Charlie. God, I hope I can make you hear me. I need to talk to you. I need to see you so badly that I’m risking everything to get to you. I’m coming, Charlie. I’m coming.
Charlie’s eyes popped open. She was in her bunk. It was after midnight, and the other recruits in her barracks were asleep, as far as she could tell. But that voice–Killian’s voice–had been speaking clearly and passionately inside her mind. Had it been a dream?
She thought of Killian, saw his face in her mind’s eye, and whispered, “I’d like to see you, too.”
Charlie? You can hear me?
She had thought it was a dream! But she was awake now, and it was just as real. It was actually him, Killian, speaking to her, mentally. She must have let her protective shell slip while she’d been sleeping. Not that she seemed able to muster up the desire to shut him out. Not really.
Yes, it’s real. Charlie, I know what they told you about your mother, but it’s a lie. I was nowhere near Portland that night. I wouldn’t hurt you that way. You have to believe me.
Her heart beat faster. Every little thing seemed to kick it into high gear, since the treatment. Excitement, anger, impatience, sadness. Every emotion sent it rocketing. Sometimes it scared her, how fast and hard her heart would pound when she wasn’t even exerting herself.
She wondered if it was a side effect of the BDX, and whether she was the only one to experience it.
I have to see you again, Killian went on. Meet me by the fence, where we met before. I’ll be there waiting.
She closed her eyes and tried to listen to the practical part of her mind for a change. He was a vampire. He’d attacked her in the hospital. He’d probably killed her mother and kidnapped her grandmother. She couldn’t trust him. He’d been trying to kill her that night...he’d been trying to....
No, he fed me from his own veins in the hospital. That wasn’t an attack. He didn’t even try to...to bite me. Except that once, when we had sex. And that was...it was...ecstasy.
LT said he’d killed her mother. That he’d been seen, or someone who looked like him had been seen. That they’d identified him from a photo taken the night he was abducting her from the hospital.
God, she wanted to believe it was all a lie. And maybe that was selfish. Maybe she just wanted to believe that because it would ease her guilty conscience. After all, the vampire she’d had sex with had murdered her mother.
No. She couldn’t believe him. She had to kill him. She was strong enough now. She could do it.
Couldn’t she?
“Okay,” she whispered. “Give me a few minutes. I have to be careful.”
Thank God. Thank God. I’ll be waiting, Charlie.
She took a breath, had second thoughts, and wondered if she was out of her mind to be doing this. Meeting him like this. But she knew LT’s plans for tomorrow night. He’d told her on the way back to the barracks, apparently too proud of his plan to keep it to himself. Her mother’s funeral would be surrounded by armed guards, government types, not BD-Exers who were, for some reason, deemed “not yet ready” for battle. A squad of hired guns would be waiting for Killian to try to get to her. It would be an ambush, a slaughter. They would be armed with automatic weapons as well as tranquilizer guns. The funeral home had been chosen for its location. They would let him get in, him and anyone who might be helping him. But they wouldn’t let him get out again. The orders were to kill him by whatever means was necessary and to bring the body back to Fort Rogers. Killian wouldn’t stand a chance. If there was any possibility he was telling the truth....
She had to be sure.
And if she wanted his explanation before he died, this would be her only chance to get it.
Pushing back her covers, she slid out of her bunk, wearing only her panties and a tank style undershirt. She grabbed her pants from the top of her strongbox at the foot of the bed, and carried them with her as she tiptoed quickly to the bathroom at the end of the barracks. In case anyone saw her, going to the head wouldn’t look as odd as walking out the front door. Once inside the little lav, she pulled the pants on, then opened a window and jumped out, landing in the weeds behind the building. She closed the window almost all the way, leaving a crack so she could open it again to get back inside later on. And then she paused to look around, to listen, to feel.
No one. Nothing. Good, she was good. Turning, she ran as fast and as lightly as a fox, landing on the balls of her feet and making almost no sound, yet moving rapidly along the boundary of the electrified fence, through the wooded area, past the center of camp and onward, beyond the parade grounds and obstacle courses to the very end.
He was there. He was there, just inside the perimeter fence, waiting in the shadows. She felt him even before she saw him and walked right up to him, stopping only a foot from where he stood. So close. So very close. Everything in her was itching to move even closer. To touch. To press herself to his body, to melt into his arms.
It sickened her that she could still feel such a powerful attraction to a killer.
Hold firm, she told herself. She had to know the truth. She had to be cool. Distant. Objective.
“What happened to my mother?” she asked, eyes fixed on his chest instead of meeting his.
“I don’t know. I only know that it wasn’t me, Charlie.”
She tried to see the lie in his eyes, but all she saw was longing.
“That night at the hospital...I wasn’t trying to hurt you. I was trying to save your life. You’d lost so much blood–”
“You were taking me somewhere. Kidnapping me.” She had to interrupt him. His voice stroked her nerve endings like a bow over violin strings, making her shiver and hum all over.
“That’s right, I was taking you somewhere. Away from them. The goons who brought you here shot me with some kind of tranquilizer. They’re the ones who kidnapped you. Took you away. Brought you here. They’d have probably killed me, if not for Roxy. She found me dragging myself along the ground, trying to get away. She told me to get into her truck, and I did. She took me home. To the cabin. Gave me a safe place to sleep, even had an antidote for the tranquilizer darts.”
She frowned, distracted from wanting him for a moment. “Roxy... helped you?”
He nodded.
“Prove it.” She glanced behind her, back the way she had come. “And hurry, you don’t have much time. Tell me something you wouldn’t know if you hadn’t spent time with my grandmother.”
“There’s a recording. She left us a message. They shot up her truck and they took her, Charlie. They have your grandmother.”
“Who?”
“The same people who are behind this...this secret death squad you’ve joined. DPI.”
He seemed to be searching his mind and spewing anything he could think of. She felt it happening, felt him searching his memory. It didn’t feel like he was making things up.
“Roxy made me sleep in the safe room that first night. On a cot. The blanket was blue and sealed in a plastic bag in there. She had blood in a mini-fridge in the basement. And three computers and a pile of cell phones.”
He was convincing her. And that was terrifying. What if she was wrong? “You’d know all that if you’d been inside the house. Doesn’t mean she helped you.”
He spoke fast, holding her eyes with his. “She had the truck’s radio tuned to a country music station. She has a pet owl named Olive. It comes when she calls it by whistling.” He puckered his lips and whistled the same three notes, and for the first time, Charlie’s doubt of his guilt became bigger than her certainty of it. “She’s the oldest living Chosen,” he went on. “She helped us find this place, too. Her computers, satellite photos. I wouldn’t even begin to know how to get the intel she did, but she found this secret camp, and we all drove out here. She was supposed to meet us after we’d checked it out, but when we got back there, she’d been taken. Not by me, Charlie. By these assholes you’re working for.”
“Is she alive?” She searched his mind with hers as she asked th
e question, wishing she knew whether what she sensed there was real or wishful thinking on her part.
“I don’t know. Rhiannon thinks so.”
“Who’s Rhiannon?”
He lowered his eyes, the first sign of a lie. “A friend of your grandmother’s. She and her husband came to help us find you. Get you back.” He reached out for her, and she didn’t duck away, but let him slide his arms around her and pull her closer. Then she panicked because it felt so damn good to be pressed against him that way, and because when he touched her, she couldn’t think of anything else. In a knee-jerk reaction, she flattened her hands to his chest to push him away.
He flew backward like he’d been hit by a wrecking ball. His feet left the ground and he hit a tree, splitting its trunk, and then slid to the ground. “Holy–!” Pushing himself up, rubbing the back of his head and shaking it as if to clear it, he said, “What in the hell did they do to you, Charlie?”
“They cured me. I won’t die at thirty-something now. I’m strong. As strong as you, maybe. Stronger than anyone here, that’s for sure.”
He frowned. “Why would that be?”
She averted her eyes.
“Look at me, Charlie.”
She didn’t. But then he said it again, and this time it was inside her mind, echoing, commanding, irresistible. Look at me.
And she couldn’t refuse, she turned to look at him.
He moved closer, slid his arms around her waist and pulled her hard against him. “I couldn’t hurt you if I wanted to. Vampires cannot harm The Chosen. Even if we tried it would be impossible. I want to kill your Goddamn lieutenant more than I want to wake up tomorrow night, but he has the antigen. So I can’t. It’s in our DNA.”
Her eyes were captive now as his held them, and his will wouldn’t let her look away. “God, I’ve been dying to hold you like this,” he said. “To kiss you...like this....”
And then he did, he kissed her, and the heat between them rose up like a living thing, a ravenous flame that would devour her if she let it. And she wanted to let it, in spite of herself. His hands moved, one crawling underneath the shirt and up over the small of her back to press her against him, the other, sliding over the pants to cup her backside and hold her tighter to his hardness. His hips moved in a mimicry of sex that made her blood turn molten. She clutched at his shoulders, arching her hips in time with his, her fingers threading into his hair, her mouth opening to his hungry invasion.
“I have to have you,” he muttered. “I have to have you now, Charlie.” He grabbed the edges of her shirt and pulled it up, and almost off, but she pulled free as her heart launched into a full gallop inside her chest. She turned away from him, bending with her hands braced on her knees, fighting to catch her breath as her heart thundered like never before.
“Oh God. Oh God,” she panted.
“Charlie?” He went to her, clasped her shoulders, turned her around, and then his face clouded with fear. “Charlie, what’s happening to you?”
“My heart....I can’t catch my breath....”
He didn’t need to touch her chest, she thought, not when she could hear her own pulse thundering in her ears. But he pressed his hand there anyway. “It’s the drug, isn’t it? Jesus, Charlie, what the hell did they give you?”
“Just go.” She had to stop to try to catch her breath, speaking only a few words at a time. “They’ll miss...me soon.” She clutched his shirt. “The funeral...it’s a trap.” Panting, panting. “Don’t go there.”
“I have to get you out of here. I’m not leaving you here, Charlie, not again.” He wrapped his arms around her, scooped her up, turned toward the fence, bending his knees to jump it. But shots came out of nowhere, all but silent, like puffs of air, and darts stabbed into him in so many places that Charlie couldn’t count them all.
He tried to jump, but already the drug was obviously flowing through him, and he landed again, sinking onto the grass and letting Charlie fall from his arms.
She sat up, then scrambled to her feet, staring down at him, her eyes wide. Her mouth was agape as she fought to catch her breath. Her heart was pounding so hard she thought it would break her ribs. She pressed her hands to her chest as if she could slow it down.
“Well done, Charlie. Well done.” LT stepped out of the trees, waving a hand at a dozen recruits who surrounded Killian, their guns aimed at him.
She tried to see him, tried to tell him with her eyes that she had not done this on purpose, had not set a trap for him. She envisioned opening her mind wide to his. But there were too many recruits surrounding him, blocking him from her eyes, and then she dropped to her knees, too dizzy to stay upright.
“Charlie?” LT rushed to her side, kneeling, hands to her shoulders. “What is it, Charlie?”
She patted her chest with one hand, still straining to see Killian around the recruits. They were picking him up now, carrying him off somewhere.
LT pressed a hand to her chest, swore at what he felt there, then picked her up and carried her back through the woods to the road. He set her on the passenger seat of a Jeep, and she was allowed an all too brief glimpse of Killian, limp and barely conscious, being thrown into the back of another one that quickly sped away.
Gasping for each breath, she asked, “Wha-what are they...doing...with him?”
“Not what you were about to, Charlie. We don’t deal well with traitors, you know. But right now, we’ve got to keep you alive long enough to hear what you have to say in your own defense.” He looked at her, shook his head in disgust. “I had high hopes for you. I really did. What a waste.” Then he put the Jeep into gear and stomped the gas.
Just before he shifted into second gear, Charlie felt a distinct sensation. The kind she’d only felt when Killian was near, but not as pronounced. Frowning, she looked back in the direction they’d come from. There was another vampire...maybe more than one.
Oh my God. He’d brought others here. Had he fooled her yet again? Was he planning some kind of an attack or....
But no, she’d felt something when he’d kissed her. She’d felt him. His mind, his emotions, his thoughts, they’d twisted around and melded with her own. There’d been nothing of betrayal, of trickery or deceit. Or murder. Only passion, only longing. She’d felt as if she’d known him always, as if she’d seen his soul and recognized it, knew it intimately. Why couldn’t she just trust those feelings and let all the rest go?
Closing her eyes, she tried to send a message as she had done with Killian, but she had no idea whether the vampires she sensed nearby would receive it.
Killian’s been darted and taken prisoner. Save him. Save Killian.
Chapter Fourteen