Page 28 of Marked Resistance

Ilanis clenched her jaw and blew out an audible groan. “Oh, now we can’t evenfeed?” She stepped in front of the blonde and came close enough where their noses almost touched. “This better be worth it,human. Or my friend and I are going to come back here and grind you and these other stupid women’s bones to dust and drink you in my tea.”

Grim released his grip on the blonde, who side-stepped Ilanis and rushed over to help the eldest woman. The youngest was wild-eyed, but she and the eldest huddled behind the blonde. She straightened herself into a strong posture and stood as tall as she could in front of her predators.

“There was a young woman,” the blonde began. “She couldn’t have been older than her early twenties, if not in her late teens. She wandered into the village with blood on her clothes and the look of death upon her. We took her in and gave her clothes, but that was our mistake. When we asked her where her injuries were so we could try to treat them, she had none. She was a vampire in disguise. It was a good disguise too, she certainly fooled all of us. She wore a bloodied wedding dress, a wedding ring, and everything.”

“Describe her,” Ilanis commanded.

Chapter Twelve

“Black eyes, dark, thick hair. Curvy. About as tall as that one,” the blonde said and pointed at me. “Big breasts.”

“What else?” Ilanis demanded. “That could be any woman. You’d better have more than that, honey. Your life depends on it.”

“Oi, she has more,” Grim added, his voice deep and full of lust.

“I’ll never forget this. When she was…” the blonde gagged, choking on her words and the memory.

Ilanis leaned closer. “Get it together,” she said in a menacing tone.

The blonde nodded. She trembled but regained enough of her composure to continue. “As she fed…she said, ‘this is so good, it rolls off my tongue.’ She kept saying it as she bit more and more.”

No way.

“She said she’d just gotten married when her farm was attacked by a vampire. He slaughtered her father and had his way with her before he—wait. She saidexactlywhat this one said he likes to do.”

Grim’s eyes rolled back in his head and he licked his lips. “Oh, the farm! Yeah, I remember her now. Sweet cunt. Slaughtered her father like a sheep and made her new hubby watch as I fucked the shit out of her, then fucked her again. I left him alive so she could feed from him once I was done to complete her turn. Told her to report to Dobgar after we were through for training and assignment. Guess she didn’t. Damn, she felt good wrapped around my cock.”

“And now we know,” Ilanis concluded. “She never reported. That’s why she’s on Command’s radar.”

“Yeah. I sent a message like we’re supposed to whenever we join humans to our elite vampire ranks. I turned a new one, so I gave them the heads up. What was her name? Farrah? Cierra?”

My limbs tingled. “Sarah?!”

“Yeah, that was it. Sarah with the sweet cunt.”

My vision filled with red. My muscles quivered, and my heartbeat pounded in my chest. A bloodcurdling wail flew out of my mouth and I used all my might to slam into Grim. I knocked him into the wall and angled my right forearm upward, pinning him with it across his throat. “You motherfucker! That was my sister!”

I leaned in to crush his windpipe with the weight of my body when Xavier’s voice pierced through the red. “Zenobia.”

“What?” I snapped back.

“Look at the hearth.”

“Huh?” I scrunched my forehead as I looked over my shoulder. The flames inside the fireplace had quadrupled in size, threatening to explode outside of their stony containment.

Am I doing that?

“Control, Zenobia,” Xavier directed, his voice both soothing yet authoritative. He flattened both his palms and pushed down as if he was moving the air beside him and directed it to his feet. “Bring the fire down through control.”

I’d never managed flames so far from me. Shooting fire from my lighter had been the best I’d been able to do at any given moment. Never anything like this. This new experience made a tingle spread all over my body. I breathed in, shut my eyes, and realized I could feel them.

I could feel the heat of the flames.

I could hear the flickering and crackling of the fire in my mind.

I could feel each blade as it moved and pulsated.

It was life.

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