“Is she… is she dead?” Elyse braced herself for his response. She’d known she was probably condemning some to death while locating them for the Savages, but it was that or another jar.
“No. She survived.”
She released the breath she hadn’t realized she was holding, and her shoulders slumped. “Good.”
“How do names help you find who you’re searching for?”
“A person’s blood carries a piece of them with it, and their name is embedded in the cells I absorb. With a name, I can differentiate the multiple people and vampires I’m exposed to. It’s all really… weird and I don’t think I’ll ever truly understand how it works, but it’s who I am.”
“Probably not,” he muttered. “So what happened after Joseph asked you to locate Simone?”
“It took me a while to sort through all the others in his blood to pinpoint her. When I did, Joseph brought me a map, and I gave him her location. Of course, that changed as she was on the move, but I told him her general vicinity. I didn’t do it fast enough for his liking, and I received my dad’s toe as a reminder to do better from now on.
“He came back a couple more times about Simone and put more of his blood on me, but though I can sometimes pinpoint someone right away, at other times, it can take a while. I lost her for a bit, and that was when… that was….”
She gulped down the lump in her throat; she wouldnotcry again. For months, she’d tried to block out that unspeakable time, but she’d never been successful. Many nights, the memories haunted her sleep, and she would wake up screaming. At other times, she couldn’t fall asleep because of what she saw when her eyes closed.
“That was when things got worse,” she muttered.
A chill ran down Saxon’s spine as she said those words. Things had been pretty bad for her before this; if they got worse, then they would have beenhorrific.
“Can you tell me?” he asked.
She stared unseeingly at the motel door before turning to him. The emptiness in her eyes caused his gut to clench.
“When he realized hitting and intimidating me didn’t make me work any faster, the jars started arriving more often.”
“Hehityou?” Saxon exploded.
“Yes.”
Unable to stop himself, Saxon spun and hammered his fist through the wall. Plaster rained down as he found his arm buried almost to his elbow within the wall, yet it had done nothing to make him feel any better. His chest heaved as he resisted pulling his arm out and hitting the wall again.
Elyse edged away from Saxon when he tore his arm from the wall. When he turned toward her, his eyes were a fiery red, and his fangs were visible. She bit back a squeak as she edged toward the door with the blanket.
“I’m sorry,” he muttered as he shook out his hand. White bits of plaster rained down on the gray, berber carpet. “I’m sorry… I didn’t mean to lose my temper. It won’t happen again; I promise.”
Elyse stopped her retreat, but she stayed close to the door. His wrath wasn’t directed at her, and she didn’t think he would harm her, but she’d prefer not to be trapped in the room with a pissed-off vampire.
When she continued to look at him with wide, frightened eyes, he edged further away from her and sat on the bed in the hopes he would be less intimidating. He kicked himself in the ass for losing control. She revealed they abused her, and he punched a wall; it was the worst way possible to make her believe she would be safe with him.
“You may not believe this, but I’d kill myself before I ever hurt you,” he said.
“I believe you.” And she did. He was volatile and lethal, but he’d never been violent toward her, and he never would be.
“Good. Tell me what happened afterward.”
“Are you sure?”
He didn’t want to hear this, but he had to. “Yes.”
“The jars would show up at least twice a day after that. Then, seeming to realize he would run out of body parts before I found her again, Joseph started… he started bringing people to the cabin. He would drag me outside and make me watch as he turned them loose and let his bastards hunt them. The blood, thescreams—”
Elyse broke off as another tear fell free. She wiped it angrily away. “Those people died because of me.”
When he rose from the bed and stepped toward her, she held up her hand to ward him off. “They didnotdie because of you,” he said. “They died because Joseph was a sick, twistedprickwho found amusement in torturing others.”
“They played with them,” she whispered. “They played with them until they were nothing but broken, lifeless bodies on the lawn for me to see until new victims arrived and it started all over again.”
