Chicagoland Vampires - Friday Night Bites Part 34

"I know about Anne Dupree, Celina. Did you and Edward have fun plotting and planning? Did George cry out when you beat him to death?"

Her smile faltered. "b.i.t.c.h."

I was really beginning to dislike Navarre vampires. Thinking they had much arrogance in common, I used the phrase I'd used before on her apparent protege. "Bite me, Celina."

She snapped her fangs at me. I flipped the thumb guard on my scabbard.

All right,that's it . "Bring it, dead girl."

She growled. I gripped the handle with my right hand, my heart thudding like a drum inside my chest.

Stupid, stupid, stupid,I thought, for baiting the crazy, but a little too late.

Moving so quickly that her body was a s.h.i.+ny black blur in the night, she advanced and kicked. She kicked with the force of a thundering freight train, and the unbelievable pain of it buckled my knees. I hit the ground, unable to catch a breath, unable to think or feel or react to anything but the crus.h.i.+ng pain in my chest. A single kick shouldn't have hurt so much, but my G.o.d, did it. A screaming, ripping pain that made me wonder that I'd ever doubted Celina Desaulniers.

One hand braced to keep my face from hitting the ground, tears spilled over, and I gripped my chest with my free hand, to rip out the pain, to rip out the vise that was squeezing the air from my lungs. I struggled for breath, and a wave of pain, a morbid aftershock, convulsed my spine.

"Ethan did this to you."

I fought for air, looked up. She stood over me, hands on her hips.I ground my fingers into the concrete, tunneled holes in the sidewalk, and tears pouring down my cheeks, watched her, hoping to G.o.d she wouldn't kick me again, wouldn't touch me again. Reminded myself-it washer plan. "No."

She bent down at the waist, put a fingertip beneath my chin, raised it up. I heard a growl, realized it was me, and when another shock rocked my body, realized that if she hit me again, I'd be completely unable to fight back.

One kick, and she'd brought me down, even after two months of training. She called my bluff, and had taken me down. Could I ever be as strong as she was? As fast? Maybe not. But I'd be d.a.m.ned if I'd crawl away like a wounded animal.

Then and there, I swore to myself that I would never be on my knees before her again.

Heaving for breath, I pushed my way up, one slow, devastating inch at a time, black fabric shredded around knees I'd bloodied when I fell to the ground. Celina watched, a predator enjoying the last licking sighs of a wounded animal.

Or maybe more accurately, alpha predator, enjoying her victory over a lesser female.

Slow, agonizing seconds later, I was standing.

Inhale.

Exhale.

I cradled my ribs with my right hand, lifted my eyes to hers.

Bright, nearly indigo blue, they fairly twinkled with pleasure in the moonlight. "He did this to you," she said. "Caused this pain. If you weren't a vampire, if he hadn't made you-if he'd taken you to the hospital instead of changing you, converting you for his own purposes-you'd be in school. You'd be with Mallory. Everything would be the same."

I shook my head, but something about that sounded right.

Was it right?

In the midst of the pain, the fact that he'd saved me from her, from the killer she'd loosed on me, didn't cross my mind.

"Confront him, Merit. See what you're made of."

I shook my head. Mutiny. Rebellion. He was my Master. I couldn't fight him, wouldn't fight him. I'd already challenged him once, my first week as a vampire, and I'd failed. I'd lost.

"He left you here for me to find. They both did."

My ribs screamed, probably broken. Maybe internal bleeding. A punctured lung?

"All that effort," she said, "just to breathe. Imagine if it had been a real fight, Sentinel. All that work, all that practice, and what have you to show for it?" She c.o.c.ked her head, as if waiting for me to answer, but then offered, "He didn't prepare you for me, did he?"

"f.u.c.k you," I managed to get out, gripping my side.

She arched a carefully shaped black eyebrow. "Don't direct your ire at me, Sentinel, for teaching the lesson you needed. Blame Ethan. Your Master. The one who is supposed to care for you. Prepare you.

Protect you."

I ignored the words, but shook my head anyway, tried to will myself to think, but it was becoming more difficult. The pain was blurring the borders, forcing the reconciliation between whatever humanity was left, whatever predator lived inside me. I didn't know what would happen if I let the vampire peek through, but I wasn't strong enough to hold her back, not with the pain. The instinct was too strong, my defenses too weak. I'd repressed her, and she was tired of being relegated to some deep, dark corner of my psyche. I'd been a vampire for nearly two months, but had managed to s.h.i.+eld myself in the remnants of my humanity.

No more, the vampire screamed.

"Don't fight it," Celina said, a tinge of l.u.s.ty voyeurism in her voice.

The pain was too much, the night too long, my inhibitions too low. I stopped fighting it. I let it go.

I let her breathe.

I let her out.

She burst through my blood, the power of the vampire flowing through me, and as I kept my eyes onCelina, locked my limbs to keep from staggering back from the surge of it, I felt myself disa.s.sociate. I felt her move my body, stretch and test muscles inside my body-and sink into it.

Merit disappeared.

Morgan disappeared.

Mallory disappeared.

All the fear, the hurt, the resentment, of failing friends and lovers and teachers, of disappointing those I was supposed to care for, of ruining relations.h.i.+ps. The discomfort of no longer knowing who I really was, what role I was supposed to play in this world-all of it disappeared.

For a moment, in its place, a vacuum. The undeniable appeal of nothingness, of the absence of hurt.

And then, the sensations I hadn't known I'd been waiting two months for.

The world accelerated, burst into music.

The night sang-voices and cars and gravel and screaming and laughter. Animals hunting, people chatting, fighting, f.u.c.king. A raven flew overhead. The night glowed-moonlight bringing everything into sharper relief.

The world was noisy-sounds and smells I'd apparently missed out on over the last two months, the senses of a predator.

I looked at Celina, and she smiled. Grinned victoriously.

"You've lost your humanity," she said. "You'll never get it back. And you can't defend yourself. You know who's to blame."

I meant to stay silent, to say nothing, but I heard myself answer her, ask her, "Ethan?"

A single nod, and, as if her task was accomplished, Celina smoothed her s.h.i.+rt, turned and walked into the shadows. Then she was gone.

The world exhaled.

I glanced back and saw, only yards away, the glow of the breach in the Cadogan gate.

Hewas there.

I took a step, ribs still screaming.

I wanted someone else to hurt.

I began walking. We began walking, the vampire and I, back to Cadogan House.

At the gate, the guards let me pa.s.s, but I could hear the whispers, could hear them talking, reporting me to the vampires inside.

The front lawn was empty, the door ajar. I took the steps slowly, one at a time, a hand on my ribs, the pain a little less, the healing begun, but still profound enough to bring tears to my eyes.

Inside, the House was silent, the few vampires frozen, staring as I moved between them, determined, my predatory eyes slitted against the harshness of electric lights.

Merit?

I heard his voice in my head.

Find me,I ordered, and stopped in the crossway between the stairs, the hallway, the parlors.

Down the hall, his office door opened. He stepped out, took one look at me, and moved forward.

"You did this to me."

I don't know if he heard me, but his expression didn't change. He reached me, stopped, and his eyes widened, and he searched my own. "Jesus Christ, Merit. What's happened to you?"

My sword whistled as I unsheathed it, and when I gripped it in both hands, I felt the circuit close. I closed my eyes, basking in the warmth of it.

"Merit!" This time, there was an order behind the words.

I opened my eyes, nearly flinched, wanted instinctively to bend to the will of my Master, my maker, but I fought it and through trembling limbs, I forced back the urge to yield.

"No," I heard myself say, my voice barely a whisper.

His eyes widened again, then flicked to something behind me. He shook his head, looked back at me.

His voice low, intimate, insistent. "Come back from this, Merit. You don't want to fight me."

"I do," I heard, in a voice that was barely mine. "Find steel," she advised him.

Weadvised him.He stood there for a long moment, silently, still, before nodding. Someone offered him a blade, a katana that glinted in the light. He took it, mirrored my stance-katana in both hands, body bladed.

"If the only way you'll come back from this is to be bloodied by it, then so be it."

He lunged.

It was easy to forget that he'd been a soldier. The perfectly cut Armani, pristine white s.h.i.+rts, and always s.h.i.+ny Italian shoes were more the workaday wrapping of a corporate CEO than of the leader of a band of three hundred and twenty vampires.

That was my mistake-forgetting who he was. Forgetting that he was head of Cadogan House for a reason, not just for his politics, not just for his age, but because he could fight, knew how to fight, because he knew how to swing a sword through the air.

He'd been a soldier, had learned to fight in the midst of a world war. She'd made me forget that.

He was amazing to watch, or would have been, had I not been on the receiving end of the slices and cuts, the kicks and turns that torqued his body nearly effortlessly. The lunges and blocks. He was so fast, so precise.

But the pain began to ease, and repressed for so long, held back by my human perceptions, misgivings fears,she -the vampire-began to fight back.

And she was faster.

Iwas faster.

My body knifed toward his, and I swung, used the katana in my hands to slash, to force him to move, to spin, to slice his own sword in ways that looked comparatively awkward.

I don't know how long we fought, how long we chased each other in the midst of a circle of vampires on the first floor of Cadogan House, my hair wet and matted, tears streaking my face, bloodied hands and knees, broken ribs, the sleeves of my s.h.i.+rt in tatters from half a dozen near misses.

His arms were equally sliced, his twists and turns still not fast enough to avoid my parries. Where he'd once let me play the game, had moved in close enough to give me an opportunity to make contact before slipping away again, now he spun to save his skin; the expression on his face-blank, focused-told that story well enough. This wasn't play fighting. This was the real challenge, the fight I'd tried to bring to him months ago, the fight that he'd mocked. He owed me a fight, a real fight, in recognition of the fact that I hadn't asked to become a vampire but had acquiesced to this authority anyway because he'd asked it of me. This was less a challenge, I thought, than an acknowledgment. He was my Master, but I'd taken my oaths and he owed me a fight. A fair one, because I'd been willing to fight for him. To kill for him. To take a hit for him, if necessary.

"Merit."

I shrugged off the sound of my name and kept fighting, dodging, and swinging, smiling as I swung the blade at him, parried and countered, torqued my own body to stay out of the line of his honed steel.

"Merit."

I blocked his blow, and as he reoriented and rebalanced his body, I glanced behind me, just in time to see Mallory, my friend, my sister, hand outstretched, an orb of blue flame in her hand. She flicked, and it came toward me, and I was enveloped in flame.

The lights went out.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR.

CH . . . CH . . . CH . . . CH . . . CHANGES.

A pale golden glow of light. The smell of lemon and comfort.

Then pain and cold and nausea. Waves of it.

Pain that clenched my stomach and a fever that flamed my cheeks, my skin so warm that the tears that slipped down my face left cold saline trails.This was what I'd hardly remembered the first time it happened.