by Bella Klaus
“Mera,” he said in a voice as smooth as silk.
The fangs protruding from his lips were also gone. Everything about Valentine said he was alive except for his unbeating heart. There was only one answer, and it explained why he had looked less dead this afternoon when I had returned from trying to escape, and why he looked completely alive now.
“Valentine, I’m going to ask you this once, and I want you to give me an honest reply.”
A corner of his lip curled into a half-smile. “Anything for you, my Inamorata.”
“To restore your appearance, how many people did you kill?”
Chapter Nine
I stared into Valentine’s darkening eyes, challenging him to tell me I was wrong about him feeding or that I didn’t know what I was talking about. Preternatural vampires fed on copious amounts of blood—that, and rising from the dead, was part of their very definition.
Valentine stood at the doorway of the library with the light at his back casting warm the highlights on his black hair. He had even changed his shirt to one of black silk that he wore unbuttoned to the breastbone, revealing a tantalizing glimpse of bronze pectoral muscles.
“Inamorata,” he said in a deep and seductive voice that made my toes curl. “I came to apologize.”
My eyes narrowed. If he thought he could distract me with his sexuality, he was in for a surprise. Either it was a trick of the light or the scar down his chest had faded since I had checked on him earlier.
“Go on,” I said.
“What I did to you earlier was unforgivable.”
“You’re having regrets now?” My brows drew together. “What happened to the smirking vampire who wanted me to admit how much I loved the humiliation and wanted me to beg for more?”
The corner of his lip twitched, and he looked like he was suppressing a smile. “Back then, my memories of you were… muddled.”
“How so?”
A little voice in the back of my head screamed that this conversation was a distraction. Valentine had enjoyed every moment of my spanking and would have probably done it again if my insult hadn’t cut so deep. I told that part of myself to be patient and dropped my gaze to the beauty mark on his left cheekbone. You know, just in case he wanted to mesmerize me into forgetting that he was a corpse. Whatever he was about to say would reveal a little more about the inner workings of his current state.
Valentine placed a hand on my shoulder, close to where Macavity currently dangled. His body heat seeped through my hoodie, confirming my suspicions that Valentine had fed. A lot. The Bengal cat ran his head over Valentine’s hand and purred against my back.
“May I transport you out of this draughty hallway?” he asked.
My lips formed a tight line. He was stalling, but it wasn’t like I had the strength to throttle him into telling me the truth.
Valentine scooped me into his arms and cradled me to his broad chest. He even adjusted Macavity so the little cat lay curled on my belly. My eyelids fluttered shut. Right now, Valentine felt like a living, breathing vampire. I could even ignore the lack of heartbeat and the fact that he was flying across the hallway—something that he would have found impossible before he had died.
I leaned my head against his warm shoulder, shutting out the cold and damp atmosphere of our surroundings. For the next few moments, we could have been anywhere, away from my troubles with the Supernatural Council, his brothers, and whoever had cursed my blood and locked him in that villa.
As soon as warmth fanned against my skin and light seeped through my eyelids, I blinked my eyes open to find us back in the penthouse. Macavity jumped down, and Valentine set me on my feet.
“You were about to explain your change in appearance,” I said.
He offered me a tight smile. “When I rose, I felt the pull of your heart’s blood and knew you were mine.”
“Heart’s blood?”
“The heart is the center of power for all us supernaturals.” He slipped into the seat next to mine, took one of my hands, and cradled it within his own. “It’s our heart that generates the magic, making us different from humans.”
I lowered myself onto one of the sofas. This was already common knowledge and something that Istabelle reiterated when teaching me about energy healing. The heart chakra and its associated organ were the body’s energy centers when it came to our supernatural power.
“And the blood you drank?” I asked.
“Mera, do you know how much I missed you while we were apart?” he asked in a breathy whisper that sounded like he was missing me already.
“No?” I said.
“My beautiful, precious Inamorata.” He wrapped an arm around my shoulder. “I used to read your letters over and over, keep your scent in my room, and dream that we would soon reunite. Your aunt and I looked for opportunities to suppress your power, but nothing could hold you back.”
“Right,” I said, my heart sinking. “Developing that magic was what got you killed. Those enforcers would never have come after me if they hadn’t suspected me of having fire and whoever cursed me wouldn’t have bothered to attack a lowly Neutral.”
Valentine took my hand and brought my knuckles to his lips. “You could be as powerful as Kresnik himself. You could even be his reincarnation, and my love for you would never fade.”
I stared him straight in the eyes. Even though his irises had returned to violet, they retained more flecks of red than usual, making him look a little like how he did shortly after my blood got changed by the curse. “You’re building up to an explanation, aren’t you?”
Valentine didn’t reply. There was no need when I was a forbidden form of supernatural that should have been executed at birth and he had gotten himself killed trying to protect me. I should be throwing myself at his feet, begging him for forgiveness, yet here I was, asking him if he had just committed murder.
“I love you, too.” I reached out to him and squeezed his hand.
Valentine squeezed back, and some of the tension around his features relaxed. “We are so perfectly matched.”
“So you did kill someone,” I said.
The old Valentine would have exhaled a frustrated breath but this one stared at me, his body as still as death.
I swallowed. “Just tell me.”
A muscle in his jaw flexed, and he paused before speaking. “He was a man who had stabbed another and fled the scene, leaving the fallen man to bleed to death.”
“Is that all?” I asked.
“What do you mean?”
“You must have fed when I went outside.”
The nod he gave me was imperceptible, but he still confirmed that he had.
“And those people are dead?” I asked.
Another nod.
My gaze dropped to our joined hands. Valentine told me what he had caught the other man doing before snatching him off the streets, but a fog had built up around my mind, blocking his words. I shouldn’t have been surprised that he was a killer and should be pleased that he wasn’t picking off innocent people, but it was unsettling to know that there was a trail of dead bodies and distraught relatives.
“Morata?” he asked.
I raised my gaze and met his eyes. A deep line formed between his brows, and his broad shoulders lay higher than usual, communicating his tension.
“It doesn’t change the way I feel about you,” I said with a sigh.
Valentine nodded, and his shoulders relaxed.
Now that stolen blood had restored his senses, it was time to tell him about my plan to bring him back to life. “I left earlier today to get you some help.”
He tilted his head to the side. “What do you mean?”
“After you died, the wards fell, and I got arrested both for your murder and on suspicion that I was a wielder of fire.” Valentine’s eyes widened, and he parted his lips as though to form a protest, but I spoke first. “The Council refused to believe you would sacrifice your life to save mine, and the enforcers were already hunting me down to tes
t my magic.”
For the next few minutes, I told him about the mockery of the trial and how they tested my blood and found the results inconclusive because Aunt Arianna had somehow infused the donated blood with powdered firestone. Valentine’s features hardened, and the flecks in his irises brightened to a furious red, but I squeezed his hand.
“It was the only way she knew to protect me,” I blurted. “That firestone absorbed enough of my magic to fool the enforcers and keep me alive until I could escape.”
“You were in the family mausoleum.”
“I used the call stone to transport myself out of the wards.”
Valentine nodded and wrapped an arm around my shoulder, pulling me into the comfort of his body. He no longer felt like a hard statue but was instead living and yielding bone and muscle. I longed to ask him how long he would last between feedings, but there was no point in bringing up the subject when I already knew the cure.
I rested my hand on his thigh. “While I was in prison, Aunt Arianna told me I had phoenix flames.”
He drew back and stared at me with a frown. “Was she serious?”
“She had no reason to lie.”
He squeezed his eyes shut. “You wish to burn my body and see if I rise from its ashes?”
I stilled. There had been no excitement in his voice but also no skepticism. “That’s an option,” I said, keeping my voice hesitant. “But I need to get this stone out of my blood.”
“On that subject, I wholeheartedly agree.”
My throat thickened at the implication that he didn’t agree with my plan to burn him, and I still didn’t know if it was because he was happy being dead or because he thought it wouldn’t work. “Valentine,” I murmured. “Tell me what you think.”
He tightened his arm around me and whispered into my ear. “I have a young woman in front of me who is beautiful both on the inside and the outside. She possesses an exciting, once-in-a-millennium power, and I should be giving her as much pleasure as she can handle.”
Valentine’s voice was hypnotic, and seemed to both arouse and relax. I squeezed my thighs together, trying to calm my breathing, trying to stave off the heat rising to my cheeks. We needed to discuss the possibility of bringing him back to life, but Valentine’s warm lips trailing down my neck made my heart flutter.
“You’re the purest, most fascinating being I’ve ever met and to know you wield the power of a phoenix makes me love you even more.” He unzipped my hoodie and sucked the skin on the base of my neck.
I wrapped my fingers around his forearm, ready to utter a protest, but his warm, wet tongue slid down to my collarbone, sending ripples of sensation to my core.
“What are you doing?” I asked between ragged breaths.
“Making love to you,” he growled.
“No.”
Valentine drew back and stared at me with brows raised. “Explain.”
I shuffled away, silently thanking him for leaving it unsaid that I was refusing him when my body ached to say yes. Perhaps he really had been apologetic for the way he had spoken to me after that spanking.
“Why won’t you consider my plan?” I asked. “Do you think phoenix flames won’t work?”
His lips tightened, and he stared at me with the same eerie stillness from last night.
“Say something.”
The corners of his mouth tightened with the barest hint of annoyance. “I will think about it.”
“Can we at least discuss it?” I asked.
As Valentine rose off the sofa, I scrambled off and wrapped my hand around his forearm. He dropped his gaze to where I’d grabbed him.
“Release me,” he said with a command in his voice I couldn’t refuse.
I stepped back and folded my arms across my chest. “Did you just mesmerize me?”
“No.” Valentine walked around the back of the sofas and around the kitchen area to the door that led outside. “Do not leave this apartment,” he said as he opened the door. “That is an order.”
Before I could tell him where he could stick his commands, he disappeared out of the door, which shut with an annoying click. I ground my teeth, clenched my fists, and stomped after him. How dare he command me like I was one of his underlings? How dare he try to seduce me into being quiet?
Macavity bolted past and positioned his small body between me and the door. I bared my teeth and hissed, but the cat hissed back with a warning. I didn’t need a proficiency in feline communication signals to know he would transform into a leopard if I didn’t back away.
A frustrated snarl reverberated in the back of my throat. “Why are you always taking his side?”
Macavity tilted his head to the side and twitched his right ear with what I swear was a pitying look.
“Forget it.” I turned on my heel and headed back to the kitchen. It was dinner time, and I was in the mood to work out my anger on a load of vegetables. I’d also slice through some meat while working through my feelings.
I opened the refrigerator and pulled out a filet steak, a cauliflower, broccoli and a bunch of other vegetables that would be great in a stir fry. After laying them out on the counter, I went to the cupboard to find some soy sauce but found several bars of Green and Black’s dark chocolate.
“Chocolate soufflé for pudding, and I won’t leave any for Valentine.”
I found a chopping board and some sharp knives, unwrapped the ingredients, and set to work. Right now, Valentine was safe in this hideout. As soon as his brothers came along to put him back in his grave, he might rethink my offer. For now, I should focus on getting him or Kain to help me unlock my power so I could defend myself against the enforcers.
The next morning, I awoke on the sofa with Macavity’s small body curled up between my stomach and the cushions. I ran my fingers down at his leopard skin head, thanking him for keeping me company through the night.
He raised his head, meowed, and went back to sleep.
Valentine wasn’t in the four-poster bed, which looked like it hadn’t been slept in since the day before. I wondered how long he would disappear for and if he realized that the enforcers probably wanted him captured and destroyed just as much as they wanted me dead.
After a nice long shower, I opened a can of tuna for the cat and treated myself to a breakfast of freshly baked croissants and hot chocolate made from full-fat milk, organic cacao powder and some of the leftover chocolate from the night before. When Macavity finished his tuna and prowled around my breakfast, I opened up another can, and he left me in peace.
The days of worrying about overfeeding him were over since he spent a portion of time as a big cat, but when he butted my head, asking for a third can, I had to tell him no.
After breakfast, we went out exploring. I thought we would go to the library again, but Macavity led me down a set of rusty stairs close to the library door which led to an empty basement of arched stone walls that looked centuries older than the exterior of the house, and floor covered in a thick layer of dust.
Instead of a vast space that stretched the width and length of the mansion, the basement was a narrow hallway of arched openings on its right side that led to smaller chambers that might once have been storerooms or dungeons. With the faint scent of brimstone in the air, I wouldn’t be surprised to find an ancient skeleton. On our left, diagonal shards of daylight streamed in through rectangular openings high up on the basement walls, illuminating our path.
Macavity trotted a few paces ahead with his ears pointed to the ceiling and his tail in the air.
“What are you trying to show me?” I whispered.
He glanced at me over his shoulder, his green eyes glowing yellow in the shard of sunlight.
I frowned. Macavity had already established himself as Valentine’s most faithful lackey, and I knew he would do anything to keep me within the grounds of this derelict, but I didn’t think he would lead me to any harm. That didn’t mean he wouldn’t show me something disgusting, like the time he trotted into my apartment with
a dead mouse.
As we passed a chamber containing barrels piled up to the ceiling, a knocking sound drifted through the air. I stiffened, glancing from side to side. “What’s that?”
Macavity turned around, trotted toward me, and bumped his head on my calf in a silent order to continue. I kept walking but splayed my arms to the side, ready to bolt in case he was taking me to a nest of rodents. Or worse.
He continued toward a door that looked just like the one that led to the penthouse, with faint streams of magic securing it at the seams. The faint knocking was resounding from behind the door, and it sounded nothing like the scuttling of tiny bodies and even tinier claws.
Macavity rose up on his hind legs and placed his front paws on my knees.
“Do you want me to carry you?” I asked, hoping he would say yes.
He dropped down and made the same motion to the magically sealed door.
“Is there something scary behind there?” I asked.
“Mice and rats?” I paused for him to shake his head. “Spiders, newts, dogs? Another cat like you? A demon?”
Each time, Macavity shook his head, indicating that there was nothing of the sort behind that door. My shoulders sagged and I released a weary breath. I sort-of trusted the cat, but he was also a feline who had a higher tolerance for weird things. Instead of doing something reckless I probably needed to wait until tonight and ask Valentine what he kept beneath the house.
Then I remembered his refusal to discuss the phoenix plan and his attempt to seduce me into not inquiring about his murderous eating habits, and annoyance prickled over my skin. This dead version of Valentine was less communicative than the one who had captured my heart. I pressed my hand to the door and pushed it open, releasing the scent of fear and sweat and urine.
“What’s this?” I clapped a hand over my mouth.
A low, muffled sound reverberated from deep within the dark room, followed by several more. My gaze dropped down to Macavity, who licked his lips and bolted inside.