Invidious

by Bianca Scardoni

  He started to protest, but I quickly overruled him. “It’s not your choice, Trace. This is the way I want it.”

  He exhaled his frustration and rose to his feet. Reaching into his back pocket, he pulled out a sharp, wooden stake, placed it down on the table and then glowered across at Dominic. “One wrong move and this isn’t coming out,” he warned him, his eyes darkening into a deeper shade of blue.

  As steady as his voice had been, I could see the trepidation in his eyes. It was written all over his face. I couldn’t imagine having to sit by and watch the person you cared about try their luck at a dance with the devil himself.

  “Sure thing, Romeo.” Dominic rested his drink down on the coffee table and stood up. A wicked grin played on his lips as he walked over to where I was standing.

  Contrary to Trace, he appeared to be the pillar of calmness when he stopped in front of me and titled his head to the side. “Do you have any preference, love?” he asked, his eyes filled with desire as they traveled down the length of my neck.

  My mouth had gotten so dry I wasn’t even sure I could talk. So I didn’t.

  “Perhaps a spot you prefer?” he continued when I didn’t answer. His dark eyes gleamed as they met mine.

  I shook my head rigidly. “I don’t care where you do it. Just do it.” I reached back and gathered my hair, pulling it to the side as my eyes remained fixed on his.

  “As you please,” he said, bowing his head as though he were about to bestow the greatest gift I’d ever received. His hand came up to my neck and gently moved a leftover strand of hair from my neck, causing a strange tingle to slide down my back.

  I quickly straightened my back, toughening my resolve.

  His grin widened as though he knew his touch had affected me. Circling his arm around my waist, he tugged me forward, and I gasped as my hips collided with his.

  Trace made a displeased grunt from over Dominic’s shoulder but I couldn’t see his face from where I stood, and I didn’t want to. I didn’t want to have to face the hurt and worry and melancholy I knew I would find there.

  Dominic’s other hand came back up along my arm, slowing down when he reached my neckline and then coming to a full stop at my face. Turning his hand over, he brushed the back of his knuckles against my cheek, soft and unhurried as though he wanted to savor every moment.

  My eyes slipped shut. As quickly as I resigned myself to the darkness, I was forced to face the light again at the sound of his fangs protracting. He paused for a split second, almost as though he were giving me a chance to change my mind, or maybe he was just waiting for the fear to start coursing through my blood. Maybe he liked it better that way.

  Gripping my jaw, he turned my head to the side and mapped his path to my neck. My heart was pounding hard in my chest now, my mind screaming at me to abort this baleful quest, but I didn’t move a single muscle. I had already made the decision long before I ventured out here.

  Hold on tight, my love, he said, speaking to my mind.

  I closed my eyes and braced myself.

  21. LOVE BITES

  The scorching ache I felt from Dominic’s teeth piercing through my skin left me almost as quickly as it came, leaving in its place feelings of a placated euphoria. Everything that had been plaguing my mind, all the grief and fear and burden, seemed to just crumble away to a place I was no longer connected to.

  In the back of my mind, I knew it was wrong to feel this way. I knew I should have been trying harder to fight against the takeover, but the contempt I felt for myself quickly slipped away to the same place where all my other bad thoughts had gone.

  His venom coursed through my blood like an antidote, remedying everything that it touched. He’d become my medicine, my newfound cure, and I held onto him tighter because of it. It didn’t matter that my thoughts were spinning almost as fast as the room was, or that my knees felt as though they would buckle beneath me. I needed to give more. Not because he needed it, which I knew by the fervor of which he drank from me that he did, but because I needed it. I needed to be in Dominic’s arms for as long as my body could stand it.

  He bit down harder into my neck, sinking his fangs as deep as they could go, drawing my blood out in heaps that could not be naturally replenished, but none of that mattered to me anymore. All I could think about was more as I whimpered into him with want.

  “That’s enough,” I heard Trace say from a distance, but it only made me clasp onto Dominic harder.

  I knew he wasn’t going to stop—he couldn’t, and this time, I didn’t want him to.

  Black spots began filling my vision and I welcomed the blackness with open arms. Whatever it took to stay in this rapture—to stay in his arms, I was willing to embrace it.

  “I said that’s enough!” snapped Trace as he yanked Dominic off of me and thrust him back several steps.

  He stumbled into the coffee table.

  “Wait!” I cried, trying to reach out to him, to reach out for more, but my legs quickly gave out on me, causing me to tumble forward into Trace’s arms instead.

  Dominic sighed as he dropped back onto the sofa with his arms and legs spread out wide and his mouth painted in shades of my blood. “You are heaven incarnate, angel.”

  I could almost smell the salty, metallic taste of blood in the air—my blood—and it made my head swim.

  Trace tightened his hold on me. “Are you alright?” he asked, his intense blue eyes running rampant all over my face as he inspected me.

  My eyes fluttered open. I couldn’t seem to focus.

  “You need to lie down,” said Trace, scooping me up into his arms and then carrying me over to the sofa where Dominic was sprawled out. “Move,” he ordered him.

  Dominic got up clumsily and staggered across to the other side of the room before flopping down into the chair he’d been sitting on earlier.

  “Talk to me, Jemma. Are you okay?” Trace asked me again, but I didn’t answer. I couldn’t seem to put words together anymore. All I could think about was the emptiness I now felt without Dominic’s vitriol.

  “You took too much!” thundered Trace, his eyes reduced to angry slits of vengeance.

  In the blink of an eye, he was gone from my sight, vanishing and then reappearing in front of Dominic with the wooden stake in his hand and one goal in his mind.

  Grabbing at the sofa, I tried to pull myself up to see—to stop him—but I was too weak to hold myself up. In the split second that it took for me to tumble back into my resting place, Trace’s arm was in the air, slicing through it like a bat out of Hell as he plunged the stake into Dominic’s chest.

  It all happened so fast, and then just like that, everything came to a screeching halt. The seconds ticked by maddeningly as I struggled to see the aftermath.

  “I don’t believe it,” said Trace, taking two slow steps back as he looked down at Dominic in horror.

  My eyes snapped to Dominic. He was sitting contently, smiling up at Trace with the wooden stake still protruding from his chest like some macabre fashion accessory.

  “How the hell is this possible?” asked Trace, his scrutinizing eyes never leaving Dominic. It was clear he’d never seen anything like this before.

  “It appears our little temptress here is quite special,” said Dominic as he pulled the stake out of his heart and tossed it onto the coffee table. He smiled over at me like I was God’s gift to the world—the Revenant world, that is.

  Trace’s face contorted with apprehension. I couldn’t even begin to imagine what he was thinking; what he was feeling. Would he still look at me the same after what he saw, or would he now see me as some abomination that needed to be exterminated?

  Trace picked up the stake from the table and inspected it. After a short pause, he shook his head. “It’s not wood. It has to be synthetic,” he decided, even though he was the one who brought it here. He was grasping at straws now, trying to make sense out of the nonsensical. And who could blame him?

  “It’s wood,” said Dominic confiden
tly and then stood up. “Find yourself another one if you need to, but I assure you, the result will be the same,” he added, dusting off his pants and then inspecting the thin tear in his shirt from where the stake had entered. His eyes snapped to me. “I wouldn't do that just yet, angel.”

  Trace’s eyes darted over to me as I tried righting myself on the couch. “Jemma, you need to lie down,” he said, rushing to my side. He tried to force me back into a reclining position, but I pushed his hands away.

  “I’m fine,” I said, sitting myself up. Okay, so I wasn't exactly fine, but good health was a luxury I didn't have right now. I needed to snap out of this daze and start gathering information.

  “You're looking a little pallid, love. Would you care for a sip of my blood?” offered Dominic with a puckish smile on his lips. “I'm told it's a wonderful pick-me-up.”

  “Yeah, I’m sure it’s peaches and cream. I’ll pass,” I said, rubbing my temples with my fingers as if to coax away the disturbing image. I couldn't even stomach tasting my own blood, let alone someone else's.

  “Very well. It’s your loss.”

  Trace said something back to him, but I wasn’t paying attention to either of them anymore.

  Everything was starting to come back to me now, including the part of myself that had slipped away from me. My head was still pounding harder than a tribal drum, but I knew I had to keep going. I had to stay focused. I sucked in a breath and buried my discomfort. “We need to move on to the next part of the plan.”

  “And what would that be exactly?” asked Trace, his eyes never straying from mine. He looked down at me strangely, his eyebrows pulled together in curiosity like I was some odd, new species from a faraway Realm.

  “We need to find out how long this lasts and what it’s protecting him from. You know more than I do about what can harm a Revenant—sun, fire, holy water, silver? Whatever we can get our hands on. We need to test all of it,” I explained, tucking my hair behind my ears. “And we need to do it again and again until the effects wear off.”

  I needed to know exactly what kind of a timeframe we were working with, especially since I was about to go up against Engel, who had previously ingested a fairly large amount of my blood.

  Both of them stared at me, speechless.

  “Well? What are you waiting for?” I asked, looking at both of them expectantly. “We don’t have all night.”

  As if on cue, they both looked at each other and then did exactly as I told them, heading off in different directions to retrieve the objects needed.

  Pulling myself up from the sofa, I glanced around the room at what my life had become. Vampires, wooden stakes, blood, carnage, death. It was nothing like what I’d dreamed of when I was a little girl—what I had hoped for myself growing up.

  But it was the only life I had, and it was mine. The days of waiting around for someone else to ride in and save the day for me were over. People couldn’t be trusted. They lied. They cheated. And then, when everything you were and hoped to be shattered apart into a million pieces, they left.

  But not this time. This time, I was going to save myself, and maybe, just maybe, the world too.

  We spent the rest of the night running countless experiments on Dominic, which basically consisted of stabbing him in the heart with wooden stakes, dousing his body in a slew of fluids, and branding his skin with different metals. All of which brought an immense amount of pleasure to Trace.

  It took several hours of repeating the same tests over and over again before Dominic was finally incapacitated.

  “Think we should leave him like that?” suggested Trace. A mischievous grin appeared on his lips.

  “Very funny,” I said as I walked over to Dominic’s dormant body. The snowy white tint to his skin had evaporated from his face, leaving in its place a desiccated shade of gray as dull and gloomy as the Hollow Hills firmament. I reached down and pulled the stake out.

  Within seconds, the sickly gray color dissipated from his face and the smooth, milky texture returned. I held my breath and waited, releasing it only when his eyes snapped open.

  “Welcome back,” I said wryly.

  “Thank you, angel,” he said, shifting in the lounge chair. He reached up and rubbed his palm over the entry wound. “Time?”

  I glanced at the clock on the wall and calculated how long it took to incapacitate him. “A little over two hours.”

  Trace joined us. “So what now?” he asked, crossing his arms over his chest. “Is that it?”

  “We have to repeat the test,” answered Dominic.

  “For what?” bellowed Trace, his disapproval written all over his face.

  “We need to discern whether the amount of blood I drank played a role in how long I remained indestructible,” he said, reaching forward for his drink.

  I swallowed hard at the thought of having to go another round with Dominic. Not because I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to withstand it (which was a pretty good possibility), but because I was afraid of further strengthening the bloodbond between us. Already as it was, I felt an uncomfortable pull towards him—a softening of my heart where he was concerned. I didn’t want to feel this way, but it seemed to be out of my control, and letting Dominic drink from me again would only further loosen the flailing grip I had over myself.

  I pulled in a sobering breath and reminded myself that this wasn’t about what I wanted or what I was afraid of. I had to find out if the amount of blood consumed was a factor or not, even if it was at the expense of myself, and there was only one way to do that.

  “He’s right,” I said, nodding my head in agreement with Dominic as I buried the doubt and hesitation deeper inside of me. “We have to keep going.”

  “It’s not happening,” said Trace, steadfast. His eyes were hard and unwavering, daring one of us to try and change his mind. “You’ve had enough for one night. I’m taking you home,” he continued, picking up my hand like I belonged to him.

  “We can’t stop now, Trace. We’re too close—”

  “No. We’re done,” he quickly cut in over me. “We did this your way all night, Jemma, and now it’s time to go.” Remarking the crossed look on my face, he softened his tone and tried to reason with me. “Look, you already lost a lot of blood. You need to rest. You’re no good to anyone if you’re dead. We can finish this another day.”

  I suppose he had a point, what with him being all level-headed and whatnot. “Maybe you’re right,” I said with a shrug and then turned back to Dominic. A peculiar pang of disappointment passed through me. “We’ll finish this tomorrow, okay?”

  His dark eyes were fixed on me in a baring way, a way that made it seem as if he knew my inner thoughts, my newfound cravings. “As you wish, angel,” he said, bowing his head.

  Had his voice always sounded so smooth?

  “I’ll come back later for my car,” announced Trace, though Dominic didn’t take his eyes off me, nor did I take mine from his. “Come on,” said Trace, his voice a quiet struggle against the connection. He squeezed my hand and began drawing me closer to him, slow and uneven, like dragging a block of concrete.

  My eyes shifted back to Trace’s and I winced at what I found in them. Hurt and worry coated his features like a new skin as he stared down at me questioningly. He felt the hesitation, the pullback, and God only knows what he saw and heard tonight.

  My heart throbbed with guilt.

  A forced smile sprouted on his lips as he softly shook his head as if to tell me it wasn’t my fault.

  But I knew that it was.

  “Oh, and Jemma,” called Dominic as Trace circled his arms around my waist.

  “Yeah?” I answered, my eyes finding him easily.

  “Sweet dreams,” he purred.

  And with that, Trace and I were gone.

  22. HEART TO HEART

  The familiar setting of my room materialized around me as the frigid cold slowly dissipated from my bones. Trace’s arms were still wrapped tightly around my waist, encasing me in th
e warmth of his body as we stood there holding each other, neither one of us moving an inch. In that moment, it was exactly what I needed. I needed his warmth to bring me back from the brink—to remind me of who I was again.

  “I’ll always be here to bring you back,” he said, his words resonating with layered meaning. He dropped a kiss on the top of my head and stepped back from me tentatively.

  I looked down at my shoes because, honestly, after tonight, I was too ashamed to look him in the eye.

  “How are you feeling?” he asked after a little while, his poignant eyes sweeping over me like cobalt stardust.

  “Tired,” I said, shrugging my shoulder. “My mind feels like it’s racing a hundred miles a minute.” Taking a few steps back, I sat down on the edge of my bed and combed my fingers through my hair. “I doubt I’m going to get much sleep tonight.” And it probably wasn’t such a bad thing either, I thought.

  He looked uneasy. “Is there anything I can do?”

  I shook my head and smiled at him. “You’ve already done more than enough. Thank you for everything tonight.”

  Smiling, he buried his hands in his pockets and glanced over his shoulder. “I guess I should take off then,” he said, ticking his chin towards the door. “Let you get some rest.”

  Dread rolled through my stomach at the thought of being alone with myself.

  “Wait!” I said, springing to my feet as he turned for the door, afraid of what—or whom—I would see tonight once I closed my eyes. “Don’t go yet.”

  His eyes ran down the length of my body and then back up again, assessing me, trying to figure me out.

  “Please.”

  “Okay,” he said softly, nodding as understanding flickered through his eyes. “I’ll stay as long as you want me to.” He pulled out the desk chair and took a seat across from me as if to prove his promise was more than just words.