending him sprawling to the ground. Gregor might have been down but was not bested yet.

Gregor rolled over to his stomach, another misstep. Mikhail threw himself on top of the other male and looped the chain around the slayer’s throat. Whether he killed Gregor before his men swooped in to help didn’t concern Mikhail, only that he caused his enemy as much pain as possible in the interim.

Chaos broke out as he squeezed the breath from Gregor’s lungs. Mikhail looked up to find Ronan, Jenner, and a small army of dhampirs pouring down the stairs into the bowels of the basement. Mikhail’s attention wandered and Gregor seized the opportunity to throw Mikhail from his back. The berserker’s strength was massive as he pitched Mikhail high in the air. He flipped, landing on his back with enough force to create a fissure in the concrete floor.

Like the coward he was, Gregor wasted no time in securing his own safety. He ducked and wove through the fighters, heading for the stairs, which he climbed three at a time. At the top of the landing, he paused, his eyes locked with Mikhail’s. Gregor’s gaze narrowed as he bared his teeth and in the blink of an eye was gone.

Mikhail stomped down on the chain dangling from his right wrist and pulled. His muscles strained, veins rising to the surface of his skin with the effort he exerted, increasing the tension until the links gave way of the wrist cuff. He repeated the actions on his left wrist and each of his feet, panting through the pain as the cuffs bit into his skin, the silver burning and blistering him in the process. When the final link snapped, he cast his bonds aside and rushed to Claire’s side.

“Claire. Claire!” Fear congealed in Mikhail’s stomach, cold and unyielding. He tore at the rope that tied her down, snapping the bonds as though they were simple strands of thread. “Stay with me. Do you hear me, Claire?” He gave her a shake. “Don’t you dare leave me!”

*   *   *

Claire floated in a realm of dark nothingness. Mikhail’s voice came to her as though across the width of a canyon, faint and breathy. She didn’t want to leave this painless place of cool comfort. Why would he want her to leave? Maybe instead of coaxing her out, he should join her. Wasn’t he tired of fighting? She was.

Formless hands hovered over where her womb would be. Where her son floated in the same dark comfort, unaware of what went on in the outside world. He was safe. Protected. If she stayed in this place, no evil could touch him.…

A disconcerting thought scratched at the back of Claire’s mind. The safety that she’d sought, locked herself away in, wasn’t a shelter at all, was it? No. She was
dying
. Sure, the pain was gone. The worry. But no matter how much she wanted to hide from the anguish of Gregor’s sick torture, she had to go back. She had to give her baby a chance to live. Hell, she had to give herself a chance! How could she possibly stay in this soft, dark oblivion when her soul was tethered to Mikhail’s on the other side?

She couldn’t leave that piece of herself behind.

As if she were swimming from the bottom of a deep lake, Claire’s lungs burned as she paddled and kicked through the dark abyss toward a muted light far above her. Mikhail’s pleading tone grew louder, more urgent, as she made her way closer, but the murky depths didn’t glide over her skin like water. It held on like sludge, pulling her down a foot for every two she gained.

The prospect of being thrown unwillingly into this life that seemed so commonplace to Mikhail had spurred her to leave the safety of his protection and it had cost them both dearly. She’d thought she was doing what was best, until she could think things through, decide for herself where she belonged. Now, though, she knew that the only place she’d ever belonged was at his side.

No matter where she lived, no matter the distance between them, his enemies would be waiting to take her. Use her as leverage, destroy her in hopes of securing some crazy preconceived notion of the future. She wouldn’t survive Mikhail’s world in this state. She wasn’t surviving it now. The only way she’d be able to live was to allow him to do what he’d wanted all along.

Only as a vampire would she endure this.

For as long as she could remember, Claire had relied solely on herself. Living with a junkie had a tendency to give a person a pretty jaded outlook on humanity. Trust didn’t exist in the world of lies, selfishness, and abuse she’d been brought up in. It was as foreign a concept to her as love itself. But Mikhail made her want to trust. To make a sacrifice for someone else’s sake and not because she was simply working an angle. The light above her grew brighter and she put every ounce of energy left in her body into breaching the surface. She couldn’t allow Mikhail to continue to insert himself into the path of danger because she was simply human and too weak. If she could just survive this moment, she’d gladly let him turn her. There was no pain on this earth worse than the thought of living without him. Of not being able to see the face of her baby boy staring up at her.

She breached the surface with a gasp, the bright light above her head an exposed lightbulb that glared down on her, swinging to and fro in a lazy circle. “Claire? Claire!” Another shuddering breath filled her lungs as his face came clearer into focus. “Stay with me. Do you hear me, Claire?” He gave her a shake. “Don’t you dare leave me!”

“Did you make him suffer?”

Her voice was foreign in her ears, raspy and weak. A sharp pain radiated up the length of her throat and she swallowed at the dryness that coated her tongue, unable to generate the saliva necessary to keep it from sticking to her mouth. As she came more fully into awareness, Claire began to regret trying so hard to leave oblivion.

The pain was paralyzing. Blinding in its intensity. She wanted to empty her lungs on a violent scream, but she didn’t have the energy for even that tiny thing. Burning up and freezing all at once, every nerve ending on her body raw and exposed. That bastard Gregor had cut into her again and again, slicing, stabbing, eliciting scream after tortured scream from her in order to make Mikhail suffer. He’d brought the knife to her belly, traced her womb with the sharp tip—

“The baby!” she rasped. Her arms flailed, as useless as cooked noodles beside her, as she tried to clutch at her abdomen. A sob lodged itself in her throat. “Oh my god!”

“Shhh.” Mikhail brushed her hair back from her forehead, the only place on her body that she didn’t feel pain. “The baby’s fine, Claire. Try not to move.”

She took in his expression, doubt and worry marring his handsome face. He’d given her assurance, but he wasn’t confident. A tear leaked from the corner of her eye and rolled down her temple. “Vanessa.” Worry sliced through Claire like Gregor’s blade. “She’s here. Locked in a room somewhere. Please, Mikhail, don’t let her—”

“Shh. Don’t worry, love; we’ll find her. And we’ll keep her safe.”

Relief was a balm on her overheated skin. “I’m going to die, aren’t I?”

The words brought Mikhail to his knees beside her. “No.” He choked on the word.

She gave him a wan smile. “Liar.” Claire tried to lift her arms, move her legs, but they wouldn’t budge. “Or maybe not.” The smell of blood surrounded her; she was bathed in it, sticky with the evidence of her torture. How was there any left in her body? “Not if you turn me.”

CHAPTER

28

It was the only way to save her and they both knew it. Around him, the melee had come to a bloody conclusion, the bodies of Gregor’s men the only evidence of a battle that he’d long abandoned to save his own skin. Mikhail was hauled up bodily and he grabbed his assailant by the throat, slamming him against the wall with enough force to put the bastard straight through it.

“It’s me!” Though Mikhail had him by the throat, Jenner put his hands up in surrender. It took sheer strength of will to release the other male. Ally or not, Mikhail was still an animal, threatened. His mate was threatened. Dying. And if he didn’t act soon, feeding Claire gallons of his blood would do nothing to save her.

Jenner shook out his shoulders as though he too resisted the urge to fight back. In a battle, their animal natures became more prevalent. Instinct overrode common sense, and logical decisions were overlooked in favor of rash violence. His eyes flashed silver and his lip pulled back to reveal his short fangs. But as the battle fog cleared from both of their minds Mikhail steered his focus back to Claire.

“She’s dying. I’ve got to get her out of here.” Dead slayers littered the basement floor, a few dhampirs, too. Mikhail couldn’t risk staying for another moment, not when Gregor’s reinforcements might be on the way.

Jenner’s expression was dead serious as he positioned his body between the staircase and Mikhail. “Just say the word and we’re outta here.”

Claire’s lids were hooded, her eyes no longer tracking. A fear so intense gathered inside of Mikhail that it froze him in place. She’d said that he couldn’t love her. That they hadn’t known each other long enough for him to care about her so deeply. But what Claire hadn’t realized was that he’d fallen hopelessly in love with her the first night they’d met, and not because of her blood or the power that her life’s essence had given him.

He’d fallen in love with her fire. With the strength he’d seen in her eyes long before anything else. And he was relying on that strength and fire now. “Claire.” She moaned at the sound of her name, barely audible to even his ears. “I’m going to move you, love. It’s going to be painful, but I need you to stay with me no matter what. Don’t retreat into your mind, don’t close your eyes or shut me out, do you understand me? I need you to
feel,
Claire. To allow that pain to keep you going.”

Her heart slowed to the point that Mikhail could barely discern its beat. Each breath dragged through her lungs was wet and ragged. A sickening gurgle that wracked her chest. She didn’t respond; her body had gone deathly still on the table pooled with her blood. He couldn’t waste another second and so Mikhail scooped her up in his arms, taking as much care as possible, but it jostled her enough to jolt her into awareness.

“Ahhh!” A tortured rasp tore from her throat and Mikhail hugged her close. Crimson soaked into his shirt, dripped from her body. Gregor had nearly bled her dry.

“Go!” Mikhail’s shout was answered by instant action as Jenner led the way up the stairs. Ronan fell into step behind Mikhail, offering protection from the rear. Despite his newly turned state, Ronan had fought with all of the speed and skill of a vampire of many years. His control was unflappable. The transformation for him had been smooth and flawless, like slipping into a warm pool. Thank the gods for small favors.

Claire cried out as Mikhail took the steps three at a time even though he leaped from one spot to the next with an agility that barely jostled his precious cargo. With her numerous injuries, Claire had sustained just about all her fragile human body and psyche could handle. It pained Mikhail that he would have to put her through more still, but there was no use for it. It was now or never, and instead of easing her pain he was about to add to it a thousandfold.

When they reached the ground-level floor Mikhail came to a skidding stop. Dawn’s gray light filtered in from the high windows of the foyer, and his body heated as it sensed the coming of the sun.
Trapped!
Forced to remain in this gods-forsaken place with no chance of escape! This couldn’t be. He couldn’t allow for Claire to be turned here with their enemies still too close. The transformation would weaken them both, and if the Sortiari sent reinforcements—which Gregor would undoubtedly do—neither of them would survive the day.

“Wait here.” Jenner threw open the door and disappeared into the murky morning.

“Claire, are you still with me?”

Blood matted the long strands of her hair, and for the first time Mikhail truly took stock of her injuries. Gregor had disfigured her. Cut into her without mercy. The only thing he’d left untouched was the area of her lower abdomen, and only because the death of Mikhail’s child had been meant to be Gregor’s crowning achievement. A lump the size of a baseball formed in Mikhail’s throat and he tried without success to swallow it down. Emotion prickled behind his eyes, burned in his chest. Constricted everything inside of him until he thought he might implode from the pressure.

Alone. For centuries Mikhail had been hollow. Soulless. A male without family, allegiance, or honor. Isolated. Held apart from those who were his kind because of his own stubborn stupidity. Disconnected from emotion and living in a soulless, apathetic state for so damned long.

Now the floodgates were open. This beautiful, fiery female in his arms had done that. And he was about to fail her.

“Let’s go!”

Jenner poked his head through the doorway and Mikhail didn’t waste a single moment as he rushed outside. Sunlight be damned, he’d burn himself to a fucking crisp before he’d let Claire die. Parked outside the house was a windowless van with more than enough shelter from the sun and room to lay Claire down inside.
Thank the gods.