Forever, page 9
“Come in,” she said over her shoulder. Then she lowered her voice. “I’ll get dressed, hold on.”
As a member of the staff brought in a rolling cart, she hustled into the walk-in closet and dropped the towel. Reclothing was done out of one of the drawer lineups in the center built-in, and really, it was just a swap-out of clean versions of what she’d worn as she’d left the estate this morning. She had been sleeping fully clothed lately because she kept expecting to have to follow Daniel down to the laboratory in a medical crisis.
A waft of roast beef and roasted potatoes shut down her hunger instead of piquing it further—and she braced herself before she could reopen things and step out. The staff member was gone, but two trays on pop-up tables had been placed on either side of the bed.
“Are you okay?” she asked Daniel, who was where he’d been, leaning back against the headboard.
When he didn’t reply, she went over and sat down on the edge of the mattress by him. Taking the starched damask napkin from under a sterling silver fork, she flipped the square out of its folds and placed it over Daniel’s chest.
“Do you want to start with some beef first? Or the potatoes?”
While waiting for an answer, Lydia started in with the cutting, making quick work of the slab of prime rib that had been cooked to a perfect medium rare. She made sure the pieces were on the small side, in order to reduce the choking risk.
“Here, let’s start with the meat,” she murmured.
Turning to Daniel, she pinned a smile on her face. There was a pause before he opened his mouth. But then his jaw lowered and she delivered the piece in between his lips.
“Good?” she said as she went back to the plate for another serving. “Good.”
As he swallowed and she put another piece on the tines of the fork, she felt like she was doing something positive, gaining ground on the slippery slope they were sliding down. With so little within her control, this was a balm for her raw nerves.
A small step in the right direction. Even though it wasn’t going to matter much.
In the long run.
TEN
DOWN IN THE Black Dagger Brotherhood’s training center, Rehv emerged from out of the office and traveled on sure feet down the long concrete corridor. Passing by the weight and locker rooms, he arrived at the start of the clinic section, and he didn’t need to knock on closed doors to locate his Ehlena.
He knew exactly where she was.
And he didn’t announce himself with his knuckles because he knew she was alone.
Opening the door to one of the exam rooms, he stepped inside, and his shellan looked around her shoulder. She was across at the supply cabinet over the stainless-steel sink, restocking things with gauze packs. Dressed in surgical scrubs and Crocs, with her hair twisted up on her head and pinned by a clip, she was in her element as she stretched up to the highest shelf, pushing the white boxes with the red crosses all the way back.
Instantly, she turned to face him. “What’s wrong.”
Lowering his lids to half-mast, he drawled, “Can’t a male come see his female on the fly?”
Ehlena laughed and put a hand to the base of her throat. “Always. But you can understand why I jump to a not-so-hot conclusion—”
She stopped short as he shut them in together and threw the lock not with his mind, but with his fingers. Slowly. So she saw what he was doing.
“I’m going to the Colony,” he said in a low voice.
Her eyes drifted down his torso, going to his hips. His mink duster was unfastened, hanging in two swaths that exposed his dark red silk suit—and his erection.
“Are you,” she said breathlessly.
“Yes.”
He tossed his cane and stalked over to her, grabbing her body and yanking her against him. His mate’s scent instantly bloomed, and her mouth parted as she looked up into his eyes.
Just as he was about to lower his head, she put her hand on his sternum, right over his heart. “Wait, why are you going?”
“I have to have a conversation with someone.”
Ehlena closed her eyes and shook her head. “Be careful up there.”
“Always,” he said. “I’m the King, remember.”
At that, he took her lips, penetrating them with his tongue while he swept his hands down to her hips. The dopamine he took to control his symphath tendencies when he was in mixed company had one very bad side effect: He was impotent as long as he was dosed. But every time he had to go to the Colony, he needed to have all his faculties available to him.
Especially the ones that made him dangerous to others of his kind.
You didn’t go into a battle without weapons, and the chemical castration of his evil instincts was a death sentence up there. Even if he was the ruler of all symphaths.
Picking up his mate, he laid her out on the examination table and wrenched her knees wide. Then he clamped his broad hands on her thighs and rode down the taut muscles under the thin scrubs bottoms. When he got to her core, he palmed her sex and arched over her, going back to her mouth. As he rubbed her, he felt the heat.
And nearly came in his fucking slacks.
“I have to be faster than I want,” he muttered. “Goddamn it.”
Shoving up the top half of her scrubs, he pushed her bra out of the way and latched on to one of her nipples, sucking, licking. Back down at her waist, he jerked the tie out of its bow and then tore the goddamn pants in half. He wasn’t any nicer to her panties.
Before he unzipped himself, he eased back and took a long look at the female who was laid out before him, that loose pale blue shirt up under her armpits, her breasts exposed, her nipples tight, her legs wide open.
Her sex swollen and gleaming for him.
He wanted to go down on her. And even checked the clock on the wall, the one with the white face and the navy blue arms—damn it, he needed to get his message delivered STAT.
His hands were sloppy at his hips as he ripped his zipper down. And the second freedom presented itself, his cock jumped out, a reminder of how often it was on the back burner. As his slacks hit the floor and he freed the button on his suit jacket, the blunt head of his erection went right to her core, without any guidance from his palm—except he wanted to draw this out, even if only for a little. Wrapping a grip on his thick shaft, he thrust his hips forward and stroked her with his tip, up and down, up and down—and now a partial penetration.
That made her gasp and him grind his molars.
What a fucking sight, his female arching and twisting, her breasts swaying, her fingers going to her mouth.
As she sucked them deep, he entered her properly, the smooth, hot, tight hold submerging his whole body in white-hot lust. Planting his palm by her head, he bent over and started pumping. He went so hard and so fast that Ehlena had to lock a hold on both sides of the padded top to keep herself in place.
The orgasm was fast for her, but it was faster for him. Almost immediately, he came, but he didn’t stop. There was no locking in—instead, he kept up the rhythm, the slapping sound of him pounding into her a metronome of his need for his female… his desperate, fucking need to mark her, to go to this place of passion with her. Ehlena was, and always would be, his one true home, his solace and his harbor.
Devotion was not a characteristic of symphaths.
But he was half vampire, after all.
A bonded male.
“Rehvenge…” his shellan moaned as she torqued beneath him. “Take my vein.”
Tilting her head to the side, she offered him her throat—and he wanted to say no, but only because he wasn’t going to want to leave her if he started in with the feeding.
“Please, Rehv—take my—”
Baring his fangs, he struck without any conscious thought, and oh, fucking hell, the rush of the taste of her, her blood going over his tongue, down the back of his throat, into his gut. And the power that came with it. On a sudden surge, his hips swung against her even harder, and he started coming again.
And then so was she.
Beneath them, the exam table, which was rated for a weight load of four hundred pounds, started groaning, and when a clapping sound started up—metallic this time, not flesh against flesh—he wondered what the hell it was, what had come loose.
Not that he cared. The only thing he cared about was his Ehlena. Fuck, he was coming another time—
The alarm that went off was shrill, and his eyes shot over to the origin of the intrusion. The computer. It was coming from the—
All at once, in mid-suck and mid-thrust, his brain clicked into high gear. And Ehlena was right with him.
“Someone’s coming in on an emergency,” she said, the words vibrating under his mouth.
With a curse, he released his lips and licked the puncture wounds, capturing a last taste of his female. Then he lifted himself and caught a last, vivid image of her, undone and open, his cock buried deep inside of her, the insides of her thighs gleaming from all his come.
Then he snapped to attention, withdrew, and helped her sit up. After she wrenched her bra across her breasts and fastened it, he pulled down her top, and as she slipped off the exam table, she kicked her bottoms off and went to the built-in desk.
Punching a code into the keyboard, there was a pause and then the alarm silenced and the screen scrolled up with text.
“Who is it,” he asked as he took out a handkerchief and wiped down his erection.
He had to grit his teeth as the sensations shot right into his balls, but he didn’t allow himself another release. He needed to know who was hurt and how—
“John Matthew.” Ehlena looked over at him. “And it’s bad.”
Rehv closed his eyes. “Goddamn it.”
Shoving the handkerchief into one of the deep pockets in his mink, he pulled his slacks up in place. “I’ll go get you fresh scrubs from the locker room while you wash up. And I’ll call Xhex while you prep the OR.”
She captured his hand before he went for the door. Her eyes were wide and anxious. “I love you.”
With a nod, he pulled her in close. “You’re going to do all the right things, you, Manny, and Doc Jane. He’s in the best hands.”
The next thing Rehv knew, he was out in the corridor, and for the briefest moment, he couldn’t remember which direction he was supposed to go in. As he took out his cell phone, things clicked into place and he headed to the right.
As he strode for the locker room, he initiated the call.
And prayed Xhex picked up.
* * *
Dead.
They were all dead.
As Blade stopped in front of the bank of ten-by-ten-foot cages, he stared through the fine steel mesh that was installed over the steel bars. Two males and a female, all hanging by ligatures, their flimsy hospital gowns limp as their limbs, some of the feet still twitching above the drains in the tile floor.
Each of their heads were cocked slightly to the side, as if he had called their names and they’d heard the sound. All of their eyes were open and blindly staring at him.
“Help… me…”
At the plaintive entreaty, Blade looked across the lab space. The setup was what he’d come to expect, the work stations of computers, monitoring equipment, vials, and test tubes ringing the space, an examination table with restraints in the center of the facility, the overhead lights bright white and glaring.
The man he’d just shot in the chest was slumped by a drain next to where the experiments were performed. Where those vampires had been cut open, prodded, injected. Where the suffering had been so acute.
Convenient, really. The blood would just drip down into the plumbing system.
“Help…”
“You realize,” Blade drawled, “that expecting a rescue from the person who shot you is not logical. And may cause me to provide you further attention.”
He refocused on the cages and the steel mesh. Vampires couldn’t dematerialize through that alloy of iron and carbon, and he wondered how long it had taken the humans to figure that out. It had to have been a rate limiter that was solved pretty damn quick. Those rats without tails were inferior in every sense of the word, so to keep their subjects captive, to work on the males and females, they would have had to sacrifice quite a few of their own kind before they were successful at imprisonment.
Walking closer to the bodies, he knelt in front of the middle one, his hand going down to sweep robing out of the way—except he wasn’t dressed in his blood-red drape. Not tonight. For this mission, his clothes were formfitting, and upon his back, he bore a heavy pack that had not slowed him down in the slightest.
He lowered his head in a measure of respect. The female had been in her prime, at least going by age—but she was in bad condition. She had been starved of at least blood and perhaps food, leaving her arms and legs without muscle. Ulcers marked her skin, the raw patches red and infected. Sections of dark hair had fallen out on her head.
The other two were in similar conditions, but the female was what bothered him the most.
She was just like his sister in so many ways.
An image of Xhex flashed into his mind’s eye, and he replaced the stranger hanging by her throat with his own kin.
And then… another memory. From the Colony, a good twenty-five years before. He was looking out the window of one of the shill buildings, the structures that had been built and maintained to look like homes so the humans in that isolated upstate town would not become suspicious.
His sister was being driven away in a van. Against her will.
Funny that “symphath” and “sympathy” shared so many letters. Because the former had none of the latter—
A tickle in his eye made him blink, and as his vision got blurry, he wiped at the sensation with impatience. Looking down, he saw a red smear on his fingertips.
The tears of his kind were bloody, which did seem fitting. And even though he was a half-breed, as was his sister, he considered himself closer to their sire’s side of things.
A gurgle from behind him drew his eyes over his shoulder. The scientist was losing blood fast, the red pool under his body gleaming like Blade’s irresponsible, undeniable expression of tears in the harsh lighting.
Good thing he had come here alone. Weakness was to be exploited, and regret was, among all the levers that could be pulled in a person, the most devastatingly effective.
He should have been working alone all along. If anyone found out he had been creating messes in the human world, even if they were covered up by the homo sapiens themselves… if anybody discovered the reasons for his aggression, the complications would be swift and onerous. But when he had begun targeting these rogue setups, so buried among all the human industry, so carefully tended, their secrets so guarded, he’d been ill prepared for the number of them.
He had thus hired on humans, creating through mind control a false governmental agency that was as those farmhouses up around the Colony, an illusion that allowed him to function at a higher level in the midst of a bumbling, fumbling, lesser enemy. Except then, back in April, a fuckup had occurred, and it had been a lesson well learned. He had therefore reverted to being a solo operator, hunting for these illicit, under-the-radar sites and destroying them.
All in the name of a sister who hated him with very good reason.
He watched the scientist struggle for breath, measured the change in color of the face… noted the tapping of the fingers on the floor, as if the man were calling for help on an invisible Morse code machine.
Shifting around, Blade looked up into the security camera. Then he reached over his shoulder and pulled out the nozzle that was vertically secured on his backpack. Initiating the flamethrower, there was a quiet woof! as the equipment came alive, a blue flame kindling at the tip.
He started with the female. He always started with the females, if there happened to be one or several.
How many labs had he destroyed? A dozen, perhaps. In the last twenty-five years.
The flame exploded out of the wand in a stream, and as it hit the mesh, the profile of the yellow blast broadened and quickly consumed the fragile screen. With the barrier gone, the fire reassembled itself, becoming more ray-like.
The burning flesh smelled like meat on a spit.
Blade watched for as long as he could. Then he closed his eyes. When the scent changed, signaling that the skin, muscle, and connective tissue had been consumed, he went to work on the other two. Meanwhile, in the background, on the floor drain, the human slowly expired.
When there was nothing left except for piles of smoking bones below where the bodies had been hung, he extinguished the flame. No alarm went off and no sprinklers rained upon him—a surprise given the heat, although the HVAC system had kept the air mostly clear. This meant either the sensors were broken or the monitoring was for shit.
Or it was a silent alarm and help, such as it would be, was on the way.
Likely the latter, which explained why no extinguishing had occurred.
He stared up at the security camera again.
It was important to make sure the owner of this shit show saw his face clearly, like in a close kill, where you were certain that your prey knew who their murderer was. When he was satisfied that his image had been captured sufficiently, he pivoted to go. The scientist was well and gone, and it was a pity, really. He could have tortured the man with some mind play.
Except he’d been too scattered to enjoy his favorite hobby as soon as he’d seen the bodies in the cages.
As he came up to the exit, he stepped over a pair of corpses. Security guards. After he’d entered the code to get into the unit, they’d jumped out and reached for their handguns. He’d made sure their efforts weren’t wasted. Trespassing into their minds, he’d made them turn their weapons on themselves, those muzzles going right to their frontal lobes.
Bang, bang. Flop. Flop.
At which point the scientist had started screeching.
Blade had looked past the noise, while he’d shot the man in the chest. The vampires had already been hung—and he could only assume that some kind of internal alert had gone off and the executions had been triggered automatically: He’d been able to still catch the scent of their stress and fear sweat in the air.
