Mastering Darkness

by Kate Wendley

  He took a breath of the fresh night air as he thought through the things they’d discussed and headed across the lot to the parking garage. He slid into his car and dropped his notebooks on the seat beside him, then pulled out his phone to send an email to his daytime business assistant, Tristan, to ask him to schedule a meeting for him with the bank. He paused when he noticed the voicemail icon.

  He had a message. Kaia. He hadn’t listened to it yet and wondered why he hadn’t deleted it right after she left it earlier tonight. She was nothing but a distraction for him at this point.

  It was time to move on with his life, so he typed in his code to bring up his voicemail. When the option came up to either play or delete the message, his head told him to delete it, but he couldn’t force his hand to do it.

  He hit the number to play it, then put the phone to his ear, determined to just get this irritation over with so he could go on with his life.

  As soon as he heard her voice, a horrific longing to go back to the way things were with her nearly overwhelmed him. This was her third message to him since her attack four nights ago, and something told him she wouldn’t be trying again if he didn’t call her back this time.

  She sounded like she always did with him… loving, caring, and his. But sad. She told him she missed him and wished they could talk about whatever was going on. She asked him to please call her, but her tone of voice said she didn’t expect he would.

  He saved her message instead of deleting it, telling himself he’d erase it later, along with the other two messages that were still saved on his phone. He didn’t have time for this nonsense. She knew full well what was going on.

  His mood turned darker and darker, and he was soon unable to stop himself from replaying memories of all the times she refused to open up to him about herself. Then it was the memory of Ethan holding her in his arms and kissing her before Anthony brought her to the club, ending with Kaia’s arms draped languidly around Ethan as he carried her away after Winston attacked her.

  Anger coursed through him for a time while he begged for the cold comfort of whatever the Vampire Mother had given him to please just hurry up and overtake him so he wouldn’t have to feel these emotions anymore.

  He was furious with himself for even thinking things might be different with a woman this time. Things were never different for him. It didn’t matter. He had a family to run and it wasn’t a game. There were serious consequences when he failed to do his job properly.

  He started the car and pulled into traffic, determined to put Kaia and feelings of love out of his mind forever.

  Chapter 34

  Kaia saw Ethan again Tuesday night when he stopped by to check on her, and everything was mostly back to normal between them… which was suspicious.

  Had he done something to make Anthony think there was something going on between them? She let the worry go because whether he did or not, Anthony was gone now and wouldn’t talk to her anyway, so she let Ethan look at her bite and the bruises again tonight. They’d been friends for so long now she couldn’t stay mad at him, even for all his faults.

  “You seem to be in a better mood tonight.”

  Ethan acted surprised. “I do?”

  She nodded.

  He finished looking at her neck from every possible angle, then said, “You’re safe here. You weren’t safe at the club.”

  She frowned. “You were in a bad mood because I went to the club?”

  He waved her question away. “No, not really that.” He sighed. “You’re human, Kaia. I want you to be safe wherever you are. Vampires and shifters are a lot stronger than you and things can happen.” He gestured towards her neck and she frowned and looked away.

  Ethan surprised her by asking, “I haven’t seen Anthony hanging around here lately. What’s up with you two? Are you guys taking a break?”

  Her face suddenly felt hot. “I haven’t heard from him since that night at the club. He won’t return my calls. I guess he doesn’t want to see me anymore.” She got up and went to the kitchen to get something to drink and to put some distance between them. She didn’t want to talk about Anthony with him, but dammit, she was sick of being in the dark. “Why do you two hate each other anyway?”

  Ethan seemed caught off guard by her question, and then his face shut down. “That’s between me and him.”

  “Really? Because he doesn’t seem to know.”

  Ethan frowned with a cold look in his eyes. “It’s personal.”

  That got her blood boiling. “Personal, like how you know lots of things about me?”

  He popped up and snapped, “Personal, like it’s none of your business.” She stared after him in shock as he stormed out of her apartment.

  **

  Anthony woke for the night and Kaia was immediately on his mind. Again. He angrily tried not to think about her as he rolled over to feed, but when Sebastian brushed some of his hair out of the way as Anthony leaned into him, it made him vividly think of Kaia finger combing his hair out of his face before kissing him all over.

  It reminded him of how loved and accepted he’d felt for such a brief period of time in his long, long life.

  He tried to block his emotions as he fed from Sebastian, but tears stung his eyes. He felt ridiculous crying while feeding, but the more he tried to force down his emotions, the more out of control he felt. He trembled from the force of fighting feelings he wasn’t used to dealing with. Feeding at the same time only made him all the more confused because every possible sensation was amplified.

  Sebastian tapped his arm and sucked in a harsh breath. His muscles stiffened just before he gripped Anthony tightly, then attempted to push him away. He gasped, “Stop. Please stop.”

  Anthony wasn’t sure if he’d had enough blood or not, but he needed to let Sebastian go since he couldn’t even control his power enough to keep his bite from feeling painful.

  He released him and tried to lick the wound to make the bleeding stop, but he was having a hard time doing that while forcing back sobs over his broken heart. He finally awkwardly managed it, but there was no way Sebastian wouldn’t see his tears, so he just sucked it up and stumbled off the bed. He couldn’t even turn into mist to leave without Sebastian seeing him because he couldn’t control his power right now.

  He stammered out, “Forgive me,” before rushing into the bathroom and slamming the door behind him.

  He stood bent over the sink with his hands on the counter, his hair a curtain around him. He needed to get himself together. These emotions of love and regret were overtaking his normal rational thoughts and distracting him too much from his real life. His responsibilities.

  There was a light knock on the door and he could feel Sebastian sitting on the floor on the other side. “Hey.”

  He somewhat loudly said, “I’m sorry about your neck.”

  “It’ll heal.” He was quiet a moment before saying, “Look. I don’t know anything about this woman, but if Ethan’s using her to play mind games with you, well, it’s working. Now would be the perfect time for him to try something while you’re all out of sorts over her.”

  Anthony looked in the mirror at his tear streaked face and knew Sebastian was right. Damn him for calling him out on it. Forcing himself to cut off his emotions wasn’t working and was only making him an easy target for his enemies.

  He slowly opened the door and slid to the floor with his back to the wall opposite Sebastian. “Kaia. Her name’s Kaia.”

  “She’s under your skin pretty good.”

  Anthony reluctantly sighed. “Yes.” He stared at the wall in front of him and tried to clear his head by thinking about absolutely nothing.

  It was some time before Sebastian spoke again. “So… do you think Ethan’s pulling something on you? Do you think Kaia’s…”

  He knew what he was getting at. Did Anthony think Kaia had purposely seduced him? His heart screamed no. The rest of him… “I don’t know.”

  Sebastian cautiously said, “And you’re a
fraid to call her in case she really is just toying with you.”

  There was more to it than that, but he supposed that was a good enough reason in itself.

  “You know, it’s not your fault Winston attacked her. He was around off and on for a while before that. He’d been hassling everyone. That’s just Winston, man. That’s not your fault.”

  Shame overwhelmed him. “But I brought her here. Whether or not she’s being honest with me, and whether or not Winston is simply a nuisance of a vampire, I’m the one who brought her here.”

  It went unspoken between them that it was then his responsibility to protect her while she was here, especially since she was human.

  They sat in more silence after that, and he realized again how thankful he was to have both Sebastian and Zach as friends to help keep him sane.

  He finally stood up, though he couldn’t look at his friend just yet. “Thank you. Again, I’m sorry about your neck.”

  He could hear the smirk in Sebastian’s voice when he said, “It’s healed.”

  Anthony quietly chuckled.

  **

  Over the next several weeks, he threw himself into work to keep his mind off Kaia. He spent more time than usual with the elders as they talked about the shifters and who wanted to move into human society, as well as any who’d been having issues acting human. He spent more time with shifters who needed help with their small businesses, spent countless hours inspecting all the buildings and the repair and improvement projects he wanted done, and even longer analyzing all his investments and reallocating his funds. Anything to keep his mind off his failed personal life.

  He’d kept himself completely immersed in work, but his mood was still sour, even with the distractions. He couldn’t help it. He was miserable without Kaia.

  Zach tried to get him to relax a few times, telling him he was too high strung lately. He knew he was but he didn’t know what to do, and he didn’t want to talk about his personal problems with anyone, even Zach, because he knew it wouldn’t resolve anything. So aside from getting Kaia back, which he knew was a lost cause, he had no idea how to just relax. He tried, though, because he was constantly irritated and angry at the world.

  He was at the gym tonight, with his usual ignore spell on himself. It made people feel the subtle need to leave his general vicinity, which let him stretch out his muscles in peace. The gym here in Brookhaven was set up especially for the increased strength of shapeshifters and vampires, so the equipment was all reinforced to handle a lot heavier weights than a normal human gym.

  Anthony was doing pullups. One hundred, on his way to almost two hundred, and he still felt irritated. The tall wolf, Marc, that Anthony confronted a few weeks ago in the club, was doing bench presses nearby and his friend, his spotter, wandered away in the middle of his set.

  Marc’s face turned red as he struggled to lift the loaded bar off his chest to the rack above him. “Rio, dammit! Help me!”

  Anthony could clearly see Rio had no intention of coming back, and if he was reading his body language right, he’d definitely heard the request for help. Interesting.

  He raced over to the wolf and grabbed the bar from him, settling it in the rack.

  Marc panted as he slid himself out from beneath the weights. “Jesus Christ Rio! What the hell is your problem? Shit!”

  Marc jumped from the bench in panic when he realized who he was yelling at, and awkwardly backpedaled away. Anthony grabbed him with his power so he didn’t run into the butterfly press machine behind him. He tugged him forward a bit until he was steady on his feet, then released his hold on him.

  “You looked like you needed a hand. Your friend didn’t seem to be available to assist you.” He gestured towards Rio, but Marc looked too frightened to take his eyes off Anthony.

  “Uh, thanks. I should maybe find some new friends.”

  Sweat dripped down his face and his hand trembled as he wiped at it. His eyes were alert to Anthony the whole time.

  “I’d like to apologize for my behavior a few weeks ago. I had a bad evening the night before and I was still in a rather rotten mood. I didn’t mean to take it out on you and your mate. I hope I didn’t ruin your evening.”

  The wolf looked surprised by his admission and graciously said, “Uh, no worries man. I was probably a little too wound up to begin with, anyway. We’d, uh, just gotten back together after some… issues. My issue, actually.”

  “Regardless, I was discourteous and I’d like to make it up to you. Could I offer you and your mate tickets to a show or a nice dinner out? Anything you wish.”

  He chuckled and cautiously stepped forward to grab his towel from the bench. “It’s ok, really. Helena… well. It was fine.” His face reddened as he tried to hide a smirk.

  “Really?”

  “Yeah. Really. No harm done.” He cautiously put his hand out. “I’m Marc, by the way. Sorry I didn’t know who you were at the time.”

  Anthony shook his hand and couldn’t help a reluctant smile. Marc had a personality similar to Zach. Easy going and friendly for no particular reason. “Marc Giroux?”

  He cocked his head in surprise. “Yeah. How’d you know?”

  “Photographic memory. I try to keep tabs on the family, though shifters are harder to remember than vampires because your looks change as you age.”

  Marc smirked, then grabbed his water bottle and took a healthy swallow, his gaze intent on Anthony’s scar for a moment. “Well, thanks for helping me out.” He gestured towards the weight bar, looking like he was forcing himself not to stare at Anthony’s hideousness.

  The unwanted attention irritated him, but he supposed it was his own fault for tying his hair back while he worked out. “You’re welcome. And I insist on treating you and Helena to a night out. I’ll have someone get ahold of you to give you some ideas to consider.” He turned to leave then, because it was obvious he made the man nervous, and that irritated Anthony almost as much as the fact that he had a face that was hard to look at.

  “Thanks man. Hey, so what happened that night? Did everything turn out ok?”

  Anthony gave him a pointed look and darkly said, “No. It did not.”

  Marc took a shaky breath. “Well what happened? You seemed pretty upset.”

  Anthony frowned more deeply. He wasn’t in the mood for games. “You don’t keep up with the rumor mill around here?”

  “No. I come here to work out, not socialize, unlike those creeps.” He gestured to his friend Rio and the group of men that were standing around talking, and Anthony lost some steam.

  He focused blankly on the weight bar as he leaned over and considered if he even wanted to talk about this anymore. In the end, it was Marc’s easygoing attitude that made him blurt out what was on his mind.

  “In a nutshell, I lost the only woman I’ve ever felt comfortable enough to be myself with, and at least part of it was my fault. The other part, well, I still don’t know what Ethan’s game is, but that bastard’s somehow involved in this mess, too.” Now that he’d said it out loud, he had no idea why he’d told this stranger his troubles other than he was tired of the piteous looks he got from Zach and Sebastian. Mostly Zach.

  Marc wiped his sweaty brow with his towel and sat on a neighboring bench. “Is she a forever girl?”

  “What?”

  “Can you see yourself with her forever, or are you just ticked about how it ended? There are lots of women in the world, so why waste effort thinking about what happened if she’s not really the one for you?”

  He stared at the wolf as that sunk in. Could he see himself with her… forever?

  **

  Anthony left the gym feeling more confused than ever about Kaia, but in the end it didn’t really matter. She was gone and he’d blown any chance of reconciling by this point. And to top it off, the latest issue with Les still wasn’t resolved. The shifter women that screamed bloody murder when Les drained Marissa in their sexual game of pretending to turn vampire weren’t happy with his punishment and
were now demanding more retribution.

  Marissa claimed to her friends and family that Les put her in a trance and forced her to let him feed, and then never stopped. Anthony already determined that wasn’t true because he put Les in a trance and asked him all about it again, then put Marissa in a trance and asked her as well. People in trances couldn’t lie, and Marissa fully confessed to exactly what Les had originally told him had happened.

  Anthony didn’t let the other women know, or even let them hear what Les and Marissa said. He felt like that might create more backlash than it was worth. He did, however, let Marissa know that he knew the truth. He could feel from her that she felt bad, but in the end, peer pressure won out and she stuck to her story.

  As Master here, considering his options of either outing Marissa for her lies and creating a possible firestorm of shifters against vampires versus punishing the vampires just enough to appease the shifters, he decided to appease the shifters. Vampires were vulnerable during the day and Anthony didn’t ever want to feel like he didn’t trust his family with their safety, so he did what he had to do to keep the peace.

  He wasn’t about to let Les take the blame for, or pay the price they wanted, though, which was to be punished like shifters got punished… out at the ranch, pack style justice. For a shifter that meant the accused took a beating from whoever the pack felt appropriate, which could be multiple people, shifted into their animal or not. With as much as these particular shifters hated vampires, Les would never survive it. He wasn’t a fighter, and he wasn’t a powerful enough vampire even if he was.

  Anthony was in a terrible enough mood lately that he finally offered himself for their abuse. One night at the ranch, one hour of the best they could do against him. He wouldn’t even fight back so long as it was a fair fight, meaning no weapons of any kind, and Marissa had to witness the beating.

  She visibly cringed when he told the group that. Good. She could watch and remember what her lies could do to people, including seeing what monsters they turned her friends and family into.