by Nicola Rose
“How do you propose I make this mess disappear if I don’t kill him?” he asked, his voice deeper than normal, blood now dripping down his chin.
“You know…?” I said feebly, circling my finger at my temple. “Mess with his head.”
“I thought you were firmly in the anti-mind-fuckery camp?”
I rolled my eyes. “I’m even further into the anti-killing camp… but maybe I’d like to dip my toe into the whatever-it-takes-in-the-name-of-self-preservation camp.” I breathed deep and waited for him to prolong my suffering with inappropriately timed banter, or a cocky smile – whilst he had his bloody fangs to one cop’s throat, and his partner’s corpse was just behind me.
He simply shrugged, as if killing and mind-bending were one and the same, no difference to him. Even so, I winced as he spun Cop One round to face him, anticipating the breaking of more bones, or the emptying of more blood, or any of the other savage things he was supposed to do. But he simply smoothed down the cop’s collar and patted his shoulder.
“Remember my face,” Alex said to him. “I’m your king. If I come to you for any favours, you’ll jump at the chance to help. You will never speak a word of what happened here, you’ll claim ignorance to Carter’s demise, but you’ll remember. You’ll know that a worse fate awaits you if you fuck up.”
Cop One nodded slowly in horrified agreement, but Alex still snarled like an animal and flashed his fangs for effect. “Remember, every woman in the world is mine. And I don’t like my shit being messed with. You will never touch another woman, ever again. That dirty dick stays in your pants for the rest of your life.”
He nodded again, whilst giving me a venomous sideways glance.
“Hey!” Alex barked, grabbing his jaw and forcing his attention back. “That includes looking too. Keep your eyes off her.”
“Sorry, Sir.”
“Run along now.” Alex shoved him and we watched as he stumbled out of sight.
Well, almost out of sight. He was about to round a corner when Alex let out a growl of anger and a blur flashed past me. A woman flew at Cop One, grabbing his shirt, and burying her face into his neck.
“You women are really starting to test my patience,” Alex groaned. “Is this seriously what life is like once you start opening up and getting involved? Feelings and shit? It’s fucking lame.”
Cop One was now clearly dead. The female vampire that was sucking him dry had ripped into his neck with undignified fury, his blood spraying as he bucked and thrashed against her grip, his skin tearing. It was messy. Savage.
My feet carried me toward her without realising, trailing behind Alex who was bristling with his own rage.
She dropped the body and tipped her head skyward, heaving a breath and sighing in satisfaction. Then she whirled around and the floor tilted out from under me.
The black bobbed hair. The full cheeks, normally rosy with a glowing flush, but now deathly-white and smeared with blood.
“Anna?” I whispered.
The world seemed to wobble and spin for a long while before I could take anything in.
“What happened to keeping away from Jess until I gave you permission?” Alex snapped.
“Ooops,” Anna replied, wiping her lips with a finger and then sucking it clean.
My head whipped back and forth from Alex to Anna, and back again.
“Anna?” I tested her name again, placing a steadying hand against the wall and willing my knees not to give out.
“Jess!” She suddenly smiled, bringing out her dimples, and looking painfully like my Anna. “You smell… different.” She took a deep breath and I thought Alex might explode.
I threw my arms around her and she giggled, squeezing me tightly.
“You’re not dead?!” I sobbed into her bobbed hair.
“Well, that’s debatable.” She pulled back to study my face and cupped my cheeks in her hands. “Jess, Jess, Jess. You sneaky little minx. A witch?! Why didn’t you ever tell me?”
“I didn’t know… not really.”
She grinned and I wanted to kiss her dimples. She was here?!
“What happened to the naughty witch at school?” she crinkled her brows in mock disdain. “She was ex-spelled.”
A laugh bubbled out from me and Alex let out a growl.
“Where are my men?” he shouted. “They’re trying to block my telepathic communications. Their heads are a jumbled mess of fear and bravado—”
“They ran,” she flapped a hand in his direction and draped an arm over my shoulder, taking another sniff against my neck before continuing, “Half of them are terrified of you, they think you’ll do that snappy-finger head-explosion thing and kill them at any moment. The other half think you’re not terrifying enough, that you’re weak and pathetic and turning into Zac. Why else would you be here with Jess instead of seeing through your ultimate goal with the Unaligned? I mean, personally, I get it… do you smell that? And look at the way she glows!” Her words gradually deepened until she was hissing and I suddenly had her fangs in my face.
Alex was at my side in less than a second, dragging her away.
“They think I’m weak? I’ll fucking show them weak,” he barked in her face. “What do you think, little doll? You think you can come here and bare your fangs at my girl and get away with it?”
My girl?
“No, Sir,” she squeaked. “I think you’re the baddest master a girl could ask for. So bad, that it’s surely about time you fucked me?”
Wait. What?!
He bit his lip, suppressing a smile, and a tang of something bitter washed through me.
She was a vampire. His vampire. All this time I thought she was dead, I’d been grieving for her. The guilt had almost consumed me.
“But,” she continued. “I could be excused if I did detect some weakness. You were going to let that cop live?”
“Of course not. Fucking with the cops is one of my favourite pastimes – I was just going to give him a week or so of living hell first, and you came and took that from me. Naughty, Anna.”
“Excuse me for interrupting your foreplay, but would someone like to explain to me what the actual fuck is going on here?” I tried not to sound jealous, but… apparently I was suddenly seething with it.
Confused. In shock. Coming down from my magical explosion.
And seriously fucking jealous.
They studied me, neither saying a word.
She was alive! Kind of…
I should have been ecstatic. But the initial happiness was wavering as something else crept in. Something that felt a lot like anger and hurt.
“You handed me over to William. You nearly got us all killed,” I said.
Anna shrugged in response. Fucking shrugged!
“I thought you were dead!” I yelled. This time I advanced upon her and smacked my fist into her stupid face.
No! Her lovely face! My Anna.
I wanted to hate her, but I loved her. Tears found their way from my eyes and I swiped at them angrily. My hands were trembling.
“OK, time out ladies,” Alex said. “Anna, get the hell out of here. Go to the house I’m renting at 129 Alberta Avenue and wait for me. And if you kill anyone on the way, for the love of God, clean it up this time.”
She nodded tightly and left.
No apology. No goodbye. Not even a backward glance at me.
“Don’t blame her. She’s different now,” he sighed.
“No fucking shit!”
“Look, I’d love to talk it through and hug it out, but we appear to have two dead cops to deal with. People have reported the gunshots and we have about two more minutes until their friends descend on us. I’d rather not have any more crap to deal with tonight. Get out of here.”
I rooted my feet to the spot.
He pressed his lips together in irritation.
“I swear, I’ll come to your place and talk. Just give me a few minutes. Go,” he ordered.
The sirens wailed. The far end of the alley flash
ed in a blue and red glow. I took off running in the opposite direction.
17
Jess
I was lost.
Not physically lost on the streets, but psychologically. I couldn’t tell what was right or wrong anymore, the lines were too blurred. There was no way that I should have enjoyed any of that crap with the cops. And yet… I had. I enjoyed a whole shit-load of what went down. I enjoyed them taking me like a little whore, and I enjoyed the feeling of power as it surged through my core and obliterated Carter.
Had he deserved it? And could that ease my conscience for the fact that I liked watching him burn? Or would I still have felt this thrill, even if he was innocent? My magic thrummed beneath my skin in answer and a chill settled over me.
I even enjoyed watching Cop One squirm under the weight of Alex’s presence.
Most of all, I enjoyed Alex. The way he looked, the way he spoke, the way he made my skin crawl with equal measures of loathing and lust.
What I didn’t enjoy was finding out that my best friend, who was supposed to be dead, was actually Alex’s little pet vampire. It probably should have been the happiest moment of the whole night. She was alive! I could have her back again. Except, it didn’t seem like her anymore, and the jealousy that tightened in my chest was crushing.
I had no right to be jealous. Not of that. It didn’t matter what Alex did. Angry, yes. I could be angry that he’d fucked me over like that, but jealous? No.
He’d kept her alive.
It was also him that killed her in the first place.
I didn’t know whether I was supposed to punch him or kiss him. He’d let me suffer her death on my conscience, all this time. He was a class-one fucktard, incapable of thinking of anyone other than himself.
My mind is mush, and my body aches for you…
I stepped out of a steaming bath, having cleaned my cuts and bruises. I’d just slipped into some shorts and was about to pull on a vest when Alex materialised.
“Would you stop doing that?!” I gasped, quickly yanking the top down. “There’s a door. Go outside and knock like a normal person.”
His roguish smile told me just how much he preferred to let himself in unexpectedly.
I walked through to the pimped-up kitchen and went about making myself a sandwich. Not that I felt like eating. I just wanted a distraction so I wouldn’t have to look at him.
“She was supposed to be under house arrest,” Alex offered. “My men were keeping her locked down until I was ready. Until she was ready. She’s new… unpredictable. A major headache.”
“How inconvenient for you.” I slammed the fridge door.
He sighed, and started again.
“Death was too easy an option for the girl who tried to kill me and hated vampires. So I made her what she feared.”
“You did it to spite her?”
“Of course she loves it now, so that plan backfired. But I liked the idea of owning her, having her bow to me after she tried to destroy me.”
“She didn’t do that, it was William. He brainwashed her.” I was buttering with such anger that the knife butchered the bread. I threw it all in the bin, took a breath, and went for round two, hoping this time my hands would stop trembling.
“How? How did you turn her, and did Zac know? He told me he’d… he’d… with her body—” I hurled the knife over the counter towards Alex’s head. His hand snapped up to pluck it from the air, setting it back down calmly.
“That night with William, when I plunged my own stake into Anna, it had my blood on it. I didn’t think about it at the time, but after the event I could feel her pulse under my skin. It was faint, but it was there. She was so close to death, clinging on. I knew with a little more of my blood I could bring her round.”
I glared at the knife, wondering whether I should make a third attempt at the sandwich or give up. Maybe another attempt at lodging it through his skull.
“Zachariah had left Caleb to deal with her body. He was so caught up in being worried about you that he didn’t pay much attention to the Anna issue at all, despite any assurances he may have given you. It was easy to slip inside Caleb’s head, do some tinkering, and take Anna’s body to complete the change.”
“But, there was a funeral. Danny went—”
“He just thought she was in the coffin, along with all the friends and family that showed up, and the undertakers. But it was empty.”
Sweet Jesus. How many times had Danny’s head been screwed?
“Why didn’t you tell me?” I assessed my ingredients to keep from crying. I could live without butter. I shoved some pepperoni slices between the bread and took a bite. Chewing was disgusting. My mouth clogged with the dryness. Alex made a face that implied he was just as grossed out by my food choice as me.
He took my hand and led me to the balcony. The humid air made the scar on my back prickle. I scratched it, and a flash of memory made me flinch. I’d remembered, when I was fighting with Carter – it was still there – the image of my father, standing over my mother’s dead body. I’d turned, and run…
Get back here, Jess!
“She was already dead!” I gasped, dropping the sandwich.
All the shit with the cops had brought a memory to the surface, then I’d got distracted with death, and Anna—
I hadn’t killed my mother. All these years, I thought she’d died in the explosion. I’d blamed myself. But she was already dead.
“Your magic spiked when you toasted Carter. I felt it, inside me. My own power seemed to respond… intensify.” Alex studied me, like he still couldn’t quite work out who I was.
That made two of us.
“I’m going to see Constance.” I hurried away, leaving him behind.
There was an odd feeling in the air as I approached Sofia’s apartment. I couldn’t quite place it. Maybe a feeling of being watched? Whatever it was, it made me uneasy. I pressed the call buzzer and Constance greeted me, opening the door and letting me through.
She offered me a seat and a drink.
“Where’s Sofia?” I asked, declining both her offerings.
“Dead,” she replied simply. “Killed by the coven that was allied with her own. They exacted their vengeance for her mistakes in dealing with vampires.”
“Shit.”
“Yes. Most unfortunate. And soon to be your own fate if you don’t stop parading yourself around town without any due regard. I mean, really, child… killing the police?” She gave me a withering look.
“How do you know about that?”
She flapped her hand in dismissal. “If you don’t start taking this seriously then we’re going to run into big problems. There’s a lot of people out there who want a piece of you, very dearly.”
“You promised Sofia protection.”
“Yes, well, there’s not much I could do about it when she put herself out there in front of that coven. It was a suicide mission, she wasn’t handling the guilt too well. I told her to keep her head down—” She toyed with a silk scarf around her neck. She seemed on edge.
“You expect me to hide?”
“No, but I expect you to consider your actions carefully. The reckless girl needs to die. You can be reborn, stronger, as a powerful witch. If you’re willing to let go of the old you and embrace the new.”
“About the old me…” I started, and paused as the memories flashed behind my eyelids again. “In my flashbacks, I’ve always thought I was hearing my mother’s screams as she burnt alive… but it was the sound of my own screams. She was already dead. What do you know about my parents?”
“I sent my daughter, Belle, to England. It was the hardest decision of my life. But as for your actual parents, I know very little. I kept an eye on where everyone drifted off to, but their instructions were to blend back into normal society and disappear. I couldn’t risk following too closely over the years, for fear of drawing attention their way.”
“Do you think it was it my mother or father that were descended from th
e coven? Which of them passed magic to me?”
“Your mother, but that’s not why he killed her.”
“You already knew he killed her?!” I was going to lose my shit real soon.
“I tested your magic when we trained. Sofia was right, you’ve buried the source of your power under your emotions relating to the explosion that killed your father. I probed and saw what happened. But unlike you, I could see it all – everything that happened that night, every word your father spoke. I could see the memories that are still hidden under blackness in your mind.” She wouldn’t stop fiddling with the silk wrapped several times around her neck, up to her chin. It didn’t fit with her usual power-bitch attire.
“So are you going to tell me? Or fuck me around and play games, just like everyone else?”
“I can open up the memories so you can see for yourself, or I can tell you.”
“Just tell me, please. I have enough visions plaguing me already right now.”
She nodded once. “He was angry because he’d found out he wasn’t your real father. He’d become ill with a genetic disease and you were tested to see if you carried the gene. The doctor was a friend of his and he told him that the results showed you were not even his child. Of course he was angry. There were lots of fights. Then your mother threatened to go to the police and have the doctor struck off for his failure in patient confidentiality. This enraged your father so much that when he walked in and found you…” she trailed off, glancing around the room.
“Found me what?” My palms tingled.
“He found you in a state of undress in your room, and he tried to rape you. Payback on your mother, I suppose.”
I sank into a chair by the window and stared at my own reflection. Dark circles smudged under my eyes, my cheeks gaunt. When had I started looking like this? It felt like years since I’d slept well.
You’re nothing but a worthless piece of shit, Jessica. I’ve raised you with love and all you ever do is fuck things up. Maybe you need that defiant streak fucking out of you. Let’s see how your mother likes that… A new memory flooded my mind, unbidden. I pressed my palms to my eyes.