The connection went eerily silent.
And then Julien’s harsh voice filled the void. “Saxson!”
Saxson spun around to face the tracker, noticing a jagged, broken vial resting in the vampire’s hand. “The blood,” Julien said brusquely. “It’s Kiera’s.”
Saxson glanced upward, toward the heavens, his heart expanding in gratitude, his senses coming alive with purpose.
Blood!
Life-giving—all-sustaining—immortality-enhancing blood!
It would contain Kiera’s DNA!
And destiny or no, there wasn’t a vampire alive who couldn’t track another soul by the anima in their blood.
He practically dove across the warehouse, snatched the vial from Julien’s palm, and poured what was left of the contents down his throat. Afraid that he might have missed a drop, or that the meager teaspoon he had swallowed would not be enough, he crushed the glass in his hand, shoved it into his mouth, and chewed it down to dust, swallowing every last fragment without hesitation.
His aorta thrummed.
His veins exploded with knowledge.
And his consciousness filled with smells, impressions, and sounds: Blessed Prince Jadon, she had waist-length blond hair, just like Kyla’s, only Kiera’s was thicker, silkier, and more vibrant. She smelled of lavender and vanilla; her heart was kind and compassionate, and she could play the strings off a violin. She was an absolute virtuoso.
His chest heaved, his stomach quivered, and his legs nearly buckled beneath him.
Someone had carved obscenities into her flesh, and they had also slit her wrist.
And someone else—no, several others, dressed in dark, ridiculous robes—were about to violate her, while her life slipped away beneath them.
“Follow me,” he hissed, locking onto the signal like a beacon. And then he released his wings, leaped into the air, and shot straight through the roof of the barn. Oh, and Nathaniel, he snarled telepathically, knowing the predator was renowned for torturing his prey, don’t kill anyone quickly. Take your sweet damn time.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Kiera grew weaker and weaker as a cold, clammy hand—someone’s cruel, calloused fingers—wrenched her panties off her hips, slid them down her thighs, and cut them away from her ankles. She couldn’t tell which of the vampire-hunters—Jon, Nick, or Mike—had elected to violate her first, or if they were still planning to do it…together.
And honestly, it didn’t matter...
The abrasive heavy-metal music in the background was growing increasingly faint, and the lyrics no longer made sense—the band may as well have been singing in Chinese. While she could still feel sensations—the room was freezing, and her wrist was burning like someone had soaked it in acid—she could no longer register fear.
Her emotions were dull, gray, and fading.
“Yeah,” she thought she heard Owen rasp. “Just like that, Mike—remove her gag. I wanna hear her groan.”
And then someone must have turned up the music.
The electric guitar sounded more like an explosion: a door flying off the hinges, a window crashing inward, the side of a wall imploding; the lead vocalist—or maybe it was one of the vampire-hunters—sounded like he was screaming, and the bass drum ricocheted off the walls like the spray of random bullets.
There was a gruesome crackle—like flesh, bone, and cartilage, bursting—followed by a heavy thump, but Kiera didn’t care.
The weight had been removed from her body, and she was grateful.
Besides, the chaos and madness all around her were somehow, ironically, soothing…if not oddly poetic.
She thought she heard a distant whisper—“Oh, iubito, forgive me for not stopping this”—and then she felt the palm of someone’s hand—warm, soft, and inviting—play along the slope of her cheek. A pair of soft, malleable lips pressed against her inner wrist, worshiping the strange, inexplicable markings and soothing the deep, vertical wound.
“Kiera…” That voice, that sonorous tenor; it was magic. “Hold on, angel. Hold on.”
Kiera tried to reach toward the light, toward the origin of that voice—it had to be a guardian angel, someone welcoming her soul into heaven—but her wrists were still linked to the chains. Then, just like that, the cuffs seemed to…crumble…and her ankles were removed from the leather straps.
Her head lolled back, and she sighed.
Ah, that felt nice…
So much better.
She felt something thick, wet, and sticky glomming to her wrist, and she absently wondered what it was. And then it occurred to her: The sexual violation was not as brutal as she’d feared—in fact, she couldn’t even feel it. Apparently, her soul was slipping away, and she was not going to experience the horror.
“Hang on, iubito. Please…hang on,” someone urged her, and her body began to twitch.
She absently licked her lips—they were so very dry—she would have given her right arm for a glass of water.
“Kagen’s on his way,” she thought she heard someone utter, in a voice much silkier than any of her captors’, and her eyes drifted shut.
“She doesn’t have time. She’s almost gone”—that pure, masculine drone, again—her guardian angel speaking. “I have to convert her, right here and right now!”
What strange, mysterious language…
Someone whispered something in a foreign, unidentifiable tongue, and then asked if Kiera could survive it.
Survive what? she wondered, but then the thought dissipated.
More words in the background…
“It’s the only chance she has”—that silky, masculine legato.
Her guardian angel caressed her chest with a soothing, paternal touch, the pads of his fingers rotating in circles, just above her heart, and then he bent his ear to her mouth and listened, as if measuring her breaths. “Son of a jackal!” he cursed—were angels allowed to do that?—“bring her a blanket, and turn that blasted music off!”
Another thump, and then Kiera gasped and gurgled, which seemed to spur the angel into action: He dove onto the table, sidled up behind her, and grasped her naked body by the waist, tugging her backward, against him.
What kind of heaven was this?
It felt jarring.
Painful.
Disconcerting.
And then he locked one arm around her torso like a vest—no, a straitjacket—brushed her sweat-soaked hair to the side, and rotated his thumb along the length of her neck.
What the heck?
“No.”
No!
Don’t do that…
He was scraping something over her jugular, something like teeth—or fangs!
“No!” she shouted, louder this time, struggling to project her voice.
He didn’t care.
He didn’t stop.
He wasn’t an angel at all.
In fact, it sounded like he snarled…
As his fangs sank deep into her artery, jolting her awake with shock, Kiera struggled mightily to escape the implacable hold.
It was no use…
And then something—oh, dear God, make it stop—something like venom from a wasp, or poison from a snake, entered her bloodstream with the force of a freight train, pumping at a velocity that was certain to rupture her veins, setting her tissues…and her flesh…on fire.
No.
No.
Please…please…no!
There was no way she could endure such agony.
What had she ever done to deserve this?
As the poison became a blaze, and the blaze became an inferno, roiling like volcanic lava, assailing her body from the inside out, Kiera gave way to true, unadulterated panic for the first time that night.
Yes, she had already suffered the unimaginable.
And yes, she had somehow managed to endure the unendurable…
But this?
This was something else.
This was her body, her mind, and her eternal soul…all going up in
flames.
As the reality of her fate became inevitable—inescapable—Kiera slipped away into madness.
Her angel wasn’t an angel at all.
And she hadn’t died and gone to heaven.
Somehow…some way…Kiera had descended into the bowels of hell, and the devil, himself, had claimed her.
She screamed until her throat turned raw.
And then she screamed some more.
The moment the vampires arrived at the urban, five-story warehouse, they realized that Kiera was being held captive—and worse—on the top, fifth floor. Santos had already sent the blueprints from the city’s industrial archives; Julien had used his supernatural heat sensors to get a bead on all the occupants; and Nathaniel had already devised a hasty plan—they didn’t have a moment to waste.
The tracker entered through the front elevator doors, spraying the ceiling with bullets in order to startle the human hunters. Nathaniel crashed through a window and immediately attacked the nearest human, while Saxson plowed right through the median wall, landing stealthily in the living room, where he dropped into a low, lethal crouch.
The first thing he saw stole his breath: Kiera, strapped to a stainless-steel table, naked, dying, and about to be raped by a goon in a black hooded robe.
Saxson dove across the room, his rage exploding as the scene unfolded in slow motion: In a classic uppercut, the fist connects with the underside of the jaw, snapping the victim’s head back and causing the prey to stagger backward, assuming the punch is powerful, brutal, and targeted. In Saxson’s case, he flew to the head of the table, threw a targeted, brutal uppercut against Kiera’s assailant’s jaw, and his fist impaled the human’s larynx, eviscerated his ears, nose, and throat, and exited through the top of his cranium, beheading him in the process.
Saxson brought his arm down to his side, peeled the skull off his forearm like a glove, and tossed it to the warehouse floor with a thump. Then he pried the body off Kiera and flung it across the room.
Staring down at his destiny for the very first time, he nearly gasped in wonder.
Kyla and Kiera weren’t just twins—they were identical—same color hair, same color eyes, same height and body build. Only, Kiera was so much more resplendent. Even in her battered state, her hair was more luxurious; her features were far more sculpted; and her beauty shined from the inside out.
She was also hovering perilously close to death.
Saxson took a hurried step back and scanned her body to make note of her injuries, trying to discern what he needed to treat first. Then he grimaced, snarled, and shook from head to toe. “Oh, iubito,” he whispered beneath his breath. “Forgive me for not stopping this.”
Her torso had been butchered.
Her wrist had been slit.
And she had clearly endured this insanity for hours.
Stepping forward, he sank to his destiny’s eye level, placed the palm of his hand against the side of her cheek, and gently caressed her skin. He turned his attention to her trussed left wrist and sighed at the visage of the celestial markings: pure, clear, and ornamental—they had obviously been enchased by Lord Cetus, himself.
He closed his eyes, pressed his lips to the insignia, and then swirled his tongue over the deep, vertical wound in a primal response, born of instinct. “Kiera…” He spoke softly, opening his eyes and breathing her name like a prayer. “Hold on, angel. Hold on.”
His female tried to reach toward his voice—in a weak, almost unconscious gesture—but the cuffs around her wrists would not allow it. Saxson growled, feeling bestial and savage. He wanted to kill them all, by himself, but he dared not leave her side, not even for a moment.
Restraining his feral impulse, he placed both palms over the vile cuffs, each at the end of a chain, and curled his fingers inward until the metal crumbled to dust…all the while, continuing to scan her belly, her thighs, and her limbs…still trying to triage her injuries.
She was so very weak, and she had lost so much blood—he had no idea what to do first.
How in the hell was he going to keep her alive until Kagen Silivasi could get there?
He hastily removed the leather straps from her ankles because her toes were rapidly turning blue; her head lolled back, and she sighed—or maybe she groaned—and Saxson nearly came unglued. He didn’t know if he was helping her or hurting her, and the gods knew, he felt helpless all the way down to his bones.
Lord Cetus, please help me—he couldn’t think!
Concentrate, Saxson! he told himself. Focus like a sentinel, and quit reacting as a terrified male.
Rolling his head on his shoulders to relieve some tension, he shook out his hands and consulted his reason: The greatest threat to her life was the continual loss of blood, but he didn’t have the means to give her a transfusion—she was human, and she was too weak to feed.
Kagen would have to do it.
Filling his palm with venom, he coated the gash on her wrist—the substance would cauterize the injury, and that would at least staunch the bleeding. All the while, he cringed at the sight of her morbid injuries, such heinous violations: the treble clef on her right thigh, the bass clef on her left, and the grisly violin carved into her stomach, chest, and breasts.
The bastards had really done a number on her.
“Hang on, iubito. Please…hang on,” he urged her.
Her body began to twitch, and she licked her lips.
“Kagen’s on his way,” Nathaniel grunted, approaching the side of the table with the head of a bald guy hanging from one hand, and a bloody set of…private anatomy…dangling from the other. The heavy-metal music in the background accentuated the gruesome visage.
Saxson nodded, watching as Kiera’s beautiful brown eyes drifted shut. “She doesn’t have time,” he argued, every nerve in his body protesting the truth: “She’s almost gone.” His heart sank in his chest as inevitability slammed into him. “I have to convert her, right here and right now!”
There was truly no other way.
Nathaniel whistled low, beneath his breath, and whispered a prayer in Romanian. “Do you think she’s strong enough to survive it?”
Saxson shut his eyes, shoving his fear aside. “No,” he answered, his voice barely audible. “I don’t believe she is, but I still have to try—it’s the only chance she has.” Pressing the pads of his fingers above Kiera’s left breast, Saxson felt for the strength of her heartbeat—it was so very weak.
So very weak.
He bent his ear to her mouth and measured her waning breaths. “Son of a jackal!” he cursed. “Nathaniel, bring her a blanket; and turn that blasted music off!”
He knew what he had to do.
Nathaniel dropped the various chunks of the human’s anatomy on the floor and stalked toward the bedroom, eager to do whatever he could.
Kiera gasped, and then she gurgled—and it sounded far too much like a dying breath.
Saxson sprang into action.
To hell with it!
There was no time to wait—not for the gods, not for Nathaniel, and not for Kagen Silivasi.
It was time to man the hell up.
He flew onto the table, sidled up behind her, and grasped her by the waist, tugging her back against him, all the while chanting in his head: I’m sorry, my love. I’m so, so sorry. Please don’t leave me, not now. He knew the transformation—if the gods showed him favor, and it worked—was going to be unspeakably brutal.
Normally, such things took hours, and even then, they were harrowing.
But this?
The way he had to go about it: fast, furious, and unrelenting…
It was nothing short of unconscionable.
Shoving the thoughts out of his mind—they weren’t going to save his destiny—he locked one arm around her chest, brushed her sweat-soaked hair to the side, and rotated the pad of his thumb along her carotid artery, feeling for the perfect entry.
Releasing his sharp incisors, he scraped them back and forth along her neck until he
was comfortable with the angle.
“No!” Kiera shouted, catching him off guard.
He tightened his grip and snarled.
As his lips drew back from his gums, he sank his incisors into her flesh and formed a tight, unbreakable seal over the punctures.
She jolted!
She squirmed.
She came awake with a shout…
And he clamped his thighs around her.
Forgive me, iubito, he wished he could whisper as she twisted and turned, arched and bucked, trying to escape his hold.
It just didn’t matter.
Nothing but his venom mattered.
As her thrashing turned to panic, and her panic became madness, Saxson continued his relentless assault, destroying the broken remnants of her human body in order to bring her back as a vampire.
Kiera screamed so hard, her throat sounded raw—and then she screamed some more. All the while, Saxson hardened his heart, tuned out the distraction, and increased the flow…
He would never stop.
He would never let up.
He would convert her, and she would be successfully converted…or they would both die trying.
Chapter Thirty
The next night ~ twenty-four hours later
When Kiera opened her eyes, she was groggy, hazy, and disoriented, but she no longer felt any pain. In fact, she was soaking in a bathtub full of sweet-smelling salts and luxurious bubble-bath, and her body felt divine.
Healthy.
Strong.
Invincible…
Healed.
She glanced around the room—it still looked curiously like Owen’s warehouse—but that couldn’t be the case; there was no debris scattered in the tub. And when she glanced down at her body, she didn’t see any scars—her hands, wrists, and chest were flawless. She swept the bubbles aside and peeked at her stomach, her thighs, and her feet—they were perfect, too! In fact, her skin was positively glowing.
She turned her head lazily to the side…
And smiled.