by Evie Ryan
And here was Christoph, someone who intrinsically understood her vampire needs, someone who was making a genuine effort to support her and respect her well drawn boundaries, and someone who was exceptionally good looking. It wasn’t a problem she ever thought she’d have. But as to the question of what he could do to make her happy? Gwen didn’t have a clue except that there was a small voice in the back of her mind that said, be Brandon.
“Maybe I should talk to Brandon,” she said finally, but more so to herself.
“To confirm what you already know?” He asked. “All speaking with him will do is cause you further pain.”
He was probably right, but she couldn’t get Brandon out of her head. Her thoughts kept drifting into the memory of having his hands on her, the warmth in his touch, the way she’d melted for him as he pressed into her, and the dark thrill of their rough lovemaking, all of which would cause her to tense and grow wet every time she thought of him.
Suddenly she heard her father’s voice murmuring through the elevator shaft and growing louder and louder as it rose upwards. Then Gwen realized she was hearing two men speaking, her father with someone else.
“Well the doorman shouldn’t have let you in even if you do know Gwen. It’s much too late. She’s very tired,” she heard her father say, as the elevator doors opened, revealing who he was talking to.
Brandon.
Gwen rose to her feet astonished that he was here. How did he know where her parents lived? How did he get past security in the lobby?
Christoph was beside her and then stepped in front of Gwen protectively.
“Gwen, Honey, do you know this man?” Her father asked.
“Yes, it’s fine, Dad,” she said, abruptly interrupting him. “I invited him,” she lied to soften the peculiarity of having a guest so late. Gwen had very few friends and her parents knew all of them. Not to mention that thanks to Christoph, she couldn’t use the boyfriend label and so was at a loss for how to introduce Brandon. After stammering a moment she went with, “He’s my friend.”
Steve looked relieved to hear that, rounded the living room, and headed up the hall towards his bedroom, while saying, “Well, try to keep it down out here. Your mother is probably sleeping. And help yourself to snacks. Oksana has retired for the day.”
“’Night, Dad,” said Gwen loud enough that her voice would carry down the hallway.
Once she heard the bedroom door click shut again, a spasm of sadness fluttered through her heart. She hadn’t realized how much she’d missed him, but seeing him standing tensely in the foyer and staring at her with worrisome eyes made everything clear. Whatever had been between them, call it love or infatuation, was still there. And she had never felt it more strongly.
“Hey,” he said, his voice sounding just as deep and sexy as Gwen remembered.
“You shouldn’t have come here,” said Christoph sternly, yet quietly enough not to wake the whole penthouse.
“Gwen I need to talk to you,” said Brandon, disregarding Christoph.
“You can’t,” he interrupted, raising his voice slightly, as he eyed Brandon threateningly.
“Gwen, please,” he tried.
“It’s Ok, Christoph. Would you excuse us?”
“It’s not Ok,” he told her.
There was an edge to his tone that told Gwen that Christoph knew something she didn’t. “And why is that?”
The vampire paused, met her gaze, and then said apprehensively, “It will strain relations between our kind and his.”
“What does that mean?” She demanded, as she looked to Brandon for an answer then back at Christoph who was equally withholding.
Brandon approached them, stepping into the living room so he could speak quietly. “An agreement was struck between-”
“She doesn’t need to know about all that,” he snapped.
"I know about the Peace Treaty, but why would it matter if I speak with Brandon?" She asked, genuinely confused.
“Just let me speak with her privately,” he asked.
Christoph clenched his jaw and didn’t move other than to ball his fists.
Gwen took a deep breath though it did nothing to defuse the tension between the men, and readied herself to ask Brandon what she needed to know. “Did you attack my mother?”
It was subtle, but Brandon seemed to sink remorsefully, and judging his change in posture and his lowering gaze, she knew it was true. She had wanted so badly for it not to be.
“You should go,” she said.
“He didn’t just bring you here to help you,” said Brandon, eyes lifting to meet hers.
“That’s enough,” interrupted Christoph. “She asked you to leave. Don’t make me enforce it.”
But Brandon continued, speaking over the vampire. “He thinks he owns you, Gwen. He thinks because he turned you he's staked some claim on your soul.”
“Leave now,” Christoph sneered.
“Is that true?” She asked him.
Christoph pulled his glare from Brandon and looked at her tenderly. “It’s not as simple as that.”
“You might be tied to him, Gwen. I don’t know how it works for your kind, but I know there’s no way that you wouldn’t have a choice in picking your life mate.”
Her eyes widened, astonished at the implication that Christoph could be her life mate. She didn’t even know what that meant other than what it sounded like. “What is he talking about, Christoph?”
“He’s only trying to turn you against me. He doesn’t have all the facts-”
“Neither do I, so why don’t you explain them,” she ordered.
“I will. In time,” he said.
It infuriated her to be dismissed like that.
“You might be mad at me, Gwen, and you might hate what I’ve done," said Brandon."But I’m not going to let him enslave you. I’m not leaving here until you understand what he’s trying to do to you.”
Without warning, Christoph flew at Brandon in the blink of an eye, careening into the werewolf and slamming him into the wall. In an instant the men were in a tangle of punches and kicks, their fangs bared, each trying to best the other in a thunderous commotion of violence and growls.
“What is going on out here?” Gwen heard her father say as he started down the hall. Brandon was half transformed with fur sprouting across his skin and claws emerging just as Christoph’s eyes turned black and his vampire fangs glistened through his wide-open mouth.
Gwen hurried up the hall. “Dad, I’m sorry, you’ll have to stay in the bedroom,” she insisted, but her father objected.
“It sounded like something broke through the wall!”
“Dad, please!” She ordered, as the men wrestled noisily, but out of view.
Suddenly the sound of a vase shattering across the marble floor stole their attention, and Gwen couldn’t stop Steve from tearing down the hall. Just then Oksana poked her head out of her bedroom door and Rose was emerging from her room as well, tying a robe around her as she came.
Knowing it was dire that her family not discover the undead, Gwen tore past them, careful not to let her impulse to glide get the best of her. Before she knew what she was doing she seized the men, ripping them apart with superhuman strength that left her parents gaping in disbelief. But she’d had no choice. Thank God, Brandon had shifted back into his human form just in the nick of time, which alerted her to her own fangs, but she was careful not to let them protrude from her mouth. She couldn’t stop her eyes from turning demonically black, though.
Her mother shrieked, but Steve held her close. Gwen forced the darkness from her eyes, as she held the men apart, Christoph by the scruff of his sweater and Brandon by the throat, all the while seething through her teeth, “Stop fighting, or else.”
When it seemed the men had calmed, she released Brandon, so she could better focus her strength on bracing Christoph against the windows.
“Get out of here,” she told him, snarling through her fangs now that her parents were behind her and would
n’t see.
“You’ll never make it without me,” he warned. “You don’t have the full picture and without it the werewolf will destroy you.”
“I’ll take my chances,” she said before grabbing him by the arm, dragging him passed her dumbfounded parents and housekeeper, and throwing him into the elevator.
Once the doors had closed on Christoph, she took a moment to straighten herself out, then turned to face everyone. Her parents looked utterly horrified, there was glass everywhere, furniture overturned, and Oksana had the hall phone to her ear.
“Oksana, put the phone down,” she ordered and the housekeeper immediately obliged despite her obvious confusion at the instructions.
“Don’t you dare, Oksana,” her mother interjected. “Call the police at once!”
But Gwen wasn’t about to let a bad situation get far worse.
She didn’t know where it came from or how she knew to do it, but Gwen conjured up an intense storm of glamour, allowing it to build and twist inside her until she felt like it could rip her in two. She then blasted the dark energy out over Rose, Steve, and Oksana, captivating them with her hypnotic allure. Their expressions went slack the moment her glamour struck them, and their terrified gazes faded into vacant stares, indicating they were primed.
“There was a small fire in the living room stove and the fire department came, carelessly barreling through the room, knocking furniture out of their way, shattering the vase and damaging the wall. Everything’s fine and they instructed that our renters insurance will cover the fireplace, wall, and broken items.” As Gwen explained in detail the ins and outs of the fictitious event, their eyes drifted with eerie recollection, as though the new memories were taking shape in their minds. “You’ll deal with it tomorrow, but for now, all of you, go back to bed.”
Just like that, her parents turned and walked like zombies back down the hall, and Oksana made her way back to her bedroom as well and shut the door.
Then there was silence. Total silence.
Gwen stared deeply into Brandon’s eyes from across the room. He was still breathing heavily from the fight, chest rising and falling, the side of his neck was scratched badly, and his lower lip was bleeding, but as roughed up as he was, it only added to his sex appeal.
He was a brute, impulsive, hot tempered, arrogant, and quite possibly dangerous, but not more than she was. She had overpowered him and Christoph, a fact she couldn’t make sense of, except that Christoph had never drank from a werewolf, and she had. There was something to it. Something about having werewolf blood coursing through her veins, commingling with the vampire blood that also flowed there, that had strengthened her. It was still strengthening her. She could feel it.
It didn’t sit right with her that Brandon had caused her mother harm. It might never. But for now the issue was falling away, as the tension rose between them. His steel blue eyes swirled with darkness as he held his gaze on her. Then his expression shifted into a crooked sexy smile that told her she was at the forefront of his mind and nothing else.
“We’ve both been warned about each other,” he said, breaking the silence between them, but not the tension. “Now what are we going to do about it?”
As if compelled by a force much greater than herself, Gwen was suddenly gliding towards him, drinking in the sight of his smoldering lips, muscular body, unkempt hair, and sexy stride, as he came towards her, meeting her halfway. Her lips pressed into his, immediately thrusting into a deep kiss, arms wrapping each other, fully embraced. Their kisses were heated, panicky, starving, but soon they ebbed back, easing apart so that they could connect by gazing into each other’s eyes.
“I have to have you, Gwen. You’ve known that from the start,” he whispered in a tone so smooth and deep that Gwen found herself melting into his arms, breathing with him, bodies held tightly pressed as though they were one.
She was about to say she knew, was about to admit she couldn’t live without him, and offer the forgiveness he hadn’t asked for when without warning Brandon’s head jerked back, shoulders stiffening and arms falling limp. It was so abrupt it took her a second to process what was happening. He was convulsing, falling, as he lost all control to an eruption of seizures.
“Brandon?” She said, distressed as she caught him before he could slam to the floor. She eased him down, tried holding him to fight the quakes that had overtaken his body, but it was clear she couldn’t stop this. “Brandon!”
He was wincing, unable to speak. His eyes rolled up into the back of his head, their lids turning slack, and suddenly he went rigid, arching back, as a howl, low and harrowing, seeped from his throat.
As he rode the jilts and jolts that seemed to sting him in intervals like electric shocks, he managed to gasp in air, lock eyes with her, and state, “I didn’t believe them.”
“What? What didn’t you believe?” She begged, frantic to understand what was happening to him.
“Take. Me,” he started, each word punching out of his throat as though the seizure was hell-bent on stopping him from communicating. “To. Elektra.”
Her mind was racing, trying to grasp the instructions that seemed to contradict her human instinct to rush him to the hospital. We aren’t human. Doctors can’t save us. She reminded herself, as she realized he was headed for dire straits.
Was Brandon dying?
Coming to her senses and thinking fast, Gwen muscled her arms under Brandon’s neck and legs, hoisted him up with a grunt, and started for the elevator then stopped. She turned. The window. She’d never flown in her life, and certainly not from a perch fifty stories high, but she couldn’t waste time doing things the human way.
In a flash, she was at the window, Brandon in her arms, kicking at the glass that had to be at least three inches thick. These were not the kinds of windows that opened and she would have to break through the glass.
She delivered her fourth kick and the windowpane cracked. Then with the fifth kick a web of cracks splintered radially, and by the sixth hard slam, sole-to-pane, she shattered the glass that rained down in shards, silent and deadly through the dark night.
As she leapt from the edge, taking flight, Gwen had one thought in her head: It was her turn to save Brandon’s life.
~~~
NEXT: PRIMAL DARKNESS
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