Smart men.
She rolled her shoulders, trying to work out the tension, and attempted to control her breathing. She could very easily hyperventilate here and that would be completely embarrassing. Still, the Princess wanted her to talk about something she’d tried desperately to put out of her mind.
Amy Jo shrugged, her gaze downcast. “I don’t know that I’ll be able to tell you much.”
“Anything you can tell us will be more than we know now,” Bella urged.
Well, that sounded rational enough. But her heart continued to flutter like a trapped bird and her throat dried to the consistency of the Sahara.
“Alright, but I’m not completely sure what I heard.”
Which was somewhat of a lie. There were parts of that night she would never forget and parts she would never remember.
“I know I heard them say something about a meeting.” As she was lying on the ground, forgotten for the moment after a second rape. She had focused on their voices, imprinting them into her brain so she could identify the men later. “They laughed about it, about how they could wipe out all the ‘fucking royalty’ —their words, not mine—at one time.”
Bella’s gaze never wavered. “Did they say where this was going to happen?”
“One of them said they were leaving for New Orleans in the morning, to scout.”
“Did they talk about what they were planning?”
She shook her head. “No. At least, I don’t remember that they said anything about that.”
Bella slid her hand over Amy Jo’s, resting on her knee, then squeezed lightly. And didn’t let go. “Do you know how many men were there?”
Amy Jo’s heart tripped like someone had flicked a switch, making it hard for her to breath. “I know…there were four men but there might have been fifth who didn’t…”
Sweat broke out in a fine sheen over her entire body. Bella’s hand squeezed her knee and she focused on that.
“Do you know if the men mentioned the word ‘congress’?”
She shook her head, her hands already starting to tremble. “No. I only remember them saying your name, Princess, and, well, yours.” She pointed at Steven, whose expression hardened like quick-drying cement and she quickly looked away. “I don’t remember what they said about you, or even if they were talking about you. Just that they said the name Steven.”
Bella squeezed her knee again. “And you didn’t hear what they wanted Steven to do for them?”
She shook her head, more to dislodge memories than as an answer. “No, nothing like that. They didn’t speak English all the time. I think they must have been speaking Italian or Arabic. Some foreign language.”
Bella nodded. “It probably was. Can you remember any of those words?”
“Only a few. They used
mal
a lot. I know that means bad. And
bene
, and that means good. But some of the others, I didn’t memorize. I was listening more for what their voices sounded like.”
“So you could recognize them later.” Pretty Boy spoke, not bothering to make his words a question. She looked up to find an expression almost like approval on his face.
Her spine straightened just the tiniest bit. “Yeah, it was…difficult.” She shook her head again, blinking away the ugly memory that just popped into her head. “But I’m good at blocking out distractions.” That was a good word. Distraction.
“Can you tell me what the men looked like?”
No. Absolutely not.
“I don’t know.”
That stopped Bella for a few seconds. “Were you blindfolded?”
Amy Jo shook her head. “I just don’t know what they look like. I…blocked it out.”
Bella’s eyes narrowed. “But I’m sure you remember something. Just generally. Dark hair, light hair, tall, short—”
“Arabella.” Diego cut her off. “Stop.”
The world had started to spin and darkness tinged Amy Jo’s vision on the edges. Snippets of sound were beginning to creep out of her subconscious, things she’d ruthlessly suppressed after that night.
Images, like subliminal photos in advertisements, were there one second and gone the next. Hands, hair, legs. None belonged to any man in particular, but they were all intertwined.
Her chest ached, like someone had grabbed her lungs in a vise and tightened. She started to hyperventilate. And then she felt it, that sense that her body was no longer her own. What she imagined it must feel like to know you have a cancer that was eating you alive from the inside.
It started like goose bumps under the skin, but it went deeper, into her very cells. She moaned, unable to speak, and her eyes closed, blocking out everything but the need to control her body.
Vaguely, she heard yelling. She felt Bella’s hand wrap even more tightly around her knee and she tried to hold on. She cried out with loss when she couldn’t.
Then she could only think about fighting off the alien that wanted to take over her body.
Even though she knew fighting didn’t help. It only made the process that much more difficult. She’d learned that over the past three months, but it was so hard to let go of herself. This wasn’t her, this animal. She couldn’t concede.
The others continued to yell at each other. Something about a bullet.
Jesus God, were they going to shoot her?
The little piece of her brain that was still thinking rationally said, “Maybe that would be better than this agony.”
Just before the fur could dissolve her skin into one ungodly itch, she felt a pinch on her arm then an almost unbearable coldness crept through her veins.
Now this, she decided, was agony. Then everything went black.
* * *
Amy Jo passed out like someone flipped a switch in her head. Diego caught her before she slid off the bed.
“Well, shit.” Bella released a shaky breath and tossed the used hypodermic needle into the trash. “This is gonna be a problem. We can’t give her a Bullet every time this happens. It could kill her.”
Diego lifted the woman against his chest, feeling the slow, steady cadence of her breathing. The Bullet—the drug the
versipelli
had developed to stop their change—had knocked her out. Unconscious, her features were almost plain—pug nose, full cheeks, rosebud lips. His gaze snagged on the freckles scattered across her nose. There weren’t many of them. He could probably count them if he tried. He wanted to lick them.
No way in hell.
“Diego, I think you can put her down now.”
He found Bella watching him with a carefully blank expression.
He laid Amy Jo on the bed and stepped away until he felt the wall against his spine, telling himself with every backward step that he did
not
want to stay by her side.
“What the hell just happened?” Steven asked.
Bella sighed and sank onto the other bed, her gaze still on Amy Jo. “Some biters have more of a problem controlling their change than others. Sometimes stress will trigger it, even if it’s not a full moon. They can be damn unpredictable.”
“And that’s going to be a problem.” Diego moved across the room, to let his feet move and get his brain in working order.
Bullshit. You just want to put more space between you and the girl.
He wanted to tell himself to shut up. Instead, he said, “Whatever happened to her, whenever she thinks about it, it could trigger her change.
“
Congress
is in three days,” Steven said. “We need to find out what she knows fast. How do we do that?”
Diego looked at Bella and found her staring back.
“Andrea,” Bella said.
“One of the
streghe
.” Diego sighed and sat on the chair on the far side of the room, running his fingers through the hair Amy Jo seemed to think was girlish.
His gaze kept straying to the bed. His brain wouldn’t stop conjuring images of what those animals had done to her. He knew firsthand the depths to which some men fell.
“Yeah,” Bella said. “Andrea can read her mind without having to put her through more trauma.”
“Where is she now?” Steven asked.
“New Orleans, believe it or not,” Bella said. “Damn, we’re going to have to rent a charter. We can’t risk taking Amy Jo on a commercial flight. And it’s going to have to be someone we know, someone who’s not going to ask questions.”
Steven snorted. “Where the hell are we going to find someone like that one short notice?”
Diego reached for his cell phone. “I know a guy. Flies out of Allentown but I’ll have him pick us up at Reading. He owes me one.”
Hell, Marco owed him more than one and Diego was about to collect on all of them.
* * *
“Long time, no see, Brother. Finally found something the bastard’s good for, huh?”
Sitting with Amy Jo—still out cold and beginning to worry her—in the back seat of the windowless rented van, Bella heard the man speaking to Diego but couldn’t see him.
It’d been a short trip from the hotel to Reading Regional Airport. Whoever Diego had called had already been in Reading, so they didn’t have to wait for him to fly in from Allentown.
And whoever he was, he didn’t sound friendly.
“
Vaffanculo
,” Steven muttered under his breath. “Bella, come see this.”
Scooting forward into the next row of seats, she peered out the front window.
And gaped at a man who looked so much like Diego it was scary.
“Holy twin brother, Batman.”
“Who the hell is that?” Steven whispered the words in her ear, causing awareness to trickle down her spine.
Even with everything else going on, she wanted him. Damn it, she didn’t have time for that now.
Shaking her head, she whispered back, “I have no idea.”
After Diego had made his phone call, he’d gone to the nearest agency and rented the van. The
Mal
probably had a trace on Steven’s credit cards so he wouldn’t be able to use them. Same for hers. Nobody was looking for Diego. At least not yet.
The man who could be Diego’s short-haired twin stood in front of a hanger containing a small plane.
“I see you haven’t lost that chip on your shoulder, Marco. When are you going to stop blaming the world for your problems?”
The guy shrugged. “As soon as you admit that those of us without completely pure blood are not
unworthy
of your attention.”
For a second, Bella thought Diego might actually hit the guy. Even though she couldn’t see Diego’s face, she saw his hands curl into fists at his sides and his back straightened until she thought he might actually break. But after a brief second, his hands loosened.
“As I told you over the phone,” Diego continued, his voice carefully neutral, “I need you to transport myself and three others to New Orleans. No questions asked.”
The man Diego called Marco grimaced in disgust and ushered Diego into the hanger with the rag he’d been using to wipe his hands. “Your wish is my command. You’re lucky the plane’s fueled and ready to go. Another half hour and I would’ve been out of here. I’m sure whatever business the mighty legit heir has, it must be important.”
Diego nodded, as if the other man had spoken the truth and not just been trying to get a rise out of him. “It is and if you’d step off your high horse for a few seconds, I just might tell you.”
Marco didn’t answer and Bella examined his features. The more she looked, the more differences she noted. She could see now that Marco was younger than Diego. Where Diego was dense muscle, Marco was a tiny bit shorter and a few pounds leaner. His hair was a half shade lighter than Diego’s dark chestnut and it was straight where Diego’s had a slight wave.
Both men, however, were drop-dead gorgeous.
“I think you should probably shut your mouth before it completely unhinges, Bella.”
She shot Steven a scowl for his wry dig but made sure she closed her mouth as Diego and Marco disappeared into the hanger.
Steven had the door open as he said, “I’m going to find out what’s happening.”
As the door closed, Bella heard a muted groan from the backseat.
“Jesus H. Christmas,” Amy Jo groaned. “What truck hit me this time?”
Bella turned to find Amy Jo sitting up in the back seat, rubbing her head with her eyes closed tight.
“Don’t move around so much.” Bella turned so she could address Amy Jo. “It’s going to take a few hours for the Bullet to wear off.”
Amy Jo opened one slitted eye. “Well, I certainly feel like you shot me but I don’t think I’m bleeding anywhere.”
Reaching over the seat, Bella pressed her hand against Amy Jo’s forehead. “Your temperature’s coming down. That’s good.”
“What the hell did you give me?”
Placing her hands on Amy Jo’s cheeks, she turned the woman’s head to check her eyes. No sign of striation. That was good. “We call it the Bullet. It’s a combination of drugs that includes silver nitrate. The silver keeps your body from changing while the other drugs keep you from dying from the silver.”
Amy Jo’s mouth fell open. “And it works?”
Bella nodded. “It works. But it’s hard on the body. Just like any drug, you can O.D. on it.”
“But it stops the change?”
The hope in the woman’s voice made Bella sigh. “Yes, it stops the change, but it’s not a cure. Use too much and your body starts to become accustomed to it and you need higher doses. And higher doses will kill you.”
That dulled the hope in Amy Jo’s eyes, but not by much. “How often can you use it?”
“Depends on the individual. I’ve known some who used it three days a month for nine months to get through college. Some people can only use it once or twice a year because they have severe reactions to the silver. Biters can usually use it more often because they don’t have the hereditary gene.”
Amy Jo paused, blue eyes searching. “Have you used it?”
“Once.” Bella couldn’t hold her gaze and turned to move into the middle row of seats, staring out the front window. “I nearly died. Spent a month in the hospital in a coma.”
“My gosh, your family must have been worried sick.”
“My brother thought I’d tried to commit suicide. Steven thought I did it for attention.”
Amy Jo’s hand clasped her shoulder. “Did you?”