Calling for a Miracle [The Order of Vampyres 2] (Siren Publishing Classic) (27 page)

“Sleep, Adam, I need to sleep.”

She began to slouch and he shouted, “No! Anna, you stay awake, do you hear me?”

The wound on her chest was beginning to heal. His mother returned with a stack of clean towels. He took one and pressed it into his mate’s chest.

“Has the blood stopped?” his mother asked from the door.

Before Adam could answer, Annalise’s scream filled the air. Right before his eyes, he watched as the flesh on her shoulder suddenly disappeared, as if it were being burned away, leaving nothing but a jagged gouge in its place. “For God’s sake, go get the healer!” he screamed and his mother ran out of the room.

* * * *

Cain grunted and pressed himself off the ground. He could taste bits of dirt on his tongue, mixing with his own blood. The female was incredibly strong for her size. Cain’s legs were beginning to tremble. He felt the burn of claw marks running over his back and arched to pull his frayed shirt off of the sticky blood running down his spine. This had gone on long enough.

Turning, he came up short when his opponent was not there. He looked around him and above. When he did not see her, he stilled and listened. He was not prepared when she suddenly dropped from fifty or so feet above onto his back. Her claws dug into his scalp as she reached around his neck and scraped the flesh of his throat.

* * * *

Anna arched, her back coming off the bed, her shoulders pulling tight as she screamed again. Adam did not understand what could possibly be happening. Terrified, he watched trails of blood open along her spine. He looked at the healer who stood frozen and useless by the door. “Do something!”

Galvanized into action, the man quickly came to Adam’s aid. He took up holding the bloodied towel over Anna’s shoulder so that Adam could tend to her back.

“Please, Adam,” she rasped, her eyes now closed. “Please, let me sleep.”

“No,
ainsicht,
you need to stay awake.”

“Perhaps it would be better if she slept. Less traumatic for the baby,” the healer suggested.

Adam looked at Gracie and she shrugged. Before he could make a decision, Anna shrieked. Her hands went to her skull as if she was trying to rip some invisible thing off her back and to his horror her throat began to run red with her blood. She fainted midscream.

“Let her sleep,” the healer suggested anxiously again, and Adam swallowed back his own tears and nodded.

* * * *

Cain pulled back his arm, prepared to strike her again when he suddenly felt something pull from deep within his mind. His balance faltered and the female disappeared once more.

“Tell me who your maker is!” he bellowed into the darkness, his own fangs dripping with blood and saliva. He had had enough. His muscles bunched as his breath sawed in and out of his lungs.

He heard her laughing from the canopy above and prepared to leap up and drag her down when there was again that strange pulling sensation in his mind. He grabbed his head and tried to shake whatever the sensation was away. When he looked back toward the trees, he was suddenly dizzy and extremely weak. What was happening to him? His vision winked in and out as he tried to regain his focus. He listened to the female cackling at him from the shadows above, but her voice sounded more distant.

He dropped to his knees, fearing he was going to pass out. He could not falter or the female would destroy him. His shoulders buckled under the weight of his head and he breathed hard as he pressed his cheek to the cool dirt. He focused on the roots of a nearby tree. The drowsier he felt, the less he seemed to fear dying. He was suddenly too exhausted to care.

He blinked with heavy, slow movements and saw a flash of his farm in his mind. With each flash came silence, away from the incessant cackling above. Silence. Cackle. Silence. Cackle. Silence, no wait, screaming. He knew that voice. He shut his eyes and went to the voice. His visions became jumbled, too much at once, the farm, the woods, the trees, Annalise, blood, a blurred flash of an infant. What was happening?

“Anna?” he wheezed.

“Cain?”

“Anna, where are you?”

“Cain, what’s happening to me? There’s blood! It hurts! Make it stop!”

“Where are you? Show me?”

Suddenly his vision stilled and Anna stood before him on the farm. She was naked, her belly slightly swollen where the baby grew. Her shoulder was bleeding as was her throat and chest and parts of her face close to her hairline. Cain reached for his own throat and felt the identical wound.

“Is this real or a dream? I don’t understand. I’m not sleeping.”

“Cain, it’s real. I feel everything you feel. Make it stop!”

Cain felt their connection get severed and the sound of that insidious cackling reverberated down to his last nerve. Anna was in pain. She was feeling everything he felt. He thought about that for a moment while he tried to regain some of his strength. Cain felt like he was at death’s door. If Anna was experiencing what he was experiencing he was not only endangering her, but the baby as well.

“
You fucking bitch!
”

Cain jumped to his feet and lunged into the trees above. Possessed by his beast within, he grabbed hold of the female’s throat and immediately silenced her cackling. He had a moment of pleasure when he saw her shock register. He threw her from the branch and watched as her body landed in a heap with a disgusting crunch on the ground.

He followed her down, but with a bit more grace. Blood trickled from his scalp into his eyes, but he did not let it slow his advance on her. She stood, body broken and mangled in a way that would have ended a mortal’s life. Dragging her broken leg behind her, she slithered toward him. Her head lay limp upon her shoulder, her neck useless.

“Last chance, bitch. Tell me who your sire is.”

She cackled. “He will not let you kill me. Isaiah love me.”

“That’s what I thought.” Cain sprung forward and punched his claws straight through her chest. He grabbed hold of her heart and yanked it back out of her chest cavity with a disgusting slurp and pop. She blinked at him once, then fell lifeless to the ground.

Cain breathed deeply as rain began to fall quietly around him, washing away the blood. He still clenched her heart in his fist, never letting it go until it slowly solidified and then crumbled like dust between his fingers. He watched as her body did the same.

Cain shut his eyes and called on the wind. He watched without one bit of satisfaction as her particles were carried away and erased from this world. Once everything was cleaned up, all traces of his camp and the battle removed, he found his way out of the woods and fled to where he needed to be.

* * * *

Adam cradled Annalise on his lap and quietly rocked her back and forth. He had no explanation for what had happened. He only knew it seemed to be over.

Her wounds had closed and were now nothing more than pink puckers of scar tissue that would soon heal as well. He had given her his blood and waited, refusing to accept any possibility other than her complete recovery at the moment. His mother had told him how Anna had fed her. As much as Adam did not believe that had anything to do with her attack, he could no longer suffer his mother’s guilt-ridden apologies. He had told all of them to leave him alone with his mate.

She had been sleeping now, peacefully for over an hour. Gracie assured him the baby was fine and Adam had decided the healer was useless for anything other than veterinary concerns. A knock sounded on the door.

“Come in.” Cain stepped into the room looking haggard and winded. “What has happened to you?”

“Is she all right?”

“This is your doing?” Adam demanded.

“I didn’t know,” Cain answered in a tortured voice. “Is she all right? The baby?” He gently placed the backs of his knuckles upon her cheek and Adam growled.

Through clenched teeth, he demanded, “How did this happen, Cain?”

“I don’t know. I was in a fight, in the woods. As soon as I realized what was happening, I ended it.”

“She almost bled out!” he roared.

“I’m so, so sorry, Adam. I swear I didn’t know.”

“Get out.” He could not tolerate the sight of anyone at that moment, least of all Cain.

“Adam.” At the small plea they both looked down. Annalise had waken and was now looking up at him beseechingly. “Be nice to Cain. It wasn’t his fault.”

“
Ainsicht,
are you all right? Do you need anything?”

“I need you to apologize to Cain. As soon as he realized what was happening, he intervened and possibly saved my life.” It seemed every word was a chore, but she continued. Turning to his brother she awkwardly took his hand. “And, you, don’t let it happen again.”

Chapter 16

Larissa sat in the bathtub and frowned. Her twenty-four hours had expired. Yet, here she sat, in her lovely little modern apartment, bishop waiting in the wings, and not a single idea what to do. He had touched her. Bishop King had touched her and she liked it. What was happening to her?

She watched as white, foamy bubbles melted into flat puddles of suds resting on the water’s surface and waited for reality to set in. He was her mate. Not Silus, but Eleazar, the bishop. There was some part of her that could not believe it to be so. She had come to the conclusion that her days on the farm were over and, if she ever were to return, it would be as nothing more than Silus Hostetler’s obedient wife, living out her miserable existence. But, according to the bishop, that was not the way things were going to be.

She had dreamt. The experience was altogether odd and somewhat unsettling. She had seen the bishop lounging in a room she did not recognize. Her happiness from the dream had penetrated her sleeping mind. She was there, lounging beside the bishop, yet also somehow watching the scene play out. He had held a ruby-colored ribbon and trailed it over her naked breasts until the flesh tightened and goose bumps covered her soft skin.

There was no shame in the dream. She felt no instinct to cover herself. She simply allowed his touch and heard herself laughing. When he smiled over her, she smiled back. He was quite beautiful, lounging beside her, his chest as bare as her own.

Larissa looked down at her body half-hidden by the tepid water. She slowly brought her fingertips to her breast and touched the soft tip, remembering how the bishop had made her breast feel heavy and achy. Her damp fingers left a trail over the darker skin and she gasped as her flesh pulled tight before her eyes in the chilled air.
You are not cold,
he had assured her. Yet she had a collection of memories as Silus’s wife that told her different.

A knock on the door had her gasping and jerking her hand below the water.

“Larissa?”

“Yes?” Her voice sounded a bit high-pitched.

The knob began to turn. Larissa panicked and quickly scooted as far under the water as her long legs would permit. Her knees sloshed above the surface, deflated bubbles running down her skin as she locked them together and crossed her arms over her chest. The audacity of this man just walking in on her!