She then shifted to meet Daniel’s gaze once more. “You know what? You can eat shit and die for all I care.”
Daniel grinned. “I want to see you go through your death transition. I want to be the one pumping into you, just like I did Zoey.”
Daniel lifted his gaze to Lucian. In that moment Lucian’s life flashed before his eyes: his desperate childhood, escaping Daniel’s compound, enduring a rigorous retraining process with Gabriel that involved a thousand exercises to purge his rage, then later battling the results of Daniel’s criminal influence in his world.
And now Daniel had Claire.
Something greater than rage flew through him, something enhanced with his Ancestral power. In the same split second that he’d watched all the events of his life, Claire fell purposefully limp in Daniel’s arm, a signal for Lucian to attack.
He flew at Daniel’s head, both hands extended toward his face. The natural protective instinct caused Daniel to loosen his grip on Claire so that she dropped to the floor.
Lucian’s momentum carried Daniel across the cavern space and into the far wall with a terrible thud.
The blood-madness tremors took over his body as a rage, built of centuries, poured through his brain and stole his rational mind.
Daniel flung him away, but Lucian roared and launched again. Daniel looked surprised, and maybe a little pleased. He reached a hand toward Lucian and Ancestral power poured from that fist, striking at Lucian hard and breaking his attack so that the blow he struck Daniel slid off his cheek.
He caught Daniel around the neck and dragged him to the ground, but his father flipped Lucian onto his back and pinned him with his millennia-old abilities. He slapped Lucian several times in a row.
Lucian bucked, but filled that movement with his new Ancestral power. Suddenly Daniel flew into the air.
Lucian gained his feet and launched once more, meeting his father mid-flight. He grabbed him and called on his power, pulling it into him as he pinned Daniel’s arms to his sides.
You’ve learned some things, haven’t you?
Lucian heard Daniel’s voice in his mind, but he operated now on instinct and said nothing in response. He gave himself to the feeling of harnessing what he’d gained by putting on the double-chains.
Daniel drew back and punched him, a hard left to his nose. The force thrust Lucian into a spin so that he landed hard on his back on the floor.
Lucian!
Claire called to him.
He trembled now, but he didn’t care. He’d finish this with his father right now. He rose up, slower than before as Daniel drifted down toward him. Daniel’s cheek bled, and his left eye was swollen. Lucian had gotten in a couple of good hits.
He intended to get in a few more. Despite the tremors in his hands, he bolted toward his father.
Then he saw something glint.
“Lucian!” Claire shouted. “He has a blade.”
He felt the slice deep into his gut. He grunted and gasped for air. He couldn’t breathe and now he couldn’t see.
Daniel twisted the blade. “I made the mistake of trusting others to kill Adrien and I failed. Now that you’ve reached Ancestral status, you’re a danger to all that I’m building. You need to die, and the great thing is that because you share the blood-chains with Claire, she dies with you.”
Daniel pulled the blade out as once more Lucian landed on the floor. He saw Daniel, blade in his fist, smiling at him. He felt his intention: His father would come for him again, probably to sever his head.
The next moment he couldn’t see Daniel, but Claire was beside him, her hands on either side of his face.
She forced him to look at her, then sent her words piercing his skull.
Lucian, I’ve created a disguise, strong enough to hold Daniel off for a few more seconds. Which means you’ve got to fly us the hell out of this cavern. Straight up will do. Just do it now.
Tremors racked his body.
Daniel’s voice broke through the disguise. “You think you can hide from me, Lucian?”
How many times had he heard that in his childhood?
“Lucian! Now!”
Lucian let Claire’s orders reach through to his rational mind. The blood-madness had him trapped again, but despite the intense pain in his gut, he flew straight up. He heard Claire cry out in pain at the same time, though he had no idea why, but he had hold of her and he kept flying.
He focused as best he could on The Erotic Passage. He dropped straight into Rumy’s office, which set the alarms shrieking.
He heard Rumy say two things: “Put him in restraints,” and “Oh, shit, Claire’s been sliced deep.”
CHAPTER 12
Claire’s back burned.
Lucian.
Where was Lucian?
He had to be nearby and alive, because she wasn’t dead.
Something sharp pierced her arm first near her shoulder, a shot of some kind, then another needle into the vein inside her elbow.
Eve’s voice. “We’ve got him, Claire. He just needs some of your blood to get him through again. Focus on healing. Sleep now.”
Focus on healing.
Her back hurt and stung and burned.
Her mind grew dull, and she dropped off.
She awoke sometime later and felt a hand caressing her face. “Claire, I’m so sorry.”
She turned, but the turning caused a mountain of pain up and down her back. “What happened?”
“Daniel cut you deep but you’re healing fine.”
“We made it? We’re alive?”
“Yes, we’re alive. I have to take you to a safe place, though, and it’s going to hurt.”
She nodded. He gathered her up in his arms. Searing pain sliced through her. She started to cry.
Then she was flying and the pain sharpened so badly that she passed out.
She awoke again on a soft mattress, on her side. She heard sucking noises and felt pulls on her arm. Lucian. She smiled.
You’re feeding
.
Good.
The madness came back so feeding was necessary, but the serum I’m releasing will rebuild your supply.
I know.
Focus on healing. Try siphoning more of my power straight to your wound.
Okay.
She glanced around.
But where are we?
My home in Uruguay.
She turned her mind toward Lucian’s power. With what was left of her pain-and-drug-riddled thought process she funneled Lucian’s power. The sensation of a warm wave rolling down her back eased her, and she floated away once more.
When she woke up, she rolled onto her back and stretched. She tensed up, expecting pain to grip her all over again, but nothing happened. Working herself slowly to a sitting position, she reached around as far as she could and she felt as much of her back as she could.
Nothing. No pain. Nothing.
“Lucian?” She glanced around. So this was his South American home. Opposite the bed was the most beautiful modern mural composed of red, yellow, and blue crystals with splashes of green. She stared at it for a long time, marveling all over again at the world she’d entered.
Lucian appeared in the doorway, sipping a mug of coffee. He leaned against the polished stone wall. “Feeling better?”
“Yeah, and you’re not dead. How the hell did that happen? Your father, the sweet man that he is, gutted you.”
She glanced at his abdomen. The vampire wore the bottoms only to a pajama set and looked sexy as hell, but there wasn’t even a scar on him. “Wow.”
“Thank you.” His lips curved.
“I meant only that you should have a scar and don’t.” Her amusement bubbled.
“Ah, I see.” He moved into the room, smiling fully now, a nice look for him. “I’m glad you’re okay.”
She shook her head, arching her back once more, which made her suddenly aware of her bare breasts beneath the sheet so she let go of the provocative position. “I don’t hurt at all. I take it Daniel cut me pretty bad.”
“He could have killed you but didn’t. Instead, he flayed you open, one of his specialties.”
Claire had seen the thin scar that ran the entire length of Lucian’s spine. Only a repetitive injury in the exact same location could leave a scar on a vampire.
He sat down on the side of the bed. Without asking permission, she took the mug from him and sipped. He smiled again. “You’re not afraid of me, are you, not even a little?”
“No, never, Lucian. Not even with my ankles and wrists shackled.”
He shifted toward her and met her gaze. His gray eyes glimmered. He stroked the back of his finger down her arm but didn’t say anything. Not that he had to: The chains vibrated, letting her know what he felt.
Desire sparked, but she didn’t want to fall down that rabbit hole, not yet. She had some processing to do.
After taking another sip of his coffee, she handed the mug back, but he held up his hand.
“Is it to your taste?”
“Black is perfect.”
“I’ll get another mug for myself, then. Be right back.”
She watched him leave, enjoying the sight of his muscled back and tight butt as he moved. She wondered if she had more chores she could give him that would bring him in and out of the room, just like that, another hundred times or so. Watching could be fun.
She chuckled, but just as swiftly her amusement dimmed. She scooted back up to what turned out to be a leather-upholstered headboard, then bunched her pillows up behind her.
She drew the sheet up and settled in to think about the trip to the River of Lights. She could have started at the end of the trek, but for just a moment she contemplated the beginning and all those extraordinary sculptures, the music, the moving lights.
For some reason, her mind got stuck there and she couldn’t let go, but she wasn’t sure why.
When Lucian returned, however, her mind connected the dots. It was because of him, because she’d once thought of him only as a vampire and the world he lived in as monstrous. But that ride, including the level of organization, the Tunnel of Love nature of the experience, the absolute beauty, spoke of something she could relate to implicitly as a human.
Which meant that her views had been so wrong about Lucian’s world. Initially, because of Daniel, she’d landed in the filth-end of a culture that had the same spectrum as her human world, ranging from scum to saints, and she’d judged his world by her extremely limited experience.
“You look so serious, Claire. What’s going on?”
She shook her head and sipped once more. She felt absurdly vulnerable right now and took comfort in hiding behind the small black mug with a four-diamond pattern on the side.
“Just thinking about last night. It was last night, right? Or have I been out longer than that?”
“Just last night.”
“And we’re both healed.”
“Welcome to my world.” He fingered the double-chain at his neck.
He sat on his side of the bed this time, angled away from her slightly. She turned in his direction, finally allowing her thoughts to travel farther, to leave the ride itself and move into the separate, hidden cavern, what had happened there, what she’d learned.
“My friend is dead.”
He didn’t look at her. This time he sipped his coffee. Maybe they both needed to hide a little. So much had happened, so much grief.
Her throat constricted, but she didn’t want to cry, not now, not yet.
“I’m sorry about Zoey.”
“And I’m sorry about Marius.” She drew a deep breath. She’d been grieving Zoey’s absence from her life for two years, but her death would change things. The loss of all hope was a terrible thing.
“Hey.”
She shifted her gaze to Lucian.
“Would you like to go home now?”
Claire at first didn’t understand what he was saying to her. She shook her head. “Sorry?”
He looked away from her and licked his lips. “Your journey is over, isn’t it? Daniel finished things with you last night when he told you about your friend. You have closure now.”
But even as he spoke these words, Claire sensed a small ripple of his doubt vibrate through the chains. “What is it, Lucian? What are you not saying?”
He shot his gaze back to her. “You could feel that?”
She chuckled and touched the chain at her throat. “Of course. What’s going on?”
He looked away again. Glancing upward, his brow creased once more, he said, “I don’t know. I guess I’m questioning what Daniel said about Zoey. I don’t trust him on any level, especially not to tell you the truth.”
“You think she’s alive?”
He shrugged and shook his head. “I don’t know. Probably not. Forget I said anything. What would Daniel have to gain to tell you that Zoey died? Nothing. Sorry, this is just me never trusting my father. I want you to have closure.”
“Closure.” The word had no meaning—or maybe it was more apt than she wanted to admit: The door had closed, so it was, therefore, “closure.” She wished she could reach for a small piece of hope through Lucian’s doubt about his father’s statements, but Lucian was right: Daniel would have nothing to gain by killing off her hopes.