Something Wanton (Mystics & Mayhem) (10 page)

“Skipper,” she said, like that was all the explanation that was needed.  “Turns out, he didn’t appreciate a demon operating in his domain.  From what I hear, it was pretty gruesome.  I’ll spare you the details.”

Yeah, I thought that was probably for the best.

From there, she went on to tell me what she’d done with her life since being rescued, but I was still stuck on the rescue itself.  My Nathan, ever the Knight in Shining Armor rescuing the damsel in distress.  Always saving them.

All of them but me.

I was still thinking about that when the first pain hit.  It was a terrible twisting sensation, like someone was trying to tie my intestines in knots.  I pressed my fist against my stomach, sucking in shallow breaths in an effort to make it stop.  After a few seconds it started to subside, but it left me feeling weak and shaky.  When it was finally over, I found Sierra watching me like a hawk.

“It’s going to get worse before it gets better,” she said quietly.  “It’s at that point where you think you’ll do anything to make it stop that your demon will be the strongest.  And that’s when you have to make a choice.  Do you fight, or do you give up?  It’s really up to you.”

  “Here,” she said, pulling something from under the couch.  When she handed it to me, I was surprised to find it was one of Tyler’s sketch pads.  When Sierra saw my confused look, she patted my hand and got to her feet.  “He thought you might need that.”

I stared down at the pad in my lap as she left the room, wondering what I would need it for.  Finally, curiosity got the best of me and I flipped it open.  On the first page was a single sentence written in Tyler’s messy scrawl. 

To help you remember what you’re fighting for.

I pressed my fist against my lips to hold back the sob that was trying to get past the lump in my throat when I flipped to the next page.  Staring up at me was a sketch of Grams.  She wasn’t smiling or looking directly at Tyler as he worked.  Instead, he had caught her poring over a book, her forehead creased with concentration, and her curls coming loose from her ever-present twist. 

I traced the outline of her familiar face with my fingertips, wishing she was there to give me the hug I so badly needed. Closing my eyes, I tried to imagine her arms around me.  I could almost feel her hand smoothing my curls the way she always had when I was upset or scared.

“Our heroes never leave us, beautiful,
” Tyler had written beneath the sketch. 
“They’re always there in the wings, waiting for us to exceed their expectations.  Show her you’re as strong as she believes you are.  Fight for her, Em.”

If you had asked me before that moment who my hero was, I would have said Kim without blinking.  Staring at my Grams’ beautiful face, I knew it wasn’t true.  Grams had
always
been my hero.  I had just never realized it until that moment.  But Tyler had.  He had seen what I couldn’t see myself.

I flipped the page and the sob I’d been holding in finally broke free when I found Kim smiling up at me.  My best friend.  My rock in the storm.  My anchor.  My sister.  Tyler had caught the gleam in her eyes to perfection, that impish smile.  He had captured her beautiful face, but more
important to me, he had transferred her beautiful
soul
onto the paper before me. 

“There are few people in this world who are capable of perfect love, Ember,”
the caption read. 
“Even rarer are those who would sacrifice their own lives, their own happiness, for a friend.  Kim is one of those people, and so are you.  The two of you really are twin souls, beautiful.  If you fall, so will she.”

I had to close my eyes against that unbearable burning as those words sank into my mind and branded themselves there.  I prayed for the tears to come then.  I prayed for just one little drop to help ease the painful pressure in my chest where my heart should have been. 

Never had truer words been written.  The bond Kim and I shared was rare.  Even as a kid I had known that.  If there had ever been anyone who loved me, it was Kim.  She had been there through the good and the bad, never wavering, never even thinking of running.  She had protected me and cheered me on my whole life.

I mi
ssed her so much in that moment that I thought it would kill me—again.  Because it was in that moment that I realized it was all up to me.  For the first time, she couldn’t save me. For the first time, she was counting on me to save myself.  To save us both.

Turning to the next page, I found my first smile—sad as it might have been.  There before me was a perfect rendering of Blake.  My heart ached as I stared at the lines of his face.  Tyler had caught that evil little grin that he had worn so often through our friendship.  No, not friendship.  Like Kim, Blake and I were much more than that.  He was my protector.  He was the voice of reason in a world gone mad and my shoulder to cry on—a service he’d provided more than once in the last eleven years. 

He was my brother, just as Kim was my sister. 

“Soldiers are hired guns, but a real
protector
is something money can never buy,”
Tyler had written beneath the sketch. 
“Only love can gain you the loyalty of someone so honorable.  Remember that, Em.  Remember how much they love you.  Remember the times they’ve been there for you and held you up when all you wanted was to sink and never be seen again.  Fight for them.  They need you, beautiful, as much as you need them.”

Was that true?  Were they as miserable without me as I was without them?  Somehow, I thought they just might be.  Kim and I had been inseparable since Kindergarten.  Blake had been
ours
since his first day in Moonlight.  We had been a team, the Three Musketeers.  Even brief separations had been hard for us.

And if I didn’t get my shit together, and soon, this separation was going to be anything but brief.

I turned to the next page and felt my heart swell just a little when I found a self-portrait of Tyler staring back at me.  His classic features were arresting, but I decided there was something lacking in the sketch.  I finally decided it was the eyes.  Tyler’s golden eyes were so enchanting that seeing them in black and white took something away.

Still, there was something about the sketch that healed a few of the cracks in my heart.  Tyler had proven himself time and again to be my champion.  There was something safe about Tyler, something warm and comforting that had always drawn me to him.

“I’m always here,”
he had written beneath the sketch. 
“If you need me, you only have to call me. I will never be far away from you.”

Though I had been expecting it, the last sketch took my breath away.  Nathan was as
gorgeous on paper as he was in real life.  Just looking at him was enough to start me sobbing again.

“You come to love not by finding the perfect person, but by learning to love an imperfect person perfectly,”
Tyler had scribbled beneath Nathan’s sketch, beneath which he had written. 
“I’ll be the first person to admit he’s not perfect, but he loves you, Em.  If you won’t fight for me, or for Kim and Blake, or for Shea, fight for him.  He needs you, beautiful.  And you need him.  Don’t let your pride and anger keep you from seeing it.”

As good as that advice might have been, it was still the quote I couldn’t tear my eyes from.  It brought back a memory, a memory of another time when I had thought Nathan could never love me.  I had quoted it during our road trip to Washington after he’d kidnapped me.

I had believed in those words then, and I still believed it.  It had never mattered to me that Nathan was a vampire.  I had accepted that and had given him my heart, anyway.  The only question was; could Nathan do the same for me?

By the time I closed the sketchpad, the cramps in my stomach had started to intensify.  Holding the sketchpad close to my chest, I got up and staggered back down the hall to the bedroom.  I climbed into the bed and pulled the covers over my head, breathing a grateful sigh as the electric blanket I kept going at all times helped warm my over-chilled skin.

Two hours later, misery had taken on a whole new meaning.  It had become agony as one cramp after another ripped through my abdomen.  When Sierra came to check on me, I sobbed and begged for my shot.  Then sobbed some more when she shook her head sadly and walked away. 

Three hours after that, I was practically delirious from the pain and hunger raging through my body. My skin felt unbearably tight and my hands had shriveled against my chest
.  I was dying, withering away to nothing, just as Sierra had described. 

Oddly enough, I didn’t mind.  If it would make the pain stop, death couldn’t come soon enough.  Even spending an eternity stuck in Oblivion suddenly didn’t seem so bad.
 

Get up and find some
energy, you idiot!
a voice said in my head, though it sounded more like a feral growl than a voice in my opinion. 
Do you
want
to die? Well, I don’t!  Stop fighting me and let me save us!

I’m ashamed to admit, I thought about obeying that order.  But then I remembered what Sierra had said, that I could give up or fight.  And, thinking about all those faces in Tyler’s sketchbook, I made my decision.

Screw you,
I thought even as I started to scream, the pain finally too much to bear in silence. 
I might starve to death, you bitch, but, as you like to remind me, I won’t die alone.  You’re going with me.

With one last scream that felt like it had ripped my vocal cords in two, the darkness of Oblivion came for me at last.  I welcomed it, welcomed an end to the pain, the hunger, the heartache.  I fell into that waiting darkness gratefully. 

And part of me hoped I would never come back.
 

I came back to the land of the living to the sounds of a full-scale argument in progress.  I could make out Sierra’s voice, as well as Nathan’s and Tyler’s.  The door of the bedroom was cracked, allowing the argument to float to me from down the hall.  At first I couldn’t seem to focus on what was being said, but after a few minutes of listening to them, I was starting to get the gist of the problem loud and clear.

Yeah. 
I
was the problem.

I got out of bed and forced my weak muscles into motion.  I slipped silently from the bedroom and, using the wall to keep my balance, crept down the hall to the kitchen.  The three of them were sitting at the table, their expressions tense and strained. 

“It’s
not
going to
work
,” Sierra was insisting, sounding irritated.  “If you would just open your damn eyes, you would see that!” 

“
It has to work,” Tyler said, sounding a little desperate.  “There have been three more disappearances in the last week.  We’re going to have to move her soon, Sierra.  Maybe in another week...”

I frowned.  That was the second time I’d heard them talking about people disappearing, but there still wasn’t anything in the paper about it.  How could five people go missing and no one report it?  

“The two of you aren’t listening!” Sierra cried, slamming one of her delicate hands down on the table in front of her.  Watching her, I thought maybe I should leave the missing people to Deputy Donut and worry about myself. 

“We
are
listening, Sierra,” Nathan said calmly.  “We just think you might be overreacting.”

“I am
not
overreacting,” Sierra ground out.  “She should have had enough Nexus built up in her system to ward off full stasis for two
days
!  She didn’t make it twelve
hours
!  She’s burning through it ten times as fast as the average darkling.  I suspected as much our first lesson, when I saw her extreme reaction to the cold.  Now, I’m sure of it.”

My mouth fell open in horror and refused to shut again. 
If the Nexus didn’t work, where did that leave me?  The answer to that was pretty easy to figure out—dead or a demon. 

In other words,
I was screwed.

“So there’s no hope,” Nathan said, his voice
as wooden as his expression, mimicking my thoughts.

“
I didn’t say that,” Sierra said with a dark look in his direction.

“Then what
are
you saying?”

I waited, holding my breath, to hear the answer to that question
myself.  Was there another drug like Nexus, something I could supplement it with to keep from demoning out and sucking the life out of the first human I ran across?  Was there some magic pill or darkling energy drink?  Really!  If the Nexus wasn’t going to work, what the hell was I supposed to do?!

“
She’s saying we’re going to have to find Em a donor,” Tyler said softly, answering the question going through my head as well as the one Nathan had asked. 

Had it not been for the wall next to me, I would have ended up on the floor. 
My stomach twisted itself into a pretzel as what Tyler had said hit home.  They were going to find me a living, breathing,
human being
to feed on?  The awfulness of that suggestion was enough to make me want to gag. 

“
It’s the only way, I’m afraid,” Sierra sighed, dropping her face into her hands.  “I’ll speak to Skipper tonight about finding her someone.”

“No.” 
 

That one word, spoken in Nathan’s smooth-as-silk voice, sent a tingle of dread down my spine.  As pleasant as his voice might have sounded to others
, I’d heard the deadly note in it.  The threat in his tone, coupled with the murderous expression on his gorgeous face, should have been enough to send Tyler and Sierra running for cover. 
I
sure wanted to.

“Nate—” Sierra began, but when he leveled that deadly furious look right at her, the words she’d been about to speak died on her lips.

“I said
no
,” he told her, his voice never rising above a pleasant hum.  “We can teach her to survive without a donor.  We’ll just have to up her Nexus dosage and work with her.”

By the time he finished speaking Sierra’s silvery-blue eyes had started to glow. 
The look she gave him would have withered live plants it was so venomous. 

“Up h
er dosage?” she repeated in a sneer.  “Did you miss it when she did that herself after what happened with the kid next door?  She’s already at double the recommended dosage!  What do you want to do?  Triple it?  Quadruple it?  Maybe you weren’t listening to me, but
that won’t work
!  Her system burns right through it—and I think you know why.  Forget to tell me something when you brought me here, did you, Nate?”

In response, Nathan just stared at her coldly and clamped his mouth shut.  If I hadn’t known him as well as I did, I might have missed the flicker of guilt that crossed his features.  I didn’t know what I was supposed to make of that.  I also didn’t know what Sierra had been talking about when she said he had neglected to give her all the necessary info when he asked for her help. 

But I was going to find out.

“I told you what you
needed to know,” Nathan said coldly, never taking his eyes from Sierra’s.  “She can do this.  She’s just going to have to fight harder.”

Sierra sat back in her chair, sucking in a sharp breath.
  When she spoke, it was in a horrified whisper.  “Fight harder?  She’s fighting as hard as she can now, Nate.  That girl in there put herself into full stasis rather than let her demon have control.  She fought!  She fought for Tyler and her other friends.  She fought for Shea.  She fought for
you
, Nathan.  She fought for you even though you’ve done nothing but treat her like she’s diseased since you brought me here.”

“
That’s because she is.”

I didn’t even hear the gasp that slipped through my lips, barely noticed when every head at the table turned in my direction. 
My heart didn’t crack.  It didn’t break.  It shattered.  It shattered into pieces so small I was sure they’d never be found again. 

Our gazes locked for just a second, and I thought I saw a flash of anguish in Nathan’s pretty hazel eyes.  When I turned to run, it wasn’t back to my room.  It was to the front door. 

I just wanted out.  Out of that house, away from the man who had once loved me but no longer thought I was worthy.  I didn’t want to stay and see the pity in Tyler’s and Sierra’s eyes.  I had to go.  I had to get out of there, before I broke down completely.

I didn’t hear Sierra cry out to me, didn’t hear Tyler’s chair hit the floor when he knocked it over in his haste to stand up.  All I could hear were Nathan’s words, repeating at top volume in my head, confirming my worst fears.

I hadn’t even reached the door handle when I hit a forcefield so powerful that it literally picked me up and threw me backwards.  I landed ten feet away,
every bit of air in my lungs expelling with a whoosh.  Before I could even blink, three faces were hovering over me, each etched with an expression of deep concern.

“Why…didn’t someone…tell me
…the doors…were warded?” I wheezed out, trying to find the strength to sit up.

“You didn’t ask.”  Tyler smiled softly as he offered me his hand to help me up.  “You haven’t tried to leave until now.  I guess it slipped my mind.
  Of course, now that the subject
has
come up, I suppose I should warn you that the windows are warded, too.”

“Fabulous,” I moaned.

I allowed Tyler to help me to my feet, even let Sierra put her arm around me when I started to sway unsteadily, but when Nathan reached out to touch me, I backed away.  I couldn’t bring myself to look at him, so if my rejection hurt him I never saw it.

“Don’t,” I told him, holding onto Sierra with a death grip to keep from sinking back to my knees.  “You wouldn’t want to take the chance of catching my
disease
.”

“Em, let me explain,” he began, but I shook my head.  I didn’t want to hear it.  Personally, I thought I’d heard enough.

“Sierra, will you help me back to my room?” I asked in a low voice that was choked with the pain I felt.  “I think getting zapped by Grams’ ward was the last straw for the day.”

“Sure,” she said, tightening her hold on me a little more.  “But are you sure you don’t want one of these big lugs to carry you?  It would be faster.”

“I’ll do it,” Nathan volunteered quietly, reaching for me again.

This time when I backed away, I felt something in me
snap, flooding me with a wave of anger so intense that it bordered on homicidal.  Nathan dropped his hands to his sides and sucked in a sharp breath when my eyes met his, then took a step back of his own.

“I would rather crawl,” I told him stiffly.  Pulling away from Sierra’s steadying grip, I forced my weak knees
to obey orders and stood up straight and tall and walked away with what remained of my tattered dignity.

And for the first time since I’d laid eyes on Nathan Ashley, I didn’t have any urge to look back.

∞§∞§∞§∞

Thanks to Sierra warning them about the impending failure of my Nexus injections,
my wardens really stepped up their game.  After more than a week of being watched day and night, I was ready to tear my hair out.  While Nathan wisely stayed away from me, Sierra spent every night watching me pace, not saying a word.  During the day, Tyler was there trying to distract me with stupid things like cards and board games.

I developed an intense hatred for Monopoly, thanks to Ty.

“This sucks,” I grumbled during what seemed like our hundredth game—which I was losing, as usual.  Giving him a pleading look, I whined, “I’m a senior in high school, Ty, not a six year old.  Can’t we do something else?  Better yet, can’t I just go see Kim?”

“No,” he said, not looking up from the board between us. 

“Why not?” I groaned, throwing myself backward on the carpet and covering my eyes with my arms.  I’d developed a whole new respect for the term ‘Cabin Fever’.

“Do I really need to answer that?” he asked, rolling the dice and moving the little car-shaped piece he always called dibs on around the board.  I didn’t even bother to sit up when he landed on a property I owned that had
a fabulous plastic hotel firmly planted on it.

“Why not?” I repeated in a sulky voice, just to annoy him.
I moved my arms enough to glare at him, but the way he was looking at me, the tenderness in his eyes, made me want to cry instead. 

“Darkling,” he said, pointing in my direction.  Then pointing toward the window, he said, “Foo
d source.  You do the math, Em.  Now, are you playing or not?”

“Not,” I muttered,

“Suit yourself,” he said with a shrug.  “You know what I think?  I think you’re just a sore loser.”

“Don’t you have a home?” I asked, rolling my eyes when he just grinned at me.

“Now why would I want to go home when I can enjoy your sunny companionship?” he teased.

“
Whatever.  Grams threatened to castrate you if you let me out of your sight, didn’t she?”

“Something like that.”

I shook my head at him as he stretched his long legs out and leaned back against the bed behind him.  It had been a while since I’d paid attention to any guy except Nathan, so I was surprised when I found myself thinking how cute he was.  When he’d temporarily enrolled in school with us in November to help Nathan keep us all safe, I’d had several of my friends ask me about him.  And watching as he laced his fingers behind his head and closed his eyes, it really wasn’t hard to see why. 

Without actually meaning to, I started cataloguing all of his more pleasing assets. 
Lean, toned body.  Unfashionably long sun-streaked dark hair, thick dark lashes.  And those eyes!  It wasn’t often you found a guy with gold-colored eyes, and Ty knew just how to use them to his advantage.  Add that to his totally hot British accent and he was just
yummy
.

In so many ways…

As I watched, his aura started to change the way Nathan’s had the day he came home.  I stared at the little swirls of light that started to work their way through the iridescent shimmer of his essence, entranced by them.  And the smell he was putting off!  Oh.  My.  God!  The first time I’d caught a whiff of that smell, I had thought it smelled like a little taste of Heaven.

Now, I thought it just might be the temp
tation that led me straight to Hell.

Now
that
is what I call a feast. 
I repressed a shudder at the sound of that cold little voice, the voice I had come to associate with my demon, filled my mind. 
Please tell me we’re going to get a taste of him.