War of Hearts (True Immortality 1)

The whole time he’d studied her reaction like she was a science experiment.

Thea had laid stunned on the floor, having never experienced such pain before. Not even the burns from the plane crash had hurt like this. And it took much longer for the wound to heal.

Amanda had walked into the room unawares.

Thea could still hear her screaming in horror at Ashforth. Amanda thought he’d killed her.

There were so many times she’d cursed herself for waiting to run. In the time she’d procrastinated, her so-called guardian had the basement converted. He’d lined it with the same metal as the blade he’d stabbed her with.

Over the years, he’d developed a drug that weakened her and weapons from that he never used but lorded over her to force her submission. All pretense was over. Ashforth wanted to be like her. The transfusion of blood didn’t change his DNA, it merely healed, but he’d lost all reasoning in his obsession for power. He would keep her locked up until he found a way to become what she was.

Four years she’d been a prisoner in that basement while he stockpiled her blood and experimented on it, searching for her source of power, searching for a way to become like her. He was like some fucking fantastical villain from a comic book.

No one would believe this shit even if she did escape.

“You can’t try to escape again, Thea,” Devon pleaded. “I’m afraid of what he’ll do to you.”

She laughed bitterly. “Like he could do anything worse to me.”

The words had barely left her mouth when the door opened. Lifting her head off the pillow, that burn scored down her neck and her pulse escalated.

Ashforth strolled in, his face blank, calm. At his side was a vampire called Morton. He’d worked for Ashforth for almost three years and was built like a werewolf, big and bruising. But Morton had the speed and reflexes of a vamp.

In other words, he was deadly.

And in his hands was a cat-o’-nine-tails.

The special kind.

The strips of the whip weren’t leather. They were strips of familiar silver-gray metal.

True fear filled Thea’s mouth.

“Dad, what are you doing?” Devon stood up from the chair, blocking her view. “What the hell is going on?”

“Son, get out of my way.”

To her surprise, Devon got into a fight with his father—he even threw a punch—but the werewolf guarding the door easily wrestled him out of the room. His horrified gaze locked with Thea’s before he was expelled.

Leaving Thea alone with Ashforth and the vampire and the weapon.

“You shouldn’t run, Thea,” he said calmly, like they were discussing the weather. “I never wanted it to come to this, but you need to know what the consequences are if you try to run again.”

The werewolf returned to the room with a friend to help secure her. She fought through the fatigue the room cast over her, but she wasn’t strong enough. She refused to scream though. She clenched her teeth and struggled with all her might, knowing it was futile as they held her between them. Their hands locked tight on her arms, splaying them out like a cross, and they tore her shirt down the back. The fabric fell away, exposing her skin.

It was pain unlike anything she could have imagined.

Tears streamed down her face as she stuffed her screams deep inside. Thea tried to keep on her feet as the biting lash ripped into her flesh, tearing and tearing until there couldn’t possibly be anything left.

To her despair, the fog of agony descended, her knees buckled, and she slipped in the blood and bits of flesh beneath her.

But then hope lingered in the dark. Hope that perhaps this was the end. Ashforth had told her he suspected her invincibility meant she was immortal.

She’d never die.

That’s why he was so obsessed with the idea of being like her. He didn’t want to be a vampire whose immortality came with compromises. Where death came too easily.

He wanted to be like Thea.

A true immortal.

God, she hoped he was wrong. She hoped the darkness descending over her was the end and somehow a hand would reach out for her and she’d finally be with her mom and dad again.* * *“I’m so sorry, my darling girl,” a voice whispered through the dark, through the burning pain. “I’m going to get you out. I promise. I won’t let this happen again.”

“Mom?” she croaked.

A sob sounded in her ear. “No, darling, it’s Amanda.”

The pain intensified and Thea could feel her body, could feel her eyelids. She pushed them open, and her blurred vision came into focus.

Amanda Ashforth’s tear-streaked face filled it as she bent over Thea.

“Alive?”

Amanda’s face crumpled, and she nodded.

“No.” Thea shuddered, the movement hurting her back. “No.” The tears came before she could stop them and her adoptive mother took her hand, holding it in comfort as Thea sobbed out all the pain of the last seven years.