If you have not read the first book of the series, "Reborn", it is advisable you do so before reading "Renewal" or you will be lost. This link will provide you with a series summary as well as all sixty-eight chapters of Reborn
Chapter Forty-Five
When Jess awoke the next time it was to the most intense pain a person could possibly experience and still be conscious. Every part of her was assaulted by a fire within, her blood replaced by a molten stream of lava. She would have screamed again but she lacked the energy and could only rock slightly while making an eerie whistling sound.
As the time stretched the pain grew in its severity until she prayed for death, chanting “Let me die” in her mind until it ran together in gibberish.
Unconsciousness finally came and swallowed her.
Hours later she woke once more, the pain having lessened, but only a little, and she sobbed soundlessly when she realized she was still in the same place. Unless she was in hell…the thought had her eyes slamming open and her body yanking upward in terror. The scream she couldn’t manage earlier erupted from her mouth, then abruptly froze and died when three men burst through the door she was facing.
They were heavily tattooed and pierced, dressed in all black, with unnatural colors streaking their hair. She knew instantly what they were. She’d never seen vampires who looked more like vampires. The need to flee possessed her but as she swung her gaze around wildly she saw the only way out was behind them. They approached her slowly and she threw her arms around her head and pushed backwards with her feet until she was pressed up against the wall.
The males looked at one another with varying expressions of surprise and disbelief. “Um, I think she’s afraid,” Chris broke the silence with a whisper.
“Animals know fear,” Jay retorted, regarding her warily.
Aerik made his way across the room and knelt beside the bed. “We’re not going to hurt you,” he said softly. “You’re safe with us.”
She responded by sinking her head between her knees and wrapping her arms around her legs tightly.
“What do we do?” Chris asked.
Aerik shook his head helplessly and carefully placed a hand on the girl’s arm. She jerked from his touch and a sound of distress escaped her.
Thirsty, Jess thought, Oh God, so thirsty and the male kneeling beside her had made the fire in her intensify into a blend of need and pain. He put his hand on her arm once more and this time she pulled her head up a little and stared at it. She could see the pulse in his wrist, could hear the blood traveling through his veins and she wanted it. Needed it, sensed it would make her pain lessen.
Her tongue darted out and moistened her lower lip. Quick as lightning she snatched his hand and brought it to her mouth. The ache in her gums that she’d barely registered in the midst of all her pain came to the forefront and she felt her back molars lengthen and drop. The moment they did she sank the sharp points into the vein at his wrist and sucked. She moaned in immeasurable relief as the warm flowery liquid flowed into her mouth and down her throat spreading out through her body and soothing the torment inside of her.
She vaguely registered voices around her.
“Are you sure you should be letting her do that?” Chris asked quietly. He and Jay had come to stand next to Aerik, looking between the girl on the bed and their brother with expressions of confusion and concern.
“She’s not reacting violently,” Jay commented in equally hushed tones, his expression one of bewilderment. “Isn’t that what they normally do? The ones we saw hissed and snarled and tore at one another.”
Aerik couldn’t bring himself to respond. He had never been fed from in his life, not having known any females since he was a child, and the feeling of it was…indescribably wonderful. It was as though his whole body was being brushed lightly with feathers, particularly the more sensitive areas, and at the same time a fierce feeling of protectiveness welled up in him. He felt the tugging slow down and when she finally pulled away she buried her face in her arms once more. They watched in silence as shudders wracked through her body.
Aerik placed a hand on the side of her head and she wrenched away from him turning over on her side and pushing her face into the pillow. He continued to kneel beside her at a loss for what to do next. Finally he pulled himself to his feet swinging his gaze to his brothers and shrugged helplessly. “I think we should just let her be for a bit. With all the pain she’s suffered she must be exhausted.”
Jay laughed shortly. “The physical pain or the emotional? Or how about mental? If she…
Aerik made a cutting gesture at his throat and pointed to the door. They headed out and Chris made a beeline for the whiskey taking a long swallow. He set the bottle down hard and clasped the edge of the table while Jay and Aerik took their own swigs.
“What the fuck do we make of this?” Chris continued to grip the edge of the table staring hard at Aerik who was generally the one to take control.
“I think….I guess we just wait and see. Since we fully expected her to either die in the change or violently attack and force her death we didn’t plan for anything else. Which is really fucking odd if you think about it. Why the hell did we save her in the first place if we couldn’t imagine a different outcome?”
“Because we couldn’t muster up the balls to kill a pretty young girl?” Jay quirked an eyebrow.
“No, if there had been absolutely no doubt about the outcome I think I could’ve done it,” Aerik bit the inside of his cheek. “Somewhere inside I believed there was a chance it might turn out differently, I think we all did.”
“We held a tiny sliver of hope you mean,” Chris met each of their eyes. “But the fact remains that she still might be little more than an animal, albeit it a docile one. So far all she’s done is scream, cover herself like she was warding off an impending attack, and seize your wrist to drink…which you seemed to enjoy by the way…did you? How did it feel?”
Aerik described it to the best of his ability then addressed the question of whether or not she was still a thinking being by reiterating his suggestion to “wait and see.”
They looked towards her room, the door visible from both the kitchen and the den, and went to the couch dropping heavily on it. There were no windows in the small guestroom they’d placed her in and the only way in or out was through the door, so they didn’t have to worry about her escaping. From the time they’d brought her into the house they had slept in shifts and it seemed the arrangement would continue.
“My God, what if she does turn out okay?” Chris spoke up in wonder.
Aerik gave him a look.
“I know, I know, wait and see.”
Jess could hear them talking but something was wrong with her because though they spoke English she couldn’t understand them. She vaguely acknowledged this was because of all the other voices she was hearing, not to mention noises…it was as if she’d been placed in a room filled with televisions tuned into all different stations with varying levels of volume.
Above all that she heard her own heartbeat thundering in her ears and panic had her insides clenching and unclenching. She began hyperventilating and thought her lungs were going to explode from lack of oxygen.
She fought in one long breath and then released it on a silent scream as she pressed forcefully on her ears, willing the noises TO STTOPPPP!! The moment the mental command was shouted everything fell silent. Gasping and shaking, she tentatively moved her hands. Her ears felt hot and bruised from the pressure she’d applied. She willed her heart to slow then burst into silent sobs that wracked her body. A long time later she drifted to sleep.
She was startled awake by the thud of her body hitting the floor as she rolled from the bed. Every muscle in her ached as if she’d been sprinting for hours, and her muddled mind supplied images of violent dreams.
She heard a creaking sound and whipped fearfully in its direction. The gothic vampire whose BLOOD SHE’D DRANK was walking towards her and she scrambled away from him pressing against the wall. She tried desperately to make her thoughts coherent but instead of words they kept forming in pictures and images.
She pressed her face against the cool sheetrock and willed the figure to go away and after a few moments she sensed he had. Finally she managed to find a few words and she grabbed a hold of them, letting them repeat in her mind over and over. God, help me, please help me. Oh God please….
He must have heard her because the cobwebs in her brain finally began to clear away. Anna’s face flashed in her mind and she caught the image and held it. Anna. She was like Anna now.
Oh my God, she thought as it sunk in, I’m a vampire. She blinked in disbelief. A vampire. She shook her head slowly back and forth then more brusquely, tears sliding down her cheeks as the events leading up to her current situation clarified in her mind. Her and Jenna being taken. The vampiress who had sliced her throat.
But what had happened after? Who had made her into this? And where was she, who were the vampires with her now? She had only looked at them briefly but she remembered thinking they looked like vampires, unlike the ones she already knew who mostly appeared human.
They had to be friends of the ones who had abducted her and Jenna. Which meant they were bad. Very, very bad.
What were they going to do with her? Her eyes widened as she remembered that aside from Anna no one had ever heard of a person making it through the change. They either died or turned into raging beasts.
Wait…the ones who had taken her and Jenna didn’t know Anna had been human, she swallowed thickly. They had thought she was a vampiress who’d managed to hide in America, which meant…what?
She cringed as she thought about the place where Anna had been taken and turned, a place where they’d made a sport of changing humans and pitting them against each other. Was that what they’d intended to do with her?
But she wasn’t in a place like that, or at least it appeared she was in some kind of house. She lifted her head off the wall and looked around.
She was in a small, sparsely furnished room without windows…Oh God, I could be in a place like that she thought with renewed panic. Maybe all the voices and noises I heard last night were coming from outside the room or below the room where the fights were taking place….All the voices she’d heard. She blinked.
She wasn’t hearing anything at the moment, but what had Anna said about her abilities? She’d worked at them and learned to control them. Last night…or at least she thought it had been night…she’d willed the voices to stop and they had. Like she’d pressed a mute button.
Cautiously she concentrated on listening to her surroundings and just like Anna had described, it was as if she had an inner volume control. She could feel her mind stretching out…and she heard them, voices, male voices. She stretched further and found she could hear all kinds of voices, and traffic, and radios…she pulled herself back and gasped. Abruptly the situation overwhelmed her.
She had superpowers. She remembered the day she’d learned Anna was a vampire, how her friend had shown off what she could do. Anna had been excited about her newfound abilities.
She wished she could feel that way, but all she felt was fear.
She knew she should stretch her hearing out again and listen in on the vampires around her, but she didn’t want to. She didn’t want to have the ability to do that, she didn’t want to have any new powers, she just wanted to be “Jess the human girl”.
Tears began slipping down her face again. I’m weak, she thought miserably, I’m not like Anna. She would be figuring her way out of the situation, looking for an escape.
She closed her eyes and put a hand on the wall trying to find strength. But the thought of trying to run made her sick with fear. If they caught her…she trembled, squeezing her eyes shut.
After a long while she opened them slowly as a thought came to her. She hadn’t spoken to the vampires, she could let them think she couldn’t speak. Maybe it wasn’t much of a plan, but it was better than nothing. At least they couldn’t use her against Anna if they thought her mind was gone.
She pulled herself off the floor and climbed back onto the bed hoping sleep would come again soon.
