Friction (The Frenzy Series Book 4) (20 page)

And then he closed the door behind him. I could only imagine how he felt being alone with her, and why she allowed it was beyond me. What could she possibly need him for? She had me. She had Roman. Her brother and father. Mercedes. She didn’t need Saul anymore.

Sure, he was convenient for a time, offering to save her from her mother and to marry her.

He was a distraction. That was it.

He wasn’t even a friend, no matter how hard she tried to be friendly with him. The truth of what he did would always be thick between them, viscous and ugly.

I saw red, and then I blurred out of Mountainside and into the forest before I tore apart Saul, Porschia, and anyone else who got in my way.

Things were changing. I thought I could stop it. I was wrong.

Garreth told me that Porschia needed me. She already felt pretty awful before she fed, and I thought maybe the feeding didn’t calm her down or ease the pangs of hunger. I didn’t understand what she went through until I experienced it firsthand, and even now I wasn’t sure I fully grasped the pain she went through. Turning into a vampire hurt. The light hurt your eyes. Your stomach ached. Your joints ached. You felt like everything in you was melting, reforming, and warming up to melt again. But the change didn’t last forever. The hunger? It did. It never left you.

That was what made a night-walker go insane, what caused the Frenzy – the hunger. Unquenchable thirst. A fire that no amount of water could extinguish. Pain and agony and constant fear.

When I knocked twice on the door, she called out for me to come in.

After I stepped inside, I saw that she was sitting on an overturned bucket with her hands folded in her lap. She stared at them like they were foreign to her, like they were about to harm her and she was frightened, waiting for it to happen but powerless to stop it.

“Are you okay?” I asked, quietly.

“I am now.”

“Garreth said you needed me.”

She played with the poison ring on her right hand, twisting it around and around in a circle. “You saved me that day. You told me to use my ring.”

Swallowing back my words, I listened. I wanted to tell her that I’d damned her. I thought the vampire blood would save her by pushing the Infection from her body and be powerful enough to rid her of the virus. It wasn’t. I was wrong and she was the one who paid the price.

After Mercedes bit me on the raft, Porschia ran after me, screaming for me to use the ring. But she didn’t see me get bitten, and I was too afraid of becoming both monsters. I wasn’t strong enough to handle both curses. Not like Porschia.

“I want to ask you for a favor,” she said, her eyes flicking up to mine.

“Anything,” I croaked. “I’ll do anything for you.”

Her eyes narrowed slightly. “Feed from me.”

My heart stopped and then began to pound. I didn’t expect that. “I can’t.”

“You can,” she assured me. “I took enough from Garreth to feed us both, and I’ll be sick if you don’t take some away.”

I shook my head. “You don’t understand. I can’t control it well. I might take too much.”

“I’ll risk it,” she said, jutting her chin out stubbornly.

My fingers flexed. The scent of Garreth’s blood lingered in the air between us. If I did this, it would change everything. “I know about the bond. If I did this, you would be bonded to me.”

“I know that,” she whispered.

“Why, then?”

“Honestly?” she asked.

“Yes.”

Taking in a deep breath, she stood up and walked toward me slowly. “Two reasons. First, I know you need to feed and are afraid of hurting someone. You can’t hurt me, Saul. And if you start to take more than I want you to, I will and can stop you.”

“Secondly?”

“Secondly, I want to make sure you’re okay until you aren’t a vampire anymore. Until you change back, we’ll be linked.”

“And Tage has nothing to do with any of this? Do you know how angry this will make him?”

“I’ll talk with him. There’s a third reason.”

“I already know what it is,” I growled. “You want to know if your bond with him is responsible for his loving you. It isn’t. He’s looked at you, wanted you, since we were still in the rotation. But he was in Frenzy. Roman told me.” I stepped back from her. “So the question is really, will I let you use me for a short time in order to quench this fucking thirst?”

“Yes,” she said boldly. “That’s the quest—”

I didn’t let her finish the word, or her sentence. I took a stride, grabbed her waist, and buried my fangs into her neck. Her heart thundered. I could hear the drumming in my ears. Or was that my heart?

She smelled like fresh flowers and tasted like sugar.

So. Sweet.

I gathered her toward me but she pushed me back. Growling on her neck I pulled her to me again. She pushed harder. Then she kneed me. Right in the balls. Only aware of the pain that made me nauseous, I must have let Porschia go. Grabbing her neck, she backed away from me.

Glaring.

I was grunting in agony as she glared at me like she was going to kick my ass, and in my state, she’d be able to. “What the hell was
that
for, Porschia?!”

“You were taking too much!” she retorted. She released her neck and clutched her heart before balling her fingers into fists. “Why are you so angry with me? I told you what I’d do if you did it!”

“I’m angry because you hurt my testicles!”

“You were going to kill me!” she shouted.

“Don’t be so overdramatic!” Both of us were screaming and I knew people had to be hearing it all. And the person I figured would come to her rescue first, did.

Tage threw open the door and ran to her side. “What happened?”

“Nothing,” Porschia said sternly, her face made of stone. She wasn’t going to tell him.

“She kneed me in the balls.” I was still bent at the waist.

“Why would she do that?” He tilted his head at a weird angle and then sprang at my throat. The back of my head hit the earthen wall, shaking it. The ceiling began to crumble and dirt and dust rained down on all of us.

“You’ll bury us alive!” Porschia shrieked.

“We’re undead, kitten. We’d make our way out. Eventually.”

She glared at me again as Tage tightened his fist around my neck. “Why. Did. She. Knee. You?”

“Because,” I started.

But it was Porschia who grew a pair and told him herself. “Because I made him feed from me and he took too much.”

Tage released me and my feet hit the floor faster than I expected. I caught hold of the wall to keep from falling on my face, or God help them, on the boys. She was strong as hell. They might never recover.

Tage’s face contorted into a half-pained, half-angry, and all-hurt look. “You did
what
?”

Porschia squared her shoulders before answering, “He needed to feed. He was about to lose it.”

“That’s a flimsy fucking excuse. Why did you bond with him? Are you still in love with him?” he asked. I prayed she said yes, because hearing that come from her mouth would go a long way towards easing the pain.

“That isn’t why and you know it,” she said, stepping toward him and reaching for his hand. “You can feel it.”

Tage recoiled. “Then why?”

“I wanted to make sure this is real,” she said, barely above a whisper. “What you feel for me. I need to know it’s not just about our bond.”

“And if it is? If it’s because of the bond, will you leave me for him?” Tage paced back and forth, effectively blocking my escape route, even though I knew they needed to talk privately. “What if it’s not? Then will you believe me? But not NOW? Not when I’m standing in front of you, telling you that I love you? I would lay down my life for you, Porschia. God damn it all!” he roared. “What do I have to do to prove it to you?”

A crimson tear leaked from her left eye and then her right.

She shook her head, silently telling him she didn’t know.

Tage threw his hands in the air instead of around her. “I don’t know either.” Then he walked out the door.

Lydia smiled at me. “Thank you for changing me. I feel electric, like I could shoot lightning from my fingertips.”

“It’s because you just changed. You’ll need to feed to keep the feeling. There’s someone in the bedroom.”

“Pierce?” she asked with a smile.

“Go see.” I nodded my head toward the door. She twisted the golden knob, easing it open and then squealing.

“He’s so young. I love the innocent ones.”

I followed her inside. Ford stood across the room, backed into the corner. “Thank God you’re here, Porsch.”

“Don’t thank anyone,” I told him.

He tried to figure me out, puzzled by my words, and then shook his head.

“You won’t eat me,” he told himself.

“I won’t,” I told him as Lydia approached.

She ran to him and smiled, easing his head to the side. “But I will,” Lydia answered. “It’s only fair, you know. A brother for a brother.”

She sank her teeth into Ford’s neck
and
I woke with a start, having fallen asleep sitting against the wall, my neck sore from being crooked too long. My forehead was covered in sweat, and my heart…my heart was scared to death. What if Ford had to pay for what I did? What if Roman was reeling us both in so he could go in for the kill, making it hurt even worse when he did it?

Tage didn’t come back to Mountainside for two days, and when he did, he barely looked at me, quickly moving out of my sight. He stayed in the forest near the western side of the wall most of the time. I knew he felt the deep ache in my chest. The same pain was visible in the creases and lines showing on his face, the ones that usually weren’t there but would become etched into his skin in years to come if he became human and began to age again.

Saul’s hunger was getting harder for him to suppress. He was losing the battle and the war. When Ford came three afternoons later, I asked Saul to escort him back to Blackwater. When he asked why, I told him it was so he could feed properly. My family and his would help him. Imagining the looks on his parents’ faces, I cringed. They hated night-walkers. They were terrified of them, but I didn’t think they would be frightened of Saul. He was still their son.