Chapter Twenty-Six
Shit, shit, shit.
He’d seen her. There was nowhere to go and nothing to do about this. She was totally fucking screwed. There was no way she could outrun a vampire. The only thing she could do was face what was about to happen.
She took a deep breath and exited the office, holding the phone close to her leg as it continued to record.
Beckham had said stay in place, but they didn’t have a contingency plan for Penelope realizing that she was there.
And by the look on Penelope’s face, she wasn’t too pleased to see her.
Considering the last time they’d been together Reyna had shot her, she didn’t blame her.
There was no love lost on her part either.
“Hey, Penny,” Reyna said with confidence she didn’t feel.
Anytime she’d been around really pissed-off vampires, things hadn’t gone her way.
“You brought her?” Penelope asked, glaring at Beckham.
He released a breath. Decision made. “Yes. She’s mine. So step away from her.”
His stance shifted into predatory and he moved in a circle around Penelope, analyzing her like the threat she most definitely was.
“She’s yours,” Penelope spat. “I cannot believe I fell for your bullshit. You came here under false pretenses.”
“As if you have no ulterior motives.”
“Right now I’m thinking about having my first kill,” she snapped at him.
“If you touch her, it will be the last thing you do.”
“And just think you’d die in that hideous robe,” Reyna said with an unapologetic shrug.
Penelope’s eyes were fire. “God, I hate you.”
“Feeling’s mutual.”
“I was going to have Harrington kill you once you turned yourself in, but no, I’d rather do it myself.”
Penelope rushed Reyna in a fit of anger, jealousy, and fierce rage.
Reyna launched away from Penelope. At the same time, Beckham lunged toward her as he fully opened himself up to her.
She felt everything all at once. An overwhelming melee of self-hatred.
So much that she could hardly tell her fear from his fear, and her anger from his.
Beckham pushed her across the room. One minute she was standing in front of Penelope, about to get her head ripped off. Then the next she was standing across the room, out of harm’s way.
Her head spun. Her legs felt like jelly. The entire fiber of her being was unsettled and discombobulated.
What the hell just happened?
She put a hand to her ears to try to stop the ringing as she regained her balance. She was so busy trying to stand up straight, she didn’t see Lance until he was nearly on top of her.
“Stay away from Penelope!” Lance bellowed as he held a lamp over his head.
Reyna ducked with a screech. “What the fuck? She was trying to hurt me!”
“You’re human,” Lance said with wide eyes.
“No shit.”
“You just…you didn’t…”
Reyna ignored him and found Beckham circling Penelope. She couldn’t believe he hadn’t already ended this. It was as easy as subduing her and getting out. And by the way Penelope had talked about Reyna turning herself in, now would be the time.
“Becks, it’s a trap. Let’s go,” Reyna called.
“You just realized that?” Penelope muttered.
“What did he offer you?” Beckham spat.
“You, of course.”
“In exchange for Reyna, again?”
She shrugged. “Good deal to me. Even if you left now, you wouldn’t make it out of the building.”
“And you were going to turn me in?”
“Why not?” she asked with a maniacal laugh. “You never chose me. You always chose her. You both deserve to suffer.”
“You’re a monster,” Reyna cried.
“Don’t worry,” Penelope told Beckham in a soft, sinister tone. “After I break you, we’ll have a great life.”
Beckham laughed. He actually laughed. “You could never break me.”
“Would have been fun trying,” she said.
“Becks, we have to go,” Reyna said again, gesturing to the door.
Beckham moved as quick as lightning. Penelope tried to veer away from him, but Beckham had years and years of training on her as a vampire. She was no match for him.
In seconds, he had Penelope’s back pressed into his chest. His hands on either side of her head.
“You were better than this,” he told her.
“Beckham,” she said, fear finally breaking through everything.
“Now you’re just a loose end.”
She didn’t even have time to call out before Beckham twisted her head at an unnatural angle and let her lifeless body fall heavy to the carpet.
Reyna gasped as the phone slipped from her fingers. Beckham killed her. He killed her. Lance fell to his knees at Penelope’s feet and began sobbing uncontrollably. His cries were loud and obnoxious, and at the same time she understood them. Death was the real monster.
Beckham didn’t give Penelope another glance before lifting Reyna into his arms. “Hold on to me.” Her body awoke at his nearness and she curled into him, wrapping her arms around his neck. “Head in.” She did as he said and then he raced away.
Away from the living room with a dead woman and a forever broken blood escort.
She had to close her eyes as Beckham moved at superhuman speed. She couldn’t concentrate on her own thoughts, let alone process what just happened. One minute he’d been seducing information out of Penny and the next she was dead at his feet. It had been so easy. So unbelievably easy.
Beckham set Reyna down inside the entrance to Penny’s building, keeping her body obscured by the large metal door. “Don’t move.”
She couldn’t argue. She could barely function after the way his speed muddled her. She latched onto the door handle and tried to remain upright.
Beckham glanced out the door to assess the situation and then slipped out.
Reyna peeked through the opening and saw Beckham moving like a blur as he attacked Visage’s men.
An elbow to the chin, legs swept out from under, a rifle snapped in half, the butt of another gun smashed against a temple.
Over and over every member of the team Harrington must have sent was taken down by Beckham’s martial prowess.
If he’d been human, he’d already be dead. Bullets pierced his skin, lodging in his body. He never even wavered.
Soon his chest rose and fell rapidly as he stood over a plane of bodies. They lay like carrion awaiting the vultures. Beckham the unstoppable beast, riddled with bullets, and master over all. Nothing could touch him.
Reyna slowly inched the door open. “Are…are they dead?”
He shook his head sharply once to the right. His eyes were lost in the distance. A force raged through him that she couldn’t possibly harness.
She chewed on her lip and waited for him to get under control. She could tell he needed a minute. Finally, his bottomless eyes turned to her and he extended a hand.
She moved toward him. The lamb stepping into the wolf’s circle, expecting the slaughter.
“You fear me?”
“Never,” she whispered.
Beckham snarled as if her answer infuriated him instead of soothed him. But he didn’t give her another chance to respond. He scooped her back up and raced away from the scene. She tucked her chin in again and tried to ignore her brain rattling in her skull.
She couldn’t even believe he still moved at top speeds. But a helicopter was beating overhead. Spotlights closed in around them. Other Visage vampires would be drawn to their trail. He couldn’t stop. They couldn’t stop. If caught, they were both dead and they knew it.
Just when she thought she might throw up from the sheer vertigo, Beckham dropped out of vampire speed and ducked into an alcove. The streetlights were smashed to pieces at their feet and the darkness enveloped them.
A helicopter circled nearby. They were so close. If they moved the spotlight one street over, she and Beckham would be seen. Beckham moved deeper into the alley, becoming one with the shadows.
She tightened her grip on him as fear pricked at her every nerve ending.
She could feel his distress and the amount of pain he was in and thought she’d be sick.
How could he endure it? He might think he was immortal, but eventually he’d have to stop.
He was losing blood at too quick a rate.
It oozed out of multiple wounds. Hot and red, pouring down his chest and arms. She was sticky with it.
“Becks, we have to get you help,” she whispered.
“I just…need…to get the bullets…out.”
“Where can we go?”
He shook his head. “The safe houses aren’t safe.”
“Can we get to Drew?”
Beckham clenched his jaw. “Too far away. I can’t…”
He didn’t finish the sentence. He wouldn’t make it. Fuck.
“Okay. Okay. Shit.”
“We’ll have to find a place.” Another helicopter shifted closer. Beckham moved deeper down the alley. “We’ll be caught otherwise.”
Then he sprinted again even though they didn’t have time for this. They moved through the shadows, avoiding the police presence waiting for him to trip up. He stopped at what looked like an abandoned convenience store and barreled through the door. He finally put Reyna down on her feet.
“This will do,” Beckham groaned.
Beckham leaned his weight against the door and pulled the shade down. Then he yanked the keypad from the entrance by the door. This wasn’t the sort of place she’d think would have a security system, but better safe than sorry.
“Bathroom,” he grunted.
They headed down the main aisle with a meager scrapping of various candy bars and an assortment of toiletries. The tile floors were rusted. The overhead light was missing the covering and one of the bulbs was burned out. This was the last place she ever thought she’d see Beckham Anderson.
They made it to the bathroom and she sighed. It wasn’t warehouse gas station disgusting, but it certainly wasn’t going to be sanitary for what they needed to do. Oh well.
“Sit,” she commanded, pushing his ass down on the toilet seat.
The fact that he didn’t argue showed her how much pain he was in. He unsheathed a wicked-looking blade and offered it to her. She looked at it in horror. Oh God, she would have to do this. Why didn’t they have Meghan with them? A fucking nurse would help right about now.
“I should get ice or alcohol or…or something.”
His eyes were dark as they stared back at her. “Just do it.”
Reyna took the knife out of his hand. She had to do this.
There was no other option. Reyna sliced down the front of his button-up and peeled away the material.
Beckham grit his teeth every time it pulled on the wounds, but she didn’t stop until he was shirtless.
Six bullets were lodged in his chest. One had gone straight through his shoulder.
Two more were in his arms. How the hell he’d held her with bullets in his arms was beyond her. She hadn’t even gotten to his legs.
Beckham wasn’t human. He could sustain much more pain than the average person, but he couldn’t go on with this.
The first dig of the blade into his skin made her queasy. He didn’t even flinch as she pushed the knife deeper into the wound. Lodging the point behind the bullet, she jerked it out of the hole. Blood gushed from the open wound, now no longer obscured by a foreign object.
A soft moan escaped Beckham as pain lanced him. Reyna rushed for a paper towel to staunch the bleeding, but Beckham stopped her.
“Finish it.”
“You’ll bleed out.”
“I’ll heal,” he said.
Reyna gritted her teeth and moved on to the next bullet.
She had to find a place within herself that didn’t feel Beckham’s pain, that didn’t react to his short gasps, that didn’t recognize the blood rushing down his perfect chest. She was calm, numb, empty.
She had to be. Her emotions were always too close to the surface, and if she looked at it any other way she would break down at the sight of his suffering.
It was easier to be present enough to remove the bullets but otherwise be absent.
She’d never been to this place before. Her courage had always sprung from her inherent hotheadedness. But now she needed steely inner strength.
All that mattered was Beckham. Everything else slipped away. She’d deal with her feelings about what she was doing later.
Her hands were steady as she dislodged a bullet from his arm.
It had embedded into the bone and digging it out was a feat.
It came free with a squelch and the bullet tinged on the ground.
That was the last of the upper half. She stared down at his muscular legs, solid like tree trunks.
Those beautiful legs with holes in them.
She let the thought drift away and started in on his thighs.
Dig in, cut, pull, blood.
Again and again.
Her hands were coated with sticky red blood. Her body covered in a thin sheen of sweat. Her breathing even and measured. She didn’t risk speaking.
The last bullet came out with a small pop.
That was it. That was the end. Everything rushed back to her all at once.
A rattling sound penetrated her sharp inhale.
Reyna dropped the knife. It clattered noisily on the tile floor.
The room looked like a fucking murder scene.
Blood coated her clothes, coated Beckham’s body.
It was all over the floor and the walls and even the ceiling.
Reyna stood on shaky knees and moved to the sink. She turned the water to the hottest setting and ran her now trembling hands under it. She felt the burn but all she saw was blood. She washed her hands and forearms until they were raw, and still all she saw was blood red.
She faced him. “We need to clean you up.”
A gurgling sound came from Beckham’s throat. That was when she noticed what her brain hadn’t been able to process before.
He wasn’t healing.