Free The Willing by Aila Cline Page B

Will brought me back.
    The light poured in strongly through a
window. I was in a hotel room, the sheets crumpled around me as if
I had slept badly. I pushed them away, turning over into my pillow,
my mind a snarl of confusion. There was nothing but a blank in my
mind from yesterday evening to this morning, other than a few
hurried whispers last night that I very well may or may not have
dreamed. The ache pulsing behind my eyes did not exactly contribute
to a speedy recovery of memory.
    Imagine my surprise then, when reality
came crashing in on me. My nose took in the sharp, acrid scent of
my own blood. Despite feeling like I had spent a night being
pummeled by the human prey again, I jumped out of bed. The bathroom
mirror showed a disaster.
    “What the hell?” My voice echoed
strangely in the empty hotel room.
    My face and throat had splashes of
crimson running up and down them. All I could do was clean up. I
lived. I may have been confused, but I still breathed and could get
back to the only safety I knew at that moment. Maybe Josh would
know what the hell had happened. By God, he was confident he knew
everything else.

    Emily
    “You sure you want to do
this?”
    “He has to be stopped before he hurts
someone else.”
    “Emily, what did he do to
you?”
    I couldn’t answer Luka then. I don’t
know if I’ll ever be able to answer him. My only response was to
lean over and kiss him softly on the cheek. The bandages on my ribs
stretched as I did so and the pain was almost beautiful in this
state between waking and sleeping, letting me know I was still
living. Even my breaths that came in almost ragged gasps told me
that I could still fight. Maria had ripped me apart. It was time to
stop thinking so much and start doing.

    The Lycanti
    One look at me told Josh all he needed
to know.
    “Leave,” he said to the others. He had
been standing, staring into the flames, warming his hands. “Go far
away. Emily and I need to talk.”
    They left, obeying his order
immediately and without any dissention. For once, I was glad of his
authority over his pack. We heard them move stealthily out of
range. He turned his attention fully to me. “Vampires,” he said
levelly.
    I nodded.
    He nodded in return. “You seem to have
such a knack for survival, my dear.”
    “Cut the shit, Josh,” I said suddenly.
“I hurt, I’m tired, and I want to know why I’m alive. You made it
sound like I wouldn’t survive the experience.”
    “You shouldn’t have.”
    That left me silent long enough for him
to fill the gap.
    “Vampires feed exclusively on those
with the Lycanthrope gene,” he explained. “As you know, we let off
a particular scent.”
    At first, I couldn’t believe he was
telling me this. I had been with his pack for half a year and he
had never mentioned anything about the topic. Never would I have
imagined that, to be cliché, the hunters become the
hunted.
    My thoughts tumbled over Will and
Luka’s disdain for the Children of Dacre. “I don’t understand,” I
said tentatively, hoping my sudden fragility would invite him to
tell me more.
    His earnest gaze caught me off guard.
He really is a gorgeous specimen of a man, no matter how much I
hate him now. “Do you know how they are created?”
    “Yes.”
    “Tell me what you know.”
    I struggled to pull up the fragments of
what I had pieced together over my born-in-blood tutorial in the
underworld of America. “Death. Or something like it. To make a
Lycanti, you have to exchange the blood before the heart stops
beating. Vampires are made when the blood exchange comes too late.
The person is dead.”
    “Very good. But I understand you know
this because your Change was uncontrolled. You almost died,
correct?”
    The memory of it still scalded me from
time to time. “Yes.”
    “No true Lycanthrope allows such things
to be out of his control. No one should go through what you did.
The Change should be joyous, the beautiful bond of loyalty between
master and servant made