Jory Strong - Dakotah's Reading

It was a dangerous ecstasy. A challenge to fate. To the wolves. To themselves.

And they both retreated when the last tremor subsided. When skin cooled and night sounds closed in on them.

Without a word, Domino freed her and stepped back. Wild emotion and the wolf swirled and seethed inside him as he watched her dress. As he dressed in turn and followed her back to where the bodies of the Believers lay.

“You’ll take care of them?” Dakotah asked, retrieving her shirt and jacket and putting them on, the words barely registering as Domino’s nostrils flared, the scent of so much blood overwhelming him, making his body shudder as The Hunger snarled and raged like a caged beast.

He gasped and went to his knees as pain racked his body. Realized in that instant that The Transformation was on him, raking like talons through his internal organs and across his skin, the alien cells finally free to do what they’d been programmed to do, to destroy anything human within him. “Get out of here,” he growled when Dakotah crouched at his side.

“What’s wrong?”

Obsidian eyes trapped brown ones. The wolf demanding that its mate be sent to safety. “Leave!” Domino hissed before pain drove him the rest of the distance to the ground.

Dakotah stumbled to a halt at the spot where she’d discarded her backpack when she made the decision to lure her pursuers into the woods. Confusion reigned, disorientation, but a glance down at her clothing, some of it blood-stained, brought memory rushing back, at least to the point where Domino had growled, “Get out of here.”

Beyond that there was nothing, only the compulsion to leave. Her own? She rubbed her forehead. It’s what she’d intended until Domino fell to the ground.

She fought against the nothingness. Remembered staring into obsidian eyes just before everything was lost.

Fear ripped through her. Anger. Disbelief. Rage when she realized that whatever he’d done to send her away, he’d also done when she would have fought him over being tied. And yet…

She snarled, hating the fact that what he’d done to her had led to pleasure beyond anything she’d ever experienced, beyond anything she’d thought she was capable of feeling after what she’d seen and done in order to survive. It would serve him right if she left him writhing in pain.

She knew she wouldn’t. She couldn’t. Even though it was a weakness. To care. To feel. To not be able to walk away.

Dakotah retrieved her backpack and returned to Domino who’d managed to get to his feet and drag the bodies into the woods, who’d even managed to make it a little way down the trail before going to his hands and knees.

He was sweating, panting, shaking.

And not happy to see her.

“Leave,” he growled, lifting his head, but she wasn’t about to let him capture her mind again.

“Where’s your house? Or your car?” One of them had to be nearby since he’d appeared wearing clothes and not naked from shifting to human form.

Domino forced himself to get to his feet, the wolf urging him to trap her again and give her a more explicit command—knowing that the bloodlust following The Transformation might lead to her death if she was anywhere near the full vampire Domino would soon become. But the man, the dhampir, resisted this time as the pain subsided enough to allow him to think rather than just react.

It was too late now to get to his parents’ home. But if he could get to the house he was renting, there was a chance he could survive The Transformation without becoming rogue. Without succumbing to the full force of The Hunger and leaving a trail of bodies behind as he killed the innocent along with the guilty as he fed.

If he could get to a place of safety, then he could contact Fane and Fane would come, if not in time to see him through the change, then in time to offer first blood.

Domino grimaced at the thought of Fane’s presence. Of the jokes and taunts he’d no doubt have to endure in the centuries ahead—payback for those he’d often delivered to Fane. But he trusted Fane with his life. He’d stood with Fane and seen him though The Transformation, given him first blood, and he knew Fane wouldn’t hesitate to do the same for him.

If there was time.

Domino could feel the pain building again. Stretching inside him, the alien cells ready for a fresh assault on anything human. He managed to tell Dakotah where he’d parked and gave her directions to the house, allowed her to drape his arm over her shoulder and help him leave the woods, but he was hardly aware of either time or distance as he used what control and will remained in order to keep upright and moving.

He was shifting back and forth between man and wolf, his clothing shredded and hanging off his body by the time Dakotah managed to get Domino into the house and into the bedroom. And as bizarre as the sight was, it was easier for her to deal with than his pain alone.

At first she’d been terrified that he had rabies. But other than panting heavily, the wolf gave no signs of being in distress.

Dakotah shivered as Domino’s human form took shape and began writhing on the bed, gasping. His words incoherent. Her stomach tightened, not only at the sight of his suffering but with the worry that what he was experiencing was something she’d have to endure in the future.

He stilled, seemed to be fighting the pain. “Cuffs. In the dresser,” he gasped, rolling to his side and spearing her with eyes holding something so alien that only instinct kept her from bolting. “Cuffs. Put them on me.” This time it was a hiss.

A chill swept up Dakotah’s spine at the sight of his fangs. She braced herself, expecting hair to begin sprouting on his face and hands, a nightmare image of a werewolf caught in the middle of two forms. Instead his eyes filled with flames, as though his very soul was being burned away. And for an instant there was nothing of either the man or the wolf, nothing except a dangerous, inhuman predator whose intent to kill her was a scream in every cell of Dakotah’s body.

She remained still, focused, knowing that to turn her back was to accept death. And as she watched, the flames receded, the man gritting his teeth as a wave of agony ripped through his body.

Escape was a fleeting thought, turned aside. Dakotah rushed to the dresser, rapidly tossing the contents of its drawers onto the floor as she looked for the cuffs he’d fought so hard to tell her about.

She found them, but the sight of the cuffs had her trembling, reluctant to touch them. They were silver, studded with some type of gem, bloodstone maybe. But the silver alone was enough to make her break out in a sweat. To make her hands clench and unclench as she steeled herself to touch them.

She shuddered, remembering the red cast of Domino’s eyes, then forced herself to take the cuffs from their velvet-lined case, to endure when a burning numbness spread through her as she returned to the bed.

He snarled and hissed as she fumbled to get the first band around his wrist. Tried to escape when she went to do the second, so that she moved to his ankles and secured them, then waited until he was bucking in pain, barely aware of her presence as she secured the last band.

Horror raged through Dakotah with sharp talons, tearing her up on the inside as she watched his suffering, watched as his back arched and spasmed so violently that she thought it would break, his arms and legs paralyzed by the silver and bloodstone.

In the nightmare that was her life before she killed Victor Hale’s son and escaped, she’d been paid to inflict pain, had mastered the art of wielding a whip or a paddle, of taking those she was forced to serve to the destination they desired. She’d learned to close her mind to their screams, their suffering, to watch it mechanically and alter her techniques as necessary, to take some of them to the edge of death itself—and feel nothing during the process.