Taken by the Others (38 page)

Even through my haze of adoration for Royce, I knew I needed to get the hell out of Dodge the minute the stuff was out of my system. I made Sara promise to stay as far away from me as possible until the blood worked its course. She blessedly didn’t argue, though that in and of itself was frightening.

It took me a couple days to recall Mouse’s offer to help break Max’s hold on me. When I asked her about it, she explained to me that she would have done exactly as Royce had–bound me to her, kept me close, and waited for it to wear off. She may or may not have let me go once the bond wore off, depending on whether I showed signs of being too dependent on her to handle the separation.

My ability to trust a vampire’s statement at face value, already low, has since plummeted to new depths of paranoia and distrust.

I remained down and bitter right up to the twelfth day following the battle. That was when the withdrawal pangs hit. The pain dragged me out of my funk and had me wishing, just for a little while, that somebody would kill me already and get it over with.

My insides felt like they were on fire. My stomach cramped painfully and I desperately craved something to drink no matter how much coffee or water or soda I consumed. Royce was there, but did nothing other than hold me while I alternated between shivers so hard my teeth rattled, and flashes of fever so hot I wondered why there wasn’t steam coming off me in scalding waves.

My head ached abominably. Though I begged and pleaded and cried for him to give me a taste, only a few drops of blood, just enough to make the pain stop, Royce never said a thing. When it got so bad I tore at my throat to reach that burning pain, dig it out, and make it end, he held my wrists and kept me pinned in his lap. I alternated between cursing him eternally for being such a heartless bastard, to pleading with any tiny shreds of humanity he might have to help make it stop.

That was not one of my better moments.

It was like that most of the night. Maybe an hour before dawn, the worst of it tapered off and I was able to finally, blessedly, sleep. When I woke up, I was on Mouse’s couch and none of the vampires were in sight. Dillon, the Were left behind to keep an eye on me, had his head tilted back against the headrest of the chair and was snoring away.

When I stood up, I almost fell right back on my ass. My legs felt weak, rubbery, and a ghost of the headache remained. Once I regained some of my balance, I rapidly crept away from Dillon, not looking back as I rushed into the hall. Panic made me forget everything–socks, shoes, trench coat. I didn’t have any money or a phone to call my friends for help, but I wasn’t thinking that clearly.

The guy seated by the table in the foyer dropped the paperback he was reading, standing up and making a grab for me. He shouted something, probably to stop, but I ignored it. Ducking around him, I rushed out the front door. Summoning every last ounce of strength I had, I escaped into the cheerful autumn sunlight, welcoming the cold wind on my skin. It helped clear my head as I put as much distance between myself and the vampire den as possible.

God, oh God, what had I done?

I don’t know why I felt so much panic. Why I was blind and uncaring as to where I was going. Why I needed to get as far away from this place as fast as my legs would carry me. After all, if Royce or any of his people had meant to hurt or use me, they’d had plenty of chances these last few days while I was so star-struck and enamored, I couldn’t see straight. Even in my blind hysteria, I knew I wasn’t running because of the Others. It wasn’t Royce or Dillon or Mouse who frightened me.

It was me I was running from.

See, the funny thing about that is you can’t escape yourself. Even as I tried to forget what I’d done, tried to forget Peter’s blood on my hands, Royce’s blood in my mouth, Max’s fangs in my flesh, the pain in Chaz’s eyes when he looked at me, I knew I couldn’t get away from it. Self-loathing washed over me in a sickening wave, and I ignored the startled looks of the people around me, the crush of traffic, the looming buildings. All I wanted was for the sunlight to warm my skin, to wash away this taint on my soul, to put as much distance between myself and Royce’s home as possible so I could forget all I had done there.

I veered into the park, losing myself in the trees. Barely noticing my feet were bleeding and lacerated from going barefoot.

I’d begged, not just asked, but begged for Royce to give me more of his blood.

I stopped, my stomach heaving as I gasped in air and swallowed back the urge to throw up. I was alone in a copse of trees, thick maple leaves providing shade and privacy. A few dappled streaks of sunlight between the trees illuminated the dust motes dancing in the light breeze. I crept to one of those beams of sunlight, using both hands to wipe tears away as I closed my burning eyes and turned my face up to the pure, unsullied warmth, breathing it in like my life depended on it. Even the heat of the sun couldn’t banish the soul-deep chill I was feeling.

The one thing I feared most in life was being bound to a vampire. That fear had been realized when Max took me. So deep under their influence was I that by the time Royce had done it, too, it hadn’t seemed like such a tremendously bad idea. I had willingly put myself under his power. I had wanted, needed to stay there, happily fixed to his will and jumping to do his bidding like a puppet on a string.

And he let me go.

Royce always had a million and one reasons he didn’t reveal behind the things he did. Everything was calculated, designed to win him some manner of advantage or influence, to put you more under his thumb. So why hadn’t he reinforced the bond when I was literally begging him to do it? Why hadn’t he taken advantage of it, when he’d so obviously tried to influence me in so many ways before? Why hadn’t he used the bond to the hilt and ordered me to give him my blood and my body the way he’d clearly wanted me to before all of this had happened?

It didn’t make any sense. It also didn’t make me less afraid. In fact, his actions made me even more terrified. His actions, or lack thereof, meant he was manipulating me in some other fashion–somehow I hadn’t thought of yet.

Lowering to my knees, I put my face in my hands, and wept until there were no more tears left to cry. I’d come so close to losing my life, my will, my freedom, and my soul, I would have completely lost it if I weren’t already so numb from my emotional breakdown.

When the tears stopped, I thought it mightily unfair the sky should be such a flawless, cloudless blue, and the sun shining so cheerfully in that sky. There was even a bird singing in one of the nearby trees–a raucous, joyful song. It was more irritating than comforting. Especially since my feet had really started to sting, and now I was going to have to either walk back to Royce’s place and explain myself, or figure out some magic means of getting home.

I raced a hand through my hair, brushing the unruly red curls out of my eyes while I cursed and limped my way back toward the street. I hadn’t been paying a lot of attention to where I was coming from or where I was going while I was running, so I took a little time to see if anything around me looked familiar.

Surprisingly, it was a face rather than a place that caught my eye.

“Fancy seeing you here!” came a cheerful, gravelly voice. “Don’t tell me you’re still in trouble with vampires?”

I dredged up a smile for the Were cab driver who had taken me from Royce’s office back to my car a long time ago. Ironic that the last time he’d seen me, I’d also been crying my eyes out. That time, it was over Royce backing me into a corner and making me agree to sign contractual papers, leaving me without any legal protection from him. Now I was crying my eyes out because, in a twisted sense, he hadn’t taken advantage of the benefits those papers gave him.

“Unfortunately, yeah, that’s the kind of trouble I am in,” I said, using the sleeve of my sweater to wipe away some of the tear tracks from my cheeks. I don’t know if it did much good, but the cabbie was still gratingly jovial and wasn’t making it a point of rubbing in that I looked like a slice of hell warmed over.

He took a bite out of the hotdog he was holding, leaning against his cab parked at the curb. The restrained power radiating off him was as I remembered, along with the ridiculous amount of thick black hair visible on his arms and peeking out in tufts at the neck of his shirt. Weres are usually pretty furry, even as humans; he was no exception.

“She break up with you or something?”

“What?” Confusion took me. Then I remembered how last time he’d thought I’d gotten in a fight with my vampire lover. My female vampire lover. Who didn’t exist. I sighed and rubbed my hand over my face, trying to think of a tactful way to explain to him that I was not a lesbian, nor was I sleeping with vampires.

His free hand reached up to rub at the salt-and-pepper stubble on his jaw as he eyed me, gauging my hesitation before he spoke again.

“Well, either way, you look like you could use some help. Do you need a ride to a hospital?”

He pointedly glanced down at my feet and I blushed a bit, feeling stupid for having reacted so poorly when I woke up. Running away didn’t solve anything.

“Actually, I could use a lift home. I don’t have any cash on me,” I admitted.

“Don’t worry about it. You can always pay me later.”

I felt myself sag with relief. That small kindness was almost more than I could bear.

His cab reeked of stale cigarettes and old fast food mingled with Were-musk, just like last time. The cabbie kept up a pleasant, unobtrusive chatter the whole ride back to my place. I think he intuitively knew how stressed out I was, and how very much I needed to be kept focused on something other than the thoughts rampaging through my head.

It was only after he dropped me off in front of my building, waving as he screeched into an illegal U-turn, that I realized I had never learned his name.

Chapter 38

The next few weeks were centered on me trying to pick up the shattered pieces of my life.

The bullet holes in the walls of my apartment were plastered and painted over. The pissed-off clients whose appointments I had missed ended up with discounts sufficient to make them happy and me grit my teeth.

I bought a new cell phone and wasted three hours digging up all the phone numbers I needed to add into the replacement. With the bond gone, Sara lost some of her edgy nervousness around me. Officer Lerian forgave Chaz and I for blowing off making our statements once I gave him everything I knew about Max Carlyle. Funny how handing him the keys to unlock the mystery behind one of the biggest slaughters this city has ever seen, along with information to track down the bastard who did it, might make the police forgive me.

I dug up the number to Jim Pradiz, the reporter who’d written the article that had me spazzing out in the grocery store. I gave him a statement to chew over so people could know the real story behind my disappearance, Max Carlyle’s plan, and how all those people died in Twisted Temptations. I kept the White Hats, Dawn, Arnold, Sara, and Chaz out of it. J.P. stayed true to form and added embellishments, but none of them included anything to do with me being a vampire’s toy or Royce having any hand in the deaths of the revelers at the club.

Officer Lerian wasn’t too happy I went to the press, but the police backed me up and concurred with my story.

Devon and Tiny disappeared to parts unknown. Neither one of them returned to Royce’s or tried to contact me after the night Chaz told me what a shit I was being. I could have gotten in touch with them via Jack, but that wasn’t an avenue of possibility I wanted to explore. Jack has not tried contacting me either. I’d like to keep it that way.

As soon as I got my car out of the impound, I went to see Mom and Dad. I omitted a few details, like how my boyfriend was a Were and my friend Arnold was a mage, but otherwise told them pretty much everything. I explained about the contract that tied me to Royce and what led up to him showing up at my apartment. I even showed them the teeny, tiny scars left behind from Max and Peter biting me. Mom nearly fainted. Dad got this dark look like he was ready to start whittling up some stakes and go hunt down Max himself.

After my explanation, my parents decided they weren’t speaking to me while they got a handle on the fact that their only daughter was consorting with Others. We all agreed we’d take some time to cool off and just have a nice, sane, normal family dinner once Thanksgiving rolled around. No need to tell my brothers, Mikey and Damien, about any of it either. Not unless they saw the news and came around asking questions.

That was just fine with me. My parents had to find out sometime about the wacky turn my life was taking. Frankly, they took it better than I expected.

I haven’t been able to sleep well since the bond broke. Without it, I can’t stop thinking about all the things I’ve done and experienced thanks to my ties with the Others. What Peter looked like after I smashed his face in. How it felt to drive the stake into John’s chest. The whispered encouragement to kill and hurt things I gave in to when the belt was around my waist. The unnatural attraction I’d felt to both Max and Royce.

Sometimes I wake up in cold sweats, my hands rubbing at the place where Peter and Max bit me. I wish I could forget what it felt like, what they had done.

What I had done.

One of the things I’ve learned from all of this is that, even though the visible scars might fade, some emotional ones take a lot longer to heal.