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He ran until it swamped around him. Fought until it deluged him. Screamed until it choked him. The sound of his banging heart thundered in his skull.
Remember…
The pounding became the rhythmic beat of helicopter blades. The darkness coalesced into a sleek shape on the ocean surface. A cruise ship. No, a yacht. It belonged to…
Cassidy was there and desperate. “Jackson, I need your help. Get us the hell out of here.”
Help her. He had to help her. Why hadn’t he? She was so angry, throwing things at…
The darkness shoved at his back, pushing him through a thick veil that grabbed at him with vicious hooked claws. He had to get through, had to get out. Had to get them all out. Had to…
Nick! Where did he come from? He was angry, too, and so wretched when he spoke to…
Jackson gasped for air that wouldn’t come. The darkness kept pushing, kept crushing him. He disintegrated against it. If he could only breathe. Then he could scream.
The veil thinned. Through the fog, he could just make out a new face, heard an unfamiliar voice, defining the world in wordless whispers. The voice of God…
The devil! wailed the darkness.
At last, the veil cracked, then shattered, the jagged edges tearing flesh off his bones as he fell through, screaming.
As the agony subsided into a dull throb, a new reality formed around him. True reality. He gasped. His stomach churned, reacting to what he already knew, but had yet to acknowledge.
Someone hovered over him. Tangled curls. Dark eyes, pools of night in a face as round as a moon with bright red lips. The copper smell of blood.
Jackson rolled over and retched.
“Is he okay? Did it work?” his sister asked, sounding more anxious than he had ever heard her.
“It is done,” said the darkness that had chased him from the light, the vampire who had just fed on him. “He will need a moment to adjust.”
A moment? Jackson was on hands and knees on Samantha’s kitchen floor and drowned in memories. He’d lived under a compulsion—in an illusion—for days. An illusion spun by a predator without equal. Both he and Garrett should be dead. They had been captured and subjugated with terrifying ease. Cassidy saw it, knew it, and had fought to reach him.
“You’re fucking compelled out of your fucking minds…” The naked fear in her voice had been the lifeline he should have known he needed, even if only by instinct. This was what he had trained for, this skill of recognizing when his own thoughts failed him. But his moment of recognition had come and gone in the space of half a heartbeat, a ruthless monster’s power over him complete.
His jaw clenched as he stared down at his sick, splattered on the tiles between his hands. Helpless anger punched his solar plexus. They had been taken so easily—by humans, no less. He had broken his promise of protection to Cassidy, and on top of it all, he had to be rescued by yet another vampire. Not just any vampire, no, but the fucking bloodsucker he had killed, and who would not stay dead. Jackson wanted to howl with it all.
“Yes,” Serge said, drawing the word out into a menacing hiss. “How fortunate you failed, isn’t it?”
“Fuck you. And get the fuck out of my head.”
“Yep. That’s the baby brother I know and love,” Samantha said. “You did it, sweetie. You fixed him.”
The vampire drew the back of his wrist across his mouth. “Not a simple thing, undoing that.”
“You all right there, Jack?” Garrett asked as if inquiring about nothing so much as a stubbed toe. He stood at the counter, compelled—as Cassidy had rightly claimed—out of his mind. It was like looking at a happy zombie. A zombie like he had been.
He choked down the need to throw up again and instead got to his feet. As he moved, the too-tight jacket he wore wafted a smoky stench. He tore it off, balled it up, sloppily wiped the floor with it, and tossed it in the trash bin. The rest of him stank of sweat and exertion.
Calmer now that he took at least a minor step toward righting the world, he poured himself a glass of water and gulped it, while hyper-aware of the vampire in the room with him.
“Kid, what’s going on?”
“Shut up.” He turned to his uncle. “Not another word out of you until you’re fixed.”
Garrett’s brow furrowed in confusion, but he said nothing, as ordered.
Jackson shot Serge a look. “Any time.”
