Page 73 of Queen of Darkness
“Okay,” I whispered to myself, moving to where the team was, trying to focus. “Let your vampireness go. Call it up, and then let it spread.”
Fear. Hunger. Rage. Those were the three keys of the vampire that lived inside me, thethingthat longed for blood above all else.
I’d always avoided it, trying to keep it in the shadows, pretending like it wasn’t there. I couldn’t do that, not now. Not if we wanted to live. So, I reached out to it, feeling its presence.
Come forth, I commanded. The darkness came into me, flowing swiftly. More and more. I clenched my jaw against the fury that was swept along with it, the rage pushing blood into my muscles while my stomach gurgled with hunger. My mouth started salivating, and then my fangs popped free with a hiss.
“Here.”
I popped my eyes open to see Aaron with a vial of blood.
“Where did you get that?” I said around my fangs, holding the caged vampire hunger within me at bay by focusing on his face, reminding myself that I was in love with him. I used other positive emotions to stay in charge. Love. Caring. Friendship.
“We always carry spares,” he said with a cringe as his team also retrieved their vials.
From between their legs.
“Was this—”
“Taped to the inside of our legs? Yes, yes, it was,” he said hurriedly. “But we don’t have time. Doesn’t matter where they were. You need to drink.”
“You should have used this,” I said. “You can already make frost.”
“Not frost,” he said ruefully, pulling the cap. My nostrils flared as the scent quickly reached me. “Only cold.Youcould make frost, though.”
I suddenly no longer cared why that was different, why it mattered. Somehow I knew it should, but between the heat, and the taste of the warm blood as it caressed my tongue, I just did not give a shit. Not anymore.
There was one thing, and one thing only, that mattered.Feeding.Hands batted away my fingers as they clawed for the vial, and one by one, the other members upended their backups into my mouth in an orgy of wonderful sensations.
“Now harness it,” Aaron whispered in my ear, his tone almost seductive, given the sensations running through my body. “Hold it tight, compress it down into a tiny ball as hard as you can, until you can shrink it no more. Then let itgo.”
I focused, trying to do as he said. Nearby, Alexi fell to the ground as his eyes rolled up into his head. Instantly, his skin blistered as it touched the heated rock. Fred and Dave pulled him up as fast as they could get to him, but his face, arm, and chest were already a wreck.
They were counting on me. If I failed, we all died.
I found the vampire in me and compressed it down. I pressed it from the outsides of my mind, clamping down with an imaginary vise, spinning it tighter and tighter. My limbs began to tremble from the effort. Aaron grabbed me by the ribs and held me upright, stopping me from pitching face-first to the floor.
Finally, I reached a point where the energy of the Hunger, so bottled up, was as strong as my mind. An equilibrium.
“Release it,” Aaron whispered.
I stopped squeezing.
A globular cold front raced out from me. It froze sweat and shattered the stone prison, sending sharp shards everywhere, slicing us all open. It turned the heat in the air to fog and then ice, which dropped to the floor in a tinkling wave that spread away from me. The ground turned white for nearly ten feet in every direction as I froze itsolid.
“Ididit!” I gasped, staggering for breath in the super-chilled air, while my body slumped from the effort, weakened from the energy that had taken.
“Yes,” Aaron said calmly. “You did. That ought to get his attention.”
From somewhere outside of the cell, a terrible roar could be heard, echoing down every corridor and passageway, seemingly coming from the very bowels of the Underworld itself.
And all at once, I knew why it was a mixture of pain and anger.
I had just released frost. In the heart of the Underworld.
“He’s definitely going to kill us now,” Dave drawled into the silence that followed.
Chapter Thirty-Six
