by Kaia Bennett
The dry taste of the truth coated my mouth, chased by the flavor I’d recognized but couldn’t name until now. Guilt. Evie felt this, not me, but I understood now, the twisted logic of this mixed-blood creature I’d made. She wanted nothing more than to feed and fuck. She wanted to hunt like I did, but in order to do so, she had to become me. She had to hurt people who reminded her of the girl I’d killed. She could’ve played at predator before, twisted my mind around to feel what she felt. She could’ve made me deny my nature. She couldn’t deny her own. Not now that I’d turned her.
I swallowed the same fire that burned in my chest when I stroked my hand through Liam’s curls, down his neck.
Only Evie’s heaving breaths broke the silence.
“I confess.” I stared at a space on the floor, a knot of wood not far from the splintered edge I might’ve plunged into Evie’s heart to stall her attack. I imagined swirling my fingertip around that knot, the pattern spiraling like the stars above me in the vision of the past. “I openly confess that I stumbled onto a witch in the woods three weeks ago. I would’ve killed her, but she spoke to me in my mind. I decided to keep her. I raped her. I killed prey in front of her—”
“People.” Her voice shook with venom. She’d broken free of her self-pitying trance. “You killed innocent people—”
“I shared her with my brothers. I made her kill prey like one of us. I made her comfort me when I had to lay my brother to rest. On my father’s orders, I killed her. I went against my own wishes to keep her and maybe even set her free one day. Before I killed her, I selfishly claimed the last of her.”
I looked up and coughed, a wet cough that echoed Liam’s when he succumbed to V-Sep. I met Masilda’s thoughtful eyes, and then Evie’s.
“I hurt you, and I don’t know if I’m sorry. I don’t know if it’s possible for my kind to be sorry for the pain we cause. I’m a killer, a predator. I told you this from the start. But, I can respect another predator when I see one. I can admit that you’ve won.”
Then I reclined, gave into my bone-deep weariness, and closed my eyes. “I submit to your will, witch. Do what you want with me. It’s your choice what happens to us now.”
She stomped out of the caravan, and I sighed as Masilda raced through the door. Screams reverberated in the open space beyond my door, obliterating Masilda’s concerned call for Evie to return. Why did the sound of Evie crying make me think of Liam? Why did I feel broken too?
Probably because I’m still fucking starving.
She hadn’t killed me outright, but that didn’t mean she’d feed. My confession didn’t do shit but give me a first-class ticket to the starting line of this curse.
I’m gonna die here and my father will never know why. He’ll never know that I saw first-hand how he built his territory. That I know everything.
My phone could be tracked, even if I couldn’t make a phone call caught between worlds. I doubted Vaughn could escape the coven alive if I died, but maybe Cai and my father would crack the code. My father had only one heir and a vicious temper. I’d have to take solace in my assurance of the carnage he’d reap when he figured out how to breech these gates.
“Evie.” Masilda’s voice cracked. “Please. Let me help you.”
Evie’s footsteps hesitated by the doorway.
“I should’ve stayed dead.” I imagined her sobs were muffled by the priestess taking Evie into her arms. “I don’t want to hurt anyone. I want to go home. I want to go back to the way I used to be! If I could just be who I was again, I wouldn’t take my abilities for granted.”
I didn’t open my eyes. I wiped a stray tear away, her influence penetrating the now-permeable walls of my strength. Death makes prey of us all, my father once said to me. That’s why our people live so long. We’re the strongest. Only death can master us.
You were only half right, father. Death, and the anguish of a witch, had mastered me.
“We can only visit the past, Evie. We can’t live there. My concern is the here and now, making sure you get through this. Let me help you.” Masilda’s soothing whisper faded in and out. “You’ll feel better after you feed, Evie. I promise.”
When Evie stepped through the door, I marveled that my galloping heart didn’t draw out her fangs. She didn’t speak and averted her red eyes with a sniffle of resignation.
“Give him a small taste of your blood first, to cleanse the palate and the wound. He won’t be able to taste my blood until he tastes yours. Then, you both feed from me.” Evie knelt by the bed to follow Masilda’s command. My fangs extended at the scent of her. Salt tears and the thrum of the artery in her throat were so close I could lick the flavors from the air.
“What makes you think you’ll be enough for two starving vampires, priestess?”
I cracked my eyes open and found Masilda standing to the side. She smirked at my question. “Experience and fifty years of carefully cultivated power.” She swept her sandy hair up into a bun, smoothing the creamy expanse of her throat.
I recalled Evie laying on a gurney, my blood flowing in her mouth, my fury at her betrayal seeping out like a dark cloud from my pores. She’d become me now. I’d become her. She lay her bare wrist against my lips, the skin still whole. Underneath, the pumping drug of my choice rushed.
“Hurry up.” Her command was like a punch behind her teeth. “Drink.”
Her teeth clenched even as my own separated. She wanted distance, so she’d offered me her wrist.
You can have all the space you want, witch. You still can’t escape this.
I opened wide and slid my fangs into her wrist, gentle as a teasing kiss. She exhaled and bit her lip just as her blood splashed against my tongue.
I wanted to fuck. My cock sizzled with the need to plunge into soft flesh. Her pulse sped and her needy musk dizzied me. I contented myself with wringing my fingers in the sheets to keep from grabbing her and my hips pumped as vigor returned to my flaccid cock and veins. She tasted like things I’d never tasted.
I’d once destroyed a wine cellar, while stalking its owner. I knew now why the plump chef hadn’t cried until I shattered a bottle of her prized Bordeaux, because that taste shimmered on my tongue. Wasting such a delicacy now seemed an unforgiveable crime, as the rich taste of Evie’s blood caressed my aching throat. She tasted like sensations I longed to experience again, like open plains and endless massacres. She tasted like freedom and humans with drugs dancing in their veins. The most desirable vintage of witch, like the first gasping taste of life after death—
“That’s enough!”
She pulled her wrist away from my suckling mouth. I lifted my head from the pillow, tongue chasing her flavor and failing to catch the last drop.
Evie’s shudder rippled through me as she finally gave into her hunger. Grasping the older witch’s thigh, she caressed Masilda’s creamy throat with her nose. I waited with growing impatience, until the priestess breathed, “It’s okay. Drink.”
I battled my climax like a teenage human boy when Evie’s fangs sank deep into the priestess’s throat.
“Oh yes.” My sigh mingled with my mate’s surprised moan of pleasure. I didn’t realize I’d attacked the vein in Masilda’s wrist until the vicarious rush of blood became a real splash against my tongue.
The sweetness of Masilda’s blood cleaved through iron, snapping the chains in my mind like paper mache. No more ashes and death. The essence of life danced on my tongue. My heart abandoned the sluggish rhythm of death and pranced in time with Evie’s, like a stallion pacing beside a mare in season. The priestess moaned as we moaned, a conduit between our joint hungers. We drank deep and Evie’s hand found my thigh over the sheets, my cock. I sat up, sweeping a hand over Masilda’s breasts, and then Evie’s, grasping her face to pull her tighter to her meal.
I want you inside me, I need you inside me. I’m dying without your touch.
Evie yanked her fangs out of Masilda’s throat. She ran her hands through her hair and then stood, turning on her heel and ru
shing out of the caravan like a golden-brown streak. I closed my eyes and continued to drink from the priestess. Her heartbeat spiked as I palmed her breasts, imagining the soft mounds were Evie’s firm, larger pair.
“That’s enough, Jesse.” My fangs retracted at once and Masilda pushed my hand aside from her pebbled nipples. “I’m not the one you want.”
She wasn’t, but the priestess would’ve scratched the itch until I felt strong enough to subdue Evie. The younger witch had no leverage over me now that she’d finally fed.
“Not your first vampire, eh priestess?”
Masilda gave me a sweet smile. Her eyes twinkled with secrets. “You’re not my first vampire, and you’re not the first I’ll leave with an untended erection.”
She licked the smear of blood on her wrist and wiped her throat.
“You’ll live, Jesse. You can feed at will. I’ll send a donor before sunset to help get your strength back. You should be healthy in time for tomorrow night’s ritual, assuming you don’t get yourself cursed again in the meantime. Do us both a favor and don’t bother Evie until then. You almost didn’t make it through this encounter.”
The priestess closed the door behind her.
I ran my tongue over my lips and swallowed deep, shifting the sheets to grab my engorged cock. I tended my erection with a brutal fist, jerking as hard as I wished I could fuck.
Tiny quakes zinged through me, and an image of Evie’s impatient fingers penetrated my mind. Evie’s desperate pants, her fingers working hard against her clit in vicious circles. Our connection hadn’t been severed. Instead, the static of overwhelming hunger had cleared. I sensed her with clarity. She tried to replicate the surge of my cock by plunging two fingers into her cunt. Harder, faster, my mate and I raced in fantasy toward a true release.
Come spurted from my cock, nearly painting the curved boards overhead. Her face was so clear, I’d swear I felt her breath as she rode the wave of pleasure I sent, and the one she returned set my bedsprings singing.
I rubbed my release into my stomach and shuddered.
You should come here and let me fuck you to death. It’s the least I could do to say thanks.
I laughed at the spike of arousal, at her attempt to dim the connection. I fell asleep smiling, my hand around my cock, and plans to bend her to my will dancing like devils in my mind.
12
The following night, I followed Masilda and her lantern into the woods, trailing at her left side with Evie to her right. Vaughn had been relieved to be left out of this ritual. I wondered if he had Hannah weeping in these woods, bent over and clawing the ground with his fangs planted in her throat as he savaged her.
“I gave her some of my blood when we were done, but she left limping.” Vaughn had grinned, rubbing his drained cock with satisfaction. He looked more like himself instead of the irritable man-child I’d had to manage since arriving in Allamuchy.
I had the energy to be jealous when he described drinking from her thigh, making her come while she sobbed from the soreness in her cunt. He planned to fuck her ass tonight. I darted a glance at Evie and smiled when I found her already starting to shiver.
Just a matter of time, baby. I’m gonna give you what you’ve been begging for in that pretty head of yours.
She averted her gaze with a grimace and wrapped her arms around herself.
The mists flowed thick as they had at the gates, sweeping in dense coils. The spinning cloud formations parted before us like cool lace, revealing the path to the second rite. The route Masilda had taken to the circle had been a straight walk to the west. Now we climbed a low hill and veered east. I had trouble telling which way was up in these woods without catching glimpses of the stars.
We found ourselves in a new clearing with another circle of stones. This could’ve been identical to the first circle. Green grass grew within and the faint scent of spring summoned me. The vibrations in this clearing were different, though. As I got closer, I realized the stones held a chain of white feathers in place, circling the entire clearing like brilliant teeth.
We followed Masilda’s lead and stripped naked, laying our clothes aside. Evie tucked her hands under her arms and hid her breasts from view. The mist formed fingers that stroked her, setting a fine tremor over her skin. I wondered if she still felt temperature like a witch, or if her senses were fully vampire now. Masilda had mentioned her hungers straddling the line between human and my kind. So much about her and her new body remained unknown to me, and now that I could think of something other than hunger, I’d grown curious.
Maybe I should ask Masilda. Maybe she knows exactly what—
I shook my head. Silly. If all went according to plan I’d never need to find out the intricacies of Evie’s new nature. She’d be dead as soon as we were separated. I’d make sure of that this time.
A wolf howled, invisible behind a blanket of gray. More wolves followed suit, revealing themselves as guardians stationed around this circle.
“The first night, you bled. Tonight, you breathe.”
I frowned. Evie’s expression matched mine when I met her gaze.
Masilda took a deep breath and blew out a coil of white mist. She stepped into the circle with her lantern, the candle within flickering with every gust of wind. I expected her to sit in the center, heading up the north, but she didn’t. She sank to the ground, just inside the encircling stones, as close as she could get to the stones without touching. The priestess placed the lantern before her like a night watchman and summoned the mist to her like smoke.
She repeated the same ritual of the previous night, only this time she swept thickening mist over her eyes, ears, lips, breasts, and finally her womb.
“Enter the circle and stand in the center,” Masilda called.
Inside the circle time seemed to slow. Evie noticed too, she spun in slow motion to face me, her brow wrinkling. Masilda’s breaths vibrated through the night, sounding loud and isolated. Inhale. Exhale.
“I can’t lead you this time.” Masilda’s voice rang with power. Her eyes had gone white as bone. “But I will stand watch, and when the smoke clears, I’ll be here to light your way back.”
Inhale. Exhale. The mists thickened around us. I stared down, searching for Evie’s obscured legs. Masilda disappeared completely from view, and I realized the fog had taken on strange new life. Solidity bloomed in the wispy air, building into firmness where moments ago the swirling gray parted with sweep of a hand.
Inhale.
Exhale.
I held my breath, as if the act would halt the rising tide of gray. Panic shone in Evie’s eyes. She ran for the edge of the circle and cried out in shock. Misty hands pushed her away from the circle’s border. We were trapped together in this gray prison. When she tried to reach an arm through, to climb over the strange cage we’d walked into, she drew back her arm, shaking out the limb. “It’s freezing!”
She didn’t need to tell me. The cold seeped into my bones as if we shared the same arm. I rubbed life into my frigid joints, one glance at the mists crawling up my stomach making me recoil with terror.
“Evie!”
The mist began to swirl around our chests now, picking up speed. I called to her again. She hesitated.
“Come here!”
I held out my hand, shuddering at the chill in my marrow when the mist latched on.
With the force of a blunt object, she shoved a memory into my mind. She’d stared at me through a haze of fire and smoke in a junkyard weeks before, fighting my order to leave all of her worldly possessions behind. She entertained death, for just a moment, if only she could escape me.
The mist solidified, making only enough room now for me to reach for her over the surprising sturdiness of a gray edge. We might’ve been dumped into a teacup drowning us with dry ice as firm as our own bodies. Rising, rising to my collarbones, my Adam’s apple straining against an approaching chokehold of magick, I called out to her.
“Goddammit! Take my hand!”
&nbs
p; She jumped to see me over the rising gray tide of death. My teeth chattered in the cold as I battered my torso against the mist separating us. Extended to my limit, I skimmed the surface that would soon engulf my head, reaching for Evie’s outstretched hand. With a cry panic, she gripped my fingers and pulled.
The mists parted for us like cool air again the second we touched. We stumbled toward each other as if I’d imagined the density of our prison. Shock halted our embrace. But, the second we ceased to venture forward, the cloud forming around us thickened between our bodies again, pushing us apart. Was this punishment? Some twisted pop quiz neither of us knew the answer to? Uncertainty, and the chill, made me bare my fangs in fury.
“I’ve had it up to here with this fucking witch shit!”
I hauled Evie into my embrace, sensing the only way to keep the impenetrable air at bay was to leave no space between our bodies for the mist to penetrate. Every part of us had to be connected.
My lungs expanded with something sweeter than mountain air the closer she came to me. More essential than oxygen. I exhaled, and my mate sucked down a gulp of air as if she’d just surfaced after being held under water.
She pushed my chest away from hers, but every time mist pierced the space between us like chill fangs in a vulnerable vein. The suffocating magick returned. Where our skin touched, warmth radiated and dissipated the mists, like dew in sunshine. Sentient clouds swirled between our legs lifting our feet off the ground. Evie gasped. Tendrils of mist caressed her throat and lips. I saw flashes of water in my mind, the assault of liquid in her defenseless airways. I grabbed her jaw with a rough hand.
“Don’t look down. Look at me.”
She did so with fresh tears swimming in her brown eyes. We treaded air like water, and soon found the weight of this horrifying vapor lifting our chins like an angry teacher would a naughty child. I strained, trying to tip my head forward as the fog pried us apart like magnets. I sensed we had to resist the force—or drown.
Evie’s fingers tangled in my hair and pulled my head closer. I did the same with the curls springing down her shoulders, and vacuum-sealed my body to hers with a kiss. The mist tried to slip between us from the hips up. Evie wrapped her legs around me to deter our mindless opponent. We shared a breath. My exhalation, her inhalation.