Текст книги "Born in Chains"

Автор книги: Caris Roane

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Текущая страница: 14 (всего у книги 17 страниц)

Yes. Sweat beaded on his brow. And strangely, that was the truth. He trusted this woman, this human.

You have a choice, Adrien. If you come in, you must do as I say, do you understand? If you choose not to come in, we’ll go back to Rumy’s guest apartment and you can fuck my brains out, but here, you are mine to command. Do you understand?

Yes.

Now choose.

He wanted to ask what she was wearing, but he suspected Eve had left her something special to put on.

He waited, trying to think, trying to order his thoughts. He already sensed what it was she wanted to do.

May I see you first before I decide, because if you’ve gone down a certain path, I’m not sure I can take it.

I’ll let you see my hand.

The door opened slightly and her hand appeared. The wrist was wrapped in silver-studded leather. Hanging from each stud were several thin chains, each of which draped to encompass her fingers. If she used her hand on him, he would feel the chains.

She would hurt him, yet not hurt him.

He could feel his heart pulsing behind his eyes.

Adrien, do you trust me?

After two deep breaths, he sent, I’m yours.

Good.

He pushed the door open then stilled.

She stood across the room, next to Eve’s table, an ancient wooden thing polished to a gleam through the years.

She was a vision in leather and wore a feathered headdress that was also a half mask. He could see the glitter of her eyes. Her lips were dark red, bloodred.

She wore a costume of black leather straps that covered only strips of her skin around her breasts and down her thighs, then broadened to encompass her knees and ended in loops of leather beneath her feet. She wore stilettos that put her just shy of his height. Her breasts and her bare peach were on display.

If he’d been hard before, now he was in pain. She’d taken sex into the realm of dark fantasy and it worked for him.

Oh, God, how it worked for him. And he knew it wasn’t just about Lily and her costume or sex, but about his life and what had been done to him when he was young.

She turned her back to him and planted a hand on a long table, then bent over just enough so that he could see the bareness of her bottom. She was fully exposed and swollen.

When she turned back, she moved to the end of the thick wood table.

She put her palm flat on the table, the chains making a soft clinking sound. “Take your clothes off and get up here. On your back.”

When his vision cleared of all his lust, he saw that heavy chains and manacles dangled off the sides of the table; two more chains lay taut across the top and bottom. In addition, he sensed the preternatural quality of the chains, that something very vampire would bind him in place, like the manacles Daniel used in the Himalayan prison.

He’d already made his choice. He wanted this. Hell, he’d been wanting it far longer than he could admit even now. But his heart pounded in his chest.

He stripped off his clothes then climbed up on the table and laid himself flat. He stared up at the mirror-covered ceiling and saw himself lying there, naked, and very erect. He kept looking at himself, his tight eyes, the vein thumping in his throat, his cock straight up and ready for something that scared the shit out of him.

Lily worked quietly and went from one ankle to the other, setting the heavy manacles with pins only she could remove. His legs were now spread far apart.

When she got to his wrists, he realized the air was thick with her feminine scent. He finally looked at her and saw that her nipples were peaked and that sweat lay in a sheen over her skin. Her bare labia were swollen with need. Whatever he felt, her desire matched his.

I can feel your need, Adrien. You’ve worked me up as well.

I want to suck your breasts and then eat you. Blatant words.

All in due course. Right now, you’re mine to do with as I please.

When the last pin fell into place, Adrien pulled on the chains. That’s when the panic set in. He felt the familiar power, the one that told him he was now a prisoner, trapped.

He couldn’t breathe.

“Let me go,” he said.

But Lily leaned over him. “No. Can’t do that, Adrien. You agreed. You can beg me a hundred times, a thousand times. Not gonna happen. You have to trust me.”

“I’m serious Lily. This isn’t going to work. I can’t do this. These manacles have power.”

“I know. I requested them, otherwise you could break free.”

He took a deep breath.

She glanced down at his erection and chuckled. “And something tells me you’re gonna be just fine.”

He hated this truth: that while he could protest, his cock loved what was happening. His hips arched and his balls were two nests of fire ready to explode.

She climbed onto the table. He was about to protest one last time, but she straddled one of his thighs, on her knees, and her hand began a slow descent of her body, from the navel, kneading her skin, all the way down to her labia. She closed her eyes and fondled herself, arching her neck. “These bonding chains are extraordinary. I can feel you shift from your fear to your desire. Do you like what I’m doing to myself?”

His mouth watered. His eyes moved from her erect nipples to her fingers massaging her clitoris and back. Using her free hand, she began to play with a nipple. He needed to get to her, to touch what she was touching.

He jerked the manacles at his wrists, trying to pull away. He wanted parts of her in his mouth, his cock buried inside her, his body thrusting.

Lily. My God, Lily.

I’ve never been so close. Her voice sounded rich and full of desire.

Let me see your finger go inside you.

She arched her hips forward and met his gaze. She held her lower lips apart with the hand that bore the chains, and with her free hand she slid a finger slowly down her clitoris, letting him watch, until she pierced her own body.

He groaned, wanting his fist around his cock. “I need you.” Shit, his voice had dropped an octave.

She withdrew her finger and slowly reached for his lips. “Open your mouth, Adrien. Do it.”

He obeyed, panting now, the chains on the table jangling because his body couldn’t keep still, his hips slammed up and down trying to reach her. His arms flexed and released, pulling on the manacles.

She slid her wet finger inside his mouth and the flavor of her, ripe with excited female and her feminine scent, made him crazy. He had to get to her but couldn’t.

He sucked hard on her finger, his tongue swirling over her. He couldn’t get enough.

She removed her finger, then shifted suddenly so that she knelt beside him.

He froze as she bent her lips in the direction of his cock. He cried out, “Do it.”

Damn but he needed to come.

He looked up at the mirror and saw the straps of her costume giving way to her buttocks, now two white mounds that he wanted his hands on, his mouth, his tongue, his teeth.

Then he felt her tongue on the head of his cock, a gentle swipe, then another.

His back arched. If she just took him and sucked he could release.

You’re torturing me.

She chuckled. I’m enjoying you.

She drew back and looked at him. “Let me know how this feels.” He glanced down at his cock, and watched her hand, draped with chains, close around his thick stalk.

He froze again, fearing, hoping.

She began slowly, up and down. She leaned over and tongued him at the same time so that the chains grew slick. It was both uncomfortable and hot as hell, though he didn’t understand why.

Chains had bound him from the time he could remember.

Now she stroked him with a handful of chains. She kept moistening the chains and didn’t move too fast or put too much pressure on.

I can feel your pleasure, Adrien. I can sense how much you’re savoring what I’m doing to you. I love having command of you like this, taking charge of your flesh and doing whatever the hell I want.

She pumped faster now and it hurt but it felt so good.

She sustained the pace and he could feel himself ready to release, then all the pressure was just gone.

He shouted his frustration.

“Not yet,” she said softly.

He groaned.

She turned to straddle his waist this time. She used the same chain-laden hand to rub deep between her legs, to gather her moisture. She put the same hand over his mouth. “Lick the chains.”

He obeyed her without question. Her arousal was a thick, perfumed cloud all around him. The chains were loose against her palm, so he drew them past his lips and sucked on them, taking the flavor of her down his throat.

His cock throbbed where the chains had rolled over his skin. He ached for her and something more, something so deep inside his soul that he had a sense all his rage at what had been done to him was about to be released.

He sucked harder on the chains. She leaned close and drifted a breast near her hand and his sucking lips. When she removed her fingers and slid her breast closer, he took all that he could in his mouth and sucked hard, muffled cries emanating from his throat. He couldn’t get enough.

Her hands stroked up both of his arms at once, her fingernails digging into his biceps. Her body rolled while he suckled her nipple. Her lashes rested on her cheeks; a pinch of pleasure had formed between her brows.

You smell like heaven, came from her mind to his.

I want to fuck you.

I’d like that. Her eyes opened and her breast came away from between his lips. She met his gaze. But you’re trapped and can’t. You can’t do anything right now.

The words burned like fire through his mind and his soul. She had spoken the reality of his childhood as well as the past year.

She slid down just enough so that his rigid cock touched her ass. He couldn’t quite define the sensations that split him wide. Rage and lust maybe. He wanted her.

What is it, Adrien? Do you want something? Need something? What could it be?

Oh, God, she lifted up her hips. He could see her clitoris through her spread legs and now he could see his cock. He struggled against the chains as he watched her lower her body onto him. He thrust his hips upward, forging a warm wet pilgrimage into her depths.

His neck arched, his eyes rolled back in his head.

She began to move up and down, slowly at first then faster. Her voice once more penetrated his mind: What are you going to do about it, Adrien? I have you now and you can’t touch me, you can’t do anything except feel this pleasure.

But he wasn’t that child anymore, and he wasn’t just a vampire.

He was an Ancestral.

He had the power now to create the kinds of manacles that now imprisoned him. Understanding flashed through him.

He knew what he could do.

Did she know what he intended?

Somehow he didn’t give a fuck. He summoned his Ancestral power, drawing energy into his legs and arms, wrists and ankles. The table began to shake.

She didn’t seem to care. She planted a hand on his shoulders and moved faster.

What are you going to do about it, Adrien? Are you still afraid? Still chained to this table? Still trapped?

The words ripped through his mind.

Power surged.

The chains exploded off his body.

He caught her at her waist and kept her anchored to him. He spun her midair so that he landed on top of her, holding himself back just enough so that he didn’t crush her as he forced her onto the table beneath him.

He took control, shoving himself into her as he ripped the feathered mask off her head. Through the chains, he sensed the depth of her pleasure, nothing but heady passionate sensation.

She panted in heavy chuffs as he drove into her, pummeling hard. She moaned and cried out as she wrapped her legs around his hips, her arms around his neck. He thrust hard and fast.

The release came like an explosion, not just from his balls but somewhere deep in his body, rushing through and streaking along his cock so that he arched and shouted.

Fuck, left his mouth repeatedly, loud, brutal, harsh.

“Oh, God, Adrien, so much pleasure.”

He looked down at her as he thrust, feeling himself moving in and out of her body, watching her head thrash back and forth, her eyes squeezed shut, the orgasm finishing its ride until finally she lay slack and his hips grew quiet.

Her eyes were still shut as he looked down at her, then past her head to the broken shackles hanging open on the old wood. He’d done this. He’d ended something here tonight, some deep wound that had festered for four centuries. Power flowed through him in waves, the extraordinary ability of an Ancestral being born here, in this place that began as one thing and ended as another.

He’d just opened up a new layer of his Ancestral power—maybe not his entire potential, but enough to challenge the suffering of his youth.

“Lily,” he whispered. “Thank you for this.”

She nodded but her eyes remained closed.

As he lay on top of her, satiated, having overpowered his captor, something deep inside Adrien shifted, moved around, expanded, and changed.

Other chains that had held him captive in the past, were broken in this moment, obliterated forever.

CHAPTER 14

Lily was mired in pleasure. She could think of it in no other way. Her body lay trapped beneath Adrien’s, a puddle of sensation, of satisfaction, of contentment.

There had been a frightening moment when the chains had come apart and he’d flipped her. She’d wondered if she would survive what was about to happen.

But as soon as she landed, and she felt that he’d somehow protected her landing, she knew she was completely safe with him. She’d barely registered the impact except for a slight loss of breath. Other than that, the fierce pounding he gave her had been just the right note.

She’d screamed, or she remembered screaming. Pleasure had flowed like an ocean finding a new dip of land to fill. A sense of well-being eased through her veins, relaxing every muscle.

Deeper still was a strange kind of release she hadn’t expected, as though she’d walked from the desert, a long desert of two years, and suddenly stumbled on green plants, sea air, and a ton of welcome humidity. This strange, dominance-based experience had released something and she’d bet all her future happiness that Adrien had gone through something similar.

“Lily, did I hurt you?” He lifted up slightly and met her gaze. She was finally able to open her eyes. “Please tell me I didn’t.”

She stroked his cheek with her thumb. “No, not even a little. You protected me. In fact, I want to do this again and again. There were things I didn’t get to do that I want to experience while you’re bound in chains.”

He leaned down and kissed her. “Like what?”

“I want to finish you off with my mouth for one.”

She felt him shudder and deep inside her, his cock twitched. Nice.

“I want to have my hips pressed up close to your face.”

“I’d tongue you.”

“I’d count on that.” She reached up and kissed him. “But do you know what I really want to do?”

He shook his head. His hips swiveled, and she could feel that he was growing hard again. She responded by giving her pelvis a quick upward jerk. He groaned. “What do you really want to do?” he asked.

“I want to explore every part of your body, especially the muscles of your arms, your thighs, your ass. I want to use my lips, my tongue, my breasts, my fingers and savor all that you are.”

He began to move into her once more. She moved with him. She kept talking about his body, his chest, pecs, and abs, how she would suck on him and use her hand at the same time. She talked about biting his feet then each butt cheek in turn. She kept it up until he was pounding once more, hard and fast, and she was shouting into his face, “Fuck me, Adrien. Fuck me.”

With her flesh made tender by the first orgasm, the second was like a skyrocket shooting through her body. She clung to him and screamed and savored the pleasure that streaked along every sensitive nerve and that kept streaking as long as he slammed into her.

His hips continued to pound her and then she felt it, like a tingling through her abdomen that ended at the vein of her neck.

She touched his face and eased back his upper lip.

His fangs glistened.

“Lily.” His deep voice filled the air.

She rolled her head.

He struck quickly, a flash of pain that disappeared in a funnel of sucking pleasure as he began to drink from her. Her back arched as desire flooded her body. What was it about the giving of her lifeblood that heightened the ecstasy rising once more?

He groaned as he drank, his hips thrusting into her heavily again, his hands holding her shoulders to keep her seated against his mouth.

The well of her took strong pulls on what was so beautifully hard, and the spasming started all over again. More cries and moans left her mouth.

When his release came, she rode yet another wave of ecstasy to the point that she grew hoarse and her arms ached from holding on to him so hard.

When the last of the pleasure drifted away, she struggled to catch her breath. Her body leaked perspiration. She wiped a stream from his forehead as well and said, “Can you fly us straight back to the shower in Rumy’s suite? Just like this?”

He chuckled. “In a minute, when I can breathe again.”

She laughed and hugged him. She sighed and this time took air deep into her lungs, a place she was sure her body hadn’t received air in a long, long time.

* * *

An hour later, Adrien stood by the mantel of the fireplace in Rumy’s guest suite, staring at nothing in particular, sobered by what had happened at Eve’s apartment.

He felt different, yet more himself than he’d ever been.

He wore his Brioni tux, ready for the gala, but what would he find there in Beijing? Daniel would attend. He never missed a social event of this magnitude in which at least a hundred Ancestrals would be present as well as the Council.

And now Adrien had the right to attend because he’d embraced his genetics and his future.

Daniel’s machinations had forced the issue, of course. If Daniel hadn’t taken over the Council, if he hadn’t somehow forced Lily’s hand to create a blood-chain bond with Adrien, if Daniel hadn’t wanted the extinction weapon as though his life depended on it, Adrien wouldn’t have gone down this path.

He’d still be a regular fighting vampire, working on behalf of the his world to keep peace and to sustain secrecy.

Now he was on the Ancestral track and he could never return to the old ways.

He stared at his ruby cuff links, frowning. He liked his new level of power, and what he experienced was just the beginning.

Everything felt new and different to him, as though even his vision had changed.

“Adrien, I’m ready.”

He pushed away from the stone mantelpiece and turned, but what met his sight wasn’t Lily, but the vision of her that he’d had not so long ago, before he’d even met her, the woman in the burgundy gown with gold crystals embroidered along the deep V cut of the bodice. The gown fit snugly to her waist and hips, flaring around her shoes just enough to allow for walking. Otherwise it fit her like a second skin.

“You look beautiful.” He started moving in her direction, drawn to her, the chains resting beneath his shirt vibrating softly when he was this close, and yes, feeling this much.

He took both her hands in his and kissed the backs of her fingers. She wore lip gloss, which meant he needed to let her keep it on, so he dipped low and kissed down her exquisite line of cleavage. Maybe he would never have chosen this path for himself, but sharing the blood-chains with Lily had become a surprisingly tender and moving experience.

The soft moan that left her lips, combined with the rush of her sweet, feminine scent, helped him to know that she was as engaged as he.

When he lifted his head, tearing himself away from her soft breasts, he drew her carefully into his arms. “Is this love?” he asked.

She shook her head and shrugged. “I don’t know, but it’s damn close.” Her eyes glistened.

“Aw to hell with it.” He kissed her full on the lips, ruining the gloss she’d applied so carefully.

* * *

Lily slung her arm around Adrien’s neck and kissed him back. From the moment she’d seen him by the fireplace, her desire for him, her need for him, had risen all over again. That he looked magnificent in black and white didn’t help matters at all.

But it was more than just his appearance, which always tended to weaken her knees anyway. He had a different air, a different feeling about him, something the chains helped her to feel, of course, but even his posture was different, a little straighter, his chin higher.

She understood that feeling because she shared it—a kind of brazen confidence born from overcoming a few things, like being able to dominate a vampire on a sex table, or tracking a weapon through miles of extended caves, or even being able to siphon Adrien’s power and finally communicate with her son.

Yes, she understood what Adrien was feeling extremely well because on the coattails was that elusive thing called hope. Maybe now, after accomplishing so much together, they could succeed at what needed doing, at finding the weapon and rescuing Josh because of it, so that Lily could at last bring him home.

As she drew back, she wondered if she should tell Adrien about her son. Hadn’t he earned the right to know the truth despite Kiernan’s warning to keep it a secret? Didn’t her hard-won relationship with Adrien demand the truth?

She wanted to tell him. Desperately.

She planted a hand on his chest.

“What is it?” His brow furrowed, a familiar look for him.

She made the decision and the dam within her broke. “Adrien, my son isn’t dead. He’s alive. Kiernan has him. He’s had him for two years, since the attack on my neighborhood. He’s kept him all this time, without my knowledge, when I thought Josh was dead, so that when Daniel wanted to use him to get to me, to create this”—she touched the chain at her neck—“he’d have the tool he needed, the only thing that would have ever persuaded me down this road with you.”

Adrien blinked a couple of times. His head jerked as he processed what she’d just told him. His lips parted; he might even have murmured something. He finally said, “I imagined so many things, this secret that you’d kept from me, but not this. Oh, dear God.” He stepped sideways, releasing her. He seemed to have trouble breathing. He pressed a fist to his forehead.

She needed to tell him everything. “I’ve been through hell since I learned he was alive. And I can’t imagine what my son has gone through. I contacted him earlier, before Rome. I made telepathic contact. He’s alive. I truly didn’t know for sure until just then that he really is alive. I mean Kiernan let me talk to him once, but these men have such resources at their command I thought maybe he’d faked the whole thing. But I spoke to Josh this evening. He has a caregiver, a woman named Claire. A human.”

She seemed to run out of words and speaking them aloud somehow made it worse, the truth of what she’d been through, what her son had suffered. A strange strangled sound came out of her throat. But Adrien caught her and drew her into his arms. Her eyes burned but she couldn’t cry. The horror of her son’s situation and of her own held her in mute paralysis.

But Adrien’s arms soothed her and helped dissipate all that rising horror and emotion. “It’s okay, it’s okay. It’ll be all right. We’ll get him, we’ll find him. Somehow we’ll bring your son home.”

“How?”

And then the real question surfaced, the one she’d been ignoring from almost the beginning, pretending she didn’t care because she hated all vampires: how could she and Adrien ever turn over the extinction weapon to Daniel? How could she ever trade Josh’s life, though precious beyond words, for a weapon that would be given to a monster who wouldn’t think twice about obliterating entire cavern systems of vampires on a whim if it suited him?

He pulled back from her but he took hold of her arms, staring hard at her. “Lily, listen to me. We’ll take this, as we have from the start, one step at a time. Now that I know what’s really going on here, what has motivated every step of your journey, it changes the game.”

“There’s no way out.” Her words came out hushed.

“There’s always a way out. We just can’t see it yet, and right now we have a gala to get to. Maybe something will surface in Beijing that we can use. Have you tried tracking the weapon by focusing on China?”

She shook her head. “My thoughts have all been about Josh.”

“Of course they have.” He shook his head. “Your son is alive. How old is he?”

“Ten. He was eight when he was taken. Two years ago. Oh, God.”

He nodded several times in a row. “All right. Beijing. We need to go there now, get things rolling again.”

Lily forced herself to breathe once more and turned her tracking ability to China. She thought of nothing else but the weapon and Beijing. Adrien rubbed her arms slowly and she closed her eyes. His power flowed through her, the tremendous power she siphoned from him continuously.

The pull began like a gentle tug on her body to a place she could only define as very dark, but quickly became a grip of need: She had to get to China. Adrien, what is the name of the Beijing resort?

The Black Cavern.

I have a fix on it, and the pull of the weapon is strong, really strong. Her tracking ability roared to life as it never had before, she felt the location rushing toward her.

Good.

She drew in a sharp breath as another sensation arrived. The weapon is there. I can feel it. The weapon is in Beijing. But this was followed by another pull as she cried out. “Oh, my God, Josh is there as well. I can feel him. Josh is at the Black Caverns.”

“Has he been there all along?”

Lily shook her head. “No. When I used telepathy earlier, it just didn’t feel as far as China. Does that make sense?”

“Yes, it does. Well then, we’d better go.”

She nodded. He pulled her tight against him and the flight began. The entire distance, Lily’s heart ached as she thought about her son, yet she feared that the whole situation couldn’t possibly lead to a happy outcome.

She wondered, too, why Kiernan would have brought Josh to Beijing—or maybe it was Daniel’s doing. Did he know something that she didn’t, about the Black Caverns and the extinction weapon? Did he know, for instance, that both she and Adrien, as a bonded tracking team would be there, at this particular gala?

A dark sensation moved through her as Adrien brought her closer to Beijing. Daniel would want to hurt them both because of what had happened in Mexico. She felt naive suddenly, that her previous and very brief spurt of confidence hadn’t taken into account that once Daniel had tested Adrien in Mexico, he’d now turn up the heat. And what better way to remind her of the pact she had with Kiernan than to bring Josh to the Black Caverns.

But she strove to calm herself as Adrien flew them east. She needed her wits about her, to hold Daniel at bay, if possible, while she sought the weapon, maybe even to get to Josh and take him away before Daniel could stop her.

The flight lasted less than a minute, a huge change from her first night with Adrien.

He took them to the far edge of what turned out to be a landing field for those just now flying in.

Adrien chose a spot and brought them down gently, using the experience of four centuries to avoid other couples.

Lily held his arm tight as she walked beside him through a grand but very dark hotel entrance, a dozen chandeliers illuminating what turned out to be walls of glimmering obsidian detailed with white crystals in small, scattered diamond-pattern designs.

She reached out for Josh, and maybe it was her mother’s heart or maybe her tracking ability, but she knew exactly where he was, even though at least two miles of rock separated her from her son. I know where Josh is.

We’ll get to him, Lily, as soon as we can. But first the weapon. I’ve been thinking maybe we could destroy it before Daniel got to it.

If only we could.

Too many ifs and maybes in this equation.

She wanted to reach out to Josh telepathically, to let him know she was nearby, but she feared alerting Daniel. What if he could discern her telepathic communications with Josh? She just didn’t want to take the chance.

One step at a time.

With such a large gathering of Ancestrals, even the air felt different, humming with power as she descended a wide, carved staircase into the Beijing resort.

Moving down a large hall, she used her tracking ability and focused on the weapon. What came back to her was a massive machine not far from where Josh was being held, and the pull from this machine was enormous.

The extinction weapon.

She truly had found the weapon, or at least one significant version of it.

She shared the news with Adrien, who stiffened.

Another frightening thought intruded. Do you think Daniel already knows where it is?

Adrien shifted to meet her gaze, shaking his head. I sincerely doubt it, but he may have had reason to guess it might be here.

You’re probably right. If he knew where it was, he wouldn’t have gone to this much trouble.

When she entered the banquet room, she climbed three steps, grateful because of her heels to have Adrien’s support. The tables were laid out on a raised portion of stone and carpeted with thick, plush burgundy-and-black carpet.

At the far end was a dais beside which Daniel, his two subservient sons, and other elegantly garbed Ancestrals chatted together.

She had to admit, though, that of all the male Ancestrals present, Daniel exceeded them all in basic charisma. He had a champagne glass in hand and smiled, always his smile. He wore a finely tailored tux, like Adrien’s, his black hair oiled and combed straight back.

“He seems to enjoy his role,” she whispered to Adrien.

“That he does.”

Daniel stood smiling, his gaze roving the guests, of whom there had to be at least three hundred present. Since there were only about five hundred Ancestrals in the vampire culture, the number here tonight was significant.

Every race was present, so that it would seem the vampire world truly did share basic human genetics. But somewhere a couple of genes had taken a hard turn that had to do with the ability to grow and release fangs, increase bodily strength, and develop a severe reaction to sunlight. The rest, even Daniel’s behavior, was very human. In her opinion, he was a contented psychopath who had somehow maneuvered his way into a position of power, reveled in his rule, and intended to do whatever he needed to keep it, including acquiring, and probably using, a weapon that could wipe out his species.