Shattered Skies: Beginning's End (20 page)

I was so wrapped up in trying to figure out what to say to him that the fact that he was moving in for a kiss escaped me. When his lips touched mine, every thought and every person in the world disappeared. He was being so gentle with me. I could see how he saw me in his mind and I was this beautiful creature to him, yet at the same time, he saw me as a deadly being. Not because he knew what I was, and that all I needed to do was have sex with him to kill him, but because he truly believed that it would kill him if I got up and walked out the door. Something about seeing myself the way he saw me made me want to show him that he didn’t have to be afraid, at least not for his reasons. I wanted to show him that I cared for him before I killed him. I am not sure what came over me next but I was on top of him. I was kissing him; his lips were my life force and I couldn't get enough to keep me alive. I had my legs on the outside of his, holding them together, acting like an animal in heat. I was grinding back and forth so fast across him that I think I was trying to rub away the fabric that kept us apart. He was so excited to feel me against him. Feeling him growing harder was making it impossible for me to be rational. It was taking everything I had not to tear his clothes off. I was a tingling mass of nerves, and the lust I was feeling for him was indescribable. He broke the kiss first and I heard myself whimpering to try to get him back.

“Kit-, I mean Catalina, we can’t do this.” Oh my God, this guy was having a change of heart now?

“What do you mean we can’t do this? I need you to do this or I am going to go crazy. I need to feel you inside of me and I don’t care how you get there, just pick a direction and go with it.” That right there should have proven to me that I wasn’t in my right mind. Sure
, I hadn’t killed the Dominus Jax a week ago, but maybe that really was because of the blood sharing I had done with Akia. I didn’t know if that was a permanent side effect or not, yet all I could think of was getting closer to him. I needed to feel him all of him. 

“Catalina you are not in your right mind. There is nothing in the
world that I would rather do than take you here and now, but if we were not touching, you would not feel this way. I am almost certain of that.” The need in his voice pushed me over the edge despite what he was saying. 

“But we are touching. That is all that matters and I want to do a lot more.” I ripped his shirt open with just one pull. His pants took me a little bit longer, but not by much. I didn’t know what was going through me but I don’t think at that point it would have mattered if I did. Before I could help it, I was on my knees and taking the tip of him in my mouth. It was wonderful and I could tell by the pleasurable noises he was making that he was enjoying it too. 

After I licked, swallowed and teased him for about twenty minutes I felt a much greater urgency. I needed something else from him, I let him slip from between my lips and I climbed back up onto his lap. I started sucking his neck and I wanted to bite him. I wanted to drink from him. I needed to drink him as much as I needed to feel him inside me. There was a tiny voice somewhere in me being logical, but she was pissing me off. I did the only thing that I could; I bit him. I needed to silence my need. He was not expecting it, and out of the shock of it all he pushed me away, stopping me from getting any of what I was after. 

“Catalina, please. We have to stop this before I am unable to control myself and I am closer to that point than I would like to admit.” 

I couldn’t hear or make sense of what he was saying. All I could focus on was the stream of ruby red blood that was running down his neck. This was what blood lust feels like. The annoying bitch in my head was screaming,
you are not a monster, blood doesn’t affect you this
way. Now snap out of it!

“Shut the hell up!” I was yelling at the nag in my head but it worked for Akia too. He completely stopped protesting and went utterly still. He was truly torn. He didn’t know what to do to make things right. If he had sex with me, he was smart enough to know that I would hate him. As if that wasn’t bad enough, I was taunting him to do it and getting mad because he wouldn’t. 

I don’t know what I was doing, and I really didn’t care, I wanted to have sex with him, I needed him to walk away, and I was truly engulfed in rage because he couldn’t figure out how to make me happy.

“Please Catalina, don’t hate me for this, but I am only so strong.” I heard him whisper the words like he was praying to someone. 

I didn’t care who he was praying to. I didn’t even care if it killed both of us; once I tasted his blood I was gone. I had no idea that blood tasted so good. His tasted like vanilla, sweet and warm. I almost smiled as I realized that he tasted the same as he smelled. That was a pretty cool trick. Just as my tongue finished licking up the delicious stream, just as my mouth closed over his succulent wound, someone barged in the door, startling Akia into a standing position, and leaving me flat on my ass on the floor. 

As soon as we stopped touching I could think again, it was like my mind became clear and I was free from a haze. What in the world had happened? I had needed his blood more than I needed him. I was crazed for it. I was going to get it at any cost. Something was seriously wrong. If I had drunk
too much from him I would have become one of them. We would have both died, and I was sure that he would have spent his last breath ordering the monsters to hunt for Darien. I needed to get the hell out of there and get back to Dr. Walker. I was in trouble. What would have happened if I had been somewhere else and the need for blood had hit me like that? Akia was afraid of scaring me off. Any other Dominus would have willingly opened a vein to me in the heat of the moment. What was I becoming? An even scarier thought was what if it was too late? What if I was already one of them and I just hadn’t realized it yet? I had to get out of there. I had to get back to Dr. Walker. I would apologize to all of them if it meant that Dr. Walker would answer my questions. For a minute I was a scared little girl that needed her Daddy to comfort her. 

Something about the man that had just barged in the door made my stomach drop to the floor. He was clearly a Dominus. He was beautiful like they all are, but this man just screamed danger. His eyes held a wild blue flame in their centers, and the look on his face held the promise of adventure and pain. 

“Drake, you better have one hell of a reason for coming in here without identifying yourself. I could have killed you thinking you were an intruder.” Akia’s voice matched the flame that was blazing in this guy’s eyes. 

“No, offense Sir, but I believe you were a little preoccupi
ed when I came in.” He laughed as Akia struggled to put his pants back on. He had a hearty laugh; one that made you want to see life the way he did for just a second, because you would probably go mad if you had to look through his eyes longer than that. While he was laughing, he pointed to me on the floor. I am sure the scene was an odd one to take in. The most powerful being completely naked, stumbling around trying to cover himself and little old me completely dressed and frazzled sitting on the floor.

“Oh Cat, I am sorry.” He held out my hand to help me up but I didn’t take the offer. I was not about to touch him again. 

“Your Majesty, I need to talk to you in private. It is very, very urgent.” Something about the way Drake said urgent made me want to get out of the Palace. 

“Nonsense, Drake. This is Catalina and anything that you need to tell me you can say in front of her.” 

“As you wish.” Drake did not seem to approve of Akia’s decision to allow me to be there while he briefed Akia and I can’t say that I blamed him, but he continued on anyway. I guess he didn’t see his great secret sacred enough to risk his life over it. Akia on the other hand, disappointed me. He trusted me enough to let me hear this already? That wasn’t right; a ruler of monsters should know better. 

“Well Sir, we have uncovered some renegade humans.”  My world started spinning and I am sure I stopped breathing, as inauspiciously as I could; I sat back down, this time on the couch not the floor. No matter what, I had to make sure that I didn’t pass out. If I passed out they would want to know why.  The rational part of me hoped that it might be another group of hidden humans. I mean, no one knew about us so who was to say that there couldn’t have been more groups like
ours? The intuitive part of me knew that I was wrong. 

“What do you mean renegade humans? How many of them are there?” Akia seemed panicked.

“Well Your Highness, from the records that we managed to save from the fire we think there was seventeen of them altogether, an old man and the rest, possibly children.”

“What do you mean possibly?” The anger in his voice was filling the room. I couldn’t think. I felt like I was going to be sick and I was close to hyperventilating. 

“We have only accounted for 14 of them Sire. We killed all but two of them; the old man and a female. We figured we could get them to talk and tell us if there are three more and where they are at. The old man went crazy before we got him in cuffs and set fire to the place and we burned everything but this.” 

He held up a notebook; Dr. Walker’s notebook. My God, they were dead. Well, most of them were dead. I needed to get to
Dr Walker. I needed to save him and whoever else they had taken. I somehow managed to compose myself. I had to get out of there without drawing attention to the fact that I was shaking. Akia was skimming through the notebook when I managed to stand up from the couch. 

“Where did you put the two you captured?” Akia went from panicked to angry with each successive word. 

“They are down in the cellar, chained to the wall in their cells. They are refusing to talk. I figured you would want to go in there to torture or beat something out of them yourself. The old man is holding up great but the female is on the verge of hysteria. I think she is close to cracking.”  I needed to get to the cellar, but I knew that I couldn’t get down there without Akia’s permission and getting it wasn’t going to be easy. 

“Sir there is something else; something that complicates things far more.” 

“What could possibly complicate this even more?” Akia was so angry that he bellowed at Drake who was managing to stay calm. In normal circumstances, I would have been impressed. Drake would have been the perfect soldier, if he had been on the right side, that is. 

“The old man isn’t human; we have reason to believe that he is a Vampire.” Drake was whispering like there were other people in the room that needed to be shielded from a
guilty truth. It mattered not how low he had said it, it sounded to me like he was screaming each word in an octave higher than I could handle. 

“You said he was old. They don’t age.” 

For a second I felt better. There was no way that they had found my family. Dr. Walker was as human as I was. Then Akia asked me if I felt well enough to accompany him to the cellar and see exactly how order is kept. There it was; my reason for being there, but what if what was there was more than I could cope with?

“Um, sure...” No shakiness. Good. I was standing and talking. Maybe I could do this. I had to do this. I had to save the two people that were my friends. I had to get them out of harm’s way and then come back and avenge the others.

“Sire, I must let you know that I don’t feel it is appropriate to allow her to accompany you on such business.”  Man, this guy was getting on my nerves. If I had anything to do with it, he was going to be the first to go. I was going to do it personally, just so I could take the time to watch his face realize that he was right. 

“Well Drake, I must let you know that I am
the King and it is none of your damn business how I chose to run my kingdom.” I couldn’t help myself. I followed Akia out the door that Drake had jumped to hold open. As I passed him, I patted him on the chest and winked at him. When he snarled at me, I knew that I was going to enjoy killing him.

The cellar was just that, a cellar. The steps were a little windy and tricky, but after that, it was a normal basement full of boxes and musk, which I found strangely comforting; when you grow up underground, the smell of musk means home. Somewhere in the distance, I could hear a female crying and a bunch of men taunting her and laughing like they were having the time of their pathetic lives. All I needed to confirm what I had already knew from the frantic sounds of her whimpering was that Jewel had been spared so far, but I also knew that it was a standard Dominus tactical move to spare the weakest captive in order to torture information out of them. I loved Jewel to death, but she’d never adapted like the rest of us had. Her heart had never hardened. She never went numb. She continued to believe that everyone had
good in them, monster or human, it didn’t matter, and at that very moment, I hated her for it. I hated her for being weak; I hated her for crying out and giving them the satisfaction of smelling her fear. Most of all, I hated her because somewhere in the back of my mind in the place that I have to go when I need to shut everything down, somewhere in that darkest place, I knew that if I wanted to live and save whoever else who had gotten out, I was going to have to kill her.

I had to do something to get Jewel alone or I was as good as dead, but how do you prepare yourself to destroy someone who has been a sister to you and has done nothing to you other than caring too much and not being cold and heartless? How do you kill someone for being able to live life in the way that you have always dreamt about? How did you kill someone who was carrying what you believed was the only free baby to be born since the attack? What the hell was I going to do?