Bloodshifted (Edie Spence 5)

I nodded as my mouth went dry.

“Come here. Hold your hand out. Don’t speak.”

My body did as he commanded without thinking: I crossed the room with my hand out as if I were asking for a train ticket. Raven held the knife like he was going to slice open my belly. Everything in me was divided in two—the wise part of me that wanted to scream and run, and the part of me that was stock-still, forced to obey. Oh baby, oh baby, oh baby—

He reached out and tapped the blade on my palm. It burned like it was on fire. I couldn’t see any blood, but surely he was cutting me, there was no way it could hurt any worse—he lifted the blade just as I thought I couldn’t take anymore, and there was a white stripe across my palm where the blade had been, where I’d already scarred.

“It’s silver. Hold it—gently now.”

My fingers wrapped around the blade, and he let go of the hilt, leaving the weight of the knife in my hand. It burned, it burned, it burned, like fire on top of fire. It was as if the blade were serrated, even though I knew it wasn’t; as if it were covered in spines that were stabbing into each of my nerves individually.

He was watching my reaction, and at some signal placed his hand back on the hilt. The weight transfer dug it in for a second, and I realized my mouth was open because I was trying to scream, even though I couldn’t. He pulled it out of my hands, making it slide against my skin—the blade wasn’t even sharp. It didn’t need to be, not when silver hurt like this.

“Have you learned a lesson, Edie?”

My mouth was still open as the fire left me. I closed it, glaring at him.

“Feel free to speak now,” he added as an afterthought.

“Don’t touch silver,” I said, because I knew it wasn’t what he wanted to hear.

“Edie,” he said, drawing out my name, waggling the weapon between us. Smart-Edie was still trying to make me jump back, but the rest of my body still wasn’t listening.

“You can make me hurt myself. And there’s nothing I can do to stop you.”

“Good. Smart. Know, too, that I am imminently capable of violence,” he said, seeming amused with his own honesty. “I am a vampire, after all.”

“Did you rescue me just to brag?”

“No. I saved you to lure her here. She’ll try to come and save you. I know it—I knew it the second she put out the call for your life. And you know it too, otherwise you’d have been groveling already.” He finally put the knife away. “Do you have any powers or abilities you can use against me?” His voice was casual, but there was still the undertone that I had to answer.

I shook my head. “No. I’m normal.”

“Then why does she want to save you?”

“She and I are friends.”

“Why?”

There was no point in lying to him. “I saved her life.”

There was a pause, and then the sound of Raven’s laughter, cruel and long and harsh from disuse. “You? Saved her life? Please, tell me how.”

I realized then that he didn’t know everything—if he did, he wouldn’t be asking me. And if he didn’t tell me directly to tell him, with his awful-voice, the one I couldn’t disobey, then I could say what I wanted to.

I’d been told once a long time ago that vampires love a loophole—well, so did this daytimer, now.

“There was a big fight. I was there, and I took her side,” I said, as generically as possible.

“You expect me to believe that you were instrumental during the Dark Night? When she lured all of her Throne to one place to slaughter?” That wasn’t quite how it’d gone down, but she hadn’t exactly left any survivors to set the record straight. She’d been the prisoner of her countrymen for a century, tortured at their hands, and in that time anyone would develop a thirst for revenge. Anyone who’d made it out had probably wanted to believe they’d been the victims of a well-executed attack rather than a spectacular case of wrong-time-wrong-place-ness.

“I was there. I helped,” I repeated. “What’ll you do when she gets here?”

“What vampires always do. We’ll have tea, play chess, trade the fascinating stories of our kind.” His grin spread and became positively vulgar. “Or I’ll slaughter her and make her watch while I eat her beating heart.”

I still couldn’t take a step back, but my face gave away my horror.

“What? Would you rather that I lie to you?”

“But you can’t—” I began to protest.

“Who are you to tell me what I can and cannot do?” he said, in that horrible tone that I could not disobey. My mouth slammed shut and the thought of speaking vanished from my mind. “No one has commanded me for three hundred years. You would do well to remember just how much I could command you to do.” He stood without saying another word and walked for the door.

I sagged in his wake. I had been dismissed.

* * *

Someone’s throat cleared behind me, while I was still trying to reassemble the pieces of my mind into a cohesive whole. I whirled and saw Jackson there, looking apologetic.

“I just wanted to make sure you were intact.”

“So far.” He couldn’t ask me out loud what he really wanted to know—if I’d told his secret. All I could do was shake my head when he had a questioning look in his eyes. “But it was awful. Is it always like that?”

“After they’ve freshly fed, yes. Plus it’s worse when you’re alone with them, and all their attention is focused on you.”

Damn. How much night was left tonight? Too much, baby.

“I still have to go get test subjects—I don’t think you want to come with me for that.”

“No.”

“I left a bag of food in Celine’s room for you. You may not feel like you have to eat, but it’s a good idea if you do. Makes the blood last longer in you when you’re not running off it.”

“Thanks.” I’d rather run through the stuff if I could, so that Raven would have less power over me—but then I’d be all the weaker against future attacks. I exhaled roughly.

“You can find your way back?” Jackson asked, giving me a worried look.

“Yeah. Thanks,” I said, nodding. A moment passed between us. Nothing sexual or even friendly, just a tacit acknowledgment that we were both fighters in the same war. In different trenches, but a trench was still a trench.

“See you tomorrow then.” He nodded and left the room.

CHAPTER TEN

I waited for another thirty seconds. I could easily find my way back—but I still needed some time for myself, and it seemed unlikely Raven would immediately return to taunt me.

Without him in it, this room felt hollow. There wasn’t anything here to let on much about him—no posters or furniture, other than the bed. I supposed the people he brought here were already so intoxicated with him that they didn’t find the place a bit on the serial-killer side.

Which was what he was, no doubt. He could’ve killed me. Or, made me kill me. And you, baby.

Shit. Jackson was up there culling people like they were antelopes. I wanted to do something about it—Race upstairs? P

ull a fire alarm?—but looking at the scar on my palm, I was too scared.

I was used to being nervous, and worried, and anxious—but what racked me now was a full-body fear. I might not have always had much concern for my own life, and I might have been too willing to trust in whatever luck had gotten me this far, but I couldn’t bet my baby’s life on it.

If it was always going to be like that with Raven, I didn’t know how I could stop him. I had to figure out some way to warn Anna.

She had to know she was coming into a trap. She was too smart not to. But—even though I was frightened, I didn’t want to believe I was impotent. Not doing anything would scar me worse than the silver had.

Yet how could I help her while I protected my baby?

I needed to learn as much as I could about this place, immediately. If there were safe places to hide, or alternative ways out, or ways I could somehow help Anna to get in. It didn’t matter what he told me to do, or what my blood wanted, or that I was afraid—I knew who I was. I want to be a mom you can be proud of, baby. Not enslaved to a horrible vampire for the rest of my too-long life. I steeled myself and stepped outside.

On my right, the lights were stretched farther apart, like pinpricks into the darkness. The prisoner I’d met in my dream—was he down here too? Could he really free me? I had a good excuse to be here now, since Raven had brought me himself, but I might not get another. One hand protectively over my belly, I silently padded down the hall, glad I was in tennis shoes.

There were doors on either side—I listened at the first one I passed, holding my own breath, listening.

Storage? Or bodies? Or storage for bodies? I leaned in and tried to smell at the edges for blood but the only thing I could scent was pervasive musty damp, my own smell, skin, and the residue of Jackson’s soap from earlier on today.

I decided it would be more useful to figure out how far the tunnel went than to open doors—door opening would be vastly safer during the day—so I trotted down to the end of the hall.