by Anne Malcom
Rick raised his brow. “You had it sorted?” he repeated, his cultured inflection over the words as opposed to Thorne’s rough grumble making it sound like an insult. “You held her in your arms while Hades prepared a fucking bunk for her. It seems dumb luck that she’s here, standing and spouting her usual nonsense at all.”
“Not dumb luck,” Sophie cut in, her voice empty and full at the same time. She stepped forward, her power once more pulsing around her.
Hers.
Maybe a little stronger, or a lot than it had been. But the appearance of whatever had been in the clearing before was gone. Or at least cloaked.
I’d have to pencil in an exorcism instead of mani-pedis this week.
“Thorne’s blood curing Isla was not dumb luck,” she continued, eyes on Rick, then me, then Thorne. The gaze was not familiar; it was probing, empty, and working some sort of spell considering I felt the touch of magic rippling over skin.
Instinctively I flinched away from it, despite the familiarity of Sophie’s aura. Though it wasn’t completely familiar. It was changed.
I could sense the power. I knew hers had been building, just not this much.
“Homegirl got powers now,” I muttered to her.
She gave me a jaunty grin before flipping the bird, making me feel slightly better.
If she was still doing that, she was my Sophie. Maybe we could take the powers for a test drive before returning them back to the lot.
“Thorne’s blood is not a cure,” Rick snapped, his controlled tone slipping. “Considering slayer blood is toxic to any vampire who drinks it.”
“Well, almost any vampire,” I corrected. “Seems I’m special. We already knew that, of course, but now they don’t need to look for reasons to put me in the history books. They actually have one.” I paused, not noting or caring about the shock on Rick’s face. “Though, I’m interested to see how you’re going to handle my almost execution and the Vein Lines asking for blood. It was Selene’s family, wasn’t it? Asking for revenge after how I technically damned their daughter to be imprisoned for eternity. Gosh, you’d think they’d have let that go by now. I think I did them a favor. Besides, they’ve got a spare.”
I thought of Selene’s sister, the quiet and weak little vampire who wouldn’t do well in a fight, compared to Selene, who was a lot of things but not weak since she tried to overthrow an entire monarchy. Though she did fail. And failure was a defining mark of weakness in my book. I’d failed at nothing in my undeath to date.
“Or was it the Carlisles? They’ve got a bit of a grudge over me too. But I think they started it.” I paused, screwing up my nose in thought. “In fact, I know they did. They couldn’t really expect anything less than me blowing up their estate in Turkey as revenge for bidding on that painting I explicitly said I wanted. I didn’t care how many conservation societies it pissed off. It was so worth it.”
“It wasn’t either of them,” he returned.
He regarded me evenly, waiting for my words to sink in and his to process, calmly, as was his way. Even though he had half an arm growing out of his shoulder.
I shrugged. “I piss a lot of people off. Throw a stone, even in this clearing, you’ll find someone. Like the king whose arm I just ripped off,” I offered helpfully.
He didn’t grin, though such things were rare, so I wasn’t offended. I was comfortable in my hilarity. I made myself laugh, which was the main thing.
“It was a Vein Line. Yours,” he said flatly, not unkindly.
The air charged in the clearing as Sophie’s palms crackled with more blue sparks. “We really need to kill your mother, Isla,” she commented casually.
“I don’t disagree,” I muttered.
Yes, my parents and I didn’t exactly enjoy the warmest and fuzziest of relationships, and they may have tried to have me assassinated a handful of times, but it wasn’t as big a deal as outing me for a capital crime to the king of our race.
“Well it seems they’ve gotten serious on getting me killed,” I muttered.
“Your mother didn’t want you killed,” Rick offered. “She wanted you sequestered until the time of your Awakening. Then she would have the power to ensure a proper vampire was chosen in order to make sure the deed was done.”
I didn’t show surprise because I didn’t feel any. My mother was nothing if not sadistically predictable. “Well of course.”
Thorne didn’t exactly have the same mild reaction. He was no longer behind me but beside me, his hand snatching mine. Well, snatching Rick’s, which he didn’t like if his jerked reaction and the force with which he threw the arm across the clearing was anything to go by.
“Hey! He might have wanted to keep that,” I protested.
Thorne glowered at me.
“Fine. I’m sure he’s got a whole closetful,” I muttered.
He glared at me. “Your Awakening?” he seethed.
“I don’t think it’s the time or place to speak about it,” I said.
“It’s the exact time and place, considering it set in place a course of events that almost took you away from me,” he hissed.
I gave him a look. “Well, that course had already been set, considering the evil witchy curse upon me.” My eyes found Sophie’s. “Speaking of which, did your little magical colonoscopy tell you if I’m still sporting it or if Thorne and his blood fixed me right up?”
She was about to answer, but Thorne beat her to it.
“Isla, explain,” he demanded.
I blew the air through my fangs in frustration. “Honey, talking about my vampire time of the quarter millennium isn’t really appropriate to chat about in front of company, especially my family’s plan to imprison me, rape me, impregnate me, and then kill me once I bore them an evil bundle of joy.” I threw my hands up. “There. Happy? Now I’ve said it and you’ve made everyone here very uncomfortable,” I accused.
“I’m not uncomfortable,” Sophie volunteered. Bitch.
I glared at her. “You will be when I burn you at the stake while you’re wearing polyester. Works better than firewood.”
She rolled her eyes. “Find a new threat, dude. Burning at the stake is a little tired.”
“But it’s memorable, at least,” I shot back.
She poked out her tongue, another comforting reminder that the juvenile and inappropriate witch I’d come to know and cause big amounts of trouble with was still driving the crazy train that was her brain. It was when someone else took the wheel that we had to worry.
The furious human in front of me was demanding attention, unfortunately.
“You knew this for how long?” Thorne asked quietly.
I didn’t mistake his quiet for calm. I knew the biggest of fury was usually cloaked under the stillest of waters.
Sophie tightened the muscles in her neck in an ‘oh shit’ gesture.
A small grin tickled the corner of Silver’s mouth. Scott was staring blankly at the entire situation like the little idiot he was. Rick was, of course, impassive. Or perhaps just focusing on growing his arm back.
And Thorne was raging, for lack of a better word. His inky black hair framed his chiseled features like a dark crown, emphasizing the sharpness of his harsh jawline which held tight when he was pissed. Then again, he was always pissed at me for one reason or another.
His steely gray eyes were solid silver, glistening and focused on me.
“Knew what?” I tried to go for dense.
His grip tightened on my upper arms in warning.
“Oh, the whole Awakening plan? Don’t worry, it was before I met you.” I waved my hand.
That was the wrong thing to say.
“And you’ve been keeping it from me this entire fucking time?” he hissed in accusation.
“No, I haven’t. It just slipped my mind,” I said, not completely dishonestly. “And I knew you’d overreact.”
That was also the wrong thing to say, considering the physical wave of fire that had me concerned about my eyebrows thanks to
the sheer weight of Thorne’s fury.
“Slipped your fuckin’ mind that your family, one of the most powerful in vampire society, has been planning on kidnapping you and fuckin’ raping you in order to get a child out of you before killing you? And you thought I’d overreact about that? Because that’s something that happens every day in your world, right?”
I tilted my head. “No, not every day, just once every two hundred and fifty years. And we’ve got more pressing matters to attend to.”
His eyes held mine hostage. “We’re killing your family. Every last member. And their deaths will last decades,” he declared.
I grinned. “Oh I do love your sweet nothings. And yes, we are. But in order to do so, we’ve got to fight the war, which is kind of why I agreed in the first place.”
I glanced to Rick, who had been silently watching the entire exchange, as had everyone else in the clearing, which I didn’t exactly mind. They’d all seen me die; it wasn’t like there were many secrets left.
“We need to fight the war in order to gather evidence on my family so I can get the sanction from our almighty doucheness to kill them,” I said happily. “Though Mother obviously has some of my brilliance with her having the same idea.” I waved my hand. “No matter. She failed. That in itself is just great. But we’ve got to keep on keeping on should we go with my original plan and kill them all.”
I smiled at the group in general. “Let’s start the killing now that I’m not dead, shall we?”
Chapter 3
Three Days Later
“I’m not comfortable with this.” Thorne’s voice matched his emotions. Pissed off was the flavor of the evening.
I wished his alluring blood was the flavor of the evening. Not that I hadn’t already had a little nip, as the fading mark on his neck indicated.
It turned out the slayer, who abhorred vampires and the fact that they feasted on human’s lifeblood to survive, got totally turned on when the vampire he was fucking did just that.
I discovered that in the midst of what was basically a three-day reunion. Of the sexual kind. Because when you see the person you love almost die right in front of you, it kind of works as an aphrodisiac.
We had gone from Thorne’s place to my apartment after a very uneasy exit with Rick. Like things were uneasy between Russia and America in the Cold War.
Each party held back their nukes.
For now.
That was most likely because Rick had promised to make some sort of announcement about the vampire community not coming after us with their pitchforks. It was something big. Condoning a slayer and a vampire and not killing them both?
Yeah. Big.
Apparently there was a big summit with all factions about this upcoming war, and treaties needed to be signed.
Treaties between vampires and slayers.
Yeah, I had to take my jaw off the floor too.
So there was that.
We parted ways, with me making Sophie promise not to get all Exorcist until I could find myself a Father Merrin type to be on standby while I watched her head spin around.
I worried about that witch. Especially since she damn near sprinted from that clearing when things had been sorted.
Scratch that. Nothing had really been sorted.
She still had power inside her that could level the world and destroy her. Thorne and Rick still had history that remained a mystery; despite my not-so-gentle cajoling, Thorne had kept murmuring “later.” I’m not a girl who accepts “later” as an answer. I don’t accept anything but the answer I wanted. Then again, I don’t usually ask people many questions. When I really wanted to know something, I’d torture it out of them. But Thorne had his own idea of torture in mind.
Of the sexual variety.
So I’d accepted “later.”
There were more important things to do once we’d finally gotten back to my apartment building. The drive back into the city was silent but for the gentle thump of Thorne’s heartbeat. For someone who loved the sound of her own voice almost as much as red-soled shoes, that silence was a big thing.
I’d let it continue. So had Thorne, though he’d made sure his hand was firmly on my thigh for the entirety of the drive.
We’d stood in my elevator in silence, our hands intertwined, each of our demons doing the talking.
And then the moment the door opened, Thorne pounced.
Or maybe I did.
It was hard to tell.
But it had been violent.
We broke the sofa.
And the bed.
And the coffee table.
But not each other.
Because maybe we were already broken.
Wasn’t that what love did? Broke you into as many pieces as humanly, and inhumanely, possible so you couldn’t put yourself back together?
Not without the other person, at least.
That’s what I felt—scattered yet whole at the same time.
And everything made sense when Thorne slipped into me, his eyes flaring, blood on his lip from… I couldn’t remember what.
“Isla,” he murmured. “This is us. Home. You’re not to ever go anywhere a-fuckin’-gain. Not even Hades himself can take you from me. Not now, not ever.”
Then he’d kissed me. With the blood on his lips and him inside me. I’d gone a little wild.
Just a little.
That’s how I’d discovered that Thorne had enjoyed me biting him.
Because after the bed was broken, we were still struggling amongst the shattered headboard, small splinters of wood stabbing into us, and his eyes had gone to my extended fangs.
“Do it,” he growled as he pounded into me.
He had been on top of me, his muscles taut from the exertion of the struggle it had taken him to get there. And then he wasn’t. I was on top, my hair cascading downwards and spilling over his sculpted and scarred chest, the two of us still connected in a brutal coupling that was better than heaven and hell combined.
“Do what?” I asked, my voice little more than a throaty snarl.
His eyes never left mine as he moved his head upwards, stretching the skin of his neck, which pulsed in invitation.
I flinched with the meaning of the gesture, my fangs aching with need that mirrored that of the need between my legs. My entire body willed me to latch on, every instinct of a vampire going to the blood that was both the sweetest and bitterest on this earth.
But one instinct stopped me.
One that wasn’t a vampire one.
It seemed like a human one, no matter how much I rejected that.
“Thorne,” I hissed. “This goes against everything you are.” The words left my mouth slightly muffled as I’d spoken around my extended fangs.
His arms brutally snatched my neck, crashing our foreheads together. “Everything I am is this.”
He moved so he slammed into me at a new angle that speared through me with a delicious mix of pleasure and pain.
I let out an unintelligible sound as I saw stars for a moment.
Then all I saw was quicksilver in his irises.
“All I am is what you are,” he growled. “Nothing more and nothin’ fuckin’ less. And I want to be inside you in every way possible. Despite whatever I was, whoever I was before, you drinking from me, me givin’ your fuckin’ life? That’s everything. You give it to me, babe. I’m givin’ that shit back to you.”
The words were spoken with so much intensity they seemed to vibrate the air. They sure as shit vibrated the empty and dead organ in my chest. Made it almost beat with the power of them.
Almost.
But my own chest cavity stayed silent.
I was undead, after all.
And as I’d explained to him between sessions eight and nine, my Awakening was at least a decade away, so the beating inside my chest and the fertility that came with it was nothing to worry about.
So after he’d claimed my mouth in a brutal kiss, allowing my fangs to puncture his lips so the warm
th of his blood flooded my mouth and dripped down my throat, electrifying my body, he leaned back to his previous position.
That time there was no hesitation.
From my human self or vampire self.
Because he wasn’t just offering the blood my vampire self craved as a natural necessity.
He was offering life, which was what my human self chased with a desperation that bordered on insanity.
Insanity was, after all, what I was known for.
So I sank my fangs into the taut skin of his neck.
And drowned.
For better or worse.
Reality had to come back in eventually.
Even for insane people.
Maybe especially for insane people. And vampires.
Reality came in the form of Duncan bursting through the door while we were having a rare moment of not being horizontal, or vertical, or fucking hexagonal in the kitchen.
Thorne had been cradling a cup of coffee in his hands, eyes on mine as he sipped from it.
I’d been doing the same, but mine was laced with blood from the healing marks on his wrist.
“We should probably talk,” I said.
His eyes flared. “Probably.”
I raised a brow at him. “Seriously, Thorne,” I told him as he stalked around the breakfast bar of my kitchen.
Naked.
Obviously.
One did not have a six-foot-something, muscled demigod in her apartment and her bed with clothes on if there was an option of nudity.
I was functionally insane, but even someone in a straitjacket and on horse tranquilizers would’ve agreed with me there.
I was naked too.
Because duh. He might have been hot but I was too. Besides, being naked was not only necessary but preferred for all of the sex.
And we’d been having it all.
The sex, that was.
The words? Not so much. And even as someone who preferred violence, blood, and sex to words—of which I’d had all three in those three days—it was time for the words.
“Since when are you serious, baby?” he asked, voice thick as he headed over to me, hand resting on my hip.
Not lightly.