His palms found my wrists, stalling my motions.
I paused because the only way to continue my task would have been to dislocate his fingers.
I wasn’t ruling it out.
“I would advise you to take your hands off me. Now. If you like them attached to your wrists, that is,” I gritted out.
His eyes leveled on mine, possibly gauging my seriousness. “I’ve just been inside you, Isla, after five days and thirteen hours without that. You think I care about a couple of broken bones compared to what I get while I’m touching you?”
I blinked once at the words and the meaning and, worse, the truth behind them.
There was no room for the truth here.
Not when the rest of my mind was taken up by his lies.
I yanked my hands from his, the crack of bone resounding through the room.
I had to give it to him—he didn’t flinch.
That sharp jolt of pain that ricocheted through whatever connection his blood had strengthened once again was enough to make me sink my fangs into my bottom lip.
He didn’t even move his gaze from mine, just dropped his injured wrist—I decided against two at the last minute—to dangle at his side.
“When are you going to forgive me, baby?”
I glared at him for his soft tone. Then I glanced at a mirror and gave my own emerald eyes a death stare before focusing on him.
“When am I going to forgive you?” I repeated.
He nodded once. “You have to. Sometime.”
I smiled. “I will,” I agreed, and something sparked behind his eyes. “How about when the sun rises in the west and sets in the east, when the seas go dry and mountains blow in the wind like leaves,” I said softly.
He blinked once. Twice. The intensity never left his eyes, but it made room for confusion.
I let out a frustrated noise. “Just when I thought I couldn’t get any angrier at you,” I hissed. “It’s a Game of Thrones reference, Thorne. The fact that you don’t know it makes you very close to losing a limb. You’re already halfway there with a broken wrist.”
I stared at his arms, trying to figure out which one would be better. Then I was pissed at myself for being unable to decide because they both belonged attached to his body.
So I moved my glare up to his eyes. “The reference, since you are so ignorant to the brilliance of George RR Martin, means never. Never fucking ever.”
He stepped forward. “Never say never, babe.”
“No, never say tweed. I can say never.”
“Isla,” Thorne began, stepping forward, his intention clear even after the breaking of bones and the warning in the air.
I silenced him with my glare. Oh, and the knife I fastened against his jugular. I liked to think the glare was pretty scary too.
I tilted my head and smiled at him. “Shh. The grown-ups are talking now.” I pointed my bloodred fingernail between my breasts, leaving a trail of blood in my wake. “The grown-up being me.”
“Isla,” he tried again, the cords in his neck pulsing, the movement causing little beads of blood to rise where the knife punctured the skin.
My fangs elongated ever so slightly but I used the power of a woman scorned—yeah, they weren’t lying about that. Who needs Ichor when you’ve got a woman’s rage?—to send them back into my gums and forget the allure of the blood.
I tutted. “I wouldn’t if I were you. Speak, that is. I’ll likely give you the closest shave you’ve ever had in your life. And then in your death.” I gave him another smile.
“You’re not gonna kill me,” he ground out, bringing more blood forth.
I stepped forward, my smile gone, rage taking over. The blade pressed harder and his nostrils flared as the pain got his attention. “Really?” I said. “Good to see you’re so sure of that. Because I’m not. At all. You know what the price of betrayal is in my world, Thorne? Blood. And, more often than not, pain. With the grand finale being death. Cliché, I know, but clichés exist for a reason. They’re memorable. And they work.”
He continued to stare at me, unblinking and unyielding and unsettling.
In a way that dared me to do it. To end it all. In a way that he knew there had already been an ending, of my afterlife as I knew it, that day at the precinct.
He knew the silence in his chest was something that, even now, I wouldn’t weather. Wouldn’t fathom. Wouldn’t endure, even if I didn’t need his blood.
I needed the thing that pumped it around his body too.
And I hated that.
Hated him for loving me.
Hated me for making me love him.
People always talked about love and its power to create shit. Like it could build fucking skyscrapers. It couldn’t. Not one thing could be built with love except perhaps false expectations. And box office profits.
Love created nothing. It destroyed everything. Handed someone the world and offered them the opportunity to crush it. And even if they didn’t crush it, the power would still be there, hovering over the head of the owner of that world. It was the power itself, not the act of one or the other, that determined the destructive power of it all.
“Isla,” he murmured again, the slight loosening of the blade at his throat making it more possible for him to form words without bleeding out on the spot. “I’m sorry about Lewis,” he continued. His voice was even, sincere. Simple. “I’ll kill them all, every single one for what they did to him. What it did to you,” he promised.
His words were sure. Genuine. I could feel it, the distaste for the fact that I had to know loss. His anger at it all.
It was strong, his anger.
I remembered the girl at the coffin. Her dry eyes and empty shell and broken spirit.
And then I found my anger. It was stronger than his.
Much stronger.
Because that empty shell, that dispirited thing standing at the edge of a patch of ground that would eat the corpse of the one she loved, that was me. When Thorne’s heart stopped beating.
And even though he was supposed to live forever thanks to the gem of his lineage that found us here, with my knife to his throat—or, if we wanted to get technical, his knife to his throat—it would always stop.
I would have to face the silence eventually. Unless I died first.
But the whole deathless prophecy didn’t bode well for that idea.
“He’s a human. Humans die,” I said, repeating the earlier sentiment I’d shared with Sophie. “It was inevitable. Everything with a heartbeat is counting down the hours or minutes or years—or, in your case, centuries—until its demise. It will eventually stop. The clock. The heart. The life.”
He saw more than even the witch who may or may not have had powers of telepathy. “You don’t have to do that shit around me,” he growled.
I glanced down to the knife. “Oh I know, but it’s fun and it stops you from getting all handsy,” I replied, deliberately misinterpreting his meaning.
He didn’t know when to quit. Maybe he thought he was too legit.
“No, you don’t have to try so hard to be the monster you’ve convinced yourself you need to be in order to deal with your humanity. In fact, you don’t need to be that monster at all. Or you can. But it’s your choice. And I’ll lie with the monster you choose to be or banish the monster you choose to abandon, Isla.”
His words, plucked from my mind that hadn’t even figured out a way to articulate that very dilemma, struck me dumb.
But they didn’t mute me, because it would likely take someone ripping out my tongue for that to happen.
The knife pressed in once more, the slight stiffening of Thorne’s body the only inkling that he registered it. The rest of his attention was on me, my eyes, my soul.
I steeled myself against it. “You’re trying to banish some monster inside me?” I asked, my voice ice. “That’s your problem right there. Well, among a lot of others. Monsters can’t be banished without creating another one in their place with the knight on his f
urry steed. How do you think the Devil became the Prince of Darkness? He was just a prince once, trying to fight monsters. Maybe slay a dragon for a princess. But I’ve got news for you: I don’t need to slay a dragon. I’ll fucking ride them. And I’m not a princess—I’m a queen.” I lowered the knife. “And I’m sure that fucking epic placement of another Game of Thrones reference is lost on you, but nonetheless the sentiment is received. So stay the fuck away from me until I need your blood.”
“Not happening. Ever.”
I glared at him. “Never say never, Thorne,” I hissed.
And then, thanking my inhuman speed once more, I left.
And that time I did run. Because I had dragons to slay. Most of which were my own.
Chapter 17
I dragged the sword along behind me, the screeching of the metal on the concrete pleasing to me.
The ugliness of it suited the theme of the night. Of my now broken and warped soul.
The hybrids were either getting weaker or I was getting awesomer because I barely even broke a nail over the group that were supposed to be some sort of freak show guard dogs.
It was rather disappointing, actually, my lack of injuries and the lack of any real fight on their end.
I was itching for it.
Killing humans was like shooting fish in a barrel. Fun, of course, but you could only do it for so long.
You needed to throw in a little bit of action every now and then.
It was becoming apparent that the hybrids’ strength depended on the bloodline with which they were created. Which was both worrying and comforting. There was a much smaller concentration of powerful bloodlines because that was how aristocracy worked—a select few at the top and large amounts at the bottom.
The pool was smaller to choose from.
That was the comforting part.
It was usually the ignorant masses who listened to a party line like the one these rebels were spouting.
But apart from this bunch, the hybrids we had been encountering had only been getting stronger. Which meant more prominent Vein Lines were joining the ranks.
Which may or may not have coincided with the ruling Rick made about me. So if you wanted to get technical, it could partially be my fault.
Though people who grasped onto one singular reason, like me being in love with a slayer even though we’d been enemies for thousands of years and escaping the punishment of death that kings had been doling out for thousands of years, were likely looking for a reason to rebel anyway.
Maybe.
Even if they were, it might be pretty cool to be the girl who started a war. Or at the very least made it a lot more interesting.
I’d gone straight from Thorne’s to the location the demon gave me.
It was in the sewers, which didn’t bode well for my shoes, but the monster inside me liked the environment. The stench of blood and death and the darkness beckoned like a familiar friend, whispering my sins like sweet nothings, urging me to commit more.
I whistled “Arsonist’s Lullaby,” leisurely strutting through the dank dungeon like a vapid human might stroll through a park in the sunshine.
Sunshine might not be fatal as a lot of those insipid humans liked to believe, but this was where we belonged. In the darkness. Shadows.
Because all the darkest of deeds happened in the shadows.
I smiled as I reached the arch that opened into the wide room, open and high-ceilinged, water dripping at the apex of the roof echoing through the chamber.
“Well, howdy. How nice of you to invite me around for tea,” I said, walking into the room, hefting the sword up so the grating stopped and the low click of my heels was the only thing echoing through the room.
The tomb.
Apt, as he was a dead man sitting there, rotting in the dark underground. We were all dead things, vampires, but this was something else. It was death personified in a vampire that was ageless in youth and yet ancient beyond the years of counting at the same time.
His hair was white. Pure stark white. It brushed at his shoulders, jagged and uneven, like he’d taken a dagger to it himself. But the strands glowed in the dark, stench-filled dungeon.
His face was strong and angular, sharp cheekbones giving him too many points in his skin to call him handsome, but he was ethereally beautiful, if you didn’t mind the way the lack of vitamin D had turned his skin so white there was an almost bluish tinge to it. And it seemed powdery, like that old paper in ancient texts that, if handled wrong, might crumble into dust.
Though he was reasonably expansive in the muscle department, they were lean and more suited to a swimmer’s body. They were there, though, under the moth-eaten black suit he wore with no shirt because he obviously wanted to show off his pale and sculpted chest while making a fashion statement.
It was his eyes that got me. A milky film over them from staring at nothing but the past.
What else did you do in a tomb if it wasn’t stare at the past and let it ravage you?
For the present could ruin you, surely. And the future promised that same ruin. But it was the past, the permanency and unchanging quality of it that would wound and perhaps destroy you if looked at too closely.
Jonathan was a fleeting thought in my mind before he disappeared.
I found me after getting lost with the jarring beauty and power of the old vampire.
The very old powerful vampire.
I glanced at the blood on my sword. “Sorry for the damage to the décor with the sharp thing. Oh, and the many, many vampires I had to kill on my way in.” I shrugged. “I’ll replace them, I promise.”
I rested the sword on my shoulder, wincing at the thought of the blood staining my jacket, but the gesture itself was badass. I could always buy a new jacket.
I was really turning dark side, sacrificing fashion for my new persona. What next, fighting a werewolf without even worrying about my manicure?
I shuddered at the thought.
“You want some advice, for free?” I paused. “Well, not for free. It’s actually for the price of the forty or so hybrids and the handful of vampire guards you had posted to protect you from attack.” I lifted the sword. “Oh, and I got this off someone, I forget who. But I like it, so I’ll be taking that too. Hence the lie of saying it comes for free. It comes for a price. Blood. But that’s the price of everything these days, and I promise I’m giving you a great deal.” I focused on the unnerving eyes that hadn’t moved, or even blinked, since the moment I arrived.
He was still. Statuesque in a way that vaguely had me wondering whether this vampire was just mad and sequestered down here in order to live in madness alone.
Not that one was really ever alone in madness. The voices would always keep you company.
But no, despite the living corpse routine, it was apparent that he was very much alive. The very air seemed to shrink to his will as it pulsed around him.
It would be a mistake to think him mad.
Mad eyes were never focused, never still. Not like these. Concentration, unfortunately, required at least a little sanity. And he had it, that unequivocal look that told me all of his attention was on me.
And he was dangerous.
In a way that sent prickles of discomfort down my spine and gave birth to something called fear.
The real kind.
It was right about then that I wished I’d stopped being so stubborn and actually called for backup.
Then again, I’d probably just add more bodies to the tomb.
Not that even Duncan would be a match for… whatever this was. Sophie’s powers could work, but her words of not using her magic on unnatural things rang through my mind. Although he was a vampire, obviously, and I considered myself natural—as did Sophie, if her ability to use her magic on us was anything to go by—there was something more to him than mere vampirism.
So Sophie was out.
My mind flickered to Thorne. Not because I thought he might have something more than my vampire hitman fr
iend and the witch with the powers of something more than anything ‘normal’ would have. No, because I wanted him there with me as I stared death in the face.
And perhaps welcomed it.
I blinked away the feelings. And that gaping kind of aloneness that I felt inside the tomb with this thing.
“Advice,” I said, snapping my fingers. “You need new minions. Better minions. I’d recommend some great ones I know, except I don’t really know that many, and the one I do know only has one eye. Although I’d give him to you in a heartbeat, you know, if I had one.”
I waltzed around the cavernous room that stank of damp mold and off blood, the sword screeching along behind me.
“Also, he fights for the wrong side. Or the right. I forget which we are.” I shrugged. “I’m not necessarily about ‘sides’ myself, but it is in my best interest to go with the one that isn’t trying to kill me. Although, I guess technically the one I’m fighting for has tried to kill me in the past, so I’ll amend that to the ones that have tried to kill me the most and really meant it.” I stopped my journey around the room, careful to keep the space between me and… whatever he was wide. The dude freaked me out with the empty yet lucid stare.
“Anyway, the point is to get new minions and not rely on these horrid hybrids. They’re not reliable. And rather too easy to kill, if you ask me.”
I stopped talking, mainly because there was only so long I could go on—yes, even me—without having anyone speak back.
I was perfectly fine in an empty room talking to myself and letting my demons converse with each other. But it was the silence that came after my words that had me needing to shut up.
For about a second.
“Dude, do you speak, or do tricks or something?” I asked, resting on the sword casually. Or giving the illusion of doing so casually. I was ready and poised for an attack.
Because I could taste that in the air too, the violence. Not like a premonition or anything, just a violence that radiated off people, vampires, werewolves, demons, and witches alike. There were just some who hid it better than others.
The man in front of me wasn’t trying to hide shit. Maybe because there was no one to hide from in a chamber on your own.