Page 326 of The Curse Trilogy

Chapter 10

Power Hungry

The dank room rattles around with dripping bits of water from above. We’re in the wetlands right now. I can smell the moist soil above me. I can taste the humidity falling down through the concrete holding cell I’m strapped up in. I can feel the darkness encompassing me in the room that almost exactly duplicates the torture chamber I was once held in.

My tattered dress drapes over me with an exhausted cling. My eyes strain to adjust to the dark while they try to awaken from their sleepy haze. How did he sedate me? That shouldn’t be possible.

“You’re finally awake,” a voice echoes over to me, it’s hollow thud bouncing off my over stimulated eardrum, and I look up to see the odd blue eyes of Ty staring without waver into mine.

The chains binding my hands to the wall behind me rattle when I try to lunge at him, and he laughs as he mocks a face of fear.

“Easy girl. I’d tell you not to go savage, but you can’t. That’s funny, huh? That’s my little gift to you. Until I can merge your blood with my little medicine, you’ll have to stay impotent in that area.”

“Merge my blood with what?” I growl.

“It’s something that enters your veins as powerfully as the venom from a bite. It erotically charges you, and leaves you as spellbound as you are when blood fucking a partner. The difference is, it holds you to that person unconditionally for an indefinite amount of time.”

“Why do this?” I almost whimper. “Why couldn’t you just move on?”

“Move on?” he blares with rage seeping from his tone. “You were my life, Araya. I thought we were going to be inseparable. I thought you loved me the way I loved you.”

“The way you loved me?” I snark in derisive disbelief. “You kidnapped me, told a group of full bloods to torture me using my most profound weakness, and you let them carry out said torture for days and days. My body still aches when I merely think of those rods protruding from me. My nightmares haunt me to this day.”

“I’m sorry about that,” he says insincerely while taking a step back.

He strides softly across the dampened floor, but his shoes clank the ground with each step. The echoes of his footsteps rattle out in the dark, empty space I’m held captive, and no other breaths warm the air around us.

“I had reached a point of desperation. When you and I were together, I found an amazing quality in your blood I had never tasted before. When I studied it closer, I learned you were immortal. I didn’t want you to be mad, so I kept it a secret. I wanted to find a path to immortality myself so you and I could have forever together. I still haven’t figured it out, but I’ve managed to add a few centuries onto my span. Your blood is so amazing, Araya. It created an entirely new species. Can’t you understand everything I’ve done, I’ve done for us?” he gushes out.

“There is no us, Ty. I love Hale.”

“You feel bound to Hale. It’s not the same. I can give you the real love you deserve. If he had never come around, you and I would still be together.”

“If he hadn’t come around, I would have left you anyways. I was already done. Kissing you left a sour taste in my mouth, and I was ready for a change. Don’t you get it? I never loved you, and I never told you I did for that reason. Those words never left my mouth. I’ve only ever loved two men, and neither of them were you.”

He growls in the back of his throat before slinging a large rock across the room. It shatters against the stone wall while chunking it up as well. I see a slither of light coming from a room on the other side, and I’m curious if that’s the way out of this hell.

“No. I gave you love. You did love me, you just didn’t know it. He took you from me, and I swear I’ll kill him before this is over. My army is growing stronger by the minute. The final drops of blood from your phase three has completed my mission. I’m already better because of it.”

“I didn’t love you. I related to you. We both lived through Cheyenne’s worst, and it was nice to talk to someone who understood. You used everything I shared with you against me. You used Cheyenne’s torture room for your playhouse to slay our own kind in your quest for self betterment. I went on to help people; to keep them from suffering the way I had to. You went on to be just like the ones who held us down and broke our flesh and spirits.”

“I did this for you,” he says, hatred burning in his tone.

“Hale will find me. You know he will, and it won’t be him who dies. It’ll be you. He doesn’t need his gift to destroy you and your sorry, ungifted ass.”

He laughs, which wasn’t what I was expecting to happen after that threatening remark.

“He might have found me if he didn’t think you just left him,” he says with a touch of mystery trying to intrigue me.

“What does that mean?” I ask while taking the baited hook.

“It means Symphony can do more than just what you saw. Originally she had your big boom that rattled the lands and caused mass destruction. Then I unlocked the piece of her brain that gave her telekinesis. Piece by piece, I unlocked more and more. Her mind is phenomenal, and the power she now holds is unsurpassable by anyone… including you. I happened to record this when we’re were leaving.”

He holds his phone out, and I gasp as I see her wearing a dress just like mine and a face that I should only ever see in the mirror. She looks just like me, and I realize the hand holding the phone has to be his.

“Everyone knows your face. Everyone knows what you look like. How did you walk in at all let alone carry me out with you? It would seem rather odd to have two of me side by side.”

“It would seem odd, wouldn’t it? Did I forget to mention the ungifted can also be gifted now?” he asks, and my eyes widen when I realize he’s referring to himself. “This is crazy, Ty. You know this is crazy.”