It goes quiet again, and I move closer to Violet, reaching over the salt line to lace my fingers with hers.
She smiles in her sleep, and I hear her whisper our names.
“Good dreams?” Arion asks me quietly, a small smile tugging up one corner of his lips.
“The best I could give her, in hopes she wouldn’t fight the internal illusion. Some of my best work, actually. In her head, she managed to beat Idun, and now we’re all rewarding her,” I say, feeling the exhausting weight of endless dread settle heavily on my chest.
His eyes meet mine.
“We were fools, weren’t we?” he asks.
“Of course we were. She was the first thing to give us all hope for something both better and different in ages, and…”
I don’t bother finishing the sentence. We know better than to hope. Hell, the vampire’s never even bothered hoping for something else.
“The storm is terrible. At least that buys us some time to enjoy this a little longer. I dread to learn what Idun has in store, and she’s not fucking around anymore. Idun TV is off the air.”
He shrugs a shoulder at my comment, and then he stands to his feet.
“Where the hell are you going, vampire?”
“I have fifteen fucking missiles. I’m going to evacuate the town, and then I’m going to at least try to blow the bitch up. I’m not going down without at least one last punch from the useless arsenal I built. When you hear the sirens sound, you take Violet and get the fuck out with the humans. Stay hidden until we all return. Or, if she buries us, see if you can find a fucking way to dig us up. At least one needs to hide.”
“So it’s me? My illusions are by far the strongest they’ve ever been, as of late, vampire. You’re faster. You take her and run.”
“You’re the best one to protect her, because you can make her unseen,” he says, pressing a kiss to her lips. “It’s not as though I look forward to being buried. But I’ll gladly sacrifice myself to buy her time to flee with someone who can keep her safer for longer.”
He’s up and gone so fast within the next second, that I barely even have a chance to curse his wake.
“Fucking fast vampire,” I mutter.
My gaze flicks back down to Violet, who is still smiling in her illusionary dream world.
Nothing else has broken her.
I fear the lives she’s risked tonight will be the lesson she’s needed to learn, and it’ll also be the one to break her.
Chapter 35
ARION
“I’m afraid to attempt to rally anyone. Right now, there aren’t many I fully trust. It’s been too long since Idun was this ready for a fight,” Emit says over the phone, as I press the buzzer to sound the town’s emergency evacuation siren.
“Hopefully, that will save all the smart humans, betas, and omegas. Darwin’s Theory will unfortunately have to apply to all the idiots who stick around,” I reply, my left hand trembling ever so slightly.
“Hey, vampire. It’s been a while since I felt this sense of fear. Let’s try not to cross paths, just in case instinct pits us against each other in the heat of this tension,” he says.
I steady my hand by making a fist, and I stare out at the stormy town below the bell tower of my House.
People are already fleeing in orderly fashion.
“They’re almost creepily rehearsed with the evacuation protocol. Not one person has bumped another,” Emit says as though he’s surprised.
“Be grateful I have a damn good beta, who ensured the town was kept up to date on such things. They’re reacting to the siren. They won’t realize they’ve left their beds, bar stools, or wherever else, until they’re safely checked in at the designated towns. All of them are assigned different ones by groups. What do your betas do, wolf? Just curious.”
I drop from the bell tower, and hurriedly move through the streets, finding more and more people doing the zombie walk. Fortunately, they’re moving at a brisk pace toward all the exit routes.
With any luck, most of them will escape, and that will help ease Violet’s conscience. Protecting her from her fucking self will be just as tedious and damn near impossible as protecting her from Idun.
Emit snorts in derision. “We’re all either going to die or end up in a pit, and you still have to get in one more jab? Without Shera, you don’t look as good, Vampyre. I almost fucking had Avery. I think.”
Just as I’m about to have a snide remark, I hear coughing in the background.
“Shit,” Emit hisses.
“I’m. Going. To. Murder. That. Fucking. Witch,” a familiar, but raspy voice says in the background.
“What the bloody hell is going on?”
“I take it back. We’re going to have to cross paths after all,” Emit says, his voice still tinged with surprise. “Vance is out of the silver.”
Dodging a streak of lightning that damn near makes me feel targeted, I pocket my phone. I’m not sure why I bother.
Not even Vance can get us out of this one.
She tried to take him down first, which means she’s planning to break all the laws. We’ll never stand a chance in an unfair fight.
Chapter 36
VANCE
Slinging Emit up against the wall, I press my forearm to his throat.
He glares and growls at me, canines showing. “It’s Idun. Fucking fight it, Van Helsing. She’s pissed. Her monster is free somewhere. You feel the threat licking up your spine. Fight. It.”
My eyes narrow on him. “Tell anyone about that fucking silver spell, and I’ll destroy you in ways you never imagined,” I bite out, almost apprehensive to even touch the silver that has returned to the small hilt on my hip.
My fingers reach twice, but I pull away, worried that damn spell will take effect again.
I look around, searching for Pandora, as I lower my arm.
“She has to be here. Only blood magic could have lifted that spell,” I carry on.
“Fuck’s sake, Vance. Violet struck Idun hard enough to break her bones on live TV—and in front of a live, captive audience. Idun TV has shut down, and the town is being evacuated,” Emit tells me, as though I haven’t heard the broken pieces of their repetitive ramblings.
My skin is practically crawling, as I make a series of tics, and start adjusting my wrinkled suit. The wrinkles end up being too much, because they’ll have to be pressed in order to straighten them.
“Do you have a steamer or an iron around here?” I ask, as I begin undoing my trousers.
“Really?” he asks with pure incredulity, as though this is shocking.
My body aches with the heavy need to shower, shave, and brush my teeth.
“I’ve been stuck in my own damn silver with nothing to do but think and go mad from not being able to move. If she thinks she’s locking me away like that until I break, she’s really going to hate it when I shove a sword through her fucking throat and bury her head under the ocean,” I state, barely keeping my calm, as I sway on unsteady legs.
Emit forces me to a chair, just as Arion practically appears out of nowhere.
“What do you mean locking you away like that until you break?” the vampire asks in confusion, as though that’s his first and only question.
“There’s always been a piece of uncertainty in her that held her back in the past,” I remind them. “Whether she admitted it or not, she worried that wheel would turn, which is why she plays her exhausting and tedious games. She’d rather outsmart us, because it’s more fun than overpowering us, given the unnatural odds in her favor. And also, it’s so she can say she tried to play as fair as possible, in case things swing in someone else’s favor.”
My eyes level Arion’s.
“I picked out a ring for Violet—a fact which I’m sure Idun has somehow discovered. I’ve lost concern over how it looks for a woman to have any sort of power over me, at least where Violet’s concerned. Damien is a loyal, dedicated, and faithful lover to one woman and with no desire for another. The wolf is le
ading his pack with more due diligence and with more reasonable expectations. And here you are, lost to Idun, because you’re a man with a reputation for unwavering loyalty, and you’ve given it to Violet,” I say, directing the last part toward Arion. “Without us, she loses you. With us, she believes she’ll reclaim you. You’re the safest of us tonight. You should be with Violet.”
“That’s essentially what I said,” Damien says as he comes in.
Arion slants a glare toward the Morpheous, as Damien looks me over.
“You look like shit,” Damien tells me.
“You’re supposed to be—”
“Marta’s with Violet. If someone is going to keep her safe, it should be the woman who’s been doing a much better job of it than the lot of us,” Damien says tightly. “If we’re to even have any sort of hope of standing a chance against Idun’s wrath, it’ll take all four of us.”
There’s a long moment of pause where no one finds a reasonable way to argue, but there’s so much to digest that we can’t possibly even begin to let it start getting to us.
“Arion, for the record, your Monster Olympics was a stupid fucking idea,” Damien decides to say.
“You’ve already said that multiple times,” Arion mutters, pinching the bridge of his nose. “I’m not used to being on the losing side, unless it’s pretend. Is there any way to keep my winning streak alive? I really think the bitch could withstand a missile attack. I swear she’s stronger than ever, just based off the palpable tension in the air.”
“Tell us about Pandora and anything she said to you,” Emit tells me.
I’m obviously apprehensive to do so, since this situation is already out of control. It’ll be just one more brick atop a shaky, poorly stacked pile above their heads.
Still, I rehash the conversation, seeing the dead look cross their eyes when they realize how long she’s been up.
“A thousand years flew by, and I still didn’t have the energy to go look for myself and see if she was up. In truth, I don’t think I wanted to know,” Damien confesses in a quiet tone, jaw clenching.
“Taste the air, Morpheous. It’s so thick with the tension she’s radiating that it’s stifling. None of us wanted to know, besides the vampire. And he was underground too,” I tell him, glancing over at Arion with new appreciation for how being awake and buried must have been for him.
“I got off topic because you tossers never let a man finish his train of thought if it last longer than your flippant attention span,” I grind out. “The point is, we’re finally doing all the things for Violet that Idun wanted us doing for her. We buried her, and then we moved on to another woman we all appreciated and wanted far more, and we did so as the men Idun always wanted us to be.”
“Sans me, who is the exact same. She just took it for granted, and Violet adores me for what I’ve endured. I’ve started playing it up and taking all the goodies Violet wants to offer to make up for the ways Idun hurt me,” Arion says with a grin.
The grin quickly falls.
“Now that bitch is going to take it all away, regardless of the centuries I did devote to her,” Arion says in a frigid tone.
My gaze drifts to Emit, who’s gone quiet for a while now, his chin tucked in his hand, as he stares at a spot on the wall.
“Why’s smoke rolling out of your ears, mongrel?” I ask, as two very bright, almost blinding, streaks of lightning crash outside.
Emit looks to me, a confused, almost lost look in his eyes.
“I’ve played it in my head hundreds of times. It doesn’t make sense for Violet to taunt Idun. Even on a power trip, her dominance is so fierce that it’s taking all my control to keep my wolf leashed. You three have been arguing almost nonstop, unable to think clearly or finish full thought processes.”
“And?” I ask, needing him to hurry on with it, because I need a shower before I die.
She’ll have to fucking kill me. I’m not going in the ground without any way of moving. I’ll go mad and come out a true monster—not some broken man she can bend to her will.
I’m Vancetto fucking Van Helsing. I hunt monsters; I don’t drop to my knees before them. I’m a fucking monster too.
“And Violet came out of nowhere,” Emit adds, his eyes darting away as though he’s just thought of something.
“Vance, come with me. I need in your archive room,” the wolf says suddenly as he stands.
“What could you possibly learn from the archives that we don’t already know?” I ask very seriously. “We need to devise a concrete plan to attempt to survive this night. This is just the first night, and it’s going to be done with the gloves off this time. We may not get the opportunity to put her under, because fewer alphas are going to side with us after that stunt Violet recklessly pulled.”
“Jack,” he says as though that makes all the sense in the world.
“Yes. We’ll spend the night looking through all the fourteen million Jacks I’ve come across this past eternity,” I state, sarcasm oozing from my tone. “I’m sure Idun won’t mind waiting to bury us alive in an attempt to conform us.”
“It’s the monster from your memories that attacked Violet inside your head,” he says, again not making much sense.
“I’ve known countless Jacks. And Violet’s not the issue—”
I stop talking, because a brief memory crosses through my mind so painfully that I’m forced to wince. I’m thankful to be sitting, because my legs go numb when the pressure pulses through my body, and the scene quickly rolls out.
Jack…
Jack…
“Jack! This ends tonight.” The echo of my own voice pushes through my thoughts.
My eyes come up to meet Emit’s, and I slowly rise, my spine dancing with a new tremor.
Jack…
That Jack…
“Why does it look like you’ve just had a huge revelation that has stunned you out of operational mode? Are you rebooting, Van Helsing?” Damien asks me.
“She does this. She does it all the time. She does something crazy, but there’s so much more going on that you dare not look a gift horse in the mouth. Sometimes it’s easier to just accept all the good she brings, while overlooking all the fucked up impracticalities that accompany it. We know she does this. We both love it and hate the mystery of it, because of our desperate need for a fresh breath and our great many trust issues.”
“What are you on about?” Arion asks.
“Jack was a different sort of monster. One that I long forgot about, because he was a freak-botched science experiment—not magic,” I murmur, questioning what I know about absolutely everything. “What if it’s all been a fucking lie from the very beginning?”
I turn and dart out without another word, hearing the wolf’s feet pounding the floor as he follows.
He doesn’t ask questions.
I don’t have answers.
At this point, my head’s going to explode if one more thing comes flying at me.
“Why did you ask about Jack?” I ask him as we sprint across the town, weaving between some straggling evacuees.
We’re both looking over our shoulder at every possible second, waiting for the shoe to drop.
“Because I’m about to ask everything that doesn’t make sense. Damien had to sedate her just to get her out of this situation, because she clearly lost control there at the end.”
I stop and take a deep breath once we reach my archive room, my hand shaking as I reach for the door.
“This storm isn’t natural. Violet can’t conjure storms. You fell out of the silver without a person to thank,” he carries on. “I feel like we’re on the outside of an inside job, and it makes me feel like I’m a pawn.”
“The feeling is mutual,” I say quietly, as I quickly type Jack’s name into my system. “Who broke my chains?”
“That’s the thing. No one broke them. They simply fell off,” he confesses.
I straighten, turning to face Emit, my mind settling down ever so slightly. The machine bee
ps, and I turn to see the file pop up.
“Who the hell is that?” Emit asks, leaning past me.
I turn back, even though now my mind has turned in a new direction, making it hard to focus. The pressure that built up remains repressed, causing my temple to throb.
“Start at the beginning,” I tell him, my voice chilling.
“What do you mean?” Emit asks, as I point behind me.
“Was your first impression of Violet memorable?” I ask Emit, my voice staying very calm.
“Extremely. She was stumbling around in homemade underwear, while Anna mocked her,” he says. “Why are you asking that?”
“During this time, Anna continuously mocked her to the point of turning every single thing she did into some silly action. We consistently talk of the severity of her inexperience versus her increasingly high list of impossible things, and carry too much casual dismissal. Why, Emit?”
“It’s not just because of Anna. Anna was even dead for a while,” Emit answers, even though he’s not full of conviction.
“A dead ghost. Back from the dead. Let me introduce you to Jack, Emit,” I tell him, my voice as shaky as my hands. “Jack has a long list of aliases that I’ve killed him under. William. Edward. Bailor. Montana. Maxwell. The list could go on, but you get the point.”
“What does any of this have to do with Anna?”
“I’ve killed Jack three dozen times, under one name or another. What if Jack realized he couldn’t beat me as a man, and finally found a woman to haunt and use against me?” I bite out.
His brow furrows, clear confusion in his gaze.
“If Anna is really Jack, and has somehow found a way to attach himself—or herself—to Violet, we have an even bigger fucking problem. Jack was an altogether different breed of monster, Emit.”
“What are you talking about? Why wouldn’t you have told us something like that?” he asks, taking a step closer.
“Because you don’t even bother keeping your own wolves in line, mongrel,” I grind out, glaring at him. “Why in the hell would you have cared about another monster that was usually almost too easy to slay? Why would I report that to you?”
Gypsy Truths (All The Pretty Monsters Book 6) Page 32