by Anne Malcom
I nodded. “Yeah, my brother is a total dick.”
He pressed his hand into my wound, as if to stop the bleeding. In the process of his needless first aid, he’d brushed my breast. The contact had me forgetting all about the vaguely painful fact that my ribs were knitting themselves back together.
“Your brother did this?” he spat.
Regretfully, I circled his wrists with my hands and yanked them away from my chest. “Yes, he’s a frightful prick,” I said, limping over to the bar which was thankfully still in one piece.
“Fuck, Isla. Sit the fuck down,” he all but roared at me.
I glanced over my shoulder at his marble face. “Why? If I were sitting down I wouldn’t be able to get a drink, and I really need I drink.”
He strode over to me, gripping my hips and forcing me onto the sofa. I scowled at the overturned one, then down at the bloodstains I was getting on the one beneath me. “Great. These were flown in from France. This is why I can’t have nice things. Blood gets on everything. This is the fourth sofa they’ve ruined. Plus, that vintage mirror.” I nodded over to the corner where the mirror had smashed on my carpet beside my ruined wall. “Seven years’ bad luck,” I muttered.
Thorne stared at me, his mouth slightly open in shock or confusion. I wasn’t sure which since I was focused on that mouth and the sharp jaw, wondering what it might taste like.
Not his blood, no just him.
Maybe Evgeni had shaken up something important. My marbles weren’t locked up tight and I reasoned it would be quite easy to lose them in the midst of a skirmish.
“I’ll get your drink,” he clipped after he schooled his features. His hand went up to brush my cheek, which I guessed was an angry shade of purple. In an hour or so it would be flawlessly pale once more. “Don’t you need some sort of medical attention?” he asked, his voice only slightly above a harsh whisper.
I sucked in a breath; his touch was tender, his proximity bordering on uncomfortable.
I wished he was holding a knife at my neck. It would’ve made things so much easier.
I didn’t get easy, though, and I had a part to play. One that meant I had to act like his mere touch wasn’t having me feeling some type of way. The wrong type of way.
I laughed. “A slayer asking me if I should get medical attention? Shouldn’t you be taking advantage of my weakened state and plunging a dagger in my heart or something?” I paused. “Although, I’m pretty glad you’re not doing that. I guess this is just rounding out a particularly strange day.”
“Is getting brutalized by your fuckin’ brother what you call a ‘strange day’?” he hissed.
I shrugged, hiding my wince at the movement. Not well enough if his narrowed eyes were anything to go by. “I call it a Saturday.”
He scowled at me, his eyes a cocktail of emotions. Instead of answering me, he turned his back and stomped to my bar. He was back in a second, holding out a whiskey.
I took it with a raised brow. “How do you know what I drink?”
He didn’t lower his gaze, nor did he answer.
“You’ve been following me,” I guessed. For a moment, I panicked at the thought of someone overhearing my conversation with Sophie. A slayer, no less. That would not do. It would also mean I’d have to kill him, and the thought of doing such a thing actually made me taste bile. I may have avoided killing humans carte blanche like the rest of my race did, but it didn’t mean I wouldn’t. I couldn’t afford to feel sick at the thought of ending one. Yet I did.
I relaxed slightly when I realized I’d have known if he was tailing me. “No, the pesky slayer sense I’ve got would’ve hampered that.” Not to mention the Thorne sense I seemed to have. “You’ve paid a human to follow me. I would say a witch or demon, but I know you slayers keep to yourselves. Well, unless you’re killing, that is.”
Slayers were built for the purpose of killing vampires, but they’d diversified in the past few hundred years, deciding to go after any supernatural creature they deemed a threat to the human race.
Which was all of them, coincidentally.
So they went from a pain in a vampire’s ass to a pain in everyone’s ass. Public enemy number one in the supernatural world.
Right below me, obviously.
“I can understand the reason for the tail, if I put myself in your self-righteous motorcycle boots, of course,” I said, my voice light but with an edge. “In no way do I appreciate it, though. But let’s just forget my simmering fury right now. We’ll circle back to me using my powers of persuasion to make certain you have the desire to follow me again.”
The threat rolled off my tongue as easy as a sweet nothing. Who was I kidding? Death threats were my sweet nothings. “I assume you’re conducting surveillance on the nefarious activities you’re convinced I partake in. Devil worship, killing children, the usual. But I wouldn’t think my drink preference would factor into the reports you get,” I continued with a raised brow.
He stared at me, his gaze unwavering.
I sipped my drink, shifting uncomfortably as my body went through the healing process. I obviously wasn’t going to betray the extent of my pain to him. He’d already acted on manly instinct that I was an injured female instead of an injured vampire; I couldn’t count on him forgetting the vampire part for this whole conversation. Hence me acting like the hole in my chest was little more than a paper cut.
Never show weakness, physical or emotional. It was of the upmost importance that I continue hiding my feelings towards his little show of tenderness, or his presence in particular. If I let even a sliver of that show in my eyes, I feared it would be more fatal than a dagger to the heart.
“It must get boring,” I continued, “being the most hated sect of humans in the whole of the over and underworlds. You don’t get invited to any of the good parties.”
He stepped forward, his fury cloaking us in its thick musk. Used to the bitter twang, I didn’t revolt against it; in fact, it relaxed me. “Stop the shit,” he commanded. “You’re sittin’ here with a wound that looks disturbingly like someone has put their fist through your chest, acting like it’s fuckin’ nothing.”
I smiled at him. “Oh my dear, sweet, naïve slayer. It is nothing.” I pointed to my almost-healed chest. “Vampire. Means I heal rather quickly. I know you humans get touchy about such things as ‘mortal wounds,’ but no need to worry your gruff little head about me. I’ll survive. Always do. Perks of being immortal.” I paused, straightening my shoulders. “Now you can tell me why you’re here, if not to kill me. You’ll see someone has already attempted that tonight, and failed. My patience is wearing thin.”
He stepped forward, bending down so his hands circled my just-healed windpipe. The gesture itself was threatening but the pressure was little more than a pinch. More erotic than homicidal.
“I should,” he whispered. “I should be killing you. I should have killed you in that alleyway the first moment I laid eyes on you. The second I found out you murdered that priest. I hesitated because….” He paused and I stilled. Has he yet to try—and fail—to kill me because he felt this weird thing too? I didn’t know if the thought comforted me or freaked me out further.
“Because you threw me with his history, and I had a little chat with Lewis,” he continued, and I deflated. “He wouldn’t say shit about you, but he did warn me against embedding a knife in your chest.” His jaw tightened. “Even fuckin’ threatened me, should I try. Lewis is a good man. He knows what you are and still he defended you. That gave me pause.”
I grinned. “Lewis and I go way back,” I said sweetly. “He’s like a father to me, though more correct to say I’m like a mother to him. No matter how correct it is, you won’t even say that if you don’t want me to rip your throat out,” I seethed.
He didn’t flinch at my empty threat. That worried me. So did the way he was regarding me. Murder was in his eyes, but that confusing concern still lingered, a strange and unnerving combination. He gritted his teeth and schooled h
is expression. “I don’t give a shit what kind of spell you’ve got him under, or whatever a man I respect says about you. It doesn’t change what you are. I should have ignored him and ended you the instant I found you with my fuckin’ sister.” His grip tightened.
I could have extracted myself from the situation as easy as breathing, but I was kind of enjoying it. I knew he was too; his eyes danced with desire and hatred, the most beautiful of combinations.
“How is the little cretin?” I inquired casually. “She still alive? I would imagine her chances aren’t good if she keeps doing idiotic things like chasing after vampires. You should make sure her cage is locked at all times.”
My words caused one emotion to win in his eyes.
Hatred.
He squeezed my neck once more before letting go and stepping back abruptly.
“You’re a monster,” he spat, his eyes dripping with disdain. The change in his aura was immediate, a shock of hatred cutting through everything as he let his natural instincts take over. I needed to follow suit.
I scowled. “I resent that. It’s been a while since I’ve had a solid day’s sleep, that’s true, but I think I look pretty good. Blood and guts aside, obviously.”
It did worry me slightly that my wound was taking longer than was favorable to heal, which was connected to the lack of sleep I was joking about. It might turn dangerous if I didn’t sleep soon, but it was even more dangerous to fall into the abyss that was. The phrase ‘sleep like the dead’ did originate with vampires, considering we did a very convincing corpse impression when in laevisomnus. Since our bodies were immortal and our strength supernatural, our slumber captured us and dragged us into what a human would liken to a coma. We weren’t able to awaken easily and were at our most vulnerable. Which was why, at this tumultuous time in my life, with assassination attempts more common than offers for dates, I had to put off laevisomnus, despite how dangerous it was to put it off any longer than I already had.
I’d just have to hope no one else punched through my rib cage for the next few days.
Thorne’s form tightened, as did the grip on the solid silver knife he’d yanked from his leather jacket. I wasn’t hugely bothered; if he was planning on using it he would have tried, and failed, by now.
“I was born and exist to exterminate your kind. The abomination that you are. The murderer that you are. The only reason that red head isn’t lying at my feet right now is because I need what’s inside it. That’s the only thing quelling my overwhelming urge to rip your evil, unnatural, disgusting head off.”
I tilted my head and smiled at him. “It’s sonnets like that every girl needs to hear. That’ll keep me cold at night.”
I pushed off the sofa, keeping my smile in place as pain radiated through my upper torso. I didn’t like being on unequal ground, him towering over me like he had the upper hand.
He stepped forward so my pointed heels were toe-to-toe with his biker boots. I had to look up to maintain eye contact. That meant my gaze traveling up his neck, inspecting the pulsing veins snaking up to his sharp jaw. I wasn’t looking at them hungrily. Well, I was, but not the blood kind of hunger. Something I sure as shit shouldn’t be feeling for the man who would attempt to kill me the moment he had the chance.
You’d think my body, even my downstairs parts, would realize that. Obviously not.
“You’re not a girl,” he growled, his eyes flickering up my body. I felt the gaze rake up my hips, my nipples hardening as his dark eyes held them to attention. “No matter how much you try to show that outwardly. Trying to look like a fucking wet dream doesn’t change that fact.”
I sighed and rolled my eyes. “Ugh. Your mood swings are giving me whiplash. This ‘you are an unnatural monster and I must annihilate you’ crap is getting old.” I whirled my finger around. “Can we wrap this up? Threaten my soulless self a couple more times, damn me to eternity, and then tell me what you came here for. I’ve got things to do.”
His jaw ticked as he breathed in my face. That would normally piss me off. Some sweaty human blowing their regurgitated carbon dioxide in my direction. With him, it didn’t. The opposite, in fact. I licked my lips despite myself.
Mustn’t bite the slayer, Isla. There’s the nasty side effect of getting dead after that little snack.
He watched my lips, and his face changed. Now, I saw a lot. Namely because my eyesight was one hundred times better than any human. And I’d been on this earth long enough to become an expert at social cues. If I wasn’t mistaken, hunger, mirroring my own sexual desire, lurked in his gaze.
Then it was gone and he stepped back, shaking himself as if he was covered in poisonous dust.
He folded his arms and I did my best not to watch the pulsing of his muscles as he did so. I did try my best not to lust after men who threatened death. Some considered it foreplay, but I was an old-fashioned girl. I preferred my men not to be homicidal. At least not towards me.
“There’s a vamp goin’ around the city, turning humans.” He scowled at me, then started to pace the room. “At least tryin’ to. What’s left.” He paused, his eyes flickering with something before they turned back to hardened silver. “It’s not human or vamp, both yet neither. They never survive. At least not yet. They’re getting stronger. Latest one survived long enough for us to get it back to the doc and for it to try and drain him.”
All thoughts of sex and homicide left my brain. “That’s impossible,” I snapped. “Vampires don’t turn humans. Despite it being illegal to even try, it’s biologically impossible. Sounds like something a stupid human who’d watched too many television shows would do.” I gave him a pointed look.
His eyes narrowed. “I’m not lying. You think I’d come to you if I had any other option?”
I tilted my head. “Of course, because you can’t get enough of me. A tiny lie about something impossible is nowhere near the most outlandish thing a man has done to get in my company. One even started a military coup to get my attention.”
“I’m not lying. I don’t lie,” he gritted out.
I laughed. “Oh that’s cute. Everyone lies. You trying to tell me you’re some sort of saint? Here’s the secret from an immortal who’s got centuries on you. No one, not even a sexy, self-righteous slayer, is a saint. Everyone’s a sinner.”
My brain caught up with my mouth the moment I stopped speaking and his frame jolted.
Crap. I just called the slayer sexy. Abort, abort!
I jumped up the second I realized the change in the air. “Now that I’ve educated you on your lack of sainthood, I request you leave now.”
He stepped forward, his eyes focusing on mine. “I’m not leavin’,” he murmured, his voice velvet.
I stood there frozen like a big dumb idiot. I decided to blame it on the hole in my chest and my healing wrist, not his sensual gaze.
“I’m not goin’ anywhere till I get answers,” he continued, voice firm.
I schooled my expression. “Answers? To what? I’m not an oracle, and you can’t come running over here whenever you need to know which pill to take. I’ll advise the red, then maybe you’ll take those fucking self-righteous blue-tinted glasses off and see the world for what it is.”
He stepped forward. “I see the world for what it is,” he hissed. “Monsters running around the world, killing, maiming, torturing without any justice.”
I glowered at him, stepping forward so I could enshroud him in my own cloud of fury.
“You want to see what monsters look like?” I whispered. “You’re in the wrong place, Buffy. Don’t go searching for vampires, or werewolves or demons. The only thing they have in common with monsters is that their depravity is on the outside. That’s not a monster—that’s reality. You want a real, ‘hide under you bed, break out the crucifix’ monster? How about you open a newspaper, turn on the TV, have a fucking browse through your history books. You’ll find your monster there.” I gestured to the twinkling skyline, then leaned forward even further so his breath was hot o
n my face, his fury like a space heater. “But that one’s far too scary to take on, so you stalk us instead. We’re different enough that it seems justifiable to kill us. Humans, on the other hand, are just too darn similar to you to be damning and slaying. What with all those gray areas, you might find the worst monster you’ve ever faced staring back at you in the mirror.”
Our gazes were locked in the intensity of my monologue, the truth hanging in the air. Or whatever version of it was closest to reality.
His eyes swirled like quicksilver. “I’m not here to debate the fucking depravity of the world,” he growled finally. “No, I’m gettin’ real answers. We can’t have vamps runnin’ around the city drainin’ humans as well as turnin’ them. So I need to know who’s behind it.”
I folded my arms. “What drugs have you been taking to think that even if I knew, which I don’t, I’d go blabbing to a slayer? What made you think you’d even get out of here alive?”
He stepped forward again, so close his thumping heartbeat actually made my teeth chatter, the taste of his proximity rivaling even the bitterest of blood. “Because I’ve been in your presence three times,” he rasped. “Been around enough vamps to know that’s two times too many. You were gonna kill me, you’d be dead.”
I raised a brow. “I’d be dead? You sure think a lot of yourself. Arrogance coupled with stupidity is fatal, you know.”
“I’m still breathin’, ain’t I?” he asked, voice hoarse.
“Don’t ask me how,” I retorted.
He stared at me a beat longer before his gaze went to my mouth, his eyes hooded. I couldn’t read minds but I was certain he was considering what I tasted like.
He shook himself, then stepped back once more. “Decided to take a calculated risk by coming here,” he said after he’d cleared his voice and his expression.
“You must be shitty at math because your calculations are way off. In fact, you’d be a pile of blood in the corner if you’d turned up not three minutes before you did. My brother does not like humans, and slayers don’t last a second around him. Unless they’re a lot prettier than you. Then they wished for death before the end.”