Blood Possession (17 page)

Just then, a large crack resounded like thunder all around him, and the patio floor dropped out from beneath his feet. His powerful silver-and-black wings shot instinctively from his back, fluttering wildly in an effort to keep him upright, even as the house disappeared from view, and the surrounding trees began to sway like animated demonic spirits.

Limbs extended outward into wily arms. Knots gaped open as fanged mouths whispered hideous taunts. And brittle bark transformed into scaly armor—rough and reptilian like that of mythical dragons.

In the face of an anonymous evil, Napolean relied upon his battle-hardened core to remain steady and alert. He swiftly built his own power into a dangerous conflagration—carefully gathering harnessed energy, mounting his wrath, silently preparing to deliver a lethal strike at a moment’s notice. He was itching to annihilate the enemy.

Even if he couldn’t name it
.

He was Napolean Mondragon, after all…

There was nothing on this planet that could best him. At least, not before now.

“What do you want with me?” he demanded. “Who sent you?” Despite his own unsettling guilt—the frequent occurrence of nightmares—it was still hard to believe that his once-loyal, loving father would approach him after all this time as a demon.

The invisible force struck first.

As if out of nowhere, Napolean’s body launched backward. It hurled violently through the air and spun wildly out of control, as if propelled by an enormous malevolent force. Although it felt as if he were traveling a great distance, Napolean remained oddly fixed upon the veranda, and the conflicting perception destroyed his equilibrium. He shook his head in an effort to clear the vertigo, and then he blinked several times in quick succession as his vision blurred and a pair of imperial castle gates appeared before him. On some level, he knew what he was seeing could not possibly be there, but it felt and appeared so real.

A deep protest welled up in his throat, and he watched in horror as a terrified young boy caught his eye before scurrying into a small hole beneath the castle wall. The boy drew himself into a tight little ball.

“No!” Napolean warned. “Don’t go in there!”

The boy was trying to make himself invisible, to hide his very essence from…
something
…horrific…while all around him a symphony of carnage rose in a deafening crescendo.

Haunting cries battered the air like thunder against a turbulent sky, and Napolean pressed his own hands to his ears, trying to shut out the noise—desperate to separate the past from the present.

The child shook uncontrollably.

Gods, he was so terrified…

So tortured.

So alone!

Absently, Napolean grasped the ring on his right hand and held it in a fierce grip. He remembered a long-ago pledge of fealty to Prince Jadon—how he had hoped and prayed and foolishly believed that he would somehow be spared from what was coming,
from the Blood Curse
—by swearing his loyalty to the favored twin.

But he had not been spared.

No one had.

“Gods,
get out of there!” he ordered the child. His voice was hoarse with insistence, and his heart beat frantically in his chest now.

Fearful tears stung the boy’s eyes as his gaze met Napolean’s and he drew back in growing alarm, desperate to break free from the imminent violation. As the cruel, disembodied laughter came closer, battering the boy’s ears—Napolean’s ears—the past and present collided.

“No. No. No.”

The child whimpered.

Napolean cried out.

They were spinning together now, falling as one—not into a hole, nor any physical time-space reality—but into some vast, invisible, nightmarish void, a world made of pure energy, powered by overwhelming, unbearable…emotion.

The child was moaning incessantly now, and although it appalled him to watch, Napolean strained to see. He was transfixed. He knew this scene so well.

Too well…

His heart broke in empathy as he
felt
the boy shake, knowing that his very bones rattled in his skin.

And then the fog approached.

Napolean swallowed the bitter fruit of fear, choking on it—it tasted like bile—as he began to wrestle in earnest to escape the void. He had to get to the child. He had to get out of this nightmare!

“No!” he protested, fully enraged. He would not live this again!

He could not live this again.

The fog swirled, became a miniature cyclone, rose up from the ground and dipped low—as if it had eyes that could see the little boy hiding.

“You think to escape, child?” The ghostly aberration hissed the words, even as Napolean spoke them aloud—in unison. There was no denying what was coming next, and there was no stopping it.

Laughter ricocheted through the small cavity.

It surrounded the child and engulfed the vortex…until at last, Napolean and the child began to merge, to see through a single pair of eyes. Flames exploded from the center of the darkness, and in one last desperate act of resistance, Napolean manufactured cold icicles all around his body—the boy’s body—in an effort to lessen the scorch of the flames.

“Die, little one! And be reborn the monster that you are!”

The child—Napolean—screamed until it felt as if his ears were bursting, yet the fog kept coming. Napolean felt his bones snapping, his organs reforming, his skin peeling back from his flesh like a pared apple. A gnarled, ghostly hand tore at his heart.

Napolean opened his mouth to command the spirits—surely, the gods would help him this time—but the fog entered his mouth and descended into his chest. He gagged and grappled for air.

“No! No! No!” There was acid flowing through his veins!

His very soul was on fire!

Napolean stared at the scorching flames consuming his childhood body—raging in spite of the perfectly formed icicles he had struggled to create—and for the first time, he let go…completely.

Welcoming death, he became the child, and they were lost together.

Suffering…praying…enduring…transforming.

Dying.

And then they were hungry—so very, very hungry
.

They lapped at the blood on their hands like animals, gnawing on their own flesh in a crazed frenzy to devour more…

Blood…

They needed so much more blood.

And then just like that, they were transported forward in time until they stood as one, stunned and confused, in the village square, beside a familiar aged stone well.

“Napolean!” His father’s voice beat in his head like a bass drum, ricocheting here and there in an endless, painful echo.

Napolean staggered to a halt beside the well and prepared to watch his father’s murder all over again. He stared in resigned horror as Prince Jaegar hunkered over his father’s body and bent to his father’s throat. The evil prince’s eyes were wild with insanity—a familiar madness—as he
drank his fill of Sebastian’s blood.

Napolean couldn’t help but wonder: What kind of son would just stand still for such a thing? Where in the name of the gods was his sword?
Blessed Andromeda
, why did he not have the courage to draw it and save the man? Sebastian was his father, for heaven’s sake!

His beloved sire.

“Father.” Napolean mouthed the words just like he had as a child. Only this time his father heard him.

Sebastian raised his head and met the child’s eyes, and a desperate plea for mercy contorted his tortured face. “Save me!”

Napolean trembled. “I can’t…”

“You can!” His father gurgled and choked on his blood. He spit out chunks of his own flesh—pieces of a battered throat that had caught in his mouth as he regurgitated in pain. “Please…son.”

Napolean could stand it no longer.

He had lived the anguish of this very moment for twenty-eight hundred years—regretted it…buried it…tried valiantly to justify it—always knowing in his heart that his own death would have been preferred to his cowardice.

No more.

“Yes, Father,” he promised, his words a solemn vow. “By all the gods, I will save you or die trying. Just tell me how.”

His father’s eyes opened wide, and a faint glimmer of hope flickered in them for the first time. “Your life for mine,” he whispered. “It is the only way, son. You must make a trade.”

Napolean paused, momentarily confused, but before he could question his father’s words, Prince Jaegar withdrew his sword and yanked his father’s head back by the hair, extending his neck as he brandished the glittering iron.

Napolean’s life for his father’s?

It was a trade he would gladly make, but how?

He was immortal—a vampire! Dispatching both the head and the heart was the only way, yet such a suicide would be nearly impossible.

Napolean steadied his resolve.

His head was spinning with confusion, but there simply was no time for reasoning why. It would take incredible strength, speed, and unwavering concentration to remove one’s own heart while remaining focused enough to dispatch the head in the space of a single second—less than that, really—before the body toppled over and the heart ceased its beating.

But if anyone could do it, it would be him.

Prince Jaegar’s sword rose high in the air, the male’s strong arm flexing at the bicep with graceful, fluid power as he hefted the heavy iron with ease.

“Help me, son!” Sebastian’s words were as desperate as they were imperious in their command: “Napolean…please; do it now.”

There was no time for contemplation.

The moment was now…or never.

Napolean Mondragon lodged the tip of his dagger just below his heart and gathered every ounce of his being into focused concentration: He would have to thrust the blade—hard and fast—deep into his sternum in an exacting, powerful thrust—a violent, sweeping, upward motion—meant to penetrate, dislodge, and break free all in one fluid movement—the final swipe being a horizontal slash along the throat. Powerful enough to remove the head.

Prince Jaegar’s arms tensed, threatening to come down in one final, wicked slash, even as a child’s plaintive wail echoed in Napolean’s memory: “Noooooooo!”

Bracing himself, Napolean counted backward: “Three. Two. One.”

“Noooooooo!” Brooke Adams shouted at the top of her lungs.

She lunged for the sharp, archaic blade nestled against Napolean’s breastbone, grasped the hilt with both hands, and tugged in the opposite direction just as he was beginning to thrust inward. If it had not been for the element of surprise, she would have never stood a chance against his brutal strength; but as it was, she surprised him and he relaxed his grip for just a fraction of a second. Long enough for the blade to slip. Just enough for it to slice sideways across his chest as opposed to impaling his heart.

He glanced down at his chest and tightened his hold on the blade.

With both hands glued to his shoulders, Brooke shook him as hard as she could while repeatedly calling his name. “Napolean!
Napolean!
What’s wrong with you? Look at me!”

He was like a block of iron.

Relentless and unmoving.

He was no longer opposing her, but he wasn’t releasing the dagger either. In fact, he had it locked in a death grip—it was as if he was stuck in some sort of trance.

“Napolean, snap out of it!”

He looked up at her then and snarled with unrestrained menace, his eyes turning a beastly red. Feral fangs shot out of his upper gums, and his lips twitched back as a savage hiss escaped his throat. “Go!”

She froze.

“Now!” he ordered, punctuating the word with a harsh, velvety growl.

The warning in his eyes was unmistakable.

He wasn’t playing, and he didn’t give a damn if she was his
destiny
.

In fact, he didn’t appear to even recognize her, which made him—unquestionably—the most dangerous being on the planet…

And that was when—and how—she knew that she and this vampire were truly, inexorably, linked.

Brooke could have gotten up and run.

She
should
have gotten up and run.

Every intelligent instinct in her body insisted that she do just that—take this perfect opportunity to escape, let this violent vampire die and finally gain her freedom—yet something far more basic inside of her simply could not let him go. Something so elementary it might have been primordial absolutely refused.

Brooke was terrified, but she would not let Napolean kill himself.

She released her death grip on his shoulders, drew back her right hand, and with all of the strength she could muster, struck him firmly across the face.

He didn’t even budge. But it did get his attention.

Napolean blinked, let go of the blade, and slowly reached up to touch his inflamed cheek, stunned. And then he glanced left and right. “Father?”

Brooke knelt down in front of him, for the first time noticing the state of the patio, the disheveled furniture and décor; it looked like a tornado had swept through the yard. “No,” she answered, keeping her voice steady and firm. “It’s me, Brooke.”