Mortal Sentry (Raina Kirkland Book 2) Read online

  “Master?” I heard Seth ask. Alistair continued to feed. Seth moved into my line of sight and I asked for help with my eyes. He looked tired.

  “I’ve brought Colbert,” he said.

  Alistair finally stopped feeding. He looked down at me, and smiled a long bloody smile. “I’ve made a mess. Let me clean it.” And, without notice he bent down to my breasts, slipping his long tongue in-between them to clean a trail of blood that had flowed from my neck. His tongue was soft and oh-so-red as he followed the trail back up to the two small wounds. I closed my eyes and let him do it. He licked at the wounds for a short time before he stood tall once again.

  “Your uncle tells me that you have the gift of pyrokinesis as well. Would you like to see what power you might possess someday far in the future?”

  I didn’t answer him. I just looked into his smiling face; not knowing what my own looked like. Most vampires gain some kind of mental ability after they turn. Mine was fire, and I was afraid of it. It hurt so badly the one time I used it on accident. It flowed through my body like lava, like a deathly fever until finally bursting through my skin and encompassing my entire body in white hot flames.

  He held his hand between us, like it was our little secret. I stared at that hand, expecting to see little white flames flare through the skin, but that wasn’t what happened. Instead, the flames were blue, blue like his eyes. They were small and dancing in his palm. He moved them in circles, counter clockwise, then clockwise. He made shapes with the flames, changed their color from blue to red to green to purple until settling back at blue. I was mesmerized by the fire until he pulled my eyes away from it, lifting my face to his.

  He held up his other hand. “Hold my hand,” he said. I grabbed it and he turned around, turning me with him. The vampire, Colbert was standing far away from us, by the door. He had long brown hair and a face far too masculine to pull off the bright silky clothes he was wearing. He looked very scared, like a deer in headlights, but he never said a word.

  “I’m sorry Colbert darling, but we need room.” And, with those chilling words hanging in the air, Alistair raised his hand that was still holding the fire. I watched in horror as the blue flames grew larger, and larger, until standing beside him was almost too much, too hot. And it was all happening too fast.

  “Alistair,” I breathed. I looked at him, but his face was blank, shut down. He was closing himself off from feeling anything while he did a very bad thing, something a mentally healthy Alistair would never do. The flames grew, until they began to eat at his robe. It was just inches from my arm and coming closer. I screamed then. “Alistair, the fire!”

  His arm was glowing blue while the fire flared and danced out from it. It set my top on fire, and while I felt the heat, it wasn’t burning my flesh. Instead it called to my fire, my white flame. I could feel it building inside me, so hot, and I screamed for Damon, for Seth. But they couldn’t help me, they couldn’t touch us. His fire had stripped us of our clothes, and his flesh was glowing blue to my bright white. I looked up at him. My red hair was dancing high in the flames, mingling with his golden hair. His eyes were glowing blue, and I wondered if my own glowed red. I looked out from us and found Seth holding Colbert down.

  “Step aside, Seth,” Alistair said.

  “He’ll run.”

  “Let him run.”

  Seth let him go and Colbert ran for the door with the speed of a vampire, but Alistair was faster. He let go of me and fetched Colbert in less than a second. I fell to the marble floor, and my flame died down without Alistair’s touch. Before I registered what had happened I was staring up at his tall naked body.

  “Will you join me now?” he asked.

  I looked past him to the dust that was still dancing in his wake. The dust had been Colbert. He killed a man so I would join his collective. He killed a fellow vampire, a man he might have known for hundreds of years, a friend, for me.

  “No,” I said quietly.

  He bent down to me, giving me a great view of his manly bits, though perhaps bits wasn’t the right word.

  “No? Why?” he asked. His face was that of a curious child’s.

  He began stroking my hair, and I couldn’t meet his eyes, not after what he’d done. “Because, you’re crazy, and I’m afraid of you.” He stopped petting me.

  “You think I’m crazy because I killed that vampire?”

  I felt a sickly smile grow on my lips. “Yes, but also, because you tortured my brother! Because, your idea of a good time is sadistic sex and fights to the death!” I knew I would regret my outburst when I calmed down, but not then. I was naked, emotionally drained and scared.

  “Then you felt that way before I ever asked. If you had said as much before, Colbert would still be alive!” he roared. He grabbed me by my throat and pinned me to the cold floor. The look on his face was inhuman and he punched the floor, missing me by less than an inch, and cracking the marble tiles. “Take her from my sight before I destroy her!”

  HER SHAME

  I HAD TO borrow clothes from one of the Bastion’s many female residences whose body type was close to my own; average height and curvy as all hell. Her taste in fashion was a little different from mine, though. I left wearing a pair of skin tight jeans, a shiny black faux leather corset and flat black dress shoes. No bra, no panties, nothing to cover my bare shoulders and massive cleavage. I felt all sorts of slutty.

  Damon walked me out of the Bastion without a word, leaving me at the entrance. Our minds were both heavy with the weight of our troubles. At least Alistair didn’t want me anymore. Though, I couldn’t be happy about it. He had killed a man, whose only fault was being the first name that came to Alistair’s sick mind. But that wasn’t my most pressing trouble.

  In a week Thomas would be under my care or I was dead. A part of me wondered if I shouldn’t just refuse Raphael’s request. If I did, it might save Damon the loss of a son. I’d never been scared of death, but I didn’t particularly want to die.

  As I walked through the parking lot, I found a woman sitting on the hood of my car. She was huddled up with her knees to her chest. She was tall yet fragile, with a thick curtain of shoulder length dirty-blond hair that hid her face from view.

  “Katie?” I questioned.

  She jumped and turned to look at me. I was utterly surprised and I couldn’t keep it off my face. I hadn’t seen my sister in weeks. Not since our brothers, Michael and Nick were turned into vampires. Though, I recently found out that Dan, their dad, wasn’t my father. So, we weren’t half-siblings after all. She and Michael were merely my half-brother’s half-siblings, no relation to me. But, to my knowledge she didn’t know that yet.

  Usually Katie wore a lot of makeup like her mom, Rachael, but not then. No, Katie looked out at me from a completely unmasked face. She looked years younger. She looked her age, sixteen. It was the first time I’d seen her without makeup in years, and it added to the shock of her being there of all places. She had huge brown eyes, like her father. She was wearing stretchy pink sweat-pants with white sketchers and a big blue sweater with an M on it. The M was for Michael.

  “Hey, Raina,” she said. “I tried calling you, but it said your phone was no longer in service. I had to call around to find you. I found your mom’s phone number online, but your mom said you moved out. She gave me your aunt’s number. Your aunt said you were here,” she gestured at the big palace behind me. She sounded like she had been crying for a long time.

  “How did you get here?” I asked.

  “I took the bus, but I didn’t want to go in,” she said.

  “That was probably for the best.”

  I sat on the hood alongside her. “What’s up, Katie? Why are you looking for me?”

  “My mom came to Dad’s house last night. She said she kicked Jed out, and wanted me back. Dad agreed I’d be better off with her than with him-- but Jed was still there when Mom and I got home.”

  I frowned. Jed was Rachael’s long time sweetie and thanks to a nosy cla
irvoyant master vampire, Melvern of Darkness, his abuse of Katie was exposed in a loud and dramatic way. Subsequently, Katie went home with Dan, I had thought for good since Rachael and Jed were planning to get married.

  Katie looked at me with a deep frown. “It was a trick.”

  “Did he hurt you?” I asked while I searched for evidence of violence on her body. I’d never seen so much as a scrape on Katie, but I’d never seen her in anything less than shorts and a tank top either. I leaned forward to get a better look at her in the dark, but she backed away from me with real fear in her eyes.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “I’m sorry, Raina,” she said through clenched teeth, as she fought back tears.

  “Are you all right? What did he do to you?”

  “Do you remember what the vampire in Darkness said?”

  “Melvern?” I asked.

  “Yeah, the vampire that could read Jed’s mind. He said that Jed hurt me and that my mom let it happen, but he never said how Jed hurt me.” I waited for Katie to go on but she didn’t. Not until I opened my mouth to tell her it was all going to be all right. Not that I knew that for sure. But, that comment died on my lips, because she spoke softly then, almost too soft for me to hear, and I was a living vampire.

  “Rape,” she whispered. I didn’t say anything to confirm what I heard. I didn’t say anything at all, because everything that came to mind didn’t sound helpful or tactful. Instead, I waited. We waited, soaking up the reality of the situation, wading through it like a filthy bog until finally she spoke again. “When we left Darkness, Dad spent the whole ride home talking about how I was his angel, how he would always protect me, never let Jed touch me again,” she scoffed. “But, he lied to me, didn’t he! He sent me back there the moment someone gave him an excuse! I thought I was finally safe, Raina. Years of Jed touching me, Oh God!” she cried.

  Katie and I never liked each other much. She was too spoiled, and I wasn’t human enough or Christian enough for us to have any common ground, yet I was the person that she confided in. I didn’t understand her logic, but I didn’t question it either. I kept my mouth shut and let her spill her heart out to me.

  “Michael doesn’t know. I don’t want him to know, Raina. I just want to never go back there again.”

  “So, I guess calling the police and having Jed’s ass arrested is out of the question?” I asked.

  Katie’s sat up abruptly, eyes wide. She yelled, “NO!” before she realized it.

  “Okay. What do you want to do?”

  “I can’t go back there and I hate Dad.” She had a disgusted look on her face, eyes shiny with tears. “I called all my friends already, but their parents are friends with my mom. They might help me out if they knew, but I don’t want anyone to know.”

  I had to ask, “Why can I know then?”

  Katie tilted her head. “They say that Admetus—you know, raped you.” She whispered the last part as though rape was the worst word in the world, and maybe it was.

  It wasn’t true, like many of the rumors about what happened between me and Admetus, the ancient immortal I killed some weeks ago. A popular rumor was that I burned down his mansion with his entire family in it. I hated that lie. Another rumor, which hit too close to home, was that Admetus kidnapped me, raped or tortured me and I burned him alive in self-defense. Katie must have heard a version of the later.

  She gasped and silent horror filled her eyes. “He didn’t?”

  “No, Katie, he—,” but, she was off the hood and walking away before I could finish my sentence. “Katie, wait!”

  “No,” she said with her back to me, but she did stop and I opened my empathy to her then. I opened it and I felt her loneliness like a weight in my heart. She thought she had finally found someone to confide in, someone who knew what it felt like to be violated, hurt, and confused. She came to me because she had no one else to turn to, and now she had no one in the world.

  I walked up behind her slowly. “He didn’t do that to me. He kidnapped me, he beat me, he drugged me, and he tore the clothes from my body and told me what he planned to do to me.” Katie turned to look at me. “There’s more than one way to violate someone, Katie.” She didn’t say anything, she lunged forward and wrapped her arms around my neck and cried. I thought she was going to hurt my neck but she didn’t. The bite marks had already healed to some extent.

  I guided her to the privacy of my car and let her cry all she needed to. We watched the sun come up together over the water. It was beautiful.

  The words I wanted to say hung ignored in the air. Katie couldn’t go home because it wasn’t safe. She wouldn’t go to her dad’s either, because he didn’t love her enough to keep her. Her words, not mine. Her friend’s homes weren’t an option, which meant that without saying as much, she planned to stay with me. I wanted to confirm my theory, but if she did and I made a face or hesitated without meaning to, then she might feel completely unwanted. No, it was best to assume the most inconvenient conclusion and hope that my aunt would agree to let her stay at her house with me until I found a place.

  “Where are we going?” she asked quietly as we drove out of Bastion Fatal’s gate and merged onto Ruston Way.

  She didn’t sound worried but she felt it. I wondered for a moment if she thought I was so cruel as to take her back to her mom’s or dad’s house. The thought was enough to open her up just a little more. An image flashed in my mind for the briefest of moments. Like a snapshot I saw Katie lying flat under a bed, hair tousled. Her makeup was ruined; her eyes were wide with fear. Knowledge came with the image. The bed that she hid under was her mom’s. Katie thought that Jed would never think to look for her there, but he did look there and he found her. He punished her for hiding, punished her with a carrot peeler. I just knew then that she had a deep white shiny two-year-old scare on her inner thy, where he cut her before he forced himself on her. I wasn’t sure if he or Katie knew just how close he came to killing her that night. The cut was the length and depth of a pencil. If it had been any deeper it would have pierced the femoral artery and she would have bled out in minutes. It was hard to drive straight with that knowledge running through my head, so fast, so shocking and I swerved in and out of the empty lane next to me.

  “Whoa!” Katie yelled.

  “Sorry,” I mumbled.

  LOVE OVER HATE

  AUNT FAUNA WASN’T happy about Katie staying in her home, but her face never gave it away. Without my empathic senses I would never have known that she detested humans. It was something Fauna kept to herself, but it was understandable. After centuries of being persecuted by humans, many preternatural people didn’t trust them, didn’t like them or downright hated their asses. Heck, with the amount of hatred Fauna instantly felt toward Katie, her composure and hospitality surprised me. She didn’t even blink an eye when I asked if Katie could stay with us.

  “Yes, yes, of course,” she said.

  Katie wasn’t happy either. She always thought less of people who weren’t human. Being in need of our good nature didn’t change that. It actually made it worse. I had to remind myself that those were her private thoughts and feelings. So what if she thought I was a hell bound abomination. On the outside she was being very sweet and grateful toward us. I learned quickly after my empathy upgraded to mind reading that people could think the very worst of you, but still love you to pieces. Also, you would be surprised by the number of people who imagine others naked or having sex with them. Weirdness.

  After Fauna excused herself Katie turned to me. “I can’t believe she’s letting me stay here with you. Thank you so much Sis,” she said. She put her arms around me in a would-be hug, but her whole body was very tense. I chose to ignore it.

  “Let me show you around,” I said.

  I gave her a brief tour through the house, full of all its magical curiosities. Fauna lived a comfortable life of a well-off childless entrepreneur. She was a proud witch and everywhere in her home were magical items. Every window had crystals han
ging to catch the sun’s rays. Every corner had a container of salt. There were: straw brooms, daggers, wands, items meant for luck and protection.

  Eventually we came to the guest room. Even though Fauna had a large home, full of many rooms, most of them were used for one purpose or another; library, gym, crafting, storage, cat’s room. Yes, the cat’s had their own room. So, in the end she only had one guest bedroom, and Katie and I had to share it.

  “It’s a little small for the both of us,” Katie said after I opened the door to the tiny eight by ten room. With more than a dozen boxes and my queen sized bed it was going to be cramped quarters indeed.

  “You think?” I asked sarcastically. Katie plopped on the bed and let out a huff of air. She looked lost, defeated. “How are you doing?” I asked.

  She looked out the window. It was a good view of trees and a small lake in the distance. “What am I going to do, Raina?”

  I didn’t have an answer for her. She had no place to call home, no place safe at least. “Let’s get some sleep,” I suggested.

  “Raina?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Do you think I’m unlovable?”

  I looked at Katie, really looked at her. Weeks ago I would never have guessed she of all people would be asking me that question. I always saw her as perfect. She had an overly involved mother, a loving father, and a brother that adored her. Human and beautiful, she had everything. But reality was a much less glamorous thing. Her mother may have made her into a mini-me, but she didn’t give a damn if her baby girl was being violently raped by her lover. To Rachael, the man’s wants came first. Dan may have loved Katie more than me, but only because it was more convenient for him. And, Michael, well, no one has seen much of that vampire goof-ball lately. Was Katie unlovable? No, maybe just, “Unlucky.”

  BACK TO DARKNESS