Once Bitten, Twice Burned

  Her gaze locked on his. “For blood.”

  He nodded. “My teeth burned in my mouth. They stretched. Sharpened. My senses became more acute. When I touched my servant’s neck, I could hear the whoosh of his blood.” His hands fisted. “The first time I drank, I killed.”

  She swallowed.

  Tell her all. Show her the beast. “I enjoyed the kill.”

  The silence in the room was deafening, but though Sabine tensed, she didn’t try to run from him. She just kept sitting there, staring up at him with those dark eyes of hers.

  So he told her more. “I killed others. My hunger was insatiable. I wanted the blood. I gorged myself on it. In those first days, I was half-mad. A beast that had survived hell and wanted only blood.”

  Human food had no longer been able to sustain him.

  “Many tried to kill me.”

  But their weapons hadn’t worked against him. Not any longer. They could slice his flesh or break his bones, but he quickly healed from those injuries.

  “I was stronger, faster, so my attackers were the ones who died.” And the blood kept flowing.

  “Why are you telling me this?” Sabine demanded.

  “Because I want you to see what I am.” And to stay with me anyway. The whisper came from deep within. He ignored it. She had no choice. She had to stay with him. Too many were after her. To survive, Sabine needed his protection.

  “I know what you are.” Her words were stark. Sad.

  He flinched. I killed you, so yes, you do know. His hands fisted. “I told you . . . one of my brothers survived, but he was weak from the sickness.” Weak and still diseased. The scent of death had clung to him. “I . . . wanted to help him.” Because even though the bloodlust had created a monster in him, the man inside had still fought to rise to the surface. “My body was different. I knew that. So I thought that my blood must be different, too.”

  There had been no doctors then. Just those who dealt in false magic and barbaric “healing” techniques. Even before he’d gone to his brother’s side, Malcolm had been bled. Again and again.

  By the time Ryder had gone to him, Malcolm had already been near death.

  “I wasn’t sure how to transform him. With the others, I hadn’t cared.” Humans, but he’d tossed them aside like they were nothing. See me for what I am. “But I wanted to save him.” No, he’d needed to save Malcolm.

  “I gave him my blood. Forced him to drink, but nothing happened.” He’d been so furious. He’d paced in his brother’s room for hours and hours. But Malcolm had stayed pale and weak. “I gave him more. Kept forcing him to drink. He . . . fought me.”

  And that was when it had happened.

  “When I fought back, my hunger rose.” The scent of blood had been all around him. He hadn’t been strong enough to hold on to his control. “I bit his arm. His blood poured into me. He started to shake and convulse. I-I gave him more of my blood, still thinking it would help him.”

  And, in a way, it had.

  “That’s how you learned how to create other vampires,” Sabine said softly. “When you saved your brother.”

  “Malcolm didn’t exactly think of it as a saving.” But Ryder nodded. “But it was after that moment, when I took his blood and gave him back my own . . . it was then that he changed.” Already so close to death, Ryder had thought that he’d lost his brother.

  But Malcolm’s pallor had changed. The stiffness had faded away from his body. His eyes had opened. He’d . . .

  Had the same consuming hunger that Ryder felt.

  And the same loss of control.

  How many had they killed in those first months? How much blood had they taken? There had been screams. Death.

  Then they’d realized that there was more they could do. Not just drinking and killing.

  Control.

  “We learned that if we fed on humans and let them live, we could slip into their minds. We could control them completely, with just a thought.” A heady power. One he’d abused. One he’d abuse again.

  She pulled her lower lip between her teeth. Bit it lightly. Then asked, “Can you control me?”

  He stared back at her.

  “Have you?”

  He wouldn’t lie to her. Others, sure, without a qualm. But not to her. “I tried.”

  Her eyes narrowed.

  “But you weren’t human. Your mind didn’t work like theirs. Every time I tried to reach you, I just saw a wall of fire.” He hadn’t been lying when he told her that before.

  She rubbed her hands over the couch cushions. “And now? Since I’m like you? Do you still see the fire?”

  “You’re not like me,” he muttered. He was still working that part out. “And I haven’t tried to control you since we left Genesis.” Not even when she’d left him. It had felt wrong.

  “Try now.”

  He shook his head.

  Her brows rose. “Why not?”

  “I don’t want to control you.” Control . . . that had been Malcolm’s thing. The more blood he’d taken, the more control he’d wanted. Ryder knew that he and Malcolm had both changed. All of a sudden, it had seemed that they’d had the power of gods, while they were surrounded by mere men.

  Sex. Blood. Death.

  But Ryder had finally found his control. Finally pulled back.

  Malcolm hadn’t. “My brother was older than me.” By a year. “He’d always been the leader, the one who would rule after my father, but . . . with the change, he was weaker—”

  “Weaker than you?” she finished, head tilting back.

  He couldn’t read the emotions in her eyes, and he wanted to know what she was thinking.

  “My blood made him, but though he was strong, I was stronger.”

  “Because you were the first.” Her whisper. And she seemed to finally understand.

  I was the first vampire.

  Long before the legend of Vlad the Impaler, Ryder had been roaming the earth. Ryder didn’t know of another who’d been cursed by the bloodlust . . . until he awoke with the hunger.

  Hell, it had been at least a few centuries later before he’d met Vlad on a blood-filled night.

  “My brother didn’t want someone else to be stronger than him. Malcolm wanted to rule. He wanted the humans at his feet.” Malcolm had wanted to change the world. To show the humans just what they should fear.

  And the stories had started to spread then. Stories about men who hunted during the night. Who drank blood. Who killed. Who terrified.

  “I saw what happened.” He turned his back to her. Paced across the room. His gaze fell on a picture of Sabine. She looked about sixteen. Smiling from ear to ear as she stood on a sun-soaked deck. “The humans turned on each other. They killed, each other, because they thought the monsters were among them.” And they were. Only the fools were killing the wrong ones. “They tortured innocents. Slaughtered. And my brother was there, laughing at it all. Even holding court over some of the proceedings.”

  Malcolm had enjoyed it all. Enjoyed having those he knew to be just humans brought before him. Malcolm had ordered their blood drained. Ordered them sliced open. Ordered so many atrocities.

  His shoulders stiffened as the memories flooded through him. “Malcolm could have taught Wyatt a great deal about torture.”

  He remembered the screams. Bones—broken. Bodies-slowly cut in half. The Middle Ages had been the worst time. So many ways to torture, ways that made the victims take so long to die.

  The screams stay with me.

  “I knew I had to stop him.” Malcolm’s madness had infected the humans, not just because he was controlling their minds, but because the hysteria spread so widely and quickly. “I wanted to stop the death.” It had sickened him, and the knowledge that pained him the most . . .

  I started it. His blood had transformed Malcolm. If he’d just let his brother die, then so many other lives would have been spared.

  “I went to him. Got him away from the followers he kept so close.” Malcolm had always b
een eager to make more vampires, though they hadn’t actually been called vampires, not back then. No one had called them vampires until centuries later.

  Back then, they’d just been blood drinkers. Monsters.

  Later, his kind had become vykolakas or strigoi. And, finally, vampire.

  “You killed him,” she said, her voice without emotion.

  He glanced back at her. “Actually, he tried to kill me first.” A perfect setup. “I was still trying to save him. Trying to stop his madness, when he drove a sword into my heart.”

  The blade had been silver. Silver didn’t kill me, brother. But the blow had weakened him. “During his tortures, my brother had been experimenting.”

  Just like Wyatt. His jaw locked. Ryder hated experiments. And the monsters who enjoyed them. “He killed humans, but he also made vampires . . . made them, then killed them, just so he could learn our weaknesses.”

  You don’t understand. You’ve changed. Malcolm’s charge to him. We can have everything. We can drink this world dry.

  Ryder hadn’t been thirsty any longer. He’d controlled his cravings. Been able to think past the bloodlust.

  “He used the sword to maximize my blood loss, to weaken me.” If Ryder had been a normal “transformed” vampire, the attack would have worked. But Malcolm’s “experiments” had been off. Because Ryder wasn’t like the others. “While I was on the ground, bleeding out, he went for my head.” His brother hadn’t wanted to take any chances. He’d attacked quickly, going for a brutal kill. Ryder rubbed his neck, remembering that long-ago day. Time couldn’t erase some memories. Not the darkest ones.

  Sabine rose and came toward him with slow steps. Her hand lifted and touched the skin of his throat. Her fingers felt like they were wrapped in silk. “But you stopped him.”

  He offered her a small smile. “No, love, Malcolm drove that sword’s blade into my throat, and I choked on my own blood.”

  Her lips parted in shock.

  “But the first blow of the sword didn’t completely sever my head. My brother should have used a sharper blade.” His mistake. “So I fought back. Not with my body, because it was all but useless. I used my mind.” He’d made a shocking discovery then. “I could control the others. Every vampire he’d made. Every vampire I’d made.” His control hadn’t been limited to humans. “In those desperate moments, I reached out, and I could feel them all.”

  Every single one.

  He’d felt a rush of power so intense then that his body had shuddered.

  “I sent out one order to the vampires. Just one . . . kill Malcolm.”

  Her fingers trembled against his throat.

  “And my brother stared into my eyes. He took the sword, and he plunged it into his own chest even as he screamed at me.”

  “Ryder . . .”

  “The others came. He wasn’t dead. They attacked him. Hitting. Punching. Clawing. Tearing into him. He kept screaming, but he wasn’t fighting them. He could scream, but he couldn’t fight.”

  She didn’t stop touching him. Why? He was telling her everything. She knew his darkness. But she was leaning closer to him. “How did you get away?” Sabine asked.

  “I made them give me blood.” He’d taken and taken. “They dragged my brother’s body away. Buried him.” What had been left of him.

  “Then what did you do?”

  “I tried to stop the monsters I’d made. Tried to pull them back, but by that point, there were too many of us.” He expelled a rough breath. “I hunted the worst of the vampires. Killed them. Staked those who slaughtered innocents and enjoyed the bloodbath.” Confess. “Though I was little better than they were. But I tried to be. I swear, I tried to be.”

  Her fingertips rested over his pounding pulse. “How long did you hunt?”

  “I’m still hunting.” A dark truth. “I’m the one who created the vampires, so it’s my job to take out the monsters who live to torture and destroy.” His job—his penance.

  “I know the rage you carry,” he said, and Ryder was careful not to touch her. “You feel betrayed. You trusted your family.” This she had to understand. “But family can and will turn on you. Especially if . . .”

  “If you’re a monster?”

  “If they are the monsters. And humans can be just as evil and twisted as any beast stalking in the night.”

  “Yes,” she agreed with her steady gaze, “they can be.” Then her fingers slid over his neck, lightly caressing his skin once more. “How close did you come to death that day?”

  “Too close.” Close enough to know that he didn’t want to see whatever hell waited for him on the other side.

  She leaned up on her toes, and her lips brushed over his throat. Over the phantom wound that had long since faded. “I’m sorry.”

  She was apologizing to him? What the hell for?

  “I couldn’t imagine killing my brother.”

  No, she loved Rhett. Once, he’d loved Malcolm. Looked up to his brother. Fought death to save his brother’s life.

  “But what would you do . . .” Ryder had to ask her this. He’d told her his story, and he had to ask, “If your Rhett tried to kill you?”

  Her lips pressed over his racing pulse. Then she pulled back, just enough to look up into his gaze. Her lashes were long and dark, shadowing her eyes. “I don’t know.”

  “Could you kill him? If it came down to a choice . . . you or him . . . could you do it?”

  “I hope I don’t ever have to find out.”

  It wasn’t an answer. He needed more from her. “Your father sent you to those men at Genesis. What if your brother comes after you? You want to save him, the same way I wanted to save Malcolm.” Maybe this was really the reason he’d told her about his twisted past. “When the time comes and you’re forced to choose, will you choose death for him? Or will you sacrifice yourself for him?”

  She just stared back at him, and Ryder realized that she didn’t know what she’d do.

  He understood then just what he’d have to do. If Sabine couldn’t fight back against those who would betray her, then he’d damn well take them out.

  She could hate him. She could fight him. But she would live.

  All of the others would die.

  Vampire law. His law. You don’t hurt what’s mine.

  No one would hurt her and keep living. No. One.

  Rhett yanked his hand free of the rope, sending blood spattering behind him. His wrist was ripped open, thanks to all the sawing he’d had to do on the rope. But he was free now.

  He’d shouted until his throat ached. That rat bastard Vaughn hadn’t come back. No one had come.

  He used his bloody hand to yank at the other bonds. His ankles were raw, more damage from the ropes, but with some tugs and twists and a hell of a lot of hoarse “fucks”, he managed to get free of those bonds.

  Then he was on his feet. His first step almost sent him tumbling right down on his face. The ropes had been too tight. There wasn’t enough circulation in his feet. They were numb. They were—

  On fire as feeling surged back into them.

  His teeth ground together as he forced himself to move. He had to get out of there. Had to find a phone and call for help.

  Got to find Sabine. Because if Vaughn had gone after her. . .

  The floor creaked. Not the floor he was standing on. The creak had come from the other room, just beyond his door. The building had been dead silent for so long that the quiet sound shocked him.

  Rhett’s heart slammed into his chest. Vaughn was back. Rhett scrambled back. Light streamed into his room now, faint light that came through the cracks in the boards that lined the windows. He grabbed the chair he’d been sitting in and lifted it over his head. It wouldn’t be much of a weapon, but he’d do whatever the hell he had to do—

  In order to survive.

  But the man who opened the door wasn’t Vaughn. The guy was some big, rough-looking bastard with black hair and glinting eyes. The guy smirked as he took in Rhett’s weapon a
nd bloody form.

  I know him. Rhett’s eyes narrowed. This was the SOB who’d burned down The Rift! Rhett had seen him.

  “Good thing I was the one to find you and not some vamp.” The man lifted one black brow. “Or else feeding time would be going on right about now.”

  “Who the hell are you?” Rhett didn’t attack, not yet. Mostly because his arms weren’t exactly feeling steady. Need another second. Just gathering my strength, then I’ll attack.

  “What do you think your sister will do in order to get you back?” the man asked, lifting a hand to scratch his chin. “Do you think she’d trade her life for yours? Maybe trade the life of her vampire lover?”

  “Who the fuck are you?”

  The guy’s smirk just got bigger.

  And Rhett had gathered his strength. He attacked, launching forward with the chair.

  The guy grabbed the chair before Rhett could slam it into his head. The man’s fingers wrapped around the wood. “I’m someone you don’t want as an enemy.”

  His eyes weren’t dark any longer. There was a circle of orange—red?—around his pupils. As if . . . as if his eyes were burning.

  The wood began to smoke beneath the man’s hand. Tendrils of smoke drifted into the air. Then the wood caught on fire. Big, bright flames erupted along the surface of the broken chair.

  Rhett jerked his hand away and leapt back.

  “I told you, be glad I’m not a vampire.” The chair burned to ash in a blaze that matched the fire in the man’s eyes.

  No, not a vampire, but . . . “What are you?” Rhett’s voice was hoarse, thanks to all the damn screaming and yelling he’d done.

  But the guy wasn’t answering him. He was too busy touching the wall to his right. Just his touch sent flames licking up the old wood and rushing toward the ceiling.

  “Stop!” Rhett yelled—or tried to yell. But, oh hell, screw stopping the guy. He just needed to get away from him. So Rhett rushed forward. He plowed his fist into the guy’s face—shit, that blow scorched his knuckles—and tried to lunge through the doorway.

  But the hulking guy just laughed and grabbed hold of his arm. “It’s not that easy.” He looked over at the flames. They were burning bright and hot. “We’ll send a little message to your sister, then we’ll let her find us.”