For the Power (For the Blood Book 2) Read online

  I stepped back. “We need to do whatever it takes to avoid being stranded outside after dark. Pack some food and supplies and let’s move out.”

  “Who died and left you in charge?” Logan asked.

  “The same person that gave you your shitty attitude.”

  I stalked out of the room, intent on getting to the kitchen and grabbing some tins, but a hand snagged my elbow and yanked me in the opposite direction and into a small storage cupboard.

  Logan’s familiar vanilla scent wrapped around me, but before I could react he’d shoved me up against the wall and pressed his palms to the brick on either side of me.

  His chocolate brown eyes bore into mine. “You reek of Ash. He’s all over you. You fucked him, didn’t you?”

  My neck heated, but not with shame, with anger. “Who I fuck is none of your business.”

  “It is when it’s Ash. He’s not like me or Noah or Jace. You want to scratch an itch then you can come to one of us. We’ll take it in turns to service you. But keep your arse out of Ash’s bed. He feels things intensely. He connects, and he gives too much of a damn.” He pushed away from the wall and turned his back on me, running a hand over his head. “I knew you were trouble the moment I saw him cradling you in his arms when we picked him up outside Haven, and then when he attacked me over you … Nah, I’m not letting you use him to control us.”

  Wait, what? He thought I was playing Ash? “I’m not using Ash. I have genuine feelings for him, and FYI, I don’t usually fuck Fangs. In fact, I don’t usually fuck, full stop.”

  He gave me an incredulous look over his shoulder. “Yeah? And what about Tobias? You’re telling me you two haven’t fucked.”

  Were we really having this conversation? I lifted my chin. “That’s exactly what I’m saying.”

  “But you’re in love with him.”

  Fuck, had everyone picked up on that? Damn, if everyone could see it so clearly, did that mean Tobias saw it too?

  “Ash knows how I feel about Tobias, and he knows how I feel about him.”

  Logan frowned. “And he’s fine with that?”

  It was my turn to run a hand over my face, because this was a waste of time and totally irrelevant to the mission. “My love life is none of your business. Getting me to the cure is. Keep your nose and your opinions out of my affairs.”

  His lips curled menacingly. “You hurt Ash and you’ll have me to answer to.”

  Anger was thrumming through my veins, desperate to be unleashed, and for a moment, Logan was wreathed in a red and purple haze, and then he was crowding me again. Forcing me to back up against the wall with his huge body. Testosterone and vanilla and his warm breath—all too much.

  “I mean it, Eva,” he said. “Ash is one of the good ones.”

  Regret, jealousy, grief—the emotions dripped from his words and wrapped around me, suffocating me with their genuine passion. What was this? Were these his emotions?

  “I wanted you gone, you know that?” His tone was soft-edged with lethal intent. “As soon as Ash brought you back to the bunker I told Noah you were trouble, but we needed your blood and then you flipped Noah and unleashed his beast. You almost got Ash and me killed over one pathetic human. I was ready to drag you from the bunker kicking and screaming, fuck the blood. But then you had the key and the cure.” His lips tightened as if holding back barbed words. “Once we have the cure, once you’ve served your purpose, we’re done with you. I want you out of our lives, do you hear me?”

  Ice trickled up my spine at the threat in his voice and the pure menace radiating off him. A day or so ago, I’d have told him to shove it, I’d have told him I didn’t intend to stick around anyway, but things were different now. Now there was Ash. Now there was hope and a light feeling in my chest that spoke of new beginnings. Unfortunately, Ash seemed to come as a package deal.

  I pressed a hand to Logan’s chest hard enough to stem the tremor, hard enough to feel his heart jump beneath my fingers. “Trust me, you’re not my favorite person either.” My voice came out strong and sure despite the fear blooming in my chest, because we were alone. I was alone with the Fang who’d almost drained me. “But I care about Ash, and I intend on sticking around.”

  He closed his eyes and grit his teeth and then his hand was wrapped around my throat, tight enough to pin me but not enough to hurt … not yet. “We don’t need you. He doesn’t need you.”

  “Let go of me, Logan.” My hand slipped into my pocket to curl around the penknife I’d found in the kitchen. “Now.”

  Logan’s gaze dropped from my eyes to my mouth and then dragged back up again. “You need to—"

  The storage room door slammed open, and Ash stood on the threshold. His gaze went from me to Logan and then settled on Logan’s hand around my throat. His mouth turned down, and then Logan was ripped away from me and yanked out of the room.

  “Fucking hell, Ash.” Logan shoved Ash, but my ogre Fang barely shifted under the assault. “She’s not worth it.”

  Logan wasn’t even on my radar when it came to giving a shit, but damn, that stung.

  Ash’s fist connected with Logan’s jaw so fast it made my head hurt. Logan staggered back but didn’t go down. Ash’s hands spoke terse and stiffly as if he was holding back on violent action.

  Logan massaged his jaw. “You know she’s in love with someone else, right?”

  Ash replied by reaching for my hand and pulling me against him.

  “You’re a fool, Ash. A fucking fool.” Logan backed up, turned, and stormed off.

  My pulse was hammering in my throat, hands shaking from the encounter, and then Ash pulled me into his arms and the tension drained away.

  “What is his issue?” My words were muffled against his shirt.

  “Not you,” Jace said from behind me.

  Ash’s hold loosened enough to allow me to turn in his arms.

  “This isn’t about you. Not really,” Jace said. He looked to Ash, his gaze speculative. “At least I don’t think it is.”

  “Yeah? Well then you need to tell your brother to sort his shit out, because next time he corners and threatens me I won’t be so accommodating.” I stepped away from Ash. “We should get going. I’ll grab some supplies from the kitchen."

  It was only when I was outside the kitchen that I realized I’d forgotten to grab my backpack from my cabin. It contained basic supplies from the main bunker—cereal bars, water, and some protein bars.

  Sage was already in the kitchen with two backpacks filled with tins.

  I crossed my arms. “You do realize we have to carry those packs for two hundred miles.”

  “And you do realize that I’m a djinn and could carry these packs and you for the next five hundred miles. Besides, I need more food than you do.”

  He hoisted the packs up onto his shoulders. “So, you and Ash?” He wriggled his brows. “Glad to see you took my advice.” He made to brush past me but paused to lean in and whisper in my ear, “My offer is still on the table, by the way.”

  And then he was gone, leaving me slightly aroused and more than a little confused.

  Chapter Eight

  Three hours on the road and the sun was inching to the apex position in the sky, but we’d agreed to keep pushing on and only stop for a break once we’d navigated the edge of the Wilds.

  Jace led the way, map in hand, Ash strode beside me, and Logan and Sage made up the rear. We trekked in silence through a deserted village. The buildings stood silent and abandoned either side of us, forlorn and creepy. A ghost village with not a soul in sight, but that didn’t mean there weren’t Feral slumbering in the depths of the buildings, hiding from the sunlight.

  “We should be coming out of the village and hitting the Wilds soon.” Jace glanced over his shoulder but didn’t meet my gaze. The awkwardness between us was beginning to grate. It was time to smooth things over.

  I lightly touched Ash’s arm. “I’ll be back in a bit.”

  Ash nodded.

  Picking up my
pace, I joined Jace in the lead. We walked in silence side by side for a minute.

  Time to start breaking the ice. “How many miles till we hit the Wilds?”

  “Another half a mile and we’ll be hitting rough terrain. The towns up north are overgrown and wild more so than anywhere else.”

  “An imbalance in nature?”

  “Yes.”

  “Like the constant full moon.”

  Jace nodded. “Noah believes that the virus tipped the scales somehow, that the existence of supernaturals on this plane was essential to the balance of our world, and when they turned Feral, that power, that—for want of a better word—magic, leaked into the air, untamed and unfettered. It affected the very fabric of our world.”

  “Do you think the cure will fix it?”

  “I hope so.”

  It was the longest conversation we’d had since Logan had almost drained me.

  Jace folded up the map and shoved it in his back pocket. “I’m sorry, Eva.”

  “I know. Let’s start over.”

  He glanced across at me, his piercing blue eyes boring into me searchingly. “I’d like that.”

  A smile curved my lips and the tension in my chest abated. “Can I ask a question?”

  “Sure.”

  “What did you absorb when you fed off me last night?”

  He blinked in confusion. “Blood, like the others.”

  “How is that possible? You just placed your fingers against my skin.”

  He held up his hands as if trying to figure out how he could have done what he claimed. “I used to wonder the same thing, but when we found the bunker and the lab, Noah did some tests. It turns out that I have microscopic filaments that extend from my fingertips when I’m ready to feed. They pierce the donor’s skin and extend into the arteries to draw the blood into me.”

  “So … your fingers have thousands of fangs.”

  He snorted. “I guess they do.”

  “But you can control it?”

  “Pretty much. I mean, if I was starving, dying, then it would be different. But so far, I’ve been able to control the filaments.”

  He could feed with a touch, a touch that would incapacitate his prey with euphoria and desire. He could kill someone, and they’d die smiling. Same went for Ash and Logan, but Noah … with Noah there had been only pain.

  “How is it that Noah doesn’t have the ability to … subdue his donor?”

  “The endorphins?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Noah’s theory was that in the time of the Vladul, there was no need to subdue the donor, because donors were victims. Vladul lived in the shadows, not interested in joining human society and blending in. They were predators who didn’t care for their prey’s comfort because they had no desire to fit in to society. It was this disregard to fit in that led to their eventual discovery. It was why Noah believes they retreated beneath the earth and fell into slumber; those that remained topside were forced to change and evolve into the Fangs you know today.”

  “Fangs that lived side by side with humans and who fed but didn’t kill.”

  “Exactly.”

  And Noah had the Vladul genes. He’d been fighting that nature all his life, trying to be the better man when every instinct in him screamed to just take what he needed. Talk about drawing the short straw.

  The landscape shifted from urban jungle to just … jungle. An explosion of flora greeted us, and the cement and tarmac that had once been the road ahead was completely obscured.

  Logan cursed softly under his breath.

  “Yeah,” Sage said. “The Wilds are something else and they’re growing.”

  “What do you mean?” Logan asked.

  “Exactly what I said,” the djinn replied. “The square footage that the Wilds cover is increasing. We’ve been keeping tabs on it over the past decade, and if it continues to expand at the same rate, then fifty years from now there will be nothing but wildland.”

  I’d heard of the wildlands from Dad—how technology didn’t function there, how the laws of physics ceased to matter there. Civilization would be swallowed by nature, and then what?

  “Hopefully, the cure will reset the balance,” Logan said.

  It was our only hope.

  The air was thicker here, sweet and almost intoxicating. Blooms, unlike any I’d ever seen, dripped from thick green stems that sprouted up from cracks where the earth had fought back against the man-made constraints of cement and tarmac.

  “If this is the edge of the Wilds, I don’t even want to see what’s in the center.”

  “No,” Sage said solemnly. “You really don’t.”

  The djinn joined us at the head of the group, gently pushing back the flora that blocked our path. The terrain was choked by nature, and any evidence of civilization had been eradicated.

  “Are you sure this is the right way?” Logan asked.

  Jace studied his compass. “Positive.”

  “You’re lucky we’re on the edge of the Wilds,” Sage said. “Any farther in and that compass would be useless.”

  I fell back to walk beside Ash. His arm brushed mine and the contact was reassuring, because all the green and red and orange of nature, all the vibrancy and the aromas that were created to spin my head, were like a noose slowly tightening around my throat.

  My hand went up to caress my neck. “Who would have thought nature could be so threatening.”

  Ash’s hand brushed mine and then his huge palm swallowed mine in a gentle grip. My pulse fluttered in my throat. He was holding my hand. We were holding hands. We’d had sex, so this shouldn’t be a big deal. Holding hands with a guy wasn’t new. I’d held hands with Tobias on several occasions, but we’d usually been running from something, so I guess that didn’t count, but this … this was … I glanced up at Ash, but his attention was fixed ahead, offering me only his sturdy profile.

  And then his brows dropped low in a frown.

  “What is it?”

  Jace, Logan, and Sage had come to a standstill in front of us.

  “What the fuck?” Logan said.

  Ash and I drew abreast of the others as my brain pieced together what it was seeing. Twisted metal gates rose up before us, open wide. A hedgerow stood on either side of the gate stretching as far as the eye could see. But it was the thing beyond the gates that had my attention. A huge wheel rose up into the sky, stationary and hung with seats that swayed gently in the breeze. Green and yellow vines hugged the structure and purple blooms lay at its feet. I’d seen this machine in movies on the projector screen at the compound. They’d ridden one in Tobias’s favorite film, The Notebook.

  “Is that a …” Logan trailed off, canting his head to study the scene.

  “Ferris wheel?” Sage said. “Yes, it’s a Ferris wheel.”

  And around it was the rest of the fairground: overgrown booths and attractions and even a dusty, flower-adorned carousel.

  “This is weird,” Jace said.

  No one made a move closer, even though this was our route. Even though we needed to go forward to get to our destination. If we were going to get to The Shack before the sun went down, we needed to keep moving. This was our shortcut, our way of shaving almost one hundred miles off our journey, but there was something about the scene, a strange element in the atmosphere that brought gooseflesh up on my skin and made my scalp crawl with foreboding. The guys must be picking up on it too. It was danger, it was a warning.

  I’d been the one pushing to go through the Wilds, but now … “Do we have time to skirt the freaky fairground?”

  “No,” Jace said. “We skirt it and that leaves us in the Wilds after dark.”

  Ash signed.

  “Ash is right,” Logan said. “We do not want to be in the Wilds after dark.”

  Ash’s grip on my hand tightened a fraction. This time, when I looked up at him, his gaze was on me, warm and reassuring. We’ll be fine, it said. I’ll protect you.

  My stomach flipped. I protected myself. It w
as who I was. I’d been trained not to need someone to save me, but damn if it didn’t feel good to have the backup. I squeezed his hand in return and together we stepped through the gates into the fairground. The air rippled over my skin, stinging and soothing at the same time.

  “What was that?” Jace sounded shaken.

  Sage brushed at his shirt as if dusting it off. “Felt wrong.”

  Ash stood silent and still, his pale gaze sweeping across the terrain. Yes, there was movement to our right, sending a ripple effect through the viscous atmosphere. Someone or something was beyond the carousel.

  “We’re not alone here,” Sage said.

  And then a child’s scream tore through the silence.

  Chapter Nine

  For a second, no one moved, and then we were all running in the direction of the sound. Another scream followed the first but was choked off by a sob. We hurtled around the carousel, past the painted eerie eyes of the horses covered in vines, and skidded to a halt by what looked like a pirate ship suspended in the air.

  For a moment, I wasn’t sure what I was seeing, and then the woman strapped to the ship by thick green vines came into focus. Her golden hair was awry and her body from the neck down was obscured by creepers. Her arms were pinned to her sides, and dangling from one of them was a child, probably seven or eight years of age. The boy screamed again, kicking his legs as if trying to gain purchase on the air.

  “Let go,” his mother ordered. “Benji, you have to let go. Drop, roll, and run.”

  “No. No, Mum. No.”

  “Benji, this is not a request.” It was a tone I’d heard Dad use on more than one occasion. The tone that brooked no argument and one I’d learned to obey without hesitation in the six years we’d been forced to live outside the compound. This boy obviously wasn’t familiar with it, because he held firm.