Chapter Eight
Seth stood beside me while Tage stared at me from a few feet away.
I remembered feeling rage when I was a vampire before, when I drained Dara, when Mercedes tried to corner us in the city, when she bit me, when I learned Mother killed Meg and the others from our Colony.
But I had never felt rage like what was coursing through my body now.
I’d always thought it was red, hot as a poker. But true, unadulterated, impassioned rage was black; thick as the tar we’d sunk through to escape the Underworld. It was poison, racing through veins and vessels. It whispered in my ear to let it free. It was all I could think of.
Rage.
Unleashing it on Sekhmet.
She bit my son.
She killed my husband, my sick and dying husband. He was supposed to live on in The Sand. He was going to be preserved. But she took that from us, took him from us. And now, I wanted to hunt her down and kill her slowly and savagely.
Roman once said that killing was different when you weren’t a monster. It was clear to me that I was one now, that I would always be one, because killing Sekhmet was the only way to sate the demon crawling inside me.
Seth turned away from me and Tage, tearing at his hair and letting out a scream that made every particle of sand underfoot tremble with fear. The dunes dissolved and then formed again, and when he roared a second time, they disintegrated once more.
Unshed tears pulsed in his eyes when he looked directly at Tage. “Turn her, and I will use my power to make sure she only craves one thing—Sekhmet’s blood,” he bit out.
Tage stepped toward me. I looked at Saul’s prone body and then back to him. “Are you sure this is what you want?” he asked softly.
It would change me – change everything, he wanted to say. I could see it in his eyes. The warning. The edge of the sword he teetered on.
“I’ve never been surer of anything in my life.”
And it was true.
The one thing more powerful than love was hatred, and I was filled to the brim with it. I rocked back and forth, waiting as he slowly moved toward me.
“Seth,” he barked. “Stay back until I say it’s okay. Then move in and use your power.”
Seth nodded.
Tage’s hands found my face. He swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing slowly up and down, like the weight of the world rested on it.
I took his face in my hands, too. “Don’t numb me. I want to feel it. All of it.” And then I wanted to funnel every ounce of pain in Sekhmet’s direction. Darkness that could be felt, tasted, and drowned in. I wanted to smother her into nothing and feel her realize that was all she was.
Nothing.
“I need your blood,” I pleaded.
Tage’s fangs slowly extended, and he took one hand away from my face long enough to pierce the pad of his thumb with it.
As the coppery scent of blood filled the space between us, I didn’t wait for him to offer the droplet.
I grabbed his thumb and drew it into my mouth, the warmth of me melting with the roughness of his skin.
The familiar fire came with an unexpected ferocity, a wrath I didn’t remember.
My blood was an inferno that couldn’t be contained or controlled.
It burned.
Fire.
Heat.
Anger.
Tage held tightly to me. “Look at me,” he demanded. “Eyes on me.”
But my eyes were melting. They were on fire, too.
I tried to focus, but they blurred.
Then all of a sudden, everything became clear. Too clear. Sharp. Every grain of sand. The sound of them all being pushed by the wind was deafening.
My stomach.
Fire.
Hunger. Anger. Fear.
Too loud, Tage called for Seth. My son.
Our son.
I looked at him as Seth stepped closer, fear etched on his face.
Fear.
Of me.
Of the monster that was me.
But I was this monster with or without the bloodthirst.
Trembling with need and power.
“Let her bite you,” Tage said to Seth.
“NO!” I growled, wheeling around to throttle Tage for even suggesting it.
“Bond to him so you know where he is, Porschia. So you can keep him safe.”
Safe.
No one was safe.
Seth eased closer. “After I alter the craving, okay?”
Tage nodded, every too-long hair brushing his neck. The fronds of the palms in the grove beyond shuddered.
My knees knocked as Seth drew near, but he didn’t touch me. Lowering his head, he muttered words I couldn’t understand and didn’t want to. He let the power under his skin bubble to the surface and spill over, out of his hands and mouth and eyes. When his hand touched me, I suddenly had purpose.
Hunger.
Fire.
Sekhmet.
Death.
Protector.
When my son offered his hand, I bit down so slightly that he didn’t realize I’d drank from him at all. The taste of his blood was revolting, but I felt the bond form.
I would protect him.
I would find her.
Looking to the ground, to Saul, a wail tore from my throat.
Seth backed away, wiping his widened eyes. “Let me out,” I told him.
He looked to Tage, who nodded and said, “Unbind me so I can help.”
With a whisper from Seth, Tage lit up from within. He flexed his muscles, bending his neck left and then right. He smiled.
“Open the door.” I smiled, my fangs grazing my bottom lip, longer than they’d been... before.
When he finally listened, I was gone before he could even step into the world. Before either of them could. And in my wake, my son told Tage, “She’s terrifying.”
Tage could only answer, “I know.”
Beating on the invisible doorway, I screamed, “Let me out!”
A slash of light blinded me for a few seconds, and then a burst of cold air hit my thighs.
It was glorious, quenching the fire beneath my skin.
I ran into the clearing, tearing my own path of destruction through the woods, blurring through tree and brush until I heard the water from the falls.
Closer. Closer. I ran across the bridge and into town, keeping to the backyards and paths that fell behind houses.
Mercedes was home. She and Roman were arguing. The kids were fine.
It would be Father she went after, then.
Sekhmet came here with vengeance on her mind.
I’d teach her the meaning of the word.
Keeping to the wall, I ran to Father’s house, where I heard him snoring inside. Nothing else stirred.
Where was she?
I walked through town, waving at the few people who were outside and bothered to wave first. Worried about leaving to check back on Seth and Tage, I caught her scent on the wind. Running to the center of town, I saw her standing in the pavilion.
She didn’t look surprised to see me. Boredom weighed her features down.
“I figured you’d want your neighbors to watch me kill you,” she boasted. “It serves another purpose, of course. They need to know who the new power is in this place, in this world. And it isn’t humans.”
“No,” I growled, bearing my fangs. “It isn’t.”
Surprise lifted her brows.
“I didn’t expect—”
I was in front of her in an instant, backhanding her to the side. She stumbled, grabbing her bleeding lip and staring at me with contempt.
“You didn’t expect me to do what? Protect my family? That was your first mistake.”
She scoffed.
“The second is underestimating me.”
Using my left hand, I sent her flying into the fountain; the concrete splitting apart and the entire thing overturning with a loud crash.
Sekhmet stood and bent her neck left and then right, cracking her vertebrae and giving me a look that said game on.
“You’ll regret that,” she promised.
“The hell I will,” I vowed.