Eternal Beast: Mark of the Vampire (15 page)

Erion grinned. He’d given the boy a few quick shifts from
paven
to demon and back again. Not in front of the
Romans or the females or the Beasts—just a scary little show for one.

He’d liked the way the
balas
had screeched with equal parts terror and pleasure.

Ladd’s eyes grew saucer wide as he stared at all the weapons on the bed. “Are you taking all of those with you, Uncle Erion?”

Everyone in the room stilled, not at the question—but at the name the
balas
had called him. Their gazes shifted to Erion, all curious, all a little concerned. They wanted to see what he’d do, he thought, how he’d act with this
balas
that was supposedly his. Would he be gruff with the boy, tell him not to call him that?

Uncle Erion.

Or would he be irritated within his own black heart because he wasn’t the boy’s uncle at all but his father?

Christ, just the thought of it sent his body into tremors. Look at him. A
mutore
, an animal, he didn’t have an ounce of true softness within him.

Uncle Erion.

He shouldn’t care; he knew that. But the title got under his thick demon skin and scratched. This
balas
carried his genes, had
mutore
blood. And after what Titus had revealed earlier, Erion couldn’t help but be concerned about that. What would it mean for the boy? Would his transition to
pavenhood
be a difficult one too? Would Cruen know how to ease it?

Erion’s gut twisted. He looked up at Nicholas.

“Do you have something to say to the
balas
, Brother?” Nicholas said, no malice in his tone. “Here? Now? In this room?”

Erion’s lips thinned.

Nicholas put his hands on Ladd’s shoulders. “Just understand what that means.” He glanced down at the boy. “And what that will mean to him.”

No, Erion told himself quickly, resolutely. It wasn’t time. Maybe never would be. The
balas
was happy, had a family here, a mother figure in Nicholas’s mate, Kate. And, though he was starting to find it oddly frustrating, the boy had a father figure in Nicholas as well. After all, Ladd had not only been rescued from some maniac called Ethan Dare by Nicholas, but had forged a deep bond with the
paven
. How could Erion strip the boy of that, especially without any promise of care from his true sire?

He turned to the
balas
and stated, “I take only the weapons I can carry on my person, young
paven
.”

The boy’s riveted gaze traveled up and down Erion, at each weapon tucked against his body. “Are you going to fight?”

“Perhaps.” He lowered his chin, gave the
balas
a grave look. “But only if I must, if there are no other options. Do you understand?”

Ladd nodded solemnly. “I could go with you.” His eyes widened even further. “I am becoming a good fighter.”

Erion felt a hitch of something within his chest. It was a strange sensation. He wasn’t sure what it meant. If it was his demon at work or something else. “You will stay here and continue your training. I want to see your progression when I get back.”

“I wish you both didn’t have to go,” Ladd said, looking from Erion to Nicholas, his lower lip pressed out.

A soft smile on her comely face, Nicholas’s mate
came to stand beside the boy. She put her arms around him. “They won’t be gone for long, Ladd.” Kate’s gaze lifted to Nicholas’s. “Right,
Paven
?”

Nicholas grinned wickedly, intimately at her. “You know I cannot be away from you for more than a few days, sweetest one. My unbeating heart wouldn’t allow it.”

Kate returned his grin. “Nor mine,
Paven
. Nor any other part of me.”

He chuckled, his expression tight, his nostrils flared. “’Tis wicked to send me off like this,
Veana
.”

“My poor Nicky,” she said gently, sweetly. “I promise I will pay the price when you return.”

“You will pay now,” he said with a growl, taking her in his arms and giving her a tender kiss.

Ladd made a face at Erion, stuck out his tongue in disgust.

Erion chuckled, but within him there was a thread of envy for what his twin possessed with this
veana
. He imagined it wasn’t in his future, romantic love, but he wondered at it all the same.

“Are we ready, Brother?” Erion said, moving away from the group and jumping up on the ledge, the cold air rushing his face.

“Let’s go hunting.” Nicholas gave Kate one last kiss and followed Erion out the window, their flashes two quick shots of lightning against the night sky.

After they were gone, after closing the window, Alexander turned and looked first at Kate, then at Ladd. “Never fear. They will be back soon.”

“We know,” Kate and Ladd said at the same time, then smiled at each other.

Behind them, something darted by in the hallway, then fell back, looking in the room. Evans. His face flushed, the servant entered with a breathless, “Excuse me, sir.”

“Something wrong?” Alexander asked, coming to stand beside Kate and the boy.

“I was looking for Dr. Donohue,” said the aged male. “There is a visitor just arrived.”

“Who?” Alexander demanded, his tone suddenly fierce and protective. “Who is it?”

The male’s eyes brightened. “Her mother.”

“Cellie?” Alexander said, stunned. “Cellie’s here?”

Evans nodded. “She says she must speak to Dr. Donohue immediately.”

Under the brilliant light of a thousand candles, Feeyan inhaled deeply and opened her eyes, a sensation of triumph moving through her. One pawn down in this chess match. “She is there, at the Romans’ compound.”

The Order member seated across from her looked concerned. “We cannot track her there.”

Several feet away, seated before an unmoving Impure male strapped to cold stone, another Order member lifted his head. “The Roman home is too secure, has too many enchantments protecting it.” The
paven
sniffed with derision. “We are able to send messages within their walls, but we can’t get inside. ’Tis very tiresome, indeed.” He lifted one pale eyebrow. “Perhaps we should see to removing that obstacle.”

Feeyan hesitated in answering the Order member’s final statement. Though she would like total access to the Romans as well, the Order’s relationship with them
was a vital one, a tenuous one, and she did not want that unspoken truce compromised, not with something like this. Not yet.

“Access to the Romans’ home matters not at this time,” she said coolly. “The older
veana
will lead us to her Impure son—and to the
mutore
.”

“Both must be exterminated,” the
paven
across from her said. “The
mutore
for what she is and the male for what he has done here.”

They all ceased speaking for a moment as they gazed at the Impures within the cells surrounding the center of the Paleo. Feeyan could see the spirit in their eyes, the burgeoning hope. Gray Donohue’s rescue operation had given them all a belief that they too would escape their destiny and be liberated.

Feeyan had seen it in their blood—and she’d seen
him
in their blood.

First with the senator and now with the Impures. This male was growing dangerous.

“We must speed up castrations,” she said to the Order members surrounding her. “And when we have this rebel Impure in our grasp, we will bring him here, let them all watch their aspiring savior bleed out before them.”

Titus heard his leader’s words and knew it was only a matter of time before Gray Donohue lay on one of the stones before him. Not only was the male harboring a
mutore
, but he was attempting to bring about a revolt within the Impure population.

The Order would be swift with their justice.

Titus stood beside his fellow Order member, who
was fang-deep within a male’s upper thigh. He despised performing castrations, and Impure blood made him even weaker than he already was, so he had, once again, offered himself up as seeker. The one who chose which Impures would lie on the stone table next.

As the Impure male below him cried out in pain, in misery over a future he could no longer see, Titus couldn’t help but recall his own history of torment and torture at the hands of the Order—long before they were even aware of it—back when he was taken from the Coliseum in Rome and sent to an experimental facility run by a new Order member named Cruen. There Titus was poked and prodded and changed into a Breeding Male monster who for decades lived in a cage and was released only to fuck and impregnate the cold, dry bodies of Pureblood
veana
s who hadn’t found their true mates.

It had been a true hell on earth. If Cruen hadn’t one day decided to offer him a vial of his magic-laced blood, he might have taken his own life. But the blood had turned out to be an elixir, and Titus had lived another several decades as a normal
paven
, with no urges, a member of the Order himself.

But everything was different now. Cruen had gone rogue and hadn’t shown himself to Titus in weeks. He prayed that the Romans and the
mutore
found him. The
paven
’s blood was Titus’s only hope for survival—his only hope to see a clear future. Because if they didn’t, he wasn’t altogether certain he could stop himself from offering up information on the whereabouts of a certain
mutore
female.

He didn’t want to hurt his children, but the further
he slipped back into Breeding Male status, back into that depraved, uncontrollable rutting animal, the more ruthless he would become. For no one and nothing mattered to a Breeding Male animal but sex and survival.

T
he blood of the Impure male that Gray had rescued from the Paleo ran into his mouth and down his throat, but the memories he desired drifted up like a cache of balloons to his mind. He centered them there, then started popping each one in turn; first the Impure getting his virgin “call” from the Order, then his struggle to find that same frequency a second time. Gray pushed deeper, centered himself. He saw the Impure stretched out on a bed, felt his ease slipping into a relaxed mind state. This was the male’s third go-round, and he obviously felt a keen strength as he called out to the Order. Gray watched him as he waited, as he remained open and eager with what he now knew and understood, all the way until the Order’s hive answered him and welcomed this new bee inside.

The Impure had learned quickly, Gray mused. He opened his mouth wide, deepened his bite, then reached out and wrapped his thought stream around
the male’s perfect memory, over and over until it was cocooned. Then he squeezed like a python.

Gray heard the male’s sharp intake of breath and he pulled out, then dropped his head into his hands and fought for peace, for his blood to slow, his pulse too.

“Take him downstairs,” he ordered to no one in particular, his voice hoarse, his head pounding and swollen. “Get him food, water, blood if he wants it, and let him rest. It’ll take a day or two for him to recover fully.”

Shit, Gray thought, gritting his teeth against a sudden lightning strike inside his mind. How long would it take for him to recover? Or recover enough so that the three other Impure warriors could go inside and mine for gold, retrieve what Gray had pulled out of their Impure informant who’d been working so intimately with the Order.

A cup of water was shoved into his hand, and he drank it down with the fervor of a desert dweller. Then a second glass. He gulped it greedily. The warriors gave him only a few more minutes of peace before they pounced.

“Did you get it?”

Gray looked up at Rio and grinned through the pain.

Vincent walked back into the room after taking the male downstairs and placing him in the care of one of the Impure guards. His eyes gleamed, and he turned to Piper. “We’re in. The Order’s mainframe, baby!”

She nodded, gave them each a brilliant smile. “Now on to phase two. Listening in and one: seeing if there’s a weak link among the nine members; two: gathering
information, secrets, anything we can use as currency; and three: intercepting any and all messages to Impures.”

“The listening and sorting information will be me and Pip.” Vincent turned to Gray. “So after we take that memory from you, you should shut down for a while. Recharge.”

“Yeah, I’ll do that,” Gray said passively, thinking about how to keep his little trip back to the Paleo tonight under mental lock and eye.

“Don’t be a fool, Gray.” Piper, with her blond hair and perfect face, looked as close to an angel as one could get, but that disguise hid one tough-as-concrete female. “After we drain you, you’re going to be out of it for a while.”

“I’ll make sure I get a nap in,” he uttered drily, his head clearing of the fog from a minute ago.

“You can’t go back inside the Paleo, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

Gray’s head came up, his eyes narrowing on Rio. “Is that what I’m thinking, Rio?”

“I can’t tell. You’re too fucking talented at blocking me.” Rio shifted to the edge of his seat. “You know there will be more guards in that place than ever before.”
“It’s impossible
.” He cocked his head to one side and uttered caustically, “You going to risk getting taken by the Order? Blood castrated like Samuel, like all those others, like your dear old—”

Gray jacked to his feet, ignoring the shot of dizziness between his ears, and headed for Rio.

The male was on his feet too, meeting Gray nose to
nose, pissed-off male to pissed-off male. “Sometimes I think you just don’t care enough about this cause.”

A low growl rumbled in Gray’s chest. “Are you fucking kidding me? Those Impures in the Paleo
are
the Cause—and don’t you forget it!”

“No, they’re the victims,” Rio returned. “You need to learn the difference.”

The urge to knock the male’s head off was nearly irresistible, but Gray forced himself to back up. He found Piper’s and Vincent’s concerned gazes and said, “Are you two selling and drinking this swill too? Lose some bodies to win the war?”

Piper spoke first. “We’re not suggesting abandoning the Impures at the Paleo.”