by L.H. Cosway
Later on, I rummaged through Ethan’s freezer in search of ice-cream and pumped my fist into the air in triumph when I discovered a huge tub of double chocolate chip. I dished it out into two bowls. Alright, one normal bowl and one gigantic fruit bowl for me because apparently I had a hole in my stomach that could never be filled now. I carried both bowls to Rebecca’s room, where I found her sitting in the corner playing with her toys.
“Ice-cream’s up,” I called, and she smiled big when she spotted the bowls.
We ate in silence for a little while, and I remembered to return her charm bracelet, helping her put it back on. I sat back against the pillows and watched as she finished off the last of her ice-cream. There were times when she got extra quiet, and I sometimes wondered if she was thinking of her dad. With everything that happened, she never really had the chance to grieve for him.
“Do you miss your dad?” I asked, my tone gentle.
Rebecca nodded, a sadness in her eyes that shouldn’t exist in a person so young. “All the time, but he’s with my mummy now, so I know he’s happy.”
I paused, considering what to say next. “What if you could have your mother, would you want to live with her, even though she’d be a stranger?”
Rebecca gazed at me, her big brown eyes full of hope at the mere idea. “I think so.”
Her answer made me feel much better about what I planned to do, and I didn’t fail to notice how she fiddled with her charm bracelet the whole time I’d been talking to her. In fact, she played with it a lot, like it was a comfort to her. Perhaps this little girl wanted her real mother more than she even knew herself.
16.
Finn
I’d never felt softer lips in my entire life. Alora moaned when I kissed her, and my tongue tried to memorise the taste. After spending hours in bed talking about our lives and getting to know everything about one another, I’d stripped her down to just her underwear and a T-shirt, and shit, I didn’t think it was possible to find plain white briefs this sexy.
She breathed in quick little bursts, all revved up, and it drove me crazy. I’d barely touched her aside from the kiss, and yet I could just tell if I slipped my hand between her legs right now, she’d be slick and ready for me.
Just as these thoughts were flitting through my brain, her entire body stilled. I pulled my mouth from hers to find her eyes rolled back in her head as she started to convulse.
Crap, she was having a vision. Panic seized me.
It was just so hard to see this happening to her. I grabbed her hands, and just as I was about to pull her into my arms, something strange happened. I felt myself being drawn closer to her. My eyes drifted shut, and then there was only darkness.
When I came to, I was standing in a long hallway, hand in hand with Alora. I looked at her, and she seemed just as shocked to see me as I was to be there. The carpet we stood on was lush, and on the walls was that expensive silk wallpaper people used to have in the 1800s. It had pictures of birds and flowers on it.
“You’re in one of my visions,” Alora said, awed, her voice bringing my attention back to her.
“Yeah,” I breathed, unable to figure out how this was happening.
“Something isn’t right.”
“What do you mean?”
“We’re not in the future,” she explained. “We’re in the past. This has never happened before.”
“How am I here with you?”
“It might be because you were touching me when the vision took hold and probably because of how close I felt to you when we were kissing.”
Before I could ask any more questions, a door at the end of the hall opened and Theodore stepped through. His clothes weren’t modern, but they still held that whimsical touch. He wore an old-timey suit with a cravat, and his socks were purple with blue stripes.
I held my breath as he approached, but he simply walked right by us.
“We’re not really here,” Alora informed me. “We’re just spectators. Come on.”
Hand in hand, we followed Theodore down the long hall. I got the impression that we were in some sort of fancy hotel. Theodore smiled as he slid a copper key from his pocket and stuck it into the door of room 203. He pushed the door open and stepped inside.
As we continued to follow him, I was struck with the harsh scent of lavender perfume—and the unmistakable aroma of blood and sex. The key Theodore had been holding dropped from his hand and clinked to the floor as he stormed through the suite. He stopped when he reached the bed, where there was a woman with long, dark hair and brown eyes lying naked in the arms of a muscular blond guy.
When the woman saw Theodore, her eyes widened, and her fangs extended as she smiled. Shit, she was a vampire. The man she lay with had bite marks all along his neck, and he looked completely zoned out from blood loss.
“No,” Theodore whispered in disbelief. “How could you …?”
The vampire laughed cruelly. “Oh, come on, you didn’t think I was going to stop, did you?”
Theodore’s eyes narrowed to slits. “I thought you were mine. I told you I would give you all the blood you needed, so long as you stayed faithful to me.”
“The thrill of the hunt is half the joy of feeding, Theo dear. Surely, you can understand that.”
“I told you I loved you,” he seethed.
The vampire continued to laugh. “People our age don’t know the meaning of love. Love is for mortals.”
“You are mortal, Jessica.”
“Not the way a human is. I’m six hundred years old.”
“And I am two centuries older than that, but still, I did love you. At least until I found you here … copulating.”
“You have to stop taking things so seriously,” Jessica replied. “I like to play with my human toys every now and again. You’ll just have to learn to live with it.”
Theodore’s anger came to a bursting point when he boomed, “No! I will not learn to live with it!”
He jumped onto the bed and grabbed the zoned out human, pressing his hand into his face. Magic sizzled from his fingertips, and the man’s life started to drain until his complexion paled and his life left him. Jessica watched Theodore kill the guy she’d just been drinking from and having sex with, no emotion in her eyes. She didn’t even seem shocked.
She did, however, look scared when Theodore turned his attention to her, purple magic still zinging from the palm of his hand.
“Don’t,” she said, in a voice that sounded calm on the surface but contained barely concealed panic underneath.
He grabbed her by the hair and threw her from the bed to the floor.
“You vampires,” he spat, “I thought you had hearts, but now I see I was wrong. You’re all dead inside with nothing but blackened stones inside your chests.”
“Theo, please, don’t do this,” Jessica begged, all pretences of calm completely gone now.
“Why not? I’m done with you. Never again will I allow myself to be fooled by one of your kind. I hate you. I hate all of you.”
At this, he threw both his hands forward, gesturing a rapid and intricate spell. He wasn’t even touching her anymore, but her head started to twist. It kept turning until her neck snapped and she was rendered unconscious. She wasn’t dead though. Not yet. Theodore strode to the four-poster bed and smashed it apart with his magic. He picked up a broken, jagged piece of wood before walking back to Jessica. Without preamble, he aimed the wood at her heart and stabbed her, emitting a heartbroken grunt as he did.
Theodore dropped to the floor, his face in his hands. It took a second for me to realise that he was crying.
“This is why he hates vampires so much,” Alora whispered, suddenly enlightened.
A second later, we were both descending back into darkness. The next time I opened my eyes, we were in Tribane again, standing on a path on Campion Row. There were people everywhere, and it was even more crowded than it had been the day Theodore had gathered his mob to burn all the vampires in their homes.
“Are we i
n the future now?” I asked Alora.
“I think so,” she answered quietly.
People chattered excitedly all around us, sort of like they were waiting impatiently for their favourite boy band to make an appearance. It was daytime. The skies were clear and sunny above us. Then I heard someone gasp and others started to cry out in terror. The atmosphere changed so rapidly that it took me a moment to pinpoint what was happening.
I looked up and saw the sunny sky darkened as a black cloud descended. It was Theodore’s chaos mist. All light was completely obliterated within seconds, and the chaos drifted down from above, invading the bodies of the humans below. Instantly their bodies fell and convulsed, and no more than a minute later they went still. I turned to look at Alora in time to see the chaos hovering above both of us. It bypassed Alora and came straight for me. There was nothing I could do to fight it, and then there was no more time left. The mist had taken me over and drained the life from my body.
Waking up, I was covered in sweat and shaking all over. I was back in bed. Relief washed over me when I realised none of that really happened, not yet anyway. Alora came to beside me, her mouth open in shock.
“You were inside my vision,” she said, her expression showing clear amazement.
“You said you thought it was because I was touching you when it happened. Has anyone ever been touching you when a vision came before?”
She shook her head. “No, most people’s reactions when I start convulsing is to get as far away as possible.” She let out a sad little laugh. “Like this crap is contagious or something.”
I pulled her close and rubbed her shoulders soothingly.
“We were in the past,” I murmured, trying to figure out what it all meant.
“My ability must have shown me that for a reason. It wanted me to know that Theodore has a cause for wanting to wipe out vampires.”
“The guy must have a very easily wounded ego. I mean, he got cheated on. Build a bridge and get over it.”
“Sorcerers are so old though. It makes them crazier. Every little thing is a personal affront, so imagine how angry being cheated on would make them.”
“I’m still trying to get my head around the fact that such a hot vampire was with Theodore.”
Alora shrugged. “Some women find power a strong aphrodisiac. And Theodore has lots of power. He was eight-hundred years old back then. That means he must be over a thousand now.”
“He’s older than the oldest vampires,” I said in awe, studying her closely. “Are you okay? Those visions have to take a lot out of you.”
“They do, but I’ll be alright.”
I pulled her closer, keeping her in my embrace as we both fell into quiet thought. Somewhere along the way, she nuzzled my neck, and a bolt of arousal shot through me. I brought my mouth to her earlobe and sucked, soliciting a soft moan from her.
“I love it when you make that noise,” I rasped and flipped us so that she was lying flat on the bed. I stared into her eyes, and a sense of urgency took over. Maybe it was what I saw in that vision and how I was almost certain I died in it, but suddenly everything seemed so vital, almost like we only had so much time left.
It always felt like that in this city. There was the constant knowledge that your next breath could be your last, which was kind of an occupational hazard when your job involved slaying vampires. Well, I guess that wasn’t really my job anymore.
Capturing Alora’s mouth in a kiss, I cradled her face in my hands.
“Finn,” she gasped as my hand drifted down between her legs.
“I want you,” I breathed, and her thighs fell apart, welcoming me in. I shoved her T-shirt up and over her head before swiftly discarding her bra. Then her beautiful tits were bared to me, and I groaned aloud. She was too fucking perfect. I trailed my hand down her side, revelling in how her hips curved out lavishly from her small waist.
“Finn, I’ve never done this before,” she finally confessed, and my heart stammered.
“That’s alright.” I reassured her, meeting her pretty gold eyes. “Do you want me?”
“Yes, God, I want you so much.” Her gaze drifted down my chest with need, and I smiled, obliging her by removing my shirt so that she could look her fill.
She shyly reached out, trailing her fingers down my abdomen. My muscles jumped at her touch. I closed my eyes and enjoyed the sensation of her tentative fingers as they explored me.
I flipped us again, and my back hit the mattress while she straddled my thighs. Her hands continued to move over my bare chest before fumbling with my belt buckle and undoing the fly of my jeans. I was so busy staring at how incredible her tits looked from this angle that I didn’t immediately notice her struggling with my pants.
I chuckled softly and helped her get them off. A few seconds later, I was naked as the day I was born. Gripping the back of her neck, I pulled her mouth down to mine, kissing her hard and possessive. She moaned as she ground herself into my erection, and I swore I almost came. Both our chests rose and fell as our arousal built. I hooked my fingers under her knickers and eased them down an inch.
Her mouth moved to my neck, and I couldn’t take it any longer. I had to be in her now. Her underwear came off, and I continued to kiss her as I reached over to the nightstand where I left my wallet.
Alora broke the kiss to watch me pull out a condom. I tore open the packet and rolled it down my length. Her eyes were wide, taking everything in. Next, I pulled her under me and spread her legs apart. I let my hand drift over her wet folds, rubbing circles into her clit. I wanted her to come first, that way she’d be more relaxed when I pushed inside.
Her orgasm came swiftly, a rosy blush colouring her cheeks. Wow. I didn’t think I’d ever get tired of making her come.
“That feel good?” I asked, my voice low and throaty. It was taking every ounce of willpower I had not to plunge inside her hard and fast.
“So good,” she sighed, and I nudged my tip against her opening. “Oh, God, please,” she begged. “I want to feel you, Finn.”
“I want to feel you, too,” I groaned and brought my mouth to her ear, licking the shell and sucking. I entered her just the slightest bit, and she whimpered.
“Fuck, you already feel incredible,” I practically growled.
“Please.”
I pushed in a bit more, and she clamped her thighs around me tight, her legs locking around my waist. I tried to focus on keeping this slow and steady, but damn, she felt amazing. I knew this had to be hurting her, and I hated the idea of her feeling any pain. Steadily, I pushed through that thin barrier, seating myself fully. I held still, and she grew quiet. I braced myself on my hands, pushing up to see her face, and found her eyes were squeezed shut.
“Tell me if you want me to stop,” I whispered, watching her intently.
Finally, she opened her eyes. “No, I just needed a minute. Keep going. I want you to.”
I rocked my hips forward, never breaking eye contact with her.
“You’re gorgeous, so beautiful,” I said, continuing to utter sweet things to her as I lost myself in the sensation. Our slow rhythm allowed me to feel every inch of her around me. Her muscles clenching on my dick was almost too much to take.
“Finn,” she moaned. “More.”
I quickened my thrusts just a little, and her mouth fell open in response. Moving my hand to her clit and my mouth to her breast, I was determined to make her come again. This time on my cock. Her muscles clenched around me exquisitely when I touched the tiny bundle of nerves. Her thighs locked around me tighter as I felt her orgasm building.
“Yes,” I rasped mindlessly. “You’re mine. All mine.”
Alora let out a cry of pleasure, and I knew I was going to come soon. I waited until I had her right on the cusp, and then, just as she shattered beneath me, I let loose, coming inside her.
“I love you.” I thought I heard her whisper so quietly that I couldn’t be certain she actually said it.
I rolled us so that I wa
s cradling her in my arms. I hesitated, unsure whether to ask her to repeat herself. There was a chance I was hearing things.
A minute later, I finally summoned up the courage. “Alora, what did you just say?”
There was no response, and when I glanced down to see her face, she was breathing deeply, her eyes closed.
She’d fallen asleep.
I tried to fall asleep, too, but I couldn’t seem to manage it. I just kept thinking about her words, wondering whether or not she actually said them. We’d only known each other a few days. She could hardly feel like she loved me already. But then, there was her vision of us together in the future. There was also the fact that she’d just given me her virginity.
With these thoughts filling my head, I wasn’t going to be getting to sleep any time soon.
Making sure not to wake her, I rolled over and off the bed, pulling on my jeans and shirt. I decided a quick bite to eat might make me sleepy, so I went down to the kitchen to see what I could rustle up. Gabriel, Alvie, and Tegan were sitting at the table drinking tea and talking.
“What has you all up so late?” I asked, taking a seat beside Alvie.
“Oh, you know, we’re just hashing things over, trying to see if there are any holes in Roman’s plan,” Gabriel replied.
“And … are there?”
Alvie sighed. “We can’t be certain. But you have to plan for every eventuality.”
I couldn’t argue with that. Looking between the three of them, I decided to tell them about what happened with Alora and what we both saw in her visions.
“Jeez, talk about a spurned lover. I never understood how anyone could be crazy enough to kill their partner because they caught them cheating,” Tegan said. “I mean, yes, it’s got to sting, but killing them for it? It just seems so extreme. Though it does explain how determined Theodore is to rid the vampires from this city.”
“There’s only one more day until Theodore lets the chaos free,” Gabriel said, and we all went quiet.
Tegan met my gaze. “Finn, when you were in the vision with Alora, did it feel like the people were dead when the chaos got into them or did it feel like it was Roman’s spell taking effect?”