Chapter Seven
Reyna’s hand flew to her chest.
Beckham.
Beckham.
Beckham.
Her mind raced ahead of her. Her heart ceased palpitating. She simply froze.
This made no sense.
It was impossible.
Beyond impossible.
People didn’t come back to life. Well, not more than once. Once a vampire was dead, they were dead. There was no second life as another vampire.
Yet, there he was.
Her heart contracted painfully.
There.
He.
Was.
Her perfect Beckham. Tall, brooding, with midnight eyes that whispered threats and echoed passion.
A figure so imposing that others shrank back at the sheer size of him, the promise of death on the razor-edged planes of his face, and the confidence that oozed out of every pore.
And that was before they even learned of his reputation.
A person didn’t need to know it to recognize the threat before them.
And yet, he wasn’t a threat to her. He never had been. He never would be.
“How?” she finally gasped out.
“It’s a long story,” Beckham said.
Reyna shook her head. She wanted to run to him, to put her arms around him, to believe what she was seeing. But how could she?
She had watched him die. Seen his body slump to the ground and die before her very eyes. It wasn’t secondhand knowledge that she could refute. She had been there. She cut open her own arm to try to save him, and it hadn’t worked. How could he possibly be here right now?
“No. It’s…it’s not possible,” she stammered out.
“It appears that it is.”
“Tell me…tell me something only I would know,” she said. “You could be an imposter.”
That was practically impossible. No one could pretend to be Beckham. She could feel down to her very being that it was him. She had sensed him upstairs in his bedroom and run the length of the driveway to reach him. It had to be him. And yet she needed to be sure.
His dark eyes clouded with frustration at having to prove himself. But he never let the words slip from his mouth. He just considered what to tell her.
“White roses are for new beginnings,” he told her, taking a step forward.
“I used to focus solely on my phone because your presence was such a distraction.” Another step forward.
“I can sense your blood.” They were practically touching now.
“I can sense it right now. You. All of you. The smell of you. The taste of you. The way your body vibrates at my nearness.” He dipped down and brought his lips close to her mouth.
“I am who I say I am, Little One. I am yours.”
The dam broke.
Reyna threw her arms around his shoulders and crushed her body against his chest. He tucked her in close, burying his face into her dark hair.
“You’re back. You’re really back,” she gasped as her tears soaked through his shirt.
“Shh.” He stroked her affectionately.
“I don’t understand. I don’t…”
She pulled away to look up at him. They were facing down the impossible. Vampires didn’t return from the dead, yet Beckham was here. He shouldn’t be standing before her, but he was.
Their eyes locked and she lost sight of everything else. The pain disintegrated. The cold was gone. She didn’t even notice their breath fogging between them. Or the people he had brought with him. Or the trees. Or the gravel. Or the gate.
Nothing.
It was just her and Beckham once more.
“How are you alive?” she whispered. “I saw you die. I watched it happen.”
His brow furrowed at that. “Let’s get you out of the cold and I will explain everything.”
He gestured for her to walk. Her boots crunched against the gravel and the cold bit back into her consciousness. It was subfreezing temperatures, and she didn’t even have a coat on. What had she been thinking?
Well, of course she hadn’t been thinking.
The four people with Beckham formed up around them as they moved forward. They all looked lethal and kept assessing their surroundings for threats. She wondered what their stories were and how they had ended up with Beckham.
She had a lot of questions.
“I can’t believe you’re really here.” She touched the sleeve of his jacket. He was solid and firm. Real.
“I’m as surprised as you are,” he admitted.
“It isn’t every day that your boyfriend comes back from the dead.”
He arched an eyebrow. “Has it happened to you before?”
She laughed. It was the first time she had laughed in over a week. It made her feel lighter. As if she walked on clouds. She glanced up at Beckham. “No. Just you.”
He wrapped an arm across her shoulders, and they continued the rest of the way to Washington’s mansion.
Gabe and Meghan were arguing out front. Reyna suspected it had something to do with her sprinting out of the house at top speed.
But when they saw her coming back with Beckham and a retinue, both of their jaws dropped.
“Oh my God,” Meghan said.
“Is that…” Gabe let the question trail off.
“Yes,” Meghan breathed.
“How?”
The million-dollar question.
“Meghan. Gabe,” Beckham said with a head nod.
“Is this some kind of joke?” Gabe asked.
“It would not be a very funny one.”
“It’s really him,” Reyna told them.
“I’ll explain inside,” Beckham said. He faced the four who were following him. “Philippé, do a perimeter sweep. Katarina, check the defenses. Return to me when you’re finished. Gerard, Zoya, you’re on me.”
Then he strode into the mansion as if he owned the place, with Reyna at his side. The entire exchange left Reyna even more confused. More questions sprung up. She ached to ask them all, but at the same time she felt at peace. She demanded a miracle. And she received one.
The entourage assembled in the dining room. Gabe rushed to get Tye and Jodie, while Meghan found Washington speaking to a young woman in the kitchen. Their looks of shock at him appearing out of nowhere perfectly mirrored Reyna’s.
“Roger,” Beckham said, extending his hand to Washington.
“Beckham,” Washington replied with awe.
“And the lovely Genevieve,” Beckham said. His attention turned to the vampire woman Washington had brought from the kitchen. She was only about five feet tall and looked not a day over twenty. She wore her straw-blonde hair parted down the middle and in a braided bun at the base of her neck.
“Mr. Anderson,” she said demurely. “It’s a pleasure to have you back in residence.”
“You know each other?” Reyna asked in confusion.
“Yes,” Beckham answered.
“Genevieve has been a close associate of ours for a long time,” Washington said.
“Indeed,” Beckham agreed. “I’m certain everyone here wants to know how I am not dead.”
The room went silent except for the scraping of chairs as everyone sat.
“William tried to kill me, but he managed to fracture my neck that day. Essential ligaments and veins were still attached, and he rendered me unconscious. I healed because I fed before going to the New Year’s Eve party and was informed when I awoke that Reyna had given me her own blood as well.”
That made sense in its own way. Vampires were difficult to kill on a good day.
Guns only slowed them down. Sunlight when they were feeding the wrong blood type could also incapacitate them but did little when they were drinking from the blood cure.
Decapitation was the easiest way, but severing the spinal cord was known to work as well.
Starvation was the hardest and most gruesome.
Reyna had been sure that Harrington snapping Beckham’s neck had done the trick. It had been horrifying to witness and just as bad to live through.
“Reyna is your blood match. It would make perfect sense that her blood would help you heal,” Washington said.
Beckham’s head whipped toward Reyna. He clearly already knew that term, but she had never had the chance to tell him that fateful night. “Is this true?”
She nodded, her heart expanding at the intensity in his gaze.
“I’m gathering a blood match is something special?” Jodie asked from the other side of the table.
“A perfect pairing of the blood composition. Beyond blood type itself but down to its very foundation. A one-to-one match,” Washington explained.
The room fell silent again as they stared at Beckham and Reyna. As they saw how unique they were to be in one place. To have discovered each other.
“Well, that explains much,” Beckham concluded.
“It could explain everything,” Washington said.
Beckham nodded. “I remember nothing after William attacked me until I woke up in a morgue. I was in a metal container, on the docket to be incinerated that afternoon. I escaped the confines of the metal tube and found a blubbering Penelope. She had been watching over me. Mourning, I suppose, in her own way.”
Reyna cursed.
“I was weakened, but I managed to use my last bit of energy to overpower her and discover what had happened. After the chaos of New Year’s, Harrington had my and Cassandra’s bodies taken to a morgue to be incinerated.
Penelope insisted on going with me. In fact, I likely would have already been incinerated before I woke up if not for Penelope’s presence.
I should have killed her then. I had the advantage.
” He shook his head. “But the damage had been severe—I don’t know anyone who would have been able to come back from it.
Once I got the information I needed, I gathered what strength I could, knocked Penelope out, and fled the facility. ”
“Did she tell you anything else?” Tye asked greedily, starved for more intel. “Any information about what Harrington is planning?”
Beckham turned his attention to Tye, who shrank back a little at the full force of Beckham’s terrifying visage. “No. She’s not important enough to have that information. Just what happened after they believed I was dead.”
“Damn,” Tye grumbled.
“I managed to get to a safe house where I could get in contact with Gerard.” He gestured to the man Reyna had only ever known as Beckham’s driver. “We have known each other for a very long time. He helped me out of the vulnerable position I was in.”
Reyna cringed at that. She didn’t want to know what it must have been like for him to be so weakened. Or what he had to do to feel better.
“We stayed in a safe house until I was back to full strength.” Something in Beckham’s expression said that he still wasn’t at capacity. That he was pushing himself beyond his limitations a mere week after his “death.” But he would never acknowledge it here. “Then I came to help.”
At that moment the flaming-haired Katarina and Reyna’s former bodyguard, Philippé, entered the hall. Everyone’s eyes raked over the newcomers.
“This is my inner circle.” Beckham gestured to the menacing group.
The Black woman, Zoya, spoke up first, a wry expression on her face. “It was time to get the band back together.”
Katarina snorted and twirled one of her twin blades in her hand. “I’ll take the drums, please.”
“Is that because you like to wail on things?” Philippé asked with a straight face.
“She likes to use both hands, if you know what I mean,” Gerard added.
Beckham coughed and all four members of his inner circle straightened. They went from camaraderie to deadly calm in a split second.
“The band,” Beckham said, amused by his company. “Gerard is my second. Philippé is my muscle. Katarina is…”
She beamed before he even said her particular skill. Her flaming red hair stark against her alabaster skin. Her blades whirled in her hands.
“A show-off,” Beckham finished.
Katarina laughed unabashedly. “That I am. I’m also the best weapon’s master and trained assassin you’ll ever have.”
“Zoya,” Beckham continued as if Katarina hadn’t tooted her own horn, “is my strategist. They’ll be helpful moving forward.”
“Are you assembling your army again?” Washington asked quietly.
“I am doing what I must.”
“A-army?” Meghan asked. “What army?”
“Elle has failed,” Beckham said evenly. “It’s clear that a covert rebellion with minimal resources doesn’t have the capabilities to stop Visage.
They are too strong. I know because I helped Harrington build the company.
As much as I wanted to believe in Sydney’s vision, the vision is dead.
I am a vampire lord. I once had an army so deadly that I conquered this city in five years. We will do it again, starting today.”
Reyna finally stood from her seat and with a brave, quiet voice said, “No.”
All eyes turned to her. Beckham faced her as well and she could see the questions whirling in his dark orbs. But his face showed none of it. He waited patiently for her to explain herself. He put the ball in her court. She intended to keep it there.
“What do you mean?” Tye finally asked. “We don’t have a plan.
We don’t have an army. We have five humans and a single vampire scientist. We’re a ragtag team of survivors.
We can’t even find the rest of Elle after the bombing.
It makes perfect sense to use what we have.
And if Beckham is willing to build an army of vampires for our cause, how the hell can we say no to that? ”
“I’m not saying no to an army. We desperately need more people,” Reyna agreed. “But Elle is not dead.”
“The bunker was destroyed. We’re scattered,” Meghan reminded her. “We’re not much of Elle.”
“Elle isn’t a place. It’s an idea. It’s the idea of equality between humans and vampires. That we can work and live and thrive better together than against each other. As long as that idea exists, then Elle isn’t dead. It is within me. It’s within all of you.”
Washington beamed at her. “I’m still Elle.”
Jodie stood up. “I’m Elle.”
Gabe grinned and shot her a two-finger salute. “I’m Elle.”
“I’m Elle,” Meghan said with a tender smile. “Always have been.”
“Me too,” Tye said.
Beckham’s eyes were appraising, as if seeing a different creature than the one he had left back on that patio on New Year’s Eve. As if she had molted her skin and come out as someone else entirely.
“I guess I didn’t understand my own philosophy on the subject. I am Elle,” he conceded to her, acknowledging her as the leader she had somehow developed into. “But it seems that you are now the heart of it.”