“I saved your life, Ella.”
I stopped and turned to face him fully. At my side, I curled
my hand into a fist. “I seriously hate you.”
“It’ll pass.” He grabbed my arm and drew us down a flight of
stairs. “I was a whore.”
His announcement drew me to a stop. I gawked at him.
“Close your mouth, dear.”
I snapped it shut and he pulled on my arm until we resumed
walking down the staircase to the lower level of the house where the distant
chatter of voices beckoned.
“Prostitution is the world’s oldest profession. I needed
money and as you know,” he winked at me, “I excel at pleasing women.”
“You excel at manipulation.”
“Lizbeth had a woman’s desires and a girl’s body. Made it
difficult for her to find lovers outside of her inner circle who weren’t, oh
how did she put it…” He paused as if searching for the memory. His face lit up
when he recalled it. “‘Creepy pedophiles’.”
For years after Julian had abandoned me, I’d been fed image
after image of him screwing another woman. I’d never seen her face, only knew
how bad it hurt to know he was with someone else.
“I’ve got the X-rated images forever branded into my brain,
thanks for that by the way.” I shuddered. “Keep your pedo tendencies to
yourself.”
“Age is but a number, you’ll learn that in a few centuries
when everyone around you ages and dies. I became her favorite toy. She turned
me, kept me at her side and invited me into her inner circle.”
I thought of Micah and the imaginary bimbo. Of how I’d felt
at eighteen while I was forced to watch Julian take another through our mental
connection. “Didn’t it bother you she was with other men?”
“And women. And no—when you live for eternity, your sexual
horizons are broadened.” He turned to me at the bottom of the stairs and
stroked my cheek.
I swallowed, vaguely sickened by his words. In a hundred
years—and that was if Micah inherited the immortal life span of a full-blooded
demon—would he want to broaden his horizons?
He leaned in closer and brushed his nose against mine as if
he were going to kiss me. The tip trailed over my cheek. His breath coated my
skin. He cupped my hip and whispered into my ear, “I’ll never stop loving you.”
I pushed him away and shook my head. “Get over it.”
I walked into the open dining room where Hannah, Dante and
Roy sat at a long banquet-style table. Even though I’d thrown out the gold
damask table runner and replaced the chairs, the room still reeked of blood and
sex, as if this had been a room of nonstop orgies.
My stomach churned and I looked at Hannah as she announced, “I’m
moving in with Dante.”
Well, okay then. My gaze bounced from my sister, whose heart
was racing loud enough to catch my attention, to my uncle. The little girl in
me wanted to rush up and throw my arms around him, to bury my face in his neck.
But I wasn’t a child anymore. No, I was a vampire. A queen
and a complete failure.
As usual, Roy’s too-long hair, part gray and part brown,
stuck up as if he’d spent the entire flight home running his hands through it.
His glasses sat skewed on his nose. The lenses magnified the lines of tension
bracketing his eyes.
He spoke in a brisk, unfriendly tone, one I’d never heard
him use with Hannah before. “I wasn’t even aware you were dating.”
Hannah lifted her chin, giving her an air of stubborn
defiance. “He saved my life. Twice.”
“He’s also fifteen years older than you.” Roy’s glare
transferred to Dante. “Hero worship isn’t a healthy way to start a relationship.”
My sister narrowed her eyes. “I don’t need your permission.
I’m twenty years old.”
Dante, who’d been silent, cleared his throat and leaned back
in his chair. He slung an arm around Hannah’s shoulders to pull her close. “Sir,
I care about your niece a great deal.”
“You care about her.” On the walls, the hand-painted
portraits of people none of us knew vibrated from Roy’s growing agitation. When
you pissed off a wizard, the best idea was to run. My uncle rubbed the center
of his chest and continued. “If you cared, you wouldn’t be rushing a
relationship with a girl who’s gone through a severe mental and physical
trauma.”
God, this talk sounded so familiar.
“This should be good. Just like old times, eh?” Julian
whispered into my ear, obviously remembering when we were at the receiving end
of this parental talk.
At the sound of Julian’s voice, Roy whipped his head in our
direction. He speared me with a sharp look and I snapped my mouth shut. He
allotted one second to scowl at Julian before returning hot eyes to me.
“Did you know about this?” He stopped rubbing his chest and
kneaded his fingers into his left arm as if it hurt.
Had he been injured? My uncle’s heartbeat thundered—the
familiar lubb-dupp sound of his heart murmur unmistakable. The beat seemed…off.
Too fast, kind of irregular, even for him.
When I didn’t respond, Julian elbowed me in the side.
“Ouch.” I rubbed my ribs and faced my uncle’s wrath. “That
they were moving in together? No, but I figured as much. She’s been spending
every night with him. Roy, are you okay?”
Beads of sweat gathered at his temples. He coughed, didn’t
answer my question and transferred his ire back to Hannah. “So you’re engaged
in a sexual relationship with a man who is practically old enough to be your
father.”
My sister’s cheeks flamed bright red, a shade remarkably
similar to her dress.
Roy made a pained sound in the back of his throat and I took
a step forward. “Roy?”
“Wh-at?” he gurgled. “Hannah—Hannah, she…grr…” His jumbled
sentence trailed off and he clutched his chest, his fingers whitening where he
fisted fabric.
His face, shiny with moisture, paled. His once-racing heart
stopped. Before I could cross the room, Roy pitched to the side and fell to the
gleaming hardwood floor with a thud.
“Roy!” Hannah screamed and shoved away from the table, her
chair skittering back hard enough to crash into the layered stone hearth behind
her.
“Call 9-1-1,” I instructed, my raised voice bringing the
thundering din of pounding feet. The Fenrir.
I collapsed at Roy’s side, just as Hannah did.
“His heart isn’t beating.” My words were panicked and
breathy. Tears spilled over my cheeks in fat drops, splattering Roy’s charcoal
dress shirt. I looked helplessly to my sister. “What do we do?”
“CPR.” Hannah laced her fingers together and pushed down on
his rib cage in slow, even pumps.
“Aren’t you supposed to breathe into his mouth or something?”
My sister shook her head on a sob and kept pumping. “That’s
the old way.” As she spoke, she pushed on his chest with her laced fingers.
I held my breath and clutched Roy’s hand to my cheek.
Everything faded in those few minutes. I heard nothing, felt nothing. There was
no Micah. No Julian. No trial. No issues. Only pure heartbreak. The little girl
who’d suffered the loss of both her parents surfaced.
“Don’t leave us,” I whispered.
Hannah continued her diligent attempt at CPR. The scents I’d
walked into faded until the only thing I could smell was the salt from our
tears, from the sweat lingering on my uncle’s chilling skin.
And then I heard it. Thud. Thud. Thud. Faint at first, and
then stronger, my acute hearing grabbed on to the subtle beating of his heart.
Oh my god. The pulse gained strength and the other sounds of the room came
rushing at me.
“It’s working,” I cried and bent over him to stroke his
sweaty head.
Roy’s lips parted as he sucked in a breath, lines of pain
deepening the wrinkles around his mouth. His eyelids fluttered, showing the
whites beneath.
I focused on my uncle—put my hand over the one he had
twitching against his chest. “Talk to us, Roy,” I pleaded.
“I, lo—” he gasped as if he was having trouble catching his
breath. “Love you. Hannah too. You girls…best thing. Take care of each other.”
Hot moisture pooled in my eyes, blurring my uncle from my
sight. I swiped my cheeks, blinked as many tears free as I could. “Don’t you
dare leave us. Do you hear me? Stay with us, help is coming. Just hold on.”
“Richard.” Roy’s face twisted with pain and he turned to
look at me fully.
In the background—over Hannah’s sobs—Dante’s low, rumbling
voice sounded and it took me a few moments to realize he was on the phone. “He
kept rubbing his arm before he collapsed. His speech is broken up but he’s
conscious now.”
“Shush.” I tried to soothe my uncle, who struggled to get
more words out.
“Don’t. Understand.” His words were broken, hard to make
out. “Black market. Laminas Animarum.”
Was that even English?
“He bought one. The trial…” Roy’s eyes rolled into the back of
his head. His arm jerked, then his leg. His back bowed up as he convulsed and
flopped on the floor.
I clutched him close, pinning him down to keep him from
hurting himself. He stilled, the life draining from his body. The minutes after
passed in a crazy blur. Hannah and I sat at Roy’s side, silent, each of us
gripping his hand as if our mere presence could keep him alive. Dante had found
some aspirin in one of the downstairs bathrooms and forced it in his mouth.
The paramedics spilled into the house and shoved us out of
the way. Someone—Julian—lifted my limp body from the floor and held me close
while the uniformed men ripped open my uncle’s shirt and worked to stabilize
him. My harem of elite wolves—their lethal vibe barely masked under their human
façades—stood guard around the room as if one of the medics was going to try to
take off my head at any moment.
“We gotta get him to the hospital for an EKG—we’ve got room
for one rider, decide which one is coming with.”
“Me,” I said automatically.
I didn’t notice Julian’s absence until he was at my side
holding a pair of flat tennis shoes and a hooded cotton sweatshirt. Clothes. In
a trance, I pulled on the hoodie over my sports bra and followed the paramedics
to the ambulance.
Outside, the cold night air slapped me in the face. Wind
whistled through the trees surrounding the house and my shoes slipped on the
light dusting of snow coating the gravel driveway. I shivered and shoved my
hands into the front pocket of my sweatshirt. Red flashing lights cut through the
darkness. I climbed inside and sat on the cold, hard bench seat. I met Hannah
and Dante’s gazes through the open double doors where they stood huddled
together.
“We’ll follow behind,” Dante assured me.
The doors snapped closed. Visible through the narrow
windows, Dante urged Hannah to his truck while Eiven dipped his head to listen
to something Julian said.
A groan from my uncle drew my attention to the gurney. That’s
when it hit me. The closed-in space smelled of disinfectant, but under the
chemical smell was blood.
So much blood…
I tightened my grip on the steering wheel and stared out the
windshield. The run-down bar I’d been frequenting for the last two weeks wasn’t
clean or classy. The music was crap. The bathroom smelled like piss and there
was a nicotine film coating the windows so you couldn’t see in or out.
Its only redeeming feature was its proximity to the house
and that no one knew who the fuck I was in there. I wasn’t—according to
rumors—the exiled hunter who’d sold my soul to become a blood whore.
The neon affixed to the roof flashed, shining an eerie blue
light over the gnarled wood slabs that made up the walls of Stew’s. Motorcycles
lined one side of the parking lot. Rusty, mud-splattered pickup trucks the
other. Twangy riffs of country music emanated from inside and increased my
irritation. I tweaked the volume on the car’s stereo, drowning out everything
except my racing heart.
Where the sign’s illumination failed to penetrate, darkness
closed in, secluding the building and its inhabitants. Shadows danced through
the trees and I focused on them instead of on the tight fist squeezing my
chest. I could actually feel the bond between Ella and me stretched to its
limit, as if it were on some giant rubber band. At any second, I expected the
cord to snap and cut me in half.
I rubbed my sternum and tried to force away the sensations.
Ten minutes ago, my Ella withdrawals had reached their peak. I could barely
function through the impulse to turn around and seek her out.
“Are we going to sit here all night or are we actually going
to go inside?” Eli asked.
“Fuck off.”
Pain tightened my chest and I gripped the steering wheel
hard enough to crack plastic. Sweat gathered, steamed. The demon thrashed
inside me, a restless pacing that had my skin tingling.
She needs you.
The hell she did. If Ella wanted to be an irrational bitch,
fine. I’d give her some space to calm down and come to her senses. If she
needed me, she could call.
Eli reached for the radio controls and I slapped his hand
away before he could touch the console. The chaotic electric noise of heavy
metal blaring from the speakers inside the car was the only thing keeping me
sane.
“Touch it and I’ll break your fingers.”
“You’re in a pissy mood.” He pulled out a silver flask from
the back pocket of his jeans.
The moment he went to unscrew the cap, I slapped the steel
container out of his hand and sent it thudding to the floorboard. Eli glared,
the metallic sheen in his amber eyes creeping me the fuck out.
Hard to reconcile the little boy I’d grown up with to the
man who now sat beside me. Energy poured off him, filling the interior with the
neck-ruffling sensation I’d trained my entire life to eradicate.
“Dude,” Eli growled.
“I need you clearheaded tonight, not drunk and on the prowl
for pussy. That shit’s gotta stop. Next time you show up at Dante’s shitfaced,
he’s going to lay you out on your ass. Don’t fuck with him.”
Eli clenched his jaw and sat back in the seat. The wolf
trapped inside him practically vibrated. In one of my brother’s three-day
benders, he’d confessed he drank to drown out the sensations. He fucked to get
rid of the tension. Neither were good long-term solutions.
He’d been forever changed, just like me.
Go to her…
I fought my instincts and reached for the keys dangling from
the ignition. I turned off the motor before I lost my self-control and sought
Ella out. I was seconds from starting up the GTO and speeding back to the
house.
“Did you give Castro an answer yet?” I asked and squeezed my
eyes closed.
Images of my blue-eyed brunette danced through my head. The
curve of her jaw, the line of her throat. The way her chest flushed and her
rosy nipples puckered when she came unglued at my touch. Jesus, I could
practically feel her wet heat sucking me in, milking me dry. My dick sprang to
attention and I wished I’d taken a moment to jack off to help alleviate the
ache.
Eli’s voice shattered my fantasy. “No.”
“You give Eiven an answer yet?” I asked.
“No.”
I turned my head and stared at my brother. “Did you do
anything?”
“I didn’t piss off my girlfriend by lying to her.”
I narrowed my eyes. “You’re a real relationship expert
yourself. How did things go with Hannah when you showed up at Dante’s shitfaced
and covered in blood? Did she know you’d just banged two chicks in the backseat
of a pickup?”
He cracked his knuckles, the subtle popping a warning. I was
going to be pissed if he shifted inside my car.
“I’m not talking about Hannah. And I warned you about Ella.
You didn’t listen. Did she take off your balls? Is that why you’re in such a
crap mood? She looked like she was going to murder you.”
I forced my next words out. “She thinks I fucked someone
else.”
Eli stared at me for two seconds and then burst out
laughing. In fact, he doubled over with laughter. I didn’t find it funny. At
all.
“Right. Not finding the humor in this.”
He slapped the dash, sending a swarm of dust mites into the
air. “That’s the funniest thing I’ve ever heard. Since the moment you laid eyes
on her, you’ve been hung up. You’re the only guy I know who doesn’t check out
other chicks. You don’t even look. Most people at least look—even if they aren’t
interested. You just give them this death glare, kind of like the one you’re
giving me now.”
Time to change the subject. “Tell me what you know about the
Blade of Souls.”
He took out his phone and tapped a few buttons.
I eyed him suspiciously. “What are you doing?”
“Googling it.”
Becoming a werewolf had obviously killed several hundred
brain cells. “I could have done that.”
He snorted. “No you couldn’t have.”
I scanned the surrounding area while Eli played on his phone
and thought about going on a hunt instead of drinking my weight in liquor. Patrolling
the grounds would have been the responsible thing to do.
“Huh,” Eli said and drew my attention. “It’s used to remove
or return one’s soul.”
My skin went cold with a chill I hadn’t felt since the night
Ella phazed herself between Julian and me seconds before I plunged the stake
into her shoulder. What in the hell would Richard want with a weapon like that?
I scratched the scruff on my jaw, the rasp surprisingly loud
amidst the blaring music.
“What else does it say?”
He swiped his finger on the screen and read silently. “If
this is accurate, not a lot. Says there are two blades in existence, both made
of obsidian. Blah, blah, blah.” He swiped at the screen again. “Looks like
there are quite a few replicas crafted by witches and wizards who sell them on
the black market.” Eli looked up. “Why are you asking about this?”
“Castro told me there was a rumor that Richard bought one. I
don’t know if his is authentic or not, or if I was just fed a line of bullshit.
What would he gain from removing someone’s soul? Wouldn’t you die once your
soul was removed?”
Eli ran a hand over the short, buzzed strands of his hair
until he cupped the back of his neck. “No, not necessarily. If something else
was animating your body you wouldn’t die—or should I say, cease to exist.”
I frowned at him. “Define ‘something else’?”
“Say a demon for example.”
I swallowed past my disgust. “If Richard stabbed me with
that thing and removed my soul, what would happen?”
“Best guess? The demon would take full control and do
whatever it wanted without regard for anything else. Take red-eyed vampires,
for example. Hunger for blood drives their every action. Nothing else matters
except sating that one particular need. Women. Children. Animals. They don’t
care who they get blood from, just that they get it. They take and leave an
empty shell behind.”
“So you think without a soul, I’d go all evil and give into
my base urges?”
Eli shrugged. “Aren’t those the types of demons and vampires
we’ve been putting down all these years? Soulless for one reason or another?
The difference between the demons who live at the Vault and the hell-raisers?
Take human serial killers and compare them against agency hunters? Both kill.
One does it out of pleasure, the other to protect.”
Protect. At least that was the excuse they’d given us. But I’d
always differed from the other agency hunters. I understood and questioned the
difference between malevolent and benevolent, always had. I ruthlessly put down
those who deserved it and had no qualms about looking away from the ones who
went about their business in peace.
I ran a hand through my hair and returned my stare to the
bar through the windshield. The knot in my stomach was a hard ball of fire. Was
it even safe for me to be among humans?
“I didn’t tell Ella I planned on killing Richard.”
Eli reached to the floorboard and found his flask. He
unscrewed the cap and took a long swallow. He wiped his mouth with the back of
his hand. “You wouldn’t have done it.”
Second person who’s said that to me.
Do they not
know me at all?
When he handed me the flask, I took it. The whiskey burned
on the way down and I welcomed the sensation. “If it had been the only way, I
would have. Castro told me not to touch him.”
“Listen to him. We know where Mom is—we’ve got an
alternative.” Eli glanced out the window. “Why are we here, Micah?”
“Because I wasn’t in the mood to sit down to a family dinner
and pretend like everything was going to be okay when in reality we’re all
fucked. Ella’s got that fucking party thing with Julian and then there’s the
trial. The vampires are revolting, the death count is rising and Ella is still
petrified of killing anything—afraid it’ll turn her into Lizbeth.”
“Doesn’t help you’ve been ignoring her. Or that you’ve been
lying to her.”
“I haven’t been ignoring her.”
Eli lifted an eyebrow.
“You know what happens when we fuck—we see into each other’s
heads. I’m trying to protect her, to step up and be what she needs. That meant
keeping my dick in my pants.”
Eli snatched the flask from me and drank deep, his Adam’s
apple rising and falling with each swallow. “You see Hannah tonight?”
Pain flashed in my brother’s eyes, a touch of vulnerability
that reminded me of the little boy I’d grown up protecting and sheltering from
Richard’s moods.
“I saw her,” I said after a minute. “Also saw Dante with his
tongue down her throat and his hand on her ass.”
Eli tightened his jaw before taking another swig. I was
surprised there was anything left in there.
“You think it’ll last between them?” Eli asked.
“I don’t think he’ll let her go, if that’s what you’re
asking. He asked her to move in with him—men don’t do that shit casually.
Tonight they were going to talk to Roy about it.”
My brother’s eyes darkened. “Them moving in together, that’d
be a mistake.”
I pushed open my car door and the night air swept inside. I
didn’t feel the cold, not like I used to before that succubus bitch had gotten
a hold of me two months ago.
“You had your chance, little brother, and you fucked it away
with about two dozen blondes and a couple of brunettes. Your choice. You had
her wrapped around your finger.”
Eli opened his own door and exited. He looked at me over the
car’s roof. “She deserves someone normal, a life away from this crap. Isn’t
that the one thing she wanted? Normalcy?”
“That’s the one thing Ella wanted for her.” I slammed the
door closed, rocking the GTO. “You wanna know why she chose Dante?”
“Aside from the fact he’s a walking Adonis?”
I stared at him for a beat, wondered if he’d really said
that aloud. “That’s super gay, bro.”
Eli shrugged.
“She picked him because he doesn’t treat her like glass. He’s
the first person who actually gave enough of a fuck to listen to what she
wanted and gave her what she needed. It pisses Ella off he had the balls to do
it and not her.”
My boots crunched over the gravel, each step farther away
from Ella a labor. I pulled open the heavy wood door. A thick haze of smoke
greeted me. I strode inside, threading my way through tables until I got to the
spot I’d deemed mine last week.
I glared at the two cowboys occupying Eli’s and my seats.
The wide, tan brims of their hats shadowed their faces. Each one had an overly
done-up woman hanging on their every word.
“Move,” I growled.
“Fuck off,” one of them said and went back to their
conversation as if I hadn’t spoken.
The skin at the back of my neck prickled and I fought the
initial urge to grab him by the back of the neck and slam his face against the
scuffed table. I grabbed the knife I’d tucked into my boot, in no mood to fuck
around. I was tired, pissed and I hadn’t gotten laid in over two weeks.
This was my bar, my spot and I wasn’t going to stand there
and fuck around with two wannabes whose belt buckles were bigger than their
dicks. I slammed the blade into the middle of the table. The resounding thwack
drew attention.
I pressed a hand to the table and leaned down until I was
nose to nose with the interloper. The move knocked his Stetson to the floor.
“I don’t think you heard me. Move the fuck somewhere else,
this is my table.”
The man scraped his chair back and when he rose, I did too.
I stepped in close, the tips of my boots touching his shit-kickers, and stared
into his eyes. I might not have been a giant like Eli or Dante, but I was
taller than most. More than height, I had the strength to back up my words. The
predator inside me rose, filling me with a visceral need for violence.
Not getting laid was really screwing with my temper.
Whatever the cowboy saw was enough for him to know I wasn’t
bullshitting. Apparently he wasn’t in the mood to nurse a shiner and a few
bruised ribs. He backed up a step and cast his gaze to the side. His girl
cuddled into his side and wrapped her arms around his middle. She looked up at
me with big, frightened eyes, as if I were the fucking boogieman.