“No!” I screamed the word, wanting to hit, wanting to pound, but I had to hold my sister. Had to keep her safe.
“He’s near,” Deacon finally said, his voice low, his head cocked as if he’d just figured something out.
“What? What?”
He held a finger up. “What if he goes too far? What if her little body can’t handle it?”
“Oh, God. Oh, God, Deacon.” I could barely speak through the tears. What the fuck was wrong with him? What the bloody hell was he talking about? Why wasn’t he doing something?
“Safety net,” he said, then met my eyes. “He’s nearby. He’ll need to have someplace for this piece of him to go if she dies.”
I still didn’t understand, but his lip lifted into a snarl, then he stalked to the door, marched over the threshold, and disappeared. Minutes passed. Minutes that seemed like hours, with Rose writhing and moaning, her screams no less pitiful and painful with the leather strap in her mouth. Then the door burst open, and Deacon came in, leading a shirtless man in blue jeans and bare feet.
Deacon had the man’s arms trapped behind his back, and the man didn’t say one word.
The reason why was easy to see—he had no mouth, just smooth skin where the orifice should be.
I’d never seen the man before, but I knew him instantly, and not only because Deacon held him with such furious certainty. Six black dots lined each side of his face, three tracking beside his nose and three curving under each eye. I knew those marks, had watched those dots as they seemed to float above his skin as life faded from me.
Lucas Johnson had found a new body.
FOUR
Deacon held his blade pressed tight at Johnson’s neck. “One wrong move, and I will drop you into a bleeding pile of waste.”
On the bed, Rose stopped convulsing, and for the briefest of moments, hope flared in my belly. Then she started laughing, and hope died once again.
“Laugh it up,” Deacon said. “But I kill you, and your essence is going to leave this body. Both bodies.”
“Fool,” Johnson spat, in Rose’s voice. “I would have thought you above all would know better. You kill that body—that shell that holds the bulk of me—and I will move entirely into the girl. I’ll become her. Meld with her.”
He ran Rose’s hands over her body, sliding down to stroke herself at the crotch and sighing with ecstasy as he did so. I shivered, my body sore from the effort to keep from leaping upon him and knocking his fucking head off.
“She’ll be me, and I’ll be her, and there will be no going back. And it’ll be on your hands,” he said, Rose’s eyes staring hard at Deacon. “Do you think your pretty Lily will want you then? Do you think she’ll let you touch her if you’ve killed her sister?”
“You’re bluffing,” Deacon said, the knife pressing hard enough by then to leave a line on the grotesque, mouthless man’s throat.
“Deacon—” My voice was not my own, squeezed small by the paralyzing fear that had gripped me.
“You want to find out?” Johnson asked in Rose’s soft, sweet voice. “Go ahead. I’m growing tired of that body anyway. So thick and clunky. Nice to have something new. Something young. Something nubile.”
I swallowed and realized my head was shaking, back and forth, back and forth. “Deacon,” I whispered, my voice filled with a plea.
In his arms, Johnson pulled back toward Deacon’s body and away from the knife. Deacon reacted in a flash, jerking the knife away, but then slamming Johnson’s mouthless body to the floor. I heard the crunch as his nose broke, then saw the blood when he rolled over.
My nose twitched, my mouth filling with saliva. Blood.
I wanted it—craved it.
And I hated myself for this weakness I didn’t want and hadn’t asked for.
Johnson pushed himself up onto hands and knees, his eyes on me as if he knew exactly what I was thinking. Beside me, Rose leaned closer. “Taste,” she whispered. “Take and taste. You know you want to.”
“Shut up!” I screamed, pressing my hands to my ears, fighting the urge to lash out, to send her flying across the room. I didn’t want blood. Didn’t, didn’t, didn’t. And I sure as hell didn’t want the blood of Lucas Johnson.
“Take,” Rose whispered again. “When you taste, you’ll know. I can be your greatest ally. Taste . . . and see what I can offer you.”
“Never,” I whispered, but dammit, I wanted to. The blood. God, the lure of the blood . . .
I still wasn’t used to the bloodlust, and to have it forced on me so unexpectedly was horrific. I didn’t have the strength to fight. Not then, not after all that had happened.