Some vamps are skilled enough to make their bites feel like minor annoyances, like a veteran nurse knowing exactly how to slip an IV needle into a patient's hand to minimize that initial prick of pain.
Dekes was not one of those vamps. He didn't want to minimize my pain or discomfort - he wanted the elemental power in my blood, and he wanted to brutalize me while he took it. The only one getting any pleasure out of this was him, and I could feel his erection pressing against my thigh as he leaned over me. Sick, sadistic bastard. It wouldn't surprise me at all if he was one of the vamps who got a power boost off sex just like he did from drinking blood.
The hot stench of my own coppery blood filled my nose, overpowering everything else. Sweat slickened my hands, my whole body trembled, and white starbursts exploded in my eyes. And still, Dekes kept sucking out my blood. Squeeze, squeeze, squeeze.
As an assassin, I'd suffered just about every injury big and small that a person could experience over the years. I'd been stabbed, shot, beaten, burned, electrocuted, blasted with elemental magic, and buried alive too many times to count. But this was a different kind of agony altogether because not only was Dekes hurting me, he was also taking a piece of me with him at the same time - the elemental magic that was as much a part of who and what I was as the spider runes branded into my palms.
My hands were tied down to the chair arms so I couldn't see the scars, but I could feel the silverstone - and the magical metal seemed to be wriggling around like hot worms underneath my skin. I blocked out the agony of the vampire's bite and concentrated on that strange sensation - and I realized that I could feel my scars burning, burning, burning with the cold power of my Ice and Stone magic, until it seemed like the silverstone was soaking up just as much of my power as Dekes was. I didn't know if I was consciously doing it or some self-preservation switch had been flipped in the back of my brain, but somehow I was directing my magic into the silverstone that had been melted into my flesh, storing the power there and trying to keep as much of it away from the vampire for as long as possible.
Maybe the blood loss was making me hallucinate already, but it almost seemed like I could feel the silverstone scars stubbornly holding on to my power even as Dekes tried to pull it out of my neck. It felt as if I was playing a bizarre tug-of-war with my own magic deep inside my veins. Every time Dekes sucked at my neck, I could feel the scars yanking back, trying to keep my elemental power inside my own body where it belonged instead of flowing through my blood and out into the vamp's greedy mouth. Too bad I didn't know what - if any - good it would do me. I might be an elemental, but there was only so much blood that I could lose and still live.
Finally, just when I thought I couldn't stand another second of the vamp's f**king fangs in my neck without going absolutely crazy, Dekes lifted his head and stared at me. I'd thought that his eyes had gleamed like a cat's before, but now they blazed like two emerald suns in his tan features. It was eerie, sickening, and disconcerting, looking into the vamp's face and seeing my own Ice and Stone power reflected in his gaze. A small, dazed part of me wondered if my eyes ever burned that brightly when I reached for my elemental magic.
Jo-Jo always claimed that I was one of the strongest elementals she'd ever met, and I'd managed to go toe-to-toe with Mab and survive. But the amount of magic that I sensed in the vamp right now was just staggering - and it was supposed to be mine. It was mine, until the bastard had taken it away from me.
"The power," Dekes murmured in a low, reverent whisper, his words slurring like he was drunk on wine. "I never dreamed of such raw power."
Then the bastard bit me again, driving his fangs into my right shoulder and snapping my collarbone. I screamed again, although the sound came out as a hoarse rasp, since I was already so weak from the blood loss.
I didn't know how many people Dekes had fed off during his three hundred - plus years on this earth, how many women he had used for their blood and elemental magic, how many times he had brutalized them until their bodies and power wore out and they simply had nothing more to give him. The vampire had no doubt left hundreds of dead women in his wake, thinking no more of them than humans did of the food they consumed on a daily basis.
But apparently Dekes had never encountered anyone with as much power as I had because the vampire fell into a feeding frenzy, like a shark frantically thrashing around in a sea full of chum, trying to snap up every single bloody, bony scrap that he could. The vamp bit me over and over and over again all across my neck and shoulders, his fangs tearing and ripping and slicing into my flesh as if he couldn't get enough of my blood, as if he couldn't ever get enough of the Ice and Stone magic flowing through my veins.
"Stop! Stop it, Randall! You're taking too much! You're going to kill her!"
I was dimly aware of Vanessa screaming at the vampire and clawing at him with her hands, trying to pull him off me, but I knew that it was no use. Dekes was high on my elemental power, as high as a junkie on any drug could be, and he wasn't coming down until there wasn't a single drop of blood or magic left in me.
The bastard was going to drain me dry - and there was nothing I could do to stop him.
For a moment, I sank into the cold, lethargic blackness that was slowly clouding my vision, my body, my mind. It would be so easy to let go, to let myself drown in the darkness where there was no more pain, no more torture, no more anything . . .
Fuck that, I growled at myself. Gin Blanco never gave up - not now, not ever.
I'd found my way out of a collapsed coal mine, I'd been electrocuted by LaFleur - hell, I'd even killed Mab f**king Monroe against all the odds. I'd survived all those things, and I'd come out stronger each time. Not to mention Bria, Finn, the Deveraux sisters, and Owen. I had them to live for now, and I wasn't going to let some psychotic, power-hungry vamp be the end of me.
Think, Gin. Think.
I struggled to push away the numbing blackness from my mind and focus. My situation wasn't good. I was tied down, immobilized, and bleeding from the deep, vicious bites that Dekes had inflicted on my neck and shoulders. Even if I were free, there was no way I could have fought my way past the vampire and the giants in the room. Not now, when I was so weak and injured and when Dekes had already stolen so much of my Ice and Stone magic.
Desperately, my gaze zoomed around the library, looking for something, anything, that would help me out of this mess. That would at least make Dekes stop biting me and give me a chance to f**king regroup. But there was nothing. Just books and giants and Vanessa screaming and Victoria lying limp on the couch . . .