Deathless (The Vein Chronicles Book 2)

by Anne Malcom

  I held my hands up in surrender to the glare that was a little more menacing than it used to be thanks to the eye patch and scar. Instead of looking like a puppy, he looked like a slightly more grown-up, one-eyed puppy who might nibble at your finger. And it might even smart just a little.

  “Just trying to help,” I muttered.

  I glanced back to Rick, who still hadn’t moved. The stillness in itself was unnerving. Vampires were still creatures, to a point, but after he’d been frozen in place and almost killed by a weird witchy version of my favorite witch, I reasoned he’d want to do some calf stretches at the least.

  “Um, Sophie, I think you put this one back together wrong,” I informed her, stepping forward so I could wave my unfortunately chipped nails in front of his glassy stare. “All the king’s horses and all the king’s witch—who wasn’t technically his—couldn’t put Humpty together again,” I muttered, still waving my hand.

  The motion did something, shocked him into movement so he was no longer dong his best ‘Rick statue’ impression. No, he was doing his best ‘crush Isla’s ribcage and spleen’ impression by yanking me into his brutal embrace. The scent of death still lingered on him, the hug imprinting it on my clothes, though my soul was already tattooed with the stuff.

  Death itself didn’t have a singular scent. Those who feasted on it knew it always had the same base notes, but the flavors were vastly different. Mostly it was somewhat natural, even when taken by supernatural beings. Because that order had been designed by nature. Nature had created vampires—as long as you didn’t believe in the Greek god version—to suck on and kill humans for their lifeblood. So even in their death, it was part of the food chain.

  Death brought on by black magic did not have the natural taste. It barely even boasted those base notes. Because of the way in which nature was manipulated to create and foster this death magic, the scent of the death itself was rancid and twisted.

  Which had been on my soul since the moment Belladonna had cursed me. Now it was staining Rick’s very soul.

  And Scott’s.

  It was the worst I’d tasted, and I’d seen some black magic from some dark bitches.

  Powerful ones too.

  But nothing like this.

  Which brought with it that glimmer of fear at those eyes that hadn’t been Sophie’s.

  Again, no time to analyze, considering the male fury amped itself up oh, about a hundred thousand percent.

  “Hands off her. Now, Emrick,” Thorne commanded in a velvet tone that promised death if it wasn’t heeded.

  Of course it wasn’t heeded.

  Rick was king, after all, and kings didn’t seem to like to be ordered around, on account of that being their job.

  In addition to shackling people, and vampires, and torturing them in front of a room full of aristocratic assholes who also happened to be vampires.

  “You beg now? For this human? This slayer? You didn’t beg for your own life that night in your apartment, yet you’re willing to do so for his.”

  The glaring memory of that did something to me, but I didn’t have a physical reaction like someone else did.

  Rick’s arms flexed around me painfully at Thorne’s command, and then they were gone.

  Mainly because they were ripped off me by the forceful, strong hands of a man who ordinarily shouldn’t have been able to achieve such a feat as forcibly removing the king of vampires from… well, anywhere. Especially considering the version of death he’d just flirted with.

  And struck out with, fortunately.

  He had his knife at Rick’s throat in a blur of motion that was impressive but only possible because I was half-distracted.

  At the thought of him really, really not striking out with me.

  Death made me horny, apparently.

  “You think you get to touch her, ever?” Thorne hissed at Rick. “When the last time you were doing so, you were drawing blood, drawing the fuckin’ life from her?” Anger morphed his voice into something unrecognizable.

  Though my downstairs area definitely recognized it.

  Rick, interestingly, didn’t move or attempt to fight back. Though I knew he was capable. Against a run-of-the-mill slayer, I’d say it would’ve taken all of the effort of a strong exhale to get one off him, but with Thorne? I had a strange and irrational feeling that he might have met his match.

  Because I had strange and irrational feelings all of the time, I rolled with it.

  “How is she alive?” Rick demanded, eyes on Thorne. Not me, the woman who was actually the topic of conversation. It was a nasty character trait of these men, to talk about women with each other, a residual stick from the patriarchal era when women had no voice.

  Of course, even in the patriarchal era, I had a voice. A loud one. I wasn’t just a woman, after all.

  I was a vampire. And a badass one at that, if I did say so myself.

  “Not alive. Undead,” I offered.

  I glanced to Sophie, who was standing next to a stone-faced Silver, watching the exchange with a flicker of interest, her face otherwise blank. She was unnervingly still too. Which meant a lot more than a vampire being still. She was human, for one. And the little witch had some form of ADHD; she couldn’t go a hot minute without moving or exploding a demon or two.

  “Ten grand on Rick,” she offered, breaking her Sophie statue impression with her mouth, at least.

  I grinned at her. “Oh, I’ll not easily bet against my man.”

  I glanced at his strong body, the radiating fury within it and around it and the small puncture marks decorating his corded neck that were almost healed. Those marks sent shivers down my body, heated up my blood—Thorne’s blood flowing through me.

  Mine.

  He was mine, and now he had my mark. It was a carnal and raw instinct that I didn’t quite recognize. One that felt very ancient. Had the same taste as the air in the clearing.

  But at the same time as being older than even me—which didn’t make sense at all—it was also fresh and new, some jigsaw piece that I didn’t realize I needed until it slotted into the jagged place I thought would be empty forever.

  Completed me.

  Ugh, did I really just think the phrase ‘completed me’? I might have to get the witch to curse me again if I kept thinking like that. I didn’t deserve to be undead if I got soft.

  With love.

  “You gonna kill me, Thorne?” Rick challenged.

  The challenging spark in Thorne’s gaze gave way to more rational, and therefore unwelcome thoughts.

  I didn’t do ‘rational’ thoughts.

  But here they were.

  The kind of thoughts that again reminded me not just of the scene in the throne room that Rick was so getting punished for, but for the familiar way they spoke to each other afterwards. Granted, I had been drifting out of consciousness and on my deathbed and all that, but my memory of it was still clear enough.

  “She’s a vampire. She’ll make it through,” the cold voice snapped. “You’re here and you’re human.”

  “Not quite, Emrick. And maybe before you pulled this fuckin’ stunt you might have tried to think of anyone but yourself.”

  There was history. With Rick, I understood; you lived on this earth long enough, you’d be hard-pressed to find someone you didn’t have history with.

  Weirdly, for me, it always seemed to be bad blood.

  Like the stuff boiling between these two.

  But Thorne was human, and a slayer. Two things that should have denoted a distinct lack of history with the vampire king, who was approximately one thousand years old.

  Yes, Thorne had hinted at the fact that he was older than his thirty-five-year-old body, but we hadn’t gotten to the specifics.

  It hit me that we hadn’t gotten to the specifics on much.

  How could you know so little about a creature yet know it all at the same time?

  Though this wasn’t the time for such thoughts, considering the creature in question—my boyfri
end, for lack of a better word—was looking very much like he might take on a vampire king in a death match. Not ten minutes after I’d almost drained him dry.

  Almost, but still.

  “I should. This should be the nail in your coffin,” Thorne seethed, fists clenched at his side while his arm rested on his belt, and the enchanted blade that was perched on it.

  The blade that was spelled specifically to kill vampires. Among other creatures.

  I didn’t want him to kill this particular one until I got answers.

  “Um, just me again,” I said, waving my fingers and crunching my heels on dead leaves as I made it to the death match. “I’m mighty curious about how the slayer, who seems to have a lot more pizazz than his other counterparts, and the king of all vampires, AKA the one who most likely has all the reasons in the world to kill that slayer, are talking to each other like old enemies. But not the kind you kill.”

  I narrowed my eyes at them.

  Thorne’s eyes fastened on Rick, something passing between them. “You touch her again and I’ll forget it all to cut you up with this. Slowly.” He gestured to the knife at his belt. “Because history doesn’t mean shit when I’ve got the future in my hands dyin’,” he said, his glance on me.

  Then he lowered the gaze, stepped back and yanked me into his side, his entire body relaxing as I molded into the hard flesh.

  To be fair, my body had the same natural response.

  My mind wasn’t as easily swayed. I darted my eyes between the two. “Someone has to spill as to who copied whose outfit to create this history that seems so much more than biology,” I demanded.

  Rick’s eyes met mine. “Oh, it’s not more than just biology,” he said. “In fact, that’s all it is. Biology.”

  The way he said it unnerved me, as did the low growl in Thorne’s throat at the words. The warning. “We don’t have time to talk about this shit,” he declared, his attention moving to Sophie. “We gotta figure out what the fuck happened with Isla. And you need to tell us how she’s still alive—”

  “Undead,” I interrupted happily.

  I got a sideways glare. “And how we can make sure she stays that way.”

  Sophie’s brow furrowed as she thought it over but she didn’t speak, namely because she knew me and knew I wasn’t likely to let it go. She’d been there when I’d been publically chastised by a certain monarch who was mad at me for getting caught in the butler’s closet with her husband.

  I could hold a grudge.

  To be fair, I did organize to get her head chopped off.

  I was still pissed, though.

  Immortals were the best at holding grudges. Hence me needing to know how this one had started and been nurtured in such a way that neither of them had killed each other yet.

  And why Rick had risked everything in order to save us. We had been renounced in front of the Sector and the Vein Lines, my own included. He should have, by all the laws of our kind, killed us.

  But there we were.

  One alive, one undead.

  “Nope. We don’t change the subject. In fact, you’ve got a lot to answer to. Both of you.” I squinted at Thorne’s face. “Considering this was looking like mincemeat not three hours ago, yet now you seem to have healed miraculously. And survived me almost draining you to death with enough pep in your step to go around threatening vampire kings, who you seem to be on a first-name basis with,” I snapped. “So the witches will wait.”

  Thorne stared at me. “That, my Isla, is history,” he declared. “And history can wait. I’m holding the future in my arms this very second. My sarcastic, infuriating, and beautiful future. That’s shit that can’t wait. And that’s the shit I’m going to ensure stays constant before we go traveling into the past.”

  I pouted at him. Then glared, then considered breaking his arm. For two reasons. Firstly because I was pissed off, and when I wasn’t pissed off at someone enough to kill them, I’d at least break a bone. The second reason being research to figure out how long it took to heal.

  I opened my mouth to argue again, because I was getting my way despite the flowers in his words and the vague amount of logic in them.

  Sophie beat me to it.

  “As much as I want the E! True Hollywood Story on this”—she waved her hand up and down in Thorne and Rick’s area—“situation, Thorne is right. The black magic spells cast by thousand-year-old witches not only bent on killing you but starting a war between every supernatural creature and human in existence is a little more pressing. Right now, we can’t focus on a bromance gone wrong.”

  I scowled at her.

  When she put it like that, I sounded like an asshole for arguing. I didn’t mind sounding like an asshole—preferred it, in fact. But only when I felt like I was going to win.

  I didn’t think I was going to win here, so I conceded.

  But not before thinking about the way the skeletons in this closet, the ones I suspected were there and Thorne thought belonged in the past, might be the very thing that turned the history into a future problem. History, after all, was always the bloodiest.

  “Fine,” I huffed.

  And then before anyone could do anything, I darted forward with a renewed strength that felt familiar and welcome at the same time as it was strange and new, snapping Rick’s arm off at the socket.

  The rippling crunch of it echoed through the clearing delightfully. I held up the severed arm, inspecting it with satisfaction, the muscle still impressively strong when not connected to a shoulder. I looked up at his grimace of pain, which was a relatively mild reaction, considering the extent of the injury.

  Yes, immortals could grow back limbs—and quickly if one was strong and old enough, which Rick was—but it was still somewhat of a painful inconvenience that was not met without some following violence.

  I waited for it. Welcomed it. The blood sang in my body, rolling through my limbs and giving them a strength that was beautiful. And a bloodlust that went beyond the need for Thorne’s blood. It was a need to yank off more limbs and try out my new moves that I knew I’d have.

  Rick didn’t make any move to attack, which was curious since the king of all vampires was notorious for punishing those who slighted him. And ripping his arm off and waving it at him—which I was doing—could have been considered more than a slight.

  Thorne must have known that too, as his heat was suddenly at my back, poised to protect me. As was Sophie, a flicker of blue sparks at the corner of my eye alerting me to the fact that she’d edged forward slightly.

  I rolled my eyes, putting my hand on my hip, still holding the arm. “Seriously, guys. It takes one little brush with death and you’re treating me like a helpless human who can’t dish out her own revenge.” I waved the arm. “I’m quite capable.” I turned to a blank-faced Rick. “Which is what I’m doing. Well, considering what I dreamed of doing to you while you had me and the man I love strung up and beaten like pigs in front of your court of snakes, this”—I waved the arm—“is pretty much a day at the spa. But you’re lucky. I’m feeling warm and fuzzy about the scent of death in the air and the dead crunch of wildlife under my feet.” I smiled at him. “So you get this. For now. I’ll not make any promises, mostly since I never make promises because I don’t like present Isla making future Isla’s decisions for her. I find it rude. But also because I reserve the right to continue with the torture if your explanation as to why you almost killed me is not sufficient,” I spat.

  He blinked up at me, a clear and regal look on his face despite bleeding from a socket where an arm used to be. “A member of a prominent Vein Line called you out in front of the court,” he informed me tightly. “You know I had no choice. I didn’t plan on executing either of you, but because I didn’t know about the fucking curse on you, I didn’t realize I had to be… gentle with the fragility that was your immortality.”

  Though his tone was Rick’s signature cold and emotionless special, I couldn’t help but read the small teasing taunt at the ‘g�
� word. Almost like he wanted me to rip off his other arm.

  I stepped forward, my fury flickering around me like a cape. “Try and be gentle with little fragile me right now. I dare you. Because you try to insinuate that I’m weak, even with a thousand-year-old witch’s curse inside me, and that’ll be the last thing that head thinks before it wears a crown much closer to the ground,” I threatened.

  Promised, actually. Death promises were the one little loophole I gave myself. I figured future Isla would never be mad at killing someone because of a promise past Isla made.

  His mouth twitched. “I’ll carry on,” he muttered. “Because of our… relationship, I wasn’t likely to let your death be at my hands. Or at anyone’s.” The way he said that, the inflection of his even and flat tone, gave me pause.

  And gave Thorne’s fury the much unneeded kick-start. His body tensed even more behind me.

  I knew he was itching to yank me into his arms once more; I could practically taste his need, and my own, which pissed me right off. I didn’t need to be in my man’s arms while he declared me his property to other interested parties.

  I needed that like I needed a tweed suit. Being not at all. Unless I wanted to look like a twat.

  Thorne knew that too. So he didn’t yank me to him.

  “Well it was almost at your hands, my friend. Your Highness. Or Your Douchebaggerness—a personal favorite of mine.” I winked at him.

  His jaw hardened. “As previously mentioned, I had no fucking clue about the curse. I would not have touched a single hair on your head had I known it wouldn’t be replaced to its original glory.”

  Cue another palpable wave of fury from Thorne. “Watch your fuckin’ step, Emrick,” he warned.

  We both ignored him.

  “And if you’d told me about a curse, not only would I have gone about that particular event in another way, but I might have been able to help, saving you and myself from almost fading away to nothing.”

  The intensity behind his words was in direct conflict with the blankness of his face.

  “We had it covered,” Thorne clipped, reverting back to the male ‘talk for the woman’ mentality he was so eager to slip back into like an old sweater or something.