Bloodlust.Arousalexcitementterrorlust—
It blended and swirled.
I couldn’t escape. Couldn’t so much as blink, not even when Dez’s heart sputtered and his lungs seized as something jagged sliced through dense muscle and unleashed a flood that smothered his next breath with the weight of a choking, crimson ocean.
Victim and assailant, I felt it all.
Every second that leached into the next, and when Dez’s heart began to flounder and sputter beneath the onslaught, I was overcome by a seductive lure. One intent on dragging us all into the dark. It was a soothing blanket of frigid nothing that banked the flames consuming me from the inside out—a numbing wash I embraced with a ragged breath.
A muffled groan puffed against my nape, and with a stuttering gasp the captain began to shift above me. “Ssstop,” he slurred. Driven to fight the seeping cold, even as I tried to welcome it. “Marco,” he rasped, and lifted his head as if it didn’t weigh thousands upon thousands of pounds. As if the weight of it didn’t strain his neck all the way down to his lower back. “Enough. Marco, that—that’s enough…”
I shivered when the noose tightened about my throat once more. Bones rattled inside my skull when the captain forced me back, my teeth clacking together when my skull bumped the cobbles and he crammed the empath back inside her cage of flesh. Canceling my murderous intentions so he could release the soldier from my grip with an effort that left me cold. Freezing solid in the heart of an inferno.
Marco coughed. Just once before he staggered back. Landing hard, he sat, braced against the cobbles as he stared between his knees. Horror etched into every grime-caked line as he stared at the wreckage of what he’d done. “A-Asher—”
“He’s dead.” The captain’s grip tightened at the top of my thigh, and I felt his jaw bulge when his teeth chattered. And then in a hard voice that showed nothing of the turmoil I could feel swirling inside his chest, he said again, “He’s dead. We have to go. Now, before anyone else gets too close. Before she—”
“Right.” Marco pulled a haggard breath between clenched teeth. Gagging at the sight of the dead elite before his eyes went to his knuckles. Inspecting where the skin had torn and peeled back, leaving a hint of yellow and white that didn’t bother to bleed. “And the woman—is she—did I—”
“She died in the blast,” the captain said. Firm. Easing the other man’s heart. “It was… she didn’t feel it. Didn’t even know what happened.”
With a tight nod, Marco swallowed.
He swallowed again, and again, before his breath burst over his lips and he forced himself to stand. Swaying before he gathered himself and turned to pull the captain up with unsteady hands anchored beneath his armpits.
And then, as they towered above me, Marco said, “Dez wasn’t wrong,” in a careful tone. “If she can’t be controlled, should she be put down—”
“Not now,” the captain snapped, and slipped greedy hands beneath the backs of my knees. Cradling my head and neck with a grip that trembled.
“Look around, mate,” Marco returned, dark eyes intent on mine. Cheeks sallow and waxy beneath his tan, his voice tinny and far away as his face began to blur. Doubling as my eyelids grew too heavy to lift.
“It was Sasha,” Asher hissed. The imprint of his fingers the only thing I could feel as everything grew numb with a dusting of frost.
“Sasha’s dead. She didn’t do”—Marco gestured wildly around us—“this.”
To that, Asher had nothing to say. No rebuttal that would spare me from the truth as he had Marco. No possessive squeeze that wrapped me in a confusing cloud of hated comfort. And no flicker of soothing energy to supplement what I’d lost and ease the burn of frigid cold.
His jaw flexed as he pulled a whistling breath through nostrils pinched white and bloodless. And then, with eyes gone dark as pitch, he caught my gaze in one that was carefully controlled. His every flickering emotion shuttered and locked down tight where I couldn’t begin to wonder what it all meant.
Ignoring the dull throb pounding away at the base of his skull, he pulled the rest of my strength from my soul in a single, merciless gulp and did not blink.
Letting me fall into swirling, inky nothingness of pupils blown wide as they might go.
I fell…
My last thought a question not quite asked.
Because I wasn’t sure if I’d ever open my eyes again.
4
Iwoke to the murmur of far off voices.
Listening to the sound of conversation ebbing and flowing above me, I was pulled up from the bottom of a deep, dark ocean.
Lost somewhere in the fog obscuring what was left of my mind.
Somewhere I’d beenput.
