The Bloodline War (25 page)

Jess blinked owlishly. “Oh.” Then he blanched, his eyes going saucer-wide on Jaċken. “Oh, dear, what have I done?”

Jaċken’s body jerked as a burning sensation roared through his veins, oxygen howling in his lungs like a high wind. Oh, shit. What
had
Jess done? He felt his muscles start to pump full of iron, growing heavy. Powerful.
No
—
no, no, no
. The tranquilizer was making him go Rău. He gritted his teeth, molars grinding.
Fight it, fight it
. He concentrated on the texture of the carpet, the scent of rug shampoo, the sound of—

The parlor splintered into a dozen puzzle pieces.
Ah!
He grabbed his head, swaying on his knees. The
crackling
filled his ears first, then the red haze unfurled over his vision. He shook his head, but couldn’t clear it. His skull felt big and weighted as a mastiff’s. Through the static in his ears, he heard a breathy whimper. A female. He raised his eyes, glaring up from beneath black brows. There she was. The female. Hair, tousled and fiery, lips, red and swollen. Beach skirt dipped between her parted knees. He made a low
snuffling
sound, an animal picking up a scent. The female was aroused. For him. Instinct reared up and clubbed him.

Bite her.

Mate her.

Nostrils flaring wide, he grabbed her under the knees and yanked her forward, locking her thighs around his hips and shoving her beach skirt up to her waist.

One of the other males in the room ground out a nasty curse.

With another whimper, the female arched her pelvis up to him, showing him the panties of her bathing suit.
Wet
. His chest vibrated. The fragrance of her was a sweet essence in the air. His fangs pierced down into his mouth, pulsating, heavy with a load of Fiinţă. He flung back his head, the cords in his neck flexed, and howled his possession.
My woman
. A glass hurricane on the coffee table shattered, a bulb in a standing lamp burst.

Frenzied shouting echoed in the room, voices intermittently making it through the
crackle
in his ears. “Hurry…and go…Nỵko!”

He turned again to the female, breathing roughly through his open mouth, a bead of saliva dripping off a fang.

Her head was lolled back on her neck, her lids half-closed.

He threw himself on top of her soft body, crushing her beneath him as he went for her throat.

A brawny arm locked around his neck in a chokehold, the weight of a male pressing his spine.

“Jaċken, no!” The arm squeezed. “…need to…the hell off!”

A feral, killing growl rumbled in his chest. A primal warning.
My woman
.

“Jaċken…me, Dev! Get…!”

Reaching behind him, he grabbed his attacker by the scruff of the shirt and tossed the body off, a mere jerk of the arm sending the large male hurtling across the room as if he weighed no more than a rag doll. The male crashed through the center of the coffee table in a hail of splinters, the scent of blood oozing into the air from the male’s nose and now his shoulder.

Fangs throbbing brutally now, he rammed himself harder between the female’s legs and lunged for her throat again.

A hand in the back of his hair wrenched him to a stop.

He snarled and snapped. There was an even larger male behind him now, twisting him into a full nelson—both arms pretzeled behind his neck.

The new male hauled him off his woman. “Get her…of here!”

A blond male leapt toward his woman, and a noise came out of the deepest part of him. A low vibrato of evil. The inhuman and threatening sound of Rău.

The blond came to an immediate stop. “…gonna kill me, Nỵko…you’re…only one who can…without getting….”

The male by the coffee table lurched woozily to his feet.

The female was standing now, too, breathing unsteadily, staring at him with glazed, greedy eyes. She wanted.

He wanted.

There was nothing but the violent rule of need.

With another shattering howl, he drove his attacker backward, throwing all of his weight into propelling the large male into the far wall. Plaster boomed into a meteor shower of white and a painting hopped into the air then hit the floor, stiff-walking from one corner to the other before whacking over. A breath was forcefully exhaled and the arms around him slackened. He thrashed past his attacker’s hold and charged for his woman.

“Put her down…linen chute!” The large male was chasing after him.

A doctor came huffing into the room, still round-eyed, another syringe in his hand.

The two other males scooped up his female and heaved her down a hatch.

Bellowing, he plowed viciously through coffee table debris after them. Those males had touched his woman! His vision hemorrhaged a deeper shade of red. The taste of murder wet his tongue.

“Shit!”

“Holy—!”

The males dispersed rapidly, but the larger one stayed right beside him, reaching a hand out….

But no. The only thing that could stop him now was an oncoming train.

And that’s exactly what he got.

A palm on his shoulder spun him around and then a fist going the speed and power of a locomotive landed square in the middle of his face.

A hailstorm of stars burst apart before his vision, drifting, drifting…. Then everything shriveled to black.

Chapter Twenty-seven

Toni stared sightlessly at her bedroom ceiling, the blue glow from her muted TV flickering across the antique brass light fixture above her. Sixteen light bulbs on it. She’d counted them over and over by now. She ran her tongue slowly over her upper lip. Moisture. Smoothness. A little arch. Everyone was gone now. Finally. Some peace. She shifted slightly on top of her lavender duvet as the musical
whoo-whoo
of wind drafting through one of the cave’s wormholes floated through the room, defining the quiet rather than disturbing it. Her butt ached from so many hours spent lying in bed.

Her mind was a mélange of images. Pictures from her “unfortunate episode” with Jaċken—Roth’s phrasing, not hers—continuously tumbled through her mind, no matter how much she tried to stop them. A vision of her standing before Roth in his library-office after she’d recovered from the drugging was one of the most prominent.

Jaċken had been posted at his usual position to the side of Roth’s desk, both of his eyes blackened, a white strip of bandage covering his nose—clearly it’d been broken—and bruises circling his wrists, suggesting that at some point he’d been shackled. Oh, what a hoot that must’ve been for the man.

“What occurred between you and Mr. Brun wasn’t real,” Roth had tried to reassure her. “I hope you and he can derive some measure of comfort from knowing that. You were both under the influence of alternative forces, after all.”

She’d felt a tic pulse in her cheek even as she’d watched Jaċken’s jaw harden to the near shattering point.

As usual, Roth was dead wrong.

She didn’t know how she’d done it—maybe something about her Dragon blood—but she’d maintained a certain level of awareness during the “episode.” It was like her brain had split in two during her sex-attack, one side utterly beyond her control, yes, intent on screwing Jaċken for no other reason than a force inside her was making her. But the other side of her brain had been very aware that the man she was touching and kissing was, in fact,
Jaċken
. She’d been vividly aware of everything she felt for him, and not only had it been very real, but it’d been the hit-the-wall head-banger of all lust. Way more than the little tingles down below or the slow surge of wetness she’d felt with other men.

“…equally sorry about the harm you endured, Dr. Parthen,” Roth had continued to intone. “Nothing like this has ever happened before. Clearly, our new enemy is blah, blah…very formidable…afraid you’re going to have to remain in the mansion until the situation can be blah, blah, blah.” It was pretty much what she’d expected: Rapunzel-in-the-tower for the rest of her young life.

She’d taken to her bed right after that meeting and hadn’t moved from it in the last seventeen hours.

Her withdrawal had thrown the community into a bit of an uproar. Dr. Jess had come by to try and rouse her, then her mate-choices, then some of the Vârcolac women of the community. Finally, Jaċken. He hadn’t tried to yapped at her like the rest. He’d merely peered down at her for a quiet moment, then set something on her nightstand. When he left the room, she’d turned her head to see what it was.

The African Queen
DVD.

She’d spent the next few hours crying, her heart breaking over and over.
I
’
m in love with a vampire
. God, it sounded like the worst B movie title. But there it was: the truth. If she hadn’t been certain about it before, she was now. “Unfortunate episodes” like the one she’d shared with Jaċken had a way of solidifying such matters for a girl. God, where was a sack of pebbles when she needed them? She blinked hard at the light fixture and her lips quivered. Maybe if she slept on a bunch of rocks again, Jaċken would realize how strong her feelings were for him, and then he’d set aside his vow to Roth and love her back.

There was a soft knock at the door. “Hey there, it’s us,” Beth said, poking her head around the jamb. “How are you?” She entered, the four other Dragon women following her inside, Maggie, Ellen, Hannah, and Kimberly.

“Oh…hi.” Toni reluctantly hoisted herself to a sitting position. “What’s up?”

Beth gave her a maternal look. “You doing okay?”

“Okay enough, I suppose.” Although she probably looked like Janis Joplin on a bad trip. She dragged a hand through her messy hair. “Uh, so…what’re you all doing here? I mean, I appreciate you coming by, but no offense, I’d prefer to be alone right now.”

Kimberly came forward, a grocery sack in her arms. “I know you’re feeling crappy, Toni, but since everyone is leaving you alone right now, it’d actually be a good time to go.”

Toni blinked. “Go?”

Kimberly smiled triumphantly. “We received a package from your brother that’ll get us out of here.”

“What?” Toni’s mouth dropped open. “
Alex
?”

“That’s the one.” Kimberly set the sack on the bed next to Toni. “Your genius brother hacked into the community’s email system and contacted Beth. She—well, both of us—wrote back and asked for help with the key code boxes. He sent this to Beth’s PO box topside.” Kimberly pulled a small metal box out of the sack, a couple of electrical wires dangling from it. “Alex says this will read the code and open the doors.”

“You’re kidding,” Toni breathed.

“Nope. Cool on your bro, huh?” Kimberly stuck Alex’s box back in the sack. “I’m sure it feels like bad timing, but actually now
would
be the best time to escape, like I said.”

Escape
. Toni’s pulse jumped in her throat. How long had she dreamed of an opportunity like this? And now here it was, so weighted with oppressive sadness because it meant that she’d be leaving Jaċken. What was the alternative? Risk more instances of throwing herself at him, like the “show me your fangs” day in his bedroom? She’d come embarrassingly close to begging, and she doubted her ego could stand much more of that. She forced herself to her feet. “Actually, it’s perfect timing. What’s the plan?”

“We head down to the basement exit,” Kimberly explained, “which leads to the garage, and from there we grab one of the community’s cars and head up on the elevator. Simple.”

Toni lifted her brows high. “It can’t be that easy.”

“No? I’d be willing to bet big money that the code boxes are the only form of security they have against us.” Kimberly smirked. “Just one of the benefits of being underestimated by the men around here.”

* * *

Beth sat spine-straight in the black antique chair set before Roth’s desk, her hands gripped tightly in her lap.

Roth was drumming his fingers on his desktop, his retinas hard and shiny like polished metal.

Along the wall of bookshelves, the Dragons’ husbands were lined up. Pedrr, Ellen’s husband, was the most difficult to read; Beth couldn’t even begin to guess what was going on behind his stoic expression. Brainiac architect Luken, Maggie’s mate, generally approached everything in life with logical precision, and today’s crisis appeared to be no exception. Sedge looked to be in a mood of resigned acceptance, as if he’d known something like this was going to happen at some point. The surprise factor was shy and gentle Willen; he was clearly very pissed. But then his wife, Hannah, was nearing the end of her pregnancy, and a protective male Vârcolac never liked to be far from a mate, especially when she was carrying his child.

Jaċken, standing to one side of Roth’s desk, also looked like he wanted to eat Beth’s head.

She twisted her hands into a harder knot, fear and nervousness sitting like vinegar at the back of her mouth. She’d never had to face this kind of intense anger before; people just didn’t get mad at pretty girls, especially not
men
. Swallowing hard, she glanced to the side at her husband and managed to regain some of her calm.

Arc was standing with his muscular arms crossed over his chest and his booted feet spread in a distinctly aggressive posture. As perturbed as Arc was with her for the stunt she’d pulled with the Dragons, he wasn’t going to let anyone just roll over his bonded mate.

Her chest shrank in on itself, and she let her eyes drift closed, feeling her lashes tremble against her cheeks. She’d volunteered to remain in Ţărână and be the go-between because she’d known full well the backlash she’d have to endure, and dealing with it would force her to quit being such a sap. And now here she was already relying on Arc’s strength. For the love of Pete, did she
never
plan on becoming a grownup?

Roth stopped drumming his fingers. “How did the Dragons get past the key code boxes?” he asked in a cutting tone.

Beth set her shoulders and steadied her voice. “I’m sorry, but I’m not at liberty to discuss that.”
There
. That sounded like something Kimberly would say, lawyerly and stalwart and—