“This was all that kept me sane when he had me locked up.”
Dominic stroked her hair and pressed a kiss against her forehead. “We’ll run, like you wanted. At the first opportunity, we’ll go.”
Nicole shook her head. “It’s too late. He’s never going to let me out of his sight again.”
“No. I’m not.” August stood in the kitchen doorway, a bottle of beer in hand. His eyes narrowed. “Don’t you two make a cozy pair?”
“Jealous?”
Nicole tensed at Dominic’s taunt.
“Of what? A silly human who will age and die, while I’ll have her forever? Literally?”
Dominic didn’t bother to mask his contempt. “Of the love you can’t have. I bet you thought that display would make me hate her. You wanted me to reject her so you could cuddle and comfort her and talk about how I can never understand you two. I’m a lawyer. I deal with the ass crack of humanity on a daily basis. You’re just another thug to me.”
A second later, Nicole found herself sprawled on the couch, flung there by two hundred pounds of angry vampire. Fangs plunged into Dominic’s throat.
She scrambled to pull him off her husband, but the vampire swatted her away like an annoying fly, growling as he drained the man she loved. “Please, August, don’t. Don’t hurt him.” She could barely squeeze the sounds through vocal chords already taut from fear.
August let Dominic fall, wiped off the blood with his arm, and went to retrieve his beer at the other end of the room. He took a few, slow sips.
Nicole rushed to Dominic’s side, pressing fingers to the unmarked side of his throat to find a faint pulse struggling to keep pace with life.
She barely saw him through the tears clouding her vision. “Please… you can save him.”
“He’s too far gone. If I give him my blood, he’ll turn.”
Nicole screamed, a long unending wail, as if she could shatter glass. As if she could shatter August, and the universe would bend to her whim just to make her stop. She pulled Dominic into her arms, not caring when the blood smeared her clothes.
“Please, Dominic. Please… don’t leave. I can’t lose you, please.” She looked up at the ceiling, helpless. “Please, God, please. Bring him back. Please.” She cradled him in her arms, sobbing, begging the universe, August, Dominic, God, anything that might be out there, anything or anyone that could possibly have the power to undo it. She’d give anything, strike any bargain to undo it.
She’d be angry with Dominic later. Taunting a vampire like that. How could he have forgotten such a recent object lesson? How could his anger have overwhelmed the knowledge of what fangs could do? How they could shred and tear and reveal the fragility of human life.
She rocked him, her hands shaking as she brushed the hair from his eyes. She pressed her fingers to his throat again. Slower, more strained. Almost stopped. Almost over. “God, no. Please Dominic, please don’t do this to me, please, please, please. God, please. Please bring him back. I can’t live here without him.”
She didn’t notice August behind her, not until he pulled her off the limp body. She watched in horror as he ripped into his wrist and forced the blood down Dominic’s throat.
“NO! You said he’d turn. You can’t!” She beat on him, but it was like hitting a boulder.
“Stop it, Nicolette. You begged God. I am God. And you know it. I’m the only God here who can answer your prayers.”
When the vampire seemed satisfied Dominic had enough blood for the change, he scooped her husband up and carried him to the car.
***
Nicole tried to forget about the body in the backseat as they drove. “Will he turn?”
“Most likely.”
She hated herself for the way her heart flipped at the idea of having Dominic with her forever—how selfish to want him to be a monster so he wouldn’t leave her alone with August.
“Is he going to have to kill people?” And then search for his own blood mate to make it stop? How would she cope with that? The shoe was too tight on the other foot.
“I don’t know. With you bound to me, I don’t know the consequences.”
“How can you be such a monster?”
August growled from the driver’s side. “I don’t know, Nicolette. After centuries of killing people, it sort of sticks. What the hell else was I ever going to be?”
Dominic looked so… dead—pale and motionless in the backseat. Maybe he was. If he turned would he still be Dominic? Would there ever be jokes between them again? Would he be like August or would he be good?
“Nicolette… I… apologize again for what I put you through tonight. I was angry he let them lock you up in a hospital. I was angry I didn’t have access to you. I had to punish him, but then I saw how you were together… I was kidding myself. I may have you forever but if I ever separated you from him, you’d never forgive me. I never feel more lonely than when I’m in a room with you but your heart and mind is with him.”
She couldn’t stand to see that mock sincerity in his eyes, so she stared out into the darkness and up at the moon that was so full and bright.
“I thought you said you could share.” Sure he could.
“I can share, Nicolette. But I can’t be shut out in the cold entirely. If you’d only let yourself feel something with me.”
“It’s wrong. I made a vow to Dominic. I love him.”
“And I’m letting you keep him. We have to find a way to live together. I can share, but I have to have a real piece of you. You have to let me in. Forever won’t be so long if you’ll surrender and find a way to make peace with this. Do you not think I will have to find a way to make peace with this?” He waved a hand in Dominic’s direction, as if by doing so, he could make her husband vanish into thin air.
There was nothing that could make any of this right. The vampire was too volatile. His promises had turned to ash and slipped through the cracks until it was as if they hadn’t existed at all. She and Dominic were fucked. If August didn’t know that, it was because he’d had enough time over the centuries to master the art of denial.
When they stopped, Nicole was shocked to find they were at her parents’ house. She’d been too deep in her thoughts, too obsessed with the blurring pattern of the passing trees outside the window as each blended into the next in a long ribbon of dark green, too upset to pay attention to which direction they were driving in.
August turned when she put a hand on his arm. The expression on his face reflected back to her what she must look like: a heroine in a horror movie—that last harrowing half hour where she’d been tormented as much as she could stand and still there was more suffering and danger ahead.
“August, please. I’ll do anything. Please, please don’t.”
He flipped off the headlights. Nicole sat numbly in the passenger side as he came around and opened the door for her. “Let’s not make this difficult, Nicolette.”
The tears burned now. They’d fallen so long and so profusely that her eyes were too raw and sensitive for more. And yet more came. She glared at him and shook her head.
“Nicolette, this must be done.”
“No. We can go back home. Let’s just go. Please leave them alone. They haven’t done anything. Please don’t hurt them.”
Was there no one she loved that he could leave breathing tonight?
“It’s time to say goodbye. Don’t make this difficult.”
“A-are you going to kill them?”
August reached into the Bugatti for her. She fought as he pulled her out, but it was the struggle of a butterfly, a valiant fluttering of useless wings.
“Of course I’m not going to kill them. I’m going to alter their memories. It’s time to cut ties. You must end your former life. I’ll take you and Dominic to my estate in Rome soon, but your parents believe you’re in the hospital. They must be dealt with now.”
She stopped struggling. The relief that no one else would die tonight had taken the last of her will to fight. “I’ll n
ever see them again?”
“I’m sorry, Nicolette. I should have made this decision sooner.”
It shouldn’t be his decision to make.
She followed him to the front door. He’d been invited into this house once; he now had free reign forever. Her mother answered, startled by the strange man, then panicked when August pushed his way inside. Nicole found herself crossing the threshold after him.
“Good evening, Mr. and Mrs. Maguire.”
Nicole’s father aimed his shotgun at August’s chest. A moment of panic gripped her. She’d been so used to the vampire being invincible. How fragile was he now that he’d turned another? She jumped in front of him as the gun went off, and the bullet tore through her shoulder. She convinced herself even as she did it that she was trying to save her own life and not his.
August was across the room, already snapping the gun in half. She’d forgotten his speed. As if he couldn’t protect himself. She felt herself fall. The flow of time she’d existed in slowed and separated from everything else. Then August’s wrist was at her mouth, his blood jump starting the clock again. She wanted to protest, but she still couldn’t heal a bullet wound as fast as he could. And the fucker hurt.
Her parents were less afraid than the last time they’d done all this, though still in shock. Perhaps a bit of déjà vu had slipped around the edges of their wiped memories. Perhaps seeing August and fangs and blood had brought it all flooding back.
“How do you want me to do it? I can make them think you had a falling out and no longer speak and that you moved away or that you died or never existed.”
“Why can’t you just order them never to tell anyone? Then I could still see them.” Was he trying to make this more painful for her? Did he want her to hate him more?
“I don’t have that kind of power. I can take or alter a memory or change how someone sees something. I can give a short term order, but I can’t enthrall someone to obey an order for the rest of their life. It’s just not how it works. I’m sorry, I wish it was.”
“Do you?”
She tried to pull away as he stroked her cheek. The tender way he touched her stirred things she didn’t want stirred, particularly while her husband was slumped in the back seat of the Bugatti like a dead man. How could anything stir inside of her when this monster touched her? And after the vicious way he’d behaved tonight? She started to cry again.
“We have to do this, poppet. Believe me, I wish there was another way.”
At least he didn’t know what had provoked her tears—the inner torment that might never go away whenever his skin brushed against hers. The fires that were ignited. These feelings were an abomination.
“He’s real.” Nicole’s mother found her ability to speak.
“Yes. He’s real,” August said. It was less of a neener-neener told-ya-so, and more a resigned admission. A delusion would have been too simple. “What do you want to do?” August pressed.
“Mom, Dad, can you swear you won’t tell anybody about August? You have to keep what he is a secret. People will think you’re crazy, and it could put us in danger.”
“Nicolette, I said no.”
She rounded on the vampire. “Why not? What if they swear? Who are they going to tell? How will it hurt anything? It’s not like they know where you’re taking me. It’s not like they know anything!”
“You aren’t taking my daughter anywhere!” Ray said, now aiming the handgun. “I will hunt you, you son of a bitch. Where’s my son-in-law?”
“Dominic is in the car. He’s coming with us,” August said.
Nicole couldn’t take it anymore. She ran out the front door, slamming it behind her. It was only a moment before August joined her.
“Poppet…”
“Don’t. Just don’t.” She held a hand up and took another step away from him. It was all she could do to hold onto herself. She fantasized about Dominic waking and beating the shit out of August. Please, God, let him be on my side when he wakes.
“We have to finish this.”
“No, we don’t have to do anything. You’re going to do whatever you’re going to do, and I can’t stop you. I can’t go back in there. I can’t do this. I can’t say goodbye to them.”
“What memories do you want me to give them?”
She turned away. “I don’t give a shit.”
The door opened again and shut quietly. Nicole sat on the front stoop, looking up at the stars, wishing wishes worked. Occasionally she glanced at the car where Dominic lay. Several minutes later, the front door opened.
“It’s done.”
She didn’t acknowledge the vampire.
“Do you want to know what…?”
“No. Leave it.” Her shoulders shook as strong hands sought to steady them.
“You must believe me when I say I didn’t want this. There was no other choice. They would have been a security risk. You can’t trust humans. Even those who have been closest to you. These secrets… they can never be told to anyone not like us.”
Nicole went back to the car and got into the driver’s side. The keys were still in the ignition. August stood in the beam from the headlights, a pained expression on his face as if he were waiting for her to stop her theatrics. She put the car in reverse and floored it out of there.
There was nothing better than a car that moved this fast. She didn’t have the luxury of super speed like August. She couldn’t blur around through life as he could. The Bugatti was the fastest she would ever move under her own power. The highway was dead this time of night, so she pressed her foot to the floor, letting it accelerate to over two-forty.
Let a cop try to pull her over. He’d never catch her. No one could catch her but the one being she most wanted to outrun. As if to prove that point, August appeared in front of the car, causing her to swerve and lose control. The Bugatti flipped twice before the door flew open and chucked her out into the night.
When she stopped rolling she turned back toward the car and screamed, “Dominic!”
“He’s fine. Nothing can harm him during the transition. He’s even more durable than you.” August glared at the damage the car had taken, but it was his own damn fault standing in the middle of the road like that. How had he thought it would end?
The soreness was already dissipating. A broken bone would have taken longer. Somehow nothing had broken. If she were merely human, it would have been a miracle worthy of front page news.
She suddenly couldn’t breathe; she’d hit her breaking point. It was too much all at once. The tears choked her, and she started to hyperventilate in the panic. August’s arms closed around her, and he held her.
“You know I can take the pain. You don’t have to feel this. Let me take it from you.”
The Bugatti was still turned upside down as the two of them sat together in the ditch.
“I can’t let you take every emotion I have. What will be left of me?”
“Please, Nicolette. Let me do something.”
How many times would she allow him to use the bond like this? To erase the parts of her that were too painful to feel? How could she forget that all of that pain had been created by August’s very existence? She dug her fingers into the earth, ripping up dirt and grass, a shriek tearing from her throat.
A moment later, she smelled the blood. She was sure she couldn’t smell blood, but she could smell his blood.
“Come here. Let me help you. Let me mute it.”
“I said no! You said you’d give me anything. I want to see my parents again. I don’t want tonight to be the last time.”
His face looked pained. “I think it’s important that we go somewhere else for a while.”
“A while isn’t forever. Please, August. Let me come back. Let me see them. Can’t you make it so I can see them again? Some day they’ll be gone forever. Please.”
“We’ll discuss it.”
“But that’s not no?”
He shook his head. “It’s not no, poppet. We’ll figure som
ething out.”
She flung herself into his arms. “Thank you.”
***
The Bugatti was—amazingly—drivable. When they reached the house, August carried Dominic inside and down into the cellar.
Nicole followed. “Where are you going with him?”
“I’m keeping him downstairs until we know the status of things.” August laid her husband on a cot and locked the cage.
“And then what?”
“I don’t know, Nicolette. I really don’t.”
She backed toward the stairs as he finished securing Dominic.
“Don’t run from me.”
She closed her eyes and breathed slowly, ignoring the dank smell of the cellar that had once been her prison. Somehow being underground made it feel as if the memories could come back to life and hurt her again, even with the magic he’d done with the bond to ease the pain.
“I wish Dr. Cronan had been right. I wish you were only real in my mind. That life would have been better than this one.”
She tried not to cringe when his lips brushed against her forehead.
“Go rest, poppet. Things will look different when you wake.”
Chapter Fourteen
Nicole squeezed her eyes shut against the sunlight streaming into the room. Light was not a feature of August’s home. He’d always kept it dark as a tomb. Heavy curtains stood guard everywhere, blocking the brightness of the day—as if it were offensive to him.
She shielded her eyes, still not ready to open them yet. God, it was bright. “August? Dominic?” Should she dare hope her husband had changed? They could be one big fucked-up immortal family.
“Mrs. Rose? We thought you’d sleep the day away. Dr. Cronan is ready to talk to you now.”
Nicole forced her eyes open and took in the gray walls, the awful gray sweats and white T-shirt, the canvas shoes tucked under the bed. A far too cheery nurse stood in the doorway holding a clipboard.
Nicole pinched herself. “Ouch.”
The nurse’s smile thinned into medically professional concern. “What we gave you was pretty strong. You needed rest. Did you sleep okay? Sometimes it causes very vivid dreams, but you were so upset last night we thought it best.”