Vampire Elite (13 page)

“Two.”
 

How was she supposed to decide?

“I agree!” Arianna was family, and the knife was at Arianna’s neck here, now: an immediate threat as opposed to a future one. Her father was smart and powerful. He’d capture Simone’s mate and keep him alive, imprisoned. Or ... he’d think of something else to get her—get
them
—out of this trap.
 

“Clever girl. I expected no less from you. We can start now.”
 

Simone heard the low murmur of Sekhmi chanting around her, slowly rising in volume to a thunderous crescendo. The voices burned into her brain.
 

Without warning, Simone was grabbed around the waist and pulled down to the ground. She barely had time to gasp in shock before she felt the stab of fangs followed by the deep pulling sensation of blood being sucked from her throat. Then, like the asshole wasn’t satisfied with how much he was getting, he bit down again, harder, and again. At this rate he was going to tear out her throat. She could feel her blood—her
life force
, she thought with horror—gushing from her, into him.
 

All Simone’s instincts rebelled. She was a predator; it was she who was supposed to dominant, to feed on others, not to be held down like this, blindfolded and restrained, while someone chewed on her body and drained her life.
 

“Let. Me. Go.” Simone snarled, struggling against him with all her strength, but she only managed to tear her flesh, rip open her vein, even more. And his grip only tightened. He was gorging on her blood, making disgusting slurping and huge noisy gulping sounds, now freeing more than he could swallow. She could feel it overflowing, sliding down her neck and chest.
 

The blood loss hit her like a blast of wind. Abruptly she was dizzy, her breath shallow, her limbs like rubber. Helplessness overwhelmed her and she started to sob.
 

Finally the asshole released her. She felt him pull back to a kneel, felt—or imagined—him using the back of his wrist, his hand, to wipe his bloody mouth.
 

“Ahh.
Very
satisfying. Thank you, that was delicious. You can stop now.”
 

What?
For a moment everything went silent and still. Then there was a shuffling sound and Simone realized: the chanting had stopped—he’d been directing that last comment to his companions—and he’d gotten to his feet.
 

“Wait! What about me?” she tried to shout, but heard her voice emerged as a rasping breath. “It’s my turn. We have to finish the ceremony.”
 

“
Nah
.” He laughed. “I think I’m done here.”
 

Through her dizziness and dismay, she felt the world start to throb and thought for a second that it was her pulse coming strong again, her body healing. Then her stomach dropped as she recognized it as a sound. She checked on the energies around her. Yes, someone had left. To go start up a helicopter.
 

Her skin crawled. He wasn’t going to feed her, wasn’t going to share his life-force. He’d taken her life-force but kept his own. She’d die with him, but he’d go on living if she died.
 

And now she could feel all of their energies withdrawing, moving away. They were all going to leave in the helicopter. And leave her here. She’d never have believed that her life would end so stupidly.
 

“Goodbye, sweetheart. I’ll tell your sister you said bye!” the asshole called out from a greater distance. The next moment the energies disappeared as the copter’s door shut, and she heard the distinctive sounds of a helicopter taking off and ascending into the sky.

She couldn’t even feel Arianna, though she should’ve been able to, since surely Arianna wasn’t shielding given what they’d done to her, not to mention the weakness from blood loss. It occurred to Simone that whatever they’d done had made her sister stop emitting Amiti energy in the first place. She wondered if it would ever come back. What if she could never find Arianna again, even
with
the blood-bond?.
 

The helicopter’s throb dimmed and then dissolved completely, the sounds of the jungle around Simone loud in the new silence.
 

Simone felt utterly isolated and helpless, as though she’d been sucked into a vacuum. Who was she kidding? She
was
isolated and helpless: even her captors had abandoned her, taking Arianna with them, and now she was alone, in the middle of nowhere, restrained, blindfolded, naked, robbed of her life-force.
 

And —she realized, as hunger reared up inside her—dying from bloodlust.

Chapter 15

Simone let herself lie there for a decadent moment of self-pity. Then she struggled to her feet, forcing her senses to fire up and tune into her surroundings. The good news was that sudden bloodlust was often a sign of the body working to heal itself, so she felt a little less weak now.

The other good news was that even blindfolded, she had a perfect orientation system. She sensed the buildings to her left, headed directly toward them, located the door on the first one, and ... found it locked. Struck by sudden inspiration, she rubbed the side of her head against the doorframe, gradually dislodging and removing her blindfold.
Ah, much better
.
 

Looking around, she saw a small cluster of bungalows at the perimeter of the little village ... settlement ... whatever. Maybe they’d be unlocked—or if they weren’t, they’d probably have open windows, or weaker doors than the more industrial buildings. And,
jackpot!
—the first door was unlocked.
 

She went into its kitchen and began the incredibly awkward process of finding the knife drawer, extracting a knife from it, and sawing through the restraints.

She’d taken so many different classes in her campaign to win over Antar—it would’ve been great, really great, if just
one
had covered
How to break through rope when your hands are tied behind your back.
Just one. That’s all it would have taken.

Finally the rope broke. She shook out her crampy hands and arms and looked around.
 

Beyond the kitchen was a standard one-room Amazon cabin, all wood and sturdy rope, furnished with a table, two wooden chairs and a single bed. The bed had been stripped completely bare, down to the wooden slats that supported the mattress—or would have, if there’d been one. Simone looked around more closely. Other than the furniture and a handful of kitchen utensils, there was
nothing at all
in the bungalow. The asshole and his pride were covering their tracks, eliminating anything that would leave their scent behind.

Now what?
She plopped down into one of the chairs and stared unseeingly at the tabletop. She imagined it covered with food, like—
oh, don’t go there!
—warm feijoada, or a huge pizza loaded with toppings, or a fat, juicy cheeseburger, cooked rare, oozing when she bit into it. Hunger knifed through her gut. A vision of Arianna’s golden neck blossomed in her mind, the pulse jumping along her sister’s vein—she could even hear the liquid pumping sound it made. Then, abruptly, the vision changed, and she saw Arianna as she’d last seen her, caked with blood, her usually warm skin drained of all color, that pulse barely visible.

When the dry heaves came to take over her body, she actually spoke to them: “Nothing to throw up.
Fuck off!
”

For a while, she just sat there. Then the press of the wooden seat on her butt reminded her that she was naked ... in a goddess-forsaken jungle bungalow, without even a scrap of cloth to cover herself. And had been drained of her blood, lost Arianna, had her life-force stolen, and been mated to an unknown monstrosity, who now held in his hands her life and her father’s—and would end up killing at least one of them. Oh, and also? She was insane and talked to her own dry heaves. And she was going to starve to death, die of bloodlust—or die first from lack of water.

She was going to die. She wanted to die.
 

She carried herself the short distance from the chair to the bed, stretching her body along its hard, rough planks. Exhaustion draped over her like a blanket. She made one last effort to think, to come up with a plan ... and sank into a mercifully dreamless sleep.

She awoke, to moonlight, and an allover body-ache, and the now-constant bloodlust. Shaking, she got up and staggered into the kitchen, finding a jug of water on the kitchen counter. She stared at it for moment, measuring her odds—of survival, of being stuck here, of finding other water—then chugged half and returned to the bed.
 

She was waiting. Half of her was waiting for Antar and the other Legacy guys to show up. There was no doubt that they’d be searching for her and Arianna. If anything happened to her, they’d have to answer to the King. They’d turn every square inch of the jungle upside down to find her; if need be, they’d bring in reinforcements, mobilize local werepacks. She just had to stay alive long enough for them to find her.
 

The other half was waiting to die.
That
half was sure they’d never find her. It knew she was going to die and wanted to get it over with.

It didn’t matter which side she listened to; going back to bed was as good an alternative as any. So she did.

One day—or maybe it was just hours later; she had no idea—she woke to a loud crash and sunlight flooding the room. Cracking her eyelids apart, she saw a dark figure backlit by the sunlit doorway.
 

“Antar.”
Safe!
She was safe, thank the Goddess.
 

He swept into the room and knelt by the side of her bed, running his hands over her naked torso, her limbs, checking for injuries. Through her relief at being rescued, she felt a rush of humiliation. He was finally getting to see her naked—and she was sure she looked like shit.

He’d reached her hands, held them up, examining the raw patches on her wrists. They should’ve healed almost immediately, but they hadn’t: her body had put all of its scant energy into keeping her systems going, keeping her able to stand, to breathe.
 

She pulled her hands away. “It’s okay. I’m okay.” Her voice pushed out of her throat, sounding like something on an old-timey gramophone recording. Struggling to sit up, she felt the ends of her hair pulling against the scab on her throat.
 

She looked up at Antar again.
 

He was frozen, staring at her throat, eyes wide. “Oh God.”
 

It was the horror on his face that made her finally start to cry—in relief at being found, over the terror she’d felt during her capture and the ceremony, over Arianna’s wrecked body and what might be happening to her now, over the desolation she’d felt alone in the jungle, wounded and starving. And then, as Antar folded her in his arms, she cried at the pleasure of finally being held by him, and at the fact that that after all she’d done to make herself attractive to him, this was what it had taken for him to press his body against hers.

* * *

For the most part, Simone experienced the next few hours as a series of pleasurable sensations that she wouldn’t have traded for even the most high-end spa treatment. Antar holding her, crooning
shh, shh
as he stroked her hair. His gentle fingers tending to her neck and soothing the angry welts on her wrists. Being wrapped in a shirt that smelled like him and a warm, soft blanket. His arms lifting her and the surge of power as he launched them into the sky. The heat of his body as she flew with him, pressing her cheek into his bare chest, listening to the steady rhythm of his heartbeat as she watched the rainforest glide by below them.
 

And, when they got back to Aldeia Alada, the amazing sight of her bed, with a mattress, clean sheets, and fluffy pillows. A hot shower and the glide of soft pajamas against her skin. Stepping out of the bathroom to be greeted by the incredible fragrance wafting from an enormous, steaming blow of feijoada. The warm glow of Antar’s golden skin and chocolate eyes as he sat in the room with her, keeping her company as she ate sitting up in bed.
 

The only thing that disrupted those sensations was the emptiness that wouldn’t go away. The emptiness of her memory as she tried without success to think of anything—
anything
—that would help them find her sister. The emptiness of the lonely, forlorn belongings Arianna had left behind in their room. And the memory of Arianna’s blank, empty eyes as she tilted her head to give her captors better access to her neck.

And the emptiness in her blood. She needed blood, lots of blood, and she needed it now. If she didn’t find a willing donor soon, she’d lose control and end up drinking an unwilling one—and she’d be in a world of trouble.

Chapter 16

“Sim, what’s going on? Are you okay?”
 

It was dark out, but moonlight streamed through the open window of her room. She was lying in her bed and Antar was sitting next to her. His warm, dark eyes glowed a little with reflected moonlight.
 

“Tell me.” He leaned in a little, eyes searching her face.

She had to tell him about the hunger. How else would she fix it?
 

“I need blood. Can you find me some?”

“You know the rule. No one is allowed to hunt humans here.”

“But—”

“But I know what to do,” he interrupted her, his voice dropping low. He leaned over her until the tanned expanse of his throat filled her vision. “Take my vein, Princess.”

“What? You’re Alpha. What would people think? You can’t sacrifice your blood.”

“I don’t care who thinks what. I care about
you
, and I want to feed you.”

Her blood lust exploded.
 

She curled her arms around Antar’s torso and pulled him close. When he pressed his neck up to her mouth, she could feel his steady pulse, his warm breath. With one powerful move, she switched their positions, straddling him, and slid her fangs into his throat. The exotic taste of winged demon’s blood—
Antar’s blood
—filled Simone’s mouth. For a moment he lay perfectly still on the bed, surrendering himself to her hunger and her lust, and then she heard him groan, felt his big hands sliding up her legs, until they reached the spot where her thighs met her hips, his thumbs hooking around to her inner thighs. Her core went liquid and she writhed against him as she drank, wanting those thumbs to move closer to her center, wanting Antar inside of her. He thrust against her and she ground back, savoring the hard bulge of his erection, the ridges and buttons of his jeans’ fly stiff on the taut fabric, her core slipping against her pajamas. She was ready to erupt; she needed Antar there ...