The door opened and Lucan strolled inside, a satisfied smirk on his face. Blood was on his hands, but he made no move to wipe them clean.
“What new game was that?” I rasped out.
“What game?” He lifted his head and inhaled deeply.
I caught a whiff of the blood, and my stomach knotted. That was Kates’s blood. I didn’t want to know how that had happened, what sick game they played with each other, or even how I knew it was hers.
“What game?” he repeated and came closer to my cage.
I glanced at the door. “Do you have a new witch on your staff? One that can do that?”
I expected them to come in. They usually traipsed behind him, ready with chanting spells. The door stayed closed today.
Lucan frowned. “What are you talking about?”
Though my Immortal powers had been stripped away, my empathic abilities were still a part of me. I felt into him and read his confusion. A dark suspicion was starting to form in him and an ugly smirk appeared again. I wanted to jerk out, but I didn’t. I needed to know whatever he thought, though painful and disgusting it would be.
“It’s working. The thread is starting to unravel. She’s starting to inflict her own pain, delusions, too. Sarach never told me this would be the first step. It has to be the beginning.”
“You will never get the thread. The sooner you realize that, maybe you can figure out a way to kill me.”
His smirk vanished. “You are a mere thread-holder. It will work. I’ve forced the thread out of others, I can do it again.”
“They were thread-holders. I am not. I am The Immortal.”
His hands curled around my cage bars and he leaned forward. His face pressed between two bars and his smile was blinding. He looked so much like Lucas at that moment, handsome with sparkling eyes alive with life. My heart skipped a beat, and pain of a different sort speared through me. It hurt to breathe again.
Lucan reveled, “If you were The Immortal, my witches couldn’t touch you. You are not The Immortal. You cannot be because there is no Immortal. No human can handle that amount of power. Your body cannot endure it. You are more powerful than the others. I will give you that, but don’t think that it’s not because Lucas’s blood is in you. You drank from him. It’s the only reason you have more power than the others do. That is all.”
How did he know that?
He laughed. “It was written all over your face.” His voice became husky, intimate. “I know my own brother. He’s always shared blood with his lovers. It gives him a connection that humans could never experience, not without vampire blood.”
I swallowed back the pain. I wasn’t just some lover to Roane. I knew I wasn’t. “The Immortal thread has only been in humans, it has only ever been in humans. No vampire-wannabe is going to get it. And that won’t be you. You’re not good enough. The thread picks the person it goes to. If, by some miracle, you do get the thread out of me, it won’t go to you.”
“I’m the only human here.”
“Besides Kates.”
He moved back and raised a hand to the side of his cheek. Her blood trailed across his lips, and his tongue swept out to lick her blood from the rest of his hand. “That’ll be remedied soon enough. Thanks for pointing that out, Kates’s best friend.”
My stomach dropped again. “What a nice boyfriend you are. You get her to betray her best friend and then you kill her. No matter what she’s told you, I know her. She doesn’t want to be a vampire. She’s a slayer. Everything inside of her wants to kill your kind. That’s what she was built for.”
A dark hint of amusement filled his eyes, and he turned to stroll out. “Who said she was going to become a vampire?”
I rushed forward, smashing against the cage. I needed to get out. Gritting my teeth, I closed my eyes and concentrated. I needed to be free. Free. Be free. The cage never gave way. Lucan’s laugh raised a notch, and the door slammed shut behind him. I could still hear him as he went down the hallway. The laughter faded, but my chest still rose up and down sharply. No matter what she’d done, Kates didn’t deserve to be killed at his hands. By my hands, but not his.
Gavin resisted the urge to break through the bars. He could hear her screams. Every day, every night, every hour. He heard them, and he couldn’t do anything about it.
“You can’t help her.” Gregory sat forward on the bunk bed. He watched his cellmate pacing. “And get away from those bars. I don’t want a repeat of the last time.”
Wren laughed huskily from across the hall. “Oh, come now. Burning vampire flesh. What’s a better smell than that? I know it helps me meditate. What about you, Trace?”
The tall blonde vampire glanced from her leaning stance, but didn’t respond. She crossed her arms and looked back through the small window again. A bored look was on her face, but her eyes were sharp. From their basement position, their windows allowed them to see foot level of the ground above. It seemed like millions and millions of Mori moved past their dungeon.
Wren sighed and stood to stretch. Her black leather stretched with her. As she arched her back with her breasts pointed in the air, she glanced backwards.
Tracey never looked away from the window.