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TIRED AT LAST, I TUCKED the ereader into my backpack and placed it in the dresser. I lay down and eventually drifted off to sleep. When I woke, I wasn’t alone. Kevin was standing over me and he was naked. Unlike Benjamin, his body was toned, but it still did nothing for me. “Go away,” I told him bluntly.
“I don’t think so,” he replied and leaped on me before I could sit up. Placing his knees on either side of my legs, he held me down by the shoulders. I could hear my mother involved with someone on the ground floor. She was too preoccupied to realize what Kevin was up to. Once again, I had to fight my battle alone.
“I had a plan to kill Katrina and then you came along and ruined everything,” he snarled. “It took me months to find a pathetic, lonely woman who was susceptible to the idea of becoming the undead. I had to feed from anything I could find in the swamp before I stole away to see her just so I could resist the urge to drain her when I bit her. I was on the brink of convincing her to make her way to our lair during daylight and dragging our master out into the sun. Now I have to start all over again!”
“You want Katrina to die so you can be the master,” I surmised.
His tone was angry and bitter. “Of course I do! We all hate her. She’s crazy and it’s only a matter of time before one of us gets rid of her and takes over. I plan on being the one in charge. I’m not going to be a lackey for the rest of my life!”
His hands moved to my throat, but he didn’t squeeze down, yet. “You’re smarter than the others, which means you’re my main competition.” He looked down at me from his position of power and his expression turned sly. “I’m going to kill you, but first I’m going to take you. It would be a waste to destroy someone so beautiful without first enjoying her body.” At that pronouncement, he leaned down and pressed his mouth against mine.
Despite no longer being bonded to Reece, my body instantly rejected his touch. Being some kind of cross between a shifter and a vampire, I was far stronger than my assailant. I put my hands on his chest and thrust him away. Kevin flew across the room and hit the wall. I was on him before he had a chance to scramble to his feet. I’d slept fully dressed with my gun beneath my pillow just in case something like this happened. I pointed the Beretta at his face and used my free hand to grab him by the arm and haul him to his feet.
“Katrina has forbidden you from killing us,” he said shakily.
“Yeah, but somehow I don’t think I’ll have any trouble pulling the trigger at all,” I replied.
Something occurred to him and shock coursed over his face. “Your lips and skin were warm.” Listening intently, he became even more disturbed. “Your heart is still beating. How is that possible?” The earlier intelligence I’d glimpsed was now apparent. He’d been hiding it from everyone, including our master.
“There’s never been anything like me before. Even I don’t know what’s possible.”
Sensing my intent to do him harm, he tried to run. My hand clamped down on his arm before he could break free. Pressing him against the wall, I put my gun to his temple and forced him to look into my eyes. He thought I was going to kill him for discovering my secret, but I didn’t think that would be necessary. Just like Benjamin, his will seeped away beneath my stare and he became compliant. “Forget that I’m still alive and don’t ever touch me again,” I ordered him.
“Yes, master,” he intoned.
“I’m not your master,” I said, knowing it was a lie. If I’d wanted to, I could have wrested him away from Katrina and made him mine. If I hadn’t been so apathetic, I might have claimed all of her minions just to see how she’d react. “Get out of here,” I ordered and he obeyed me.
I gave him enough time to reach the ground floor and get dressed before I followed him. When I entered the room, he was sitting on one of the cheap plastic chairs and was brooding silently. I sat in my usual chair and only had a short wait before Katrina and Orlando sauntered in. One by one, the rest of the group straggled in to join us.
Katrina waited until we were all present before she spoke. “It is time to hunt.”
Excitement immediately swept through the group. They crowded around her eagerly as she took the stairs to the roof then leaped to the ground below. The snow crunched beneath our feet as we searched the alleys for a homeless person.
We quickly found a man who was healthy enough to survive some blood loss and who didn’t smell like he was riddled with disease. Katrina bent, grabbed him by the throat and lifted him to his feet with one hand. He tried to scream, but her grip tightened and he could only make a pained gargling sound. After a short staring match, he fell beneath her spell. He went limp and stopped clawing at her arm.
“We’ll have to bite him somewhere on his body where it won’t be seen,” I reminded her.
Gesturing for Tiffany to come forward, she handed the human over to her. “Drink a few mouthfuls of his blood, then stop,” she instructed. The others were practically salivating in hunger as she pulled his clothes away from his neck and bit into the man’s shoulder. Everyone but me took a step forward when the hot scent of his blood wafted to us. They halted at Katrina’s sharp glance.
As instructed, Tiffany only drank a few swallows before she pulled away. I could feel her desire to tear into the man and savage him to death, but our master’s will was stronger than hers.
“Try to make him forget he saw us,” I suggested and Katrina complied.
Taking the human by the upper arms, she stared into his eyes again. “You never saw us,” she instructed him. “If someone asks what happened to your shoulder, tell them you were bitten by a dog.”
The irony of her command wasn’t lost on me. That was the story I’d been told by my father to shield me from the truth. Anyone with medical training would know it was a lie, but homeless people didn’t have much access to healthcare. It was doubtful anyone would discover his wound.
Proud of her ability to control her minions, Katrina repeated the process with the rest of us. I played along when it was my turn to feed, but I didn’t need her to instruct me when to pull back. It seemed that I didn’t have the same need to rend and tear my victims as the others. They were merely a food source, not playthings for me to maul at will. My complete lack of emotions meant I wouldn’t go into a feeding frenzy like the others.
When it was Katrina’s turn, she very nearly lost control. She fed more deeply than she should have and it took four of us to drag her off the homeless man. Rounding on us, she bared her fangs and hissed in fury. The others cowered away from her, but I met her stare squarely. “Do you want Mark and his team to hunt us down?” I asked, striving for a reasonable tone that wouldn’t incite further rage. Her mood was volatile and it wouldn’t take much to set her off.
My question snapped her out of her bloodlust and she came back to her senses. Crouching beside the man, she checked his pulse. The wound on his shoulder was far worse than the others we’d fed from this night. Her upper teeth had left deep puncture wounds, but there were only shallow indentations from her bottom teeth. His scar matched the one on my right shoulder. Katrina had a knack for biting the exact same spot each time she fed from her victims. “He’ll live,” she decided and stood.
I made sure to cover him with several layers of filthy blankets, just as I had with the other men and women who we’d fed from. It wasn’t because I cared, but because I didn’t want them to freeze to death and to be found by the authorities. If their bodies were examined and their strange wounds were noted, it would get back to the PIA. Mark would figure out who was responsible and we’d have to run again. I didn’t care whether our nest was wiped out or not. I just hadn’t come up with a plan that would ensure my master’s death yet. Katrina had the Devil’s own luck and had managed to escape justice too many times. I needed to come up with an airtight plan that not even she could wriggle out of.
During the next few nights, we quickly fell into a pattern that became mind numbingly repetitive. We weren’t allowed to feed every night. Katrina kept a tight rein on us all, making sure we all knew who was in charge. Her moods swung from silently brooding, to rage-filled rants. When she sat on her leather chair with us surrounding her like worshippers, she was at her happiest. Not that our kind could ever feel real joy.
After a week and a half of sitting around listening to the others squabble, or engaging in noisy sex, I was thoroughly bored. Needing a break, I waited for the sun to come up and for the others to die for the day before I headed outside.
Walking away from the industrial area to a residential neighborhood, I heard footsteps approaching. Melting into the shadows, I watched as a young man jogged towards me. He was in his early twenties and had short dark brown hair and a well-muscled body. His face was handsome enough to make most women stare. He ran past me without seeing me and he didn’t even realize he was being watched.
Entering a house halfway down the block, he thumped up the stairs and turned on the shower. My feet were moving before I realized what my intentions were. My mother had told me that my sex drive would increase, but I’d seen no signs of it yet. This was the first man to catch my attention for more than a few seconds and I wanted to see if her prediction would come true.
He wasn’t alone in the house. I could hear another person in the kitchen making breakfast. It was another guy and he was whistling merrily. Leaping up to the second floor, I clung to the windowsill and peered inside. Clothes were strewn all over the floor. Haphazard piles of books on a desk indicated he was probably a college student.
The window wasn’t locked and I slid it up and climbed inside. Just in case the roommate came knocking, I locked the bedroom door just as the shower was shut off. The young man opened the door a few seconds later. He started in surprise when he saw me. A towel was slung tantalizingly low on his hips. My eyes dropped from his face down to his feet and back up again as I took in his sheer male beauty.
When I reached his eyes, he was smiling. “I don’t know who you are,” he said, “but I’m very happy to meet you.” He glanced downward and I looked down to see him stirring below the waist.
I’d never tried to enthrall a human before. Katrina always took care of that when we fed. He crossed the floor to stand in front of me. Our eyes met and after a few seconds, he became mine. With his will sapped away, I was free to examine him in further detail. He had a magnificent body that had been honed from a lot of time spent at a gym. On one level, I knew why I’d chosen him for this experiment. He could almost have passed for Reece’s brother, except he wasn’t an insane werewolf who had a taste for human flesh.
“Sit down on the bed,” I told him and he complied.
I followed him and waited for him to sit on the edge of the rumpled bed. Running my hands across his shoulders, I straddled his legs and sat down. His breathing had quickened and I looked down to see he was now fully aroused. He could be mine, if I wanted him. All I had to do was take my clothes off, strip his towel away and let my body take over.
Unfortunately, my body wasn’t interested in participating in the experiment. I leaned in to kiss him and before our lips could meet, I was climbing out of the window without remembering how I’d gotten there.
I’d broken my bond with Reece, but I still wasn’t free from him. I almost felt bleak when I realized that even now that I was semi-undead, I was still bound by the promise that I’d secretly made to him. I’d vowed that he would be the only man I’d ever share my bed with. That promise had followed me to my new state of whatever the hell I was now.
The only way I’d ever be free of him was when I was truly dead. Knowing my luck, even if I became a ghost, I’d still be tethered to him somehow. I couldn’t dredge up the interest to wonder how he was faring with his new mate.
His mother had been fairly certain that bonding with Gloria would save him from the fate that I’d suffered. Now that I couldn’t feel him in my head, I had no idea whether her plan had worked or not. For all I knew, the vampirism might have already killed him. Deep inside me, my wolf howled in sorrow at that prospect.
