I gritted my fang against my bottom lip, drawing blood. His thumb moved to wipe it away in one swipe and bring his hand to his mouth, tasting me.
My stomach dipped with desire at seeing my human tasting my blood.
His hand went back to my neck. “Would it be so bad?” he continued, hand moving downward. My eyes rolled to the back of my head. “To create something other than death between us? To create something undoubtedly beautiful?”
His hands working against my perfect spot had me momentarily distracted, so the impact of his words was delayed. But when they hit me, it was with the force of a hundred-story building collapsing on my chest. I managed the weight and then yanked out of his grasp, taking my turn to pace the carpet.
“Are you fucking loco?” I screamed. “I’m not asking this hypothetically either. I’m seriously asking, has the witch cast some sort of insanity spell on you that’s been lying dormant, waiting for the perfect moment to rear its nutso head?” I stopped pacing to glare. “Because if so, bravo, you’ve picked the perfect moment to make a crazy even I couldn’t reproduce.” My stomach whirled. “Tell me you’re kidding. Or bespelled. I’ll take either.”
He stood, striding to me so he could grip my hips. “Only thing I’m fuckin’ bespelled by is you, Isla,” he growled.
“No shit,” I snapped. “I’m enchanting as fuck. But in a sex goddess type of way, or an ‘I’ll bite your head off after sex if you don’t treat me right’ type of way, but definitely not an ‘impregnate me with your fucking spawn’ type of way!” I yelled.
His eyes were anchors, the intensity within them somehow stopping me from yanking out of his arms again and maybe punching him. “I know I’m holding my most precious fucking treasure in my hands right now, Isla,” he said, hands flexing at my hips. “Know I’ve got eternity with her. And you’re enough for eternity. In fact, you’re too fucking much even for eternity. But I’m greedy. I want more of you.” His palm spanned my flat belly. “Want more of us.” The way his voice suddenly softened around the words as his eyes caressed the skin of my stomach had me unanchored real quick.
I jerked back, only just restraining myself from punching him. “You’re serious?” I hissed. “You want to plant a baby in my vampire womb because you’re half caveman and it’s your fucking need to breed? Show your manhood?”
“No!” he shouted. “It’s ’cause I fucking love you.”
I narrowed my eyes. “You love me, then fucking love me, Thorne. Don’t go seeking out more reasons for the world to tear us apart.” I continued to stare at him. “Think about this. We’re in the middle of a fucking war, in which people keep trying to kill me. My husband has come back from the dead and has vowed to kill everyone I love.”
I pointed at his chest. “That’s you, buddy, no matter how much that truth pisses me off at this current moment. He also seems intent on turning me to the dark side and making me queen of the sewer rats. Then there’s my witch bestie, who seems to be harboring an apocalyptic-type power inside her that we all keep forgetting about. Oh, and there’s an evil witch with a death spell on me that may or may not kill me if we don’t figure out a way to kill her first.” I stared at him. “So there’re a lot of reasons not to bring a bundle of misery out of my fucking vagina,” I said mildly. “Oh, and also the fact that I fucking despise children!” I yelled. The sound was in part due to anger, some used for dramatic effect, but mostly it was used to drown out the sounds of a baby’s laugh as I tickled its pudgy little stomach.
My glare was to try and chase away the midnight curls, shiny and perfect, smelling like that divine baby smell that was more addictive than crack. My fury couldn’t chase away the fear, the disgust at seeing that little baby, the one I imagined I might hold one day, lying murdered in his mother’s arms, along with every other human I’d come into contact with.
Fucking smiled at.
A baby.
Killed. In the most gruesome and ugly way possible.
Because of me.
My mother and Jonathan doing it, because of their plans for me. And now they were back. Had more plans. And I nearly blacked out from the sheer panic at the thought of bringing a being into this world, a being who was half of Thorne, and seeing it lying motionless, staring at me with the cold accusation of death.
The image of that was so clear, I was sure that’s what I was seeing instead of Thorne’s hard gaze.
But then I blinked away the agony and was once again in my bedroom.
I needed to get rid of the acid in my throat at Thorne’s suggestion, and my wanting to fucking agree with it.
“If you want children, a happy family to chase away the demons of your own grizzly history, I suggest you go find another vampire in the midst of her half-centuries.” I seeped as much acid into my voice as I could, pretending his small flinch at the mention of his murdered families didn’t affect me. “Because my history is grizzly and blood-spattered enough. I’m not looking to add another psychopath to it.”
And then I turned on my heel and stomped into my closet, snatching clothing items at random, anger and pain blurring my vision. I ignored the fact that Thorne was still standing in the middle of the room, statuesque. I ignored my urge to go to him and stomped right into the bathroom to get dressed, put on my armor, my makeup, so I didn’t recognize the vulnerable girl in the mirror flushed with the dangerous ignorance of love.
I needed some peace.
So I found myself in a graveyard.
Contrary to popular belief, vampires did not hang out in graveyards. Why would they? All the humans there were dead and rotting—therefore of absolutely no use to us.
I did hate that part of Buffy where Spike lived in that horrible tomb. Even the lowest-level vampires could afford an airy one-bedroom.
But there I was, standing in front of a slab of rock with a scrawl of writing signifying the previous owner of the decaying flesh and bones six feet under.
“I don’t even know why I’m here,” I told the rock. “Or why I’m talking to myself. That’s like the first sign of insanity. Then again, I’ve already established my own insanity, so I guess it doesn’t really matter,” I reasoned.
The rock obviously had no answer for me.
“I had a personal and selfish stake in this war, I’ll admit,” I said, squinting around the graveyard for wayward mourners. The last thing I needed was some nitwit coming to offer me sympathy or a filthy handkerchief. Then I’d have to kill them, and I was trying my hand at being a little less homicidal with ‘innocent humans’ these days.
“But now I have something more than a personal selfish stake,” I continued, happy I was alone. “Then again, revenge is pretty selfish, right? ’Cause you’re already dead, and me obliterating everyone responsible for that isn’t going to make you any less dead or your family any less broken.”
I fought against a strange prickling behind my eyes as I thought of Lewis’s daughter standing by this grave while they were filling it with dirt, her face empty.
“But I’ll get the revenge anyway,” I continued. “Because well, I’m selfish. So why break a five-hundred-year streak?”
I stared at the unyielding stone.
“I’m sorry,” I said, little more than a whisper. Then again, the tone of voice didn’t matter when talking to the dead. They’d never hear you anyway. Anything you said to dead things fell of deaf—dead—ears. You were saying them for yourself more than anything.
But I kept talking regardless.
“I’m sorry I brought you into a life that was more dangerous than the one you already chose,” I said. “I’m sorry you got killed for me. And I’m sorry I never told you that I kind of liked you.” I paused. “That maybe I kind of loved you. Because even though I’ve got centuries on you—well, I did when you were breathing—I started to think of you as kind of like a dad. Watched you grow into a responsible adult as I stayed an immortal irresponsible one. I’m sorry I was too fucked up to say it when you were alive. I really hope you’re not just
rotting in the dirt. That you’re… I don’t know, somewhere where the Yankees win the World Series every year, even if they are fucking idiots. I hope there’s that terrible whisky you like. And that there’re no vampires there to get you dead.”
I stepped back from the grave, like the distance might get me away from the sorrow of it all.
From the memory of standing in front of Jonathan’s grave, bloodlust making my vision red and sorrow crumbling my heart.
“I wish you could come back like he did,” I whispered. “Instead of him. Because he didn’t deserve to come back from the dead. I know I didn’t. And you do. But you won’t, because that’s the way the world works. The evilest of us all get to walk the earth for as long as they like. The good ones are buried beneath it.”
I stared at the soil, at the hallowed dirt covering the bodies of humans, crushing them under the weight, the truth of mortality.
It seeped into me, that sorrow that seemed to be attached to the air in places such as this. Memories of before, of that time tinged in red, were hurled at me and I actually went back on one foot when they hit me square in the beating heart.
My gaze was tinged with red.
My throat burned with the power of a thousand suns. The thirst clawed up my neck, demanding I feed, demanding I take another life so maybe someone somewhere would be hurt just as much as I was. So I could hurt someone worse than my mother had hurt me.
I’d just finished off two newlyweds. She was still in her wedding dress. It had been pretty. Prettier stained in blood, I thought. More real. Because everything, especially the great big farce otherwise known as love, got covered, drenched in blood eventually. I was saving them pain. They should’ve thanked me instead of screaming, instead of begging.
But humans were stupid. They believed love conquered all. They ignored the considerable evidence that it destroyed everything eventually.
I’d kill some more before the night was out.
My crimson-tinted gaze touched on the cluster of delicious heartbeats across the cemetery from me.
Mourners. Clinging to the last sliver of death as it seeped into the soil where the damned lay to rest. I was still getting used to my improved eyesight, but I could see the grieving widow clear enough. She was sobbing into a silk handkerchief. Her face was red, splotchy, but underneath that ugly grief, she was pretty and young. Chances were she wouldn’t recover since her pain was so similar to my own. But she’d have to marry again, or she wouldn’t survive a world where solitary women were targets, witches, spinsters. I would be doing her a mercy when I drained her.
But later.
I glanced back at the cold stone jutting up from the dirt. Jutting up from where the decomposing body of my husband lay. There was nothing left in what lay beneath this ground anymore. Not even death. It was just a cluster of bones.
He was nothing more than a memory.
He didn’t matter anymore.
But I couldn’t shake the fact that his death hadn’t seeped into the ground here. It had attached itself to my skeleton, never to be removed unless something tore my head from my shoulders, ended my miserable existence.
Not that I would let anyone do that.
No, I had a job to do. I had people to kill. People to save from the fatal disease known as love.
And when I was done with that, I’d be able to focus on my true mission.
Killing my entire family.
I glanced up. The service had finished.
The mourners had dispersed, and the drizzle that had been lingering all day turned to rain.
The widow stayed, her pretty outfit getting ruined, her lovely shoes getting covered in mud from the dead.
My throat burned hotter. And I turned away from the grave of my husband to add some more residents to the cemetery.
I emerged from the memory, my throat burning, though not with a thirst for blood.
This was a thirst for revenge.
Three Days Later
“I feel like we’re missing quests,” I said, staring at the books surrounding me in utter distaste. Another day in the library, reading.
Reading.
Not killing, like Duncan got to go out and do, with some of the slayers who didn’t want to kill him on principle. Interestingly, one of them was the woman from the meeting we’d had in Oklahoma, when she’d thrown a knife at him and then threatened to kill him.
I knew that was flirting.
Even Scott got to go. Mostly because he had somehow befriended the slayers from Thorne’s little crew—maybe because he was half human and a halfwit, hence they felt more comfortable with him in their killing crew.
Me? The single most important vampire to this whole fucking thing? The vampire who was actually mentioned in these idiotic prophecies and the most badass of them all—well, maybe apart from the witch frowning at a book across from me—this weapon was being stuffed in a library and told to read books.
Like it was going to help.
Of course, I wasn’t reading anything. I was seeing how many jabs I could throw at the wolf before he hulked out and made this day more interesting. I hadn’t seen him change yet, and it was on my list of things to do before I died.
That and have sex with Thorne, and even though Sophie had gotten what she needed in Mexico, whatever this spell was needed time.
Patience.
I did not have that.
Like at all.
And Thorne and I were still on shaky ground after the little blowup three days ago. I’d returned from the cemetery and he hadn’t been home. I was half worried he would never come back until, hours and a bottle of vodka later, his lips had brushed the back of my neck and then met my mouth.
There had been no mention of the words from earlier, no words at all. We’d taken everything we could from each other to blanket the events of the past.
And we’d been doing so for the past three days.
But it was getting old quick. Sophie needed to get the charm done so we could fuck the anger out of each other.
Sure, we’d done the whole ‘technical virgin stuff,’ everything but penetration, but penetration was my favorite part of fucking.
Sophie glanced at the wolf, who was glaring at me, then focused her attention on me. She grinned a little. “Quests?” she repeated.
I nodded, pushing away the books for good effort. “You know, we’ve got the prophecy thing, fate of life as we know it hanging in the balance, blah, blah, blah.” I made a talking motion with my hand. “Such things usually come with tasks, quests. Like hunting horcruxes or something.”
Sophie raised her brow. “Well, I’d say finding a spell to curse the witch stinking up my office and then figuring out how they’re still making hybrids without her and killing the man you used to be married to—once we find him, of course—could be considered a quest.” Her grin widened. “Your mother could definitely be considered a horcrux.”
“Of course she can,” I agreed, thinking of her face in Russia, of the depth of her torture and betrayal of me. “So why aren’t we out finding her and sticking a basilisk fang into her?”
She quirked her head. “You seem to know a lot of the finer details about the life of a made-up English wizard,” she teased.
I scowled at her. “J.K. Rowling created a sensation for generations to come,” I snapped. “Pure imagination and creativity. Of course I know the finer details.”
She laughed, closing the book. “Well, I think this is the point where we take Isla out for some fresh air,” she said to the room at large, which consisted of her wolf and Thorne.
Lamest double date ever.
I stood with such force my chair toppled over. “Thank Kate Beckinsale,” I breathed. “And by fresh air, you do mean we’re going to kill things, right?” I clarified.
Sophie stood much slower than me. “Isn’t that what it always means?”
I smiled.
And of course the idiot males had to get their hackles up at that. It was pretty much what they were t
here for, eye candy and overreaction.
“Like fuck that’s happening,” the wolf growled.
“Shut up, Spot, or I’ll have to muzzle you,” I seethed.
Another growl, his eyes turning to liquid gold as he glared at me. “You have no idea how much danger she’s in already,” he snarled. “How much danger you continue to put her in. The witches—”
“Let’s not bore her with that, honey,” Sophie cut in sharply.
I quirked my brow. “Honey? Really?”
Thorne stood too, because some alpha male was throwing his weight around and he was feeling left out. “I agree with Conall,” he said, face tight.
I scowled at him. “You’re going to hitch your wagon to that dog? Brave, considering he’s not the one who gets to decide whether you get to fuck me or not when Sophie’s little potion or whatever is ready.” I smiled sweetly at Thorne. “And that’d be me, just in case you wondered.”
I glanced to my best friend, who was having a glaring competition with her wolf. She was totally winning.
“So how about you let us go and have a girls’ day—manis, pedis, maybe some murder? It’s not too much to ask, is it?” Obviously I didn’t wait for an answer, because something clicked from the wolf’s earlier growls and Sophie’s eagerness to shut him up.
I narrowed my eyes at Sophie. “What was the mutt saying about the witches?” I demanded. “They’re giving you trouble, aren’t they? And you didn’t tell me.”
Sophie conceded her glare-off to look at me sheepishly. “You had a lot to handle, coming back from the dead and then your ex coming back from the dead. Fatal curses. New boyfriends,” she listed them off. “And you were trying to binge-watch Scandal. I didn’t want to add a burden.”
I folded my arms. “You better burden me the fuck up like right now, or I’ll rip your wolf to pieces,” I promised.
She rolled her eyes. “Well, you’re probably doing us a favor, because that’s the only way we’ll get out of this library.”