Rebecca Louise Johnston.
And there she was.
Dear God.
His heart skipped a beat in his chest.
She was breathtaking—his Rebecca—and for a moment, he almost forgot why he had come. He almost forgot his anger and his vengeance. He almost forgot his rage. Hell, he almost forgot his own name. There was only her and those mysterious topaz eyes; her wavy brown locks; and that gorgeous, slender body. His lips parted to breathe her name with reverence, but he was brought up short by a bestial growl.
What the hell?
Had Rebecca recently purchased a dog?
Trevor’s eyes immediately shifted from Rebecca’s pale, stricken expression to the face of a very large man—no, a giant—standing far too close to Trevor’s woman and leaning possessively beside her. The guy was a walking slayer with bizarre gray eyes and the most unnaturally-colored hair Trevor had ever seen; and despite the fact that Trevor was a card-carrying heterosexual, he couldn’t help but notice the absolute perfection of the man’s incomparable features.
And it instantly chapped his hide.
Hell, the guy was not just good-looking: He was beyond a cover model of a magazine, or a professional athlete, in his prime. He had the body of a mercenary, the stealth of a tiger, and the face of an ancient Greek god, like something only an artist could create.
And Rebecca was now clinging to his arm.
Something inside of Trevor snapped. “Hey, baby!” he crooned in a lude, lascivious tone. “Miss me, lover?”
Rebecca gasped in alarm, and that made Trevor smile.
The VOSU women were quickly putting two-plus-two together, as well, and that suited Trevor just fine. They’d be easier to control if they knew who he really was, and that he hadn’t come to swap pitiful stories about victimization. “Oh,” he drawled by way of explanation, and for the benefit of everyone in the room, “your friends know me as Jake—I was at last Thursday’s meeting. But, of course, you know me for who I really am: your fiancé. Did you get the gift I left for you? On your bed?”
The muscle-bound individual jerked like he had just been struck by lightning, and his eyes registered something so murderous in their depths that Trevor took an involuntary step back. The giant shoved Rebecca behind him and cocked his head to the side like some predatory animal, flashing his teeth in warning.
His teeth?
Seriously?
Trevor did not wait around to see what the crazy bastard was going to do next.
He reached into the inner lining of his jacket, withdrew a loaded Colt .45 revolver, and extended his right arm to the side, pressing the barrel of the gun, taut, against Nancy Thomas’ temple. “I think you might wanna chill out, asshole!” he barked. “First and foremost, that’s my girl you’re standing in front of. Second, and more important, I won’t hesitate to light up this entire room, kill every slut in the house. And last, but not least, I don’t like your ass—not one bit—so you might be the first to go.” He puffed out his chest, turned up his lip, and spat on Rebecca’s floor, feeling more powerful than he had ever felt before. And then he slowly pulled back the hammer for effect.
“Rebecca, get your ass over here. Now!”
sixteen
Julien Lacusta had just sent the last of the five VOSU women, not including Rebecca, back to their seats, having uploaded all the memories and sensory information he needed to track their stalkers, when he heard three brusque knocks on Rebecca’s front door. He turned his head in the direction of the sound and watched as the handle began to rotate. And then, just like that, a human male of medium height strolled brazenly into the room.
His hair was dyed black and covered with a baseball cap.
His expensive glasses barely concealed crazed, desperate eyes, and his pulse was racing far too fast for the situation, though he was trying to control his breathing.
None of it mattered.
Not at all.
Julien recognized the human’s vile scent in an instant.
He felt his noxious vibration.
So, Trevor Rainier had an iron set of balls, and he thought he could stroll right into Rebecca’s living room and…and do what?
A feral grow escaped Julien’s throat, and Trevor met his seeking gaze, silently appraising the vampire from head to toe. Whatever he saw must have ticked the human off because he immediately turned his attention to Rebecca and sneered. “Hey, baby! Miss me, lover?”
Rebecca gasped in terror, clung to Julien’s arm, and the vampire’s entire body tensed.
Trevor smiled and belatedly regarded the group as a whole, through the guise of speaking to Rebecca. “Oh, by the way”—he paused for effect—“your friends know me as Jake. I was at last Thursday’s meeting, but of course you know me for who I really am: your fiancé. Did you get the gift I left for you? On your bed?”
Julien felt his chest and shoulders jerk with a fury he could hardly contain.
Such was his need to kill the arrogant cretin where he stood.
Right here.
Right now.
He shoved Rebecca behind him, restrained the growing impulse, and surveyed the room instead: The women were in shock, their human minds trying to process the new information in an instant, trying to register the fool’s deception, even as the idiot took a cautious step back.
Yes, Julien thought, prepare to run, little rabbit. I am going to devour your entrails for supper. Despite his desire to remain calm, Julien tilted his ear toward his shoulder and flashed his fangs in warning.
This seemed to get the rabbit moving, but rather than turn tail and run, like any halfway intelligent being would do, the jackass reached into the inner-lining of his jacket, withdrew an old Colt .45 revolver with a polished pearl handgrip, and pressed the barrel of the gun against Nancy’s temple.
Nancy’s.
A woman who had already suffered two broken arms at the hands of a stalker.
Julien felt the air rush out of his body, but before he could determine his next, lethal move, Trevor stared him down and narrowed his eyes in menace.
Was the son of a jackal insane?
Just how desperately did he want to embrace a hideous and painful death in a public forum?
“I think you might wanna chill out, asshole,” Trevor snarled. “First and foremost, that’s my girl you’re standing in front of. Second, and more important, I won’t hesitate to light up this entire room, kill every slut in this house. And last, but not least, I don’t like your ass—not one bit—so you might be the first to go.” He swelled up with some seriously misplaced confidence, cocked the hammer on the gun, and barked a command at Julien’s destiny. “Rebecca, get your ass over here. Now!”
Julien didn’t know whether to laugh, howl, or set the entire apartment ablaze with his eyes, scorching the fool—and his pitiful revolver—to ash in the process. He felt Rebecca stir behind him, and her emotions swept over him like a wave: She felt both trapped and responsible for the situation, pressured to go to Trevor and ameliorate the situation. He immediately snatched her by the arm. “Don’t. You. Dare.” He turned his full attention on Trevor, regarded the silly revolver, and smiled. “You’re gonna shoot that woman, Trevor? In front of me?” He tsk-tsked with his tongue, running it along the dual sharp points of his descending fangs, even as he allowed his eyes to glow red and his lips to curl back in a snarl. “Oh, I really don’t think so.”
He pointed at the gun and crooked his finger; and just like that, the barrel changed directions and angled toward the floor. “First and foremost, Rebecca is mine, and you are a walking corpse. Second, and more important, you just pissed off a vampire—I don’t think this is going to go as you planned. And last, but not least, I don’t like your ass either, and that’s putting the sentiment mildly. So you will be the first to die.” He hissed, loud and drawn out, like a man-sized snake issuing a feral warning. “Now then, you get your ass over here. Now!”
Trevor wrinkled his brow in confusion and alarm.
His p
alms grew instantly moist, and he dropped the gun at his feet as his knees began to tremble.
That’s right, little rabbit, reality is finally sinking in, Julien thought.
Despite the abject terror seizing Trevor’s body, he began to shuffle forward toward the vampire, like a puppet on a marionette’s strings, and that’s when Rebecca jumped between the two males, her back facing Trevor, and pressed both palms firmly against Julien’s chest. “Please,” she voiced with urgency. “Julien, please. I’m begging you. Not here. Not now. Not like this.”
Julien spared her a dismissive glance and frowned: Did she have any idea what she was asking? The enormous self-control he was already exercising in that moment? How absolutely deep and primal his rage now went? It was taking everything he had not to paint the walls in Trevor’s blood, outline the portrait with strips of his peeled-back skin, and punctuate the canvass with the jackass’s innards.
He glanced down at his destiny and shook his head. “Step away, Rebecca.”
Her hand stiffened against his chest. “No. Look at me, Julien. Please. Look at me.”
He stared at her with incredulity, even as Trevor continued to pace forward, trembling and weeping like a dolt.
“Not in front of the women, tracker. They’ve seen too much horror as it is.”
He shrugged with indifference. “I will wipe their memories…later.”
At that cryptic statement, and before Rebecca could respond, Patricia seemed to finally come on board with the whole macabre scene: Her dark, ebony eyes instantly registered awareness as her brain processed the preternatural turn of events, and her neurons started firing on all cylinders. She leaped from the couch, sprinted for the door, and the other women immediately followed out of instinct.
Julien swept his hand across the frenzied room, tossing each individual woman back into her seat with the mere stroke of his wrist. “Sit down, and stay as you are until I release you!” he thundered, unapologetic if his actions were too brutal or harsh.
Hell’s minions, he was hanging onto his sanity by a thread.
Rebecca didn’t get it.
This fool had threatened his destiny; he had threatened Julien’s life, and by extension, he had threatened the house of Jadon. Everything in him—vampire, tracker, and possessive male—was wired instinctively for the kill.
Rebecca gulped. “This is getting out of hand, Julien.” And then she did the only thing she could apparently think of, the one thing that might capture his undivided attention. She rose to the tips of her toes, cupped his jaw firmly in her hand, and pressed a short but tender kiss on his mouth, breathing him in like a prayer.
He blinked several times and gawked at her in surprise.
“Julien,” she whispered, now that she had his attention. “I know you can wipe everyone’s memories, and I know you’re going to have to do exactly that, when this is over, but”—she sighed heavily—“I really don’t want you to have to wipe mine. I don’t ever want that kind of deception between us. And I don’t want to see this…this execution…unfold in my house.”
Julien paused to measure her words, trying to make sense of their meaning in his amped-up state. Was his destiny making a reference to the two of them…together…as a couple?
Like she actually saw a future?
Or was she just playing him for a fool, trying to manipulate his emotions in order to get her way?
He snatched both of her wrists in his hands and tightened his fists around them, not enough to hurt her, but hard enough to warn her. “Do not toy with me, Rebecca. I am not some teenage boy you can wind up, play with, and set back down. Don’t offer something you cannot back up, later, down the road.”
Her tongue darted out to moisten her top lip, and she slowly shook her head. “I’m sorry,” she whispered, “I didn’t mean…” She immediately changed tactics. “Julien, all I’m asking is…please, don’t kill him in front of me. Don’t do it in front of the women. I don’t want to carry that image in my mind for the rest of my life, and I don’t want you to take my memories.” She lowered her voice to a heartfelt plea. “Please, tracker. As a point of honor. Please.”
The VOSU women looked positively petrified as they watched the scene unfold.
Trevor, on the other hand, had just released his bowels in his pants.
Julien turned his nose up in disgust. “Very well, șoarec micuț, but do not move from this spot.” With that, he lunged forward, snatched Trevor by the scruff of his shirt, and hoisted him off the floor. Traveling as quickly as possible so the fool didn’t soil Rebecca’s carpet, he sprang out the door, dove over the railing, and flew to a nearby empty alley, shoving Trevor, violently, up against the nearest grimy wall.
The human literally quaked in his boots, and in that instant, Julien Lacusta grew inexplicably calm, as placid as a hidden mountain lake.
Pinning the disgusting human to the bricks with an unforgiving stiff-arm, he stared deep into his eyes. “I want to know something,” he murmured, his voice a velvet promise of death. “I want to understand your mind. What were you thinking when you terrorized Rebecca so many years ago? What were you thinking when you followed her from state to state, in direct opposition to her wishes, in flagrant violation of your human laws? What the hell were you thinking when you stroked yourself on her bed?”
Trevor stuttered like he had an affliction. “I-I-I…oh, c’mon, man…p-p-please. Can we…w-w-we…talk this out?”
Julien slapped him crisply across the face, breaking his jaw and dislodging a handful of teeth. “Mm,” he drawled wickedly, “I think the time for talking is over.” He shook out his wrist, as if the slap had stung him; held up his right hand; and absently studied his nails. And then he extended two fingers forward, forming a perfect V with the digits, and held them in front of Trevor’s eyes, pressing the pads of both fingers against the idiot’s tear-stained glasses.
Trevor tried desperately to kick at him, but Julien was far too fast. He simply widened his stance, leaned into the bastard, curled his lip, and laughed. “I so want to kill you slowly, but I’m afraid that I cannot.” With that, he shoved both fingers forward, shattered Trevor’s glasses with the thrust, and impaled both of his eye sockets, in concert.
He continued to tunnel beyond the temporal lobe.
He hooked his fingers in his cerebellum and yanked.
He curled his digits around a thin, bony mass and retrieved Trevor’s spinal cord with a single tug, pulling it back through his eye sockets, where he held it like a trophy in his trembling hand.
As he released the bastard’s body, allowing it to slump to the ground, he turned the slimy, meat-like carnage over in his palm and frowned. “Whatever were you thinking?” he asked the curious mass of bone and brains. And then he hurled it against the wall, splintering what was left of Trevor Rainer into a dozen grisly pieces.
His thoughts immediately turned back to Rebecca and her living room, full of guests, the memories he still needed to wipe…
And that lingering kiss.
Gods knew, he was trying to handle this Blood Moon with a semblance of objectivity, with some sort of decorum, if not reason, but the entire affair was becoming a treacherous game, at best.
And it was quickly spiraling out of control.
Julien knew the deal: Rebecca had no intentions of staying with him, not a moment longer than she had to, not a moment longer than it took to fulfill the Curse. Julien had seen this truth in her eyes all along. And gods forgive him, he had allowed it because somewhere deep inside, in that place that terrified him the most, that place where he buried his rage and suppressed it with liquid O, he had also doubted his own staying power.
He did not believe he could sustain a long-term relationship with his destiny…with any woman, really. He did not believe he had what it took to maintain a lasting relationship with a mate. Yet this encounter, Rebecca’s courage and the tenderness she had openly displayed in that kiss, had been more than a little bit disquieting.
It had shaken h
im to his core.
He wiped the gruel off his hand, onto the wall, and shut his eyes.
Dearest celestial gods, what was he going to do?
In many ways, Rebecca was as broken as he was: She was as equally determined and strong. She was defiant, single-minded, and resilient, and he was growing to respect her. But she was also susceptible to the compassion in her heart, curiously lost and alone, even as she pretended to be in control. She surrounded herself with the illusion of support, hiding within a community of victimization—yes, it was a powerful way to heal and move forward, but only for a time. As the years passed, for anyone, it could become an enabling identity. And for Rebecca, in particular, it had become a means to an end, a way to hide from herself.
Was his destiny capable of trust, even if it was tentative and fragile?
Was he?
That kiss had said that…maybe…she was.
And gods be merciful, her vulnerability was like a lure, dangling in front of his starving soul, just begging to be taken…consumed…devoured.
Oh, hell: Julien Lacusta had no intentions of letting this female go.
Not ever.
He had not lied to Trevor Rainer when he had said, Rebecca is mine. And he had not come to Denver because he did not possess the power to claim her, to take her, to bend her to his will, back in Dark Moon Vale. He was nearly an Ancient, a primordial vampire, and he could command his destiny’s compliance with nothing more than the strength of his mind. No, something far more primitive and distant had awakened in the depths of his savage soul, in the wake of that singular kiss.
Perhaps hope?
Perhaps a chance—a real chance—for change?
Julien opened his eyes, leveled his gaze on Trevor’s mangled corpse, and set about incinerating his body with infrared heat. And then he took a generous step back, all the while trying to adjust to this new revelation.
Come hell or high water, Rebecca Johnston belonged to him.
And it was high time that he made that clear and started acting like he wanted her.