Enemy Within (Vampire Born Trilogy, #2) (46 page)

Awareness tickles at the edges of my mind, and right behind it is a splitting headache.

My reflex is to push against my temples and stop my head from exploding, but I
’m on my side, arms tied behind my back and something over my head.

Before I can get my bearings, I’m jostled across the van’s grooved floor—

A
van
?

I’m tied up, gagged, and moving in the back of a van!

What the heck happened to me?

Despite my panic and the searing pain pounding my coherency away, I try to recall the last place I was.

We had the meeting, my testimony.

We won and my dad was going to be freed.

Mirko!

I was with Mirko!

The pain in my head is so fierce, I’m on the verge of blacking out.

I fight it.

I hold onto Mirko’s face—

His hand! I was holding his hand, and we were heading back into the amphitheater.

People. Lots of people.

Their faces blur in and out. I can’t make out their features, save for their angry eyes, but as the image expands, it gets blurry.

Then there was a loud noise. The sledgehammer in my head pounds harder recalling it.

I exhale deeply, trying to ease the pressure.

I still can’t get my bearings.

I’m confused.

Mirko’s hand slipped away from mine and I’m moved deeper into the crowd. I heard him saying my name, and I opened my mouth to holler back to him, but a firm hand clutched my arm and something heavy hit me on the head. And then nothing.

I loll my head to the side and the goose egg along the back of my skull rolls against one of the grooves in the floor.

Sharp pain shoots along my scalp and down my neck.

My gasp is impeded by the gag in my mouth, so my nostrils inhale the air I can’t get otherwise. The air is moist and thick inside the head cover.

Somehow through the panic and the confusion, my mind has enough sense to wander the minds in the van with me. And the moment is beyond surreal. It’s as if my mind is a camera and zooms in and out, expanding my view, giving me almost a second sight.

My conscious mind is confused, and hurt, and lame, but the subconscious part knows I’ve been kidnapped and remembers I’m a vampire.

I follow her, my subconscious mind, as she roams the awareness in the van.

She’s smart enough to stop the fear from controlling her, to grab a signature so she can ID the perpetrator before we flex out of here.

I feel three minds in here with me, but I’m mentally too weak to penetrate them or do anything more than wander near them.

My dad didn’t tell me how much mental stamina it would take to use and control the minds of an amphitheater full of people.

Probably because he didn’t know I could do it, or that he should’ve warned me.

My weak attempt reminds me of a video we watched in science class last year of the birth of a baby deer. When the doe tried to stand up, her legs wobbled and she didn’t have the upper body strength to push herself upright.

My mind is the weak upper body of that doe.

Screw it.

Self-preservation is stronger than revenge right now, so I focus all my energy on flexing out of here.

I may not be able to do that, either, because the power originates in my mind, but it’s a different kind of mental exertion.

I can do this.

I squeeze my eyes shut. The chronic pounding in my head is a beating drum in my ears.

I hold my breath to ease the drums, and flex.

I don’t go anywhere.

The trill of the van’s motor is constant.

I bite down on the gag and try harder.

Ringing sounds in my ears and drowns out the drums.

But I remain in the van.

Panic overwhelms me, overwhelms my subconscious even, and together we scream into the gag.

“Welcome back, mi lijepa.”

I know that voice.

And it grates on the edge of my spine the same way it did the last time he held me captive.

Dikan.

<<<<<>>>>>

To see images that inspired scenes, places, and characters (especially Mirko!) from this novel, visit Angeline’s Pintrest board
here
.

BLOOD RULE BY HEATHER HILDENBRAND TEASER

Book #4 in the Dirty Blood series

Coming Summer 2013

Chapter One

The strains of an electric guitar maxing out against its amp filled my eardrums. At maximum volume, heavy metal music made my organs rattle and my heartbeat erratic. Neither of these were things I found particularly enjoyable. However, at that many decibels, the music also drowned out any noise inside my own head. And these days, my head held a lot of noise.

Forty-six.

That’s how many hybrids survived the Hunter attack in the woods after I revived them with an injection of my blood. That’s how many followed me home to Frederick Falls. And that’s how many were now linked to me through a blood bond. At its base form, the bond was an emotional connection—or at least it had been when I’d only been bonded with my friend George—but with forty-six more of them bonded to me through a mostly-magical-but-also-somehow-scientifically-explainable blood connection, it’d become strong enough that I’d begun hearing actual voices on occasion.

It had taken me three valium and fourteen hours of sleep before I’d convinced myself the voices were real and not some sort of psychotic break after all I’d been through. My mother still wasn’t entirely convinced.

When the bond happened with George a couple of months ago, I’d wondered how I’d ever get used to constantly having access to someone else’s emotions. It was a live feed with no “off” button. And for a while, it was overwhelming, making it impossible to know which feelings were mine and which were his. Not to mention the awkwardness of him feeling what I felt. Especially when things got a little heavy with a certain Werewolf boyfriend of mine. Wes found it amusing—until he realized a shared, constant stream of emotion meant he didn’t get past first base. Then he was just as frustrated as me.

I’d just begun to get it under control, finding ways to turn the volume down a few notches, when I’d woken the bond between myself and the dozens of hybrids Miles De’Luca created before he’d been killed. After his death, his mother, Olivia, had forced me to inject them all with my blood as a means to save them from the change of becoming a Werewolf.

Most had been Hunters before their change—a superhuman created with the ability to kill a Werewolf in order to protect humans—and so their bodies were strong enough to accept it and hang on. But a lot of the humans had died before I ever got there. Which is why there’d been only forty-six.

And now, whether I wanted them or not, they were mine. Not just because I could hear and feel everything in their heads. It was more than that. When the bond formed, it was like my body or my heart itself melded to theirs and I cared. That was the strangest part. These people—or animals—were strangers to me. Names. Faces. No one that meant anything to me before that day. But now … the thought of parting with them disturbed me. Imagining them hurt stirred a protectiveness in me that awakened my wolf. The alpha. And maybe because I cared, the constant hum being poured into my head was driving me crazy. 

The only thing I’d found that quieted the noise was music. Really, really loud music.

I blared it every chance I got. I’d taken to wearing earphones when my mom threatened to remove every stereo and music-playing device from the house if I didn’t turn it down. By now, everyone knew if they wanted my attention, they better tap my shoulder because I wasn’t going to notice them otherwise.

I removed my earphones and tucked them into my sweatshirt as I passed through the automatic doors that led inside the hospital. The mental hum rushed back in. I gritted my teeth and focused on my other senses to distract myself: the bright white of the walls as sunlight streamed in through the floor-to-ceiling lobby windows, the smell of disinfectant and rubbing alcohol, the comforting feel of the fabric where my fingers clutched the inside of my pockets while I walked. After almost a week of steady rain, the late afternoon was unseasonably cool for August in Washington DC.

As I passed, the nurses at the desk looked up and nodded before going back to their work. Though it’d been only two weeks since Alex had been admitted, I’d been here often enough the staff didn’t bother with me anymore. I almost wished they would since it would mean some sort of update on his condition. Most of all, I wished someone could tell if I’d helped him or just made things worse.

My blood injection that day had saved him, or it had at the time. But then he’d fallen into a coma and by the time we’d transported him here—a civilian hospital with a wing paid for and dedicated to Hunters. CHAS apparently didn’t skimp on health care—the doctors were unable to coax him out of it.

I came every day. Sometimes twice when my music-fueled runs led me this far north. I didn’t know why. The sight of Alex’s face, unmoving, pale, so devoid of anything that made him Alex, always made my throat constrict and my chest ache. And then there was the anger. I was furious. Still. After weeks of wondering whether he’d even get well, I still found it in me to be mad at him for what he’d done. The hybrids weren’t happy with him either. Maybe that was part of what fed my own anger.

I made my way down the stretch of hallway hidden behind a non-descript door that led to the Hunter’s wing. I had the impression the staff thought it was for government agents, maybe spies. They weren’t wrong on the second.

I stopped in front of the third room on the right. It looked just as I’d left it the afternoon before. Across the room, on the table underneath the window, sat a large vase stuffed with carnations courtesy of Grandma. There’d been a smaller vase with lilies from Logan and Victoria but they’d already died off and been removed. No one else had sent anything. No one else ever came.

Grandma would if she wasn’t tied up in CHAS business every day of the week. She’d been furious at Alex for what he’d done but her anger wasn’t like the others. I knew she cared about Alex despite his betrayal. That and she’d recovered the Hummer.

She hadn’t said much about the purpose of the meetings yet. She didn’t have to. I knew Gordon Steppe was getting all he could out of his new prisoner. Not that I expected Olivia to talk, but Gordon didn’t seem like the type to give up easily. Somewhere in the back of my mind I knew I should be concerned. Both Gordon and Olivia would do anything to see me fall. And in Gordon’s case, that included taking down all members of The Cause. But between the voices humming inside my head and the unconscious boy in front of me, I couldn’t bring myself to care very much about a crooked politician bent on exacting vengeance from his throne across the city.

I lowered myself into the chair pulled to the bedside and stared at the boy I’d almost killed with my poisonous teeth. I’d been so angry, overwhelmed by all of the emotion from the pack. Their primary instinct was to fight. And so I had.

Remembering that day always choked me up. The way I’d felt when I realized it was Alex I’d sank my Werewolf teeth into. Followed by the knowledge he’d betrayed me by coming with a strike team of Hunters and the intent to kill what was now my pack. I wasn’t sure which broke my heart more. I fought back the tears that burned at the edges of my lids and dropped my face into my hands.

“I’m so sorry, Alex,” I whispered, remembering how the doctor had encouraged us to talk because the sound of our voice could subconsciously be comforting to a come patient. “I know I did this, it’s my fault. You can be mad if you want. I’m mad too. You always said you trusted me to handle myself and then to go behind my back … to bring in Kane …” I could feel the heat of anger creeping up my neck, replacing the guilt. I sighed. “Just wake up so we can yell at each other and get on with it. Please?”