I met his eyes for one second, slipping down that crevice in time we’d made for ourselves.
In that vortex, I was propelled back into memories as my mind struggled to save me from plunging into insanity at seeing Thorne journeying to the grave. Whatever he had that was more than human, whatever had saved him countless times, was failing him now.
Because of me.
“Demon. Thirty years ago,” Thorne rumbled as I traced a crescent scar on his left pec. Little of his torso was untouched from the memories of his life.
I glanced up, jostling only slightly so I stayed in his arms but could meet his gaze. “Thirty,” I repeated.
He nodded once.
I explored his face. Weathered for sure. Tan that was permanent now, in the midst of New York winter. Up closer, I could see the small white line at the top of his lip. Another scar. His eyes betrayed age much older than the thirty or so that the very faint lines at the edges of them suggested. How I hadn’t seen it before I didn’t know. Maybe it was because every meeting until that point had been under life-or-death circumstances; I’d barely had time to keep my head on my shoulders, definitely not puzzle over the depths in his eyes that didn’t match up with the years on his masculine and attractive face.
“How old are you?” I asked him.
His eyes twinkled slightly as he traced circles on my naked back. “Thirty-five.”
I grinned. “And how long have you been thirty-five?”
The corner of his mouth twitched. “A while,” he responded.
In that moment, the pure obscurity of all of this, coupled with the reference to a movie that I had been sure he hadn’t seen, became too much for me. I laughed. Full-on laughed. Genuinely, not sardonically or sarcastically. An actual laugh.
When I was done, there was no residual humor in Thorne’s eyes, but something else. Something intense, though that seemed to be his default around me. Usually it was tinted with a heavy dose of fury.
Not then, though.
“I’ve never seen you do that,” he said, his voice thick.
I frowned. “What? Make a sarcastic movie reference? I’m sure that’s not true. I’m half movie quotes, half sarcasm and the rest nonsense.”
He pushed the auburn hair from my face. “No, laugh,” he rasped, watching my face. “You make a lot of jokes, Isla, but it’s just occurred to me that that’s the first time you’ve truly laughed. It’s rather beautiful. You’re rather beautiful.”
The compliment, so simple, so genuine, took me off guard. “I guess there’s a lot to joke about but not much to laugh about lately,” I told him honestly.
“We’re going to have to change that.”
I gave him a look. “Yes, there’s heaps of time for laughs in the midst of a supernatural war that I’m somehow in the middle of whilst I’m in love with a slayer who is something other than human and has refused to tell me quite what. Oh, and this current relationship could get me killed if anyone in my race, most of whom are just looking for a reason to get me executed, finds out. We’ll pencil in the hilarity between battles,” I deadpanned.
His emotions turned the moment I spoke, swirling with sweetness and bitterness that was better than the best blood in the world.
“You love me,” he rasped.
I raised my brow. “That’s what you got from that?”
He moved so I was pinned to the bed, his muscled form pressing into me, his heart vibrating against my chest.
His mouth covered mine and he thrust into me. “I love you too,” he grunted. “That other shit? It’s nothing to that,” he promised.
The heat from the memory was chased away as a cool hand clutched my neck and yanked me back from where I’d reached for Thorne.
Rick plunged his knife directly into my heart. At least that’s what I thought. Though it only brushed the organ that was pulsating with pain when the blade broke my skin, hurtling through my chest cavity.
I did let out a scream that time.
Thorne’s pain filled the room and wrapped me in enough strength to silence myself.
His fury meant exerting energy that he sorely needed to stay alive.
I didn’t look at the steely gray eyes I knew were burning into me. Instead, I met the emerald ones.
“You go nice into those cuffs and maybe he’ll live.” Rick nodded to Thorne while removing the knife. “You don’t, you fight.” He moved his eyes to two burly vampires. “To the death with my two best. You win, you go free, your treasonous transgressions forgotten.”
A murmured whisper rode over the small crowd at his words, the outrage palpable. I could most likely win against two of even the king’s best. My fighting skills were not exactly a secret—I’d advertised them in that very room not two months before when I’d been saving the king’s life—so him offering such a thing was tantamount to a pardon.
Vampires didn’t get pardons. They got put in Rick’s gallery, as I’d learned. Or publicly executed.
The king was feeling merciful. Or at least sentimental.
The wave of protest came and went as quickly as it took for emerald eyes to silence them with a glare.
Even their outrage of such an offer to a vampire such as me wasn’t enough to make them do something as suicidal as speak against the most ruthless king we’d ever had.
They expected me to take the fight, of course.
And most who knew me at least a little, like my mother and father who were sitting mere feet from me, knew that I’d win.
Without hesitation, I stood and moved to the copper restraints.
Whereas the king’s offer was met with a roar, my gesture was met with an even thicker silence than Thorne’s. I nearly choked on it.
“Don’t you fuckin’ dare,” a rough voice ordered.
Even half dead, restrained in a room full of vampires literally out for his blood, he managed to give weight to such a command. “You fight,” he growled.
The weight of the silence had nothing on the weight of those words, the stare that kissed the side of my cheek.
I addressed neither and ignored him. Me thrusting my hand up to be cuffed was enough of a response.
I couldn’t look at Thorne. Not yet. It would kill me to see the grave in his eyes. To know I put it there. I would only welcome death if it came with the reward of his life.
Instead I looked to the face of my captor
“Don’t do this,” I pleaded, my voice rough.
His body jolted, only slightly, while his face stayed impassive.
He turned to the room. “Out, all of you,” he barked.
Their disappointment was palpable. They had been there to see something that many, including my family, had been waiting for for centuries.
My death.
In the blink of a human eye, the spectators were gone. The room felt fuller without their presence, even though the cavernous space was only occupied by the three of us.
Rick turned back to me, his eyes twinkling with something that hadn’t been there before. Something I couldn’t name. “You beg now? For this human? This slayer? You didn’t beg for your own life that night in your apartment, yet you’re willing to do so for his.”
“I don’t beg.”
“Even for your life?”
“Especially for my life.”
I didn’t lower my gaze. “I don’t beg for my life. My soul? That’s a different story.”
Thorne’s energy sizzled as my words entered the air. “You want to kill someone, asshole?” he growled. “Kill me. You’re fuckin’ amping to do so. Do it now. Isla has no part in this.”
“Shut up, Thorne,” I hissed, my eyes moving.
“Never,” he rasped, his voice filled with death. “Not gonna watch you give yourself up without a fight. You want a fight, Emrick? Fight me,” he invited, rattling his binds. “Don’t you fuckin’ dare taint this world any more by removing her from it. Not even the grave will save you if you do. I’ll chase you to the fuckin’ afterlife. Fight me. Let her go.”
> Rick glanced between us, laughing coldly in a bitter sound that poisoned the air. “Fight you? Now?” He gave Thorne’s midsection a pointed look. “Rather unnecessary.”
He stepped back to me, clutching my neck in the grip that was akin to two semis pressing on either side of my jugular. In other words, not pleasant.
The chill of his breath kissed my eyelids as he leaned forward. “What is it about them?” he hissed. “The humans? What is it that makes you not want to kill them?” His glance wavered down to the floor. To the ever-increasing pool of blood. I could smell it. It was a pulse, a life force, vibrating through the room, reaching my pointed heel. That pulse was receding, weakening. “To save them?” he continued, eyes back to me.
I didn’t waver from his eyes. I couldn’t look down at the blood. The body so full of strength and life and me, containing what was left of my soul. It was withering and dying and I couldn’t watch that. I was already feeling that death clutch me in its icy grip. It was much tighter than the king’s grip, no matter how strong he was.
“They’re weak,” I whispered. Choked, really. “They die. They get sick. Age.”
His brows furrowed. “Yes. Which is why they’re nothing.”
I shook my head. “It’s why they’re everything.” I blinked. “They change. They are a never-finished project. Their very nature accommodates death, but it also accommodates life. Love.
“Us? We’re done, right? The finished, more improved version of God’s first time around. We don’t die. We don’t age. We aren’t plagued with the soul that becomes man’s demise. We get to walk this earth without the shadow of death kissing our shoulders, which means we don’t need to change. As a species, we’re bloodthirsty, emotionless, cruel, and that’s all we’re going to be. No more change.” I swallowed, the air scraping my lungs like a thousand razor blades. I cast my glance past the ever-increasing pool of blood to the man it was coming from. The lightly tanned skin was turning gray, lifeless. The magnetic eyes were glued to me, intent, flaming with so much emotion. Physically seeing that life in his eyes at the midst of death, it hurt. More than anything.
But I carried on.
“They change,” I croaked. “Through the centuries, we’ve seen them turn from savage illiterates to creatures who produced A Tale of Two Cities, Romeo and Juliet, who introduced compassion into an ever-cruel world. They encompass all of our soulless depravity, that’s true, but they also possess something our superior species cannot. The other side of the coin. The binary opposition.” I met the silver eyes that were draining of the fight that surrounded his soul. “Love that means so much more than whatever we can have. Because we’re safe with our immortal love. Because forever means forever, though it rarely lasts. Forever, in reality, is a long time. For love to wither, die, become boring.” I nodded to Thorne. “But for them, forever is sixty years, sixty days, sixty seconds. It’s not fixed. They love even though they know the life they’ve attached that emotion to is so very fragile, temporal. That life that has the power to destroy them will, inevitably, when it ends. But they keep doing it, despite everything. And that’s why we’ll never win. Because we don’t know death, we don’t know life. It means nothing to us. And that’s our curse.” I wrenched my eyes away from his. “And that’s why I save them. Because it’s our curse, not theirs. And every innocent life that’s ended because someone was hungry, bored or turned on is never just singular. It’s multiple little deaths for those connected to that life.”
My eyes no longer saw the dungeon. I was in Paris, my gaze flickering over the littered bodies of those I had come to love.
To Jonathan, who I had come to breathe for, to exist for.
And I died a thousand little deaths then.
But I survived. And endured.
But this time I wouldn’t. There would be no pieces to pick up if I had to taste Thorne’s death. Live in a silence that didn’t have his steady heartbeat filling me.
I jutted my chin up. “So you can sit on your fucking solid gold throne with your arrogance and superiority and immortality and pretend to lord over the human race. But in reality, you are never going to be better than them, because you won’t ever change. You won’t ever die, but you won’t ever live. And that is the only glory I’ll get from my death. Not much, not nearly enough, but it’ll do.”
I met his eyes through all of the pain and death and utter destruction that was coursing through my veins. “But if you kill me, you best make sure that I’m dead. Otherwise, I swear to Ambrogio, I will come after you with a ferocity that even you, oh fearless leader, couldn’t dream of in your wildest nightmares,” I promised.
Rick’s eyes inspected me. “That’s the idea,” he muttered, and then there was a resounding crack followed by a thundering yell so full of pain and suffering that it sent agony unlike I’d ever experienced through every part of me.
Then there was nothing.
“I will kill you,” a rough voice promised.
“Wait until we’ve made it out of this alive first,” a calmer voice responded, its elegance scraped by an undertone of something.
Uneasiness. Concern, perhaps.
It was hard to inspect through the fog I was fighting. It was like nothing was corporal, real. My last memories were of death, yet I was reasonably sure that this wasn’t heaven. Or hell.
The raspy voice coupled with the resounding heartbeat told me it wasn’t hell.
He wouldn’t be in hell.
And the arms cradling me to the chest that was the source of that beat wasn’t hell either. Though I reasoned heaven wouldn’t be so full of murder threats.
“If Isla doesn’t make it through this….” The arms around me flexed as pain peppered through the emotions that were more tangible, anchoring me to the earth.
Though the earth was jerking with bumps and we seemed to be hurtling at an uncommon speed. In a car, I reasoned. And I was horizontal, half splayed in Thorne’s arms. His heat burned the air but didn’t break through the ice I was trapped in.
I was yet to find purchase on my body or my eyelids, which seemed determined to stay firmly shut.
“She’s a vampire. She’ll make it through,” the cold voice snapped. “You’re here and you’re human.”
“Not quite, Emrick. And maybe before you pulled this fuckin’ stunt you might have tried to think of anyone but yourself,” Thorne roared, every inch of his tone filled with utter devastation and rage. There was a lot of that.
Confusion flickered around my floating mind. Thorne seemed to be alive—cue glorious rain dance at that. But he also seemed to be pissed. Another glorious rain dance. Alive enough to be pissed was fine with me.
But he was conversing with Rick in a way that was decidedly familiar.
Too familiar for a slayer of noble blood and the king of all vampires.
Granted, I was a vampire of noble blood in love with the slayer, but we were an exception to the rule.
Or so I thought.
“Thinking of myself? I risked everything on this, on the two of you tonight,” Rick hissed, igniting a cool inferno of anger. “I was provided with concrete proof of Isla’s betrayal in front of the Sector and had no fucking choice but to do what I did. By not only letting the two of you survive but escape, I’ve thrown this world, my world, my fucking life into turmoil.”
“Heaven forbid Emrick’s carefully structured life gets shaken up,” Thorne yelled back. “If you haven’t noticed, we’re at war. Your crown was bound to topple off at some point. Be grateful your head didn’t come with it. It still might if you’ve killed the woman I love.”
“The vampire you love.”
Another squeeze. My limbs were tingling with feeling. Soon I might be able to move them, though I was gaining a disturbing amount of information playing the coma victim.
“The woman I love,” Thorne repeated.
A heavy silence settled.
“Despite being that, she is still a vampire. She’ll heal.” His voice was softer. Or as soft as a polishe
d stone could be.
“Maybe you’d have learned how wrong you are if you’d bothered to speak to her instead of using her as a weapon in your war and a tool in your monarchy,” Thorne hissed. “But she won’t. Not after she’s been cursed by a witch, who she was fighting for you.”
Another heavy silence.
“What?”
“I don’t have time to explain.” Smells and sounds exploded as we burst from a car into a familiar woodsy-smelling area. “I’ve got to try and save the woman I love.”
Then various heartbeats entered the fray.
“Holy fuck, Thorne. You’re covered in blood,” a masculine voice seethed.
“Is Isla…?” Sophie’s voice was small.
I managed to find purchase on my vocal cords. “Surprise, bitches. I bet you’d thought you’d seen the last of me,” I croaked, my voice foreign.
In the time it took for me to open my eyes following my excellently timed American Horror Story reference, no one spoke. No one even breathed.
Steely gray eyes were the first thing I saw. They swirled like a storm, then closed for one beat as if the strength to hold them open had failed him. His arms flexed, bringing me up so his lips pressed to my forehead.
“You’re not allowed to pull that shit again, Isla,” he growled, voice thick.
“What, dying? Only if you promise the same,” I replied, my voice losing its earlier bravado. I moved my arm that seemed to be made of solid steel to stroke the skin of his face, then narrowed my eyes downwards to where the gaping wound should’ve been. “I’m sure I haven’t been out long enough for you to recover from having your insides on your outsides,” I said, suspicious.
That’s when Rick stepped forward. On pure instinct, I wrenched my body from Thorne’s arms—only possible because he wasn’t expecting it—and lunged at Rick, my fingers around his neck in an instant.