I went down, Mia on top of me.
We hit the floor. My breath whooshed out, and I tapped a line, frantic. Pain hit me as the heat of the ley line suddenly burned across my unprotected neurons and synapses, and when her hands touched my face, I screamed as my aura pulled through my soul. “You think you can kill me!” I screamed defiantly. “Go ahead,” I panted. “Make my freaking…day.”
Her teeth bared, inches from me. Her breath came in a pant, her gaze wild, fevered with savage instinct. But I had fought off Ivy, and this didn’t scare me. The line was humming through me, and I let her have it. I let her have it all.
Mia screamed. Her fingernails dug into my jaw, her agony reverberating through me like her voice echoing against the curved ceilings of stone over us. She screamed again, and I clenched my teeth, refusing to let go of the line even as it burned me. Power flowed into her, burning her mind and body, but she wouldn’t let go. The scent of cold dust and forgotten air filled me, and then her eyes opened against the torment.
Blacker than the sin of betrayal, she fixed her gaze on mine, panting from the agony. “If it was that easy,” she said, clearly hurting, “I would have died before my twenties.”
I had a second of doubt, and feeling it, she attacked.
It was as if the world flipped over. With a curious twist of vertigo, she ripped my thin aura from me. Pain lit through me as the ley line I was pulling on hit me, completely raw and unfiltered. I jerked, instinct shoving her away, but she had me and pinned me to the floor. The line still flowed, but I wouldn’t let go as it was clearly hurting her, too. Pain was etched on her forehead and sweat beaded up. Her breath came in a pant, and she held it. Behind her pain, I could see my soul slipping into her, my strength going with it. If I couldn’t stop her from taking my soul, she would freaking kill me, line or no.
“Rachel…,” I heard from behind the roaring in my ears, and then someone knocked us apart. Mia’s grip tore away as she fell back. The cool air of the tunnel hit me, and I groaned as the strength of the line boomeranged back into me. Unable to breathe, I curled into myself and rolled to my stomach, clenching in hurt. My face rubbed into the dusty cement, and I sucked in the air as if it would help me find my soul. I still had it. I still had some of my aura, or I’d be dead. I didn’t think I was dead. I hurt too much.
Only now did I let go of the line. A pained sob escaped me as the incoming force ceased and I pushed enough out of me so I could think, but even so, it hurt. Power leaked from my muscles, cramping them when I tried to move. In the distance, I could hear Holly crying. Or maybe it was me.
“I’m sorry, Mia,” Ford was saying faintly as I tried to breathe without taking in the dust. “You’ve had all the chances I can give a person. Holly will be fine. She’s-”
“Give her to me!” Mia screamed, her raw voice scraping my awareness. I turned my head and cracked my eyes. It hurt. God, it hurt to do even that little bit, but I found them. Ford was holding Holly, the young girl blinking at her raging mother but not upset. Ford had my splat gun and was holding Mia off. The charms must not have popped, or he would have knocked himself out picking up the gun. How he could hold the baby and Tom couldn’t was beyond me.
“Holly, take him!” the banshee shouted, and Ford shifted her higher on his hip.
“She is,” the man said, his face screwing up with emotion, and then he forced his expression to calm. “She’s taking everything from me but what is mine. There are no thoughts in me but my own. And, Mia, you are a criminal. You helped make our society, and you will live by our rules.”
“No!” she howled, then lunged. The flash of the lantern was red against my eyes as it fell over. My sight went gray as the pain in my head almost made me black out. It was either that or the light was busted. Groaning, I didn’t see but heard the puff of my splat-ball gun and the thump of someone hitting the floor.
“It’s okay,” I heard Ford whisper, his voice pitched high to tell me he was talking to Holly. “Your mommy is okay. She’s going to sleep for a while. And you’ll see her every day, Holly. I promise. Stay with her. I’ll be right back.”
I couldn’t breathe. My chest hurt so bad.
“Rachel. Are you okay?” Ford said, his voice heavy with heartache, and I felt him turn me over, lifting my head from the cold cement. Masculine fingers traced my face, but I couldn’t tell if my eyes were open or not. I was so cold, and I shivered violently, making the pain worse.
The dust on his hands turned to damp grit as he wiped my tears away, and the scent of wet cement rose higher. It trickled through my thoughts, mixing with my pain in a slurry of confusion. I breathed, not knowing if I was in my past or my present. I was going unconscious. I could feel everything shutting down. The light was gone, and I couldn’t see. But someone held me, and he smelled like cold cement.
“Kisten?” I forced my lungs to work. Someone in Kisten’s boat had smelled like this. Like old, abandoned cement. I struggled and he pulled me closer, holding my wrists when I tried to fight him. “We have to go!” I sobbed, but he only pressed me into his chest as he cried with me, telling me to remember, that he had me, and that he wouldn’t let me remember alone. That he would bring me back.
The stink of cement filled me, pulling a memory into existence. It trickled painfully through me, drawn by the scent of wet stone and dust. And I panicked.
We had to get away! The vampire was coming, and we had to go now. I struggled to break from Kisten but he held me close, his voice mixing with my frustration as he wiped my tears. I jerked when a memory surfaced. Kisten had wiped my tears away. He wouldn’t leave with me, and then it was too late.
I couldn’t think, that dammed dust caking my thoughts, mixing my past and now. I couldn’t…think. Was I here or on Kisten’s boat? I’d been crying. I had tried to save him, and he had loved me. But it hadn’t made a difference. He had still died. And I was alone.
Not alone, echoed in my mind. Go. I’ll bring you back.
Tears leaked out even as I fought oblivion, and my mind rebelled, dropping me into a memory lost for an instant in time, triggered by the scent of dust, the sensation of pain, and the feeling of love turned into the pain of sacrifice.
My heart beat, and I closed my eyes, falling.
Thirty-one
You son of a bastard!” I exclaimed in frustrated anger, wiping the helpless tears away and shaking from adrenaline as I faced Kisten, his blue eyes pinched in distress because I’d found him in this tiny backwater of the Ohio River. “I don’t care what vampire law says, you’re not a box of candy. I’ve got everything we need. My car is in the lot. Just put on the disguise charm and we’ll get the hell out of here!”
But Kisten smiled at me with his bright blue eyes and ran a shaking hand under my eye to leave the cool breath of drying skin. “No, love,” he said, voice utterly devoid of his fake accent. “I can’t live outside my society’s rules. I don’t want to. I’d rather die among them. I’m sorry you think I’m a fool.”
“You’re being stupid!” I yelled, stomping my foot. God, if I was stronger, I’d knock him out and drag him away. “There’s no reason for it!”
Kisten stiffened, and when his eyes went over my shoulder, I remembered the boat’s oh-so-subtle shift of motion and the sound of water lapping. The smell of vampire rose thick, and I turned, pressing my back into Kisten’s chest. My chin trembled, and I clenched my jaw.
Kisten’s killer wasn’t a big man. Kisten could probably take him in a fair fight. I knew there would be no such thing. His eyes were black from blood lust, and there was a faint trembling in his hands, as if he was holding himself back, relishing the last drawings out. Faint wrinkles marked the corners of his eyes. His suit looked like it was from the eighties, and his tie was wide, stuffed into his shirt. For an undead, he looked sloppy and out of date. But he was hungry. Blood lust apparently never went out of style.
“Piscary said I might get a taste of witch,” he said, and I swallowed at the angry bitterness just beneath his softly aggressive voice. He might look the fool, but he was a predator, and as he moved slowly into Kisten’s low- ceilinged bedroom at the back of his cruiser, I realized how deep in the crapper I’d fallen. Eyes unmoving, I felt in my bag for my splat gun. It would down him as fast as anyone else, but only if he didn’t see it coming. Undead vampires were fast, and I was sure he’d been dead long enough to pass the tricky forty-year ceiling that killed most of the undead. Which meant he was smart, too. Oh God. Why hadn’t I just left when Kisten told me to? But I knew
