Made By Design (Blood Bound Series Book 2) (35 page)

“That was good,” Ty said, walking over with the others to the log where we sat. “But now…”

I pushed off my crouched perch, dumping my phone and iPod on the log. I knew what was next. “It’s our turn.”

Marika stood and dusted snow off her hands before pulling out her own stake. “Challenge accepted, leech.”

She jogged into the clearing and I followed, pulling my own silver stake from my belt. With my pulse racing I grounded my feet as Marika launched at me. She moved like the wind. But her stance gave her away.

I dodged just in time, elbow jutting out to connect with her ribs. The hit made her snarl but she didn’t falter, swinging out a leg as she dropped to the ground. Off balance, I staggered. The fact that I hadn’t seen that one coming cut through me with irritation.

The rain began to pelt down harder and I spun on the spot. Free fist ready, I delivered a blow to her cheek. The hit caught her off guard for a moment. Which was all I needed. I threw my arm forward, directing the stake at Marika’s chest.

Before I reached the kill spot her hands came up, knocking the stake free. It flew through air into a wide oak. It’s branches trembled at the embedding force, dusting snow like icing sugar through a sift.

Not stopping to berate myself, I back flipped to the tree. I tugged the stake free, but I didn’t have a second to waste. Marika was coming for me.

As I spun to face her, a deafening crash rang out. A lightning strike plummeted straight for us. I leapt away as it struck the exact spot I had been standing. The force sent me flying straight at another tree and cracking it in two.

With a groan I stood on aching legs.

You must accept the light
. Madam Dorothy’s words blew through my ears with the wind. I fingered the amethyst pendant tied around my wrist, shivering at the memory of her cryptic telling of my future. For the first time ever her declaration made sense. I knew what I needed to do. The vision yesterday had painted a clear picture. At the time, I hadn’t understood the vision or the strange man’s will to get struck by lightning. I’d felt an unnerving sensation at my own close encounters with the storm-created force. That unnerving sensation was lost to me now. Right now, I knew what I felt. It was an unrelenting pull towards the storm, towards the power within the lightning’s volatile strike.

“I’m over this crap,” I spoke to myself, and I meant every word. I took off past the clearing and through the thicket.

“Amelia, stop!” Kendrick screamed, bounding through the trees after me.

I ignored his call, maneuvering through the incline of the thick, snowy forest, dodging, weaving, and jumping. I burst from the tree line, pulling to a stop at the edge of a rocky, plunging cliff.

“Come and get me!” I screamed up at the angry coiling clouds.

“No!” Kendrick’s scream echoed. Other feet pounded along with his, but only he knew what I planned to do.

With my arms outstretched to the blackening sky, Kendrick sprinted past the tree line.

Too late.

A crack split the sky, blasting through my ears as a strike of lightning shot straight at me. It connected with my palms and surged through my body, turning every bone and muscle to liquid. Everything disappeared and I collapsed.

Somehow, even in this darkness, I wasn’t unconscious. I could hear nearing steps. Smell the crispness of winter. Sense the storm receding.

I forced my lids open as Kendrick reached my side. He grabbed my arm and recoiled as static shot free. I watched my arm in fascination as blue lightning danced over my skin.

Ty and Dorian met us on the cliff’s edge then, and Ty dropped to his knees, reaching out to take me into his arms. “Are you hurt?”

“Don’t touch her!” Kendrick shoved him back. “She’s a live wire.”

With shaky hands I pushed my body from the ground. “I think I’m fine,” I said, brushing myself off. The static rays had slowed and now seemed to be sinking into my skin. They faded out, becoming lighter and lighter until they all disappeared.

“What the hell happened?” Dorian asked as Marika joined us along with Troy, who was carting Vanessa on his back.

I raised my eyebrows to Kendrick in question, hoping his vampire knowledge would somehow explain this. He shrugged, completely lost.

“The lightning,” I said. “It’s what I saw in the vision of the man. I knew I needed to let it hit me.”

“You could have gotten yourself killed.” Ty’s voice was rough as he watched me, his face revealing the pure terror I’d just subjected him to.

“I wasn’t afraid.” I recalled all the past close encounters. How the lightning had reacted to my fear, anger, or a threat. It had always been coming for me. “It was all leading to this. I knew I needed to do it. I needed to seek it out.”

“But why?” Vanessa asked, frowning at me like I’d gone totally batshit.

“Aren’t you the one who knows everything about creatures that go bump in the night?” I quipped.

“I do. But
this
?” She waved her hands, indicating my entire body. “It isn’t in any book I’ve ever read. It’s not normal.”

“Nothing about any of you leeches is normal,” Troy said.

“Amen,” Marika added.

I ignored them both, feeling powerful and hollow at the same time. “What am I?”

Ty held his hand out for me to take. “Exactly what you’re supposed to be,” he said, now smiling.

I went to lace my fingers through his, feeling Kendrick’s jealousy rise. But the moment our skin touched a spark shot from my palm into his hand.

“Ouch.” Ty slapped his hand against his thigh. “That seriously hurt.”

I saw the ghost of a smile on Kendrick’s face and sensed his hope. Now a new obstacle stood between Ty and me ever getting too close. And I had brought this on myself.

“Fan-freaking-tastic.”

~

We returned home late in the afternoon, the sun wilting behind snow-ladened clouds. The paved driveway and front steps were wet from rain, and slippery as hell. I minded my step and stared down. My Vans reminded me of the pair I’d ditched before escaping the Armaya. Clogged with mud and drenched from melted snow. But at this point shoes were the least of my worries. Because after my reckless actions I was electric. Literally. A spark-conducting vampire with no control. Just what I needed.

Kendrick opened the front door, waiting for me to pass. “Amelia, you coming in?”

Hearing him through Red’s song
Fight Inside
, I removed my earbuds. The sparks had died down since leaving Mt Major, enough that I wasn’t worried about frying my iPod. So long as no one tried to touch me at the same time. During our journey home, I’d already gone through the whole album once. Thankfully Kendrick knew I was past the point of talking.

I peered up from my Vans to see him watching me. The pity on his face made me want to scream. Instead, I pulled my iPhone from my soggy jeans. “I’m gonna call Marcus again.”

Since my vision of the mass slaughter, I’d called so many times. So far there hadn’t been a single pick-up. Not knowing was torture, and I’d tried not to dwell on the subject. Which was useless. Was Marcus even alive? Was his family? My worry and need to know trumped any new personal issues. It also made me feel like shit. How could I be so caught up in my own problems when other lives were at stake?

As the phone reached Marcus’s voicemail, I hung up with a sound of frustration. “He’s dead. Isn’t he?”

“I’m sure he’s fine,” Kendrick said, going to embrace me. He stopped as sparks lit up my exposed arms like a glass plasma ball, the currents attracted to his nearing touch. He sighed. “Don’t take this on. It’s not your fault. You warned him. That’s all you could do.”

“Was it?”

As I edged away, Mom came out of her study into the foyer. Her phone slid back into her pants suit. “Oh good, you’re home. I mean, no. Not good…” Her complexion was sheet paper white, her eyes glassy and bloodshot. She took small breaths, clearly holding back tears. “Where’s Dorian?”

The sight of her sent morbid terror clawing at my throat. “Out at Vanessa’s. Why?” I gulped. “Mom, what’s wrong?”

She sat down on the padded bench beside the foyer table. Her back was posture-perfect straight, but her long fingers twined together, tight like a rope. “The Vladimirs…they’re all dead.”

The memory of spine-chilling screams rang through my ears. The innocent girl, Marcus’s cousin, choked to death at the top of the stairs, her vertebrae crushed like shells underfoot. His father’s jugular ripped out, his lifeless body dropped like yesterday’s trash. My legs gave out and my butt hit the marble. “Every one of them?”

“It was in Russia.” She shook her head. “They were all there for a family reunion.”

Kendrick sat beside her and unlocked her hands. He glanced at me, frowning as my entire body began shaking. “Ms. Lamont, was Marcus…was he…?”

“Marcus?” Her hand went to her heart, seeing the all over body quake and tears streaming down my face. “Oh, Amelia, your tutor. I’m sorry, no. I didn’t mean to make you think…”

I stumbled forward, falling to my knees in front of her, careful not to touch. “Tell me. Please. Is he dead?”

“He arrived too late.” Tenderness stole the despair from her face and she pushed my hair behind my ear. “He found them all…dead. He’s the only Vladimir now in existence.”

I fell back, cold marble coating my back while I just breathed. The whole Vladimir line had been exterminated, but Marcus was still alive. The relief at his survival over all the others, so many others, stung my heart with guilt.

I was so overwhelmed that I almost missed Mom saying, “The bodies are being flown to the Armaya for a royal funeral. Our flight leaves tonight.”

~

When the coast was clear, meaning Mom had left to source suitable attire for the royal funeral, I stalked toward the backyard seeing red. I was beyond pissed. As usual my stupid visions had failed. Showed me a future I couldn’t change at the stake of others’ lives. A whole line of royals extinguished, bar one sole survivor.

And now I had a new power. The ability to electrocute anyone and everyone. Yet another uncontrollable ‘gift’ that made me anything but normal. I was cursed.

My palms hit the terrace doors and static jolted them open like a bomb exploding. I screamed in frustration, the setting sun stinging my eyes. Snow no longer fell but it coated everything. Beautiful, pure…and natural. Everything I would never be.

I kicked at it with my Vans, the rubber buffering the built up current streaming to my toes. Crying out at the lack of release, I fell to my knees before the stone bench. Blue lightning danced along my arms, collecting at my clenched hands. The rest of my body tingled too, including my face and neck. A live wire, Kendrick had said. How true that was.

I was a freaking freak. A vampire with a power none had ever had before.

I screamed again and brought my fists down. As they met the stone the force cracked straight through, the voltage liquefying the snow coating.

“Amelia, stop.”

With my vision blurred by tears, I shot up. Rage seared through my veins, lighting my skin on fire. “Leave. Me. Alone.”

Kendrick came forward. “I’m not going anywhere.”

Like a match setting off a firework, my hand shot up. My voice splintered with ice. “I said, leave me the hell alone!”

A blue streak shot from both my hands as I shoved Kendrick’s shoulder. He spun, face-planting in the snow.

I rushed over, horrified at what I’d done, eyes glued to his convulsing body. As I went to reach out, my hands snapped back. Constant static ran down my arms like waves, ready to let loose again. “Shit, Kendrick. Talk to me. Are you okay?”

“J-just. Ah, shit that hurts.” With the tremors fleeing his body he rolled and used his hands to sit up. “You’re a weapon.”

I sunk to my heels, imagining this happening anytime Ty and I tried to touch. “I’m a freaking live grenade with the pin out.”

When Kendrick said nothing, I looked up. The prick was smiling. Freaking smiling. It was the same smile he’d had when I shocked Ty. Static surging, my hand rose in threat. “You better wipe that look off you face before I slap it off.”

Kendrick’s smile didn’t falter. “Is that the way you talk to the friend who’s going to help you control your new-found power?”

His words had my hand dropping to melt a hole in the snow. Teaching me to control the ability to electrocute people would remove the new obstacle standing between Ty and me getting closer. “Why would you do that?”

“I may not like Ty, but I still want what’s best for you.” He went to take my hand then thought better of it. “Besides, I want you to be safe. Learning to control this power, wherever it came from, will make you stronger.”

“But—”

“You’re not cursed,” Kendrick cut in. “You’ve only looked at this gift from one angle. Only considered the
relationship
you have with Ty. Not the benefit of controlling your new power. Amelia, you could be a weapon.”

I felt the truth of Kendrick’s words in his unwavering stare. Even though he hated helping me remove what could potentially keep Ty and me physically apart, he truly wanted to help. “Okay, so what do we do?”

Kendrick walked over to the terrace, sheltered by a thatched roof twined with white-dusted vines. He pointed to a candle on the glass and wrought iron table. “Hold your hand out, palm facing down. But don’t touch the candle. Concentrate on the energy and force it’s power to your fingertips.”

I followed his direction, my hand reaching for the object without touching it. As my fingers neared, a blue streak crawled across my skin, over my hand, and down my middle finger. While still attached it shot at the candle. It flashed again and again, trying to touch what was just out of its grasp. “Now what?”

“Touch it.”

My fingers edged closer and closer, the blue electricity still reaching, wave after wave. I could sense the multitude of energy within my fingertips growing with every second. It was intense and powerful, unlike anything I had ever experienced before. The split second I touched the surface the built up power split from my hand. It plunged into the cylinder and shattered with an explosion of wax.

The thought of having almost done that to Kendrick had my heart racing. “I don’t like this, Kendrick. It’s too dangerous.”