“Where is he?” My voice dripped with agitation.

“With Antonio in one of his parlour rooms.”

“Why would he think you’d go with him?” asked Jared.

I puffed. “Victor’s a master at manipulation.”

“He will not be allowed to threaten you,” Sebastian assured me. “You can refuse to see him if you wish, but I suspect that he will only press the matter until you agree to see him.”

I nodded in agreement and inhaled deeply. “Alright, take me to the bugger.”

“I’m coming.” Jared’s tone left no room for negotiation.

As much as moral support was nice, I didn’t want Jared there. I didn’t want him to see the weak person that Victor had the power to reduce me to. “No.”

“Why?”

“If a bloke walks in there with me it’ll piss him right off. He never liked other blokes round me, it got him paranoid. He’ll think me and you are together and he’ll be even more difficult.”

Jared shrugged. “That’s a good thing. If he loses it, Antonio’s got an excuse to throw him out, no conversations necessary.”

“He has a point,” said Sebastian.

Before I could speak, Jared added, “I’m Antonio’s Heir and you’re my co-worker -”

“Co-worker?” I asked with a smile.

“Yeah, co-worker. I’ve a right to be there, and I’m going with you – end of discussion.”

“If I can’t even get you off my back how in the hell am I going to stand up against Victor?” I grumbled.

Jared grabbed my lower arm gently. “Look, all you have to do is go in there and tell him you don’t want to go back to him.”

Sounded easy enough. But it wasn’t. “Victor’s power...He can gauge and alter your emotions.”

“Alter your emotions?”

“In other words, if he wants you to feel something or want something it can be very hard to resist it. I’ve had plenty of practice, and I reckon I can block him better than most. But not for long. It has this crushing effect on you until you feel like your head will explode.”

“He’ll try to make you want him.”

I nodded. “Won’t this be fun.”

“So then we need to get you in and out the room as quick as possible.”

Jared had made it sound so simple. Maybe it could be. Maybe I was fretting for nothing. It hadn’t been long since I’d left Victor and already I felt like a different person. For the first time since becoming a vampire I’d experienced freedom, friendship, passion, and the feel of having a life of my own with my own job, my own home, my own money, my own belongings. Just the very idea of Victor wanting to make me lose all that was enough to make me inflate with resentment.

“Let’s get this over with.”

With each step I made nearer to the parlour that cold draft within me got chillier. Victor was well and truly pissed, I sensed. Vampires always had close emotional links to their Sires whether they wanted them or not. Being a mixture of both eager to get it over with and tempted to procrastinate, I had that dreamy feeling of walking on the spot but not actually getting anywhere. Determined to be strong or else I’d never resist Victor’s influence, I squashed the sense of panic and focused on the graceful, elegant, leisurely stroll of Sebastian as he led Jared and I to the parlour.

He’s already trying to reach your emotions, isn’t he? said Jared as Sebastian opened the parlour room door. I can feel the weight of his power in the air.

My head’s pounding already.

I’ll get you out quick, I promise.

This parlour was much the same as the one Antonio had taken me to that time he had offered me the job, except that there was no piano in here. Antonio was sitting on a beige sofa with Luther beside him and his guards on either side.

Startling me, both Nero and Achilles dashed over to me protectively. The snarls they hurled at the very unwanted visitor were silent. Victor was stood between the two sofas in a smart black trouser suit and stared at me as if we were the only people in the room. Several emotions flashed in his squinty gray eyes. Relief. Pleasure. Desire. Betrayal. Fury.

Instantly I had the feeling of being hit hard with a heavy object, but it wasn’t an object. It was pressure. A pressurizing sense of guilt.

“Sam,” he drawled, his thin lips forming a warm smile. “You don’t know how much I’ve missed you, luv.” He had a way of being able to always sound friendly, polite, reasonable and compassionate. His eyes scanned my appearance. He didn’t look too happy about the tight clothing. The clenching and unclenching of his fists was expected. “Looking well.”

I didn’t speak. I was afraid of what I’d say. One part of me had an instinct to yell a string of profanities at him and tell him to go jump up his own arse. But another part of me wanted to run to him and beg him to forgive me for leaving him and ask him to take me home – thanks to the weight of the guilt that he was throwing at me. The more I tried to fight it the more my head hurt.

Knowing that the closer I physically was to him the easier it would be for him to rule my emotional state, I stopped about five feet away from him. Jared halted beside me. It seemed that it was only then that Victor noticed him. I watched as Victor read Jared’s emotions. A smile appeared, which surprised me.

“Aren’t you going to come and give your old hubby a hug?” he asked me.

The strength and sharpness in my voice surprised me. “You’re not my husband.”

“There’s no need to lie.”

But I wasn’t lying. And Victor knew that. Just like he knew that I hated being called something that I wasn’t, especially a liar. “I know what you’re trying to do,” I told him. “Trying to piss me off so my composure will crack and you can control my emotions easier.” I shook my head. “It won’t work.”

Suddenly the force of the guilt was overwhelming, and there was a new emotion too: self-loathing. I had the sensation of being stuck in a pit with emotions that weren’t my own clinging to me and trying to devour me.

“You agreed not to manipulate her emotions,” warned Antonio.

“And I’m not.” Victor was utterly unaffected by Antonio’s air of authority, I realised. That was probably a lot to do with the fact that he was a fruitcake. “You must have noticed by now that my Sam can be temperamental. One minute she’s furious, the next minute she’s calm, and then all of a sudden she develops a sense of humour.”

As usual, he was coming across as reasonable and fair while making me out to be the pain in the backside. Planting the seed of suspicion was a specialty of his. Plus, he knew that falsely accusing me of doing things or being things was likely to crack me.

“She did a runner because she was angry with me, not because she doesn’t love me or want to be with me. Isn’t that right, Sam, luv?”

God I wanted to smack him. I wanted to scream out to Antonio that Victor was a lying, manipulative twat and not to listen to a word he said. Victor knew this. But I didn’t do those things, because I knew that the more energy I spent trying to defend myself the weaker I would be to his power. “What is it you want?”

Victor’s smile disappeared but his friendly, caring tone remained. “I just want you to come home, luv. What else would I want?”

“No.” The word was no more than a whisper. It had hurt to get out, especially since a part of me hated myself for saying something so awful. Self-loathing.

Good girl. I could almost feel Jared’s pride.

“No?” giggled Victor. He took a few steps toward me.

Simultaneously another emotion came crashing down on me. Desire. It stirred low in my stomach. My thighs instantly clenched and I had to swallow back a moan.

“Don’t be daft, luv. Come to me.” He opened his arms and I almost did go.

What’s he trying to make you feel now?

He wants me to want him.

A second later Victor’s head whipped to face Jared and I felt a million times lighter as the saddle of emotions slipped away from me. I could only guess that Jared must have sent a telepathic thought to Victor that he really didn’t like.

I spoke quickly, “You’ve come to hear it from me so here it is: I’m not going back with you, Victor. I’m asking you to free me from your hold.”

Victor snickered. “I bet you’re very pleased with yourself, aren’t you; getting picked for the legion tryouts and then getting hired by Antonio as a Commander. You just remember that I’m the one who made you and I’m the one who taught you how to use your gift -”

“Taught isn’t the word I’d use,” I spat.

“- and every single strength you have you owe to me. You wouldn’t be where you are now if it weren’t for me.”

I smiled. “Then you only have yourself to blame for Antonio offering me a position then, don’t you?”

His snarl was loud and feral, making Nero and Achilles bark.

“Victor, will you release me from your hold?”

“Never,” he growled. No surprise there. “You’re mine.”

I turned my attention to the Latino-looking bloke on the sofa. “Antonio, you’ve witnessed me say I don’t want to leave with him, will you grant me release from his hold?”

Victor pivoted on the spot and bore his teeth at Antonio. “She’s mine.” The guards were beside their Grand High Master in less than a second.

Antonio, completely unfazed by Victor’s behaviour, said calmly, “Samantha Parker, I release you from your Sire’s hold with immediate effect.”

No one else felt it but me. That surge of black, bottomless hatred, that seething need to cause pain. It was coursing through Victor, I could sense it. Then there was a snap within him, I felt that too. Antonio’s guards were quick and would have easily apprehended Victor before he reached Antonio, but I didn’t think about that when I saw him ready to pounce. All I thought about was defending Antonio.

Soaking up the energy around me, I felt it swirl in my grasp and I blasted it out of my palm in the form of a thermal beam; a long, silver ray of hot energy that buried itself into Victor’s abdomen and burned him from the inside out: his favourite thing for me to do to his marks.

He cried and writhed and fell to his knees, and I felt that same pain...Like being torn open and sliced by a boiling hot knife while heat shot through my body, singing my extremities. And then he disappeared in the flame and disintegrated completely. It was my turn to cry out.

(Jared)

I couldn’t believe she’d done it. Not many vampires would kill their Sires. It was the same feeling of killing a parent; even if they were a total ass you respected that they created you and you had a special link with them – in most cases, anyway. Plus, the physical pain of destroying that link and killing your Sire was, from everything I’d heard, unbearable. It could even make vampires ill, it was the only thing that could.

So there Sam was on her knees, gritting her teeth against an agony that I could only imagine.

I was the first to react. It was pure instinct to kneel beside her and pull her to me and envelope her with my arms. I half-expected her to push me away – what with her being as stubborn as she was. But instead she buried her face in my chest while her hands clamped down tightly on my arms. An ear-piercing whine still escaped her mouth despite how much she ground her teeth together. She was shaking so hard she was more or less convulsing. I couldn’t even tell where the pain was coming from.

“What hurts?” I asked Luther and Antonio as they rushed over to her. The dogs where making slight howling sounds. “Will it be her stomach, her head – what?”

Luther gazed down at her with sympathy. “The pain supposedly hits every single part of your body.”

I sighed out of my nose. I wanted to punch something. “How long will it last?”

“She could be like this for minutes or hours,” replied Antonio, running a hand over her hair but she didn’t seem to feel it. I wasn’t even sure if she knew who was holding her.

Sam? Sam?

It BURNS! The pain was obvious in her mental voice.

Where?

EVERYWHERE!

“Brave little thing, isn’t she,” said one of the guards.

“A very extraordinary young lady,” commented Luther.

Just then her body shook hard and blood poured out of her mouth and drenched my t-shirt.

I glanced up at Antonio and Luther. “Is there anything that’ll make it stop?” I already knew the answer would be no.

“You have to think of it as her body grieving,” said Luther. “As vampires, our links with our Sires are based on the exchange of blood that occurred during the creation process. Victor drank her to near death and then fed her his own blood. Her body no longer has a living, breathing blood-link and it is grieving it. Grieving is a process – painful, draining, overbearing. It must run its course. For vampires who have ended the life of their own Sire, the agony will be no less than excruciating. I’m told that the pain is bad enough that it makes you want to die.”

Jared? She sounded weak but there was something else in her mental voice. Hope, maybe? Hold me still.

What?

Just hold me still.

So I did. I tightened my arms around her until she was as still as I could get her. Then I watched, completely baffled, as she moved one of her hands from my arm to her chest. A slight zing went through her body and then she was limp in my arms mere seconds later.

“What’s wrong with her?” Seized by panic, I set her back slightly and examined her body with my eyes. The hand she had against her chest flopped down to her lap, revealing something small lodged there. Holding her securely with one arm, I used my free hand to pluck the little thing out from between her br**sts.