Mine to Have
Page 24

For the first time since she’d crawled out of that swamp, Jane dreamed of blood.
Rivers of blood, enough to choke her. To drown her.
She saw men in an old chamber, a room made of stone. A fire flickered in a hearth. Voices were shouting.
Don’t kill him!
The voice that made that desperate plea…that voice sounds like me.
The chamber vanished. She never saw who was being killed there. Jane was too busy staring at a new scene.
A dungeon. Two men were chained to the walls. When their heads turned, she realized that they weren’t men.
Vampires.
“You can’t do this…” One hissed.
“Watch me,” Alerac said and—
Wait, Alerac? In that instant, Jane realized that she was seeing these images from Alerac’s point of view. She almost seemed to be inside of Alerac and looking out at the world from his eyes.
Even as Jane made that realization, the river of blood deepened. Alerac sank his teeth into the vampire’s throat and he fed.
The vampire died moments later, horror and shock still on his face.
Then Alerac turned to the next vampire.
“Don’t!” The vampire shouted, fear making his eyes flare wide. “I wasn’t there! I don’t know where she is!”
“Of course, you were there,” Alerac’s voice seemed to boom all around her. “I saw you.”
His claws reached for the vampire.
That vision—that dream—vanished. Turned into another. More vampires. Being tortured by Alerac. Being drained by him. He took their blood. Liam was with him, watching his alpha. Smiling with a sick and cold grin as the vampires died.
“I’ll find her,” Alerac promised. “Even if I have to kill every one of you.”
“No!” Jane jerked up in bed, the scream breaking from her lips.
Her heart drummed, shaking her chest, and the sheets were tangled around her naked body.
In the next instant, the bedroom door flew open. Alerac stood there, dressed in his jeans, nothing else. “Jane? What’s happening?”
I saw you kill—you killed my kind.
She’d been told that Alerac was a master when it came to killing vampires. She’d just seen the master up close and personal on his kills.
He rushed toward her. His claws were out.
She flinched.
Alerac stilled. His eyes narrowed. Those bright eyes. Too bright. That gaze swept over her. Then his lips tightened. “Been dreaming, have you?”
She jumped from the bed. Wrapped the sheet around her body. She’d been moaning in that bed beneath him just hours before. Moaning beneath a man who killed so easily. “I don’t dream.”
He went back and closed the door behind him. Blocked that one wonderful exit. “No, I guess memories aren’t dreams, are they?”
She could still feel him on her body. “M-memories?”
“When you took my blood, I knew it would happen.” He shook his head. His claws vanished. “Just a matter of time. With my luck, I should’ve known the visions would come the first time you slept.”
She just stared back at him.
His hands fisted. “Right. You don’t remember that part, do you?”
“No,” she gritted out. “I don’t.”
“When a vampire takes blood from live prey, the vamp can tap into that person’s memories.”
So she didn’t have her own memories, but she had his?
“I’m not sure which highlights you saw,” he said, and she was glad that he didn’t try to come any closer to her. She wasn’t sure what she would have done. “But I’m guessing from the scream that just shook this place, they weren’t good ones, huh?”
She gazed into those glowing eyes. “Do you have good ones?”
His fisted hand rose and pressed over his chest. Right over that dark tattoo that covered his heart. “I do.”
“I didn’t see them.”
“What did you see?”
“You.” Her breath felt cold in her lungs. “Killing vampires.”
He nodded. “I’ve done that.” A long pause. “A lot.”
“But you weren’t just…killing them. You were—you were drinking from them.”
All emotion left his face. “Saw that, did you?”
“Do werewolves do that?” She hated being so lost. “You drink from your prey?” She’d thought that blood-drinking was something that only vampires had to do for survival.
Alerac began walking toward her. She backed up, instinctively, and her shoulders pushed into the heavy wood of the bedroom’s wall.
He kept coming. Stalking her. Closing in.
“No,” the answer slowly growled from him. “Usually, we just kill our prey and move on. But I needed their blood.”
“Why?”
His jaw was clenched tight. “You.”
Jane could only shake her head.
“You changed me. After you, I wasn’t just a werewolf.” He sounded angry, enraged—at her? “I had to feed from them. I didn’t want their blood. I wanted—”
He broke off. She was pretty sure her heart had just jumped right into her throat. “You wanted my blood,” Jane finished.
“I guess you addicted me.” Still angry. “You changed me. Made me into something other than the wolf I’d always been. I stopped aging. I didn’t die, and the hunger for the blood grew.”
So—what? He was some cross between a vampire and a werewolf?
“It wasn’t just about feeding.” Those images were in her head, and Jane couldn’t get them out. “You—you tortured them.”
“Yes.”
No denial. She’d hoped for one.
But he just stood there, watching her.
“Why?” Jane demanded.
“Because they deserved the pain that was coming to them. They were there that night. They took you. They trapped you.”
“And you killed them.”
A little shrug. “It’s what I do.”
He terrified her. “No one should speak of death so easily.”
His eyes narrowed. “What did the vampires look like in your dreams?”
She wanted to put distance between them. To run.
I can still feel his touch on my skin.
“T-two were chained in a dungeon.” That was what it had looked like. Just like a medieval dungeon that she’d seen on a history channel special once. “One was blond. The other had brown hair. You killed the blond first, and then—then you turned on the other one, even though he said…” She couldn’t finish.