Bad Blood

by Everly, Faith

  “I would’ve done it anyway.” When I rolled my eyes, he insisted, “If it meant protecting you? Yes. I could find another penthouse, Sophie. But there’s only one of you.”

  There I was, thinking at first he was dangerous because he might kill me.

  Now? It seemed more likely that I would die from melting over him. And it made absolutely no sense and I had no idea what my life was going to be when all was said and done, but I knew what I felt when he looked deep into my eyes and it wasn’t fear.

  He looked back toward the building. “I’ll have to find a new place, anyway. I can’t go back there now.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be. I was tired of the view. Maybe something on the river next time.” He stood up straight. “Come on. Let’s get moving.”

  “I wasn’t kidding about the whole magic thing, you know.” I made sure to whisper, just in case, though the only people in the park at this time on a Saturday morning were runners wearing earbuds, anyway.

  “I know. Only we can’t get there that way. Magda made sure to protect herself with countless layers of protective spells. It wouldn’t do for just anyone to be able to appear out of nowhere in the middle of her bedroom. We can get close, but I’d rather not suddenly vanish into thin air in the middle of a park where runners keep venturing past. And I couldn’t do it from the penthouse. Magda placed some strange spells on it when I first rented the place. She rarely ventures from her home, either, so whatever she did, she felt it was important. She masked it, for one thing, which was why your scent wasn’t a problem when we were there. No one from our bloodline would’ve been able to scent you while you were inside. Her spells also rendered me unable to transport from it. Only to it.”

  “Gotcha.”

  “No, I don’t think you do. Only she and I knew exactly where the penthouse was located, so no other vampires could transport themselves there. One has to know precisely where they’re going if they’re to use our rings properly. They might end up in the middle of nowhere otherwise. Yet if somebody found me there somehow, say by following me, she wanted to render them powerless against transporting away once they were inside. So they either had to escape on foot… or not.” His voice deepened in a dangerous way.

  “Something tells me you wouldn’t let anybody get away.”

  “You would be right about that. Until now, no one was ever able to track me there.”

  “You’re saying it’s my fault? Somebody had eyes on us, knew to look for me?” I must’ve glanced over my shoulder ten times before we even left the square. What did I expect to see? A massive wolf running straight at me?

  My heart almost jumped out of my chest when I saw an actual, honest-to-God wolf doing just that moments before we would’ve hit the sidewalk—then, the traffic beyond.

  “Gabriel!” I barely had time to gasp it before a blur flew toward the wolf and collided with it. It took a second for me to understand that it was Gabriel who’d thrown himself at the snarling lycan.

  I watched in horror as they rolled on the ground, the wolf snapping at Gabriel’s throat. Should I call out for help? Should I try to jump in somehow? No, if a vampire wasn’t strong enough to end things easily, what was I supposed to do?

  “Hey, what’s happening?” A pair of runners came sprinting across the grass when they saw the fight. “Fuck, it’s a rabid dog!”

  “No, no…” Shit, they’d call the police or animal control or somebody. This was falling apart. I had to do something, anything, to stop this.

  Gabriel let out a yelp that pierced my chest. He was wounded. There was blood on the wolf’s fur, on Gabriel’s leather jacket. The runners were in hysterics by now, one of them on his phone to call for help.

  “You don’t need to do that.” A familiar person appeared next to the men. “Put away your phone. Nothing is happening here. Run along now and forget all about it.”

  “Jessabelle?” I gasped. Never would I ever have imagined being happy to see her, but there were exceptions to every rule.

  I turned to the fight and found the wolf was outnumbered now. Dominic and Kristoff pried him off Gabriel and did one of their fast-moving numbers where they blurred in front of me. Soon there was a dead wolf on the ground.

  And a bleeding, unconscious Gabriel.

  * * *

  DOMINIC

  “Gabriel!”

  I couldn’t believe my eyes.

  She didn’t come to me or to Kristoff.

  She didn’t notice her best friend standing off to the side.

  All Sophie, my queen and my love, cared about was my brother. She fell to her knees next to him, taking his face between her hands. “Oh, my God, please. Don’t be dead.”

  Kristoff touched my shoulder. “I can take the lycan body to the river and come back.” He held up his ringed hand. I nodded, too distracted to care much where he disposed of the body. We’d already convinced a handful of police officers to ignore the gunshots earlier.

  I was growing tired of covering up reality for fragile human minds.

  I sank to one knee beside Gabriel. “He’s been bitten.” I noted the bites on his throat and shoulder. “We have to get help for him, right away.”

  Finally, she looked up at me. Blinked hard as if she’d never seen me before. “Dominic? What are you doing here?”

  “I scented you. It came on suddenly, and strong.”

  “I threw up the scent blocker.” She turned her attention back to Gabriel. “We have to get help for him, like you said. What can we do?”

  Scent blocker. That was why he’d taken her to Felix. What a risk to take for something she’d only thrown up, anyway.

  Kristoff appeared beside Sophie, having completed his task. “What’s his condition? Is he—” He rubbed Sophie’s shoulder, hovering protectively over her.

  “Bitten. He’ll need a lot of help.” Poppy stepped forward, touched Sophie’s other shoulder. “Hey, babe. We’ve gotta talk.”

  Again with the hard blinking. “Pop? What are you doing here? Why—what—”

  “I can explain everything once we’re out of here. Too much attention.” Meanwhile, Jessabelle busied herself with wiping the memories of anyone who happened past.

  “Where can we go?” Kristoff asked no one in particular. “We were going to see Magda, weren’t we? Can we take him?”

  Sophie gasped. “Magda? That’s where we were going. He was taking me to her.”

  “She’s the only one who can help him now.” Poppy held a hand over his chest, hovering inches over the rising and falling flesh. “We have to move. Can we transport there?”

  “Am I dreaming?” Sophie clutched Poppy with bloodstained hands. Searched her face with wide eyes. “This is another nightmare, right? Why else would you be here?”

  Poppy forgot Gabriel in favor of wrapping Sophie in a hug. “I love you, sweetie. Remember that, okay?”

  Kristoff eased Sophie from her kneeling position. There was tenderness in his gaze, his voice. “Magda will take care of him. I’m sure he’d be glad to know you’re okay.” Sophie looked up at him, still a bit dazed, but she managed to nod.

  “I can get us close to Magda’s,” I announced. “But we’ll have to walk the last mile through the tunnels.”

  “I can carry him.” Kristoff lifted Gabriel’s limp body, slinging him over one shoulder.

  “Good. Everyone, together now.” I took Kristoff’s arm, Jessabelle’s hand. She held Sophie, as did Poppy on the other side.

  I looked to my ring, where the ruby’s inner fire glowed, and imagined us in the abandoned train tunnels.

  I could only hope no humans observed this process.

  The fresh morning air turned stagnant. The sound of passing cars turned to dripping water and the skittering of rodents in the darkness.

  “Where are we?” Sophie’s voice was a whisper. “What is this place?”

  “Magda hides out in an abandoned station a mile from here,” I explained. “I’ve been there before, as I know my brothe
r has.”

  “We’d better hurry. He doesn’t have a lot of time.” Kristoff’s dark expression spoke volumes more. He didn’t particularly want to go out of his way to spare Gabriel’s life, but this clearly meant a great deal to Sophie.

  He’d come to feel for her, too. I saw it in the way he looked at her. Was it the fact that Fate had already tied us together? All it had taken was the two of them becoming acquainted for him to fall under her spell.

  “We can run them.” Jessabelle motioned to the two girls. “You could take Sophie. I’ll take Poppy.”

  Yes, we could use our vampire speed to run much faster than walking would ever get us there. Like transporting others by holding onto them while using our rings, we could carry them along with us when we ran so long as they held on tight. I was impressed with Jessa’s quick thinking—normally, all she did was make a sarcastic comment and roll her eyes.

  I reached for Sophie. “Yes. That makes sense. We can be there in a hurry.”

  She backed away, stumbling over one of the rails but righting herself easily. “No. Don’t touch me.”

  “What?”

  “I’ll take him,” Kristoff offered. “Straight ahead?”

  “The next station.” I waved him on without looking, too busy staring at Sophie.

  “Uh, I suppose we’ll go, too.” Jessabelle murmured to Poppy, telling her to hold on tight. Within moments, they were gone and it was just the two of us. And the dripping of water all around.

  “What’s happened?” I asked, careful to give her space. “What did he tell you?”

  “Don’t do that.” She pointed at me, jabbing her finger in my direction. “You don’t get to do the whole morally superior thing now. Now tell me the truth. Did you or did you not kill my parents?”

  She might as well have caved my chest in. That was what the pain there brought to mind.

  “Well?” Another jab from her finger. Tears rolled down her flushed cheeks. “Did you? You’re not denying it, which makes me think you did. Why didn’t you tell me? Why did you do that? Why?”

  She bent at the waist, hands covering her face. I watched, helpless, as she sobbed. Her cries echoed off the tunnel walls, assaulting me from all sides.

  “That was never my intention. It wasn’t what any of us intended. It happened so fast.” It sounded pathetic even to me. Because it was. “Only I knew exactly where to find you. We went there to take you, to bring you to safety. To tell you who you are. You weren’t there. Your father attacked, or tried to. He was brave. He loved you so much.”

  “I know.” Her body heaved in wracking sobs. “I hate you. I fucking hate you.”

  “I know.” And I did. I bore it as well as I could. “You deserve to. I could never make it up to you. And it’s entirely on me, only me. Not on Kristoff or Jessa. They both tried to tell me what a mistake it was to go to the cabin that night, to take you that way. I wanted it to be as painless as possible, while your parents were sleeping.”

  “Painless for who?” She laughed, disdainful. Bitter. “Not for them. Not for me. What the hell is wrong with you? Are you so desperate to prove yourself to Daddy that you would kidnap me from my bed? You want so much for him to think you’re worth something, you would forget the impact your actions would have on real people.”

  “With all due respect in the face of your grief, don’t tell me what I think or what my intentions were. You don’t know the first thing.”

  “Obviously, I know more than you thought I did. I knew you killed Mom and Dad. And I’ve seen the way you act in front of Lucian, that son of a bitch. What do his shoes taste like? You lick them enough.”

  “Watch yourself.”

  “What are you gonna do about it? I’m supposed to be so important, right? Worth murdering my parents over. Worth stalking me for ten years.”

  I had no idea what that meant, though I could guess. So that was what my brother had been engaged in during the decade he’d been away from us.

  “Sophie. You don’t have to believe me, but it will make things much easier if you do. I bungled everything from the beginning. I know it. I accept full responsibility. I was too wound up, too tense, and when a simple human man tried to attack me I lost my head. I could easily have overpowered him, but … it all happened so fast. I’m ashamed of myself and always have been.”

  I raised my voice. “But the reason I wanted to take you ten years ago, the reason we went to the trouble of locating you now and being verbally abused by you, wasn’t to take you back to my father. Yes, at first, perhaps. We’d heard whispers and rumors started by other seers who’d prophesied the arrival of the queen. We knew you existed somewhere and needed only to be found. When I promised my father I would find you, I hadn’t met with Magda yet.”

  “So, you met with her. And you knew what he’s all about these last ten years.”

  “Years in which I did everything I could to make certain we didn’t find you. I know, it’s ridiculous, and I don’t consider myself a hero, but that was my mission. To pretend I had no idea where you were. Granted, the drugs in your system masked your scent, but I had a general idea of your well-being.”

  “Why did you take me to the manse this time, then? If you knew what was up?”

  “I never had any intention of doing so, but Jessabelle and Kristoff made the mistake of telling him we’d bring you home to him. I hadn’t told them about Magda’s visions, her memories. You were in danger at the cabin—you’ve seen lycans for yourself. They were on their way to search the area for signs of you. We were in a terrible hurry, so I agreed to take you to the manse for a short while, intending to take you away at the first opportunity. My cousins weren’t as aware of Lucian as I am. His true intentions. And it was better that way, for no one can scent liars the way he can. I couldn’t risk them knowing.”

  “Knowing what?”

  “That he intends to kill you and always has.”

  It didn’t shock her—at least, she took it well. “What makes you think that?”

  “Gabriel isn’t the only one who’s visited Magda, remember. And Magda knows all. She told me ten years ago to be aware of his true intentions. That there was a reason your family vacationed in the same area where we’d held the Summit for centuries. It could have been what existed of us in your mother’s blood, guiding her actions even though the vampire marker was dormant, but regardless of the reason you were precisely where we needed you to be. And he would know that, even if he would never deign to do the dirty work of fetching you himself. If there was any hope of you surviving, I had to keep you away from my father.”

  Her chest rose and fell. Her hands clenched into fists, then loosened.

  Then clenched again.

  “What about Gabriel? Why were you fighting with him? What drove him off?”

  “I couldn’t let him know I knew what our father wanted. Again, I didn’t know who I could trust to keep the truth from Lucian. When Gabriel confronted him with the information Magda gave him—the reason she’s lived in hiding for so many years, by the way, for fear of his vengeance—I had to pretend not to believe him. To go along with Lucian for your sake. Someone had to remain close to him, to be aware of his plans. It was all for you. Any further resentment I feel for my brother stems from us being two very different people who’ve never seen eye-to-eye.”

  She took a few deep breaths, staring through the darkness into my eyes. “All for me?”

  “Absolutely. Always. Every day. For you.”

  “Why? Why me? Is it only because I’m who you say I am?”

  “How can you even think it?”

  “Because I’m important to everybody. Vampires, witches, fae, everybody else. I still don’t quite get why or how, but Gabriel told me all about it.” She rubbed her arms as if goosebumps had popped up there.

  “It’s a big responsibility.”

  “Understatement.”

  “I’m good at that. But you won’t have to go through it alone.” I took a step closer, then another. She stayed in
place. A good sign.

  “No?”

  “Not at all. We’ll be there with you. Every step of the way.” I reached out, stroked her cheek. There were still tears there. I wiped them away.

  She sighed. I heard her pulse pick up speed. “It’s happening again.” Her voice was breathy.

  “What is?”

  “That feeling I get when one of you touches me like this. Like my legs won’t hold me up. Like there are bees buzzing inside me. Like I want to…”

  I couldn’t help it any more than I could help needing blood to survive.

  She was in my arms in an instant, our bodies flush. When my mouth met hers she parted her lips, groaning when our tongues touched. Heat blazed to life, engulfing us. I would’ve crushed her against me her body could’ve withstood it.

  Then there was the question of whether I could withstand it. Whatever deep wisdom existed inside me wanted to cement our bond, to take her then and there. It was inevitable. We were meant to be.

  But not here. Not in this filthy, disease-ridden tunnel.

  She fell against me when the kiss broke, dizzy, breathless. “Whoa. So it’s not just him. It’s you, too.”

  I could only imagine who she referred to. Well, it was inevitable he’d kiss her. He probably found her as impossible to resist as I did, and not purely on a physical level.

  She was ours. We were hers. It was that simple. Fundamental.

  I tipped her head back until our eyes met. “Now. Are you coming with me and getting to Magda much faster, or are you walking the next mile? Alone? In the dark? With the rats?”

  “Screw you.” But her heart wasn’t in it. Not anymore. That edge in her voice had softened. Was it perverse of me to hope the change wasn’t permanent? Her edge was one of the things l loved most about her, even when it was directed at me.

  My arms tightened in preparation for the run. I couldn’t risk losing my hold on her while moving that fast—it would be the same for her as falling from a speeding train. “I hope you know how I worried over you. Please, don’t ever run away from me again. One day, you’ll understand how intertwined we are. Until then… trust me?”