Chapter 41
Chapter forty-one
Tressa
Tressa burned.
Fire ripped through her side where exploring fingers found a massive bruise blooming around the rough edges of a broken rib just peeking through her skin.
First, seeing a facsimile of her mate cringing in fear had been a red-hot brand to her soul, then seeing the real Ethan flung like a rag doll, his head and limbs snapping just as loosely, set bile churning in her throat and rage roiling in her mind.
She struggled through a few shallow inhales until she could finally breathe despite the excruciating pain threatening to double her over.
The bleeding under her skin repaired itself within a moment or two, but the muscle and bones beneath would take several minutes or more, an eternity in a fight like this.
Not that she had any plans to surrender. Broken ribs were an absolute bitch to deal with, but at least she could still function, even if each panting breath felt like shards of glass grinding into her side, and each step forward felt like a tiny gremlin was slamming a pickaxe among said glass.
Tressa sealed away her physical agony, locking it deep in the vault of her mind that housed all the pains of a different variety. Her mate needed her, and she would not fail him.
Your will is weak, Loloma.
Renata was right, partially anyway. Loloma had been weak. She survived long enough to escape from Fiji, escape the sickness that had taken her mother, all so she could hunt down and end the pathetic existence of her father.
Not that she ever called him father. He was just the white man who’d shown up two and a half decades earlier, forced himself on her mother, then took off with the rest of the English sailors back to his ‘civilized’ life.
When her mother finally revealed his name on her deathbed, Tressa made a promise that he would not be allowed to live for what he’d done.
She’d endured untold suffering to cross the ocean and hunt him down in that dingy brothel, only to discover she couldn’t do it. Couldn’t take a life in cold blood. She’d left him untouched and ran away. She’d been too weak, and she’d failed her mother.
But then Loloma died in a dark alley, and Tressa was born.
And the first thing she had done after waking up as a vampire was return to the brothel to murder her father, feasting on his blood until there was not a drop left in his body.
When she had seen what she’d done, had seen the women cowering in the corners and weeping softly as they waited for her to drain them as well, she’d vowed that she would never take a life again.
Would never become the monster that lurked under her skin, craving retribution for all the evils of the world by any means necessary.
Until now.
I’m going to rip that bitch’s head off and toss it to those fish she cares so much about, Tressa thought as she rose to her feet. She would not run away. She would not bury her darkness under a smile and a joke any longer. She would use it.
Seeing Ethan moving again as he climbed off Saiden lifted a weight from her shoulders, and fresh vitality surged through her.
She rushed forward to help Derrick right as he got knocked to the ground by Renata. “Glad you could join me,” he grumbled, sliding a short knife from his boot and springing to his feet. “Thought you were going to take a nap or something.”
“Nope,” Tressa said with a determined grim, taking the offered blade. “I’m fully awake.”
Tressa danced to the side, trying to keep her profile slim and protect her injured ribs, while Derrick shifted to flank Renata on the left.
She stepped in with a quick yet clumsy upward slash before spinning the knife in her hand to reverse into a hard plunging stab at Renata’s heart.
Flowing alongside Tressa’s attack, Derrick slid in low, slicing at the rogue’s hamstring.
Neither connected.
Renata flipped her leg up to avoid Derrick’s attack and brought it down hard in an axe kick, her heel driving into the nape of his neck.
Pinwheeling her arms as she bent at the waist, Renata snaked her hand over Tressa’s wrist and redirected her downward blow straight into the meat of Derrick’s shoulder.
Snarling like a pissed off badger, Tressa ripped her blade free and spun around with a cursing Derrick close on her heels. Rage drove each of her unskilled strikes, but three sharp slashes from her knife encountered only empty air as Tressa pursued her prey.
She briefly regretted not training in combat with Saiden more often, but some part of her hadn’t wanted the knowledge.
Hadn’t wanted the temptation to kill again.
And while protecting her mate wasn’t the same thing, she was starting to think her newfound justification might not actually mean shit against the much older rogue.
Still, she refused to accept defeat, and her fourth swing met with glorious resistance as it sliced a long furrow along Renata’s upper arm.
The smile of satisfaction that lit up Tressa’s face vanished just as suddenly as it had appeared, though.
A fist flashed out and sank into her stomach, the vicious uppercut forcing every ounce of breathable air from her lungs as she was lifted off her feet.
Before gravity could bring Tressa back down to earth naturally, Renata snatched one ankle and whipped her arm in an overhead arc to slam Tressa’s body deep into the sand.
She caught Derrick blurring toward her, but the world flashed black for a moment, and she couldn’t see what happened to her cousin.
She could only feel a symphony of pain and could only register a vague sense of him careening off to the side.
The sounds of the combat, the screams of the seabirds, and the crashing of the waves disappeared, replaced by a steady high-pitched whine boring through her skull.
Flashes of shadows flitted across her vision, taunting and teasing her with how useless she was, until finally, tingling sensations started fluttering through her numb limbs as her muscles sluggishly came back online.
The shadows faded away to reveal Derrick leaning over her, a knife gripped in each hand. His shirt was ripped in a dozen places, and dried blood lined his arms in parallel cuts where nails had raked and clawed.
Tressa began to push herself up, rising onto one elbow, when Derrick was suddenly flung away from her, and Renata’s foot smashed down on Tressa’s knee like a meteor strike.
Pain more intense and powerful than anything Tressa had ever felt before coursed through her, and blood flew from her lips as an anguished scream burst from her lungs. She tried to move, tried to force herself to get up and fight through the agony, but it consumed her. Destroyed her.
“Stay down,” Renata growled, her face blocking out the rising sun as she loomed over Tressa. “I don’t want to kill you, Loloma, but I won’t let my own desires jeopardize my mission. You simply cannot win this fight.”