“I’m going to kill that idiot,”Kasen groggily slurs as he collapses on his stomach at my feet.
“Not if I beat you to it.”Grumbling, I fill in Malcolm and Beck, knowing not only are they’re going to be pissed as fuck, but I’m in for a lifetime of ‘I told you so’s.
“I knew this was a horrible idea,”Malcolm seethes before going on a pissed off tangent I didn’t know he was capable of.
“Can you get back here?”Beck demands, angry, but keeping more of a level head than Malcolm.
“They’re herding him back the way we came. Kasen’s passed out and there’s no way I’m going to be able to drag him like this. I have no idea if the cave the original was shacked up in lets out anywhere else, but I doubt it. I think we’re better off staying put until they ki-fuck!”
A small scuff of dirt is the only warning I get before there’s a hand wrapped around my throat and lips whispering in my ear. “You’re not one of mine.” He grips both of my wrists in one of his hands that he slams into the wall above my head. “But you’ll do nicely.”
I’m floored that someone that’s centuries old is this fast instead of an inch away from death’s doorstep. The way Vice and the others were talking, they were blindsided too, I just don’t knowwhy.
Teeth rake along my shoulder and I stop breathing.He can’t change me, so he can’t control me.But the theory we’ve been going on starts to crumble to dust with every passing second.
Changed vampires can’t re-infect someone that’s already been turned and key them into the pack link that lets their original to control them. Just like Beck or Kasen could tap us into the link, but even though Malcolm and I are included in the loop, we can’t add anyone else. They broke their pack links with their families before coming out here and creating a new one.
If they can do that, originals should be able to as well. They had to change their first minions, after all.
Beams of light bounce around the tunnel as a few men come down, but they stop in their tracks at the sight before them. The original readjusts his position to his hand threatening to crush my windpipe as he rasps, “I don’t know about you, but I bet I could tear her throat out before you could get a shot off.” Warning growls reverberate around us that I can feel deep in my bones.
“Let the girl go,” Vice demands. “You’ve made your point. You’re better than us, is that what you want to hear?”
A dark chuckle escapes the vampire, his fetid breath on my face making me gag. “The only thing I want to hear is you leaving my home, and me in peace. I’ve done nothing wrong.”
“Nothing wrong?!” someone spits, taking a step forward before one of his friends puts a hand to his chest to stop him. “You’ve killed gods only know how many people!”
His lips curl into a cruel sneer. “I’vekilled no one. Not even any of you when I easily could have.”
Vice’s face and neck are turning red. “You sent your minions to slaughter and change people to recruit them into your twisted little cult so you-”
“Wouldn’t be gunned down for hunting fair game?” he challenges. “The same prey your kind is free to feast on, but the moment one of mine appears, they’re savagely torn apart?”
An incredulous scoff. “Yeah, ‘cause the vamps are going after rabbits, not fucking cities.”
“Mykind!” he screams, raspy voice cracking from so much abuse when he likely hasn’t spoken in ages. “The first. The ones that went through the change at the same gods forsaken time as the rest of them; the first mages and shifters. One day we were human and the next we needed blood to survive, but while you all were accepted, we were condemned as monsters. Hunting grounds were taken by the shifters until we were starving and had no fucking choice to find another source so we wouldn’t starve to death! You think we like living like rats while the world tries to forget that we exist? That I enjoy the fact I can’t hunt down a deer myself to sate me because I’d be murdered on sight?” His voice is a harsh whisper. “That I’m forced to see the world go by through the eyes of others like enough wasn’t stolen from me already?”
“What the fuck is happening, Scarlett?!”Malcolm and Beck demand, but I can’t concentrate enough to answer them as I focus on every twitch of muscle the vampire makes, searching for an opportunity.
Everything is tense, but by the guns trained on him, they aren’t buying into the speech in the slightest. The pressure increases on my windpipe, and I barely manage to gasp out, “Vice, he’s not bluffing.”
Lips pursed, he reluctantly lowers his weapon, setting off a chain reaction of the other men following his lead. The original doesn’t look pleased in the slightest, nor does he ease up on his grip, but he doesn’t increase it either.
“The girl is coming with me as insurance,” he states, and in a blur, my wrists are restrained behind my back and his hand is wrapped around my throat, using me as a living shield while he approaches Vice and his men. “As soon as there’s enough distance between us, I’ll leave her; in how many pieces depends on if you’re stupid enough to follow.”
Vice locks eyes with me, screaming for me to understand what he wants me to do, and since I can’t nod, I blink twice, praying I’m guessing right. The vampire’s other senses have clearly enhanced to compensate for the lack of vision, so we can’t just have someone waiting at a tunnel entrance; he’ll see and smell them. But he can speak with Malcolm via the earpiece if I get the vampire far enough away, and then Malcolm can fill me in on the plan telepathically.
His back to the wall, the vampire leads us past them, turning to walk backwards with me as a buffer until we reach the massive cavern. Before I can so much as blink, the hand at my neck is gone and my hands are restrained in front of me as he takes off down the only tunnel I haven’t been down. It lets him run far faster while dragging me along, while still ensuring I can’t attack him.
Within ten minutes, I hear Malcolm in my head, trying to get a read on our location so they can be ready. The same way we were bombarded at the project house by the people’s presence being concealed by shields, he can do that here if they can figure out where we’re coming out.
“What about the cabin?”
“Fuck the cabin!”Beck snarls.
“The survivors are holding the doors for now,”Malcolm answers, trying to put me at ease the only way he can right now.
Kasen comes to, and the undiluted rage and self-loathing he projects is potent enough that I pick up as a tumultuous thought. “Where’s he taking you?”
