Rom had easily taken care of the other rogue, doing what he did best, but for good measure Damian ashed him as well. With the power of negation and absorption, Rom could not only resist whatever power another vamp used against him, but he could then take it as his own. Rom said the vampire would retain some of their power, albeit weakened, but he’d only tested that once early on. Rom was pretty unforgiving when another vampire was trying to kill him. Rom’s skills were kind of like a human campfire story. Were the stories real or lore? Damian was convinced that was one of the reasons Xavier had avoided Rom all these long years. Even with Xavier’s impressive skills, he was no match for the formidable Romaric Dietrich. Damian was only glad Rom was on their side and not the enemy’s.
They’d decided during their strategy session that even if they could flash inside they wouldn’t. It was too dangerous and those were the tactical errors that got less experienced vampires killed. So they went in the old-fashioned way instead…through the door. Now flashing out…that was a different matter altogether, if they could.
Upon entry, they were attacked from all directions. Damian could hear war shouts and screams of agony all around him within seconds as he tried to make his way down the hallway to Analise. The vampires they’d brought on this mission were seasoned and extremely skilled. The best of the best and he worried little for their safety, so with a singular focus on getting to Analise, he easily ashed two rogues who were blocking his path as he quickly made his way toward her.
He was halfway down the narrow space when the first real attack occurred from a rogue with vortex breath, which was the ability to freeze a person in a solid block of ice within seconds. He was mid-stride when his muscles began to quickly solidify. Luckily for Damian, his fire elemental ability could easily negate the ice, but they were matched in their vampiric power, and every time Damian tried to ash him, the rouge would simply put out the fire with a thought. The rogue actually smirked at him…taunting
him
. Damian fucking DiStephano, Regent Vampire Lord.
Damian had felt Analise’s energy calling to him the moment he’d stepped foot into this hallway and he was getting tired of this cat and mouse game with an insignificant, far less experienced vampire than himself. Damian unleashed his animal instinct with a roar of fury. This fucker was going down.
He tried flashing and was surprised when it worked. The smirk was now permanently wiped off iceman as his body lay in a pool of his own blood, head rolling like a lumpy bowling ball somewhere down the long hallway.
Buh-bye Mother. Fucker.
He silently passed the flashing tidbit off to T, who would make sure the other men on their team had it.
He turned back toward Analise and flashed to the door behind which she was a prisoner. For the first time, he wished he had the superpower of x-ray vision. He didn’t want to flash inside as his enemy would anticipate, and be ambushed, so this was the better way. In retrospect, he’d look back on the next several seconds and swore they took a lifetime. But had they been more than several seconds, he would be dead and his mate lost to him forever.
He was mid-kick when he felt a sudden calmness blanket him and his foot dropped down with a thud to the floor. All of his emotions went numb, like he’d taken an entire bottle of Xanax and was floating in the air watching the scene unfold as if it were happening to someone else. There was no anger, no fear, no hate, no love.
Why was he here again?
An angelic voice cut through the dense fog that had permeated deep into his brain, wrapping it in cellophane. A voice he vaguely recognized but stirred a strange feeling deep in the pit of his stomach.
“Damian, help me. I need you.”
She needs me. Who needs me?
Her lyrical voice sounded once again and the words she spoke shattered the haze that had fallen over him into a million pieces.
“We’re undivided, Damian. It’s you and me.”
Analise
. He turned, shoving his knife to the hilt in the chest of the empathy rogue, but not before he felt the bite of the blade through his own torso, barely missing a lung.
Jesus, that hurt
. He stumbled back against the door and unleashed his wrath with a vengeance. The white-hot fireball took two more rogues out, along with the empathy rogue. With a swift kick, the door standing between him and his mate was in pieces and there she was, huddling in the corner, eyes wide with fear.
“Damian,” she cried, launching herself off the floor and into his arms. Even though his midsection was on fire from his wound, he wasted no time getting them out of the melee, flashing them to Dev’s estate. He wanted nothing more than to take her to his penthouse, but she might need medical care and the best person for the job was Big D, who was waiting at the shelter. He’d lost a lot of blood with his injury and the flashing made him dizzy, but nothing, not even his own injuries, concerned him more than her well-being.
She was alive and finally back in his arms and he would never, ever let her go again.
C
hapter
50
Geoffrey
They were here.
Took them fucking long enough
. The loose plan he’d formulated over the last week was finally in motion and he once again questioned the prudence of it. But this was the only way out. The only way to throw Xavier off track. The only way to get his Moira to safety.
Geoffrey had served Xavier for close to five long, torturous centuries. As his lieutenant, the last one hundred had been by far the longest, and since he’d discovered the truth about his existence, about his
family
, he’d been strategizing for this exact moment.
Xavier was a mean, sadistic, black-hearted, egotistical motherfucker and it made him ill to think of the things he’d done under his command. He was fucking done. He only hoped he had enough information to bring the monster down once and for all and didn’t die in the next five minutes before he could put the second part of his long plan into motion. If he did, he’d at least die with the knowledge that
she
would be rescued and in part, it was because of the actions he took to get her the hell out of here.
For countless decades, he’d watched, he’d learned, he’d tucked information away in his brain for later use. He’d been plotting, strategizing. But the minute he’d laid eyes on subject number four hundred eighty-two, it was all over. Poof…up in a plume of smoke.
She
was now his number one priority and it was only a matter of time before Xavier figured it out and just for the sport of it, tortured and killed her while forcing him to watch. Hell, he’d probably make him do it just to prove his loyalty. And he couldn’t—
wouldn’t
—let that happen. Not ever. All that mattered now was
her
. And this plan was his only shot to get her away from these vile monsters and to safety.
He’d been waiting for the lords to show up and rescue Damian’s mate, so he’d personally been scouting the area, telling Xavier he was extra cautious. The minute he’d sensed them, he’d told Xavier there was a problem at the Kentucky lab that needed his immediate attention. Only Xavier could handle it. Of course, it was a very timely
problem
that may or may not have been created by him.
Taking a deep, fortifying breath, he stepped into the hallway. His first objective was to personally kill every single vampire and human down here that had laid a fucking fingernail on his Moira. He’d protected her from being brutally raped by these savages this long, but Xavier was onto him and he needed to get her the hell out of here. Yesterday.
He
wanted the honor of painfully gutting each and every one of them. Unfortunately, there were several vampires upstairs guarding the girls that he wouldn’t get the chance to slice open, but in the end they’d be dead and he’d have to live with that. All that mattered was that they were wiped off the face of the planet for the wrongs they’d done.
Striding down the hallway, he adopted his new persona. Mimicry was something he could only hold for a reasonably short period of time. A few hours at best. And if he was severely injured, he reverted back to just plain old Geoffrey. He’d found that out the hard way once and nearly lost his head. When he mimicked someone, he sounded like them, acted like them, his mannerism were like them. But the one downfall of his skill was that while in mimicry, he still retained
his
powers, not able to take on the special skill of the vampire he mimicked. Humans were easy to mimic, vampires were much more challenging.
Only minutes later, having killed each and every vile creature on the lower level—plus Xavier’s favorite pet researcher who’d orchestrated his mate’s torture—and covered from head to toe in his enemies blood, he stepped back into the hallway only to face the most intimidating vampire he’d ever come across. Looked like they’d sent the big guns. This might not turn out so well for him after all.
He was shitting bricks. The Reaper, in the flesh. He’d heard rumors about Romaric Dietrich, but couldn’t believe the tales that a single vampire possessed such mind-blowingly powerful skills. And he didn’t really want to find out firsthand either. Geoffrey was a very powerful vampire in his own right, but Romaric Dietrich was not a vampire he’d ever hoped to cross paths with. It would be like jumping into a lake full of flesh eating piranhas. Foolish, painful and life ending.
He couldn’t keep Xavier’s persona for the next part of his plan to work. He had no choice but to morph back into Geoffrey, hoping Romaric didn’t take this opportunity to capitalize on his vulnerability and behead him on the spot.
Back to his six-foot-six bulky stature and hands held in the universal surrender position, he spoke, “I, and I alone, have information that can bring down Xavier once and for all, so it’s in the Lords’ best interest to capture versus kill me.”
Romaric regarded him with cool interest.
Before another thought formed or he could utter another syllable, Geoffrey felt red-hot, blistering pain leak into every single pore of his body. He looked down, fully expecting to see himself ablaze or his skin falling away, but outwardly he was fine. It felt like acid was eating his flesh, burrowing its way greedily into his veins like thousands of African driver ants. He couldn’t even drop to his knees or scream in agony because every one of his muscles was held immobile, including his voice box.
His last thought as he succumbed to the beckoning, blessed darkness was that he hoped his Moira made it out alive and that he’d see her again in the afterlife.
C
hapter
51
Analise
“How are you feeling today, Analise?” Big D quietly asked her as he patted the exam table, indicating she should sit. No doubt he didn’t talk louder because he couldn’t.
She felt good, more than good. She’d honestly never felt better. “I’m feeling great actually. Have you been able to find anything yet?”
This was the third blood draw in the last five days…since Damian had rescued her. Trying to respect her privacy, Big D had asked Damian to wait outside, but quickly changed his mind when he found himself pinned up against the wall, depleted of oxygen on account of the hand tightly wrapped around his neck. Damian now stood stoically at her side, a possessive arm around her shoulders.
He hadn’t left her side for one second since they’d returned. He even followed her to the bathroom for the first three days, which she finally had to put an end to. He would only agree if she left the door open. She couldn’t even fart in private!
Gah!
Stubborn vampire.
While he hadn’t left her side, he hadn’t touched her either. Not in the way she wanted, in the way she needed. She was ready to throw a temper tantrum like a five-year-old in a grocery store whose mother denies her that pretty rainbow-colored sucker in the checkout lane. Damian would never know what hit him.
The foolish vampire was unable to forgive himself, blaming himself for her abduction, but she knew this path had been predetermined long before either of them could influence it. She just wasn’t sure to what end. She’d told him all about her mother’s help during the abduction—her mother had remained strangely absent since her rescue—but for some reason she had left out the part about Geoffrey. She was afraid if she told him, she’d have to confess her act of betrayal in the worst way, for which she hadn’t yet forgiven herself.
“I believe I finally know what was injected into your bloodstream, but I would like one final test to confirm it,” Big D said, getting the phlebotomy kit ready.
Ugh. Another goddamned needle.
“What is it, Doc?” Damian demanded, his sinewy body coiled with tension.
Big D flicked his gaze nervously between Analise and Damian. Analise reached out, laying a soothing hand on his arm. “It’s okay, Dirk. I’d just rather know.” Damian grabbed her hand back, tucking it into her side. She promptly elbowed him in the stomach with the other, hoping that the daggers she fired with her eyes landed on their mark. He was being absolutely ridiculous.
“You were injected with the pregnancy enhancing hormone that Xavier’s minions developed.”
Well, yikes
. She hadn’t really seen that one coming. Damian stiffened beside her, his grip becoming painfully tight.
Her mind spun with possibilities. Clearly Xavier had planned to farm her body out, hoping to make grandbabies. He’d referenced a
family business
several times during their conversations. She’d just foolishly thought he was referring to herself and Kate—and Kate’s baby—and that was why he was so upset she’d bonded with Damian. Damian had told her how difficult it was to procreate with a mate, let alone without one, which was supposed to be impossible.
More puzzle pieces knitted their way together, but more questions plagued her as well.
Her mother knew.
Her mother knew all along what Xavier’s intent was. But
how
had she known? Could she somehow have been responsible for orchestrating this entire thing? It didn’t seem feasible, but since she was officially living in Narnia—a world where anything was possible—she couldn’t definitively say she hadn’t.