chapter 4
Fire.
She was covered in it; it was rolling inside her, through her. Running down her arms, legs, pumping like a fiery fist through her heart. Mila wanted to scream, but when she opened her mouth, it was like someone had fused her vocal chords. All she could do was grunt and cry and wish like hell she’d just die already.
“Hold her down,” a hard male voice grunted, and then two sets of hands clamped down on her arms.
Last thing she remembered was staring into a pair of silver eyes. Silver eyes that belonged to the man with fire in his hair, whose movements made her think of the rapacious glide of a panther, both deadly and graceful.
She’d begged him not to let her turn. Begged him. With what little strength she’d had left in her body, she’d told him to never let it happen.
But she felt the change happening, felt her blood bubbling, frothing, evaporating inside her veins. Spasming, she screamed inside her brain.
The moment she turned, she’d drive a stake through her heart.
* * *
“What’s happening to her?” Frenzy scowled, turning to George.
Holding up his hand, George nodded. “She’s necrotizing. This is the process. If you can’t handle it, then go someplace else.”
From the moment George had bitten Mila, she’d begun the change. To the shifter’s credit, he hadn’t stayed on her long.
Her skin had slowly leached of color, turning from a muted pink to an ivory so pale it almost appeared tinted with shades of blue. The veins underneath stood out in bold relief, a vivid greenish blue, but as time continued they grew more and more pale.
The blood that’d been coating her face and neck was literally absorbing into the skin, which was starting to gleam like a freshwater pearl. Blond hair that’d appeared ashen before was doing something strange. Instead of color leaching out, it was growing bolder. Brighter. Shot through with veins of gold.
“What the hell is happening to her?”
George shook his head, his eyes roaming her face. “I told you I wasn’t sure what would happen. She’s been bitten by two sets of species.”
Ripping the shredded section of shirt off her stomach, Frenzy pointed. “The bites are fading, and look at her eyes.”
A thin film of translucent flesh grew over the eyes, gradually shifting from clear to the same odd grayish-pearl tone of the rest of her body.
“A lone wolf cannot regenerate.”
Pulling her lips back, Frenzy touched the tip of his finger to her canine. “She obviously is. But look at this, it’s not growing.”
She didn’t seem to be turning into a vampire; a vampire was useless without its fangs. But she was definitely regenerating, so did this mean that she’d be one of the rare viable hybrids?
Tracing the length of her sewn-up cheek, George shook his head. “This isn’t healing.”
Her mouth opened then, and a scream ripped out of her throat, followed by large amber-colored doe eyes turning to him with a hostile glare. The silence was almost eerie after that earsplitting shriek.
“You,” she hissed and sat up, clutching at the tatters of her shirt. Then her eyes landed on George, her chest heaved in and out, and her nostrils flared as panic scrawled a hard line across her brows.
But rather than freak out and scream again, she merely stared, the silence confounding Frenzy.
Whatever transformation was going to happen to the mortal seemed to have occurred. Her skin was alabaster smooth, and her nails were long and deadly sharp looking. The hair was supple and silky and falling like a billowy wave across her shoulders. He slowly tracked the length of her long, long thighs, the graceful lines of her calves, and the dainty, bare feet.
She was as beautiful now as she’d been damaged then. There was not a flaw on her, save for the sewn sections of her cheeks, reminding him of a macabre porcelain doll.
“I dreamt of you,” she said, voice even and smooth. Apart from her outburst the moment she woke up, she was now the picture of composed calm.
George and Frenzy exchanged glances. Not sure what that meant or whether there was even any true meaning behind it, so much as a muddled brain still working through the “change,” he choose to ignore the comment for now.
She lifted a brow, holding her hand up in front of her face. “So I’m a vampire now, right?” There was a small hitch to her voice, something that would barely be discernible to anyone without his ability to hear the scamper of mice ten miles downfield.
There was an absolute stillness to her body, not a wrinkle or a frown around her eyes or mouth. She hardly took a breath.
George shook his head. “Actually, no.”
At the sound of his voice, she turned. She was measuring him, it was obvious by the way her eyes touched his cassock, moved across his face and hands. Frenzy was amazed she didn’t rail or shiver, violently questioning who, what, when, where, or how? Maybe she was in shock.
Those haunting amber eyes were cold, hard, and unswerving.
“Why didn’t you kill me?” she all but growled at Frenzy. “You have no idea what you’ve done.” Gaze dropping to his bony hand for a split second, she whispered, “You should have killed me.”
“Why?” It was George asking. “Who are you? Why has the Ancient One taken such an interest in you?”
All questions at the forefront of Frenzy’s mind, but he’d been unable to voice them because he couldn’t make her out. Most humans would be falling over themselves with gushy tears of joy that they lived, had a new lease on life. Instead she seemed not only pissed, but disappointed in him. The thought prickled.
“You don’t seem shocked by this,” he finally spoke up.
Violently yanking on a thread poking from her robe, she shook her head. “Should I be? I knew the second they found me it was done.” Rubbing the bridge of her nose, she inhaled deeply and then paused. Frowning, she inhaled again. “I smell…dirt?” She sniffed again. “And acorns?”
George’s brows dropped, gathering in a caterpillar bunch at the center of his forehead. Kneeling, he crept slowly forward, cocking his head to the side and studying her like one of his specimens.
“What?” she snapped at him.
“It’s just that”—pausing, he glanced back at Frenzy briefly as an astonished question mark flitted through the film of his eyes—“you feel different.”
“Different?” Her tone dropped, became deeper and richer.
“How are you?” George asked her, not bothering to answer her question.
Running her hands across her flat abdomen, down her thighs, and up her biceps, she shrugged. “I feel fine. Great, actually.” But then her fingers touched the scars on her cheeks and she hissed. “What is this?”
Crossing his arms, Frenzy decided he was done with this game of fifty questions. “Enough. You want answers, so do we. Start with who you are.”
Nostrils flaring, she jerked to her feet. Her movements were swift, so fast, she obviously hadn’t been prepared for it. One second she was scooting off the bed, the next she was on the domed ceiling with her fingers driving through the stone, anchoring her firmly into place, looking much like a terrified house cat.
“Let go.” George’s accent thickened as he shambled slowly to beneath where she was clutching onto the roof and breathing heavy, panicky breaths.
A cascade of blond hair waved in front of them as she shook her head. “Give me a second.” Her voice wavered, but again, it wasn’t nearly as thready or panicked as it should have been.
When Frenzy killed the man responsible for taking his Adrianna’s life he’d siphoned her last moments from his mind. She’d been pleading, crying huge, angry tears, and begging for her life. Screaming as the knife plunged over and over into her body, whispering with her dying breath for him to let her live.
This woman was doing none of those things. It unnerved him in ways he didn’t want to analyze at the moment.
Taking a deep breath, her body tightened, and then she jumped gracefully to her feet. Licking her lips, she looked up at the ceiling before finally dusting her hands off on her pants.
“I’m thirsty,” she said and then shuddered, her shoulders rolling and her mouth turning down as she glanced at her feet.
Holding up a hand, George shambled over to the corner of the room where he’d kept his meat. Stooping, he retrieved the final squirrel and handed it to her.
A blank stare was all that met the gift. Then a hard swallow and licking of her lips. “I…”
Her fingers convulsed around the furry body.
“Do you want to drink from it?” Frenzy inquired.
Confused amber eyes met his, nodding softly, her lips thinned. “I want to…to—” Lifting the rodent to her nose, she inhaled deeply, and this time when she shuddered it didn’t seem to be in revulsion: a moan as of pure ecstasy spilled out her throat. “Take it away.” She held it back to George. “Get it away from me. I’m not hungry.”
But it wasn’t true, because the irises in her eyes were bleeding a deep shade of crimson. The hunger, that vampiric need for blood that was so all-consuming, had made itself manifest.
“Yes, you are.” Pushing George’s questing hand out of the way, Frenzy stepped around the monk, forcing Mila to look at him.
“I’m…not.” The breathless tone of her voice filled with the raw shiver of desire, and he smirked.
Fluttering his bony fingers along her jawline, he quirked a brow, realizing instantly that Lise had not lied. He still sensed the effervescence of her soul pulsing against his fingers, but she was immune to his touch.
Her gaze was instantly drawn to his hand, but again, she said nothing. Irritated at his curiosity, he growled. “Your throat is spasming, so dry all you can think of is that wet warmth sliding down.”
Grabbing ahold of her stomach, she shook her head. But it lacked heat.
“Can you see the red, creature?”
She licked her front teeth, tongue lingering along the blunt edge of her canine.
Taking the squirrel from her lax fingers, Frenzy used the bone of his hand like a saw, inserting a roughened edge into the animal’s pelt, just enough to create a small tear. Enough for her to see the pink meat inside.
Closing her eyes, she turned her face to the side. Taking perverse pleasure in her obviously disgusted desire, he chuckled.
“It is here. For you. Must you be so difficult?”
“Difficult?” Snarling, she whipped around. “How dare you? Do you have any idea what you’ve done to me? Who I was? That I can feel these…these…” Dropping her eyes toward the red pelt with a mixture of revulsion and pure unadulterated need, she shook her head.
“Wants. Needs. Desires?” He took a step forward.
“Yes! These perversions,” she cried with force. “I told you to kill me.” Breath sawing raggedly through her lungs, she stood before him like a shieldmaiden ready to do battle.
An answering thrum of awareness, of her strange scent of sun-kissed raspberry and freshly turned leaves, the way she moved and pierced him with honeyed amber eyes flecked with crimson—it took seconds for Frenzy to note them all. Not wanting to, he mentally compared her to the only other woman in his life who’d ever made him this aware, and discovered that he liked the fire. Liked her heat. After years of feeling nothing but the drudgery of life, he laughed and the sound came from deep inside. Filled with the raw excitement of the unknown.
“You do not act surprised by me.” He cocked his head.
Her nostrils flared and she crossed her arms, pointedly not looking at the squirrel he still held.
He took a step into her, just to test her, to see what she’d do. Whether she’d back up or stand her ground. He felt strangely delighted that she did neither. Planting her hands on his chest, she shoved him back hard using the supernatural strength inherent to her now. But she was a baby in monster years; her strength was nothing to his.
“What do you know?” he asked, tracing the curve of her jaw with bone.
Lifting her chin, body vibrating like a tuning fork, she snarled. “Damn you, grim reaper. I know enough to know that you should never have let me live. You stupid, dumb arsehole. I should have died tonight, and now everything’s in peril.”
* * *
Mila tried to ignore the slab of meat cooling in his bony hand, not sure which she was more disturbed by—the fact that she craved that squirrel like a junkie with his fix, or the fact that she was standing in front of a grim reaper. The reaper she’d dreamt of for the past three years.
He lifted a brow, and her heart thumped violently. While she’d known of each subset of supernatural baddies living and working in San Francisco, it was one thing to have book knowledge, and it was quite another to be confronted with one so…
Potent.
So…man.
He was Michelangelo’s sculpture breathed to life; he was all that was male beauty. A strong square jaw with a light dusting of facial hair—eyes the color of liquid mercury that gazed at her with the intensity of a predator spotting prey, making her feel exposed, alive, incensed, desperate.
His hair was fire, like hot molten magma, falling to his shoulders. A patrician nose that made him seem both cold and aloof, except for the fact that he kept touching her with the bone of his fingers. Caressing the scar of her cheek so softly, tenderly. But doing it in such a way that she wasn’t even sure he realized he was.
But the most arresting part of the reaper was how his eyes seemed to drink her in, how they’d roll across her body like a lover’s touch, how they’d land on her face and stare deep into her own eyes. There was a mystery behind his gaze, a powerful urge to return his touch consumed her, filled her limbs, and made her fingers twitch by her sides.
Discombobulated, disgusted by her obsessive need to take that squirrel and greedily slurp it down, she jerked out of his reach and snarled. Her skin itched and her ears throbbed with too much noise.
Fifty paces ahead a cricket kept rubbing its back legs together, the booming vibrations of his hairy bristles scrubbing her ears raw. The shifter standing in the cassock before her kept gulping, glancing down at the carcass in the reaper’s hand.
God, why was she still here? She should have been dead. She’d tried to escape, but the moment she’d realized the futility of it she’d given herself into the hands of the vampires, goading them to a blood frenzy because she’d known no matter what, they could never take her alive.
Her people had been tracking the murders for weeks. Piecing the puzzle together as best they could. Finding dead bodies and matching them to the missing victims days later, looking like macabre princesses the way they’d been laid out and displayed. It’d been obvious their limbs had been first sawed off, then reattached. Their faces painted bright in garish colors, and their bodies all dressed in ball gowns. Each woman had been threaded through with laces, turning her into a human marionette, and posed into positions of beauty. Some had worn ballerina shoes and been forced to pirouette, others had been draped in nothing but fur, looking like sex-kitten cadavers.
It’d been sick and twisted, but it hadn’t been the worst of it. The worst was knowing no matter how many girls they found there’d always be one item missing.
Their eyes.
The killer’s treasure. Or at least that was what the strike force thought.
Mila had known differently. Deep in her soul, her gut, she’d known why the eyes were missing.
She’d told no one else; only she and her kind knew the truth. Understood the significance of it. The bodies were incidental; the countless “Black Dahlias” hadn’t been the true crime. That was the mask, the cover-up for the truth.
The truth was the killer had been searching her out.
Somehow she’d gotten sloppy, done something to alert the shadow to her whereabouts. Because the monster was out and he was hunting for her. She was the last of her clan. She didn’t know the face or the name of the monster, but her ancestors had kept records of its misdeeds. The part it had played in the O’Fallen family history.
Mila was a seer. Meaning she could see the future. Meaning any creature to get their hands on her would seek to control her, to force her to use her powers to give them the upper hand within their subclave. If the vampires had taken her, and turned her as they’d attempted to do, she would have had no choice but to forever be their puppet. Forever pump them information to make them unbeatable. Knowing the future meant you could prevent and thwart any attack that came your way. In the wrong hands, Mila was a ticking time bomb.
People might believe or think that there were many future seers in the world; there were enough humans claiming to be the real deal. But it just wasn’t so; the talent lay in the blood. You had to be born with the genes to do it, and the genes were dying out. It was what made her kind so desirable. Though human, she was a rare breed indeed.
“How did you know what I am?” the reaper growled, and the sound of it didn’t scare her or make her want to cower.
In fact, it made her own animal come padding out of the deep recesses of her mind. “Did you creatures,” she spat, “honestly believe humans wouldn’t do our due diligence? Wouldn’t learn the strengths and weaknesses of those out of the closet?”
Silver eyes narrowed into thin slits. “You know nothing of my kind.”
She scoffed. “I know you belong to a class of filthy fae.”
Nostrils flaring, he gave no other outward indication that her slur had disturbed him. “And what would you know of the fae?”
Lips twitching, she tapped her nails on her biceps. “I know that it was your lot that started the bloody Great Wars. That you’re a covetous kind, petty and jealous. That a human life means nothing to you. You’re close-minded, selfish, and so damn vain you think the world should prostrate itself before ye.”
At the end her brogue came out. Anger always caused that. She was usually so good at hiding it, but just being in front of the smug bastard made her feel a level of violence she’d never felt before in her life. Hiding the thing was one of the few ways she had to successfully keep herself hidden while in plain sight.
Torn between her desire to rake her nails down his face or just slap the hell out of it, she curled her fingers inward instead and turned aside, only to stare into the slightly filmy eyes of her other captor.
“Lone wolf.” She curled her nose. “You are so rare. In fact, I know of only one.”
His irises flared.
Lifting a brow, she nodded. “Necrophilia is apparently perverse even to monsters. Who knew, right?” She tsked, and she knew she was acting like a bitch, but it was how she coped. Rather than give in to the fear and scream and cry, she became a shrew.
He shrugged, but she could tell she’d rattled him because his breathing had become suddenly erratic. “No, I suppose they don’t.” Scratching softly at the top of his wild mane of brown hair, he frowned, looking at her as if she were the strange one.
“What?” she snapped, at her wits’ end.
“How do you know so much about…us?” The red-haired faerie said the words as if he loathed the idea of grouping himself into the other category.
Standing here now, before her, the man was so much more than her dreams had made him seen. She’d never been into redheads, finding the shade of hair usually accompanied a pale shade of flesh and several hundred freckles to boot. But the faerie was unlike any redhead she’d ever seen. Instead of a bright orange mop, his was supple and falling to his shoulder blades. The shade looked more like a deep crimson rather than the shade of carrot she was accustomed to.
A hard, square jaw was clenched tight as his gaze roamed hot across her face and then dropped down the column of her throat before running across her suddenly too tight chest.
His lips quirked and she realized she’d been not just staring, but pretty much drooling. Humiliation crept hot fingers up her cheeks and, clearing her throat, she pinned him with her haughtiest glare.
“You should have let me die,” she hissed again, but this time not with any true anger. Her stomach was churning, her throat was burning, and she knew she was seconds away from bawling.
“You keep saying that. Trust me…” His deep, whiskey-roughened voice shivered across her body like the caress of a lover’s touch, pulling things down low and making her blood pressure rise. “If I’d had my way you’d be pushing up daisies.”
Shoulders twitching from holding herself so erect, she puffed out a breath and planted her hands on her hips.
“Now answer. My. Question.” His voice growled. Literally growled, echoing roughly through the cavernous room. A shot of heat pulsed through her blood. “Who are you? One last time to tell me the truth, human, before I decide you’re not worth my time.”
The shifter was silent as death, his filmy eyes drifting between the faerie and her. Damn that grim reaper, putting her in this position. If he’d only allowed her to die, none of this would be happening. To even contemplate breaking her oath, letting someone not of her own genus know who she really was, was blasphemous.
But the reality was she was no longer Homo sapiens. The redheaded bastard had let her become the thing she’d once helped to kill.
“I’m not mortal anymore, or have you forgotten?” Her upper lip curled. “Because of you I’m a vampire; because of you I’m no longer—”
“Well”—the monk held up a slightly gnarled finger—“that’s not entirely true.”
“What?” she and the grim reaper snapped at the same time—both turning on the now-cowering shifter.
Holding his hands up in a placating fashion, he curled his lips in an odd distortion of gums and teeth. A smile, maybe?
Pinching her brow, she shook her head. She didn’t care to hear anything they had to say; she should have died a while ago. Each second she lived, the more danger she was in. “Do you have a knife?”
The shifter frowned, clearly confused by her sudden change of subject. But not the reaper. Eyes widening, he stepped forward, clasping her forearms tight in his strong hands, and shook slightly. “Why? So you can stab it through your heart?”
She sucked in a sharp breath, and his smirk grew smug. “Think I don’t know you, human? Your intentions are written all over your face. So tell me, why do you want to off yourself so badly?” His hot gaze made her body burn, tingle, and it was suddenly hard to breathe.
Blunt fingers traced the curve of her jaw, up and around the shell of her ear, before tugging on a blond lock. Mila could hardly think when he did that, when he touched her that way, looked at her like he wanted to eat her all up, reminding her of the faerie tales of old. He was the big bad wolf and she was his prey.
Swallowing hard, she licked her lips. “I’m a vampire. I’ve been sired. They…they can’t know.”
She couldn’t believe it was her voice that sounded so breathy and sex-kittenish. It was so easy to believe the old stories about the fae now that she stood in front of one. How their beauty was as deadly as any blade, how a mortal (or immortal, as her case now was) could be beguiled and lost to the evil scheming of their cold, black hearts. How the faeries had turned brother against brother and sister against sister during the Great Wars, how they’d controlled and commanded armies of others to do their bidding, and all for one glance. One touch of their sexually charged flesh.
“Get off me.” Forcing every last bit of will she had into those words, she ripped herself out of his grasp, rubbing her arms up and down to erase the memory of his hands on hers. “Don’t ever touch me again.”
“You’re not sired.” The priest cleared his throat, head bobbing up and down. “I understand now. Why Lise sent her to me. You’re not sired.”
Lise. The mention of the Ancient One’s name sent a cold shiver down Mila’s spine. She was the one being her people had never been able to learn much on. Other than the fact that she ran a club for the safe intermingling of the others, and that she was known to sometimes run interference between them in order to keep the balance and tenuous peace amongst species, her people hadn’t been able to gather more intel on the woman. But Mila had always suspected that Lise was so much more than a moderator. It was why in Mila’s hour of terror, hers was the first name that’d popped into her head.
“What do you mean, Lise? What does she have to do with me? And what do you mean I’m not sired?”
Licking his front teeth, the reaper swung the squirrel back and forth, and immediately the hunger she’d been able to pretend did not exist while she was furious at him came back with a vengeance.
Her body ached. Her bones hurt, the blood running through her veins pumped like thick sludge, making her aware of the gnawing, throbbing, spreading toxin through her blood. Her brain. All she could think of now was that squirrel. Ripping into it, feeling its blood soak down her throat, quenching the terrible, fiery ache spreading hot and quick. Tongue feeling three times its normal size, she licked her lips, internally raging at herself that she didn’t drink blood. She would never drink blood.
“I offer a truce.” The reaper’s smile was laced with venom. “Food.” Tipping the squirrel out until its tail brushed against the tip of her nose, a wicked gleam danced in his silver eyes as he brought it back to himself.
Throat aching, she groaned, balling her fingers tight to her side. “Food for what?” She growled, unable to stand the constant pendulum swing of the rodent in his hands.
“Facts.” He shrugged. “Just answer some questions.”
She was no longer human, therefore the vows she’d taken no longer applied. But to reveal who she’d worked for, what they’d done, could put the others at risk. On the heels of that thought came another. She was now one of the monsters she’d hunted in her past life. The irony did not escape her.
Feeling a terrible urge to cry, she gritted her teeth and nodded. “Fine. But then you give me that knife. Do we have a deal?”