The blood cooled the fire racing through his veins, easing his tension and anger. When he pulled away, he flashed Zane a smile. “Thank you.”
“Thank you,” Zane replied with a grin as he rolled onto his back and stretched like a cat.
“Zane always enjoys giving blood to vampires he likes,” Lexi explained.
“Not to the ones you don’t like?” Mitchell asked as he got to his feet and helped Lexi stand before reaching out a hand to help Zane.
Zane took his hand and stood before taking a step closer. From anyone else, Mitchell might be irritated with the lack of respect for personal space. Zane didn’t know the first thing about respecting personal space. Shifters tended to be that way, but Zane was worse than any other Mitchell had met, not that he minded.
“I don’t offer to feed vamps I don’t like from my throat,” Zane explained. “I’ll offer up my wrist in an emergency, but nothing too intimate. You, I like more than the others I feed. Don’t tell Claire I said that.” His finger slid down Mitchell’s chest, and Lexi slipped an arm around Mitchell’s waist. Zane had rubbed off on her with regards to personal space. “If it weren’t for you, I wouldn’t be here now.”
“Don’t talk about that,” Mitchell told him.
Zane nodded and slipped his arm around Mitchell’s waist as he cuddled into his side. “We’d better get out of here.”
As they started walking toward the jeeps, Mitchell looked across the small clearing and his gaze locked with Abram’s. The heady mix of jealousy and lust in Abram’s expression nearly made him stop in his tracks.
“You should stay away from him,” Zane said softly, possibly so Abram wouldn’t hear.
“Stay out of it,” Lexi told Zane. “Mitchell can make his own decisions.”
Zane let out a sigh and nodded. “She’s right, but if you need someone to kill Abram for you, let me know. I’ll be more than happy to end his existence.”
Chapter 42
“I sensed an energy surge,” Arzalina announced as she walked briskly into the room. In Hell, Arzalina couldn’t pass for human, but she could maintain a humanlike appearance in other realms. That ability made her useful. In her natural form, she was a striking demon with short black hair, dark blue skin, light blue eyes, and small black horns on the sides of her head. Elfin features and the lean build of a fighter completed the look. She wore her usual black leather jumpsuit and matching boots. It was the uniform of one of Satan’s bounty hunters.
After losing Kishara’s magic trail, he’d returned to Hell to avoid arousing suspicion with a long absence. Terigin had also needed to find a new tracker. Making a deal with Arzalina was risky. She’d been a hunter for the previous Satan, tracking down rogue demons and bringing them back to face justice. Ruthless and sly, she’d been promised a high-ranking position, but the new Satan didn’t value her skills, viewing her as little more than a demon bounty hunter. Though she hated the new Satan, Terigin still worried Arzalina would reveal his plans.
Terigin would never have attempted a coup under the previous Satan’s rule, knowing he’d have been exposed as a traitor and suffered a fate much worse than death. A part of him missed the previous ruler of Hell because he missed the respect he’d gotten from being part of Satan’s inner-circle.
“You’ve located Kishara?” he asked.
“No, and I don’t think it’s her magic I sensed,” she admitted. “The power felt more like yours than your brother’s. It also felt oddly Fae.”
Terigin’s eyes narrowed. It seemed like too much of a coincidence that one of his offspring had turned up on the radar again, especially when they’d suddenly lost Kishara’s trail. “Where is the little bastard?”
Arzalina cast a spell that caused a map of dimensions to appear on the wall in front of them. She moved her finger around the map until it narrowed in on one. “He’s here, in the same dimension as Kishara. I’m pretty sure the power came from a male half-demon, but I could be wrong.”
Terigin took several deep breaths to get his temper under control before he replied to her useless information. Narrowing it down to a dimension left him with an impossible number of places to search. All she’d done was show him the same cluster of human realms Destran had located. Granted, she’d narrowed it down slightly more, but it wasn’t enough. “I need to know the exact realm!” he demanded.
Arzalina visibly bristled at his demand. “The power surge didn’t last long enough to trace it further. You had a tracker working on this for months, and now you suddenly expect me to find an answer in a day. I don’t know of any tracker who can do that.”
Just as Terigin was considering slicing the bitch open to hear her scream, his brother walked into the room with a wide grin.
“I have excellent news!” his brother announced.
“You’ve discovered we aren’t related?” Terigin asked under his breath.
His brother frowned. “Now, that’s not very nice, especially when I’ve come with information that can help you find my daughter.”
“You finally know where she is?” he asked excitedly.
“Not exactly,” his brother admitted.
“Then what do you have for me?” Terigin asked with an exasperated breath. He was tired of people telling him they had information when they had nothing.
“I remember where I met her mother,” he explained. “At least, I remember the area.” He pointed to the map on the wall. “Excellent! You already have a map of the right dimension up.” Reaching forward, he ran his finger along the map to manipulate it more until it narrowed in on a much smaller region. “It was somewhere in this territory.”
Terigin nodded and turned to Arzalina. “Do you think the energy you felt came from this area?”
She shrugged. “It’s possible. If we go there, I should still be able to trace the magic if the surge happened nearby.”
Terigin nodded. “Then let’s go. We need to find them soon.”
“Why the rush, brother?”
Terigin glared at his idiot brother for asking such a stupid question. “We aren’t the only ones trying to find a way to lay claim to the throne. We need to find our weapon before someone else acts.”
“Then let’s go find my daughter and use her to take over Hell,” Aglinon said with a grin.
Chapter 43
Abram was in a piss poor mood from the time he climbed out of his tent to drink a bag of blood. He’d had trouble getting to sleep after his guard shift, and then he’d tossed and turned with nightmares about dead vampire kids. Nothing bothered him more than undead kids. There weren’t any living on Treasure Island since, unlike the original Moon virus, very few survived the new version. The ones who’d survived had died in battle before Abram became a vampire. Graham had been the asshole who’d turned young children. Roger had been a dick, but he’d been squeamish when it came to infecting kids—a fact that always struck Abram as funny, since Roger had been more than willing to abuse young born vampires in the brothels that had existed in the early days of the Moon virus. That didn’t make him cringe as much as infecting kids with the new Moon virus and watching them die. It proved that even evil assholes had their limits.
Mitchell also seemed determined to avoid him since their argument two days ago. He’d told Abram he wasn’t mad at him, but Abram couldn’t think of any other reason for the sudden distance between them. Zane and Lexi gave him the evil eye every time he approached Mitchell. Abram tried to keep his jealousy in check. Zane had a mate. Still, Mitchell’s avoidance of him had started after he’d fed from Zane, and there had been nothing innocent about that feeding.
“Fuck my life,” Abram muttered as he stretched and looked around. Kish was standing away from the others, and when she saw him watching her, she glared at him.
Kish had been acting like a bitch to everyone. They were all tired of her snipping. She’d offered to donate blood, but he’d rather use bagged blood than get anywhere near her vein. His vampires were also tired of her shit, but that hadn’t stopped
her from acting as if Maddox owed her his life since he’d fed from her. He couldn’t do anything about his situation with Mitchell or his nightmares, but he could do something about Kish.
Since Abram was the least patient in their group, he figured no one would be surprised by him losing his shit with her first. Still, he decided to wait to lose his shit until she was away from the others. Something told him Kish would respond better that way.
He waited, and then he followed her as she stalked away from the group. “I’m going to the lake. I don’t need a guard.”
Jase was about to follow her when Abram stopped him. “I’ll go with her.”
To say Jase looked relieved would be an understatement. No one wanted to deal with Kish’s bitchiness.
He caught up with her when she reached a small lake. She was about to strip out of her shirt when he approached. She spun and glared at him.
“What the fuck is your problem?” Abram demanded as he stalked toward her.
Kish huffed and turned her back on him. She kicked out of her pants, leaving her shirt on. He was surprised by her modesty since shifters didn’t mind being naked around others. She stepped into the lake and began walking out into the water.
“That won’t work,” he told her. “I don’t have a problem chasing after you.” He hoped to avoid walking into the cold water since freezing his nuts off wasn’t in his plans for the morning.
Kish spun to face him and snarled. “Poor, Abram,” she taunted with a sneer. “Always chasing after me. You just can’t stay away, can you?”
“Don’t flatter yourself,” he replied with a laugh. “You already know that’s not what this is about.”
“I intrigued you,” she reminded him as she stripped off her shirt and tossed it on the ground by the lake. “You wanted me.”
“I’ve wanted a lot of people,” he admitted, not about to play her game.
“Like my cousin?” she asked.
Abram shrugged.
“Why were you drawn to me?” she asked. “You knew nothing about me. Did you want my power just like everyone else?”
Abram was happier when she acted like a bitch. He hated that he felt bad for her. Kish had been nothing more than a weapon to her clan since the day she’d been born. Now, she was hiding from an uncle who wanted to use her as a weapon or kill her.
“Fuck my life,” he muttered. “I’m not good at this. If you want someone to comfort you, I’m not the right choice.”
“I don’t need comfort,” she scoffed. “No one’s ever comforted me. I need the truth.”
“The truth?” he asked, continuing when she nodded. “I was drawn to you because you had a horrible life. It was more nightmarish than mine, and I felt bad for you. I wanted to be your hero. That was the craziest thing about my attraction to you. I saw you were suffering, and I wanted to make it better. I’m such a bastard that I’ll never be anyone’s hero, but your situation tugged at the strings of my withered excuse for a heart.”
“So, it’s pity,” she muttered. “Plenty of the jaguars pitied me. I guess you’re better than them because you’re at least willing to help me.”
“Wanna know the truth?” he asked as he leaned against a tree and crossed his arms in front of his chest.
“Sure,” she muttered as she walked out of the water. “Wow me with your big secret.”
Abram shook his head and laughed.
“What are you laughing at?” she snapped.
“You don’t know whether to be pissed at the world for feeling sorry for you or pissed at the world for not helping you,” he replied. “At least, you’ve got the pissed at the world part down. For the record, I don’t feel sorry for you, and I’m not chasing after you.”
“You followed me out here,” she pointed out.
“Only to try to get you to stop acting so nasty to everyone,” he told her. “You are not Vexx’s favorite person.”
“I don’t blame her for not being fond of me,” she whispered. “She lost her mate bond because of me.”
“Stop trying to take responsibility for every damn thing that went wrong,” he grumbled. “You didn’t cause everything that happened. Vexx knows that or she wouldn’t be helping you. That doesn’t mean she’s not going to lose her shit if you don’t get yours together. She might not seem like much of a fighter, but Vexx is a tough witch.”
Rather than responding to what he’d said, she changed the subject. “Do you want to hear something crazy?”
“That’s all I hear lately,” Abram replied with a laugh.
“When I first got back to my clan’s territory, I dreamt about you coming for me.” She seemed embarrassed by her admission. “Stupid dreams. I was a fool for getting caught up in childish fantasies. I didn’t know you, but I wanted to believe you were my hero. It was stupid to think you’d care about a stranger.”
“It’s only natural to want someone to care about you,” Abram assured her. He’d had that desire more than once. Unlike Kish, he’d had people in his life who loved him. Kish had only her sister, and that likely made her more guarded. “I also know what it’s like to be afraid someone else won’t accept you because of all you’ve done.”
“Is that how you feel?” she asked.
“Practically all my life.” He decided that opening up to Kish might get her to feel less like everyone was out to get her. “You may have noticed that the other people on this little trip hate me more than they hate you.”
“I seriously doubt that,” she replied with a sharp bark of laughter. “As you may recall, I tried to kill a lot of people they know and love. No matter what anyone says, I’m partly responsible for what happened to Vexx.”
“I helped kidnap a vampire who a lot of them consider a good friend,” Abram began. “He was human at the time, and I helped infect him with the Moon virus. The people I worked under wanted to use him to destroy his friends.”
“That’s bad,” she agreed.
“That’s not the worst of it,” Abram admitted. “I tried to torture and kill Jase’s brother’s mate. She wasn’t his mate yet, but I’m sure you can still see why Jase hates me. Should I go on?”
“No,” she replied with a shake of her head. “You gave them some good reasons to hate you, so we should both sleep with one eye open.”
Abram waved off her concerns. “They’re all too fucking noble to kill either of us in our sleep. Someone might get pissed and try killing me, but they won’t put a stake in my heart while I’m sleeping or stab me in the back. It’s irritating how noble they are.”
“Why is it irritating?” she asked.
“It keeps rubbing off on me,” he explained with a shudder. “I’m not interested in becoming a good person.”
“Not even to impress Mitchell?” she asked.
“That’s a question I don’t have a good answer for,” he admitted.
“Mitchell,” she mused with a laugh. “I don’t get it.”
“What don’t you get?” he asked.
“Why you’re falling so hard for him,” she replied. “I mean, Mitchell?”
Abram’s eyes narrowed, and he glared at her as he growled, “What’s wrong with Mitchell?”
“Absolutely nothing,” she replied. “He’s perfect. Mitchell is everything we’re not. You seem like the type who’d want to find someone as dark or darker than you. That would help with your image. If you were falling for me, it would make sense since you don’t look quite as bad in comparison. Standing next to Mitchell, you look downright evil.”
He shrugged. “Maybe I don’t mind looking evil.”
She studied him before shaking her head. “You mind, and that bothers you more than anything else. You hate that you want the others to like you. It’s crazy that you even care since you seem like the type who’s more drawn to the darkness in others.”
“An interesting observation coming from someone who doesn’t know me all that well,” Abram replied.
“Maybe I’m projecting,” she said with a shrug. “I can’t
imagine finding a nice man and settling down. I hope I never find a mate. It would be better if there weren’t any more mutt demons running around.”
“You need to find someone who can’t get you pregnant,” he stated. “There are options.”
“Or maybe I’m not the type who’s meant to take a mate unless they're darker than me,” she added. “I should have waited for my uncle to come for me. I’m sure some demons would make me look good in comparison.”
“You don’t mean that,” he argued.
She let out a sigh and turned away from him. “No, I don’t mean that. I don’t want to be anyone’s slave again.”
He nodded. “We’re trying to prevent that from happening.”
“That and the end of the world,” she added.
“That’s a little overdramatic,” he replied. “It would still be bad if you were used as a weapon again.”
“Why are you avoiding Mitchell?” she asked.
“I’m not avoiding him,” Abram argued.
She snorted in response. “You haven’t spoken to Mitchell in more than a day. Did you freak out when you saw the evil side of him?”
“There’s nothing evil about Mitchell,” he snapped. “You said it yourself.”
“I never said he’s not evil,” she argued. “The darkness is in there. He’s part demon and part Fae. I don’t think there’s any way of getting around the evil, but he’s got a light that burns bright enough to almost blind us to the evil. We only catch brief glimpses of it. Maybe you saw the darkness before, and you’re drawn to it.”
“There’s no darkness, but it’s not all about the goodness I see in him. Mitchell accepts me for who I am. Few people do that. No matter how many awful things I confess to Mitchell, he refuses to see me as a monster. I’m not saying he tells me it’s okay to be an asshole, but he seems capable of accepting that I’m not a good person.”
“My sister is like that,” Kish confessed as she sat on the ground with her back to a tree. Her eyes closed. “She knows some of the stuff I’ve done, but she doesn’t blame me. Sometimes, it makes me angry that she won’t tell me how horrible I am.”
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