“Leila,” she called with authority. “Leila Quinn.”
There was a muffled sound from Leila’s bedroom. Dawn immediately headed down the short hall, Tristan right behind her. Outside the door they paused, listening.
“Leila?” Dawn said.
“Leave us!” a voice snarled.
The door was flimsy anyway, but Dawn felt a wave of angry satisfaction as she twisted and broke the lock the way Tristan had done. She’d never had to test her vampire strength, but it seemed to come easily, especially in the throes of wrath.
Jared, chalk-white and hollow-eyed, held Leila in front of him like a shield, his arm hooked around her neck. She stretched up in an effort to breathe more easily, her hands scrabbling at his forearm.
“Let her go!” Dawn ordered, panicked at the sight of Leila’s fear-filled eyes.
“I’m not letting her go,” Jared said. “Ever.”
Tristan stepped up next to Dawn and placed a discreet hand on her lower back. “She’s still human,” he said in a neutral tone. “Why haven’t you changed her?”
“I told you I don’t know how. I don’t want to kill her. Are you going to help me?”
“No, Jared.”
“I wanted her to come freely to me,” Jared said, licking his lips. “I love her. I really do this time. I didn’t want to do to her what Loftus did to Delphine. I read his journal years ago. He did everything wrong.”
“Yeah, he did a lot of things wrong. But he’s dead now, so we should stop thinking about him.”
Jared seemed barely to register the news of Loftus’s death. “I’ll force her if I have to,” he said softly. “She belongs to me.”
“She’d make a lovely vampire,” Tristan said. “You chose well.”
With his free hand, Jared stroked a length of Leila’s hair. He tilted his face down slightly to inhale a breath of its scent. “I know.”
“But you can’t have her, Jared. We’ve hurt a lot of people, not just for survival, but for the thrill of it. I never stood in your way before, but I’m not letting you do this now.” Tristan moved past Dawn in measured steps, threatening notes creeping into his voice. “You let her go, and then you get out of here. I killed Loftus and I left Branek for dead in a fire. I’m not afraid to kill you, too, if you don’t listen to me.”
Petulant hurt trembled in Jared’s green eyes. He was like a child being punished by having his favorite toy taken away. Leila was a toy to him—that was the terminology all the vampires had used to describe the humans they messed with. Even Tristan.
“She’s a person,” Dawn asserted when Jared said nothing. “Not a thing for your amusement.”
Her words chased the hurt from his eyes and he tightened his grip on Leila. He was choking her now. Intentionally or not—it didn’t matter. Tristan flew forward. He grabbed Jared’s arm and wrenched it away from Leila’s body. Leila fell to the ground and crawled rapidly away from them. Dawn reached for her and together they retreated into the hallway.
Peeking back into the room, Dawn watched as Tristan twisted Jared’s arm behind him and jerked it from the socket. Jared fell face first onto the bed. Tristan pressed a knee into his back and kept a tight hold on his arm.
“You’re not going to stop, are you?” Tristan asked.
Jared squirmed to find relief from his painful position. “Not until I’ve found what I’m looking for.”
“Whatever it is, I’m sure it’s out of reach.” Tristan paused. “Tell me you’ll stop, Jared. Tell me you’ll leave Leila and every other girl alone, and I’ll let you go. You’re my brother. I don’t want to do this.”
“I can’t stop,” Jared sobbed. “You know I can’t.”
“Then I’m sorry,” Tristan said. The sobs cut off abruptly when he broke Jared’s neck, a succinct, passionless movement.
Leila shoved past Dawn. “Oh, god, he’s dead.” She pressed a hand to her mouth as if to contain a scream. Her eyes were wide with horror, glued to the body. She clearly hadn’t expected that outcome.
Seemingly exhausted, Tristan leaned back against the bedroom wall. “I said I wasn’t afraid to kill him.” Dawn tried to catch his gaze, but his eyes were shuttered and he didn’t turn in her direction.
“No, I-I’m glad. I—” Leila eyed him distrustfully, then turned to Dawn. Her topaz eyes flicked up and down in puzzlement. “You …”
“I’m a vampire,” Dawn said. “It wasn’t my choice.”
“I’m sorry. I wish— I should have—”
Dawn forced a small smile. “There wasn’t anything we could have done.”
“There wasn’t,” Tristan agreed, not proudly. He shoved off the wall and gestured at Jared. “I’ll get rid of him. Leila, you should probably rest. Dawn …”
“Just get him out,” she said. “I’ll be here when you get back.”
They waited in Dawn’s bedroom while he did whatever it was he had to do. The door was closed so they wouldn’t see—so Leila wouldn’t see. Dawn didn’t mind one more dead vampire.
It was strange to be so immune to death. To not even care.
“Are you okay?” she asked Leila. “I mean …” She faltered awkwardly. Of course Leila wasn’t okay. “It’s over now,” she added.
“Yeah.” Leila nodded, trying to make herself believe it. “I wasn’t all right after we escaped the house, even though it seemed like it. I was just faking until it was true. But it never was.”
Dawn licked her lips, scrambling for the proper words. “I know it hurts, Leila. I know you’re going to need time. And I’ll be there for you if you need me. Even though I’m … Well, I’m still your best friend.”
“Thanks. I know.” Leila forced a brave smile, adding a little fullness to the recently sharpened angles of her face. “I just want to sleep now. He hardly ever let me sleep.”
Closing the bedroom door softly, Dawn went out into the living room. Tristan hadn’t returned. She lay down on the couch and remembered the first night she’d met him, in the red light of a nameless bar. She’d yearned for him so badly, knowing nothing of him except that she liked the way he looked. The way his presence made her feel. The innocent attraction of a stranger in a bar, the secret smiles, the heady potential for sticky, alcohol-sweet kisses.
But he’d had few smiles for her, and nothing about him was innocent.
Dawn knew most of the blame belonged with Jared. He had sought out Leila and abducted her. He was the one who’d drawn them into the web of sickness and refused to let Leila go. If not for him, every horrible thing could have been avoided.
There was a lot of blame to spread around, though. Dawn couldn’t help but shove a bunch of it at Tristan. And even though Branek was dead, she wished she could kill him a thousand times for what he’d done to her. She punched the couch cushion, miserable in her anger, yet unable to let it go.
Tristan walked through the door about an hour later, shoulders hanging low. “It’s done,” he said. “It was harder than I thought it would be to just … dump him. I left him in the wetlands, away from the trails. Maybe coyotes will get him.”
She pulled herself into a sitting position. “Are you all right?”
He dropped down beside her in a lazy sprawl. Letting one arm fall behind her, he drifted his fingers along her hip in a soft, unconscious rhythm. A long, weary sigh escaped him. “I just feel … I don’t know how I feel. Fucked up, I guess. It’s like I did something wrong. Everyone’s gone now, except Augusta, and I don’t even know where she is. This is just weird. And sad, I think.”
“You’re not glad they’re gone?”
“No. Not really. They were … important to me.”
“But they were bad,” she insisted, sure it should have been as simple as that. “They hurt people for fun.”
He whirled to his feet, suddenly angry. He spoke through clenched teeth, hands fisting at his sides. “They were the only family I ever knew, Dawn. And I’ve hurt people, too. I’ve done terrible shit for the fun of it. Does that mean you won’t mourn
me when I die? Does that mean I don’t deserve your forgiveness?”
She recoiled in surprise. “You don’t.”
“Well, you’re right. You don’t know how bad I’ve been, Dawn. So bad I don’t think I can bring myself to tell you all of it.”
“Then maybe you should leave and we should never see each other again.”
In one swift movement he pulled her up from the couch and held her in front of him. His eyes were desperate. “Is that what you want?”
“Get off me,” she snarled, yanking herself free. She spun away and stared at him, surprised at how quickly their conversation had escalated to this. But they were both tired and stressed, and a heated confrontation was inevitable. “How am I supposed to know what I want? Was this even real? This—whatever it was—between us?”
“I guess I can’t speak for you,” he said nonchalantly.
She laughed, bitter and disbelieving. “Do you even care about the shit that’s happened to me? I was …” She faltered, not wanting to say it out loud. To hide her uncertainty, she blustered on. “Well, you know what Branek did. And that’s only part of it. I guess you were right that nothing good would ever happen to me because of you.”
“I never wanted that to happen to you. Or any of this.”
“But you knew it could, didn’t you? You knew he was just a fucked up psycho like everyone else in your family! Did you think you could protect me from him or something? Or did you know you wouldn’t have to force anything from me?”
“I didn’t have any expectations, Dawn,” Tristan said. “I was only keeping you alive, and I didn’t even know why. I tried to leave everything else up to you.”
Her eyes narrowed in sour amusement. “He said you were persuasive, but I didn’t know just how much. Why did you threaten me but never follow through? Why did you let me consent to everything we did together?”
“I told you, I don’t rape.”
“You could have hurt me in other ways. You did, just not physically. You said some really bad stuff to me. In normal circumstances nobody would ever forgive the things you said. I should hate you, Tristan.”
There was a furrow between his brows and tension around his mouth and eyes. He took a breath, calming himself. “I wouldn’t blame you if you did.”
Dawn scoffed. “Would you blame me for anything?”
He nodded slowly. “Oh, yeah. I blame you for a lot of things.”
His casual reply stoked her rage. “Like what?” she shrieked. “What did I ever do to you?”
“Well … you made me miss you when you weren’t around. You made me need you. Made me dream. Made me wake the fuck up. You made me examine the parts of myself I hate the most.” He took a step closer, his eyes never leaving hers. “You fell in love with me. You made me fall in love with you.”
“I’m not in love with you,” she snapped. She crossed her arms in defiance. “And you can’t blame me for any of that. I’m not in control of you.”
He grinned softly, closing the remaining space between them and enveloping her in his arms. His lips met hers in a softly persuasive kiss. Unable to move with her crossed arms trapped between their bodies, she allowed him to bend her backward and ravage her mouth. She couldn’t ignore how the skill of his tongue liquefied her core, how the feel of his body against hers made her ache.
Finally he broke the kiss and stepped back, smug and waiting for her to say something. She uncrossed her arms and slapped his face.
“Ah!” he cried, taken by surprise. He pressed a hand to the reddening cheek. There was a gleam of excitement in his eyes and a sly, feral upturn to his mouth.
Dawn ignored his reaction because she was still majorly upset. “You’re not allowed to just kiss me whenever you want, you … you heartless—heathen.” The words didn’t sound strong enough, so she poked him hard in the chest several times for emphasis.
“I have a heart,” he said. “It beats for you.”
Sucking in a sharp breath, she drew away from him. She suddenly felt alarmed. He always made her feel that way. “So what? You want to be together now?”
“Yeah. I’m in love with you, remember? I need you. I’ll stay with you forever.”
She laughed on a bitter note. “But why? What could possibly keep us that way? What’s between us, besides a few good fucks?” She continued in a rush as he tried to speak. “I want to be able to do things on my own. I don’t want to feel … obliged to be with you.”
This gave him pause. “Obliged?” he repeated coldly.
“Yes. No.” She softened slightly. “It’s just … you’ve done horrible things, Tristan. Maybe you were corrupted by circumstances, maybe you’ve repented, but it’s not enough. You need to be by yourself and get your life together and … I don’t know, get therapy or something.”
“So,” he said. “This is because of the things I’ve done? My past?”
“Well, yes. But that’s only part of it. I can’t just forget the things you said to me and pretend everything’s fine. You were so cruel too many times. I didn’t deserve it.”
Tristan blinked as her words struck him. “No, you didn’t deserve it. I … I’m sorry. I was scared and I— It was different,” he said inadequately. “From anything else I’d known. I didn’t know how … how to …”
“I know,” she said gently. “And I can forgive you just about everything. But not right now. I want you more than anything, and I’m afraid we’ll hurt each other too much if we don’t take time apart. We can’t save each other. You have to save yourself. And I need to time to recover from all”—she gave a futile wave of her hand—“all this.”
His lips twitched ruefully. “Why did you ever let me touch you?”
“Because I wanted you.”
“And I wanted you.”
“But that wasn’t enough. Not for me.”
He looked faintly distraught. “We’re over, then?”
“We never really began,” she said. “But, no. Not over. Only … on hold. We have to be alone. God, I—I need you so much and I—” She broke off at a sudden rush of emotion and paused to collect herself. She continued in a measured tone. “We have to figure out why we need each other, and prove that we can live without each other. We need to know ourselves, Tristan, before we can know each other.”
“I see.” He stared at her until something in his eyes cracked and began to melt. His face remained immobile, hard as stone, but his voice was quiet when he spoke again. “Do you love me?”
“That’s not—”
“Do you love me?” he repeated fiercely.
Dawn looked at him uncertainly, her mouth open, her throat closed to words. He was gone, the blank, unknowable man he’d been. Tristan’s eyes now were pained with desire and need. A need for her to love him, to trust him.
“I …” She wet her lips and started again. “I do love you. I loved you long before you ever loved me, but I didn’t want to tell you because you were such an asshole. And a psychopath. As far as I knew, you were going to follow through with every threat you made to me. How do you think that made me feel? I thought I was nothing to you, just someone you felt like having sex with. And now you say you love me and want to be with me forever, and I’m just supposed to jump into your arms?”
He considered her answer and nodded thoughtfully, accepting the logic of it. “How long,” he said, “will we have to be apart?”
“I don’t know. As long as it takes. I should have done this a long time ago.”
“A month.”
“A year,” she countered.
“Three months.”
“Eight.”
“Six.”
She nodded. “All right. Six months apart, and then …”
“Meet me somewhere.”
“Can you find me?” she asked. “Wherever I am?”
“I’ll come to you when it’s dark, exactly six months from now. Wherever you are.”
She hesitated. “If you’re not there …”
“Then we’ll kn
ow none of it meant anything. But,” he added, “I’ll be there.”
“So will I.” She paused. “I’m sorry.”
He made a dismissive sound. “You don’t have anything to be sorry for.”
They gazed at each other for a long, solemn moment. Then she threw herself at him, lips smashing into his, arms locking around his neck in a passionate embrace that would only make it harder for them to leave each other. He lifted her by the waist, squeezing her against him, kissing her back like they were never going to see each other again.
Their ardor slowly languished as they remembered they didn’t have the night, and wouldn’t have one for what seemed an impossibly long time. They drew apart reluctantly.
“All right, then. I’ll see you soon. In six months.” Tristan’s voice was neutral, but his eyes were mournful.
“Yes.” She put a hand to his cheek. “I love you, Tristan. I do.”
“I love you, too,” he replied gravely. He walked backward for a few steps, as if memorizing how she looked in that moment, then turned abruptly and strode out the door, out of sight.
And just like that he was a stranger again.
Seventeen
Thirty-four years. Twenty-six of them spent as a human. An additional eight as a vampire. That wasn’t so long, wasn’t so many years, and yet it felt like forever. Like so much more than enough.
But now the promise of unexpected relief danced within Tristan’s reach. He loved someone. He was in love with Dawn.
He’d never known what it was like to love someone who wasn’t his family, and he hadn’t really cared. Nola was probably the closest he’d ever been to love, but now he could see he hadn’t loved her like this. They’d been good together and they’d had a lot of fun, but they always left each other amicably when the fun was over. And that was it. He didn’t want to dwell on comparisons between her and Dawn. There were none to make.
At first the separation from Dawn had made Tristan incandescent with rage. The need to be with her overshadowed anything else, and without her he didn’t know what to do.
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