by Anne Malcom
“I fucking know,” she hissed. “All I know is I sense death and magic and that’s the only conclusion.”
“We kill them, then,” I said happily.
She nodded once.
“Well, turns out I’ve got some information acquired by a great friend of mine to help.”
She raised her brow. “And by that you mean tortured out of something before you killed it.”
“Precisely. So I did my job and your job for you, considering you were meant to be finding the witches. I got digits for one of them. I doubt the ones we’re looking for, since those haven’t likely gotten a cell phone number just yet, so soon after being let out of a cave. But I’m sure I’ll persuade this one just like I did a certain weirdly shaped vampire,” I said.
She looked at me. “I found them. Well, one of the two. She’s the one released from her prison. I’m guessing the other isn’t strong enough yet.”
I glared at her. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
She sipped her drink. “I just did.”
I rolled my eyes. “Earlier.”
“Because this was more fun.”
“So where are they?”
Her demeanor stopped being as playful. “Russia.”
I cursed under my breath. “Of course the one we can find is in the fucking motherland. It’s where all things that try to kill me seem to hang out. Witches. My mother.”
That reminded me. My mother was responsible for my almost execution, and requested the front row. I needed to send her a selfie to taunt her with my very undeadness.
But then the selfie wasn’t necessary.
“They’re staying at—”
“Please say Castle Dracula,” I said.
Count didn’t live in Transylvania, though he did vacation there. Russia was his true home. Less tourists.
“In your parents’ compound,” Sophie said.
“Drat,” I murmured. “Castle Dracula would’ve been so much better. And when I’m preferring that vain asshole’s company you know it’s bad.” I paused. “But then again, the presence of the witches is great proof to denounce and assassinate my entire family. Silver lining,” I said happily. “When do we leave?”
She raised her brow. “We can’t just hop on a plane to battle one of the darkest and most powerful witches to live and fight your family as well,” she said.
“Why not?”
“Because it’s suicide.”
“Only if we lose,” I argued.
“We need a plan.” “Plans are for sissies.”
Our argument was cut short by the sharp gaze that had been on us all night, and I’d been trying my hardest to ignore.
“You’ve attracted a stray,” I observed, my eyes touching the werewolf who seemed vaguely familiar.
And attractive, if you preferred the scarily unwashed and broody men. And that they turned into dogs.
Which I didn’t.
Then again, all men were dogs, one way or another.
Sophie didn’t turn. “I’m aware.”
My eyes narrowed to something much more interesting than witches or wars, and more bloodstained: Sophie’s love life.
But that conversation was cut short before it all began.
On account of the blood.
Always the blood.
“How is this the second bar death match I’ve found myself in tonight?” I asked when I slammed a werewolf down on the bar.
“Because you’re Isla?” Dante questioned, ripping the head off.
I grinned, showing fang. “Oh yes, that’s right.”
Then I throat-punched a vampire going for Sophie’s, well, throat. Not that she strictly needed my protection, or the wolf’s who’d damn near jumped over his own corpse to snap at anyone who got past her spells. Which wasn’t many.
Shame there was a good many murderous vampires and werewolves and the odd demon killing everything in their paths.
And they seemed to have one goal.
Yep, you guessed it—moi.
I ducked a knife that hurtled towards me, going after the demon who threw it. “Now that wasn’t very nice,” I gritted out.
There were a lot of supernaturals still here fighting. More than I expected. Maybe because they didn’t have a choice.
Fight or die, the choice was usually made for you.
Running was a third option, but that didn’t work well when this place had one entrance and one exit.
The fire marshals really fucked up on that one.
“Get the vampire!” a large demon roared from the outskirts of the fight.
It wasn’t in human form and it was red all over with bulging muscles, kind of like a red version of the Hulk without the ripped clothes and sporting horns on the top of his head.
I grinned over my shoulder at Dante while snapping the jaw of a wayward wolf. “Looks like I know who I’m dancing with tonight.”
“Isla,” he warned.
I, of course, didn’t stay for a warning. It was like staying for the credits at the end of the movie.
Yawn.
So I waded through the battle, getting a scratch or two from a werewolf who was very sorry for that. And a broken rib from a vampire who should’ve known better.
But I made it to my date relatively unscathed.
I grinned up at him, standing a good enough distance away so he would have to lean forward and warn me of movement if he did choose to lunge at me.
“You called?” I asked. “Or rather sent in a small army to do the dialing. But I assume you’re the one I answer to.”
His eyes glowed with flames. “You come without a fight and I’ll try to make sure you’re not bleeding from the inside out when I deliver you to him,” he growled, throaty and strange, not used to forming words. From the depths of the pit, then.
“As charming as that little promise is, I think I’d like to meet The King—you know, Elvis—on my terms. So pass.”
The flames extended to his hooved hands. “So be it. He said you’d put up a fight.”
I didn’t get to ask about the mysterious ‘he,’ not that I was overly curious, because he chose that moment to lunge.
The big bastard was quicker than I intended so the blow to my chest landed hard enough to cave it in, despite me dodging the worst of it. I went flying above the battling bodies and crashed into a snapping werewolf, landing teeth first.
Luckily, it was the werewolf who was Sophie’s pet so it yanked me to my feet. Its eyes darted to Sophie, whose own were starting to glow all freaky-deaky as she was surrounded, and then to me, a big hulking demon with a steroid problem stomping forward at that moment.
Wolfy growled in the demon’s direction, seeming conflicted.
I straightened, despite the awareness and pain that came with the movement on account of my crushed chest. “Chill, Cujo. I’ve got this one. Go make sure the magic inside Sophie doesn’t have her head twisting all types of ways, won’t you? We’ve got enough excitement for tonight.”
On that, I stepped forward as the wolf didn’t hesitate to heed my command. Though it was likely because it was of the Sophie reason, not my commanding tone, it was still pretty darned good, if you asked me.
I made a mental note to inspect that little love story when I wasn’t in a death match with the horned wonder.
I glanced down to my chest, noticing my missing necklace. A crunch under my boot told me the fate of it.
I glared at the charging demon. “That was custom Cartier,” I hissed. Then I lunged. It was a good lunge too, considering I landed on his shoulders and managed to wrap my legs around his neck in order to rip off one of his horns.
The bellow of agony that erupted was glorious. The spurting of inky black liquid smelling like charcoal and dead fish was not.
“Ew.” I cringed away on instinct, for my dress more than anything else. The demon took advantage and crushed my shoulder under its grip to fling me to the floor.
My survival instinct for my dress and the body inside it was much more on t
he ball as I rolled away from the large foot aimed at crushing my skull. That would have taken much longer to recover from.
Read: never.
“I hate it when Thorne’s right,” I muttered to myself, wrenching myself off the floor. I was a little hunched, standing half-bent over on account of my cracked spine and my arm dangling unnaturally in front of me as the bones tried to knit shattered pieces together. “There’s no such thing as ‘just a drink’ for me. I’ll never hear the end of this.”
Well, that was if this wasn’t the end of me.
Though I refused to let a red-bodied, one-horned demon be the end of me.
No way, no how.
If any demon was going to end me, it was going to be the king himself, and not Elvis.
So I dodged his next attack, not as gracefully or as badassly as I would’ve liked, but it served its purpose—namely not getting me dead.
I played dirty by ducking between his legs and hitting him where it hurt.
I wasn’t above taking cheap shots. Death wasn’t that expensive, after all.
The groan of pain helped to tell me that I was working the cheap shots like a pro. I capitalized on the pain by darting out with my good hand and crushing his kneecap so he came down on one knee.
I met black eyes. “Hello. You’ve reached the end of the road. Please give the devil my regards,” I told him easily, planning on breaking his neck—a feat the same as felling a large tree trunk, but I was confident I was up for the challenge. When the snap of his bone signaled my victory, the snapping of mine signaled his final victory in death.
It was cheap, after all. Maybe it was two for one.
At least it wasn’t painful, the short fall into nothingness.
Though nothing never was painful.
That’s what made it so dangerous.
Chapter 8
“Lewis, it’s Scott. We need a mark, stat,” a slightly unnerved voice demanded.
“We don’t have time for this,” Sophie snapped.
“Well if you healed her, like a good witch should,” Dante’s annoyed and maybe slightly worried voice cut in.
“I can’t heal her. Not when she needs blood. No witch can reproduce what the blood gives. It’s kind of the point. Magic cannot reproduce life, nor can it change death.”
“Well, why the fuck are you here if you can’t do that?” Dante challenged.
A low growl came from what sounded like the back seat.
Did we run over a dog on the way to get me some blood?
“Just pull over and snatch that human,” Sophie suggested impatiently.
“Isla wouldn’t do that. They could be innocent,” Scott cut in.
“Did you see his outfit and his beard? No way that dude was innocent. I’ll bet a hundred he’s got some woman locked in his basement,” Sophie said. “Dante, pull over. We’re getting Isla a snack.”
“No, we’ve got something,” Scott said, the muffled voice at the end of the phone he was on not as clear as it should’ve been.
Then again, nothing was as clear as it should’ve been.
“It better be close. She needs it.” Sophie’s voice was grim and had an edge of worry that I didn’t rightly like. Not at all.
“It is. Did you call Thorne?”
“Yes, I called him. He’s out in Slayerville, and even the power of his rage and shouted curses isn’t going to get him here any faster. I’d really like it if I didn’t present him with the sight of Isla’s corpse for the second time in a week.”
Her voice was blasé and sassy, but even in whatever static coma vampire state I was in, I could hear it.
The fear.
Because my voice sounded like that too when I talked about someone I loved dying.
I didn’t feel like I was dying, though. Sophie was right; I’d already done that once this week.
This wasn’t that.
I would admit I wasn’t in a good way, and the absence of pain usually meant absence of life. I was numb in a way that told me my broken bones weren’t knitting themselves back together as they had been all night.
Not good.
“She’s not going to die, and we’ve got a drug dealer in two blocks,” Scott said, his voice sounding different. Stronger.
I was vaguely proud of the little punk.
They grew up so fast.
Or not, in Scott’s case. Unless you considered a few decades ‘fast.’
Which I did.
It was all relative.
As was the time it took to get those few blocks and weather the nothingness.
On first thought, it was preferable to the immense amounts of pain my broken and shattered body had given me before. But the nothingness wasn’t preferable for extended amounts of time. Not when the mind was trapped in what it knew was still its head, though with nothing to anchor it but the sounds around it.
The nothingness taunted me with the reality that I could just float away.
And it wasn’t darkness at the edges of my vision that people liked to describe the welcoming of nothing. No, it was stark white where nothing could hide, where there was no depth or tangibility to anything. White everywhere.
And worse than feeling the nothingness was the grating sound of everything around me that wasn’t quite there to touch but was close enough that I heard the screech of tires, the opening of a door, the frenzied protests of a human.
“Hey, dude, what the fuck do you think—”
Snap followed by silence.
Death.
Silence like that had a sound of its very own.
The wetness that trickled from the dead body splashed onto my face. I heard the droplets on my granite skin instead of feeling them.
“Drink,” Scott demanded.
Then there was a small twitch. A warmth, a drop of crimson against the stark white that was starting to make me hate the color in general. Which was annoying since my new Prada was a beautiful shade of snow.
Then another droplet, followed by a warmth trickling down the area that I knew was my throat. That I could feel was my throat. Feeling came with pain, the screaming protest of my spine as I fastened my one working arm on the still-warm corpse and sucked deeper.
More warmth filled my throat and then my stomach, hurtling down the nerve endings raw from agony.
The interior of the SUV’s cab flickered quickly into existence before I banished it again once I closed my eyes. The blackness welcomed me back like an old friend as I continued my meal.
But then the warmth did something unexpected.
Something that blood hadn’t given me.
When I drank from someone, I tasted their life. The warmth of it, sure, but it was a pleasing type of warmth, what I imagined to be like the sun catching the damp skin after a swim in a lake on a summer’s day.
Kind of like the warmth that came with Thorne’s touch, though Thorne’s touch was an inferno, and then it beat even that.
Because the blood was no longer pleasant and life.
The blood was unpleasant and decidedly deadly. Like an alcoholic so desperate for the drink that they don’t realize it’s drain cleaner until the buzz they’d chased was in fact their demise.
I dropped the body abruptly, frantic to get the blood, the poison, the fire from my veins and my mouth.
The first logical thing to do was spit out my latest mouthful of blood. Scott was sitting closest, so he bore the brunt of that.
“What—”
His words were cut off by more blood.
That time I didn’t consciously spit it out; it expelled itself from my body quite literally in a disturbing amount, like that puke scene in Pitch Perfect. The amount was disturbing because it was coming out at all, and because I surely didn’t take in that much blood in a few measly swallows. I could barely think through the ocean of shudders that vibrated my body as my stomach roiled and writhed and basically just rebelled against me to rid itself of the poison.
The problem was, much like chemotherapy worked on cancer pati
ents, it was a poison to kill everything in the body: the bad stuff—the cancer, of course—but whatever remained that the body needed to survive too. It was merely a question of what would win first, the cure or the poison. That’s what it felt like my body was doing, poisoning itself to cure itself. Ridding itself of every inch of blood I contained through the entirely gross process of puking it all over the place.
“What the fuck is happening?” Scott yelled over the sounds of blood leaving my body.
“It’s the curse,” Sophie yelled back. “Fuck, her body is rejecting all blood but his.”
His.
Mine.
My slayer.
“Where the fuck is Thorne?”
My vomiting stopped, as did the fire, which was good; it meant the poison was all gone. But the lack of heat gave way to an icy chill that was too cold for even a vampire. A dryness to it that seemed to make my skin suck in on itself.
My vision was tinted with crimson from where capillaries had burst under the pressure of the vomiting saga. But I saw the thinness to my skin that was seeming to wrinkle before my very eyes.
That’s what happened to vampires under severe blood deprivation. They crumpled like paper and didn’t die. Not immediately. Or ever. But there was a point in the process that the body, even the immortal one, couldn’t come back from. The terrible space between undeath and Hades himself. Unless someone took pity on the vampire and sent its soul to the underworld, a vampire could conceivably live forever in that state, undead yet not living either.
And my crimson eyes watched the skin deteriorate at a disturbing rate, the iciness getting worse. I felt like those idiots who climbed mountains for nothing other than ‘because it’s there,’ the ones who got the severe frostbite that literally froze their limbs off. Handy if they ever had to eat the weaker ones for substance, but not so much when you were trying to not die.
I’d never felt that, because as a vampire, one of the many perks was not getting frostbite and losing extremities.
My smugness to a lack of frostbite seemed to be an omen for the very moment of my cells themselves freezing.
“You need to meet us at Seventy-Third and Park. Now,” Sophie demanded into a phone, eyes locking with mine.