Scorned (11 page)

“Yes, indeed.”

“Fine. I will take one of these, then.”

For the second time in less than half an
hour, my body was lobbed toward Roman at such a speed that I knew I
would be dead when I hit, but Roman knew better than that. He
caught me and spun with my momentum. I slumped in his arms, all of
the courage gone out of me, and he pulled me in against his chest,
his arms wrapped around me, holding me close so I wouldn’t
fall.

On the other side of the room, Perdita had
Adelina in her arms, rubbing her nose against the vein in the
woman’s neck, smelling her flesh and blood and the beat of her
heart. Adelina didn’t look afraid, but I didn’t know if I could
stand there and watch her be fed from like some animal. Perdita
opened her mouth, fangs bared, poised just over the large vein.

I tried, I really did. I knew this was no
business of mine to be getting involved, but I couldn’t live with
the fact that Adelina as taking my place.

“No.” The protest squeaked out before I
could stop it. Perdita’s fangs stopped in mid-strike and she turned
her fiery blue eyes on me.

“You would take her place?” she hissed.

“Yes.”

“No. I won’t allow it.” Roman’s voice
rumbled in his chest against my back. The look in Adelina’s eyes at
his betrayal was too much. I looked away.

“
It is considered impolite to turn away,
LeKrista,”
Roman whispered in my head and I turned back as
Perdita’s fangs sank into Adelina’s flesh. I forced my eyes to stay
open as Perdita fed. Perdita stared into my eyes, driving home the
reality of the situation. I was helpless to protect myself or
anyone else against her.

“She won’t kill her?” I asked. My voice had
gone pitifully soft with fear and despair.

“No, my dear. She will not kill her.
Calliope, come here to me.”

Calliope didn’t need to be told twice. She
climbed to her feet and scrambled across the floor of the closet
toward us, her feet getting tangled in her long skirt. As she
passed, Calliope brushed my arm with her fingers. I think it was a
touch of acceptance or trust. Either way, I knew she no longer
disliked me.

The floor to my left exploded and a body
flew through the hole to cling to the ceiling.

“Hello, father.” It was Lucretious. “What
have we here? Three for the price of one? Do you mind if I join the
party?”

Perdita looked up with lust in her eyes.
“Never, my love,” she answered and I was relieved to see that her
mouth wasn’t coated in blood as I expected it to be. Instead, her
brilliant white fangs shone in the light. “Please, join me for
dinner.”

“My pleasure.” Lucretious dropped behind
Adelina and Perdita and helped prop her up by slipping an arm
around her waist almost lovingly. He stroked the other side of
Adelina’s neck before plunging his fangs in to feed.

For a moment, watching the two of them watch
me as they fed, I was both terrified and disgusted. Not disgusted
in the “I think ima be sick” way, but disgusted with Roman. How
could he let this happen? Then, I felt that connection to
Lucretious pinch at the back of my mind and the taste of blood
filled my mouth and I liked it. My anger toward Roman turned inward
then pushed out to Lucretious, and I felt it like a living
breathing thing. I stared into Lucretious eyes and I let my anger
grow. I watched as he realized what was happening. The dark place
rose up inside me and grew until it was sitting there in my throat,
choking the life out of me, feeding off of me. I struggled in
Roman’s arms, unable to keep still, and yet it grew.

“
It should have been me!”
I screamed
it in my head like I was going crazy. Roman heard it, Lucretious
heard it, Perdita and Calliope were oblivious.

“LeKrista?” Roman called my name, but I
couldn’t answer. All I could do was let out the most anguished,
angry, hateful scream I’d never known I had within me. I felt it.
All the way down in my toes I felt it build until I couldn’t hold
it in any longer and it ripped through me. I felt it tear at the
tender flesh in my throat until no more sound came out and I tasted
real blood this time.

Everyone was looking at me. Good, because I
wanted their attention. Calliope had disappeared. That was just as
well. If I lost it, I didn’t want to take it out on her.

Lucretious was looking at me strangely. I
couldn’t place it. Perdita was staring, confused and afraid.

Good!

I wasn’t close enough.

“
Let me go,”
I shouted at Roman so
forcefully that he did exactly that before he thought about it. I
ran as fast as I could, hoping to get there, before Roman realized
his mistake. He got his arms back around me more quickly than I
wanted, but it didn’t matter. I wasn’t going to go down without a
fight, and chances were, if I went down I was going all the way
down.

“Where did you find this one, Centurion? I
think she’s a bit touched, yes?”

Roman shrugged with me still struggling
violently in his arms. “You found her, my child. I just followed
you.”

“Ugly bitch.” I whispered it, because I had
no voice left, but Perdita heard anyway.

“What did you just say?” I didn’t answer.
“Why don’t you say it out loud, or are you too afraid.”

I shook my head and let my hatred for her
show in my eyes. “I’m not afraid of you, ya little parasite.”

Perdita stepped closer to me and laughed. “I
like her. I might just have to play with her before we kill her,
Lucretious.”

She was almost close enough. I grinned. “Why
wait?” I whispered, and it hurt.

Two more steps. All I needed was two more
steps and she gave them to me, stepping a little closer. My grin
broadened.

“Die bitch,” I whispered, and using Roman’s
solid weight as an anchor, I kicked out with my feet, sending the
heels of both my stilettoes deep into the flawless vampire’s chest.
The world froze around me. Lucretious looked from me to his love,
skewered at the ends of my diamond-tipped stilettos. I kicked the
shoes off and dropped my bare feet to the floor. Roman’s arms
dropped to his sides and I could feel his surprise like a wave of
cool air. It sent a shiver down my spine and goose bumps popped up
on my arms.

I don’t think Perdita was dead, due to her
age and that I’d staked her with two diamond tipped heels and not
wood or silver. She held a hand to her chest, the tips of her
fingers barely touching the blood that trickled from the wound.
When she looked up, the look on her face said she couldn’t believe
she’d just been stabbed in the heart by stilettoes.

I looked up at Lucretious, who seemed to be
having trouble figuring out what had just happened. “You’re next,
bastard!” I lunged, yanking the cross necklace over my head and
slipping it around his neck before he could connect the dots. His
screams started before he knew what I’d done. He didn’t burn from
the cross out as I assumed. He didn’t even go up in flames or begin
to smoke. I don’t know what happened to him, because as he screamed
he pulled me down with him. I dropped to the floor in a lifeless
heap as fiery pain consumed my body long before I lost
consciousness.

When I first woke up, I thought someone was
on top of me. There was so much pain in my ribs and a pressure on
my lungs and I could hardly breathe. I came awake with a vengeance,
trying to fight off an unseen enemy before I realized how much it
hurt to move and that there was no one on top of me. But it was too
late. Something in my chest broke and I screamed.

“LeKrista!” Roman shouted. “LeKrista I can
try to heal you, but I’m afraid after what happened the last
time...”

“Do it!” I screamed and coughed, twisting on
my side to catch my breath. Dark splotches landed on the sheets and
I tasted that now familiar metallic taste of blood on my tongue.
“Oh, god,” I gasped. “Roman!” He was there in an instant and his
alarm matched my own.

“Calliope, there’s internal bleeding. I’m
going to have to do something. If it goes wrong-”

“Wrong?” she asked, not understanding.

Roman nodded, but didn’t take time to
explain. “If it goes wrong, we may need to start her heart.”

Calliope nodded and disappeared.

“What happened?” I asked. “What did he do to
me?”

“He tried to kill you.”

I looked into Roman’s eyes and I knew it was
true. I had a moment of shock before a sharp pain stabbed me from
the inside. I screamed again.

“Hold on, LeKrista. Just hold on a few more
seconds. She’ll be back with the-“

”Just do it!” I yelled and doubled up in
pain. “One way or the other I’m dead!”

“No, LeKrista. I won’t let you die.”

There are some things that are just supposed
to happen, Roman.

I didn’t say it out loud. I didn’t even mean
to think it at him, but he caught it anyway.

“There are those of us who can change things
like that,” he said to me softly. He pressed his hands to my bare
stomach and the fire began. It spread through my body until it hit
my brain and I began to seize immediately, but I didn’t lose
consciousness.

“Calli!” Roman roared. I heard every facet
of his voice and every language that had sprung from his.

Calliope came running, eyes wild, and she
gasped when she saw me. Roman flipped me so I wouldn’t choke on my
tongue and then he was gone. I whimpered as I tried to make the
convulsions stop. The fire continued to burn me up from the inside
out and I wanted to die.

Please. Please. Not like this.

I begged God to do something, to intervene
in a way I’d never experienced before. I believed in God, but He’d
never been all that real to me. I tried to breathe, but my lungs
wouldn’t work. I looked at Calliope wide-eyed, but I couldn’t form
the words to tell her.

“What?” she asked. “What is it?” She spouted
off something in Greek and shouted. “Master!”

Roman was there instantly. Where had he
gone?

“
Can’t breathe,”
I thought at
him.

“She can’t breathe,” Roman told Calliope.
“LeKrista, I’m going to finish the healing if I can.”

I nodded. Something, anything. I didn’t
really care. Death would be welcome if it made this stop.

“
Please,”
I begged again. When he
started the healing I thought my skin had been set on fire. I
screamed around the obstruction in my throat before I passed out
for, like, the one hundredth time.

I woke up in my room, and it took a moment
for it all to come back to me. My head spun, my throat hurt, and I
had a sudden flash of myself screaming, yelling, howling at the top
of my lungs. The vampires were looking at me, staring at me with
bewilderment. I was looking at myself through Lucretious eyes,
but...was that possible? I thought he was dead.

A cold draft wafted past me and I shivered.
I needed a hot bath.

Sitting up was painful. I dropped my legs
over the edge first to give myself some balance. By the time I
pushed up to my elbows my entire body throbbed with pain from the
effort and I had to take a break. Black spots popped across my
vision and the world swam before me. I took deep breaths, waiting
for it to recede. It wasn’t like I was in pain, but my muscles
ached and my insides didn’t want to be jostled.

Five minutes later, I made it to the
bathroom. Bending over to start the bath was killer, but I got it
eventually and used the carton of Epsom salts that my aunt had left
on the counter for me. I undressed and realized I was back in my
own clothes

I stepped carefully into the hot bath and
using the wall and the washcloth rack I lowered my aching body into
the steaming water.

“Staci?” Pierce’s voice reached me from the
bedroom door and I woke with a start. The bath water had grown cold
and my teeth were chattering.

“In here,” I called back.

“What are you doing in there, babe?” Pierce
asked. “Why are you shivering?”

“I fell asleep,” I told him. “It’s so
cold.”

Pierce jumped into action, never thinking
twice about what my aunt might think of him seeing me naked. All he
knew was that I needed help and he was the only one there to offer
it. He slid an arm under each of mine and lifted and took all of my
weight on himself. It was sexy as hell. He tossed me the closest
towel while he grabbed my robe from the hook on the back of the
bathroom door and wrapped me in it.

“Your face looks better, today, Staci.”

“Does it?” I smiled. “I hadn’t looked. I
just woke up sore.”

“Those bruises around your ribs do too. Are
those new?” He looked at me wide-eyed.

I shrugged. “I was in a car accident,” I
said with as encouraging a smile as I could muster. “I’m sure there
are lots of things that could have caused it.”

“Yeah, you’re right. They just don’t look
right to me. Do you want to get back in bed, or what?”

“No, I think I want to sit out in the living
room and watch TV.”

Pierce nodded. “Good plan. I’ll get the sofa
set up while you get dressed, okay?”

I nodded and waited for him to gather the
necessary accouterments from my bed to use on the sofa. When he
left, he shut the door and I tried to get my clothes from the
floor. I couldn’t bend over no matter how I tried to work it, so I
had to squat, using the door jamb to steady myself. Once I’d gotten
the clothes I wanted, getting them on was the next problem. I slid
the tank top on over my head and settled it into place. The
built-in bra cut me across one of the new bruises and I had to
wiggle it until it was in the right spot.

The pants were a little harder. I couldn’t
bend over to slip them on, so I sat on the edge of the bed and
tried to pull them on one leg at a time.

“Stace?” Pierce knocked on the door.
“Everything okay?”

“Yeah, I’m just having a little trouble,” I
called. “I’ll get it in a minute.”