I survived this.
The thought had barely passed through her mind when the thing came at her out of the dark, teeth bared and fingers clawed, eyes glowing red.
She began to shoot, yelling, “No!” when Dmitri would’ve lunged past her. “I have it!”
The creature kept coming and she kept shooting, the noise deafening in the enclosed space. Finally it lay wheezing on the floor. Taking out her flashlight, she aimed the beam at whatever it was that had made this foul place its lair, never moving her gun off it.
“You.” A bubbling, blood-filled word.
He no longer looked anything like the photos Dmitri had shown her, his elegance buried under animalistic hunger. The skin had retracted from his mouth to bare his gums, his fangs; his face was hollow, falling into itself. As was his body under the tattered remains of his shirt, his broken ribs not yet completely fused, other parts of his torso pulverized with bullet wounds.
“I had you,” Amos whispered.
“No,” she said again, speaking to Dmitri.
“Honor.”
“He’s no danger.” Walking to look down at Amos’s emaciated form, she realized he’d somehow gotten himself here after Jiana carved him up. However, once safely hidden, he hadn’t had the strength to go out to feed, even as his body cannibalized itself to heal his massive injuries.
A pitiful creature.
But one with a reservoir of strength.
He lunged up at her with a hissing roar. Not losing her cool, she emptied her clip into his heart, blowing it to smithereens. “Will he rise again?”
“No. He was too weak.” Dmitri’s hand touched her hair. “It’s done.”
Turning, she looked around the smoke-filled room and saw just that. A room. “Yes. It’s done.”
Exhausted and emotionally drained, she didn’t protest when Dmitri flew them to the Tower and took her to his suite.
“I had a new bed delivered,” he told her as he drew her into the shower and began to help her strip. “You’ll be the only woman who ever sleeps in it.”
He owned her heart, this vampire with his scars and his darkness. “Come here.” Cupping his face as he leaned down toward her, she rubbed her nose against his, felt his body stiffen for an inexplicable second before he took her mouth in a raw claiming of a kiss, the kind of sinful, debauched kiss no good man would ever give to his woman. The resulting shower was decadent and welcome, but her body gave out when she hit the bed.
They wanted to dishonor her, the vampires with the hot eyes and the hands that roamed over her flesh as they pinned her to the wall. She knew that, understood that. “Forgive me, Dmitri,” she whispered inside her mind, and turned quiescent.
They laughed. “There, she wants it. I knew these peasants were all happy to spread their thighs for a real man.” Rough, clawing hands pushing up her skirts, another pair mauling her breasts.
In spite of her shame, her rage, she told herself to be quiet, to not fight.
But then the third vampire walked into the nursery and came out with Caterina in his arms. “So sweet and soft,” he murmured, his tone chilling in its gentleness. “I have heard such blood is a delicacy.”
Quiet, quiet, she told herself even as fury turned her blood to flame. If she protested, the monster would know he held a piece of her heart in his hands and he would hurt Caterina even more. But her silence couldn’t protect her child, and she screamed in horror—“No! Please!—as the vampire lowered his head to Caterina’s tiny neck and began to shred it like a dog. Her baby’s terrified cry pierced the air, pierced the silence, pierced her until she bled.
Jamming her elbow into the nose of one of the vampires who held her, she stabbed the other with the kitchen knife she’d hidden in her skirts when they came into her home with such evil in their eyes. “Let her go!” Escaping because they hadn’t expected defiance, she wrenched Caterina from the feeding vampire’s arms. “No, no. Oh, no.” Her poor baby was dead, her throat so much meat, her little body already cooling.
“No!” It was the keening cry of a mother as the monsters tore at her again, but she would not release Caterina. Not even when they broke her ribs, shoved her to the ground, and pushed up her skirts. She didn’t care what they did to her, not as long as they didn’t touch Caterina . . . and didn’t discover Misha.
“Stay quiet, Misha,” she pleaded in her mind. “Stay quiet, so quiet.” He’d been playing in the little space below the roof that was his “secret” place, and she’d yelled for him to hide when she’d first seen the vampires. There had been no time to get to Caterina, but she had hoped they would not be so vicious as to harm a babe.
She felt no pain when they hurt her, felt nothing, every ounce of her being concentrated on listening for her son, on holding her daughter close. “I couldn’t protect her, Dmitri,” she whispered in a soundless voice as the vampires used her. “I’m sorry.” She would die here, she knew that. And whatever else, he would not forgive that. He was so stubborn, would carry the wound in his heart till the day he took his last breath, her beautiful, loyal husband who had loved her even when an angel came to woo him.
A whisper of sound.
Looking up, she saw Misha peering over the edge of the roof space. With her eyes, she told him to be quiet, to be still. But he was his father’s son. Screaming in rage, he jumped on the back of one of her attackers, sinking strong little teeth into the vampire’s neck. The vampire went to rip off her son and throw him to the floor as she fought to escape, to protect him.
“No!” One of the others caught Misha’s screaming, twisting form in his arms. “She wants the older child alive!” He squeezed her sweet boy tight as she begged him not to hurt her child. But the monster only laughed, continuing to crush Misha until his tiny, fierce body went limp.
Then, finished with her, they broke her spine so she couldn’t escape as the house filled with smoke, with flame. She died with her baby in her arms, holding on to the end. But there was no peace for her soul, her mind filled with the echo of Misha’s screams, the sight of Caterina’s ravaged neck, and Dmitri’s haunting words when Isis’s men came for him. “Will you forgive me, Ingrede? For what I must do?”
Such a proud man, her husband. So very, very proud. “You fight a battle,” she’d whispered, touching her hand to his cheek. “You do this to protect us. There is nothing to forgive.”
So he had gone, her Dmitri, gone to the bed of a being who saw him only as a thing to be used. And he had promised to come back, no matter what it took. But now, she wouldn’t be waiting for him.
His heart would break.
“Honor!” Dmitri shook the woman who had slept so warm beside him through the night, trying to wake her as she cried great, hiccuping tears.
Then she turned, burying her face into his chest, and he knew she was already awake. Her tears, they were those of a woman who had lost everything. Utter devastation in every hot, wet drop as she cried and cried and cried, her body shaking so hard, he worried she would shatter.
She wouldn’t hear his words, wouldn’t be gentled, so he simply held her, tighter than he ever had before. She didn’t fight him, didn’t do anything but cry—until his chest was wet with her desolation and he wanted to tear something apart. But he didn’t tell her to stop. Amos’s death, he thought, had been the catalyst for this, and if she needed it to complete her healing, so be it.