He breathed again, but his shoulders strained forward and his spine arched.
The section leader wiped his forehead, which did little more than smear blood into his sweaty hairline. Gideon was a Militia Warrior operating at Warrior of the Blood status, thanks in part to his vampire DNA but in more recent months to Warrior Jean-Pierre’s newly acquired ability to channel warrior powers.
Everything was changing.
Finally, Leto was able to speak again. He looked up at Gideon once more. “Give me details,” he said, clenching his fists. He had maybe three minutes.
Gideon’s nostrils flared. “We tracked them into the mountains. The mist-dome seems to be holding. At every juncture within ten feet of the dome, the detail would turn away, but each time they did, another one of their group, observing at a distance, would lay down another transmitter.” He tossed the small black box onto the desk.
Leto stared at it. His cheeks cramped as a round of nausea swept over him. Still, he persevered. “Do we know exactly what this is yet?”
“The techs think it might be some kind of satellite mapping technology. We tried to get them all, but this is a huge perimeter.”
“Shit,” Leto muttered. “They’re mapping the location of the colony through negative space.”
“That’s what it looks like. Maybe they can’t see the mist, and maybe the mist turns them away, but laying out these transmitters will eventually create a map.”
“It also means we’ve run out of time.” He wasn’t even sure they’d get through the three days set aside for the warrior games.
Gideon seemed to settle into himself as he said, “Agreed.”
Leto turned the box over in his hand and breathed through another heavy vibration. This news wasn’t good, but his current physical situation right now was even worse. His vision had started the paring-down process; soon he would see everything through a black tunnel.
Brynna sent, You’ve got two minutes.
Got it.
He turned back to Gideon. He was really feeling the change coming. His lips parted and he started breathing through his mouth. He leaned forward in his chair. Could he even get the next set of words out?
“You and your men get cleaned up and double the patrols. Let’s get as many of these transmitters as we can. That should buy us some time.”
Gideon nodded, turned, and left the room. Thank God.
His breathing grew rougher, heavier. This one had come on so fast.
Shit.
“Get up,” Brynna said. “Now.”
He pushed up from the chair. Sweat popped all over his body.
By the time he stood, he was hunched and shaking. “Get me out of here,” he said, between clenched teeth.
He felt her palm on his shoulder. He cursed long and loud as the slide through nether-space began. He didn’t know why, but it hurt like a bitch to dematerialize when the transformation started.
He arrived in the basement of his cabin. He’d built his home deep in the forest, at the edge of the mist-dome, to keep what he went through as private as possible. He collapsed on the hard stone floor, laid and mortared by his own hands. He curled up in a fetal position, trying to stop the process.
“You gotta let go,” Brynna said. “Stop holding it in. Just let go, you idiot-bastard.”
He huffed a laugh. “I … don’t want … this.”
“I don’t know why not,” she said sarcastically. “You look so comfortable on the floor sweating like a pig.”
“Now get out of here. You know what happened last time.”
“Hey, the scars are almost gone.”
Again, he chuffed a laugh. Brynna was a powerful vampire. She’d stayed once, they’d fought, he’d cut her up some but she’d healed within an hour.
“Leave.”
“Fine. Just don’t soil yourself again.”
He coughed and laughed at the same time. “Bryn, you’re such a prick.”
“Thank you. Best compliment ever. Adios.”
As she dematerialized, he felt the faint movement of air over his boiling skin. The shaking started.
He breathed hard.
During the past few months, he’d tried everything under the sun to get over this condition, including weeks of therapy with Alison and even a blood transfusion.
When the shaking built so that he felt like every joint in his body would come apart, he let go of any hope that he could stop the process. In the hopelessness, however, came a kind of release, and he gave himself over to the change.
The shakes diminished as he pushed himself to his feet. He stripped off his clothes. They would be no good to him anyway in the next few minutes. They wouldn’t fit. He’d learned that much—to get rid of his clothes before the change ripped them to shreds.
He bent over slightly and felt the inordinate swelling of his shoulders and arms, as though in an instant he’d packed on forty pounds of muscle. His thighs expanded and he grew from six-six to a powerful six-eight. Even his cheekbones spread slightly, giving him the look of a predator.
He tore the cadroen from his long black hair. His hair moved around his head in powerful emotional waves, settling at last to hang beside his face.
He was something greater, more powerful, yet more animal than he’d ever been. He hated this man-beast. He was a demonic version of the warrior he’d been and the opposite of the vampire he’d cultivated in himself for millennia. Warrior he might have been, but like Antony Medichi he considered himself a gentleman, with fairly refined tastes, a preference for an excellent port, long games of chess, and discussions of philosophy and religion.
That his centuries of service had led him here, to this beast-state, humiliated and infuriated him.
The next stage began, a vibration in his chest and throat, a new round of humiliation ready to come forth.
He chuffed. He even tried to restrain himself. But an image of Grace, folding away with Casimir and disappearing from his life all those months ago, streaked through his mind like a bolt of lightning. She was his woman, and she had left with that bastard, Casimir.
The ensuing roar came from so deep in his chest that he felt the sensation into his testicles. With his knees bent, he roared at the low basement ceiling, over and over, but this time the sound was different, full of a kind of resonance that had never been there before.
He felt as though he were calling from the distance of tens of thousands of years ago, when humans were swamp-creatures and battled in small territorial tribes. Was this what he was, a throwback to ancient times? Was this the result of the slavery to dying blood that Greaves had forced on him as a sign of his loyalty?