Scorned (10 page)

“
Be silent, whore!"

Vivian started to cry, not because of her
unimaginable pain, but because her love had called her a whore.

As I watched, blood began to trail from her
ears and nose. Alarm ran through me. Could he not see what he was
doing? I looked up at Roman’s face and saw the disgust, cruelty,
and hatred that I had seen a shadow of earlier that evening when I
mentioned Pierce. He knew what he was doing.

“
You’re killing her!” I shouted. “You’re
killing her!”

But it wasn’t me, it was Lucretious. The
room disappeared and I looked around. I was alone, but I needed to
see him. “Where are you?” I called. “Show yourself. Please.”

And he was there, standing in front of me in
nothing but his black jeans. “Why? Does this make it easier to
bear?”

I shook my head and looked into his eyes.
“Show me the rest.” I saw the muscle in his jaw work as he
deliberated, then nodded. The room came back in a rush.

Vivian was bleeding from her ears and her
nose and I could see that blood was starting to trickle from her
tear ducts as well. I looked at Roman. Surely all that blood was a
temptation for a vampire. But there was nothing but anger and
hatred in his handsome face. His features were twisted with it. His
eyes had turned almost black.

I looked back at Vivian. Her body jerked
unnaturally and she slumped to the floor. Blood began to pour from
her eyes, ears and nose and I thought I could see a slight swelling
in her head. He’d killed her.

I pressed the heels of my hands to my eyes
and tried not to cry. He wanted me because I reminded him of
Vivian, but how? Surely there was no connection between us. He’d
killed her for...what? Cheating?

“
You really don’t know?” Lucretious’
hatred seemed to ebb and a soft regret coated his next words.
“Then, I am sorry for what I must do.”

“
What happened?” I asked, ignoring his
apology, because I didn’t want to like him. “Why did he do
it?”

“
Because she fell in love with me. She no
longer loved him as a woman loves a man, as you don’t love him, and
he could no longer use her the way he wanted.”

“
Use her for what?”

“
We’re taking over, LeKrista. Living
humans will no longer rule the world. We will, and very soon. It’s
happening now, even as we speak. Soon, those who stalk the night
for a mere taste of blood will never again have to live in hiding.
It will be your kind that must hide in the night.” He laughed then,
a villainous laugh.

“
What does that have to do with me?” I
asked.

“
With you, his power will be great and he
can be the ruler of all. With you he will take over the
world.”

I shook my head. “But I don’t love him.”

“
It doesn’t matter. Do you really think
you stand a chance against a vampire as old as he?”

“
I can run. Hide. You don’t have to kill
me.”

Lucretious laughed and began to fade. “Oh,
little human. You are funny.”

“
If you come after me,” I said, mustering
all of the anger and hatred I could, “I will kill you.”

Even as he faded, I felt him smile. “You
sound just like Vivian. And I welcome the true death.”

I woke with my two “ladies maids” attending
me. Adelina and Calliope sat at the head of the sofa where I was
carefully laid out with my skirts tucked around my ankles for
modesty’s sake. Roman came through the door then anyway,
apologizing out the ass. He had a pretty girl with him and, at
first I thought she was a vampire. Her skin was so pale that her
burgundy red hair stood in stark contrast. Then I saw her pink eyes
and I knew she wasn’t a vampire but an albino.

“LeKrista, I am sorry.”

“For what?” I asked, my voice a little
rough.

“I did not want to harm you.”

“Harm me? You mean by knocking me out?” When
he nodded there was so much guilt in his eyes. “Are there any
lingering effects I should know about?”

“There do not seem to be any, no.”

I shrugged and tried to swing my legs over
the edge of the sofa, but they got all tangled in the fabrics and I
couldn’t get them apart. I tugged and yanked with my legs so much
that Adelina and Calliope came over to help me. A loud
riiip
made me stop. Everyone froze for a moment. I felt Roman’s shock,
then amusement and the albino girl giggled. Adelina and Calliope
finished unwrapping my ankles and I swung my feet to the floor,
finally free.

“My bad,” I said, daring a look at Roman. He
was smiling, unshed mirth swimming in his eyes, but he was
concerned too.

“Adelina and Calliope will take you upstairs
to change back into your clothes. Tate, please come with me.” Roman
ushered the albino girl through the main door as Adelina and
Calliope dipped into small curtsies before helping me to my feet
and leading me from the room through a door hidden in the
wallpaper.

The door opened into the long hall. A
stained-glass window was to my right at the end with the stairs to
the left. As I stood there, appreciating the craftsmanship that
went into making something so grand, the window exploded raining
multi-colored shards of glass down on top of us. The three of us
screamed as one and I threw up my arms to shield my face.

The roar of a great beast filled the hall
and I turned to see where it had come from. It didn’t sound like
the jaguar and no man could have made a sound like that, but the
only thing in the hall was Lucretious.

“If I cannot get to you through her mind and
body, then I will simply kill her body.” His voice came as a low,
guttural growl punctuated by that accent that was so completely
Roman’s. He began stalking towards me and the girls and I froze.
There was nothing I could do to stop him. I wasn’t strong enough, I
wasn’t fast enough, and I wasn’t smart enough to out think a
millennial vampire.

“You will do no such thing.” Roman appeared
from the hidden door we’d just come through and put himself between
the three of us and the man that would kill me.

“How touching. You care for this girl. I’m
sure your other women are overjoyed to know this.”

“We would protect that which the master
deems important,” Calliope said. They didn’t like me, but they
would protect me. Honorable.

“What abilities has the master given you to
protect her with?”

Calliope didn’t have an answer for this and
I realized she didn’t have any abilities, because she and Adelina
weren’t vampires. They would die trying to protect me for ‘the
master’ even though they cared nothing for me.

“Calliope, Adelina, take LeKrista to your
room and do not come out until I tell you.”

“Very well. I will fight you, old man. And
then, when I have satisfied myself with your death and blood, I
will go after LeKrista. I will take all of your women for my own
and drink them dry.”

That vicious roar sounded again and I
scrambled to my feet with Adelina and Calliope following suit.

“Silence beast!” Roman roared right back and
he flung his hand, sending the half naked, roaring Lucretious back
through the shattered window. Perdita appeared in the hall from the
banquet room as Adelina and Calliope grabbed me by the arms and
pulled me toward the stairs.

“We must go,” Adelina said, never taking her
eyes off the woman vampire. “Now. Hurry.”

They pulled me to my feet and Perdita
lunged. I screamed, throwing up my arms as if this would save me,
but there was no impact. I expected my arms to be bent and broken
at unnatural angles and my head to be crushed. I expected a lot of
pain to come my way, but there wasn’t any. When I finally opened my
eyes and looked there was a blur of black and blue moving through
the hall. Roman had saved me again.

“Come on,” Adelina whispered. “While she’s
busy.”

When we got into the bedroom they weren’t
satisfied to simply close and lock the door. They pushed me into
the closet and locked that door as well.

Adelina made us sit against the back wall of
the closet and left to turn out the lights. I didn’t see her when
she came back, but I felt the air shift and swirl around her as she
sat on the other side of me so I was sandwiched between them.

“Is turning out the lights really going to
help?” I asked unbelieving.

“No,” Adelina confirmed, “but it can’t
hurt.”

That was true, and if the bad guy was going
to eat me I would rather not have to see it coming.

“No more talking,” Adelina demanded and we
sat in silence.

I heard the fight downstairs, people being
thrown through walls and slammed into floors. I felt every
vibration through the rafters and beams of the old house and
wondered if we would fall through the floor. That alone would take
care of me. I wouldn’t have to wait for that crazy thing to come
get me, because I’d be dead as soon as I hit the ground.

Hopefully. I didn’t want to be stuck in a
wheelchair for the rest of my life. But I didn’t want to die a
virgin either.

Decisions, decisions.

The girls shifted on either side of me and
stiffened. “What?” I whispered as quietly as I knew how. A hand
clapped over my mouth and held for only a second.

Point taken.

Through the rumbling and the banging from
downstairs, I heard something that sounded like a muffled cry from
the other side of the wall behind me. I thumped Adelina with my
elbow.

Are there other women in this house?

“You did not think that two of us were
enough to slake his hunger for all time, did you?” she asked
condemningly.

“No, I guess not, but I hadn’t really
thought about it either.” My tone was more harsh than I wanted.

“Silence, please. We will be heard. They are
vampires, remember?”

How could I forget with the noises rising
from below? A good hard tremor shook the entire house. The shoe
tower threw most of its occupants to the floor. A few stiletto
heels gouged at my arms and one caught me in the knee through the
thick skirts of the dress. It still hurt, even with the
padding.

As things began to settle, I heard the latch
on the door rattle and I stopped breathing.

Please let it be Roman. Please let it be
Roman. Please let it be Roman.

I held my breath as the door swung open. Air
swept into the room, cool against my exposed skin, and I drank it
in. There was no way to tell who it was with the lights out, but I
knew it wasn’t Roman. He would have given me some kind of sign to
know I was safe.

“I know you’re in there,” a sultry, female
voice with an Italian accent crooned. “Not only can I smell you and
your fear, but I can see you. I can feel your hearts beating so
fast...” Her voice dropped away, but the last tones held a hunger
so deep and infinite that I knew we were doomed. “I was promised a
meal,” she continued, “for the inconvenience of coming here to meet
you, so I think that you will just have to do.”

I didn’t say anything. I didn’t know what to
say. What are the right words when trying to reason with a vampire?
So, I kept quiet. I’d lost the need to breathe somehow.

I couldn’t see the vampire in the darkness,
couldn’t see her advancing into the room, but I could feel her. Her
presence pressed into the room with the weight of a freight
train.

“I can feel your fear, little human. I can
taste it on my tongue. It fills my mouth and makes it water.”
Perdita took a deep breath as if trying to pull me in through her
nostrils, and then she fell quiet. She stalked slowly forward and I
tried to press myself into the wall and disappear.

She chuckled, low and seductive. “I am so
hungry.”

I could hear the hunger in her voice and
there was no doubt she was going to kill me.

Pierce will never know what happened to
me.

“I don’t suppose it would help to know that
this wasn’t my idea?” I decided to try my hand at reasoning, but it
had never been my strong suit.

The vampire laughed, a rich, tinkling sound
that filled the room to a volume and capacity of which it had no
business. Her laughter shouldn’t have been cool and sweet like ice
cream. It shouldn’t have been thick and enticing like honey. It
shouldn’t have made me want to go to her and wrap myself in its
velvety softness, but it did all of those things. The urge to go to
her was so strong I actually stood to my feet. Only Adelina and
Calliope’s grip on my ankles kept me from turning myself over.

Within the next few seconds, two things
happened. First, the lights in the room flared, momentarily
blinding me, giving Perdita ample time to close the space between
us and wrap her arms around me like a vice. Her arms cut into my
ribs to the point that the last thing I expected to hear before I
died was the snap of broken bones. I would have bruises on top of
my bruises from the car accident if I lived. There was no getting
away.

Second, I screamed. I didn’t scream from
fear or pain or the hopelessness of my situation. There was only
one logical thing for me to do and that was to scream for help and
only one word left my lips.

“Roman!”

The vampire hissed in my face, her breath
warm and stale. She tightened her arms around me cutting off my air
supply and the scream. “I really wish you hadn’t done that.” Her
fangs were less than an inch from my face, her eyes a blazing blue.
I couldn’t help but look into them. Our noses almost touched, and
there was nowhere else to look.

“Perdita mia.” Roman’s voice came like a
soothing wind.

“Stay out of this, Centurion.”

“Perdita, my dear, you know I cannot let you
have her. She is mine.”

“She is no such thing and you know it.”

“I have claimed her as my own, given her my
protection.”

“Like you gave to Vivian?”