Again I went to charge at them, but again Sam stopped me, worried they would hurt me too. I growled, intent on finding some way to burst that bubble and kill them all.

The tall vampire gave me a cool smile. “Rest assured that we have not harmed her, we would never wish to make her ill. On the contrary, if this works – and I strongly suspect it will as she is so much stronger than any subject we have used before – it will make her beautiful and unique in a way that you could never imagine.”

For a third time I moved toward them, but once again Sam held me back. I growled again. “Know this: I will f**king hunt you both down, and I will f**king destroy you both.”

“It is understandable that you feel that way now. But I truly believe that this is something you will come to appreciate.” He smiled at Sam. “I shall be seeing you again very soon.”

The vampires had teleported away before anyone could say another word. Well great. Just. Fucking. Great.

Anger surged through me, wanting an outlet, needing an outlet. Realising that they had left behind the vampire who had been minutes ago bound by Sam’s whip, I took him out with a lightning bolt. But it didn’t make me feel better. The same feelings of dread and helplessness that I’d felt when she’d once Merged with me were now taunting me again. “See, this was why I didn’t want you to come!” Oh yeah, logic told me that it wasn’t her fault, but whenever she got injured, I reflexively took my anger and worry out on her.

Sam’s mouth fell open. Then she punched my shoulder. “I didn’t want them to hurt me, you sodding fruitcake.”

“We have no idea what they did to you!” But if it was the same thing they had done to the vampires in those cells…Shit, shit, shit!

Denny swallowed hard, studying her from head to toe. “How do you feel, Coach?”

“Well and truly ticked off.”

(Sam)

The rage and fear riding Jared was beating at me, almost stealing my breath. He was practically vibrating with it. So when he tugged me to him and enclosed me in a hug, I went easily. Ordinarily, I didn’t like having displays of affection in front of the squad. But Jared was close to snapping and, truth be told, I kind of needed him right then. I wasn’t a person who allowed myself to lean on others, but that vampire’s words had spooked the living shit out of me.

“We need to get you to Antonio. Maybe he can do something.” Turning to the squad, he began, “You guys finish up. I want the whole place burned d—”

I tugged on his jacket. “Wait, Jared, the Sventé—”

“Sam, we need to get you back to Antonio.”

“Jared, we came here for her.”

“Exactly. If it wasn’t for her contacting you, those f**king bastards would never have—”

“Jared.” I framed his face with my hands, seizing his gaze. “I know you’re worried, and I know you’re pissed, but whatever they did has already been done. That vampire said it wasn’t going to make me ill. We have to cling onto that, because right now there’s a female who is ill, and we need to talk with her.”

“She might be able to give us some idea of what those motherfuckers were trying to do,” Max pointed out. “Then maybe we can work out what they did to Coach.”

Jared squeezed his eyes closed as if in pain, and I could feel that he was wrestling with his instinct to whisk me off somewhere safe. I kissed him lightly. “We spend five minutes talking to her, and then we go.”

When he opened his eyes again, they were a little calmer. “Two minutes. You’ve got two minutes, and then I’m getting you out of here.”

Any other time, I’d have whipped his ears off for speaking to me like that. “Yes, then we can go.” Sucking energy into my palms, I released it as an air blast that was strong enough to blow her cell door open. As we all stepped inside, she didn’t react other than to slowly turn her head to look at us.

When her eyes met mine, her frown melted away. “You…You c-came.”

I wanted to go to her side and give her some form of comfort, but the eleven males with me were feeling mighty overprotective right then and had planted themselves in front of me. Managing to shove Salem aside just enough to have a clear view of the female, I asked, “What did they do? What’s happening to you?”

She swallowed hard and her eyes drifted shut. “D-d-didn’t work.”

“What didn’t work?”

Her words weren’t audible even to vampire hearing.

“Do you have any idea who they were or where they would have gone?” Jared’s voice was gruff with anger.

Without opening her eyes, she stammered, “O-Orr-in.”

Jared frowned. “Orrin? Is that a name, a place, what?”

She gasped as a spasm hit, making her back bow from the floor. Even through her groans of pain, she heard my wince. Her expression was almost sympathetic when she looked at me. “Y-you c-c-can’t help m-me.”

“What were they trying to do?”

“Make…m-make me—” She was cut off as yet another bad spasm racked her body. It was agonising just to watch. Her eyes shut and she seemed close to drifting off, but then they fluttered opened again. “Kill me,” she croaked out.

I stiffened. “No.”

“Pain. Hurts.” She cried out as a particularly violent spasm shook her body and her back arched so unnaturally that I heard a bone break. There were tears in her eyes when she looked at me again. “Pl-please?”

“I’ll do it, Coach.” Chico squeezed my shoulder.

Salem nodded. “Yeah, you go see Antonio. We’ll take care of everything. We’ll make sure there’s nothing left of the place.”

I might have told them to stop coddling me if I hadn’t sensed that Jared was going to lose his composure any second now. No sooner had I slipped my hand in his than we were back in Antonio’s mansion. We found him in one of his many posh parlours with Luther.

Jared didn’t even give them a chance to speak. “Sam got hurt. I don’t know what the f**k they did, but you need to do something.”

Antonio double-blinked. “Hurt? Hurt how? And who are ‘they’?”

“We have no idea.” He told Antonio about what had happened, giving full details on the condition of the captives, and carefully quoting every word the brothers had said. “All we could really get out of the female Sventé was the word ‘Orrin’. Do you have any idea what she could have meant?”

“I’ll have my researchers look into it.” Antonio studied me intently. “How are you feeling?”

I took stock. “Fine. The pain’s gone. I don’t feel ill. I don’t feel any different at all.”

Releasing a heavy sigh, Antonio shrugged. “I suppose all we can do is watch and wait.”

“Watch and wait?” repeated Jared. “You’ve got to be kidding me. They could have done anything to her!”

“Exactly, it could have been anything. Sam says she feels fine. You say you do not know what their gifts were. I have nothing to go on. Until I know what type of help she needs, I cannot know who I need to summon to help her. I doubt that my own gift will do her much good, no matter the problem.”

Jared scrubbed a hand over his face. “Maybe we should postpone the celebrations.” Well that got my back up, and he obviously felt it because he raised a placatory hand. “I want that Binding ceremony, Sam − you know that. But I don’t trust outsiders around you; not when those vampires said they’d be seeing you again soon.”

I snorted. “They wouldn’t be stupid enough to try to infiltrate The Hollow.”

“Bennington tried it, and he was just as f**king weird as the brothers.”

“They wouldn’t even know where to find me. They don’t know who I am.”

“No,” agreed Antonio. “But they will have known who Jared is. He’s recognised worldwide; he needs to be. However, I do not believe it necessary for the Binding ceremony to be postponed. I appreciate that you are feeling particularly protective at this moment, Jared. I fully understand that, as does Sam. But she is very well protected here, and nothing can get in or out of here without my knowledge or permission. It is also worth noting that having the High Masters here for your ceremony will mean that she is even better protected than usual. And I know that the last thing you really want is to postpone the ceremony.”

It was a few moments before Jared exhaled a heavy sigh and nodded.

Distracting myself from the shard of pain I’d felt at hearing him propose to postpone the ceremony, I asked Antonio, “How could they have mutated those vampires like that?”

“There are vampires who have the gift of genekinesis and similar abilities which allow them to manipulate a person or animal’s DNA. In fact, my Sire’s life-partner – who you will meet at the informal gathering tomorrow evening – has such a gift. But these gifts would not work on vampires. It is a shame that the female Sventé in the cell was not able to tell us more.”

I thought about mentioning Luther’s earlier vision, but there was a good chance that Jared would kill him for not having warned him. Instead, I waited until Jared was in deep conversation with Antonio before approaching Gandalf’s doppelganger. He had remained uncharacteristically mute and made himself busy in the far corner of the room. “What’s going to happen to me, Luther? The vampires tried to change me in some way. What did they do?”

His expression was sad, apologetic, and anxious. “Do you know what one of the hardest things is about having my gift, Sam? That sometimes I can see a very trying time ahead, but I also know that to do something would be to affect the future.”

“There you go again with those sodding riddles. Is it something bad? At least tell me that much.”

“That depends on what way you look at it.”

“Oh for the love of God, Luther, throw me a bone here.”

He placed a hand on my shoulder. “All I can tell you without possibly meddling with the future is that you have a difficult time ahead of you, Sam. I know you do not like to rely on others, but you must accept what support Jared tries to give you. You’re going to need it.” And then the confusing bugger walked off.

CHAPTER THREE

(Sam)

Panting and shaking with the aftershocks of my orgasm, I griped, “Now will you untie me?”

“No,” mumbled Jared, who was using my breast as a pillow.

“You can’t leave me to sleep like this all day.”

“You’re so wrong about that.”

“We’ve had sex five times. You were supposed to have stopped brooding by now.” Although Jared had long ago stopped snapping at me and pacing like a caged tiger, he hadn’t quite calmed down. I could sense that he was trying to block what had happened from his mind in the hope of calming, but even five bouts of sex hadn’t been able to mellow him. “Untie me.”

“Could you shush? I’m trying to sleep here.”

“Jared.”

“Hey, I told you that if you got hurt I’d strap you to the bed. You knew I wasn’t kidding.”

Trying a different approach, I softened my voice and injected a little sensuality into it. “But if you leave me all tied up like this, I can’t wake you up in style at dusk.”

A snort. “I’m offended that you think I’d fall for that.”

“Well if you really insist on being a plonker…” Sucking the surrounding energy into my palm, I formed my whip and cracked it at him.

He flinched and rubbed the healing gash on his lower back. “Now that was just plain mean.”

“It’ll be your ears next.”

Grunting, he untied one wrist, leaving me to free my other wrist and then my ankles. The second I relaxed back into the bed, he rested his head on my chest again. Then he flung an arm over me, cupping my hip possessively.

Although I very much wanted to disappear to dreamland where I wouldn’t have to worry about anything, there was something nibbling at me. “I need to ask you something.”

“Hmmm?”

“Are you having doubts about the Binding?”

He lifted his head, frowning. “Baby, why in God’s name would you think—” As realisation dawned on him, he sighed. “I would never, ever have suggested postponing it if it hadn’t been for what happened tonight. I’m on edge right now, and I don’t like the idea of outsiders being around you.”

“Binding is a big thing,” I reminded him. “It’s a lifelong commitment, and considering we’re never going to die, you don’t get one more serious than that. I never would have envisioned you being prepared to make that kind of commitment to anyone.”

“In all honesty, neither had I, baby. But you’re it for me. I don’t think you get what it would do to me if you walked away. I’ll always remember something you once told me. You said that sometimes people only love each other for a little while and then it’s over. That plays on my mind all the time; I worry you might suddenly stop and decide to leave. Not that I’d let you leave me, but you get my point.”

I had to smile a little at that. “I’m not going to leave.”

“That’s good. I’d rather not have to keep you here against your will.”

“All that aside, I’d understand if you didn’t feel like celebrating when your mum’s just died.” And down went the shutters. “You have to stop doing that.”

He lowered his head to my breast again, nipping it lightly. “Sleep, baby.”