Eternal Beast: Mark of the Vampire (6 page)

But that bond had been severed long ago. And the soft memories of it were best forgotten now. “Come to check on the prisoner?” she asked.

He nodded, his grin deepening. “We all drew straws and I—”

“Got the short end?” Dillon finished for him.

He shrugged. “Hey. I look at it as winning.”

“Well, you’ve always been lucky, Helo.”

“Not always.”

His pointed words and expression hummed with an intimacy, an unmasked grief that tore at her insides. She shook her head. “I’m not going there. Back there. Ever. So if you came to chitchat about the past—”

“I don’t chitchat; you know that. I just want to help you. We all want to help you.”

For Dillon, the natural reaction to charity offered in any form was to question it with biting indifference. “Why?”

Helo’s brow lifted. He looked incredulous. “Really? You have to ask that?”

“We were mutts together, Helo. For a short time. An experiment by a madman. We weren’t a family.”

His nostrils flared and he shook his head. “You’re such a bitch.”

She snorted. “Tell me something I don’t know. I should’ve been the wolf
mutore
, not Lycos.”

“He’s pretty much a bitch, too.” With that, Helo allowed a quick grin.

Dillon grinned back. She couldn’t help herself. That fucker knew her. They may have been mutts, may have
been together a short time, but in that time he’d really known her.

Growling with irritation, she turned away from him, walked in a circle, trying to clear her mind. Or maybe it was her unbeating heart. Helo had this way about him. He was one of those males who never had issues with showing his feelings, showing he had love for another. It never stole his masculinity and it never felt fake. Maybe that was why she’d gravitated toward him back then—that openness, that willingness to give had been fragrant as hell.

Still was, apparently.

Maybe that was one of the reasons why she hadn’t gone to him after the rape. Besides dealing with her very first shift into feline form, she would’ve had to face what happened to her, feel the shame, talk about the act with this
paven
who cared about her. It had been better to shove it down and away and forget, go on. And damn, that had worked for a really long time. Until the night the senator and his assholes-for-hire had decided to teach her a lesson.

“Dilly,” Helo said, his tone far too gentle. “Look at me.”

Her gaze remained where it was. On the ground. Christ, this fucking cat was turning her into a full-fledged pussy.

Behind her, she heard the shift of the lock, quick fingers on the keypad. She whirled with a hiss to find Helo opening her cage, moving inside.

“How the hell,” she uttered, her lithe body on alert, her mind humming with thoughts.

Helo shrugged. “Been watching Evans.”

“Stealing from him, too, I guess,” Dillon returned.

“Don’t make me regret my thievery,” he said, grinning.

Regret. Her eyes narrowed on him. No, she didn’t regret him breaking into her cage, standing in front of her. Her gaze dropped to his hands.

“I don’t like the way you’re looking at me, D. Way too fucking hungry. Cool down or I’ll have to head back—”

“Helo,” she said abruptly, eyes up, her voice serious as a heart attack now. “I need you to do me a favor. I need you to touch me.”

The
paven
’s eyebrows shot together as though this were the very last thing he’d expected her to say. “What?”

“Just put your hand on my head, on my fur. Just for a second.” She knew she sounded insane, panicked, but unexplained phenomena did that to a
veana
. “Please.”

There were questions behind Helo’s eyes, which were now glowing a pale green. “I suppose you’re not going to tell me what this is about.”

“Little experiment, that’s all.”

“If you bite me, I’ll be so pissed, Dilly.”

“I hate seafood.”

Helo raised one dark eyebrow.

She sniffed. “No biting. I swear.” She dropped her head, giving him better access.

She stood there, eyes down, and waited. Nervous energy tingled within her, and she wished she could shake it off. She was truly growing weaker by the minute.

Come on, Helo, she wanted to scream. She had to know, had to see if she felt anything. She had to know if the change had been in her, inside her, and not from the Impure with the striking mouth and hazardous touch.

For a good minute she held herself still. She was just about to lift her head, give up, when she felt Helo’s palm press down into the fur on the top of her head. A feeling did move through her in that moment, but it wasn’t the one she’d hoped for. It was a soft breeze, that sweet rush of safety she remembered so well.

She released the breath she’d been holding and let the feeling of his skin, his fingers moving through her fur, sink into her senses. Helo. Her Helo. Goddamn it, why couldn’t this have worked? Why couldn’t it have been his touch, or anyone’s touch, that made her
veana
flare to life within this cat suit? It would’ve been so fucking simple, so easy. She would’ve been back to walking on two legs within an hour, been in control of her shift once again.

She looked up then and regarded him with pleading eyes. “I need to get out of here, Helo. Will you help me?”

There was nothing in the world she despised more than begging. It was weak, humiliating, and vile. But remaining a jaguar for the rest of her long life, with no choice, with zero control over who and what she was every moment of every day was far more loathsome.

She asked him one last time. “Will you help me escape?”

Helo’s eyes changed from pale green to muddied
onyx—the color of a bruise to match his bruised expression. “No.”

“Then I’m sorry,” she whispered.

“For what?” he asked, confused.

She was on him before he had a chance to shift.

I
nside the circle, his body stretched over the blood symbol of the Impure Resistance, Gray allowed three sets of fangs to penetrate his skin and three Impure warriors to penetrate his mind.

It wasn’t the first time and it wouldn’t be the last. Riordon James, Piper Leigh, and Vincent Seal were his partners in freedom, had been for months now and would be until the Order destroyed the Paleo and ended blood castration. These three warriors who were poised above him now, feeding from his memories, were the most talented, most gifted Impures Gray had ever met. Each had a mental gift that complemented the other, each used the other to gain information—share information—anything that could get them inside the Order’s mainframe, any avenue they could find to send out their tentacles and burrow deep into the Order and their dark secrets. Secrets they could use, perhaps a weak-minded Order member they could…control.

Then they could begin to infiltrate.

Vincent pulled out of Gray’s vein with a growl, blood coating his teeth and lips, his dark brown dreads bracketing his fierce face. “Was that truly necessary?”

Piper retreated next, her lovely face ripe with frustration. “We could’ve used this human, Gray. Taken him from that hospital and brought him here. He could’ve been a conduit. Killing him was careless, reck—”

“No. It was justice,” Gray said without passion as Riordon lifted his head and sniffed derisively.

“Let’s not play games,” Rio said, licking his lips. “That was for your girlfriend.”

Inside Gray, a quick anger rushed over him, but as leader of this small band, thoughtful answers to bad-tempered accusations had to win out. He could not have them all fighting one another when the war that they had to win raged outside their tight circle.

He sat up, regarded the heavily muscled ex-military male. “I was quick to serve him justice. But the human male could never have been an instrument for our use. He was a beacon, a homing device that if we captured and brought here would only have attracted the Order. They are not fools—they would’ve had him bugged.” The words, the clean explanation flowed from his lips with such ease. Problem was, while that was true, the reality was that he could not let the senator draw another breath after learning what he’d done, what he’d ordered to be done to Dillon. That had been the driving force behind his death sentence.

“Perhaps Gray’s right,” Piper said, her lavender eyes thoughtful. “Capturing him would’ve been foolish. We have his memories, his interactions with the
Order. We must comb through them and see if we can find the thread, the frequency the senator used to communicate with them. We must see if there is a member whose lock on their mainframe is not as tightly fused.”

Vincent nodded, but Rio looked less than convinced. Which was nothing new. The ex-military badass couldn’t help being continually suspicious.

“If we’re done here”—Gray got to his feet—“I’m going to see Samuel.”

“Good,” Vincent said. “While you’re there, have Uma check the frequency of visits from the Order on her next Paleo run.”

Turning toward him, Piper asked, “You think they’re slowing down castrations or speeding up?”

“I am hearing that more Impures are being taken to the Paleo than ever before. And I want to know why. I want to know if they’re feeling our presence within the community.”

Gray nodded. “I’ll let you know.”

He left the room, headed to his own to change. He’d met Samuel Kendrick and his son and daughter during his short stint at the Paleo. As they’d awaited blood castration, Gray had learned that the old Impure had been his father’s best friend. He had learned through Samuel that his father had been no human, but an Impure and the secret head of the Resistance before he was found out and taken, then blood castrated by the Order. The shock of more lies within his family had cut Gray deep, and yet the knowledge had filled him with a sense of purpose. The truth combined with the visual nightmare of watching Samuel be dragged off—blood castrated in front of him—had changed Gray forever.

Dillon had rescued his sorry, naked ass from the Paleo that night, but Gray was determined to return. After weeks of using his new status, and the power of hearing others’ thoughts, he had found a Pureblood willing to be bought and used. Days later, he’d executed his first search and rescue at the Paleo, gotten the entire Kendrick family out, and had them housed in the vacant apartments below the Resistance headquarters for several months now.

And there they would remain, for as long as they liked, Gray thought while moving down the hallway. His father’s best friend would always have his help—regardless of how it may inconvenience or irritate one of the Resistance warriors.

Gray was nearly to his door when a sudden pain ripped through his skull. Dropping against the wood, he cursed and gritted his teeth against the intensity, against the blinding heat that shot up the base of his neck and spread like fingers of lightning. Flashbulbs behind his eyes, then images, memories flickering on the screen of his mind. The senator’s, Vincent’s, Piper’s, and then his own. But they weren’t his short-term memories. No. Fuck. These were from way back, from the days of the fire when he was a child.

With a groan, he barreled through the door and collapsed in a heap near the edge of his bed.

The Order had their blood extracted from their ancient veins every day. It was deposited in “banks” within the
credenti
s for daily distribution among the Impures. It was how the nine remaining rulers of the Eternal Breed kept watch, kept control of their subspecies. They had
been exercising this right for so long, they knew no other way.

Would accept no other way.

Within the bloodletting room in the Order’s reality, a human body had been flashed and laid out on the pallet between two Order members. The pair hovered over the body, robes pooling around their feet, upper lips curled back to display their brick red fangs.

“Vile,” said one.

“Must we have that thing in here?” said the other disgustedly.

Removing the needle from her wrists and neck, Feeyan sat up slowly on her pallet. She had just been drained, vials of her blood lined up in a neat row beside her. “That
thing
,” she said pointedly, “may have the location of our missing
mutore
.”

One of the Order
paven
looked confused. “I thought we had been monitoring this human. If my memory serves, he was able only to grant us images of her voice, her face, her animal.”

Feeyan flashed from her pallet to the bedside of the dead senator. “Yes. But his killer may have more.”

“You think the killer knows the
mutore
?” the second Order member asked.

“The guards at the hospital were in agreement that the perpetrator was not human. What reason would a vampire have for killing the senator?” She pressed his head to one side, revealing his temple. “I think one kills out of passion. That passion could be political, yes, but it could also be out of revenge.” Feeyan inhaled deeply, lengthened her fangs. “I despise the cold blood of a dead human.”

The Order members chuckled as she struck into the male’s temple, but one—one who had only pretended to give his blood earlier that day and was now sitting in the very back of the room pretending to practice his meditation as he shook beneath his robes—did not.

Titus Evictus lowered his head and drank the newly pulled blood of the Order member, Feeyan. Too intent on what was happening with the human senator, no one noticed him, no one suspected. And why would they? They did not know that he was once a Breeding Male, a genetically altered Pureblood vampire who could breed on command and choose the sex of its offspring. They did not know that when rogue Order leader Cruen had disappeared, his dark, magic-filled blood along with him, Titus had begun to decline. The Order’s blood was strong and took the edge off his need, but just barely.

He snatched another vial, drank it down in one thick gulp. He needed to find Cruen, the creator of the Breeding Male program, or he was going to return to the maniacal Beast who thought only of rutting anything, anywhere. But what bargain could he strike with Cruen now? He had given him all he had. He was worthless, and he would not betray his sons, not anymore. Not ever again.