Blood-Bonded by Force (13 page)

“She broke his left fang,” Rău-vamp retorted.

Tonĩ’s blonde eyebrows rose. “I thought fangs were too strong for that.”

“Usually that’s the case, but…” Jaċken sneered. “She’s a bit on the strong side.”

Two vamp males raced into the garage, one had cowlicked light brown hair, the other had hair so blond it was nearly white.

Jaċken gestured them to a stop. “Kasson, Jeddin, stand down for now.”

The two men gawked at the bloody-mouthed, unconscious vamp sprawled out on the garage floor. He was quite the spectacle, that one.

Pändra dropped her hand from her jaw and rotated it once to test it. When it didn’t fall apart, she spoke to Tonĩ. “You have Raymond’s power.”

Silence.

Chatter-chatter-chatter
went an air vent, like pebbles tumbling through an aluminum pipe.

Tonĩ gave Pändra a flat stare.

Pändra glanced at the vent. “You’re his favorite, you know. He has a picture of you in his den, the only of his children who made it into his precious man lair. You’re about two years old, holding a red ball—”

“That’s not the matter of importance I need to discuss with you.” Tonĩ kept her expression neutral, but Pändra sensed emotional currents roiling below the surface. “The man you…attacked, Thomal, is lying in the hospital on the verge of death. Because of you.”

Near death
? “Well, that’s not my doing.” Pändra made a blithe sweep of her hand. “God’s truth, someone else must’ve thrashed him after I left the hotel.”

“You don’t understand.” Tonĩ offered her a wintry smile. “When a Vârcolac feeds on and has sex with an unmated female, as Thomal Costache did with you, he goes through a cellular change that biologically connects him to that female. Thomal is now physically dependent on your blood, Pändra, and yours alone. Because of that, for the last nine days, we’ve watched Thomal wither steadily towards death while we’ve scrambled to find you.”

She went silent for a long moment. Of all the convoluted bilge water, she’d never expected to hear something like this. “That doesn’t make a whit of sense. If this Thomal chap is so dependent on my blood, what the bleeding hell did he do before I came along?”

“He fed on donor blood. But that option is no longer available to him now that he’s gone through The Change and is bonded to you.”

Bonded
? That didn’t sound like something she wanted to be, not to a vamp. Not to anyone. “Well, how do we undo this effing change?”

“There’s no undoing it.”

“What? You’re codding me.”

“Unfortunately, no. The bond is permanent, Pändra.”

“But…” The beginnings of dread stirred at the back of her throat. “Truly? Never?”

Tonĩ spread her hands. “As long as you’re alive on this planet, a sixth sense radar within Thomal will know it and make it impossible for him to take in any other blood but yours.”

The hairs on the back of her nape prickled up. “I see.” Her chest burned, the hot coal that lived inside her flaring up. A
crackle
echoed through her ears and red flashed at the corners of her retinas.

“Pändra,” Tonĩ interjected quickly. “We’re not going to hurt you.”

“I’m sure not,” she drawled. “Didn’t you just say this Thomal chap will be released from his bond if I’m dead?”

“No one’s going to kill you,” Tonĩ insisted. “Thomal’s too weak to endure the wrenching process of unbonding right now. Moreover, that’s not our way. We don’t kill without proper cause.”

Pändra blew out a laugh. “What more does a girl need to do?”

“Believe me,” Jaċken stomped in. “We’re keeping the option on the back burner in your case. Meanwhile, you’re stuck here because Thomal needs your blood. You don’t like it? Go fuck yourself. You sealed your own fate the night you abused two of my men. So that means you put your attitude in check, lady, or your time here will be spent hanging from a meat hook as no more than a vein for Thomal. We clear?”

Pändra hooded her lids, trying to hide a flicker of alarm. Could they really keep her here against her will, if they had a mind to? Of course they could. That long trip down meant she was umpteen meters below the soil. “I should jolly well think so,” she returned dryly. “You didn’t exactly beat around the bush, chum.”

The bicycle chain
whisked
again.

She swiveled her head toward the noise, and saw two large garage doors sliding open, revealing a Pathfinder vehicle sitting on an enormous elevator platform. The idling engine shut off, no doubt because the Pathfinder had nowhere to go. The Lincoln Town Car was all skew-whiff in the way, wispy strings of smoke still eddying from the two back tires.

Three men climbed out of the newly arrived vehicle. One had long blond hair caught back in a ponytail, a bloody cut on his brow, another had a black goatee and a small gold earring, and the third, stubbly black hair and a bull skull tattoo on his arm. Each owned the kind of sculpted, muscular bodies seen on men who fight for a living…or for their lives. Hard-nuts, all, not a jellyfish among them.

Pändra’s chest shook with a tremor of claustrophobia. The three didn’t come down off the platform, but her situation squeezed in on her all at once; she was enclosed on all sides now by men of supernatural power whose breed had always been hostile enemies to her own. She didn’t know where the blinking heck she was, only that she was underground, deep enough to render escape extremely difficult, if not impossible. She was trapped, surrounded, and possibly helpless.

“No one’s going to hurt you,” Tonĩ repeated. “As long as you cooperate.”

Pändra sucked in the garage smells—oil, petrol, WD-40, Windex—to tamp down another upsurge of Rău. The demon state was flaring up to protect her, but Rău often did her more harm than good.

Somewhere out of sight, a door slammed, followed by the thunder of running feet.

“They’re coming.” Tonĩ strode forward, palm outstretched. “I’ll need your immortality ring now, Pändra.”

She made no move to comply.

She rarely took off her ring, certainly never removed it in an overtly threatening situation like this one. And hard-shit to anyone who wanted to force it off. Bribe, threaten, torture…there wasn’t anything anyone could do to confiscate her ring if she didn’t fancy having it removed.

Except for Tonĩ. Aye, Mürk had firsthand knowledge of Tonĩ’s extraordinary ability to get around Raymond’s enchantment and remove their rings without receiving a shock.

Pändra supposed that meant her ring was coming off, will her, nil her. So, either she could continue to stand here being a stubborn knothead, and then the Vârcolac would hold her down—maybe tank her full of more of that enchanted drug—and take her ring off that way. Or she could make a show of being “cooperative.”

“Very well.” Pändra held out her right hand to Tonĩ, her brows arched high.
Let’s see if you can do what they say you can, Sunshine
.

Tonĩ slipped her ring right off.

Blimey
…

Tucking the ring into a small box, Tonĩ trousered it.

Ice washed through Pändra’s belly. “I thought you only needed to change me into real blood for this Thomal chap?”

“That’s true,” Tonĩ responded.

“But you’re not giving me my ring back?”

“No, I’m not.”

“Right. I almost forgot. You want to leave the snuffing-Pändra option open to the Rău-vamp over there, don’t you?”

“Please don’t refer to my people as vamps, Pändra.”

The pounding feet grew louder, and then four men exploded into the garage.

A nattily dressed black-haired Vârcolac with a medical bag rushed in first, casting a surprised glance at the zonked-out vamp. Next came Sideburns and her nemesis, Crumpet, the two carrying a fourth limp bloke. They had the fellow propped between them, each with a hand under the chap’s thighs and the fellow’s arms looped around their necks, making it look like he was sitting in an invisible chair. Or
slumped
in a chair, as the chap’s head was lolling off his shoulders as if held there by no more than an imaginary length of fishing line.

“Put him against her,” Crumpet ordered Sideburns. “Hurry!”

The unconscious fellow was shoved into Pändra’s body. He drooped against her, his breath cold as deep water fish against her flesh. She quickly stepped back.

“Don’t move, you fucking whore!” Crumpet lashed out a fist, the punch catching Pändra with a vicious crosscut to the jaw.

Her head whipped to the side so hard she felt her cervical vertebrae grate together. Her lungs bottomed out of air. Bejesus, she hadn’t been braced for that.

“Arc…” Tonĩ began.

“See what you’ve done to him!” Crumpet bellowed at Pändra.

Pändra back-paced several more steps, little spasms leaping through her belly like a herd of hunted gazelles. The garage rolled arse over kettle before her eyes, then righted itself. Bile was a rotten lemon in her throat. Now that her ring was gone, all the aches and pains from her recent fighting bouts were coming to life, some nagging, most screaming: kneecaps, cheek, kidneys… Crumpet’s punch to her face just now was
really
fecking reminding her that her jaw had been broken by Whopping Vamp a short time ago. She had the sudden, silly urge to lie down.

“Hey, I got this.” The Vârcolac with the goatee came down off the elevator platform and walked up to Crumpet’s side, speaking quietly. “This has been a tough couple of weeks, Arc. So why don’t you let me take care of Thomal on this one?” Without waiting for an reply, Goatee pulled Thomal out of Crumpet’s hold, then looked at Pändra. “You ready to give this a shot?”

She didn’t budge, didn’t answer, too overwhelmed by another ludicrous urge. She wanted to hum the song Inga used to sing to her when Pändra’s childhood world would spin into a rage, an all-too-often occurrence in a house full of half-demons and a father who always insisted on his own way, and woe betide the person who didn’t give it to him.

Där satt en liten fågel i päronatä
. Å
sjongde så många vackra viser
…

A little bird sat in the pear-tree. And sang so many beautiful songs
…

But that was before Pändra had grown into a woman and learned that life was to crush or be crushed.

“Look, Pändra,” Goatee said. “Thomal’s one of my best friends and I don’t like to see him hurt. But you released my wife, Marissa, from Raymond’s control, so I don’t have a beef with you. I only want you to make my friend better. Can we be cool with that?”

Why was it so ridiculously relieving to learn that there was at least one person here who didn’t want to have her guts for garters? The pain of her injuries making her weak-minded? She took a step forward, catching a better gander at Thomal. Shitting hell,
this
was the man she’d sported with nine nights back?
Couldn’t be
. Her bloke had been unfathomably attractive, golden skin, sharply carved features, vibrant blond hair, and iridescent blue eyes flecked with gold. He’d had a docking great body, too, a perfect combination of muscle and leanness. His sleek, supple form had suggested the ability to move at lethal speeds while the width of his shoulders and the honed shape of his muscles promised his agility came with substantial strength.

At first she’d been so focused on his brother, the crumpet, she hadn’t realized how attractive this one—this Thomal—was. She’d wager that was a common mistake, too. Most women probably thought Crumpet was the better looking of the two brothers. But no.

Either man could’ve been splashed all over the cover of GQ magazine, without question, but it was Thomal’s face which hadn’t been Photo-shopped into plastic perfection. A tiny scar nicked through his right brow, his lips were a little off-center, and his eyes were full of a hidden darkness; profound waters moving through his soul, warning that he just might be fighting as many inner demons as she was. All of this gave Thomal character, and made him way more handsome than his brother.

That magnificent fighting animal was gone now, though, reduced to a Raggedy Andy doll in the arms of Goatee—who she now knew was Nichita. Thomal was definitely on the verge of death, with sallow skin stretched like parchment over wasting muscles and his shimmering blond hair faded to a sickly straw color. A strange knot gnarled up Pändra’s heart. How long would this man have lasted if boredom hadn’t lured her out to the San Diego airport tonight. One day? Two? The thought was oddly disturbing.

She nodded. “All right.”

Nichita moved forward.

“Wait a moment, Devid,” Natty interceded. “I’ll need to shock Thomal. His fangs won’t elongate without it. He’s too far gone.” The doctor opened his medical bag and pulled out two long probes, wires trailing down to a black box.

Nichita changed his hold, securing Thomal against his chest with one arm, the other hand pressing Thomal’s head back to his shoulder. “Okay, Doc. Fire away.”

“You’ll feel this, too,” Natty warned.

“Just light him up.”

Dr. Natty set the probes onto each of Thomal’s canines and squeezed the trigger. A small bulb on the box blinked on.

A biting snarl whiplashed out of Nichita.

Thomal’s body went rigid, his spine bowing, the cords in his neck knotting up. The light went out, and Thomal wilted lifelessly in Nichita’s arms again, his thick, dark blond lashes lying against his cheeks like the wings of a dead bird.