“I might die?”
“Yes.”
“This just gets better and better.”
“Life’s a bitch.”
The room crawled. “I’m not dreaming, am I?”
“If this is your dream, you’re seriously f**ked up.”
“Who are you . . . all of you?”
“You ask too many questions.”
He pulled away from her, turned her arm to him, and bit into the soft flesh just above the elbow. Pain lanced through her. Her body tensed in response, but his arms clamped her down and she could barely breathe.
It hurt. It hurt and hurt, but worse than the pain was the awful sensation of his gnawing teeth and the prickly heat squirming its way up her arm. It spread into her shoulder and fanned out, claiming her body. She wanted to break free, to get away, but Lucas held her tight.
“Promise me you will make sure my daughter is safe if I die.”
He didn’t answer.
“Promise me.”
“I promise,” he said.
Karina let herself sink into the pain. Gradually it eased into a steady ache. Her limbs relaxed. She tried to think of something else, anything else, of Emily, of their safe little apartment, of being far away in a different place. But the reality refused to recede. And so she lay there and waited it out, her entire body humming with a distinct unusual pain, until her dizziness blotted out the world and she slipped under.
Lucas nuzzled her thin neck. Feverish. Not too bad. She was healthy. And clean. The blood work from the main house had shown no abnormalities aside from the poison. That was what donors were. Resilient; resistant to most disease.
And grounded. She didn’t seem like she would snap, but he’d seen enough people break under the weight of the transition to let his guard slip. And then there was her daughter. Children complicated things.
She just lay there and let him feed.
His first donor, Robert Milder, had to be sedated for the feedings. After him, there was Galatea. He had to tie her up. Every time. She had resented her role, loathed being restrained, despised him, and yet pulled him into her bed; and when they f**ked, she drained him so completely, he felt blissfully empty, as if he had poured not only his seed, but his pain into her. She took it all and reveled in it, enjoying the power she wielded over him. He wasn’t a fool. He knew she was driven by revenge, but he came back to her again and again, an idiot thirsty for a poisoned spring.
And now he had Karina.
A soothing cold spread through his veins, melting the needles of pain that always prickled him in the aftermath of his transformation from the attack variant. Funny. He had survived for six years on injections, shooting himself up every couple of days, but the synthetic hormones failed to soothe the ache. They managed to dull the pain, yet it had still gnawed at him, until he became convinced it would grind him down to nothing. Karina’s body had barely had a chance to respond to his poison, yet even this tiny dose of the hormones brought relief to him. He had forgotten what it was like not to hurt.
Lucas breathed in her scent. The memory of the chase through the motel danced through his mind. He wanted to chase her again. He felt drunk.
He slipped the narrow strap of the tank top off Karina’s shoulder, baring her left breast. Bigger, fuller, softer than he had expected. He imagined sliding his palm over the mound, brushing the nipple with his thumb. He pictured how her body would tighten in response, how the nipple would feel erect against his fingers.
He slid his fingers under the waistband of her jeans, pulled it up, and looked at the triangle of her white underwear. His c*ck ached. He wanted to mount her and thrust it inside her.
So what was stopping him?
Lucas slid his hand up, to her slightly rounded stomach, holding her gently, trying to puzzle it out. Had he tied her up before feeding from her, he would’ve f**ked her by now, of that he was certain.
Trust, he realized. She’d held up her part of the deal. It had cost her. She’d cried toward the end, once her grip on consciousness slipped—silent tears that left wet tracks on her cheeks. Her arm would be sore as hell tomorrow. Provided the fever didn’t rise, the poison didn’t kill her, and there was a tomorrow in her future. He wanted her to live, but he had done all he could to help her.
The feeding had cost her, but she lay there and let him do his thing, as she had promised, and she expected him to hold up his end of the bargain. And the bargain didn’t include f**king rights. She’d made that crystal clear.
He tugged her tank top back into place, covering her up, and pulled her to him, sliding his arm over her. She was his. She would take away his pain and he would guard her in return. That was the agreement.
CHAPTER 3
Karina awoke to an empty room. Bright morning light flooded through the open window, drawing a yellow rectangle on the wooden floor. A draft brought an acrid stink of burning bacon.
Emily.
She pushed free of the sheets and almost fell. Her head swam. Slowly, very slowly she slid off the bed and stood upright. Her throat was so dry, it hurt. A full glass of water sat on the bedside table beside a pair of binoculars and a yellow sticky that read “Drink it.” She could practically hear Lucas’s growl.
The memory of his gnawing teeth squirmed through her, dragging nausea in its wake. Karina bent over, gripped the night table to steady herself, and saw a square bandage on her arm. She tugged at it, sending a jolt of pain through her limb. The bandage remained stuck. Karina pulled harder, trying to rip it away as if she could shed the memory of Lucas with it. She struggled with it for a few seconds, pain pounding up her biceps in hot prickly bursts, and finally tore it free.
A big bruise stained the bend of her arm. Dark purple, it sat there like a brand. Lucas’s proof of ownership. Dried blood was caked in the center, where his teeth had mangled her veins.
The price she paid for Emily’s life. And her own. The ache in her arm pushed her to scream at the sheer mind-boggling unfairness of it: at being attacked, kidnapped, hurt, held down by brute force, robbed of her daughter, stripped of her freedom . . . At being plucked from her life. Only a day ago, she felt reasonably safe, secure in the knowledge that she could dial 911 at any moment and bring a police cruiser to her door. She had rights. She had protections. She was a person.
She felt the hot wet tears well in her eyes and clenched her teeth. She had to get a grip. Thinking like a victim would get her nowhere. Yes, it was terrifying. Yes, it hurt. But it didn’t kill her. She was still alive and as long as she breathed, she had to fight for herself and her child. She had to obey and be sweet. She had to ingratiate herself. That was her only chance at survival and escape. Karina dropped the bandage on the night table and drained the glass. It was time to find her daughter.
A harsh screech made her turn to the window. She walked to it, picking up the binoculars off the night table on the way. A wide green expanse spread before her, a wooded slope gently rolling away and down, toward mountains, brown and rust, fading to blue and eventually gray in the distance. A scrub forest hugged the roots of the mountains, dotting the grassy prairie in clumps of green. The wind fanned her face, bringing moisture and the tart fragrance of some unknown flower.
It was the middle of summer in southern Oklahoma and the prairie she’d seen through her windshield the day before had been a brown sea of dried grass. This, this looked like spring after weeks of rains somewhere in the foothills of rugged mountains.
Where the hell was she? Looked like complete wilderness, probably miles from any road, any people. Any help. If she escaped, crossing across rugged country with a six-year-old would be very difficult. She would have to plan well and bring a lot of water.
The brush quaked. A small brown animal burst from the growth. It resembled a dog, or maybe a coyote. It dashed across the grass, zigzagging in sheer panic. It didn’t run like a coyote.
What in the world?
Karina raised the binoculars to her eyes.
The creature wasn’t a dog. If anything it looked like a tiny horse, no more than two feet tall.
The brush shivered and spat three gray shapes onto the grass, one large and two others smaller. They ran upright on a pair of massively muscled legs, their bodies sheathed with gray feathers speckled with spots of black. Long, powerful necks supported heads armed with enormous beaks. The binoculars picked up every detail, from the crests of long feathers on their heads to the tiny vicious eyes.
The horse galloped for its life, veering left. The bird closest to it slid and swung toward the house to right itself. A flash of pale red shot through the empty air, as if the bird had run into an invisible net stretched tight, and the pressure of its body caused the threads to glow. The bird screeched and fell, catapulted back. For a moment it lay on the grass stunned, and then it rolled back to its feet and rejoined the chase.
The small horse was getting tired. It slowed. Foam dripped from its mouth.
The largest bird sprinted. The monstrous beak rose, then came down like an ax, chopping at the horse and knocking it off its feet. The horse rolled in the grass and staggered upright. The three birds danced about it, jabbing and pecking. The horse cried out and fell. Bloody beaks rose again and again . . .
Karina lowered the binoculars.
She didn’t know much about zoology, but she knew enough. They weren’t emus; they weren’t ostriches; no, these were something vicious, something ancient, something that should not exist in Texas or the Ozarks. Or the twenty-first century.
Suddenly she was cold, freezing from head to toe.
A triumphant screech rolled up from the plain.
Karina dropped the binoculars on the side table and slammed the window shut.
A cloud of oily smoke greeted Karina in the kitchen. By the stove, Henry cursed, slid several charred pieces of bacon out of a pan with a spatula, and deposited them onto a plate. He saw her and waved the spatula around, flinging hot drops of grease onto the table. “Good morning.”
“Good morning,” she answered on autopilot. “I saw . . . birds.”
“Terror birds.” Henry nodded. “Nasty creatures. Don’t worry, there is a large fence around the entire hill. We call it the net—it’s thin wire with a powerful current running through it. You’re completely safe within the vicinity of the house. They won’t come close. Besides, they are mostly cowards. An adult human has nothing to worry about.”