Scorned (34 page)

I shrugged and it wasn’t a complete lie. “I
don’t really know.”

“Oh, come now. You know something. Bring
him!” She said to someone behind her back and Tate came around the
corner with Pierce in tow. There was no leash or shackles, just a
woman leading a man into the room, but there was something missing
from Tate’s eyes. The girl I knew was gone, replaced by Perdita’s
control.

Perdita laughed. “I just felt your blood
pressure spike. Interesting.” She peeled herself away from the wall
and came into the room. “Here kitty, kitty.” All of the shape
shifters came through the door a moment later, half in human form,
the other half in animal form. “I’m not sure which distresses you
more. Seeing your friend under my control or seeing your man hauled
about like a pet. I can see you don’t much care for the animals
though.”

“That’s not true,” I said.

“Yes, this is strange for me. You do not
like this man,” she tipped Eddy’s jaguar chin up with a long,
manicured fingernail and he growled. "Yet you don’t want me to hurt
him.” Perdita caressed his head before she gave him a powerful
smack and sent him sprawling. The other jaguars, human and animal,
growled. “Oh, shut up!” They shut up mid-growl.

Perdita went to Pierce. “This one,” she
said, “causes you great distress.” She raked her nails down his
chest and over his healing scars, not hard enough to break the skin
but hard enough to hurt. Pierce didn’t even flinch. Perdita
chuckled and sauntered over to me. She tipped my chin up with her
finger and
tsked
. “Such a weak, ugly little thing.”

I felt my blood pressure rise another notch
and she laughed. “You’re getting angry. I wonder how angry you must
get before you try something heroic.” She paused. “I wonder what it
takes to make you angry. I think I know.” The way she said it
sounded like she knew me too well, as if we’d been friends for some
time.

Perdita marched over to Pierce and wagged
her hips seductively. “He is a sexy man. Maybe I will take him to
replace the one you stole from me.” She ran her hands over his
chest and down his body until one lingered dangerously close to his
crotch. With a look over her shoulder at me and a sly grin, she
grabbed his manhood through his sweat pants, not to hurt but to
arouse. Pierce refused to look at her, but he wouldn’t look at me
either and I knew he was feeling things he didn’t want to. Anger
washed over me like a hot wind and it filled the room. Perdita
threw her head back and laughed.

“Is that all it takes?” she asked. She
straightened, but her mouth went for Pierce’s before anyone knew
what was about to happen. The room went still as she kissed him and
it took a moment for me to get angry. When I did, I couldn’t hold
back any longer.

Scorching wind filled the room before I
realized what was happening and everything came into perfect focus.
Every nuance, every shadow, every dust mogul in the room became
clear to me, and when Perdita pulled back from her kiss with
Pierce, her eyes registered something I hadn’t seen on her before.
Fear.

“He’s mine,” I said, and my voice didn’t
sound like my own. “
That
was too far.”

I crossed the room to Perdita as the wind
blows from one side of the world to the other and had her by the
neck before she knew I’d moved. I felt her pulse under my hand and
the energy with which she lived off. She’d fed. She was strong, but
I was angry.

“I want your life,” I said softly into her
ear, “for touching my Pierce. No one touches him but me.” My jaw
quivered with anger, my voice shook from holding back, so I stopped
holding back. I let go and I let out everything that I was trying
to keep in.

And I let in things I didn’t know I was
keeping out.

The veins in Perdita’s neck turned black and
she screamed as I felt her energy rush into me. It was like that
high you get when you consume too much caffeine, but one hundred
times better. It was like a wind rushing in your face so hard you
can’t breathe, like drinking an ice cold glass of water after being
parched in the desert. I felt her energy fill me and it made me
want to laugh, so I did.

“Stop!” I heard Roman’s shouts, but I didn’t
know how to stop and I didn’t want to. No one tried to rip me from
her, so I kept going.

Perdita’s face and body began to shrivel so
the dress no longer fit her busty form. She continued to scream and
die until there were no lungs left for her to scream, but she kept
working her leathery jaw. The room fell blessedly, eerily quiet.
There was no energy left for me to consume and the dress fell from
her emaciated body. And then, she was gone. No blood, no flesh, no
bones. No carcass left to bury.

I looked down at that pile of lovely cloth,
then around the room at the people in it and said, “I’m hungry.” My
voice was low and held a hint of the vanished vampire’s accent. All
eyes were on me.

“Don’t let her feed.” Roman’s voice was
weak. “Don’t let her taste blood or we’ll lose her forever.”

“What are you babbling about, old man?” I
asked, and turned so quickly that it left me dizzy. I licked my
lips and nicked my tongue. Only then, did I notice the extra razor
sharp teeth in my mouth. I cocked my head to the side. “What’s
happened?” I asked, but there was no emotion to my voice. “Have I
become a vampire?”

Roman shook his head. “No, but you’ve
absorbed her. You’ve taken on some of her attributes, changed your
DNA. Most of it will go away, the teeth, the bloodlust, but there
will be some things you will endure forever. What those things are,
we won’t know until they happen.”

“I’m hungry. Why can’t I have blood?”

“Because you don’t really want it. It’s the
vampire talking, not you. You’re not in your right mind, and if you
taste blood you will go crazy. You’ll lose your sanity and you will
never get it back.”

“What if I don’t care?”

“You do care,” Roman said, and tried to push
himself up. “You will care.”

I sniffed the air and it smelled so good,
like the vampire equivalent of a barbecue. “It’s so good,” I said
softly. “How do you do this every day?”

“I didn’t have to until I met you.”

I turned to Pierce. “You smell amazing.” I
sniffed his neck and it was my Pierce with the added bonus of blood
and the negativity of Perdita’s stench on him. “I should kill you
for kissing her.”

“She kissed me.”

“Yeah. That’s what they all say.”

“She has no reasoning,” Roman said. “She
won’t believe you until it has faded. I could feed off the energy
she absorbed, but I have to have her blood too. I can take most of
it, if you’ll let me.”

“No,” I said. “I like it.”

Pierce took a step toward me. We were
already so close that I had to back up to keep from falling.
“LeKrista, I didn’t kiss her. She kissed me.”

I shook my head. “You let her grab you and
you kissed her.”

“No, Staci, she kissed me.” He took another
step and forced me back.

“No.”

“Yes.” Another step.

“Stop that,” I said, and planted my feet. No
more moving, no more getting closer to Roman. “You kissed her.”

Pierce sighed. “Fine. I kissed her. And now,
I’m going to kiss you.”

I didn’t have time to protest. Pierce’s lips
closed over mine in a kiss that was hard and full. I tasted Perdita
on him and hot, angry tears sprung from my eyes. My anger rose, but
it was quickly cut off when something bit into my right wrist and
latched on. I pulled away from Pierce to look down.

“What did you do that for?” I said, but
before I got the words all the way out, my tongue turned heavy and
thick and I dropped to the floor, convulsing while Roman fed from
my wrist. I felt him pull the energy from me, and I knew the moment
my eyes went back to normal because everything went fuzzy before it
faded to black.

The first thing I noticed was how badly
everything hurt. Every muscle in my body ached all the way to the
bone and my tongue felt like I’d bit it off. I stuck it out and
touched it with my finger.

Still there.

There was an arm around my waist and a body
curled up around mine, even though I was lying on my back. “Off,” I
said, and my voice was hoarse and scratchy. I needed water.
Bad.

The body jerked awake and jostled me in the
process. I whimpered in pain.

“I’m sorry, Stace. I was trying not to fall
asleep.”

“Get off me,” I whispered, because it hurt
too much to speak. “I’m thirsty. Help me.”

Pierce was off the bed and around to my side
in record time. He helped me to my feet, a slow and arduous process
that almost wasn’t worth the effort, and we walked the few feet to
the bathroom sink with me hanging off his hip like a baby.

“LeKrista, there are a few things you need
to know,” Pierce said, “before we get to the bathroom and the
mirror. There have been some changes. I don’t really know how to
tell you except to let you see for yourself.”

I panicked. I pushed away from Pierce and
fell to my knees, jostling every sore place in my body. I cried out
in pain, but pushed myself up and teetered again before Pierce
caught me. I tried to get away from him, but he held tight,
gripping the sore muscles in my arms to still me.

“LeKrista, you have to calm down,” he said
soothingly like you would to a child. “LeKrista.” I whimpered and
fought, but soon gave up because I knew it was no use. He wasn’t
going to let me go. “Baby, take a deep breath and calm down.”

I tried, but it hurt, so I did my best.
Pierce kept looking at me with worried eyes and I knew my own eyes
were wild. I glanced at the bathroom door, then back to Pierce,
then to the bathroom door, but we just stood there as Pierce tried
to calm me. When I guess I was as calm as he knew he would get me,
he put an arm around my back and scooped me up to carry me into the
bathroom. I didn’t protest. He smelled so good that I had a sudden
flashback. I could smell the blood pumping under his skin.

Pierce set me so my feet touched the cool
tile floor, but he supported the majority of my weight. I closed my
eyes when he turned me to the mirror and tried to breathe around
the tightness in my chest. I knew what I’d done. I’d absorbed all
of Perdita’s energy and all of Perdita’s being into my own body and
I knew that I’d taken on characteristics of her, but what? What had
happened to me? Was I a vampire now? Half vampire? Was there such a
thing? I didn’t know and I was afraid to find out.

“Staci, you’ll have to look eventually.”

Tears burned at the corners of my eyes. “Am
I still me?” I asked.

“Yeah, baby. You’re still you, and I still
love you, no matter what. Remember that.”

I turned and didn’t open my eyes until I
knew I was looking full at Pierce and not in the mirror. When I
looked at him, there was such a look of love in his eyes that it
made me want to cry. He hadn’t looked at me like that in a long
time. It was “I love you,” without words. I didn’t need to ask any
more questions. Pierce tucked a strand of hair behind my ear,
playing with the end of it like he liked the way it felt between
his fingers.

“Look,” he said, and helped me turn
around.

My eyes were closed again by the time I got
turned around and my breathing had become erratic once more. I felt
a tremor run up my spine, a tic that made me shiver, and I took a
deep breath. My eyes opened and it took me a moment to make sense
of what I saw.

I was still me. I had my face, my nose, my
bone structure, none of that had changde. I still had my honey skin
tone, but my skin was different, smoother, more lush. My eyes had a
light to them that hadn’t been there before, and there was
something else. My face looked thinner, not as full as it had been,
like I’d lost weight or something. I looked down at my body and
realized that was indeed what had happened. I wasn’t sure how long
I’d been unconscious, but I knew it wasn’t long enough to lose the
ten pounds I knew were gone.

“Ohmigod,” I whispered.

“Yeah,” Pierce said. “See, it’s not bad.
It’s just different. It’s good. I like it, but I’ll always love
you, no matter what.” He wrapped his arms around me and rested his
chin on my shoulder. “I love you Staci.”

“I love you too.”

He dropped down to one knee and I didn’t
realize what he was doing until a diamond sparkled in his hand.

“StaciDoll, I
love
you. Will you
marry me?”

Tears filled my eyes and I shook my head.
“No.”

Pierce didn’t stay. I spent three more days
in bed because it hurt too much to move, which meant I added three
more days to my “vacation”. Miranda, Tate, Adelina, and Calliope
came to visit with me, but they never stayed long. I think they
were afraid of me, and I couldn’t blame them. I had every memory of
what had happened and it scared me too.

On the morning we were ready to leave,
Miranda came to the room to talk to me.

“I told Lady Xiomara what happened,” she
told me without preamble. “She wants to see you first thing when
you get back. I told her about your condition, but she’s
insistent.”

I nodded.

“Truth is,” Miranda continued, “there hasn’t
been one with your kind of power in a long time. You’re so strong
that it scares them. Well, it scares her, really.”

“Why?” I asked.

“You’re strong enough to take her place when
your power is fully controlled. You don’t need any cultivating,
because it all came to you at once. All you need is training. Most
of it will come to you as you use it.” She shook her head.
“Personally, I think it’s good. Xiomara needs to be unseated. It’s
time for her reign to end.”

“You make it sound like a dictatorship.”

“Yeah,” Miranda said. “That’s about it. She
dictates. Everyone else does what she says.”