Fatal Harmony (The Vein Chronicles Book 1)

  Supernatural.

  He pounded into me with a ferocity that rivaled that of any vampire, demon, or werewolf. I gripped his back, holding on with everything I had, sinking my nails through the fabric of his tee so I scratched his skin, drawing blood.

  He let out a hiss and his pounding intensified, his mouth hovering inches from mine as his blood lingered in the air. The aroma of it coupled with his smell had me focusing on the veins in his neck, yearning to sink my fangs in and taste his blood on my tongue while he pulsed into me.

  I’d even meet the death it promised at the moment.

  As if he’d sensed it, Thorne’s hand circled my own neck, jerking my gaze up to quicksilver eyes.

  “You look at me, Isla,” he growled. “Me.”

  I complied, no longer yearning for the taste of his blood.

  Nor the taste of the grave that came with it.

  I wanted more. And in the moment when the fire he built reached breaking point, I realized that him, inside me, taking me amidst the corpses we’d created, was nothing supernatural.

  It was natural.

  And it was fatal.

  Then there was nothing but white blinding light as my climax took over every inch of coherent thought, my mind latching onto Thorne’s grunts of pleasure as I milked his own end from him.

  The air was sweet and bitter and wondrous with our combined scents, with the pulse of his emotion.

  I managed to blink away the white light until quicksilver dominated my vision.

  With a gentleness that contrasted the brutal grip of before, Thorne brushed my hair from my face with agonizing slowness, watching its journey as it trailed along my cheek.

  My world became blurry around the edges, Thorne’s face the only thing in stark and jarring clarity. Bruised and stained with the results of damage that would always be done as long as he was human.

  The stark realness of his face decorated with the symbols of mortality served as omens that sent a cold force of premonition through the heat he’d created.

  “These violent delights have violent ends,” I murmured, almost to myself.

  He grasped my chin, his steely gray eyes oceans to be lost in. To drown in. “Everything has a violent end, Isla. Life. Death, as it turns out. Even peace is violence packaged differently.” He gripped my face tighter, his other hand digging painfully into my hip. “But isn’t the violence the best part?” he growled.

  The blurring at the edges of my vision became more dominant with his words. The enticing respite from that very violence I craved from his touch. So I gave in.

  Surrendered.

  In Thorne’s arms was both the most fatal and safest place to do so.

  COMING AWAKE IN AN INSTANT of panic and grasping at my burning throat was not my idea of a good way to start the night.

  Every instinct in my entire being thrummed with unease as I surged into consciousness in unfamiliar surroundings. The savage thirst of flames stripping my throat of flesh made it hard to take in why I was in a small and sparsely decorated bedroom.

  One thing I did note was the woodsy scent that snaked from the gray sheets I was tangled in.

  Thorne.

  Images of furious bodies clashing together in a brutal coupling amongst the blood and corpses littering the floor had flames lick somewhere else.

  Somewhere much lower.

  It was only belatedly that I realized I was naked except for a shirt that imprinted Thorne’s scent into my flaming skin, pressing into my breasts.

  Had I not been half wild with thirst I might have paused to ponder why I was in Thorne’s shirt in what I guessed was Thorne’s bedroom. As it was, I thought of only one thing.

  Blood.

  Not in decades, centuries perhaps, had I been so stripped down to my baser instincts.

  Years when the only thing that meant something was filling the emptiness with the lifeblood of as many humans as possible.

  Thrumming in the next room had me leaping from the bed and darting to the door before I quite understood what happened.

  I caught myself with my hand on the doorknob as lowered voices floated through the air and tickled my ears.

  Had I had a smidgeon less self-control, I’d have ignored it and went in search for a big breakfast. Instead, I stopped.

  “Normal?” A rumbling voice encircled me in its rough caress and Thorne’s unmistakable fury-filled growl echoed through the room. “She’s been as still as a fuckin’ corpse for almost a fuckin’ week,” he hissed. “We got no clue if she’ll even wake up because she doesn’t have a heartbeat. We need the witch back here.”

  A week? I felt like I’d been on a no-blood diet for at least a year. I glanced down at my arm, still smooth and flawless. But my hands had a wrinkle to them which would have been invisible to the human eyes. When vampires went too long without blood they started to shrivel up like a prune. Young vamps couldn’t last a day. Once they’d passed a century they were better.

  Me? I could go longer than a week. It was uncomfortable, but nothing more than emaciated models felt like on a daily basis. However, I couldn’t go that long without blood when I’d lost a lot from a gaping wound at my neck and that blasted witch had turned the rest to steam.

  “We can’t bring the witch here,” a deeper, smoother voice argued. The twinge in my neck told me he was a slayer too. “We’ve got enough heat on us havin’ a fuckin’ vamp in the house. Another in the barn. Sneaking the witch in a second time is going to be near impossible. You know Erik is watching this place. He’s still loyal, despite being an asshole, so he’s yet to inform anyone outside the unit about you working with a vampire. But if he knew you had one in your bed?” There was a pause and a rustle of movement as the speaker paced the floor. “Jesus, Thorne, what were you thinking, bringing a bloodsucker here? You know the council can take your stripes for this.” Anger and frustration bubbled out of the formerly smooth voice. “I know she’s got somethin’ on you, bro, but it’s not fuckin’ good.”

  I agreed with him there. Even now, Thorne’s mere presence had my body in tune with the wave of fury and undertones of concern rippling through his rigid body like a storm. I could taste his emotions with more clarity than I had purchase on my own. His heartbeat was loud enough to reside in my own chest. And the surge of blood around his system sang to me with a melody that had me gripping the doorknob with enough force to snap it off.

  I glanced down, wondering if I’d just announced my presence.

  Thorne’s thundering shout coupled with his volcanic eruption of my emotions drowned out the sound.

  “I fuckin know,” he roared.

  Silence bathed the room in its tempting and confronting clarity.

  I tried to swallow the flames at my throat.

  “Then let’s go in there and solve the problem by putting a knife through her temple.” The other voice was once again calm.

  I grinned against the fire. I liked that guy. Well I would, if he wasn’t discussing my murder. But I enjoyed his bloodlust.

  Thorne’s fury seeped through the walls and drenched the room I was in.

  “You touch her, I’ll put my knife in your heart,” Thorne uttered in a voice so deceptively soft you’d think it was a lover’s whisper—if you were dense, that is. Even a deaf person could taste the promise of death in the air.

  It swept around me, its meaning permeating my bloodlust.

  The other slayer let out a throaty chuckle. “Only you would fall in love with the creature you were born to kill.”

  I burst through the door before my eavesdropping took me somewhere I couldn’t come back from.

  Love and Thorne?

  No.

  Love was a death sentence.

  I may have already been dead, but I didn’t want it to be literal.

  I sped through a hallway peppered with photographs to reach a small open-plan living room and kitchen. The glass doors leading to a porch revealed an overgrown lawn that snaked into dense woodlands.

  Two masculin
e gazes focused on me. I returned the favor. Thorne was close to the muscled man in front of him, obviously necessary for his death threat. His hands were still curled into fists, and the veins exposed from his black tee pulsed with the way he held himself. His jeans were black instead of his usual faded denim. I steeled myself against his gray gaze and the wild look etched into his features.

  I focused on the man beside him. It was like looking at night and day. Where Thorne was dark, his features carved from marble, this slayer’s blond hair was cut short but mussed artfully, his nose crooked from being broken one too many times. He was covered from throat to ankle in tattoos, vibrant and alive on his muscled skin, visible around his tight tank and board shorts. The skin underneath the tats was tanned, and I half expected him to give me the ‘hang ten’ greeting while drawling “dude” in a Californian accent.

  My perusal of them only took a couple of seconds, but it caused physical agony to ignore the pulse in Thorne’s neck and the call of his blood. Interestingly, surfer slayer was about as appetizing as wet cardboard.

  “I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore, Toto,” I addressed the imaginary dog at my feet.

  Surfer slayer’s eyes popped out just a little at my words. Once more his gaze roved over my exposed legs, Thorne’s tee swallowing my torso but only just covering my butt. My hair wasn’t mussed from sleep because I stayed completely still when I slept, the absence of bed head was one of the great things about being undead. My auburn locks tumbled down my back like I’d just strutted out of a shampoo commercial.

  “I get it,” he said immediately.

  Thorne let out a warning sound in his throat as his gaze mirrored his friend’s, though it was followed by a shadow of his phantom touch. Memories of the rough hands pinning me down as he drilled relentlessly into me.

  My memories were cut short by another hunger pang that bolted through my midsection with the power to double me over. I stayed upright, but the sardonic smile flickered from my face.

  Thorne caught it and was already halfway across the room when it hit. His breath was hot on my face the moment he came in front of me.

  “Isla,” he rasped. “You’re alive.”

  I tilted my head, ignoring the pain in my stomach and the burn at my throat. I couldn’t show weakness. Not even in front of the man who’d ravaged me within an inch of my afterlife a week before, then sheltered me through laevisomnus and threatened what I guessed was a close friend who’d suggested murdering me in my sleep.

  And he may or may not love me.

  “Not technically,” I replied breezily as if that last thought hadn’t chilled me to the bone. “But I’m not dead, so kudos for me.” I gave him a thumbs-up.

  “Could you tell me where we are, how I got here and then kindly direct me to my car?”

  His gaze turned thunderous. “Could you fuckin’ tell me how you collapsed in my goddamn arms and not even an open fuckin’ vein has woken you up in a week?” His emotions flickered around him like a black cloak.

  My head snapped up. “Open vein? Hate to break it to you, buddy, but unless you were trying to kill me for real, your open vein wouldn’t do much,” I lied.

  His proximity had me tracing the journey of the blood pumping through him with every beat of his heart. I craved it. To sink my fangs into his neck was the promise of something even more than the blood Rick had given me a week back.

  Nirvana perhaps.

  Death certainly.

  But the urge was so strong I had to dig my nails into palms and cut them open just to stay rooted in place.

  His eyes hardened. “It wasn’t me,” he admitted through gritted teeth.

  “Ditto with surfer boy over there.” I nodded at the slayer who was watching the exchange with interest. “No offense,” I added. “I’m sure your blood would make me all squidgy if it weren’t for the whole ‘toxic to vampires’ thing.”

  Though his blood wasn’t singing to me like Thorne’s. Even as I tracked its journey around his body, the scent of it made my starved body recoil. Yet Thorne’s was an oasis in the desert. Not good.

  He grinned wide. “None taken, beautiful bloodsucker.”

  The way he used ‘bloodsucker’ as an endearment had me grinning.

  “Sophie,” Thorne continued.

  I turned my attention back to the stormy gray eyes that searched my face like a man searching for flecks of gold in a pan.

  “Sophie was here?” I asked, glancing around in case I’d missed my not-quite-a-wallflower best friend. “She’s okay?”

  Thorne nodded once, confusion knitting his features at my concern.

  “Didn’t tell you not to worry about a vase that you broke seconds afterwards?”

  His brow furrowed further. “No.”

  Thorne obviously hadn’t seen The Matrix.

  “Didn’t take any unexplained trips to colonial New York?” I continued. It was a risk even hinting to the powers that could get her dead if found out, but if they knew about them I’d sense the lie in the air. Then I’d have to do something about the knowledge.

  Thorne looked at me like he was wondering where he could get a vampire straight jacket on short notice.

  That was good. It was a look I got on the regular.

  “Isla,” he clipped, his voice full of the authority he had commanded his men, and my body, with.

  My stomach dipped, making way for a new kind of hunger.

  Only for a second; then my baser instincts for blood took over.

  “Explanation,” he demanded.

  I let out an exaggerated sigh. I didn’t rightly need to but it was the human marker for annoyance. “In case you didn’t notice, I was involved in some strenuous activity at the house of horrors,” I answered, and his eyes flared. “Killing witches who have a thousand years on me and can boil my blood kind of took it out of me.”

  I watched as Thorne’s eyes flared for a different reason.

  “She boiled your blood?” he repeated, his low rumble cutting through the air like razor blades.

  I nodded. “Not an experience I’d recommend.”

  Thorne didn’t glance behind him. “Silver, out,” he commanded. “Go put that vamp in the barn into Isla’s car, ready for transport.” He paused, eyes never leaving mine. “Keep enough copper in him that he’s out of action for a while. A long while.”

  My stomach dipped with different hunger pangs at his words.

  Silver grinned and gave me a chin lift. I winked at him. “Nice to meet you.” I couldn’t resist putting my thumb and pinky finger up, shaking them in goodbye. “Hang ten, bro,” I drawled.

  His laugh followed him as he stepped outside the glass sliding door. “Same to you, bloodsucker,” he murmured, knowing I could hear.

  “I like him much better than No Neck,” I informed Thorne. “Why don’t you take him on missions? Seems to me he’s less likely to get killed than No Neck—by me, that is.”

  Thorne regarded me. “Silver works in the lab. He doesn’t come out in the field unless needed.”

  I raised my brow. His appearance certainly didn’t translate to ‘scientist’ but then again, appearances rarely gave insight to the true person underneath.

  “He’s been dissecting the red-eyed freaks we tangled with last week?” I deduced.

  Thorne nodded once.

  I fought past my need for his blood. And his touch. “Did he find anything?”

  The question hung in the air as Thorne watched my face with an intensity that had me rattled. “Later,” he growled. “Now he’s gone. And you’re awake.”

  His hands moved up to frame my neck and his mouth fastened on mine, kissing me with a fervor that made me forget about my thirst for blood.

  Heck, it made me forget I was a freaking vampire.

  If it were possible for me to be breathless by the time he let me go, I would’ve been. Had I been human, his grip on my neck would have snapped my bones.

  “You don’t do that again,” he ordered, his mouth inches from mine. ??
?You just….” His jaw hardened. “You want to tell me why it felt like you fuckin’ died in my arms the second after you made me feel more alive than a thousand battles could have?”

  I jerked at his words, at the delayed effect of the kiss, at the fact that I was being held by a slayer.

  “Like I said before, I’ve gone through a lot. You know, cursed with black magic for the second time in a day, throat ripped out, then….” I thanked everything that was unholy for my inability to blush. Never in my undead life had I been chaste when discussing sex. In this case, however, I felt like a fourteen-year-old virgin.

  I decided to skip the fornication part of the evening. “I hadn’t slept in….” I paused, mentally calculating. “Two months.” Crap, had it been that long? “It usually wouldn’t be a big problem, but I’ve had more injuries and blood loss in the past two weeks than I’ve seen in the last two years.” I paused again. “Oh wait, there was the time that demon broke all the bones in my back. That didn’t exactly involve blood, though, or battle.”

  Fury cloaked the air once more when he read between the lines.

  Thorne was the jealous type.

  I pretended that didn’t get me a little hot as I stared at him. “Anyway, vampires don’t need nearly the same amount of sleep as humans. Eight hours every twenty-four-hour period? How do you get anything done?” I waved my hand in a dismissive gesture before he could answer. “Young vampires need it more often, maybe twice a week, but it quickly becomes less necessary as long as you don’t sustain too many injuries. If you’ve never slept with a vampire before”—I gave his granite jaw a pointed look—“which I’m betting you haven’t, you wouldn’t know that the expression ‘slept like the dead’ does in fact hold truth. Vampires have a heightened metabolism despite being technically dead, so in order to stay undead we have to enter a sleep deeper than REM. It’s the closest we come to taking the ‘un’ out of undead. The reason for everyone thinking vampires slept in coffins was because stupid humans stumbled upon a vampire taking a nap, stuffed him in a coffin, and then buried them. And vampires have no consciousness when they’re under the cloak of laevisomnus, no control. Nothing short of copper through the heart could wake them long enough to kill them.” I gave Thorne a look. “Which is why me giving a slayer such information makes my life already forfeit under vampire law, so I’d appreciate you keeping that little piece of intel to yourself.”