The Soul's Mark: CHANGED (3 page)

Suddenly, Amelia felt sick. 
“I’m sorry,” she said softly, casting her eyes to the floor.  Luke had always been on her side.  No matter how childish she acted, or how mean she was, he stood behind her.  He’d believed in her when no one else (not even Mitchell) had.

Dammit!
  She needed to get it together.  Ever since she had become a vampire, she was like a smoldering fire that was just waiting to blow up when the littlest bit of fuel was added.  She missed the clean white magic she’d had as a witch, and she loathed the flaming crimson light it had turned into.  She didn’t know how to keep her vampiric powers separate from her magic, and when they mixed, it was explosive.  She wished she knew how Mitchell had handled the magic when he’d used it through the bond, but in all honesty, she was too freaked out to ask him.  Too worried that he would think she was weak.  And her being weak was the last thing he needed to worry about.

“
Again?” Mitchell asked, tightening his arm around Amelia’s waist.  “Dammit, Lola!” he shouted, and then started hacking again.  Amelia turned in his arms, and pulled his arm around her shoulder, helping to support him as he coughed, a painfully wet sound.  She helped him back over to the bed, and when he was settled, she tucked the covers around him and handed him a glass of water.

Mitchell drank i
t greedily, finishing half the glass before he pulled it away from his lips.  Amelia stood over him, wringing her hands nervously.  She gathered a morsel of her magic, pushing it out towards him, picturing soothing waterfalls and birds chirping, and he smiled at her, a silent thank you, before he turned his attention back to Lola.  “This is why she needs the bond.  She needs help dealing with the magic.”  His voice was hoarse and his expression strained.

“You’ve never helped her
,” Lola said, exasperated.  “It’s always you that pushes her over the edge.”  She glided over to Luke, curling herself up on his lap.

“And it’s always Mitchell that brings her back,” Luke said
sternly, looking down at Lola with hard eyes before shifting his focus back to Mitchell.  “Do you think you can help her with it?”

Amelia didn’t give Mitchell time to answer. 
“It doesn’t matter ‘cause I’m not doing it,” she said, spinning around to glare at Luke and Lola.

Mitchell swatted at her as
if to tell her to keep quiet.  “I can help,” he said.  “I’ve done it before when the power was too much for her and I can do it now.”

Luke seemed to be considering it.  His intense gaze raked over Mitchell and
Amelia sighed long and loud, but they ignored her.  She guessed this was another one of those things that would never change.  They had rarely listened to her before, why had she expected them to start now?  She stood there for a few moments listening to them discuss whether or not she should bite Mitchell and solidify the bond.  Luke listened to all of Mitchell’s ridiculous reasons, such as he missed her, and he thought that he could help her with her magic.  It was all the same things that he’d said to her, over and over and over.

S
he tried a few times to interrupt and tell them it wasn’t happening.  She wasn’t going to put Mitchell through that kind of pain, and they knew damn well that if he hadn’t been able to control the bond, there was no way she’d be able to do it.  But they ignored her, and when Mitchell
shushed
her, she sighed, a frustrated sigh.  They went on discussing Mitchell’s health, and which doctor—if any—they could trust him with, which in Amelia’s opinion was retarded.  He needed a doctor.  They could all smell it.  At this point, did his secret really matter?  But Mitchell was pushing back, saying he didn’t need, or want, to see someone.

Amelia gritted her teeth and listened to them argue back and forth on what to do with him. 
And she was ready to start pulling out her hair in frustration when an idea dawned on her.  She felt the start of a smile twitch at her lips. 
I can fix him. 
Right then, she was certain of it.

None of them noticed when
Amelia grabbed her iPhone from the nightstand, and walked out of the room.

Hot white light blasted from Megan again.  It laced around Eric, tickling his skin and heating his blood.  He gritted his teeth, trying to ignore his pounding heart, and let the energy in.  It was a hard thing to do, letting the magic merge with him.  Each time he felt her energy all he could think about was their incredibly hot nights and … her blood.  Her blood was …
damn
, well it was the best blood Eric had ever tasted.  It was like a sour soother coated in chocolate.  Utterly sweet with a bite.

Not even f
ifteen minutes ago, Eric had been in the dungeon with Megan attempting to scrub away the lingering signs of death that clung to the walls like glue.  Megan had decided last week that the area was wasted space, and with a little love (and a heck of a lot of renovations), she was determined to turn it into livable space. They had just gotten started when the message on Eric’s cell phone came through
.  Help, please help me! Kyra,
it glowed at him.  As soon as his phone beeped with the message, Megan had abruptly dropped her bucket.  Eric said, “Here we go again.  This time it’s Kyra and Jake.”  And without another word, he had bolted for the stairs, Megan right behind him.

And now the
living room he was standing in felt as if it was closing in around him.  The milk chocolate walls and solid hardwood floors were suffocating.  All the curtains were drawn, sealing the room up tight, the only source of light coming from a small table lamp and Megan’s magic.

Megan
hovered over Kyra, letting her magic cover the girl from head to toe.  Kyra was a small, washed out thing, with bleached hair and pasty skin.  She was skin and bones, her hips, just as sharp as her elbows, protruding from her jeans as she convulsed on the floor at Megan’s feet.

Kyra’s screams were piercing
, but Jake didn’t care.  He stood in the arched doorway, arms crossed over his chest with a smug grin on his face.

“Anytime now, Eric,” Megan shouted over the shrill screams.

Eric sized Jake up.  He was a bit shorter than Eric was, and not as bulky, but if Eric was remembering correctly, Jake had about one-hundred and fifty years on him. 
Dammit!
  Eric didn’t know how much longer he could deal with this crap.  One of the others should be here.  Someone older.  Stronger.  Someone who wouldn’t accidentally kill the vamps, while using their soulmate’s magic.

Jake chuckled, a throaty and cruel kind of sound.  “She needs to learn,” he spat.  “Mitch may let his girl treat him like shit, but I won’t.”

More magic poured from Megan in shimmering streams of white and blue.  It wrapped around Kyra, coating her in a thick mist of delicate looking light.  Eric opened up his senses, siphoning some energy off of a few strands, and channeled it, calling it into the palm of his hand in a fiery ball.

Jake blanched.  His eyes widened, and a slow
fleck of red grew in the center.  Kyra’s screams died down almost instantly to a soft, breathless sob, and Megan gasped, as she began to draw the pain that Jake was inflicting on his soulmate into herself.

“Knock it off, Jake, or I’ll burn you up,” Eric snarled, as he pulled his arm back, read
ying himself to launch the blazing ball of magic in his hands.  He hated this part.  Feeling the pain of the bond through Megan.  Watching someone else inflict it on her.  Not that he had ever done it himself, but knowing that someone else could; actually feel her let someone else do it … it sent the demon part of him into a mindless frenzy.  She was his.  No one else had the right to do that to her.  Only him.

Megan was starting to shake, and she tried to give Eric an
I’m okay
kind of smile, but he knew she wasn’t.  This was the third one today, and after the last, she hadn’t been able to walk for a full ten minutes.

“She deserves it,” Jake gr
owled, and his face contorted with rage as he glared at Megan.  “What the hell are you doing?”

Megan whimpered.  She couldn’t answer.  Not anymore.  Eric could feel the pain burning her up from the inside out and her knees were starting to tremble.  “Jake!” Eric yelled.  “Mitch gave me orders.  I can kill you.  Pull it back!”

Eric, don’t!
Megan sent the frantic thought into his mind. 
No more deaths.

Eric ignored her.  He didn’t mean to, but he couldn’t think about anything other than the pain Jake was causing her.  He let the blazing ball go, launching it at the vamp. 
As soon as it left his hand, he felt Megan pull on his senses, and she shot in front of Jake with the speed and grace of a vampire.  The ball hit her square on, and she absorbed the blazing sphere of magic back into herself with a loud, shaky gasp.

Jake crashed to the floor, covering his head with his hands, cursing, and Kyra screamed, “No!
Don’t hurt him.”

“He
was hurting you,” Eric snarled, as he glared at Megan.  She glared back just as fiercely, with her hands on her hips.  She was trembling, just a little, and the last of her magic sputtered away.

“I deserved it,” Kyra shrieked.  “It was my fault.  He was hungry and … and … I shouldn’t have listened to Millie!”

Eric shifted his glare to Kyra, as she crawled across the hardwood floor to Jake.  He’d never understand the blind attachment that came with the bond.  These humans … even with all the pain, all the abuse, they still wanted to protect their vamps.  He guessed Megan would do the same, but part of him hoped she’d let him fry if he did this to her.

What did Millie say to them?
Eric asked Megan silently.  It wasn’t the first time he’d heard one of them say something like that and it made his gut twist into a tight knot.  Millie was his best friend, and he loved her, but damn, that girl had caused a shitload of damage in the last nine months.

Just that it should be their choice,
Megan sent.
  Some of the vamps get a bit carried away when they’re taking blood, Eric.  They take too much. 
Her silent words were dripping with disgust, as she sent him images of finding soulmates barely alive, drained to the point that if they lost even one more drop they would have died.  It wasn’t the first time he’d seen those memories.  For some of them he’d even been there, seeing them first hand. 
I agree with her, you know,
Megan sent, mixing her voice in with the montage of memories.
  The humans have rights, too.  They shouldn’t be forced to give blood or put up with any of this crap.  Things have to change.

Eric didn’t say anything.  It wasn’t that he didn’t want to, he did.  It was just that he didn’t really know what to say.  Megan was right, he knew that, but he was still a vampire, and that part of him was simmering from her words.  He couldn’t help
but think about what he might do if Megan refused him of anything, especially her blood.  What if he ended up doing what the rest of the vamps were doing?  Could he force Megan to give him blood?
Yes.
  Would he?  He didn’t know, and not knowing scared the crap out of him.

It had been two weeks of this
crap.  Two weeks since the bonds were put back together.  Two weeks since Millie had become a vampire, and two weeks since Mitchell had become human.  And in those two weeks, all Eric had been doing was pulling vampires and soulmates off of each other.  The bonds may have been put back in place, but he was starting to think that the damage that had been done while they were broken wasn’t repairable.  He had never realized it before, but the humans had never really fought back, at least not until Millie came around.  And now, that’s all they did.  Fight back.  They’d had a taste of freedom when the bonds had been broken, and now, they wanted it all the time.

Wanting freedom shouldn’t have been a bad thing, but as it turned out, it kind of was. 
The vamps weren’t giving an inch.  And without Mitchell around to stop them, they were using the bond and the pain that came with it, to its fullest extent.

There should be a rule,
Eric thought for the millionth time.
Something to stop the vamps from keeping their soulmates as human pets. Something to force them to change their mates.

He glanced
over at Megan, as she helped wipe away the drying blood from Kyra’s neck, and he couldn’t help but wonder if he was guilty of the same crap they were.  He tried to convince himself that they had been a bit preoccupied since Megan had shown up and that was the only reason she was still human, but he wasn’t entirely sure if that was true.

Eric
and Megan hung around for just over an hour, listening to Kyra and Jake bicker back and forth, about mindless things like dishes and laundry, before Eric couldn’t take it anymore.  The two seemed stable enough.  Jake hadn’t used the pain of the bond once while they argued, and Kyra even let him bite her.

Eric quickly recited the warning that he’d been giving to all the couples: no pain, no fighting, and most of all
, no killing each other, and then he took Megan’s hand, and pulled her from the house.

“Jeez, Eric, way to keep your cool,” Megan said, once they were out the door
and down the driveway.