by Elena Lawson
“Azrael,” I ground out. “I am not climbing in this coffin with you.”
Azrael turned from his conversation with the man in the suit, the glimmer of challenge in his eyes. Then he turned back to the compelled hearse driver and said, “It seems your services are no longer required, my friend. The lady doesn’t wish to see her companions, anymore.”
My breath caught. “Wait!” I practically shouted as the driver made to turn. Azrael stopped him from getting back into the vehicle. My breathing had picked up and I glanced from the coffin to Azrael and back again, my heart thrumming in my ears. My stomach was ready to heave.
I hated small spaces. It was why I didn’t like elevators. It was why, in this godforsaken cave, I felt like I could only breath halfway. Like there was a weight on my chest at all times.
If I thought the air here was stale, I cringed to imagine what it would be like stuck in a coffin with an immortal undead guy for…how long had he said? Six hours.
I steeled myself, dragging in an unsteady breath. “Fine,” I said through gritted teeth. “I’ll do it.”
Azrael clapped his hands together and grinned at me. “Excellent.”
He nodded to the driver who resumed his stoic stance with his hands behind his back, waiting for us to get inside the coffin so he could roll us into the back of the hearse and drive us where we needed to go.
My pulse wouldn’t calm as Azrael made his way back over to me, but I tried my best to appear calm. “Tell me again, why exactly do we need to get in a fucking coffin?”
Azrael frowned at my cursing, but right now I didn’t care about our little bargain. This was going to be hell.
“It will take us six hours to arrive in Baton Rouge,” he said, and I ignored the fact that he seemed to know without my having to tell him where they lived. Had he always known? I shivered. He wasn’t bluffing when he said he would hurt the people I cared about if I didn’t cooperate, was he? “It’s about midday now. But leaving at this hour will allow us to arrive after sunset. Then we’ll have time for your little visit…and have time to get back on the road before sunrise.”
“So, it’s to protect you from the sunlight.” I stated.
“Yes,” he said, unapologetically. “And I can’t trust you anywhere out of my line of sight it appears. Compulsion or not.”
He wasn’t wrong. I was the fucking queen of loopholes.
Then I thought of something. “Wait. Didn’t you say that my blood was like some sort of cosmic sunscreen? Can’t you just use some so that we don’t have to,” I glared down at the box of doom. “You know—shack up in a death box?”
He chuckled, and shockingly, I found the sound to be kind of pleasant. I shook my head to clear it and tried to replace the traitorous feeling with the right one: disgust. Shame made heat rise to my cheeks and I dug my jagged nails into my palms to rid myself of it.
“Are you offering?” he asked dangerously, stepping in with a lusty gleam in his eyes and a twist to his lush lips. His hulking frame blocked what little light there was, and I cursed myself at the shudder that ran through me at the prospect of his ancient teeth piercing my flesh.
I shoved him away, and his eyes widened in surprise. “Hell no.”
Azrael shrugged, suddenly the picture of emotionless calm. “I wouldn’t take it from you, Rose,” he told me, turning to jump up onto the table and step into the coffin. “I certainly won’t be the first one to test the theory. Synthesizing your blood into a combatant against sunlight is going to take time.” He set his eyes on me with a cutting look. “A lot of time.”
Of course, he wouldn’t be the first to try it. The great and terrible Azrael wouldn’t deign to put himself in danger. Oh no. He’d rather watch one of his lackeys burn to a crisp.
And now he was telling me I was stuck here for a lot of time. How long was a lot of time, exactly?
Fuck my life.
“Coming?” Azrael asked after a moment’s hesitation on my part.
I tried to climb onto the raised table thing to get into the coffin, but my cast was difficult to maneuver. I bent to try to pry it off, but I could barely get my fingers inside the top of it to get any sort of leverage.
In a flash, Azrael was out of the coffin, off the table, and knelt in front of me.
I recoiled, but he already had his hands on my cast, one on either side. He had the thing broken off in two perfect halves within the blink of an eye.
I tried not to look impressed.
He took hold of my bare foot, inspecting it, feeling around the areas where the bones had been broken. “A perfect setting,” he muttered to himself, as though giving himself a pat on the back.
I groaned, tugging my foot out of his hands, and jumped up onto the platform, my body going rigid as I forced myself into the box.
Sitting in the middle of it, I curled my arms around my knees, trying to soothe the riotous beating of my heart.
Azrael, calm as you please, stepped into the box with me, nudging me as he laid down flat on his back. That feeling of otherness was sending shivers skittering over the surface of my skin, leaving gooseflesh in their wake.
The driver approached us, drawing the lid from the back of the hearse. It had shining silver knobs on it spaced at intervals down the length. With a jolt, I looked down at the rim of the coffin and found where the latches would catch, effectively locking us inside.
“Can’t have you trying to tear the lid off mid-trip, now can I?”
The worst part of that was—I hadn’t even thought of doing that. Why wasn’t I searching for any and every option available to me to kill him?
Azrael nudged me with the tips of his fingers, and I peered back to see a smug look on his stupid handsome face. “You’ll need to lay down, Rose,” he said, his voice rich with sarcasm.
There was barely more than half a foot of available space next to the massive, hulking form of Azrael. I had no idea how I was supposed to fit.
Either reading my mind, or perhaps seeing me frown at the smidgen of free space, Azrael scooched a bit more to the side and then quirked a brow at me as though to say this alright for you, princess?
Fucker.
Wholly unable to conceal the slight tremble now, I closed my eyes and laid back, having to wiggle around a bit to find a spot that would allow me to lay flat enough so as not to impede the lid being put on.
I squeezed my eyes tightly shut as Azrael lifted an arm to put around me, it was the only way I was going to be able to lay flat against the bottom.
It’s not him, I told myself. It’s Frost.
It’s Frost who’s holding you.
And you’re not in a coffin.
You’re snuggling in a warm bed.
It’s fine.
Everything is—
The lid fell into place with an ominous thud, and what little light there was behind my eyelids vanished into a deep and total blackness.
Each click of the latches being turned into locking position made me flinch.
The scent of him coiled around me like a fog and I hated that he smelled good. Woodsy, like white birch, with an undertone of something sweet, yet earthy—like African violets and rain.
“I’m going to murder you,” I whispered to Azrael in the dark through clenched teeth, my fingers clawing into the material of his shirt.
Azrael’s laughter echoed in the box as the driver rolled us into the back of the hearse and started the engine.
The unfeeling prick could laugh all he wanted. One day I would make good on that promise.
7
I was right.
The six-hour drive was torture.
We were only about an hour into it when my self-assurances began to slip. It helped to focus on the roar of the engine, and the tires chewing pavement below us, but that only worked to a point. Every so often—and by so often I mean about every two minutes—I would remember that we were in a fucking coffin in the back of a fucking hearse and that I was basically cuddling with the man who I thought murdered
my mother.
The vampire, I corrected my thoughts, who almost killed my guys and kidnapped me.
I maneuvered my body to try to put some space between us, turning so I was facing him instead of being awkwardly half on my side and half on my back. But to my dismay, he readjusted himself, too, pressing himself against my front.
Coffin hog.
“Is that a stake or are you just happy to be here?”
The joke took me so much by surprise that I just stared into the dark in stunned silence and horror.
It made jokes?
Azrael had his hand halfway down my pants before I could do anything to stop him. I gasped as he withdrew the long piece of whittled bedpost. I tried to snatch it back, but no matter how hard I tried to pry it out of his fingers, it remained there, as though encased in cement instead of flesh.
“Give it back,” I hissed.
“As you wish,” he said, and tossed it back to me, but since I couldn’t see anything in the all-consuming dark, it hit against my temple and I groaned, placing it firmly between my legs since I had no better place for it.
I couldn’t believe the cocky fucker actually gave it back.
Didn’t he know what I planned to do with it?
“If it were that easy to kill me, I’d be long dead by now.”
We went over a pothole and my stomach dropped; my mind thrown back into claustrophobic panic mode. My chest grew tight and my breaths came short and fast—heart pounding anew. Sweat beaded on my brow.
“Tell me,” I said, willing to try anything to distract myself. I was starting to feel disoriented and the last thing I wanted was to pass out in this coffin with Azrael. I needed to keep my head. “How old are you, exactly?”
I heard him make a popping sound with his lips, as though considering whether or not he should tell me. After a few more moments of paralyzing dread as the walls of the box felt like they were closing in, he answered. “Over a millennia. I can’t pinpoint the exact number of years.”
“What?”
I must’ve heard him wrong. There was no way he could possibly be—
“I was born on the immortal continent of Emeris.”
No. Fucking. Way.
There were two immortal continents shrouded from the mortal eye. A human hadn’t ever set foot on either of them. They weren’t on our maps. No sailor had ever even so much as seen them on the horizon.
The magic that kept them separate from our mortal lands also worked as a sort of human repellant. From what I knew, any ships that managed to get even remotely close had sunk in some form of storm.
I always thought they were somewhere near Bermuda. Within that triangle everyone was so wary of.
But I would never know.
I didn’t know much of anything about them other than that they existed. Courtesy of a very chatty vamp who I’d gleaned information from before I’d staked him. It wasn’t the sort of information I was looking for, but I’d allowed him to finish, finding the new bit of info quite interesting.
I always thought the blood sucker was lying, but after hearing Ethan speak about the place, and now Azrael, too, I had to believe it was real.
“And why did you come here? Why not stay where you belong? Terrorize your own people? Hmm?”
His body stiffened next to mine. “I didn’t have a choice,” he practically growled. “None of us did.”
What the hell did that mean?
“Your puny mortal mind couldn’t comprehend it.”
“Fuck you.”
He snorted.
As the distraction faded and the panic began to rise again, a small whimper left my lips and my chest felt so tight I thought it would implode.
I needed to get out of here.
Azrael groaned.
The vampire moved himself so he was on his side, too, facing me. I kept my eyes firmly closed even though if I’d opened them, I wouldn’t have been able to see anyway.
“Rose?” he said gruffly.
I just focused on breathing.
“Rose, open your eyes.”
How could he see in here? It was so dark.
“No,” I breathed. “It makes it worse.”
“I’ll make it better.”
Confused, I opened my eyes for a split second and felt an iron vise curl itself around my heart and mind. Shit.
“Sleep,” Azrael commanded, and I felt my body sag. All my bunched, aching muscles turned to jelly, and my bones unlocked. My head lolled back, and my eyelids fluttered closed.
I drifted into a deep and dreamless sleep.
8
I couldn’t be sure what woke me, but as I blinked back into the present, I found myself surrounded in darkness.
There was a cushioned wall to my back, a warm body pressing in against me and an unyielding surface both beneath and above me.
Where the hell am I?
My heart began to race and vaguely, I thought I heard someone say to calm down, but I was already clawing at the surface of the box I was trapped inside, breathing fast, breaking nails. I tried to turn to put myself in a position to kick at the wood, but I couldn’t raise my leg high enough to do it, I didn’t have enough space.
A small, broken sound came out of my mouth before I could stifle it and then I felt movement. The box was being moved.
I shouted, and as I heard little clink, clink sounds, I worried that something was about to explode.
“Rose,” A voice shouted and in a moment of clarity, I recognized the deep, rich, baritone. It was…Azrael. I was in a coffin with…Azrael.
We were in a cave, but we were going to—
Where had we been going?
It all came back in a rush and I lashed out, punching Azrael as hard as I could without the ability to reel back. “You asshole. I told you not to compel me!”
“You were having a panic attack,” he said calmly, as though he didn’t even feel the hit.
The groan I let escape sounded more like a growl.
“Your welcome,” he added as the lid above us loosened and then lifted.
I was up and scrambling out of the evil box in a heartbeat. My lungs protested at the amount of fresh, unrestricted air that I was pulling in greedily through my nostrils and open mouth. I coughed and my head cleared. As the dizziness passed, I reached down and grabbed my makeshift stake from the pavement where it fell in my haste to escape and tucked it back into my lose-fitting jeans.
As I righted myself, I blinked to clear my vision and waited for my eyes to adjust to the light.
We were parked at the side of a two-way street. A lot at our backs and across the street, a line of shops, all closed for the night. By the position of the moon, it had to be around ten at night. Maybe a bit later than that.
My eyes narrowed on the enormous corner building down the way. It was old, colonial style, with fancy trim and edging—half-columns spaced evenly between wide panes of glass on the bottom level. The top level had the same, except there, every window was blacked out.
But it wasn’t the building that caught my eye—it was the decal on the window facing us. It was a pair of crescent moons back to back with old fashioned script like writing beneath that read Moonlit Ink.
Below that was a sign posted on the inside that read Opens at midnight. Closes when I say so.
Squinting more closely, I saw that they had two roses worked into the logo design. That couldn’t have been an accident.
I smirked.
My heart swelled and I resisted the urge to immediately beeline for the building.
Swallowing, I made my voice as steady as I could. “Are they up there?”
I considered the blacked-out windows and wondered if they could see outside.
Azrael stepped up next to me and nodded. “Yes.”
I didn’t ask how he knew. Maybe he could sense them. Or maybe the fucker had x-ray vision, who knew…it didn’t matter, anyway.
Azrael had kept his word. And he hadn’t lied about them being unharmed. Though I wouldn’t f
ully believe it until I saw it for myself.
I moved to cross the quiet street, but Azrael stopped me with a brusque sound in his throat. “Remember our bargain,” he said. “You see, they’re alright and then you come back with me. You do as I ask. Or else…” he trailed off.
He didn’t need to say it again. How could I forget?
Either I did as he asked, or he would hurt the people I loved.
I glanced back at the tall building on the corner and my bottom lip quivered.
Damn.
Ignoring the inner voice that was screaming at me, I removed the stake from my jeans and tossed it to Azrael, who caught it easily midair and grinned. “Good choice,” he crooned. “Now let’s go meet the family, shall we?”
The door to go up to the second-floor apartment was plain black, nondescript. It didn’t even have a handle on it.
A panel with a speaker box and a single off-white button rested on the wall to the right. Azrael and I stepped off the street and onto the stoop and I gulped. “Do you have to come with me?”
“Afraid so.”
I pursed my lips, my finger hovering a mere inch from pressing the button on the receiver. “And if they try to kill you?”
It was a distinct possibility. He kidnapped me and almost killed them. If they recognized him—they’d be going for the throat. And I didn’t think Azrael would take too kindly to an attack from three rather large vampires—no matter how young they were in comparison.
All thoughts of ganging up on him with my guys had vanished the moment I’d seen the tattoo shop—those roses in the logo. If we tried to fight him, I had no doubt at least one of us would fall. If not more than one.
If not all.
Now that I knew he was over a thousand years old, I was reconsidering my position. I’d have to relegate myself to the disappointing fact that I was stuck with him until he decided otherwise.
Azrael fixed me with a look that said he wasn’t even remotely worried about it. “Don’t worry so much. I won’t hurt them. Not so long as you keep your end of the bargain.”
I jabbed the buzzer before I could change my mind.