by Gaja J. Kos
He plopped his butt beside me. “Zaynab called.”
“She shouldn’t have dragged you out of bed.”
“Honestly, Gin”—he swept his gaze down my body in a less than flattering manner—“I’m glad she did. You look like hell.”
I glared at him, but it was impossible to stay firm in the face of his damn disarming smile.
“But,” he drawled, “I also heard you probably broke a whole number of werewolf records, tearing through Berlin like you did, so I guess your state is…acceptable.”
I rolled my eyes. “Asshole.”
“An asshole who’s taking you to his place and has a nice little variety of healing spells lined up.” He pulled the tote over his body and pried it open.
“Is that…” I reached in and my fingers wrapped around a familiar fabric.
“Yep. I knew you’d probably fight me, so I might have swung by your place before I came here. I got your scarf to keep your lovely twists safe, your toothbrush, some clothes because I figured you weren’t too thrilled about not switching out your spares right about now.”
I snorted.
Finn rummaged through the tote. “I have your phone in here, too, makeup removal wipes, cleanser, toner—”
“All right, all right.” I laughed. “I got it. You came prepared.”
He winked. “I always do.”
I chuckled at him over the coffee.
“Also, to sweeten the deal… If you come with me now, I’ll even make you a new cup”—he eyed my mug—“and spike it.”
How was a werewolf supposed to say no to that?
I quickly threw back another mouthful of the dark brew, then got up, looped my arm through Finn’s, and let him guide me down to the garage. Although my state, now that the worst of the healing was through, wasn’t anything a good night’s sleep wouldn’t cure, just this short walk made me appreciate Finn’s offer to fix me into top form. Besides, his magic pampering was better than any spa treatment money could buy, and after the night I’d had, being taken care of in that way sounded like the perfect remedy.
He unlocked his car and held the door open for me. “I know you probably don’t want to talk about all of it now, but I just wanted to tell you that I fixed your lock with a spell. You’ll need to get it replaced, of course, but until you do, the magic won’t let anyone inside the apartment but you.”
“Thanks, Finn.” I pressed a kiss to his cheek.
Finn grinned like the motherfucking sunshine he was, making me laugh all over again. I snagged the tote off his shoulder, then sent him cruising around the car with a pat on his ass.
His lingering magic smacked me right back when I bent over to stash the tote on the back seats before climbing into the car.
Not for the first time, a deep sense of appreciation for whatever fates had partnered us up stirred in my gut. Finn might be a warlock, but he was pack in all ways that mattered. A partner who knew precisely what I needed—and gave selflessly.
After I’d nestled myself as comfortably as my aching body allowed it, my head braced against the window, Finn pulled out of the garage and steered us toward his place. He switched his beloved rock music to something more bluesy that spoke to my soul, and I shot him a grateful look before resting my temple against the window once more to watch Berlin drift by.
Little Richard’s music and distinct voice seeped inside me, another kind of healing magic, yet no less powerful. I’d almost surrender to the feel entirely when Finn stopped at a red light. My gaze caught on a cluster of people at the mouth of an alley just across the intersection.
“What the fuck?” I shot ramrod straight and stared at the sight as if focusing on it would somehow change what I was seeing.
But the three figures draping themselves over Aric’s tall frame refused to fade, the bite marks on their necks bleeding dark in the night.
Chapter 11
A leggy brunette slithered closer to Aric from the front, her hand roaming across his chest, while the other two pressed against him from the sides, basically half-straddling, borderline dry humping him. The sight burned holes in my eyes.
All it needed was some tight bodice gowns and creepy-ass candlelight and it could be a fucking overused, traditional, hypersexual vampire movie.
I punched the seat belt release, then hit the dashboard button to unlock the car, and kicked the door open with a slew of curses.
Finn’s attention hooked around me in tangible vines. “Gina, what are you—”
I slammed the car door shut and bolted across the street. That the quartet hadn’t even heard the noise spoke volumes of just how fucking engaged in each other they were.
Molten fire coursed through veins of hard, cold marble.
This was it. The last godsdamned straw.
And I was adamant to carve this ending on my terms.
A thick concoction of blood and alcohol assaulted my senses. I snarled, the sheer force and menace within the sound startling the trio of inebriated women fawning over Aric—Aric, who looked up from among them, his fangs out and pupils dilated with hunger.
Footsteps pounded into the night from behind, but I paid Finn no attention. Launching myself on the sidewalk, I pried the drunk women with their bleeding necks off Aric, then cornered the vampire against the wall.
He had the audacity to look horrified, pissed, and relieved all at once.
“Gina…”
The reek of alcohol saturating the air subsided somewhat as Finn herded the women away from us. Pinning Aric with a hard stare, I let a growl trickle from my lips.
Aric lifted his hands. “I didn’t bite them. I swear to the fucking gods I didn’t bite them.”
His whiskey-touched breath fanned my face, but the lack of a coppery twang didn’t mean a damn thing. He could have easily downed the blood with whiskey, eliminating all traces of his livelier sips. I didn’t exactly check if he had the usual bottle tucked in his back pocket before I’d cornered him.
Besides, bottle or not, his erected fangs spoke a whole fucking telling story all on their own.
“Really?” I dropped my gaze to his mouth, then arched an eyebrow. “You didn’t bite them?”
Aric shifted against the wall, but there was nowhere for him to go. Not unless he wanted to fight me.
Seeing that I wasn’t about to relent, Aric cursed under his breath, then said, “I vamped out, okay? I fucking vamped out when they came at me like that, but that’s it. My fangs didn’t come anywhere near their necks.”
“You honestly expect me to believe that?” I snapped and cast my arm in the direction of the car where Finn was talking to the women.
A touch of their confusion, even a hint of panic, poked at me on the wings of Finn’s low voice, but they weren’t my problem right now.
I glared at Aric. “They have fucking fresh bite marks on them, and I don’t know about you, but I sure as shit don’t see another vampire around. Just you.”
Aric looked past me to the group as if he’d see something he hadn’t already.
“Test the marks,” he whispered, more an escaped idea than an actual statement. He met my gaze and repeated louder, steadier, “Test the marks. You already have my teeth on file. They won’t match.”
Oh, I’d test the marks all right. If he believed I wouldn’t go the extra mile, that his firm conviction in the story he was selling would somehow placate me and make me drop the whole thing, well, he was fucking wrong.
“I just vamped out, Gina,” he said and withdrew his fangs. “That’s all.”
A dry laugh rolled through my mental tones. “All right, if that’s all you did, then would you care to explain why you had three women bleeding from their necks grinding up your greaser ass?”
Aric’s jaw tensed, and he snapped his mouth shut so tightly that bitter, inner laugh rumbling within me spilled out into the night.
“Yeah, thought so.” I shook my head and glanced at Finn, who’d been trying to get my attention for the past minute or so.
; Once I gave him the green light, Finn walked up to us.
His gaze flicked to Aric before settling on me again. “What do you want me to do?”
The subtle undertones in his question hinted that he suspected I wanted to veer from protocol.
Since there was no foul play here, not really, we not only had nobody to charge but also no basis to question the women. Inebriated as they might have been, their little play with Aric had been voluntary. Not even the deepest traits of their scent had revealed any discomfort, doubts, or impaired reasoning.
But—I pursed my lips and focused on the two leaning heavily against Finn’s car while the brunette looked like she was on her way to throw up in a trash can—letting them go without knowing the actual state they were in did not sit right with me.
Nor was I ready to give myself a reputation for spewing out empty threats.
I turned to Finn, ignoring Aric, who had the right mind to remain perfectly still, precisely where I’d pinned him earlier, and said, “Take the women to HQ. Have the medics document the bites and run vitals. I don’t want them on their own until they’re okay.”
“How long do you still need?” Finn tipped his head toward Aric like the vampire was just another pain in the ass perp, and in that moment, I could have hugged him for the attitude.
Some of the ire within me dampened, but the rock-solid presence of resolve promptly filled my voice. “You drive on to HQ. I’m not going anywhere until I get the truth.”
“You sure?” Finn frowned. “I have all your shit in the car.”
I nodded. “I’ll walk over to your place once I’m done.”
Though I could tell Finn wanted to protest, he also knew I wouldn’t mind sitting outside under the stars for a while if I wrapped things up before he did. I had a feeling I’d need to cool down anyway.
With a nod, Finn spun on his heel and marched back to the car.
The second he started ushering the women inside, I rounded on Aric. “Start speaking.”
Headlights briefly illuminated his face when Finn U-turned before driving off to HQ, offering me a crystal-clear glimpse of the hardness shaping Aric’s eyes. For fuck’s sake. This night had been too fucking long for me to put up with his bullshit.
But maybe, just maybe, I wasn’t exactly unbiased in my attitude.
Kerstin’s words seeped into my mind. I let them wash through all the dark crevices, and leaning on their flow for assistance, I toned down the dial on my anger.
“All right,” I said with far more cool and physically eased off Aric. “If you didn’t bite the women, what happened?”
Aric unglued himself from the wall. He fixed his shirt, then ran a hand through his hair and sighed. “I was headed home after having a couple of drinks with friends.”
His subtext broadcasted loud and clear. I hadn’t been the only one who’d turned to alcohol after our fight.
Although his silent confession that our falling out had impacted him just as much as it did me tugged damn hard on my emotions, I couldn’t waver.
“Then what?” I asked.
“The women came out of nowhere, I swear. One moment I was walking alone, lost in my thoughts, the next they were all over me, maneuvering me into this damn alley.” He let out a slightly manic, barking laugh. “They caught me off guard. I vamped out because I smelled their blood, but I hadn’t done a single thing, still trying to catch up with what the fuck was even happening.”
What the fuck was right. I studied his face, his scent—nothing indicated that he was lying. But three women catching a vamp off guard?
He’d need to be super detached from reality not to smell the blood dripping down those necks sooner.
“That was when you arrived,” he added after a moment.
“And if I hadn’t?” I asked dryly and instantly hated my tone.
Aric could do whatever the fuck he wanted—whomever he wanted. We hadn’t cleared anything between us up, and until I conveyed what I felt for him, I couldn’t hold him accountable by some standards he was unaware of. But… He did kiss me just hours before, and although he wasn’t outright lying, there was truckloads more to everything than he was letting on.
It was that, more than anything, that nudged me toward the precipice.
“What would you have done if Finn and I hadn’t driven by?” The venom slithering through my veins took hold, and, like watching a train wreck unfolding in slow motion, there was nothing I could do to shake it off. “Would you have drained them like you did those girls in the fifties?”
An icy chill that had nothing to do with the mellow night whisked across my skin. Aric’s whole demeanor turned glacial, but his eyes blazed.
My stomach sank.
It was true.
He’d drained those girls. Murdered two of them.
I hadn’t even realized how hard I’d been holding on to the hope that the evidence was circumstantial. That Aric had just happened to be at the same show as the vamp killings happened.
A tremor snaked down my spine, and I shook my head.
“Fuck this,” I whispered, looking one last time into Aric’s eyes, then stormed away.
My footsteps seemed to thunder across the shadowy landscape of Berlin’s slumbering streets, and my mind raced, a sick feeling building up in my stomach.
Aric had been secretive about his godsdamned past for a fucking major reason.
I groaned, disgusted with myself.
I’d fallen for his charm, his smile, the fucking way he made me feel whenever his face brightened up at the sight of me. All the while he’d been hiding the festering truth beneath the surface.
He was a killer.
Aric was a killer, and I was here, running away instead of dragging his ass to an ICRA cell where he’d rot for the lives he’d stolen, because I couldn’t fucking deal.
Because I’d seen the red flags and dismissed them.
Because I couldn’t face how pathetic I’d been, painting Aric the way I wanted him to be instead of looking past my own desires for the real fucking deal.
Because somewhere, somehow, my soul became convinced our paths were meant to entwine. That this pull between us was something larger, grander. Something that surpassed the trivialities of the material world and operated by rules that defied logic but resided within the realm of fate.
Yeah, I couldn’t fucking deal with the irrefutable evidence, with Aric’s own godsdamned confession, because in the core of who I was, I believed our souls were meant to travel together.
The air behind me stirred.
I turned around, fully expecting to see Aric ready to either admit the truth or murder me for seeing who he really was, but before I could even take a good look at the street, a blast of magic cannonballed into me and sent me hurtling into a thick, endless pit of absolute black.
Chapter 12
A dull red light clouded my vision. I jerked and blinked, only to realize it wasn’t some consequence of the magic that had hit me staining my vision, but an industrial bulb screwed into the wall to the side.
What the fuck?
The dark street I’d been on and my current reality clashed. Then the pit of darkness I’d fallen into when the magic had hammered into my flesh.
Shit, I must have lost consciousness.
After a few blinks to invite in some more clarity, I attempted to move my aching body, but the pressure I’d felt earlier but hadn’t truly registered bit down hard on my skin.
Bound.
I was fucking bound.
Steadying my breaths, I sewed shut the maw of panic edging to open and took stock of my surroundings.
Bare walls of raw stone, darkened by the glow of the muddy red bulb, more stone beneath my feet, outfitted with a drain that reeked of old feces and blood, and a single door up ahead toward the corner. I strained to check what lay behind me, but thanks to the steel half-collar around my neck, I couldn’t really fucking twist enough to see anything beyond what lay parallel to me. Given the state of the place, though, I
was willing to bet more of nothing.
At least I fucking hoped someone hadn’t perched a camera in my blind spot.
No, I had to go with my gut on this one.
I wasn’t being monitored.
I was, however, strapped tightly to a chair that looked like something out of a nightmare. All fortified steel, modified to hold a person immobile.
Swallowing, I tested the cuffs on my feet, then the ones around my wrists and forearms. Nothing. The damn things didn’t even rattle. They weren’t ICRA-grade, but between the exhaustion I hadn’t fully recovered from and the magic that had run me over, there was no way I could break through on strength alone.
Yeah, my prospects were not good.
Briefly, I closed my eyes and just breathed through my nose. In the absence of visual inputs from my outer reality, my brain so helpfully filled the gap with a vivid image of Aric’s face when I’d confronted him about the murders. Of the glacial coldness, so at odds with the man I’d come to know.
I chewed on the inside of my lip.
Aric was a popular vamp with a reputation to uphold. But just how far was he truly willing to go to protect that charmer smile of his?
Grunting, I shifted in the chair as much as the cuffs allowed.
Okay, sure, it was a possibility Aric was behind this. But if he wanted to kill me, wouldn’t it have been easier to just do it on the street when I’d been down for the count? Why kidnap me and bring me here?
Besides, where the fuck could he have gotten a witch to smack me unconscious on such short notice?
Unless… Unless he’d had some sort of bottled spell on him.
That would certainly solve the whole spur-of-the-moment scenario, even if it did imply a level of pre-meditation I wasn’t quite convinced I was buying into. Aric hadn’t expected me to bump into him. That much, at least, felt like fact.
Then there was Finn to consider. He knew I’d been with Aric. If I’d wound up as a corpse buried somewhere in the woods, Finn would have torn Aric apart in his search for the truth.
No, if Aric wanted to silence me, gaining that kind of attention wouldn’t serve him at all.