Seth’s face loomed over the balcony that circled around the entire upper level. “Hi, cuz, what’s happening? Hey now, don’t you look sexy. Wow!” He whistled. “Look at all those knives.”
It was time to harden back up again.
“I’m not, nor will I ever be your cousin.”
“Oh, but there you’re wrong, pretty lady.” He held up his left hand, showing off a gold band on his finger.
Fuck.
“Marriages can be annulled.” I stood my ground as I stared up at him. Keep him talking, get him to lower his guard. But if he let her fall, I’d have to turn my attention to saving her. That might just be his plan.
I noticed a glow illuminating the pocket of his pinstriped shirt. The rhodonite. It had to be. He would have it on his body somewhere in order to wield its power.
“What’s wrong, Seth, is the honeymoon over? Why are you dangling your bride upside down thirty feet in the air like you want to drop her? You do realize that will kill her, right?”
“I don’t want to drop her. But she’s all I got for leverage right now. You need to leave here. Leave me alone to do what I need to do.” I didn’t want to ask what he thought he needed to do. It didn’t matter anyway. He wasn’t going to get the chance.
“What did you do with the rest of the people, Seth? The hotel workers and the other guests?”
“They’re around. But they’re all busy.” He bent over, laughing, and the rope he held in his hand jiggled. Jillian’s body bounced along with his belly chuckling. “Where’re the rest of your friends?”
My friends. My lover. I’d been cold to Lane. I had to be if I wanted to be tough enough to defeat Seth. I only hope he understands when this is all over. I fought to keep thoughts of Lane out of my head. If Seth realized how important he was to me, Lane’s life would be used against me.
“You think I didn’t know they were vampires? Ha! What the fuck is a witch like you doing hanging out with such vile creatures? Oh, wait. You’re in love with one of them. Let me guess, it couldn’t be the smooth-talking Cian, he was too wrapped up in the sweet, vampy Maggie. And Gage was too busy making eyes at my wife”—his eyes bulged as he said wife through clenched teeth—“so it couldn’t be him. That leaves Elvis or…” He smiled, showing off crooked and sharp teeth that he hadn’t had yesterday. “Pretty boy Lane. Yes! That’s it. I see the truth in your eyes even though I know you’re trying to hide it. You’re doing a piss-poor job of it by the way.” He cackled, actually cackled, like the old witch in the Wizard of Oz.
He didn’t sense that I was also a vampire yet, which meant my magic was working, and he couldn’t see past the glamour I’d created. Taking out Seth would be a challenge, but I knew I could do it. But not if he called out his demons. I wouldn’t be able to fight them off in time to get to him.
He shot out a bolt of something dark and sharp at me, and I jumped out of its path just in time as it whizzed by my ear and sizzled into the floor behind me. I gave him back what he’d given me, and managed to nip him in the shoulder. I chanted the old spell used by my ancestors when they’d first separated the stone. The stone vibrated under his shirt, I could see it, but it didn’t do much else. I needed more of a distraction for him, so I summoned Lane telepathically to come in with the others.
The doors swung open, and Lane and his brothers entered, their faces contorted with hate, anger, and a viciousness I’d never seen before. Gage immediately placed himself beneath my cousin, poised and ready to catch her if she fell. He was the largest and strongest. If anyone could handle the weight of a body falling, it was him. Cian and Elvis perched themselves up at the top of the landing on either side of Seth so he wouldn’t be able to see all of us at once without turning his head. Lane stayed with me, right by my side. I knew there was no other place he would be. There was no other place I wanted him to be.
I shot another bolt at Seth, aiming more for the rhodonite as I chanted the words to the spell. Seth ducked and laughed. At the same time, he released the small army of demons he’d made out of all the guests and hotel employees. They came plowing into the room, ready to kill everything in their paths.
Cian and Elvis began fighting their way toward Seth, but Seth just laughed as he reached his hand out toward Cian, twisting it, bringing him to his knees. Cian coughed and swung his hand out, taking one of the demons down at the hips.
Lane and I stood back-to-back. “Stay close,” he said, placing his hand on my hip as we circled, knocking out each demon as it approached.
“We can’t kill them. They’re being controlled.”
“Okay, but if it comes down to our heads or theirs, honey, I make no promises.”
Having Lane inside with me was a mistake. I couldn’t keep my mind clear, too worried about him. Lane was the one who’d believed in me, he was the one who’d challenged me to embrace my voice and not fear some cockamamie jealous judgment of the girlfriend of a fucking attempted rapist. He’d gotten me to talk about something I’d always feared would make me weak if I ever mentioned it. He’d comforted me, even after I’d told him everything, never judging. He’d loved me even though I’d been tainted. Touched by the devil. He’d been abused and hated by his own father, tortured by his maker. No one understood my pain better than Lane. If anything happened to him here, it would be my fault, and I didn’t know if I’d be able to continue on without him. This was my fight. But like it or not, I needed his and his brothers’ help.
“He married her,” I whispered to Lane.
“Did they have a lover’s spat? Because he doesn’t seem too fond of her at the moment,” he whispered back.
“We need to get up there.” I kept my eyes on Seth, watching him laugh at Cian and Elvis as they crumpled to their knees from his herculean psychic grip around their throats. “He’s getting his power from the rhodonite. I need to be closer in order to split it.”
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Lane
I nodded at Vanessa. I was in awe of her power; her beauty stunned me. She’d been cold as ice toward me since I’d turned her, but now I understood. She needed to be cold in order to build up the ice inside to defeat this bastard, and she’d needed to keep me at a distance because her feelings for me were too strong. She was a part of me now, and I could sense her emotions convoluting her thought processes.
“Now would be a good time to go up,” she said, kicking a guy in the gut, sending him flying against the wall as ten more deranged and possessed people came into the lobby.
“On the count of three,” I said after I’d finished pounding my fist in some guy-in-a-suit’s face, knocking him across the room.
“One, two, three.”
We flashed up to where Seth stood, a jagged blade in his hand, ready to cut the rope and let his new wife fall to her death.
Seth was busy holding my brother and Elvis captive with his sorcery and didn’t see us right away. Vanessa stabbed him in the back with one of her blades. He turned toward us, the blade still in his spine. He yelled out something garbled and evil-sounding as his eyes flared red.
“Your weapons can’t hurt me, Vanessa!” His voice sounded demonic.
He waved his hand through the air, sending V flying across the room. “Vanessa!” I yelled in horror as her body hit the wall and she fell to the floor. I wanted to go to her, but I knew it would take a lot more than flinging her against the wall to hurt her now, and this asshole needed to be taught a lesson. He released his hold on Cian and Elvis, but they couldn’t even get close to us with all the people Seth had turned into zombie-like creatures coming at them.
Vanessa got up and threw another blade at Seth that landed in his chest but missed the stone.
“Now you’re just making me mad.” He sliced the knife he’d been holding through the air, cutting the rope securing Jillian, and she plummeted down. Luckily, Gage had stayed right beneath her, and she landed straight into his arms. Two seconds later, Gage vanished with Jillian from the building. Going somewhere safe, I presumed.
<
br /> Seth glared at me, and I lunged at his throat, ready to sink my fangs into him when his wicked powers took hold of me, choking me the way he had Cian and Elvis.
“What’s the matter, Lane? Can’t catch your breath? Maybe Daddy can help.”
I blinked, looking right into my father’s eyes. There he was, his big, brawny build, his dark hair falling onto his forehead. He stood in front of me, wearing those same loose-fitting pants he always wore right before he’d take me to the shed. I froze. “It’s just a vision,” I mumbled. “You’re dead.”
“What’s the matter, Lanie?” My father grabbed my arm. What the fuck? He was real? Flesh and bones? This wasn’t just a vision. How? He even had the whip, the one he used to beat me with, slapping it against the palm of his hand for effect. It always scared the piss out of me, and then he’d strike me across the face for peeing in my pants. “You’re such a sissy boy.”
He tugged me to a bench that suddenly appeared out of nowhere, the one he’d always used when I was a kid, shoving my face against the hard wooden surface. “Pull ‘em down, pretty boy. All the way to the floor.” I was never sure if he was going to beat me or stick his dick in me; either way, I was doomed. Though I preferred the hitting, I could tolerate that. The other just made me feel empty and dirty, disgusted with myself for allowing him to do it. Next time, I’d say to myself. Next time I won’t let him. Next time I’ll kill him. But I was always too weak. I never had the guts to take his life.
Sometimes he would do both, depending on his mood. My ass and back had so many scars from that whip, but they’d all disappeared after I turned vampire.
I remembered coming into the house afterwards the first time. I went to our room to hide, but Cian had come and sat next to me on the bed. He grabbed my hand and held it. We were nine. He never asked me what had happened. He knew, though. We sat in our room, holding hands, for what seemed like hours while I cried.
I think I stopped crying after I turned twelve. From then on, I never shed another tear, not from the beatings or the molesting. I took it like a man up until I was sixteen. That’s when Cian and I left home. And never returned.
“You can’t do this. I’m a grown man. You have no power over me anymore.”
His eyes widened. “You’re not grown. Look at you. So pretty. You’ll always be my sissy boy, and still pretty enough to fuck.”
Damnit. “You were supposed to be my father. You were supposed to be my protector. Instead, you beat me, raped me, whenever you had the whim.”
“I’m still going to beat and rape you. There’s no running from me, Lanie.” He smirked at the feminine nickname he’d always called me right before he’d take me.
“Lane!” Vanessa yelled.
What was she doing here? I couldn’t let my father get to her. He’d hurt her. “Get away, Vanessa!”
“Lane! He’s not real. He’s not your father. Just kill him!”
Could I kill my father? I wanted to kill him. I’d thought about it so many times. I’d always wondered how a kid could kill his own father. I didn’t want to be known around the village as a murderer. Committer of patricide.
Instead, I was the kid who let his father fuck him in the ass.
“Lane! Damnit. Kill the son of a bitch!” My brother’s voice rang out in my head. Cian was always the strong one. My father’s favorite son. Though only six and a half minutes younger, I was the scrawny little brother. Where Cian towered over me with his brawny body so much like our father’s, I was weak and way too skinny. My father always said I was too frail and pretty to be a boy, and that’s when he’d started calling me Lanie and taking me in the shed. I hadn’t grown to my full height until I was close to twenty.
Seth let out a hideous cackling laugh, drawing my attention from my horrid reverie.
“Lane, just fucking kill him!” Vanessa yelled as she fought with Seth—a blade in each hand, she swung at him, ducking from his retaliation.
I scrambled to my feet. My father was the monster. Kill him, kill him! I launched at the man, my father, and ripped my fangs through his throat, then reached into his chest and yanked out his heart. I think I’d wanted to do that my entire life.
I stood frozen. His heart in my hand. Blood dripped to the floor. Then I looked down at the corpse. “You were a son of a bitch! But you can’t hurt me anymore,” I breathed. Then the body on the floor disappeared. The heart I held gone.
I turned to Seth. “Now it’s your turn, you fucker. “I lunged at him before he had time to blink. Sinking my fangs into his jugular, I ripped his throat open just like I had my father’s. I reached inside his shirt but not to grab his heart, I didn’t want his. It meant nothing to me. Not like holding the vital organ of the man whose abuse I had to withstand for most of my childhood in my hand. I yanked the large crystal out and threw it to Vanessa. She caught it and took off down the hall.
I let go of Seth, and his limp body fell to the floor, blood pooling around his head. I’d torn half of his neck away. I spit the tainted flesh from my mouth, wiped the sour blood from my lips with the back of my hand. The other demons stopped attacking and fell into a slumber.
I quickly followed Vanessa into a conference room where she placed the rhodonite crystal in the middle of a long table. The stone was about four inches wide and maybe three inches high, triple the size it had been.
She stepped back and stared at it, her eyes wide, hungry for its power. “You have to destroy it,” I said.
“No,” she whispered. Her skin glistened with sweat. She licked her lips. The effects of the crystal already grabbing hold of her soul, pulling her into its evil. She’d held on to it too long.
“You have to. It will destroy you.”
“No, not if I don’t let it. I can control it, Lane. I want to.” She rubbed her hands together, and I could sense her desire for the power as it seeped into her cells.
I looked at the crystal on the table. A pink glow hovered around it, working its way into her soul.
“Wow, it’s really pretty,” Elvis said as he and Cian entered the room. They both looked like they’d been through hell and back. And they probably had.
“Baby, you can’t control it. It’s too evil. I won’t let it consume you this way.” I grabbed one of the swords from the holster she wore.
“No! You can’t destroy it. It will destroy you if you try!” she yelled a second too late as I swung the blade at the stone, hitting it right in the center.
I’d never felt so much pain in my entire life as the jolt of a current ran up my arm and through my body. I fell backwards as everything went black.
Chapter Forty
Vanessa
“No! Lane!” I cried. The rhodonite was too strong for him, for anyone to try to attack it that way. I crouched down beside him. Tears sprang to my eyes. “I’m so sorry, Lane. I should have told you. I never should have said I wanted to keep it. I didn’t really mean it. I didn’t know you were going to do that. Please, wake up.” I placed my ear close to his mouth to see if I could detect whether or not he was breathing, and felt nothing. But vampires didn’t need to breathe. Maybe he was okay.
Cian squatted down beside me and put his hand to his brother’s face.
“What should we do?” I asked.
Cian shook his head. “I’m not sure.”
I lifted Lane’s arm. His wrist hung limply from my hand and fell to the floor when I let go. “Is he dead? Can he die from that?” I asked. My knowledge of vampires was limited at best.
Cian didn’t answer me. Maybe he couldn’t. Maybe stating the horrible truth was too difficult for him. Instead, he asked, “Do you think you can separate the crystal again?”
I nodded. Wiping the tears from my cheeks with the back of my hand, I stood and faced the rhodonite.
I took out three candles from the pack at my waist. I set them around the crystal in a triangle. Sniffing away the hurt and regret, I looked down at Lane lying unconscious on the floor. I lit each candle with the wave of my hand then slippe
d out the titanium blade from the holster I’d worn. Holding it above my head ready to swing it down on the crystal, I chanted.
“All of three, pay mind to me.
Let your power defuse out from thee
As once you were one, now become three
Heed my will, so mote it be.”
I repeated the chant two more times, and the room went dark as death. I swung the sword down at the crystal. The light from the explosion lit up the entire room, and sparks flew around us. When the chaos cleared, three pink stones sat in the middle of the table. Three innocuous crystals unable to hurt anyone but able to bring peace and warmth when used correctly.
When everything died down, I went back to where Lane lay on the floor. Cian had stayed by his side. His lips turned downward, his forehead wrinkled with worry. His eyes glassy like he was ready to cry. I knew he and Lane loved each other so much.
Lane looked dead. I saw no discernible clue that he would wake up. No indication that he was alive at all. Placing my hands behind his head, I lifted his face to mine. Tears stung my eyes. I cradled his head, leaning my forehead against his. “You can’t die on me. We have this big, long-ass life to live together. Remember? Eternity?” I pressed my lips to his unresponsive ones, and it tore me to pieces that I couldn’t get one more kiss from him. I was breaking. Just like the rhodonite. Losing my will to go on. I sucked in a breath, releasing it with the worst ache in my chest I’d ever experienced. “Love sucks,” I said.
“That’s what I always said. Until I met you.”
“Lane? Oh my gods! You’re okay. The rhondonite didn’t kill you?”
He coughed and sat up. “Fuck, that stone packs a powerful punch,” he said, rubbing his right arm where he’d held the sword when he tried to hit the stone. “I’m okay.”
Rocked by a Vampire: Billionaire, Rock Stars, Vampires (Immortal Hearts of San Francisco Book 3) Page 18