The Rebel and the Final Blood War (Blood Type #3)

Chapter One

Beckham was dead.

A gunshot pierced the air, and another followed.

Reyna Carpenter ignored it all. None of it mattered.

Beckham was lying on the ground and hadn’t moved an inch since Harrington snapped his neck and dropped him like a sack of potatoes. She’d opened her own wrist to feed him her blood. After all, they were a perfect blood match. She should be able to save him.

Instead, she had watched her soul mate die.

And there was nothing she could do.

Tears wouldn’t come. A sob caught in her throat and buried itself there. She couldn’t think or see or breathe or even feel. Everything was caught up in that one moment. As she stared down at the man she loved with all her heart while it ripped in two.

Harrington had moved so fast. Beyond her ability to even comprehend, and then in that second, he’d ruined everything. She thought she hated him before. Hated him for kidnapping her, stealing her blood to keep himself alive. Abusing her. For the psychological torture.

But all that was nothing compared to this.

Commotion ensued all around her, yet she couldn’t drag her eyes away from Beckham to find out what was going on. Did it even matter?

An arm grabbed at her. She tried to fight the person off. She screamed. She clung to Beckham. No. She wouldn’t move. They couldn’t take her from him.

“Reyna!” Gabe shouted at her. “Reyna, look at me. I just shot Harrington. All the vamps are down. We have to go.”

“No! No. Get off me,” she screamed back at him.

“We’re all going to die if we don’t move now.”

Reyna tried to shrug him off, but it was pointless. Gabe was a fighter, an Irish mob boss, and one of the most fearsome leaders of the rebel organization Elle. She could no more move him than bring Beckham back from the dead.

He grasped her around the middle, then hoisted her over his shoulder.

She reached for Beckham. Her hand outstretched into open air.

Slowly her brain pieced together everything around her.

Harrington on the ground, blood pouring out of bullet holes.

Roland next to him trying to staunch the blood loss.

The backstabbing traitor Penelope bleeding from a gunshot wound, hysterical.

People flooded out of the mayor’s New Year’s Eve party downtown after seeing the chaos and death and destruction.

Beckham.

She needed to be there with him. She fought against Gabe’s hands, trying to get back to him. But Gabe was strong and persistent. He refused to let go as he carried her farther and farther away. Beckham was gone, and Gabe was taking her away from him.

“Put me down. Let me go back to him!”

“Reyna, fucking shit!” Gabe yelled at her.

She kicked and clawed at him to release her. As they moved, her heel fell off and onto the patio floor. She couldn’t do this. Fuck! She couldn’t lose him. She refused for this to be her reality.

Gabe cursed and then dropped her on the pavement, tugging her hastily into a secluded alcove. He grabbed her roughly by both shoulders.

“Snap back to reality, Reyna. There’s nothing we can do right now. Harrington told the snipers not to shoot you, but people will come after us. If you want to live through the night, I need you to run!”

“But Beckham,” she whispered.

“Live, Reyna,” Gabe pleaded with her, his voice tight. “All you can do is live.”

She hardly saw his sympathetic look as she stared over his shoulder to the patio beyond.

Beckham hadn’t moved. Living didn’t feel possible.

How could she live when he didn’t? Maybe it was outrageous to even consider, but she felt as if a bomb had detonated in her mind.

Shrapnel tore her apart from the inside out.

Then to her horror, she saw Roland stumble to his feet.

His eyes caught hers across the divide of people.

They promised blood and torment and destruction.

Roland was now Harrington’s only remaining second-in-command, and he had always wanted Reyna—to break Reyna.

She could see then and there that he would stop at nothing to get what he wanted this time.

Beckham couldn’t stop him. Harrington wouldn’t stop him.

Leaving now was the only way to escape a fate worse than death.

She couldn’t continue to stand here. She couldn’t go back in time. Nothing she did could fix this situation.

She had come here to kill Harrington. And he’d gotten the better of her…of all of them. But if she died here, what would happen to the world?

“Reyna, please,” Gabe said.

She turned clear, devastated eyes to him and nodded. Beckham’s death would not be for nothing.

He released a harsh breath of relief, and she realized then that she’d scared him. That he’d thought he’d lost her. He didn’t know how right he was, but she would have time to think about that later. Right now, she needed to survive.

She compartmentalized all her doubts into one space in her brain, kicked off her other shoe, and took off sprinting after Gabe.

Barefoot and freezing in nothing but a strapless dress and Beckham’s suit coat, she didn’t dare stop.

They made it to the end of the block and nearly ran smack dab into Meghan. Her red hair box braids were pulled into a high pony, and her silvery dress was obscured by a black jacket that went nearly to her knees.

“What took you so long?” Meghan gasped, moving into position next to them.

“I’ll tell you later,” Gabe said.

Reyna glanced over her shoulder. Her eyes rounded in horror. “Fuck.”

“What?” Gabe asked. He followed her line of sight and cursed violently, before grabbing Meghan’s hand and running again. “We need to pick it up.”

Reyna measured her breathing and increased her pace.

Roland followed them, and considering vampires ran at incredible speeds they were lucky he hadn’t reached them yet.

Maybe Beckham throwing him into the brick building actually hurt him.

She’d seen Roland crumple at the hit, and it took him a long time to stand up again.

Reyna glanced back one more time to see that the crowd seemed to keep Roland off their back.

Between the New Year’s Eve mob and the mayhem from the gunshots, he had no clear path.

And everything was so haphazard that he had to physically push people out of his way as he attempted to weave through the crowd. No one made it easy on him.

But after that glance, she couldn’t keep looking. Not if she wanted to get through the crowd herself.

They ran down three blocks, weaving in and out of traffic and taking turns and corners, hoping to lose Roland and trying to get away from the mass of people to reach their getaway car.

Gabe checked once more and flashed them a victorious smile. “I don’t see him.”

Reyna nodded and Meghan shot them both a quick grin. But Reyna couldn’t get rid of the uneasy feeling in her stomach.

“Almost there,” Gabe said. “Just this corner.”

They whipped around the next corner to an unmarked black van idling on the street. As they rushed toward it, the back doors flapped open.

Then Roland appeared and cut off the end of the street. No longer meandering, he launched himself toward them. He saw the van. He knew that they could get away and had every intention of stopping them.

Everything happened in slow motion. Meghan reached the van first, careening into the empty interior.

Gabe was next jumping inside. Reyna was the last and the slowest, her breathing jagged.

No matter that she’d spent months training for this very moment.

Her time on the treadmill hadn’t actually seemed to prepare her for running outside, barefoot, in unbearably cold temperatures.

She knew Roland was almost upon her. She didn’t dare look over her shoulder, but she could tell it was too close for comfort.

Meghan pulled her gun out and pointed it toward them. Gabe placed his hand on the barrel.

“You’ll hit her!”

Meghan shook him off, lifted it again, and aimed. Gabe reached his hand out toward Reyna, and she used her last burst of energy to throw her body toward him.

His hand locked on her wrist. But she fell short and her knee hit the metal bumper. Her shoulder was tugged so hard she swore it felt as if it dislocated as he hauled her inside. She was nearly there when she felt a hand clasp her ankle.

“Go, go, go!” Gabe yelled at Tye, who was driving the getaway car.

He moved to wrap his arms around her chest as he tried to pull her farther inside.

But Roland was stronger. The van kicked into drive and suddenly they were all thrown off balance.

Gabe scrambled to get his footing again, but even with them rumbling down the street and Roland having no leverage, he was still pulling her from the van.

“Let me go!” she shrieked, trying to dislodge Roland from her.

“You think this is over? That you can just walk away?” Roland spat at her.

“Fuck you,” Meghan yelled.

Then Reyna heard a series of gunshots. Roland shifted fast enough to miss most of the spray, but a bullet must have hit. He grunted and gave a bit of release on her ankle. Reyna reared back and kicked him in the face. He let go, falling backward across the pavement.

Gabe tugged Reyna all the way into the van. She gasped on all fours as she stared through the open doors at Roland’s furious face. Even after being shot, he still got back on his feet and raced to catch them.

But he couldn’t take down a moving vehicle barreling down the street. Their eyes met in the distance, and a chill ran down her spine, as if he was saying that he would come for her. This wasn’t over.

But it was over.

It was all over.