The Frenzy Series (Book 2): Frantic (4 page)

“You’ll have to stop them,” Saul said.

Roman shook his head. “We have to maintain the treaty.”

“Screw the treaty!” Saul roared. “She isn’t
dying
—teach her how to control it!” He pointed at Tage. “You—you’re new, aren’t you? When you bit Porschia during the rotation, you didn’t numb her. You didn’t, because you didn’t know you could. Teach her. Please.”

Tage stiffened, but nodded.

Roman’s eyes zeroed in on Tage suspiciously. “What’s he talking about? How long ago did you turn?”

Tage helped me walk away from Saul. We followed Roman to a large Victorian home, one that fit in well with the others in the Colony, but was slightly bigger and better maintained. Dara was waiting for us on the porch.

“Where have you been? It’s time for the evening rotation,” she said. Glancing behind Roman to me and Tage, she gasped. “What’s
she
doing here?” She sniffed the air.

“She turned,” Roman answered matter-of-factly.

Dara’s mouth gaped open, but she covered it with her delicate hands. I hated those hands. Those hands had touched Saul.
My
Saul. Mustering the energy I had left, I ran up the steps at her and knocked her down. She stared up at me with her mouth agape; half-angry, half-shocked. “Don’t ever touch Saul again.”

Roman and Tage were immediately behind me, pulling me away from her, but Dara’s eyes were wide. “You have to lock her up. She’s a loose cannon. The Elders are going to freak out.”

“We know,” Roman gritted out between his teeth, his hands bruising my arm. “Get the cell ready,” he ordered.

Dara opened the door and the three of them wrestled me down a wide set of steps into a dank, musty-smelling basement. Scents of mildew and the scurrying of mice had my head spinning; spiders, their legs tapping surfaces and working silk. Roaches skittered. It was dark. My eyes focused on it all, especially the floor-to-ceiling bars arranged in a large rectangle across the room. Inside the cell? A rusted cot with a bumpy mattress, stained with blood. That was it. Floor. Ceiling. Bars. Cot. Mattress. Stains.

I fought them with all my might, pulling my arm from Tage, pushing Roman away, kicking, clawing, and biting at Dara. But in the end, they were stronger than I was in my weakened state. I was sick. The bars slammed behind me with a loud clang and I covered my ears as they secured the locks. So many locks.

Then they left.

“Tage?”

“Rotation,” was all he said. They had to eat. They had to feed. I wanted to feed.

“I’m hungry! I need to feed, too,” I screamed. “Let me out!”

Roman pulled the basement door shut. “We can’t do that right now, Porschia.”

“When, then? When can I feed?”

No one answered.

“I’m hungry! Please! Let me go with you.”

“Please,” I repeated in a choked whisper.

Please. Please. Please.

Hungry.

The pain.

Please.

Don’t leave me down here alone.

Saul was the only one waiting at the pavilion, leaning up against the fountain like he’d been waiting there for hours and we were wasting his time. “Where are the others?” Roman growled.

With a shrug, Saul answered, “Guess they made a choice.” He stood up straight, pushing away from the fountain.

“The treaty says—”

“The treaty is void.
You
voided it.”

Roman was in front of him in a flash. “We didn’t turn her. She used the ring.”

“What about the recent deaths? The victims all had fang marks on their necks,” Saul goaded. What an idiot.

“Not. A. Vampire,” Roman growled in exasperation.

“So you say, but it looks like no one believes you. Anyway, I’m here. Do you want to feed or not?”

“Why are you doing this?” I asked. “What’s in it for you?”

“To keep her safe for as long as I can. If you all tear through the Colony to find someone to feed on, the colonists you feed on will tell the Elders. The Elders will call a meeting, and if Porschia’s not there, they’ll want to know why.” He obviously loved her, and it was no wonder. She was exceptional: strong, beautiful, and sarcastically funny, and now that she’d turned and I had claimed her, the sexiest thing I’d seen since I left Florida and stumbled into the freaky time-warped Blackwater Colony.

Roman’s dark eyes bored into me, promising that we were going to have a legit man-to-man about me running interference.

I ignored him, turning to Saul instead. “You can’t marry her now. You can’t be with her. You can’t even be her friend. If she approaches, you need to run in the other direction as fast as your legs will carry you. Because even if she seems like your Porschia, she’s not. She’s a huntress. She wants nothing more than to drink from you, and if she feeds, she will not be able to stop herself. Not right now, and maybe never.”

Saul stiffened and tipped his chin up. “I know. So…let’s get this over with.”

There was a saying that ‘curiosity killed the cat’, but stubbornness might kill Saul. He was going to try to rescue her, and the only possible conclusion was that Porschia would drain him, after which she would fly into a rage that none of us would be able to contain. There weren’t bars powerful enough to hold that sort of heartache; that despair. It was why Roman was such a cold-hearted bastard. And if Porschia killed Saul, or anyone else she loved, she would lose herself. She might slaughter the whole Colony.

Roman might try to kill her before she managed it, which meant I would have to try to kill Roman. And Dara. And anyone else who tried to hurt Porschia. I didn’t want her to die. There was something in her green-gray eyes that understood what it was to be human, and that still saw humanity in me. It was something I could no longer see in myself when I glanced in the mirror. I would help her through this, right after we figured out how to make her well.

Roman fed from Saul first and then Dara took her turn, but they were careful not to take too much. When it was my turn, I declined. I already fed from the bear and was good for now. I might still be good in the morning, but wouldn’t push it. My control was a tight string that could easily be snapped. One vamp in Frenzy was frightening as hell, but something that could be dealt with, given the proper guidance. Two? Two would be a blood bath. And nothing under the heavens could stop a pair.

Not only would they feed on everything living they could capture, they would feed off of one another’s heightened emotions. They would bask in the glory of their kills, high on competition and blood, drowning out the sorrows that always followed behind; a constant roller coaster of ups, downs, twists and turns. Happiness. Sadness. Contentment. Despair. Longing. Anger. Frustration. Hopelessness. Giddiness. Desolation. Confusion. Fear. Annoyance.
Feed
.

Before I left, I turned to Saul and said, “Don’t do it.”

“What?”

“Try to be the hero. There are no heroes in this story. She’s cursed now.”

I could hear his teeth grinding against one another. Upper versus lower.

“I’ll be here in the morning,” Saul replied dryly, ignoring my warning completely.

“I’ll get food for you and your family,” I vowed.

He nodded and so did I. Walking quickly through the darkness, the three of us returned to Roman’s house. There was room for all of us to live there, now that the other vamps were gone – wherever they’d gone. I had my own place, but someone needed to stay and keep an eye on Roman. No matter what, I was going to stay close to Porschia. And ‘close’ tonight meant standing guard in the basement, watching her sleep. Her chest rose and fell so softly, one might think she wasn’t breathing at all. But I could hear it. Every puff, every sigh.

I was there when she woke up, rolling in discomfort on the mold-spotted mattress, clutching her stomach. I was there when she begged me for something to sate her thirst, and I offered my neck to her. I was also there when she began rejecting the blood, spewing red fountains onto the dirty mattress, across the white peeling paint curling down the wall.

Roman still hadn’t said anything about me claiming her. My blood was already inside her from the ring, and now the fact that she’d bitten into me made her mine and me hers. However, she didn’t know that tiny fact.

So I stayed with her. Watched her. Because we were so tightly linked, I was able to feel her every emotion. Seeing them, seeing her pain, was hard. This went on for another day. She would wake, so hungry she couldn’t sit still, in pain from it. She would feed, vomit, and then she would sleep. The cycle was even worrying Roman.

“We need to try something different,” I announced, easing the legs of my metal chair onto the cracked concrete floor with a bang.

“What?” she rasped from her new mattress, clutching the blanket that covered her body. I could hear her trembling shaking the fabric.

“I’ll be back.”

She didn’t make a noise in response. I jogged up the basement steps, meeting the others on the landing. It was evening rotation time and they were ready to eat. So was Porschia. Saul could help me with that.

Roman, Dara, and I each took turns feeding from Saul at the pavilion. He never complained, he just asked for an update on Porschia. “Actually, I think you should come and see her, Saul.”

Roman stared at me, head tilted in question.

“You’re the only one who knows about her situation, besides her mother and brother. They haven’t said anything to anyone that you know of, right?”