Page 45 of A Token of Blood and Betrayal (Kennedy Rain #4)

My shivering body forced me awake. My muscles cramped, and the ground beneath me was hard and lumpy.

It took a minute to realize my eyes were open. I was in some place with no lights and no windows.

I reached blindly to my left, felt a wall of stone. My fingers slid down to the blankets? Or clothing? Something was underneath me, softening the hard ground.

My throat was almost too parched to swallow.

I’d fought the werewolves as hard as I could, and now I was sore all over—my ribs bruised, my wrists aching from being wrenched behind my back, my throat raw from shouting.

Scrapes burned across my palms and elbows where they’d dragged me, and every bone in my body felt like it had been gnawed on.

I felt the bandage around my right arm. It hadn’t completely healed from the attack at my apartment, but my left arm was bandaged too. My neck…

I reached up. That too had been covered.

My curse interrupted the dead silence. I had been gnawed on. Astrid’s spell had worked, but in the worst way possible. It had nulled Garion’s token and, if Melissa’s reaction and the bites covering my body were anything to go by, it had also nulled me—nulled my blood.

I was damned, doomed, and cursed. If I didn’t get the hell out of there, I’d become nothing more than a paranormal chew toy.

Not letting that happen. I made it to my hands and knees, then felt my way along the wall. I quickly found a corner and followed it to the right until my fingers found metal bars.

This was an underground prison.

Not good. How much rock and earth was over my head? Where the hell was I, and would anyone be able to find me? How would—

No. Don’t panic. I had to stay in control of my mind. If I couldn’t think calmly, I couldn’t get out of there. And I would get out of there. When I did, Melissa was dead.

Something scuffed to my left, and I froze. Was there a faint glow now? I squeezed my eyes shut. Yep. Definitely a glow. It grew brighter and brighter until Melissa appeared, carrying a battery-powered lantern.

“You’re awake,” the vampire said far too cheerfully. “I didn’t think you would be yet, or I would have left a light for you. I have someone making a store run. They’ll buy extras so you won’t have to be in the dark again.” She hung the lantern on a hook on the wall.

I wanted to choke the life out of her, a ridiculous compulsion considering that was probably the worst way to attempt to kill a vampire.

“Sorry for the random pile of blankets and clothes.” She motioned behind me.

“I wasn’t prepared for this. Like, at all.

This bare-bones setup is temporary. We should have a bed for you tomorrow.

New clothes. Do you want a TV? There’s no electricity down here, so I’ll have to get a generator, and you’ll have to watch downloaded shows, but I can totally assign someone to make sure they bring you whatever you want. ”

She grabbed a folding chair that had been propped against the wall, opened it in front of me, and sat, her eyes clear and expression open as if she was just there to serve.

“Can I get you anything else?” she asked. “A couch. A desk. Oh! Are you hungry?”

I was famished and thirsty, but I wanted nothing from her except answers and information.

“Where’s Christian?” I croaked out.

Melissa shot to her feet. “Water. Right. You have to be dehydrated.” She walked toward the tunnel she’d entered from and called out, “Kennedy’s awake. Bring the water.”

She returned to her chair. “Christian is cooling off. Jerro chewed a little too hard on your arm.” Her mouth tightened into a smile that might have been apologetic. “He’s been punished, and it won’t happen again. I’ll make sure you have a bodyguard from now on.”

“I shouldn’t need a bodyguard.” My throat felt raw. When a man appeared with a gallon jug of water, it turned to sandpaper.

“You definitely do.” Melissa stood, took the jug from him, then realized it wouldn’t fit between the bars. “Grab one of the glasses.”

The man, who I was almost sure was a werewolf, rolled his eyes but left to do her bidding. Werewolves and vampires working together. I’d always believed they could get along, could interact without wanting to kill each other, but this wasn’t the way I’d envisioned testing the hypothesis.

“Back to the bodyguard issue,” Melissa said.

“You taste like magic. Better than the fey’s nectar and the blood of the Aged.

More addictive too. It is… extremely difficult to stay away from you.

It’s been about six hours since I fed from you, and your blood’s nulling effect is wearing off.

We’ll have to experiment with quantity and timing of a refill, and we have to be careful not to kill you, but we’ll figure out a good balance. ”

Her tone was so casual, so damned reasonable, like I was a friend in town just crashing on her couch for the weekend.

The werewolf returned, and with him came two others.

The first was another wolf, a woman with the faintest edge of gold in her eyes.

The gaze of the man beside her was so dark it looked black in the dimly lit prison.

He was the one who reminded me of the bone-deep chill.

I’d never seen his human eyes, but I recognized the resolve in them.

The sick hunger. This was the wolf who’d tried to turn me outside my apartment, the one who’d taken me down by the river, and he was the reason both my arms were bandaged.

Jerro. I hadn’t killed him. But I would. I’d kill them all.

“Here we go,” Melissa said, taking the stemless wineglass the first werewolf handed her. She took the top off the water jug then filled the glass to the top.

I didn’t want to accept it, but my head was pounding. Letting myself get dehydrated or starve wouldn’t help me escape. So I took the glass, drained every drop of cool filtered water. Then I launched it at Melissa’s head.

It shattered against a bar, causing no damage whatsoever.

She frowned at the glass scattered over the floor, then dusted off her shirt to dislodge any shards that might have been there. “Okay. That was an oversight. My fault. I’ll add plastic cups to the shopping list.”

I gripped a bar in each hand and brought my face close. “Let me out.”

She sighed. “I can’t. Not yet. Eventually you’ll realize how lucky you are. You’re more than just another Rain. You’re practically a savior. Your blood frees vampires from the night and werewolves from the moon and from those ridiculous urges to be part of a pack. You’ll be treated like a queen.”

“Great. Then I order you to open the fucking cell.”

She laughed. “I’m glad you still have your sense of humor. This is going to be great for all of us.”

More footsteps came from the tunnel. That’s when I realized I shouldn’t have heard them. Vampires and werewolves tended to move silently. It was part of their nature. Part of their magic.

When they had magic.

Maybe that’s what could save me. Paranorms were always surprised at how slow and almost clumsy they were in the Null.

If Melissa and her cohorts drank themselves human, if I pretended to be docile, to be their fucking queen, I might be able to outthink and outrun them. If I didn’t pass out from blood loss.

Two people emerged from the tunnel—someone I’d never seen before and Christian.

It felt like I’d taken my first breath after drowning.

I had an ally, a friend, a partner who was beginning to feel like he belonged at The Rain as much as I did.

Maybe that was due to his connection to my parents.

He’d spent more time with them the past year than I had.

He’d known a side of them that I’d never seen.

He was a good man. He wouldn’t stand for my imprisonment.

Christian’s gaze swept the cave, then landed on me, steady. Assessing. He didn’t rush forward. Didn’t speak. But his jaw tightened, and something flickered in his eyes. Anger? Dread? It didn’t matter. He was here. I wasn’t alone.

“Christian!” Melissa turned to her brother, gave him an enthusiastic hug, then stepped back. “Are you better now?”

He looked at her, and that faint, unidentifiable emotion that had been in his eyes a moment ago faded away. “What is this?”

She kept her hands on his arms. “I know it isn’t what we planned.”

“Not even close.”

I didn’t try to decipher his tone. I was too caught up in the words of what we planned. He and Melissa had planned together.

“I know.” She turned to face me. “The spell went wrong but in the best way possible. She’s magic, Christian.

Her blood is sweeter than the blood of the Aged.

It’s more addictive even for the werewolves.

” She glared at Jerro. “Which won’t be a problem again.

I know this place isn’t ideal yet, but it will be.

And you’ll finally get the girl. You deserve her. ”

What the hell was she talking about? Did she think Christian wanted me? He’d never taken one step beyond the friendship line. We were colleagues. Partners even. We were humans navigating life with the knowledge that paranorms existed and had no qualms about eating people for dinner.

Melissa took Christian’s arm, stood shoulder to shoulder with him, and focused on me. “She needs you.”

I needed him to get me the hell out of there.

I searched his eyes, looking for some sign he was on my side. He was smart. Principled. He had to realize Melissa was crazy. He would put the pieces together to see…

To see that Melissa was the villain. She had been the whole time.

The past few months rewound in my mind like a movie reel, frame after frame of moments I’d dismissed or tried to reason away.

I hadn’t trusted her at first. She’d lured Isaiah into biting her, had torn up Christian’s room and then the residence, looking for an aura-dampening spell.

She’d caused me to crash my car into a tree—she’d put me in the hospital!

Then, when I’d learned who she was, she’d explained everything away with an “I panicked.”