Hannah lifted her chin, giving her an air of stubborn defiance. “He saved my life. Twice.”
“He’s also fifteen years older than you.” Roy’s glare transferred to Dante. “Hero worship isn’t a healthy way to start a relationship.”
My sister narrowed her eyes. “I don’t need your permission. I’m twenty years old.”
Dante, who’d been silent, cleared his throat and leaned back in his chair. He slung an arm around Hannah’s shoulders to pull her close. “Sir, I care about your niece a great deal.”
“You care about her.” On the walls, the hand-painted portraits of people none of us knew vibrated from Roy’s growing agitation. When you pissed off a wizard, the best idea was to run. My uncle rubbed the center of his chest and continued. “If you cared, you wouldn’t be rushing a relationship with a girl who’s gone through a severe mental and physical trauma.”
God, this talk sounded so familiar.
“This should be good. Just like old times, eh?” Julian whispered into my ear, obviously remembering when we were at the receiving end of this parental talk.
At the sound of Julian’s voice, Roy whipped his head in our direction. He speared me with a sharp look and I snapped my mouth shut. He allotted one second to scowl at Julian before returning hot eyes to me.
“Did you know about this?” He stopped rubbing his chest and kneaded his fingers into his left arm as if it hurt.
Had he been injured? My uncle’s heartbeat thundered—the familiar lubb-dupp sound of his heart murmur unmistakable. The beat seemed…off. Too fast, kind of irregular, even for him.
When I didn’t respond, Julian elbowed me in the side.
“Ouch.” I rubbed my ribs and faced my uncle’s wrath. “That they were moving in together? No, but I figured as much. She’s been spending every night with him. Roy, are you okay?”
Beads of sweat gathered at his temples. He coughed, didn’t answer my question and transferred his ire back to Hannah. “So you’re engaged in a sexual relationship with a man who is practically old enough to be your father.”
My sister’s cheeks flamed bright red, a shade remarkably similar to her dress.
Roy made a pained sound in the back of his throat and I took a step forward. “Roy?”
“Wh-at?” he gurgled. “Hannah—Hannah, she…grr…” His jumbled sentence trailed off and he clutched his chest, his fingers whitening where he fisted fabric.
His face, shiny with moisture, paled. His once-racing heart stopped. Before I could cross the room, Roy pitched to the side and fell to the gleaming hardwood floor with a thud.
“Roy!” Hannah screamed and shoved away from the table, her chair skittering back hard enough to crash into the layered stone hearth behind her.
“Call 9-1-1,” I instructed, my raised voice bringing the thundering din of pounding feet. The Fenrir.
I collapsed at Roy’s side, just as Hannah did.
“His heart isn’t beating.” My words were panicked and breathy. Tears spilled over my cheeks in fat drops, splattering Roy’s charcoal dress shirt. I looked helplessly to my sister. “What do we do?”
“CPR.” Hannah laced her fingers together and pushed down on his rib cage in slow, even pumps.
“Aren’t you supposed to breathe into his mouth or something?”
My sister shook her head on a sob and kept pumping. “That’s the old way.” As she spoke, she pushed on his chest with her laced fingers.
I held my breath and clutched Roy’s hand to my cheek. Everything faded in those few minutes. I heard nothing, felt nothing. There was no Micah. No Julian. No trial. No issues. Only pure heartbreak. The little girl who’d suffered the loss of both her parents surfaced.
“Don’t leave us,” I whispered.
Hannah continued her diligent attempt at CPR. The scents I’d walked into faded until the only thing I could smell was the salt from our tears, from the sweat lingering on my uncle’s chilling skin.
And then I heard it. Thud. Thud. Thud. Faint at first, and then stronger, my acute hearing grabbed on to the subtle beating of his heart. Oh my god. The pulse gained strength and the other sounds of the room came rushing at me.
“It’s working,” I cried and bent over him to stroke his sweaty head.
Roy’s lips parted as he sucked in a breath, lines of pain deepening the wrinkles around his mouth. His eyelids fluttered, showing the whites beneath.
I focused on my uncle—put my hand over the one he had twitching against his chest. “Talk to us, Roy,” I pleaded.
“I, lo—” he gasped as if he was having trouble catching his breath. “Love you. Hannah too. You girls…best thing. Take care of each other.”
Hot moisture pooled in my eyes, blurring my uncle from my sight. I swiped my cheeks, blinked as many tears free as I could. “Don’t you dare leave us. Do you hear me? Stay with us, help is coming. Just hold on.”
“Richard.” Roy’s face twisted with pain and he turned to look at me fully.
In the background—over Hannah’s sobs—Dante’s low, rumbling voice sounded and it took me a few moments to realize he was on the phone. “He kept rubbing his arm before he collapsed. His speech is broken up but he’s conscious now.”
“Shush.” I tried to soothe my uncle, who struggled to get more words out.
“Don’t. Understand.” His words were broken, hard to make out. “Black market. Laminas Animarum.”
Was that even English?
“He bought one. The trial…” Roy’s eyes rolled into the back of his head. His arm jerked, then his leg. His back bowed up as he convulsed and flopped on the floor.
I clutched him close, pinning him down to keep him from hurting himself. He stilled, the life draining from his body. The minutes after passed in a crazy blur. Hannah and I sat at Roy’s side, silent, each of us gripping his hand as if our mere presence could keep him alive. Dante had found some aspirin in one of the downstairs bathrooms and forced it in his mouth.
The paramedics spilled into the house and shoved us out of the way. Someone—Julian—lifted my limp body from the floor and held me close while the uniformed men ripped open my uncle’s shirt and worked to stabilize him. My harem of elite wolves—their lethal vibe barely masked under their human façades—stood guard around the room as if one of the medics was going to try to take off my head at any moment.
“We gotta get him to the hospital for an EKG—we’ve got room for one rider, decide which one is coming with.”
“Me,” I said automatically.
I didn’t notice Julian’s absence until he was at my side holding a pair of flat tennis shoes and a hooded cotton sweatshirt. Clothes. In a trance, I pulled on the hoodie over my sports bra and followed the paramedics to the ambulance.
Outside, the cold night air slapped me in the face. Wind whistled through the trees surrounding the house and my shoes slipped on the light dusting of snow coating the gravel driveway. I shivered and shoved my hands into the front pocket of my sweatshirt. Red flashing lights cut through the darkness. I climbed inside and sat on the cold, hard bench seat. I met Hannah and Dante’s gazes through the open double doors where they stood huddled together.
“We’ll follow behind,” Dante assured me.
The doors snapped closed. Visible through the narrow windows, Dante urged Hannah to his truck while Eiven dipped his head to listen to something Julian said.
A groan from my uncle drew my attention to the gurney. That’s when it hit me. The closed-in space smelled of disinfectant, but under the chemical smell was blood.
So much blood…
Chapter Four
I tightened my grip on the steering wheel and stared out the windshield. The run-down bar I’d been frequenting for the last two weeks wasn’t clean or classy. The music was crap. The bathroom smelled like piss and there was a nicotine film coating the windows so you couldn’t see in or out.
Its only redeeming feature was its proximity to the house and that no one knew who the fuck I was in there. I wasn
’t—according to rumors—the exiled hunter who’d sold my soul to become a blood whore.
The neon affixed to the roof flashed, shining an eerie blue light over the gnarled wood slabs that made up the walls of Stew’s. Motorcycles lined one side of the parking lot. Rusty, mud-splattered pickup trucks the other. Twangy riffs of country music emanated from inside and increased my irritation. I tweaked the volume on the car’s stereo, drowning out everything except my racing heart.
Where the sign’s illumination failed to penetrate, darkness closed in, secluding the building and its inhabitants. Shadows danced through the trees and I focused on them instead of on the tight fist squeezing my chest. I could actually feel the bond between Ella and me stretched to its limit, as if it were on some giant rubber band. At any second, I expected the cord to snap and cut me in half.
I rubbed my sternum and tried to force away the sensations. Ten minutes ago, my Ella withdrawals had reached their peak. I could barely function through the impulse to turn around and seek her out.
“Are we going to sit here all night or are we actually going to go inside?” Eli asked.
“Fuck off.”
Pain tightened my chest and I gripped the steering wheel hard enough to crack plastic. Sweat gathered, steamed. The demon thrashed inside me, a restless pacing that had my skin tingling.
She needs you.
The hell she did. If Ella wanted to be an irrational bitch, fine. I’d give her some space to calm down and come to her senses. If she needed me, she could call.
Eli reached for the radio controls and I slapped his hand away before he could touch the console. The chaotic electric noise of heavy metal blaring from the speakers inside the car was the only thing keeping me sane.
“Touch it and I’ll break your fingers.”
“You’re in a pissy mood.” He pulled out a silver flask from the back pocket of his jeans.
The moment he went to unscrew the cap, I slapped the steel container out of his hand and sent it thudding to the floorboard. Eli glared, the metallic sheen in his amber eyes creeping me the fuck out.
Hard to reconcile the little boy I’d grown up with to the man who now sat beside me. Energy poured off him, filling the interior with the neck-ruffling sensation I’d trained my entire life to eradicate.
“Dude,” Eli growled.
“I need you clearheaded tonight, not drunk and on the prowl for pussy. That shit’s gotta stop. Next time you show up at Dante’s shitfaced, he’s going to lay you out on your ass. Don’t fuck with him.”
Eli clenched his jaw and sat back in the seat. The wolf trapped inside him practically vibrated. In one of my brother’s three-day benders, he’d confessed he drank to drown out the sensations. He fucked to get rid of the tension. Neither were good long-term solutions.
He’d been forever changed, just like me.
Go to her…
I fought my instincts and reached for the keys dangling from the ignition. I turned off the motor before I lost my self-control and sought Ella out. I was seconds from starting up the GTO and speeding back to the house.
“Did you give Castro an answer yet?” I asked and squeezed my eyes closed.
Images of my blue-eyed brunette danced through my head. The curve of her jaw, the line of her throat. The way her chest flushed and her rosy nipples puckered when she came unglued at my touch. Jesus, I could practically feel her wet heat sucking me in, milking me dry. My dick sprang to attention and I wished I’d taken a moment to jack off to help alleviate the ache.
Eli’s voice shattered my fantasy. “No.”
“You give Eiven an answer yet?” I asked.
“No.”
I turned my head and stared at my brother. “Did you do anything?”
“I didn’t piss off my girlfriend by lying to her.”
I narrowed my eyes. “You’re a real relationship expert yourself. How did things go with Hannah when you showed up at Dante’s shitfaced and covered in blood? Did she know you’d just banged two chicks in the backseat of a pickup?”
He cracked his knuckles, the subtle popping a warning. I was going to be pissed if he shifted inside my car.
“I’m not talking about Hannah. And I warned you about Ella. You didn’t listen. Did she take off your balls? Is that why you’re in such a crap mood? She looked like she was going to murder you.”
I forced my next words out. “She thinks I fucked someone else.”
Eli stared at me for two seconds and then burst out laughing. In fact, he doubled over with laughter. I didn’t find it funny. At all.
“Right. Not finding the humor in this.”
He slapped the dash, sending a swarm of dust mites into the air. “That’s the funniest thing I’ve ever heard. Since the moment you laid eyes on her, you’ve been hung up. You’re the only guy I know who doesn’t check out other chicks. You don’t even look. Most people at least look—even if they aren’t interested. You just give them this death glare, kind of like the one you’re giving me now.”
Time to change the subject. “Tell me what you know about the Blade of Souls.”
He took out his phone and tapped a few buttons.
I eyed him suspiciously. “What are you doing?”
“Googling it.”
Becoming a werewolf had obviously killed several hundred brain cells. “I could have done that.”
He snorted. “No you couldn’t have.”
I scanned the surrounding area while Eli played on his phone and thought about going on a hunt instead of drinking my weight in liquor. Patrolling the grounds would have been the responsible thing to do.
“Huh,” Eli said and drew my attention. “It’s used to remove or return one’s soul.”
My skin went cold with a chill I hadn’t felt since the night Ella phazed herself between Julian and me seconds before I plunged the stake into her shoulder. What in the hell would Richard want with a weapon like that?
I scratched the scruff on my jaw, the rasp surprisingly loud amidst the blaring music.
“What else does it say?”
He swiped his finger on the screen and read silently. “If this is accurate, not a lot. Says there are two blades in existence, both made of obsidian. Blah, blah, blah.” He swiped at the screen again. “Looks like there are quite a few replicas crafted by witches and wizards who sell them on the black market.” Eli looked up. “Why are you asking about this?”
“Castro told me there was a rumor that Richard bought one. I don’t know if his is authentic or not, or if I was just fed a line of bullshit. What would he gain from removing someone’s soul? Wouldn’t you die once your soul was removed?”
Eli ran a hand over the short, buzzed strands of his hair until he cupped the back of his neck. “No, not necessarily. If something else was animating your body you wouldn’t die—or should I say, cease to exist.”
I frowned at him. “Define ‘something else’?”
“Say a demon for example.”
I swallowed past my disgust. “If Richard stabbed me with that thing and removed my soul, what would happen?”
“Best guess? The demon would take full control and do whatever it wanted without regard for anything else. Take red-eyed vampires, for example. Hunger for blood drives their every action. Nothing else matters except sating that one particular need. Women. Children. Animals. They don’t care who they get blood from, just that they get it. They take and leave an empty shell behind.”
“So you think without a soul, I’d go all evil and give into my base urges?”
Eli shrugged. “Aren’t those the types of demons and vampires we’ve been putting down all these years? Soulless for one reason or another? The difference between the demons who live at the Vault and the hell-raisers? Take human serial killers and compare them against agency hunters? Both kill. One does it out of pleasure, the other to protect.”
Protect. At least that was the excuse they’d given us. But I’d always differed from the other agency hunters. I understood and question
ed the difference between malevolent and benevolent, always had. I ruthlessly put down those who deserved it and had no qualms about looking away from the ones who went about their business in peace.
I ran a hand through my hair and returned my stare to the bar through the windshield. The knot in my stomach was a hard ball of fire. Was it even safe for me to be among humans?
“I didn’t tell Ella I planned on killing Richard.”
Eli reached to the floorboard and found his flask. He unscrewed the cap and took a long swallow. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “You wouldn’t have done it.”
Second person who’s said that to me. Do they not know me at all?
When he handed me the flask, I took it. The whiskey burned on the way down and I welcomed the sensation. “If it had been the only way, I would have. Castro told me not to touch him.”
“Listen to him. We know where Mom is—we’ve got an alternative.” Eli glanced out the window. “Why are we here, Micah?”
“Because I wasn’t in the mood to sit down to a family dinner and pretend like everything was going to be okay when in reality we’re all fucked. Ella’s got that fucking party thing with Julian and then there’s the trial. The vampires are revolting, the death count is rising and Ella is still petrified of killing anything—afraid it’ll turn her into Lizbeth.”
“Doesn’t help you’ve been ignoring her. Or that you’ve been lying to her.”
“I haven’t been ignoring her.”
Eli lifted an eyebrow.
“You know what happens when we fuck—we see into each other’s heads. I’m trying to protect her, to step up and be what she needs. That meant keeping my dick in my pants.”
Eli snatched the flask from me and drank deep, his Adam’s apple rising and falling with each swallow. “You see Hannah tonight?”
Pain flashed in my brother’s eyes, a touch of vulnerability that reminded me of the little boy I’d grown up protecting and sheltering from Richard’s moods.
“I saw her,” I said after a minute. “Also saw Dante with his tongue down her throat and his hand on her ass.”
Dark Secrets Page 5