Authors: Melody Johnson
Rene nodded. “Yes, it is. I can smell him and the fry from his restaurant. If Jeremy’s missing along with all the other night bloods who lived here, like Walker claims, it’s no surprise his uncle came looking for him. He probably—”
I glanced at Rene. One look at my expression and Rene shut up.
Not far from there, only three and a half miles into the woods and down a steep decline, was a grove. The trees thinned and a shallow creek sliced the rolling hill in half. The water was shallow, mid-thigh at its deepest, and slow-running. If our plan worked, if Nathan followed my blood to the grove, Dominic, Bex, and Jillian would have higher ground advantage, better coverage, and space to maneuver.
Nathan finished what was left of his victim and stood at his full height. I held my breath. Knowing Nathan was this creature and experiencing it in the heat of an attack was somehow different at this impartial view. He was still horrifying, but he was like a lion, having ripped through a gazelle from instinct and hunger and the might to survive. He was as majestic as he was frightening. And he was my brother.
My throat burned with tears.
Nathan lifted his pointy-tipped nostrils and pulled long drafts of air into his lungs. His chest expanded, and after the first few breaths, a low growl rattled from his chest. I knew that insect-like rattle very well from my many attacks, encounters, and intimate interactions with vampires. He smelled something he liked and was going to hunt it.
With a grace that belied the weight and raw power of his frame, Nathan turned on his haunches and dashed into the woods toward the beginning of my blood trail and down the winding path that led to the grove.
I turned my lips into Rene’s ear. “I think he’s taking the bait.”
Rene nodded, his eyes trained on the trembling leaves and rustling underbrush in Nathan’s wake.
I fell silent, staring at the mess that was once a human being, a person with family and friends and a restaurant to run, who entrusted Walker with the safety of his nephew and had died worrying about him. Inexplicably, perhaps because he was my brother and none of this was entirely his doing—Jillian could rot for eternity for transforming him—I couldn’t help but hope that despite the murders and wreckage and lives he’d destroyed, that he could still survive.
Staring at Buck McFerson’s remains, however, I had my doubts that anyone—even my justice-seeking younger brother—could come back from this hell. And that made me want to curl in a ball and cry.
Instead, I turned back to Rene. “We should probably double back again to the grove. He’s going to reach the stream soon, and we need to arrive at the clearing when he does.”
Rene glanced at me and a small smirk pulled at his lips. “Nope. We’re staying right here.”
I frowned. “Why would we stay here? Bex needs you back there, and Dominic might need me.”
“I’ve got my orders.”
“Whose orders?” I snapped.
“Lysander,” he said, and as I was becoming accustomed, Rene’s grin widened when he delivered the news, like he’d been waiting in relish to divulge his little secret.
“What are you talking about?” I hissed. “Dominic made the plan with me, and the plan is to return to the grove and help them.”
Rene shook his head. “That’s the plan Lysander told you because he knew you’d never willingly agree to stay out of it, but if the creature took the bait, which he did, than the real plan was for you to stay here, out of harm’s way.”
“You’re damn right I wouldn’t have agreed to stay out of it. That creature, as you refer to him, is my
brother
, and I—”
Rene launched himself at me in a full body tackle, knocking me out of the tree, and we were suddenly airborne.
That was a bit of an overreaction
, I thought, and then I saw Nathan, his jaws snapping at the tree branch I’d just been standing on a moment before.
Nathan hadn’t followed my blood to the grove. He’d followed me here.
“Shit,” I said, not realizing I’d even spoken until the word exploded from my lips.
Nathan spat the bark from his mouth and met my gaze. For one trembling throb of a moment, I thought I saw a glimmer of recognition, of thought behind the instinct. I thought I saw a choice to either pursue and kill or retreat, and the choice to retreat had merit.
Rene hit the ground running. I blinked, jostled from the impact, and Nathan let loose a shrieking roar that shriveled my bones. He jumped out of the tree, straight for us.
“He’s coming after us,” I warned.
Rene tightened his grip on me. He didn’t turn to look, and he didn’t stop running. Although a much younger vampire than Dominic, Bex, and Jillian, he could still move faster than my brain’s synapses could fire, but with Dominic’s added blood coursing through my body and enhancing my senses, even at this speed, my vision wasn’t a complete blur. I could see the trees that Rene was dodging and the logs he was jumping over. I could feel his muscles straining, bunching, and pushing us as fast as possible through the debris and underbrush to beat Nathan to the grove.
But Nathan was faster.
“He’s gaining on us,” I hissed.
“I don’t want to lose him,” Rene said.
I watched Nathan over Rene’s shoulder, pounding through trees instead of dodging around them. “You’re not at risk of losing him.”
“We don’t have that far to go,” Rene said. “We’ll make it.”
Nathan was close enough that I could see white foam gathering in the corners of his craggy lips. He was close enough that if I wasn’t careful, he could eat my outstretched hand.
I kept my hands tucked safely around Rene’s neck, but as if reading my mind, Nathan lunged forward, his jaws snapping. I jerked back instinctively and screamed.
Rene stumbled. My heart lurched as I fell backward in his arms. He rolled, trying to take the brunt of our fall, but we hit the ground hard on my hip. My vision blurred as a blaze of instant, radiating pain shot through my leg. I felt Rene bounce to his feet and lunge away from Nathan, evading the snaps of his teeth. I heard the clack of his jaws catching air and the rumbling rattle of his frustrated growl.
“Cassidy, snap out of it,” Rene said. “Are you all right?”
My vision was starting to focus, but I didn’t know which was worse: blind pain or the nightmare that was my brother, snapping at our heels. Literally.
“Cassidy?” Rene shook me as he ran, still whirling around Nathan’s lunges, bouncing off tree trunks, and flipping over boulders and logs.
“My hip,” I ground out. I took a deep breath against the rising nausea and the double fright of Rene’s crazy acrobatics and Nathan’s ferocity. “I’m fine.”
“We’re here. Take hold of my shoulders and hang on tight,” Rene warned. I felt his arms squeeze more securely, nearly painfully, across my back.
I locked my arms around Rene’s shoulders, and true to his word, the moment I held on tight, the woods dipped into a sharp decline toward the grove. Rene launched from the ground, from one step to the next into a flying leap, like Dominic could leap, soaring over the gorge and toward the meandering stream below. I tried not to look down, but my curiosity and bubble of burdening questions broke through my healthy fear, as usual. The wind from his flight whipped my hair in a wild cyclone around my head. I looked down through the whirling locks. If Nathan didn’t catch us, tear us to shreds, and eat our organs, the fall from this height would kill us just as easily.
I tightened my grip on Rene’s neck.
I looked up, daring to hope that Nathan couldn’t fly. He was so heavy and muscled and monstrous that it seemed impossible that he could soar through the air like the rest of the vampires, but sure enough, just as Rene had launched from the crest of the grove, Nathan followed suit. He jumped after us, snapping and snarling.
“Rene, he—”
“He can’t fly,” Rene spat. “He can jump really far, but it wouldn’t be fair if he could fly, too.”
“Whether you call it flying or one really far jump, it doesn’t matter. He’s coming.”
“It’s not like I can soar through the air any faster.”
Nathan was inches away. I gagged on the putrid smell of his rotting breath. “We need to do something! He—”
A glowing, black and blue blur collided into Nathan midair, knocking him off his trajectory and pummeling him down the thirty feet to the grove below.
Dominic.
I held my breath as they crashed. Their bodies dug a long crevice into the earth. Dirt and leaves uprooted and sprayed in an arch over them, and then, as unexpectedly as he’d appeared, Dominic’s blur vanished into the surrounding trees and shadows.
Rene caught hold of a tree branch and pulled us into its vegetation. A few smaller branches snapped across my cheeks and snagged my hair as he yanked me inside. We collapsed against its trunk. His arms, still tight around my body and holding me sturdy against him, were shaking.
I pulled back to see his face. “Rene?”
“We must stay here, Lysander’s orders,” he said. His voice was steady and calm, not winded in the least, unlike my own ragged breathing, but then, Rene didn’t need to breathe to live. Something wasn’t quite right, however, no matter his calm countenance. His hands holding me were still trembling.
“What’s wrong? Are you—”
The tree shook, like the violent sway of an earthquake inside a high rise. Rene and I tightened our grip on each other and the tree. As my hand curled into his back, fisting his shirt in my hand, I felt something wet and tacky coat my palm. Rene stiffened against me.
Nathan’s soul-quaking roar echoed from below.
“He’s certainly not taking any of this well,” Rene commented dryly, but I could hear the strain in his voice.
“He got you,” I said. I lifted my hand to see, and sure enough, my palm was gloved in Rene’s blood.
“I’ll heal. It just takes a moment longer than you’re probably accustomed to with Lysander.”
“How badly are you—”
The tree jarred again, this time with the force of being completely uprooted, and I was dislodged from Rene. The hot friction of Rene’s grip tore at my skin as he attempted to keep me in the tree, but he was too late. I was wrenched from his embrace—my hands and forearms slick from his blood—and falling.
I screamed, as loud as I’d ever screamed in my entire life. “Dominic!”
Something pounded into my left side with the force of a Mack truck. Another something hit me from above with the same force, spinning me around in a 180. The three of us crash-landed, my body cushioned from the hit by their bodies.
The impact knocked the wind out of me despite their cushion. I gasped ineffectively, struggling to breathe. Rene was under me, lying flat on his back, unmoving. Dominic was in front of me, having already knocked Rene and me behind him with a swipe of his arm. I sat up and peeked over his shoulder.
Nathan stood in front of us, his sharp, crazed, black-eyed stare honed on me.
“What’s the plan? Where’s Bex with Jillian?” I whispered from behind Dominic, into his ear. “This might be a good time for her to start draining him.”
“Timing is key. He was supposed to follow your blood trail further down the grove.”
“He didn’t, so Rene and I had to improvise,” I hissed.
“Yes, and now you and I must improvise, as well,” Dominic said. “Can you still feel Jillian inside of you?”
“No, you severed our connection, remember?” I blinked, wanting to stare daggers into Dominic, but I didn’t dare take my eyes from Nathan. Maybe he wouldn’t attack if we remained quiet and unmoving.
“Yes, I severed her connection to you,” Dominic said patiently, “but not your connection to her. She has ingested blood that you swallowed. You should be able to find and control her.”
I shook my head. “No, she’s gone from me.” And then what he really said suddenly clicked. “She ingested blood I swallowed.”
“Yes,” Dominic said. “I just said that.”
“But I swallowed
your
blood. You should be able to feel her. You did last time.”
“Yes, I did. Through you.” Dominic’s eyes narrowed on me. “Cassidy DiRocco, look into my eyes.”
I felt his connection instantly, and my gaze tore away from Nathan’s against my will to meet Dominic’s gaze.
Damn it.
“Dominic, don’t—”
Nathan roared. He swiped out with his talons, but with my mind entranced by Dominic, my body was pliant and defenseless—not that there was much defense against Nathan anyway—but I watched, helpless, as Dominic was knocked aside into an adjacent tree.
Rene was a sudden blur, out from under me and on Nathan. He tossed his head, swatting at Rene like a bee as Rene struck and zipped away in a brilliant attack and retreat maneuver. He wasn’t inflicting much physical damage but was distraction enough that Nathan forgot Dominic.
“Merge a connection with Jillian Allister,” Dominic commanded, purring his power through me from his prone position on the ground. “Now.”
Dominic, as I was beginning to accept but still resent, was right: the severed threads of our connection were still there. Severed, but present. The power of his command sparked my awareness of them and the healing properties of his own blood flowing through my veins nourished them.
Suddenly, I was no longer myself. I was nothing but bone and skin and pain—horrible, burning, brittle, excruciating pain. The pain peeled over my entire body and scorched through my throat.
The new me cocked her head, recognizing my presence inside her.
“I was wondering how long it would take for you to realize that you needed me inside you again,” Jillian said, the smirk obvious in her voice. “Longer than I’d thought.”
“Jillian Allister,” I commanded, ignoring the relish in her tone. I felt the threads of our tenuous connection weave between us, its twine strengthening a two-way street of my power over her and her leaching nourishment from me. I could feel the mirrors of her mind reflecting back at me, her mental barriers attempting to keep my commands at bay and her intentions secret.
The fact that she was planning to use our situation, her connection within me, and her temporary freedom to her advantage was unmistakable. We’d known she would betray us from the start, but that didn’t change the fact that we needed her. At the moment, that would have to be enough.