Gerrod?

Trust me.

The wraith’s eyes, all that silver, opened wide. “My mastyr will be pleased. Of course it is very experimental, but we have had profound results. One day, we will prevail.” And there it was, the truth of all this organization. A mastyr vampire had taken the Invictus in hand and now worked to build a force against all the realms.

“Don’t delay,” Gerrod said. “She will not live much longer.”

Her gaze lowered to Abigail. “The human is very weak but the coupling will heal her.”

She sped away, her robes flapping behind like great red wings.

Gerrod, are we to become Invictus?

Trust...me. His vision grew dark and as he slid down the wall, he hoped to hell the wraith took him at his word.

Abigail felt arms pick her up. She glanced to her left. The vampire who had taken her blood, probably joined to the wraith now hovering nearby, held her steady. She whimpered because of her ribs.

“You will grow stronger, never fear,” the wraith said, floating in front of Abigail. “Then you’ll see the true majesty of what we intend to accomplish in the realm world.”

A troll slave shuffled toward her. She bore a silver chain, threaded through iron rings that dangled from each ear. The chain was caught below her chin and clamped together and travelled inside her beige muslin shirt. Abigail didn’t want to know where it ended. The slave waited beside the wraith, her head tipped submissively down, or maybe it was the weight of the chain dragging down her ears.

“Slave, you will take the knife and open the human’s vein.”

The troll stepped close to Abigail, took her arm in her hand, then cut her wrist open, a deep wound that made Abigail cry out. She opened her eyes and saw that the wraith held a bowl beneath her arm. She watched what little blood she had left stream into the pure white vessel.

“Good. That will do.” The raspy voice of the wraith flowed down from above her.

The troll bound her arm with gauze as Abigail looked around. Gerrod lay on the floor on his side. He looked horribly still.

She gasped. Gerrod? she pathed.

But nothing returned, just a blank emptiness. She turned and looked up at the wraith. “Is he dead?”

“No. Close. But this should work.”

“He won’t be able to drink.”

The wraith smiled, her yellow fangs so strange against her dark lips. “He won’t need to drink,” the wraith said. “We have many methods for completing the symbiotic bond.”

A chill traveled over Abigail’s neck. What did she mean?

The troll moved to Gerrod and bunched his sleeve above his elbow. She then cut him deep, not at the wrist but high on his forearm. Blood pumped slowly into the bowl, as in way-too-slow, rhythmic spurts, which was the only sign Abigail had that his heart still beat. After no more than fifteen seconds, the troll slapped a bandage on the wound. She returned the bowl to the wraith.

The wraith snapped her fingers at the troll then laughed as she extended her arm down to the slave. She levitated lower so that the troll could reach her wrist. “Make the cut, but not too severe, or the next cut will be on you.”

The troll trembled as she whipped the knife over the wraith’s veins at the wrist. The wraith didn’t even flinch. She let a good portion drip into the bowl.

When she was done, the troll bandaged her wrist.

The wraith then used what looked like a single chop stick to swirl the blood together. She breathed in deeply, her thin nostrils flaring. Her very white cheeks colored up and her fangs seemed to press down on her lower lip.

“The bouquet. Like bread dipped in wine. Exquisite.”

Abigail still panted each breath, waiting.

The wraith’s fangs retreated. She called out over her shoulder. “Bring me the syringe. We must do this now. He no longer breathes.”

Abigail drew in a sharp painful breath. She glanced at Gerrod’s chest and sides. The wraith was right. “Hurry.”

The slave helped the wraith fill the syringe with half the combined blood. With her foot, she pushed Gerrod onto his back.

“Expose his chest.”

The troll dropped to her knees and used the knife to cut through the shoulder strap. She made quick cuts at both front panels of the leather coat at the shoulders then sliced up his woven shirt. Within seconds, he was stripped to the waist, his heavily muscled pecs and strong abs horribly white under the glare of the fluorescent lights.

There was nothing pretty about this moment, just horror and pain.

“Step away,” the wraith commanded.

The slave rose and moved backward in quick short steps.

The wraith dropped to her knees, her hair still wafting back and forth. She put one hand on Gerrod’s chest and felt the spacing between the ribs.

Before Abigail could take the next breath, she slammed the syringe down into Gerrod’s body. This alone caused him to jerk, which gave Abigail some hope that he wasn’t too far gone. She depressed the plunger and the combined blood flowed into his heart.

He began to twitch.

She couldn’t take her eyes off him, not even when the wraith moved close and put the bowl to Abigail’s lips. She watched Gerrod as she drank the rest of their combined blood.

One second.

Two.

Three.

Gerrod’s skin color returned but soon ran an almost fiery red.

But that was the last she saw, because Abigail threw her head back and screamed. The pain was almost unbearable. Between her ribs and what the combined blood was doing to her, now she really couldn’t breathe. She just stared up at the ugly box light fixture, panting once more in light breaths. She felt as though her blood was doing battle with the wraith’s blood. Maybe it was.

The pain pulsed through her, driving into her head, setting every joint aching like she was being pummeled. Her skin felt blistered with heat.

But even through all this pain, for a moment, her mind seized, and her life began to roll before her, of the tragic deaths of her parents, the frequent and at times constant illness her sister endured, Abigail working nights and weekends while she finished her senior year in high school, later majoring in realm studies at Northern Arizona University but never completing her degree, of opening a bakery, of her sister’s health improving, then Megan’s wedding and the birth of her children.

But it was first seeing Gerrod that her mind grabbed, the sheer breadth of his shoulders, the fine angle of his back to a narrow waist, the fierce power of his thighs, the frequent look on his face when he would turn and stare at her, his expression so angry, as though she’d intruded on his life in order to torment him. Yet, how well she knew him now, that all that anger was a mask of deep concern for his people, the weight he bore in his soul, even his attraction to her, all that pulled his brow low and gave him a constant scowling appearance.

As the visions stopped, she realized her pain was gone and in its place was a thumping heartbeat, stronger than she’d ever known. She glanced at the wraith and something nagged at her, something that she had heard two weeks ago about wraith blood.

Enlightenment dawned as she remembered what Vojalie had said about a blood rose being impervious to wraith blood. She stared at Gerrod. He must have remembered this as well, which was why he knew neither could become the heinous symbiotic pair that enjoyed killing.

She focused within her body and felt it, her blood overcoming the wraith infection.

She sat up.

She stared at the wraith whose silver eyes glowed with a mad light. “You are now Invictus.”

Like hell I am, she thought. But all she did was dip her chin then turn to stare at Gerrod.

Her vision seemed changed, as though he had an aura around him. That aura drew her.

She rose to her feet in a fluid motion, her body completely healed. She felt better than she had ever felt in her life, except for the weight of the excess blood she had made for Gerrod. Yep, she was ready for her vampire again.

But now it all made sense, what at least one of her purposes in Gerrod’s life would be, now and forever. She crossed to him and dropped to stretch down beside him. She laid a hand on his chest.

He was breathing much better now, but the redness of his skin had faded and he was now once again very pale. She knew the cause: chronic blood starvation. Even the power latent in their combined bloods could not suddenly restore this amount of deprivation. Although as a blood rose, she’d had the opposite experience.

She touched his face. Drink from me, she said, mind-to-mind.

He blinked slowly, as though he wasn’t fully able to comprehend his surroundings.

Take from me all that you need and grow powerful once more.

He blinked again and his vision cleared. He dragged in a breath and his nostrils flared.

He fell on her, attacking her neck, sinking his fangs. He started to drink.

In the distance, she heard the wraith’s approval.

She slid her hands up into his long, thick hair and savored the feel of him taking her blood that he might live. Her body grew alive beneath his, straining against him as her hands slid over his bare muscled back.

As her heart evened out, she sighed. She understood now that the more she had been around Gerrod, the more blood she had produced, as though her body had understood on a hormonal level, even from the beginning, what she was long before Vojalie had spoken the words: blood rose.

Gerrod felt born anew. Abigail’s blood had returned his life to him. At the same time, he could feel a waning battle in his blood stream: the taint of wraith blood against the antidote of a blood rose. A few seconds more, and a stream of peace flowed through him. His blood was now pure. Abigail had prevailed.

His body pounded with life and he was fully aroused against her, but his mind was alive with the other truth, that he had a ruse to continue until he could get his woman to safety.

He shifted his mind to focus on anything but the warm soft body beneath all his hardness of muscle and desire.

He thought of Abigail’s bakery and the unimportant cupcakes that had brought the most important thing into his life.

He had Gus to thank for Abigail’s presence in his life, Gus of the pink and purple embroidered socks, who never feared to call him on the carpet for his bad behavior, Gus, who’s sweet tooth had taken him into Flagstaff one fateful day, and to a bakery called Just too Sweet!, which led to a second bakery, Just Two Sweet!