War of Hearts(48)

Thea remembered the explosion of glass

To this day, she still didn’t know how she’d done it … how she’d caused the front windshield of the plane to shatter … but she had. She was grateful the pilot and flight attendant hadn’t been hurt.

However, everything changed in that moment. Ashforth realized what it all meant. Her surviving the crash, her broken leg healing, and so, like the na?ve idiot she was, she’d told the Ashforth family about the abilities she’d had as long as she could remember. That her mom and dad had protected her, helped her hide them.

“And they didn’t know what you are?” Ashforth had sounded exasperated. “You’re extraordinary, Thea, and they didn’t want to know why?”

“I’m their daughter. They were human. How could I be anything else?”

Ashforth was in awe. Even as a fourteen-year-old kid, she knew for him it was all about power. He’d amassed a lot of it over the years, but Thea had her own kind of power. A power he coveted. Ashforth became obsessed with understanding it.

The first year of the family knowing wasn’t too bad. Amanda worried about her and insisted she continue to hide her abilities, scolding Devon when he goaded Thea into a sprint race he had no hope in hell of winning. He just wanted to see her move like a blur. Devon had the typical attitude of a fifteen-year-old boy who found himself living with the equivalent of a superhero sister. He thought it was awesome.

Thea knew Ashforth had begun researching her. He came to her with his findings and opened her eyes to the world of the supernatural. Werewolves, vampires, and witches were real. And yet, Thea wasn’t any of those things. So, he kept researching.

And as the months passed, Devon grew ill.

Leukemia.

“My son is dying, Thea.” Ashforth had stormed into her bedroom one night, a manic wreck. He fell at her bedside. “You have to help.”

“How?” she whispered, terrified of losing another person she loved.

“Your blood. I’ve tried vampire blood. I’ve tried werewolf blood. They heal quickly but their blood doesn’t do the same for humans.”

He’d fed creepy paranormal blood to Devon? She’d been shocked.

“Don’t look at me like that. I had to try. And you have to let me try yours.”

An ugly knot formed in her gut, a strange foreboding, but she nodded her agreement.

It had worked.

It saved Devon.

But Thea’s life changed.

She’d known the very next day because the warning burn she’d felt on the back of her neck the day her parents died, the inexplicable racing of her heart, the feeling of dread, she’d experienced it all as Ashforth walked into the kitchen that morning.

At first, he just wanted to take more blood. He had people he could trust analyzing it. But Thea soon started to realize that he’d learned more about her than he’d let on.

“I want to test the limits of your capabilities.”

He’d made her train to fight werewolves and vampires he’d hired. Supernatural men and women whom he then kept on at the estate. He said they were her trainers, her bodyguards, but Thea knew they were prison guards. As he’d hoped, she soon surpassed them in their fight sessions until it became less about training and more about testing her speed and strength against the strongest supernaturals he could find.

She no longer went to school and was homeschooled by Amanda because Ashforth refused to allow a tutor onto the island. Thea overheard arguments between Ashforth and Amanda about his treatment of her, but he promised his wife he’d never hurt Thea.

Thea knew it was a lie.

The burn up the back of her nape told her so.

Her suspicions were proven true the first time Ashforth allowed a vampire to break her neck. The evidence was insurmountable when a wolf took a knife to her gut. It became a sick kind of torture when a marksman shot at her while she ran an obstacle course.

As Thea plotted her escape, stealing money from the house where she could and keeping it hidden under her mattress, she was unaware that Ashforth had discovered something important about her.

One day he killed any affection she’d had for him when he came to her with a blade made of a metal the color of mercury. She’d braced herself but nothing could have prepared her for the agony that tore through her lower gut when he plunged it into her.

The whole time he’d studied her reaction like she was a science experiment.

Thea had laid stunned on the floor, having never experienced such pain before. Not even the burns from the plane crash had hurt like this. And it took much longer for the wound to heal.

Amanda had walked into the room unawares.

Thea could still hear her screaming in horror at Ashforth. Amanda thought he’d killed her.

There were so many times she’d cursed herself for waiting to run. In the time she’d procrastinated, her so-called guardian had the basement converted. He’d lined it with the same metal as the blade he’d stabbed her with.

Over the years, he’d developed a drug that weakened her and weapons from that he never used but lorded over her to force her submission. All pretense was over. Ashforth wanted to be like her. The transfusion of blood didn’t change his DNA, it merely healed, but he’d lost all reasoning in his obsession for power. He would keep her locked up until he found a way to become what she was.

Four years she’d been a prisoner in that basement while he stockpiled her blood and experimented on it, searching for her source of power, searching for a way to become like her. He was like some fucking fantastical villain from a comic book.