The corner of his mouth slid upward in a sly smirk. “Connection, it sounds so… cold.” He didn’t believe for a minute she’d allow anything to happen to him. Not yet at least. “You’re putting up a good front, My Lisbeth. My brave, brave, Lisbeth.”
The use of her old name, the name only he used for her, plucked at her heartstrings.
“Please, Grayson.” Now the desperation was in her voice. “I’m doing my best. This is not easy and I must take it seriously.”
“Still the witch who won’t give up.” He closed his eyes recalling how much he loved her for this. “You have no idea how much I’ve missed you.” His simmering gaze flamed out to her, his refusal to give up ever present. “Our reunion will be most, intoxicating.”
Her breath hitched at the very idea. As when she’d first met him, horrified with herself for her body betraying her mind. Common sense discounted over hormones. And memories.
“You killed people, Grayson. I think, many people. Innocent people. I can’t…” she stopped, no idea where to go with this. “Please, just tell me about the curse.”
“Did you even miss me at all?” His confidence level didn’t lower at all.
“Of course I missed you, Grayson,” she snapped breathlessly. It was apparent they’d not get far unless they talked about them first. “I missed you every single second, of every single minute, of my confinement in that ghastly form. I mourned you. And missed you. And thought you dead.”
“Obviously…” his nose turned up at the scent still lingering on her. Only a hint of the wolf remained, but it was enough to displease the vampire.
“Okay, look, Grayson. This is hard. For both of us. We both went through a living nightmare. And I honestly have no idea what the future holds for either of us, but it starts with you telling me about the curse. You said twice, we don’t have much time. Why is that?”
He nodded, squirming a bit against his bonds. He didn’t bother asking her to loosen them, there was no point. His bride was stubborn. And good. And would take no chances.
“Charlotte Howard… she was angry when I refused to turn her into a vampire. Angry when I would not fall for her after your death, and furious when I blamed her for your death and swore vengeance on her.”
“I assume you mean by swearing to never give her what she wanted, and turn her?”
“Yes.” He smiled a little. “Even after all these years, you know how I think.”
“I like to think we knew each other well. We were engaged after all.”
“Are,” Grayson corrected.
She did not respond to that. “Continue.”
“I thought she killed you, Lisbeth. I thought she took your life, and she did in the most brutal way possible. But I had no idea.” He hissed, furious at the memory. “Death would have been tragic enough, but what she did to you…” Pain etched his words. Pain that had been carving itself a permanent home for these last couple hundred years.
Lizzy wanted to offer comfort but did not dare move from her chair.
“Charlotte tried, oh so very hard, to force my hand. To trick me into turning her.”
“You did not,” Lizzy stated with fondness. This was a fact that had gotten her through so many long years in her ghasted form. That Grayson had loved her and not betrayed her.
“I saw her trickery. Her deceit. So I refused her. If I’d known what she did to you, what she would do to me for denying her.” His head dropped, the conversation weighting him. The werewolf blood tiring him faster than normal.
Unconsciously, Lizzy had inched her chair forward ever so little and leaned back purposely so as not to keep doing that. She needed distance and focus as Grayson explained how he still lived, and how he’d been cursed.
“Charlotte was cunning,” the vampire explained. Lizzy lifted a brow as in, yes, she was. “The bitch knew. She knew what I’d do once I confirmed your death and she failed at forcing me love her, instead of you.”
Lizzy waited for him to explain.
“Do you remember, My Lisbeth… do you remember when I told you I love you more than my own life. That your lips were the only lips I’d ever kiss. Your body, the only mine would ever love. That you owned my very soul, whatever that is for my kind.”
Lizzy held her breath. Each word he’d ever said to her engraved into memories that were suddenly fresh and cutting. Not events that had happened hundreds of years before.
“I do remember, Grayson. Although sadly, I didn’t fully believe all you said.” She shook her head. “I believed you, I just didn’t fully see the reality. I guess I was more naïve than I thought back then.”
“Time has changed you some. You’re a little more hardened in some places. Softer in others. But it’s still you. And I still lo…” Lizzy cut him off.
“Please don’t say that. I can’t hear it. Not today.”
There was a drunken smirk on his face. Because you want me to say it and can’t admit it yet. He would win this battle. Win her back. Lizzy belonged to him.
“Once I thought you dead,” he started up again with an inhale, “I could not bear the thought of an eternity without you. I’d already decided if you didn’t ever want to be turned into a vampire I would die with you. Whenever that moment came. A vampire who finds his true love cannot live without it. To do so even a day is like a century of hell. And Charlotte knew this. So clever that one. So very fucking clever.”
“That’s how she cursed you, isn’t it?” confirmed Lizzy, her voice weak. “She knew you’d try to kill yourself?” The idea that he loved her so much he’d take his own life moved her, so very close to tears, but she refused her body’s attempt to cry. Not now.
Grayson nodded. His gaze penetrating hers, drawing her in. Savoring the shortened distance between them as Lizzy unconsciously moved closer again. For a long quiet moment, he looked contented to sit, and drink her in. Or maybe it was just the werewolf blood keeping him reduced to this placid façade.
“You’re upset,” he said softly. “And still don’t like to cry in front of anyone.”
“That has not changed. Although it has been more difficult since I came back to life. I want to… feel. Everything.”
“It’s me, Lisbeth. There is no need to hold back.”
“I can’t, Grayson.”
Not now, or not ever?
Was there any chance of them having a future together?
The vampire held firm there was. His assuredness of this shown through any sluggishness of the werewolf blood.
“How did she do it?” Lizzy prompted, clearing her throat.
Grayson’s head tipped forward, his eyes straight on her.
“I burned. The agony nothing to the thought of living without you. And when all that was left of me was ash, I was done. Floating out to sea. The beyond. Heading to whatever afterlife there is for my kind. Any hell was better than living on this earth without you. Except I never made it.”
Lizzy rubbed her hands together a chill biting her skin.
She owed Grayson for his suffering. So much loyalty to her.
How much did she owe him though?
Even with all these memories returning like fresh wounds, there was no way to determine their worth. Her heart twisted, tearing a little more. The pull of her old love yanking her farther from her new love: the werewolf currently hiding out on his boat somewhere off the coast of The Demon Isle.
“And then it happened. The curse,” Grayson brought her back. “Charlotte used magic to collect my ashes and rebind my body back together. It took months to heal, fully. She fed me from her own vein, but only enough to heal. Never enough to get strong. She kept me weak and locked up, with no chance of escape. Not so unlike now.”
Another flash of guilt hit Lizzy, but she reminded herself this Grayson was not the same as the man she’d loved so long ago. Currently, whether by his choice or not, he was a killer.
“You’re right to do so,” he marveled with a weak grin. “Yes, I too can still figure out what you’re thinking. Don�
�t forget our bond, Lizzy. It’s broken, but when I’m strong again, when we are strong again, I’ll be in your mind just like before.”
A vampire ability that required an intimate connection. Like William did with Melinda when he slipped into her mind. She had told Lizzy everything she’d shared with Charlie over the last few days, all the things she’d kept secret over the summer. While they worked on potions and other lessons and tasks. Melinda needed a clean slate, and she’d also filled in a lot of blanks in things Lizzy had missed before getting back into her body, from many events over this summer and in previous years.
One of the biggest things to hit her of course, had been about Charlie. Actually, so many. And this frightened her a little, her thinking. Partly because of what Grayson just reminded her of. If they reformed a bond he’d be able to slip into her mind and see everything. Regardless of her choosing Grayson or Charlie, she would never purposely betray Charlie or anything he or his family had ever shared with her. And trusting Grayson with these secrets wasn’t something she was comfortable with. Yet. They’d just have to keep him weakened until she sorted this out.
Lizzy had been thinking a lot since falling for Charlie, just what his wolf bite would do to her. What it meant to be a werewolf. Or a werewolf mother. Or wife. Would she be giving up independence? Not that she did not trust Charlie with this, but it was something to consider. And she had thought that perhaps, like Charlie, she might be able to hold off the transformation. But as it turns out that would be unlikely as Charlie’s was only prolonged by the fact that Eva had bitten him while in her shifter form, not her true werewolf form. Which weakened the power of the bite enough for him to have some measure of control.
This would not be the case if he bit her since he was not a shapeshifter, but pure werewolf. And the transformation would need to happen before she got pregnant, it was safer that way. She shook her head; babies were a topic she didn’t have the luxury to think about today. So off subject.
“I wish I knew where your mind was this very minute,” Grayson broke in.
He so did not. “I guess we can’t read all of each other’s thoughts.” Thank God.
“I imagine I can guess.”
“Let’s not, and how about you finish telling me about the curse.”
He leaned his head back sucking in the lovely scent of her. Just being this close gave him the strength to go on.
“Charlotte was working on a way to force me to change her. She had my blood in her, but she needed me to bite her and drink her blood. She planned on killing herself as she didn’t trust me to do that for her. I might have taken it too far and left her for dead… really fucking dead. No coming back a vampire. But secretly, I was getting stronger than she realized. I drank off rodents that snuck into my cell. Not tasty in the least and not nearly as potent as human blood, but over time, enough to give me an edge.”
“You escaped?” assumed Lizzy.
“Yes. And oh was Charlotte furious. And I… a fool.”
Lizzy narrowed her gaze in question.
“She’d warned me if I escaped and left the Isle, I’d be cursed. I did not listen, thinking she was just trying to frighten me into giving her what she wanted. I think back now to have done it. Given her the immortality she sought. None of this would have happened and you and me, we would have been… happy. And she would have moved on from us.”
“I asked you not to. When I found out what she wanted. I asked you not to because I didn’t want her blood to tempt you.”
“And I went and lost my control anyway, and bit you.”
One of the most erotic things Lizzy had ever experienced, but she refused to linger in that memory.
“You’d done so well, Grayson. It had been over a year without human blood. Plus, the very idea she wanted to be a vampire confused me to no end. And I’m sorry, because you know how much I did not care you were a vampire, but in my heart of hearts I was not prepared for that outcome. I wanted to remain a witch. However, Charlotte as a vampire, she would have taken innocent lives.”
“Yes. I can guarantee that.”
“Don’t blame yourself for not giving in to her. You did it for me, Grayson.”
More worth she could not calculate the cost of, but the amount was climbing.
“And I can do it all again if you help me, Lisbeth. I don’t want to be the monster. I never did.”
She took a moment. Imagining her Grayson back. Somehow putting these deaths behind them… a second chance. Did she want it? Was it even possible?
“So what exactly did Charlotte do to you? How do we lift the curse? Why did you not return to the Isle after you escaped, or after Charlotte died? Why only now, are you returning and seeking out my help?”
“Because, when you freed yourself, you freed me. In part…”
It made sense if his curse was tied to her own.
“My Lisbeth, oh My Lisbeth. I was not aware of your condition when she first took my ashes and brought me back. Her curse forced me to exist in this world without you, a monster once again.”
“So the curse is why you’re feeding off humans again?” She needed to hear him say this was the reason. That it was in no way his choice.
“It’s the curse. Only the curse. I never wanted to defile your memory with such treachery. Charlotte made it so once I’d left the Isle, I was banned from ever returning. It’s a vexing mystery how she accomplished such things…”
Lizzy guessed it was extremely dark and powerful magic. Maybe even something to do with why Charlotte had fed him her own blood to heal him. Not just that she was trying to control his strength, or needed his blood inside her so when she died she’d become a vampire. But dark magic often required blood.
“The moment I was on the mainland, free of The Demon Isle, it all hit me,” Grayson continued. “Like some magical veil lifted out of my mind. Every horrid detail of what had been done to you. That you were a prisoner on the Isle. Not dead, merely a spirit without a body. Immediately I tried to return, my plan to do anything and everything necessary to free you. But alas, I was no longer permitted to step foot on the Isle. No matter how hard I tried. She’d forever split us apart. Charlotte made it so I was not even capable of speaking of it to another soul. Not even a way to send someone else in my place. And then… the thirst hit me…”
“You lived all this time with the knowledge of what happened to me?” Lizzy feared she might vomit. God, Grayson had suffered. Regardless of the deaths he’d caused, he did suffer as she had. Maybe more so as he knew the truth and was helpless to do anything about it.
“The truth is a pain unlike any other I have ever survived. It has nearly driven me to madness. I’ve come to believe I never truly escaped anything. Hell has followed me since the day you vanished.”
“Charlotte let you escape, didn’t she?”
“Hell hath no fury like a crazy-ass bitch scorned,” he returned in flat animosity. “I’m sure she meant me to suffer for spurning her advances and refusing to turn her.”
“It does appear that way. So why were you able to return to the Isle? What changed?”
“I didn’t understand what changed at first. Something was… different. Sadly, it took me weeks to figure it out. The magical block Charlotte put inside me, that’s the best way I can describe it, this block, lifted. It wasn’t until I accidentally spoke of you, and the Isle, that is struck me. You were free. And I was able to return at last.”
“Because you could speak of it when before you could not.” Lizzy nodded in comprehension. Her mind flew through many thoughts, spanning all the years of her ghastly imprisonment. Imagining if she’d known Grayson was alive out there somewhere and being unable to reach out to him in any way.
The horror of this broke her heart.
She really had been much more naïve in her previous life.
How did she miss the true depths of evil Charlotte carried inside her? Was it because she carried the last name of Howard, it was easily overlooked or excused? Or perhaps it was t
hat seeing such evil as real, was too much to accept as real?
Her memories of that time were a little fuzzy in some spots. But she’d missed so much. Everyone had. And after Charlotte failed at this task of becoming a vampire and remained human, she’d lived out her life on the Isle. No one ever truly knew the depths of her evil. She hid it well.
Lizzy had never been more satisfied with a death than Charlotte Howard’s final breath. Although it had not led to her freedom as she’d hoped. Only more years of captivity thanks to her own despicable family who got addicted to dark magic.
“Okay, Grayson. I think I’m getting the overall picture of what happened and all you’ve gone through.” She kept her voice calm, while inside she was anything but. “How do we stop you from killing again? I’m assuming it’s the last part of the curse we need to break, and then you’re free of it all?”
“Yes. It’s the last string that needs to break. When your curse broke, the magic keeping me off the Isle broke too. At last, I was able to come and find you. Charlotte, dear fucking Charlotte. She planned for every eventuality like she saw into our futures.”
Lizzy’s eyed widened for a moment. Wondering… it wasn’t common knowledge that Charlotte had this magical gift. But it made sense she might have. How she so easily gained the upper hand and planned for things and futures not so easily guessed.
“You think she did,” Grayson realized aloud. “My mind is already more in tune with yours.”
Lizzy squirmed a little at that. “It would explain a lot if she did. But I don’t know this to be true. It’s possible perhaps, if it became public knowledge, it might have been recorded in some of the Howard history. I suppose it doesn’t matter now though. Only getting you free of this curse.”
He let out a languid sigh. “When I first left the Isle, the thirst hit me. So hard it burned. And I grew weak. So very weak. Not just physically, but inside my mind. She did something that made me crave human blood more so than ever before. And only blood of the living would heal the burn. But I needed to live. So one day I might find a way to free you from your suffering, Lisbeth. It was worth all the lives I took…”
Hexed and Dangerous (The Wicked Witch of Future Past) (A Wicked Good Witches Paranormal Romance Book 9) Page 7