Cove's POV

In this world, only the foolish and the fortunate save a dying girl they hardly know. I must be foolish. Very foolish.

"If I get you what you want you'll let her go?"

"Now why would I do that Cove?"

"She didn't make any bargains. She doesn't belong to you."

He looks at me like he wants to eat me, filling the air between us with a resounding hiss. Then he sighs. "Fine, I'll let your girlfriend go. You can't blame me for trying. Anyone who takes advantage of my hospitality, taking time with my most expensive asset, should know it comes with a price. Is it not fair to expect a little taste in return?"

"That was hardly a taste!" There's no hiding the heat in my words.

He leans in, until his breath is on my cheek. "We're not monsters Cove. You think that we are to keep you here. Don't forget you chose this, to belong to me. I see the pleasure you get after we sip from you. Don't deny you enjoy it."

My jaw clenches as well as my right fist. It takes me a few seconds to relax my hand, enough to breathe, without wanting to punch his lights out.

Not that I could.

Hybrid bites are messy, but their saliva cocktail can be relatively addictive. Containing the perfect blend of psychoactive narcotics and neurotoxins, as well as anti-blood clotting and coagulants hitting in the right order. Being bitten is not without its benefits. Unfortunately, I know that first-hand, many, many, times over.

He licks his lips, no doubt remembering shared a moment I'd like to forget. "Do we have a deal?"

I close my eyes, praying I get out of this alive, praying we both do, and then open them.

Reluctantly. "Yes."

"Good. You know chivalry suits you. You should date more often."

"Just get on with it," I snap.

The hybrid smirks, and then stretches like a cat having played me so utterly well.

He strolls over behind the desk and codes open the small, refrigerated safe next to it. Inside are rows and rows of tubes filled with different types of blood, all marked with differently coloured labels. I know he has vials of my blood in there, somewhere on the shelf with the blue labelled tubes. Dias takes out one with a green label, the only one of its kind, and closes the safe back up with a click.

How long he was watching and waiting for this moment?

"Did you plan this?" I hear myself ask.

"Cove, I plan everything."

And then he's behind me, where Ai is laid out.

He leans over and smears the blood from the green vial on her lips. Her mouth opens and he pours the rest in slowly, tilting her chin back, stroking her hair out of her face. Vial empty, he traces her bloody collar bone with his fingers and touches them, red and bright, to his own lips tasting her.

I have the urge to hit him again.

Dias looks at me, amused. Daring me to take a shot, his tongue darting out to lick up the spots of blood still on his mouth. I jerk my gaze away before he sees what I think of him, black hatred blurring the room around me.

All it took for me to break was a strange girl landing in my lap. I'd already sold my body to escape from one hell, and now I've sold my soul into another.

I'm so screwed, but I need to get a grip.

"Whose blood was that?" I have to ask.

He gave her viper blood. The green label told me that much. Viper blood when consumed by EVes can have temporary effects, an echo of what the bond could be if allowed to form. It's a way of testing for compatible matches and bond potential among sapiens and vipers, and if needed, an emergency restorative in situations where immediate physical healing is necessary.

Like if someone is about to die from blood loss.

The downside – it creates a partial psychic connection between sapien and viper for the duration of the effect. It can last hours, if not days, depending on the strength of the viper.

I need to know whose blood it is.

Dias turns away from Ai, back to his desk. She's already better, breathing much deeper. Satisfied she'll make it I follow Dias to his desk, staying near side, while he takes a heavy metal device from the drawer, holding it up between us.

"Don't ignore the question. Whose blood did you just use to heal her?"

"You know how to use one of these right?" He asks, checking the kinetic cells and adjusting the default settings. The silver surface is shining like it's never been used, but I doubt that's true.

I nod at him. Of course I know. My family made that thing. "Tell me who Dias, or the whole thing is off."

"The viper who owns the blood I gave her is no longer alive."

"How does that even work?"

"The viper is dead. She's alive. What else is there to care about?"

"I don't know. It just feels wrong."

"Worry more about getting the blood you owe me. The serpent is downstairs, playing nice with my brother."

Inside, I'm cracking up. It's happening now?

I must have spoken out loud because he stops what he's doing and looks at me straight, eyes narrowed. "No better time than the present."

He offers me the device. I don't take it. I don't want to touch that thing.

"I can quite easily go over there and undo what I just did. Her life is nothing to me."

Like a rabbit in a snare, the trap I've gotten myself into keeps getting tighter. There's no way out. "No, no, I'll do it." I reach over and take the weight of it.

The thing is ugly as sin, shaped like an over-large pistol with a flat end instead of a pointed barrel. The handle has a screen showing illuminated numbers blinking in red and green. I know the flat side is pitted with a dozen retractable lances, all of them sharp and hollow ended.

It has some fancy name. But the hybrids refer to it as the Scarificator or the Scar-eater, or just simply the Scar.

"I'll bring him upstairs. You know what you need to do?"

Nodding, I stare at the sleek device suppressing the horror of what's about to come to pass. Then wedge it as you would a gun into the rear waist of my jeans, as far out of my sight as possible.

"Good boy. Now don't screw up."

"I'll need a new shirt or he'll know straight away I'm carrying."

"Upstairs. The bedroom on the left. Isa has a whole walk-in-wardrobe you can choose from."

Grimacing, I turn to leave, a few steps to the broken door. Heart beating wildly.

The Blood of the Serpent is supposed to be the most powerful agent nature has ever created, a means to control every single viper and geminae pair on the planet. The vipers say it's a myth, of course, and the Establishment denies the agent even exists, but history has always hinted some truth to it.

Whatever the facts, there are those who have tried over the years and failed. And yet here I am, about to do the same, taking on a suicide mission to deliver supreme power to perverted nut-job, all to save some girl I don't even know.

Of all the ways this could have gone down, this was not what I had in mind.

I step over a dead Ely and the stink of burnt flesh, and reach for the handle on the busted door part still hanging from its hinges. Ai looks to be fast asleep, a lot less the pale corpse she was becoming. Still bloodied, but the bite must have healed. The hue of her skin returning to normal, teasing hints of colour back into her cheeks.

I am (on the other hand) far from normal. My hands are shaking badly. I need something sharp to calm my nerves – shot of whiskey maybe – or I'm never going to be able to switch the damn thing I'm carrying on. Never mind hold it still.

"Oh Cove one last thing." I turn around as Dias blurs, and in a split second he's behind me. He grabs my wrist, bending my arm behind my back, forcing me down onto my knee, while trying to break my upper body in two with his foot.

"What are you-" I don't get to finish. He's twisting my arm hard enough to make me want to cry out. I grit my teeth instead. Grunting through the pain of it.

You've got to be kidding me.

"In case you get any ideas about leaving us and running back to your Inside friends."

"Like hell I would!" I snarl at him, but my bravado is lost on the floor with the tiles.

"I like to be sure of my investments, and you won't needing this anymore anyway."

I struggle but this is not a fair fight. I'm human and he's lighting and stone made flesh.

He bites my right hand. The one he's holding hostage behind me.

Teeth tear into my flesh, parting soft tissue like butter, grinding down to bone, so effortlessly I don't even cry out. Not at first. Then he rips my thumb from my palm.

Dias releases me and I manage to throw out my other arm to stop myself falling forward.

Blood sprays in all directions.

I fall into sitting, and crouch clutching my torn and bloody hand to my chest. It hurts like I've jammed it in a door or knocked it hard, not like it's been ripped from its socket by a half-crazed vamp.

Mostly it's numb. I'm surprised. It's not as painful as I was expecting. Was I expecting it? Did I know he was going to mutilate me?

I think I'm in shock.

Dias is grinning. Blood, my blood, drips from his lips and stains his teeth rotten and red. The bleeding stump of my thump is still in his mouth. I can see the fleshy end of it between his fangs, and a sliver of bright yellow and black metal tucked in-between the folds of raw tissue – my ID chip.

"Fuck." I say.

If he swallows it I'm going to throw up.

He runs his tongue over it, the whole thing, and closes his mouth. The chip that allows me move to through the gate, tracks my every move, and connects to my digital identity, is no longer mine.

My own blood-soaked shirt lands in front of me. Clumsily, I wrap it around my hand. He doesn't want me to bleed out, but he doesn't give a flying rats-behind about blood-borne diseases.

There is so much blood.

It's sticky and everywhere. You think I'd be used to this.

An empty feeling settles over me. I know I'm just a vessel, nothing more than the blood in my veins and the potential everyone is hungering for. I can't tell if it's that or the sickening crunch of my own bones making me feel ill.

Dias couldn't have picked worse timing. Screw the serpent. I'm about to pass out.

A loud whistle and hum of light distracts me partly from my injuries, and pity party I've found on the floor.

I draw my eyes up to the light as it passes over and through the hybrid in a fluid arc.

He doesn't even notice. He is still sneering, an insane smile plastered to his face, when his neck erupts in a horizontal line of seared and burning flesh. Then his head starts to move, sliding to the left while his body stays standing. It crashes to the floor, clean off. Leaving where it used to sit, a scorched mass of burnt tissue, like mound of barbecued meat on a hot plate.

My brain takes a few seconds to comprehend what the hell just happened.

His head just detached itself from his body.

And rolled to my feet.

I stare down and pull my foot back, to avoid touching it, jumping as the headless body next to me collapses on itself.

Then she appears behind him – an avenging angel wielding a sword of light.

***

Author's Note - Ahhh I decided to enter the NaNoWriMo Writers Camp, so here is my new novel >< 

** Transcendence: War of the Fallen **

https://tapas.io/series/TRANSCENDENCE-War-of-the-Fallen

Hope you like it! 🙈🙈

*

And hope you enjoyed today's update! I wonder how many of you are liking Cove again, or still preferring Felix? Please do share with me your thoughts!

A small apology for the use of the F word. Sometimes you just need to say you know?! 🙈

Thanks for reading my story and all your love and support! ❤️

[Image credit the sultry Sakura Heffron as the er.... 'Avenging Angel Ai']

Lisxx