Page 62 of Absolution
He wanted me to come to him. Accept him. Like I knew at all what that meant. He tried to force more of that vile dead blood into my mouth, but I refused it, needing something more vivid, living, and terrified, beneath my jaws.
He tried to drink down my power, pulling at it like he could peel it off of me and wear it as another skin. Only the more he tugged, the more his own power stuck to mine, ripping away from him in chunks when he tried to break free.
The glow engulfed us both. He fought me, trying to hold me down as I fed on the power that he’d stored away for years, only daring to use with an occasional illusion. So much power, almost like Seiran…
Seiran, who I thought I heard somewhere nearby. Seiran, who I remembered I had hated, but now…wanted to eat? This was a different sort of lust, not for blood or sex, but energy and power.Not my power, the one who held me, said. His, and I was using it to destroy him. Borrowed and amplified, I drank him down, swallowing the light, illusion, and electricity like it was water. It burned through me, flashing a word of pain and dizziness, but I couldn’t stop.
The noise around me of cries, screams, and pleas, all meshed into a hum of white noise. I fed at the source of him, eating away that supernatural liquidity of magic until there was nothing left. He struggled against me, trying to push me away until he became too weak.
I caught a glimpse of blond hair and thought briefly of triumph that I’d destroyed Gabe. That he could never hurt anyone again. He couldn’t abandon Seiran or strip away my control. He couldn’t leave everyone floundering for a way to save him from himself by putting him back in the grave. Only the taste of him was unfamiliar. Gabe had a power, stored away and barely touched, a part of my subconscious brain recalled. This wasn’t his power. And that was okay. I took it in anyway, rending apart the last of the energy and devouring it.
The power of the other faded as the vampire did. His form becoming dirt in my arms, the earth taking him back, leaving me floundering in a blinding light, every pore of my being singing with lightning-deep pain. Like being shocked by a billion volts of electricity, I convulsed and shuddered. Still the hunger rode me; bloodlust back again, I crawled toward the smell of witches and power, despite the pain.
It didn’t matter if they all died. Not as long as I could finally rest that endless need in my gut. A small voice inside my head said it would stop when I died too, but wasn’t sure if anyone could achieve that in that moment. I felt invincible, and lost all at the same time.
Another vampire appeared in front of me, and I reached for his leg, only he stomped down on my hand, breaking every bone in my fingers, causing the lightning network of energy to crackle through me. I howled. He turned then, lifting his other foot to smash down between my shoulder blades, crushing me into the floor.
Bones broke, a lung punctured, skin broke as bones protruded through it, and I only barely felt it. Now I’d need more blood. The pulsing energy throbbed inside me, burrowing itself deep in my core like a pit of lava waiting to be released. My blood smeared the pavement, a nasty mess of useless rot just like the rest of the vampires.
I reached for the new vampire with the power, trying to find his magic, only he came up blank. Powerful, yes. His strength echoed through the hunger as danger—this was not prey—yet not from magic. No, his power was something more human, physical. His energy seemed to be from pure will rather than something tangible. Death magic coursed through him, something that my body recognized immediately, but could do nothing with. It was just something that animated us both, connected us, yet couldn’t bridge the gap.
He held me effortlessly, turned me like I was a ragdoll and forced his blood, not into my mouth, but into the punctured mess of my chest. When had that happened? I vaguely recalled the pain.
His blood was like a brand coursing through my veins. The pulse of magic faded, quieting, though it still sat hot and livid in my gut ready to be called in an instant. The bloodlust began to ease and I blinked through the red haze to stare into the bright lights of the fighting area outside the cage. The cage looked like it’d been ripped open by the Kool-Aid Man, a huge gaping hole in the center of five layers of stainless steel mesh. Inside the cage a mess of blood and gore dripped off all the sides making wet plinks and splats.
My world tilted with nausea and I gasped for breath. Luca, Con, and Seiran stood huddled together a few feet away, kept back by a handful of shifters in fighting clothes. Everything else was carnage. Blood, gore, and the dirt of dead vampire.
My stomach rolled in disgust as my brain struggled to catch up. The revenant faded as something—someone else—took control. His strength and calm settled over me like a finely woven net.
I closed my eyes and could see a wash of memories, more than a single person should ever hold, but there were innumerable faces, lovers, friends, business partners, and even children. I caught a glimpse of a little boy my brain tagged as Luca, afraid and lonely, standing on a doorstep. I saw a man with dark hair and sapphire eyes dressed in clothes from the fifties who smiled tenderly my way, then glimpsed a raging fire as he died. I saw a thousand others cascading further into the past until it came to a pause in a time I didn’t know enough history to understand. This was an intimate embrace with another man, blond hair curling around his forehead in honey-wheat waves, eyes a bright shade of green. Handsome, and young, probably early twenties at the latest. My mind recognized him, though in a different way than the person whose memories I walked through.
Gavriil.The man was called, though I knew him as Gabe, younger in the memory than I knew he’d been when he’d changed. The image shifted, like I’d directed it somehow, to the Gabe I knew, dressed in the different clothes of a generation long dead, reaching for me, covered in blood.
The memory was shut down hard. The whole walk through places and people closed, like a door in my face. The vampire let me go, though his presence still lingered in my head, binding me like a lock on a door leading to the monster I’d become.
I gasped for breath, trying to control the influx of processing thoughts, memories, and confusion. Too much for my brain, my head throbbed, and my stomach churned. I rolled over and vomited, heaving up blood and gore like a cork had been pulled.
The person who had held me down stepped several feet away so as not to get splashed. “This is why I don’t create or blood bond vampires anymore,” Maxwell Hart said. “Disgusting.”
Chapter 19
Once I’d stopped heaving, Luca and Con dragged me into the shower to hose me off. I didn’t have the energy to do much more than stand there. Max leaned against the wall outside the shower talking to Seiran. I could feel Max in my head, needed him close for the moment, which I suspected was why he was still there. It was a little unnerving, yet he didn’t seem to be trying to intrude on my thoughts.
“You’re back, right?” Luca asked for the twentieth time.
“I think so,” I replied again, not sure where I had been, other than lost in the haze.
“That was a redout?” Con wanted to know.
“That was a revenant,” Luca said. “Way past the redout stage.”
“But he just went to ground.” Con dried me off and they found clean clothes for me, dressing me with the little help I could provide. I was exhausted, and healing very rapidly from a dozen or more broken bones. The hand was the worst. It throbbed like an open wound, but I felt each bone as it knit itself back together. Even after it healed, it ached in warning that it was too weak for any sort of battle.
“Gabe abandoned him,” Seiran said appearing beside us in the locker room. “He’s too new to survive without a sire.”
“How does that even work?” Con asked. “Some sort of magic bond? Was it the blood? He didn’t stop until Max covered him in his own blood.”
“Blood bonding can override the sire bond,” Luca said. “It’s the only other option if the sire is dead. I assume that’s what Gabe originally did.”