Vengeance of the Demons (21 page)

“No one.” She tried to keep her wits about her.

He kissed her hard and pulled her panties down between her knees. He used his foot to push them down to her ankles and then she stepped out of them.

She pulled off his towel, and he spread her thighs with his and hefted her off the ground.

He held her hands high above her head as he pressed against her.

Arms stretched tight, he found her breasts again, teasing them with his mouth.

“William, I want you,” she crooned.

He looked up at her, his eyes icy fire. “Who do you belong to?” he asked again.

Her brain told her to say nothing. She’d belonged to a Vampire once before and it had ended with heartbreak unimaginable.

She kissed him hard and bit down on his lower lip. He growled and pressed closer to her. She wiggled her arms and got one hand free. She gripped him tight in her fist and stroked him once.

He dropped her arm and grabbed onto her waist.

“You tell me,” she said, barely able to contain herself. “Who do you belong to?”

“You,” he said. “I belong to Evangeline.”

She stroked him hard and then he pushed her hands away and thrust into her, filling her completely. She cried out as her back slammed into the wall and he lifted her hips to meet his. She wrapped her arms around his neck as he thrust again. His rhythm hard and fast. Their bodies slammed together in a painfully pleasurable joining that had her crying out. He covered her mouth with his as the waves of ecstasy overtook her and she broke apart. It’d been forever since she’d been with anyone and her body could wait no longer to find release.

He continued to thrust as her muscles clenched tight around him. She reveled in the pain and pleasure of it. After a minute, she finished but he was still going. His eyes met hers as a bead of sweat licked down the side of her neck.

He carried her to the bed. She lay limp as a rag, allowing him to do whatever he wanted as he kissed his way from her neck to her toes. He rolled her on her stomach, climbed back on the bed, and parted her thighs. She started to get up on her elbows but his body covered hers and he flattened her. He grabbed a pillow and put it under her hips, raising her up before entering her again.

He shuddered and ran his hands down her spine. Going slow, he bent over her and hooked an arm underneath her for leverage. His mouth found her right shoulder and he thrust inside her over and over. She grabbed onto the bed trying to hang on. He reached between her legs from the front and found her nub again. His breathing became quick and short and his thrusts harder and faster as he pumped into her. The spiral of ecstasy wound tight within her once more.

“William,” she moaned as her body grew tight and tingles traced up her spine.

“Who do you belong to,” he asked again, his voice tight with need.

The first shockwaves hit her like a tornado. “William,” she cried. “I belong to William.”

His mouth fell onto her shoulder and as she climaxed for the second time, he bit down and moaned. He kept going, driving into her and sucking from her vein at the same time. She pressed her hips back to meet his thrusts till he tensed and cried out her name. When she grew light-headed and melted into the bed he removed his fangs and fell on top of her.

Her muscles shook and every part of her burned from the workout. She smiled into the pillow as he licked her wound shut and then withdrew from her and got to his feet. She rolled on her side completely sated.

Before she could say a word, he walked into the bathroom and this time closed the door.

Anger mixed with fear as she tried to process what had happened. They’d made love and he’d just gotten up and left her like a used blow up doll. Tears threatened to spill and she covered her face with her hands. She’d let him in and he’d already turned on her. The anger overtook her. Not this time. She wasn’t going to be played for a fool again.

* * * *

William curled into a ball on the shower floor and pounded on his head. He couldn’t focus. Evan surrounded him. Her smell, her taste, her voice. All of it clouded his judgment and made him unable to deal with what was happening to him. He’d wanted to drain her dry and instead he’d screwed her and made her confess that she was his like a common slave. He pounded on his temples trying to hold the hunger at bay.

Shame rocked him to the core. He’d taken her like a whore instead of making love to her the way he should have. Soft and slow and beautiful. With candles and foreplay and… everything he could no longer give her. She’d been hurt before; she deserved so much better.

Danika had warned him that this would happen as a fledgling, but it hadn’t for him somehow. And now that it was… now she wasn’t here to help him figure it out. He’d not been prepared for these feelings and thirsts and inability to control himself. All he’d wanted to do was screw Evan till he died. She didn’t deserve that. She didn’t deserve to be treated like that.

Even as he sat on the floor having once again drunk from Evan, he should feel healthy, alive, sated. But the thirst burned his gut and pounded in his mind till he couldn’t see straight.

The bathroom door burst inward.

“How dare you?”

William’s head whipped up. Evan’s beautiful naked body stood before him taut and angry.

“How dare you toy with me? After everything I told you. You think you can use me and throw me away like trash? You can have your way with me and then send me back to the barracks when you’re done? I will not be a slave, William, so if you think I’m just going to stand by and take that? I have news for you, jackass, you better think again.”

“I’m sorry.” His voice was flat as ever as he tried to see her through the haze of bloodlust.

“You’re sorry? You bet you’re sorry. And to think I actually believed you might love me.”

“I do.” The veins in her throat beckoned to him like a siren’s song.

“Right. Like I’m supposed to believe that.”

He closed his eyes and clenched his fists till his nails bit into his palms. Then pressed them in harder trying to do anything to take his mind from the bloodlust.

“It’s true, Evan. I swear it is.”

“Don’t think for one second that—”

He was on his feet so fast it made his head spin. He grabbed her around the waist and pulled her to him, clamping his hand over her mouth.

“Shut up. Please.” He kissed her forehead and her eyelids and her nose and then laid his cheek on hers. His body shook with the strain of trying to keep from biting her again. “Please,” he pleaded. “Please.”

She stood stiff for a minute and then relaxed into him. He tried to calm the lust enough to speak.

“I can’t… I can’t control it.”

She peeled his fingers from her mouth.

“Control what?” she whispered.

“The thirst. This virus inside me. It’s eating me from the inside out. Melting away every shred of who I am until there is nothing left. All I can think about is the blood. Your blood. Tommy’s blood. The bottles of Savor. I can’t control it. And the more I drink, the worse it gets.” He rubbed her throat with the pad of his thumb. “I can’t see you anymore. All I see is the blood and the sex.”

“We’ll get back to Chicago and they can fix it.”

He pushed her away. “No they can’t!” he yelled. “Don’t you see? I’m dying. The only reason I didn’t die already was because I killed a man! I killed him. I drained him dry and stole his clothes and—”

She stepped up to him and took his face firmly in her palms, forcing him to look at her. “We’ll fix it. Do you understand? I’m not going to let you die. I’m not.” She searched his face and then held him tight again.

He clung to her, fighting the shakes, fighting the thirst, fighting the drive to take her again.

“Think of something,” she said. “A memory. What is your best memory?”

“I can’t.” He shook his head. “The thirst—”

“See past the thirst. The thirst isn’t you. See through it and beyond it. Remember a time when you were happy. The Peter Pan pixie dust memory. The best one there is. Find it and tell it to me.”

Water rained down on them as he held her close and kissed her neck. He tried to see past the thirst, past the pain. A memory surfaced.

“The day I was adopted.”

“Good. What was that day like?”

He’d never told anyone he’d been adopted. “I was five. I wore a blue plaid shirt with a green alligator bow tie. Sister Margaret held my hand. I remember sitting on the hard pew in the hallway outside her office and thinking that I’d never be alone again. The door opened and a couple walked in. A bald man with glasses and a lady graying at the temples. She clutched her purse handles so tight I thought she was going to break them. I couldn’t bear to look her in the eyes. I was afraid that if I did, I’d see her disappointment in me and they’d walk away. She wore a blue flower dress with tiny red polka dots. She got down on her knees in front of me and lifted my chin. With tears in her eyes, she told me she’d waited her whole adult life for her son to arrive. That was the best day.”

She held him tight as he clung to the memory. “Remember what she wore. Remember what she smelled like. Remember what you heard. Cement that memory. That’s the memory you want to hold on to. The one you look for when you want to see past the thirst.”

William closed his eyes and hung on to Evan, afraid if he opened them he’d wake up back in the cell, and she’d be gone.

Evan had slept in William’s arms. Tommy had gotten a room of his own. The trio got into the car and Evan helped William settle in the back on the floor. Before the crack of dawn they were on the road again.

“We’re gonna try to drive straight through,” she said. “At dark we can get out and stretch but I think it’s best that we keep moving.”

He nodded and his gaze flicked around as if searching for something.

She pulled his face to hers. “Focus. I’m here.”

He nodded again.

She kissed him, trying to calm herself as much as him. The drive ahead wasn’t going to be fun for any of them.

* * * *

William slept for six hours straight. About eleven, he awoke with the burn of the thirst clouding his senses once more. He swiped at his face to find blood dripping from his eyes and nose.

“Dammit!” He sat up quickly and rubbed at his face.

“You okay?” Tommy asked.

Evan turned in her seat and then reached for one of the duffel bags. “Here.” She shoved a pack of wet wipes at him.

William snatched them from her and tore into them. His chest tightened and a violent coughing fit over took him. Blood sprayed onto the back of Tommy’s seat.

Evan twisted out of her seatbelt and grabbed a bottle of Savor. She ripped off the cap and tried to hand it to him.

“Drink this.”

William continued to cough and pushed the drink away.

“William, please,” she pleaded.

“I don’t want it!” He shoved the bottle away, splashing it on the front of Evan’s shirt.

“Knock it off!” Tommy bellowed.

The coughing subsided and William’s gaze narrowed on Tommy’s in the rearview mirror. Tommy slammed on the brakes and William fell forward between the seats. Sunlight filtered through the windshield, burning his hands and his face. William scrambled back into his seat.

Evan wiped at the spilled Savor with a towel and Tommy turned in his seat. The veins in his forehead and neck bulged so large that it took all of William’s willpower not to leap on him and tear out his throat.

“Now look,” Tommy said. “I get it that you’re in pain. And I get it that things are in the crapper for you right now, but you have no right to be rude to Evan. If it wasn’t for her you’d be dead already. Now I’m not saying what my Pop did to you was fair, but we’re trying to make it right.”

Hunger gnawed at William’s gut. His fangs burned with the need to feed. He stared at the pulsing, throbbing vein in Tommy’s neck, every thought clouded in a haze of red. Tommy didn’t move, but soon his pulse slowed and the veins smoothed out under the surface of his skin. William swallowed hard and wiped a trickle of blood that dribbled from his ear down the side of his neck. His hands shook and his body sank into the seat as if it were swallowing him whole.

“Here.” Evan held the bottle of Savor out to him once more.

He took it with shaky fingers but couldn’t seem to grip it tight enough and it dropped. Tommy caught it before it hit the floor.

Evan’s eyes held fear and pain. “You’re getting weaker,” she said.

William nodded and then closed his eyes. He laid his head back on the seat and pictured his mother’s blue dress with faded flowers. The overly large fake pearl earrings that dangled from her ears and the smell of lavender and mint that always permeated her.

I’ll see you soon, Mom.

* * * *

Tommy started driving again after handing her the bottle of Savor. She put it in the cup holder and then laid her hand on William’s knee. He gripped her fingers but didn’t open his eyes.

“I don’t know that we’re gonna make it in time,” Tommy whispered.

“We’ll make it,” she replied. Her words rang hollow. William’s skin had gone from pale to ashen in the last eight hours. The blood that dripped from him was now a thin, watery red consistency. Even his grip on her hand seemed faint.

Evan hadn’t been much of one for God since she’d lost her family, but at that moment she prayed that they’d make it.

They were almost to the Nebraska/Iowa state line. Another seven or eight hours and they’d be back at the coven house.

“We need gas,” Tommy said. “We have to stop in the next thirty minutes.”

East of Omaha they spotted several gas stations.

“One of them has to still have gas,” said Tommy.

They’d bypassed two previous exits with gas stations because something about the places hadn’t seemed right. As they pulled off the highway memories of being attacked and stabbed flooded Evan. She rubbed at her leg absently.

“Keep your eyes peeled,” said Evan.

“Something wrong, sis?”

“No just… bad memories is all.”

Tommy nodded. “We could keep going.”

“There won’t be anything for the next while. Better to stop here where we have options.”