Eternal Beast: Mark of the Vampire (3 page)

Her lip curled. She was growing weaker with every breath, every thought. She needed to end this, find and kill the remaining member of the senator’s assault team—the senator himself—so she could return to her vampire form, to the control over her shift that she’d once enjoyed, counted on, reveled in.

Survived by.

The rain ceased its endless torment, and scenting the cool, crispness of stream water somewhere to her right, Dillon darted off the path. Weaving between the heavy sugar maple trees, she ventured down into a gully and found a wide stream. Under the bleak light of a cloud-covered moon, she drank her fill, pausing only momentarily when she heard the sound of an animal in the distance. A mile or so away, she thought. Nothing to
pose a threat. Again, she dropped her muzzle into the water and drank. The feel of it on her skin and tongue reminded her of the cold, clear water she’d run to as a
balas
, as a
mutore balas
so many years ago. The water had saved her, not from thirst as it did now, but from the one who had hunted her, the one who had worked for her adopted father, Cruen, and had stolen her innocence—the one who, with his sexually violent act, had turned her into a she-cat for the first time.

Suddenly the thought, the memory, was stolen away. A sound and a scent far too familiar for Dillon’s liking rushed into her nostrils, and her eyes caught on something moving down the stream toward her. The light from the moon was still dim, but it was enough to see the creature. It was large, the size of a whale shark, but it was not a fish, not anything that naturally belonged in the water or the forest. Her limbs were frozen, the pads on the undersides of her paws pressed into the moist ground. This was an invader, and if he had tracked her there, others like him were surely close behind.

Her muzzle as dry as the inside of her mouth now, Dillon turned and raced from the stream. She was a jaguar, yes, and her speed, her sight, her instincts were strong, but the ones following her were just as strong, had the same keen instincts, and one of them could get at her from the sky.

Panic pricked at her skin, at her insides, and her breathing went labored. She wasn’t afraid of them, of fighting them. No, that wasn’t why she ran. She was afraid of being caught and returned, caged and forever fixed as this cat—afraid of never being in control of herself again.

Afraid that bastard senator would continue to breathe.

Yet another male who thought he could lay his hands on her without her consent and live. Live while she died just a little bit more.

Her sprint was tight as she weaved in and out of the trees, but soon she heard it behind her, closing in, then quickly matching her speed. The wolf. The dog chasing the cat. Her brain worked overtime. If she headed back toward the river, swam as her body was capable of doing, the creature that waited there, the water lord, would force her to shore. And if she climbed the massive tree directly in her path, it was the hawk who would halt her assent.

Fuck.

The scents of all three were coming at her fast and furious now. It was one thing to be chased as a vampire—as a grown
veana. That
she could handle. But being pursued as a Beast made her feel vulnerable, trapped, like a young
veana
again. She wanted to curl into a ball and wish it all away. But just as it had been the first time her jaguar emerged without her consent or control, the only way out of the weakness and fear was running straight through it.

They weren’t taking her back.

They weren’t deterring her from the vengeance that she had to believe would save her sanity, her life, and—shit—the soul that may still be lurking within her somewhere.

She leaped onto the base of the tree and began to climb, her nails digging into the sodden wood like fangs through flesh. She’d deal with whatever met her
at the top. She’d fight as she always did, always had, to hold on to whatever freedoms she could claim. Because they—the control and the choice—were all she had. They were the only things left to fight for.

The growl, the bark of the wolf that sounded below her was menacing and all Lycos, but he wasn’t the one who concerned her. It was the voice of another, the water lord, the one she’d suffered the most with—been found with as a
mutore balas
—had truly loved as a brother, that finally halted her.

“Stop running, Dilly.”

Helo.

Her claws dug farther into the wood, ready to spring.

“We just found you again,” he called, his voice cool as the water he’d just emerged from. “
I
just found you again.”

Fucking Helo. The six-foot-six, skull-shaved, caramel-skinned water Beast had always been a bleeding-heart little bastard. She climbed another few feet and hissed. Unfortunately, he was her favorite bleeding-heart little bastard and he knew it. He was the one who always let her crawl into his bed at night when she was a scared
mutore
shit who’d belonged to no one but Cruen. The one she’d wanted so badly to run to the night Cruen had watched her shift for the first time with greedy, clinical eyes after his servant had raped her. The pretend father of them all had been interested only in the fact that the assault had caused her shift—not in protecting her. It was then that she’d realized no one could or would ever truly protect her. No one but herself.

Just a few feet above her, a massive snow-white hawk landed on a thick branch and trained his eyes, one brown, one green, upon her face. The panic within her threatened to steal her voice, but she pushed it back, as she pushed everything complicated and painful and terrifying back as far as it would go. Someday, all that suppressed shit was going to bubble to the surface and explode.

But not today.

The bird’s beak lifted slightly into a sneer, and Dillon hissed at the thing. “Get out of my way, Phane, before you lose some of those pretty feathers.”

“We want to help you, Dillon,” Erion called from below. The flash of the eldest brother’s arrival was lightning quick and brilliant next to his animal brothers, who had used their speed and scent to track their sister.

“If you want to help me, then walk, fly, swim, and flash the hell out of here,” Dillon shouted down at the Beast, so massive in his demon state, his diamond eyes moon-bright in the dark forest. “Let me finish what I started.”

“Killing the senator.”

Her nostrils flared. “Yes.”

“This isn’t the way to get revenge, Dilly.”

“This is the ultimate way!” she returned. Not to mention the only way she knew of to get control over her shift from vampire to jaguar back again. “Have you learned nothing from our adopted father? Or did Cruen teach you only to torture your prey?”

She saw Erion’s eyes flash, Lycos’s too. The demon Beast shook his head, as though he were attempting to
remain calm. “You will only draw attention to yourself.”

“You will get yourself killed,” Helo added, his chest naked and wet from tracking Dillon in the river. “Get us all hunted.”

Beside him, the wolf growled out an irritated, “She doesn’t give a shit.” Lycos looked at her with his narrowed canine eyes. “She didn’t give a shit back then when she ran from us, and she doesn’t give a shit now. There is no loyalty inside her. Look at her, brothers. She is an empty shell, selfish and without a conscience.”

Strange bleats of pain shocked Dillon’s insides. It was as though a knife were playing with her organs, making tiny cuts, attempting to make her feel anxious and slow and desperately alone. She wanted to feel angry at Lycos’s words, wanted to shoot back with something equally stinging, but nothing surfaced for her to grab on to, to use as an emotional battering ram. Maybe because he was right or maybe because she didn’t care about anything but herself in that moment—saving herself, getting control of herself.

But was that wrong? Shouldn’t she care about herself first? It’s how one survived—how she’d survived this long. Granted, they didn’t know—the Beasts, her brothers—they didn’t know what she had to run from, why she’d run from them. And they never would. Their memories of the past and her part in it were their own—not something she was ever going to correct.

She stared hard at Lycos, then Erion—then Helo. “Listen, Beasts. Return to your new family, your new lives, and forget the sister who so easily forgot you.”

The words were effortless to say. Lies always flowed
from her tongue like blood from a gaping vein. It was the look in Helo’s eyes that stopped her from punishing them further—that shattered the last bit of hope she had for a working soul.

Failure.

He’d thought he was going to bring her back, rescue her, carry her home on his back from an emotional or physical scrape like he’d done a hundred times when they were
balas
.

Dillon allowed herself a second of self-loathing and grief, but a second was too long. Above her, the hawk pushed from his branch and dove at her, landing on her shoulder and sinking his needle-sharp talons into her neck.

The jaguar screamed in pain, lost her grip on the tree trunk, and began to fall. Panic seized Dillon’s muscles and she struggled to rotate, belly and feet down, as she stretched to catch branch after branch but missed every one. Fifteen feet. She hit the ground hard, paws slamming the dirt, back legs attempting to cushion, but something broke.

Something inside her.

A bone? Or was it her resolve? She couldn’t tell by the pain—it was everywhere.

Her head came up, her fangs dropped, but she was in no position to fight. And even if she was, could she truly hurt these
paven
s? Any more than she already had?

Someone flashed directly beside her. He was tall, dark, had a closely shaved head and eyes the color of wine. Under the cool moon, she saw that he held a long silver object in his hand. Her instincts flared and she
hissed and tried to snap at it, at him, one paw lifting, claws extended.

“It’s all right, D,” he whispered, his voice strained as pulled her against him. “Everything will be all right.”

“No!” She struggled, desperation ripping at her insides. “Let me go. The senator. I have to kill him.”

Alexander Roman’s voice went hard as stone. “It’s already done.”

“What?” Clouded by pain and adrenaline overload, Dillon couldn’t make out his words.

“The human male is dead. It’s over.”

“No!” she screamed into the cold forest air, barely hearing the concerned hum of the male voices surrounding her. “He’s mine! Oh God. Oh shit! I’ll never recover…”

“Calm down, Dilly, please.” Helo. Or maybe it was Erion. She didn’t know, didn’t care.

They didn’t understand. How could they? It was over. She was never going to be free.

Despair choked her and she cried out, “Who? Who did this?”

There was silence.

“Who?” she screamed. “Goddamn it! Tell me!”

There was a curse, then the word, the name. “Gray.”

A growl exploded from Dillon’s throat and she whirled to face Alexander. “I’m going to kill him.”

Alexander’s worried expression registered for only a second before he abandoned all mercy and plunged the needle straight into her neck, sending Dillon, the jaguar, to her knees, then into a sea of bitter nothingness.

T
he Paleo, the great oval space belowground that had for centuries been the Order’s den of castration, where the sexual desires of Impure vampires were removed at a steady pace, hummed with the many sounds of blatant misery. Under the golden light of a thousand candles, Feeyan, the one who now led the Order, stilled over the wriggling Impure on the stone table, her fangs an inch deep within his vein. Information was bleeding into her mind at a frantic pace, and she suddenly ceased the bleeding of his body and lifted her snow-white head.

A few yards away, another member of the Order pulled his fangs from the groin of the Impure male he was castrating and glanced over his shoulder.

“The human politician has been found?” he queried, blood dripping from his bloodred fangs.

Feeyan nodded, a thread of anxiety moving through the already heavy feelings of irritation. It was what she
had heard as well. “And our connection to him has been severed.”

“How could that be?” the dark-haired Order member asked.

“I am not entirely certain,” she told him. “He was well hidden, his location a secret within the Order.”

“Perhaps someone inside the facility learned of his identity,” the
paven
said tightly. “The Order would not betray itself.”

Inside the Paleo, a hush had fallen. From those strapped on the stone tables to the many others locked inside the cages circumventing the arena, Feeyan noticed a keen interest in what was being said. This time she spoke to her colleague inside his mind.
“Think of Cruen. All he has done and continues to do. We are not perfect beings with pure intentions, no matter how we wish we were. We are flawed.”

The male Order member looked mildly insulted but didn’t voice it.
“Shall I speak to the other members?”

“Not yet. The senator’s body is being brought to me. Along with the blood memories we’ve collected from his dead employees, we will piece together the truth.”

“And the location of the
mutore
female who has killed those employees.”

Feeyan nodded. The
mutore
female. The one called Dillon, who had somehow not only escaped death at birth, but had managed to live as a
veana
without detection. Still lived without detection. How had the Order not sensed her living among the vampire population? Perhaps they were truly flawed. It was a deeply humbling thought, but one that would serve as a reminder and as a fervent push to find this
mutore
and bring her
in, comb her mind to see if there were more like her roaming free.

Feeyan glanced around at the faces of the Impures pressing through the bars of their cells.
“Impures breeding is problem enough. But those mutants, those animals who made it past their first breath would sully our bloodlines like nothing else.”
Feeyan turned, her eyes narrowing on her fellow Order member.
“If we allow even one
mutore
to live, to breed, to think, to decide, it may change the way the Impures view their role and their place in society. We cannot have that.”