Bitten Beauty (Book 3 Of the Deadly Beauties Live On)

by C. M. Owens

  Aunt Masie owns this house. This is her home. Victor will lose his head if she comes back and sees this.

  “Stand up for yourself, girl,” Victor growls.

  I slowly stagger to my feet, and I spit out the blood in my mouth.

  “Go to hell,” I hiss.

  I turn around and knock a shotgun away from one of the guys, and he glares at me. He doesn’t make a move though.

  “Go,” I tell Tommy, nudging him with my knee, but never taking my eyes off Victor. “Get out of here.”

  Tommy looks between us, acting too scared to stand.

  “Go!” I shout.

  All three Leonard boys start scrambling to their feet and race out the barn door. Victor just scowls at me, watching me with unmasked disdain and disappointment.

  “You’ll regret this,” he growls. “You’ll regret it even more if you utter one word to Masie. And she’ll regret it, too. If you know what I mean.”

  Soft laughter fills the room as his followers leave behind him. The second they’re out of sight, I collapse to the ground, trembling all over.

  I’ve always thought Victor was crazy. Now I know he’s a monster.

  Voices carry up the hall, and I reach out to feel for Zee, who is missing. It’s then I hear them yelling downstairs, and I curse while leaping up and tucking the sheet around me.

  Please don’t hurt anyone.

  I jog down the stairs, and stumble into the living room, where… nothing is going on. Chaz is yelling at Zee and waving a hand in front of his face, but Zee seems to be lost, just staring straight ahead at nothing.

  “Hashtag, toga party,” the annoying incubus says, eyeing me with a smile in his eyes.

  “What’s wrong with him?” I ask, noticing his eyes are back to normal. Well, sort of. All I can see are the colors they usually don’t want seen.

  My hand comes up to cup his cheek as Chaz moves out of my way, and Zee’s eyes move up to meet mine. Unshed tears rest on his eyelids, and he wraps both arms around my waist, pulling me to him as he buries his head against the sheet, pushing his face against my stomach.

  “We just told him he was a proud new sire,” Dice says flatly. “He didn’t take it too well.”

  Zee burrows his head closer to my breasts, and I run my fingers through his hair as I cradle him to me.

  “He didn’t know?” I ask softly as Zee’s grip on me tightens.

  “No memory,” Ella says quietly. “It happens on power highs. It’s my fault, Leah. Not his. I could have stopped him, but I was afraid—”

  “Ella and Zee both living in crazy badass town would have been worse than you being turned into one of us,” Dice interrupts, then gets slapped by Karma, who groans.

  “You’re such an insensitive ass,” she hisses.

  “I’m a bloody incubus! What do you expect?” He rubs the sore spot on his chest while glaring at her, and she rolls her eyes before turning back to me.

  “I can’t see the night stalker in you unless you shift your eyes. You have a lot of control already. Which may have to do with your anointed blood,” Karma states matter-of-factly, shifting the subject.

  I continue stroking Zee’s hair while he tries to disappear against me. I’d rather take him upstairs and talk right now than listen to their findings.

  Ella idly doodles on a piece of paper, seeming lost inside her own head. Chaz leans back, putting his arm around her shoulders, as he studies me.

  “You’re not acting like a typical newb.”

  I shrug, still focusing the majority of my attention on the man unravelling in my arms.

  “Explain what typical means.”

  “Well, typically a newb is so enamored with their sire that they practically can’t even think for themselves. It’s annoying as fuck. Zee’s night stalker blood is from a weak line, which is supposedly why Gavin infused magic into his system. But you should still be a little more entranced than you are. You’re really not acting any differently than you were, other than the fact you don’t seem to have a problem with what he’s turned you into. Which might keep him out of the century sentence.”

  My head snaps over to Chaz, and he watches me as I glare at him. “No one is putting him in prison for doing what he had to in order to save my life.”

  Chaz’s lips thin, and Dice—being the asshole he seems to be—adds, “Well, technically they won’t listen to your grievances now, since you’ve just been sired. They can’t trust your words for a century or so. You made it known you didn’t want to be a night stalker, but he turned you. That’s all anyone outside of this circle will hear. The queen can’t show favoritism.”

  I lower myself to Zee’s lap, and he keeps his silence while I think of ways to get us far away from them. Has Roslyn had either of our blood? She can’t track us unless she has our blood.

  “No one outside of this circle can know what she is,” Chaz says, eyeing me like he knows what’s going on inside my head. “I think Kane would definitely agree with that, but we’ll even keep him out of it so that nothing comes back on them.”

  I relax, but Zee doesn’t even seem to hear anything going on right now.

  “Is he worried about prison?” I ask, trying to snap him out of it. He doesn’t respond to the gentle tug I give his hair.

  “No. He’s worried about what he’s done to you,” Ella says weakly, still doodling.

  Frowning, I try to say his name, but he still acts catatonic.

  “How different am I?” I ask, diverting the attention when I see everyone staring at him with concern. I don’t want him feeling the weight of their gazes while he seems defenseless.

  “Very,” Chaz says, motioning up and down me. “I almost wonder if there are any bonds between you two. Maybe Gavin’s magic messed up the bond process—which isn’t a bad thing. Or maybe your anointed half changes the rules. Anointed blood isn’t supposed to ever be tainted by ours. In fact, the hex is the only reason we can find that allows you to be turned.”

  The hex…

  “Slade mentioned the hexer. I think… I think the hexer was his mother.”

  Ella drops her pen, and her eyes snap up to meet mine as Chaz slowly leans forward, removing his arm from behind her as his brow furrows.

  “Why would you think that?”

  “Something he said. Then… Then he did something with my blood to my face. He mentioned his mother and father.”

  Ella turns a little puce, and Chaz goes still beside her.

  “That fucking changes the game. He’ll never stop,” Chaz whispers.

  “What? Why?” I ask, noticing the way they both tense at my question. Apparently I wasn’t supposed to overhear, but all of my senses have heightened since Zee… Since I changed.

  “The Aquarius book… Where is it?” Ella asks, glancing down at her doodles.

  “What the bloody hell is going on?” Dice asks as Karma hands Ella the book.

  Ella flips it open, and she rapidly turns the old pages like they aren’t fragile.

  “Slade is a hell of a lot older than we thought. We knew he spent centuries in the cages, but we had no idea how long he spent in the world before he was taken. Hell, everything we’ve heard so far was only hearsay anyway. Distorted, reworded rumors at best,” she explains… Well, sort of.

  “His age is a factor?”

  “A big freaking factor. It disproves some rumors we’ve already heard. It also means he laid low in a big way. It… It changes everything because if he’s…”

  He words trail off like she’s lost in thought as she reads something, and she has to turn away from the page. Chaz takes over, and I get a little nauseated when I see the hand-drawn sketch.

  A woman is sprawled out with her hands and feet bound, and blood is all over her like she was brutally assaulted and murdered very slowly. A man is on the page beside her, and his hands and feet are nailed to a stone floor beneath him. The nails are almost as big as his hands, and it’s… It’s so sadistic that I actually get sick and have to look away.

&n
bsp; “The hexer died after her spell was cast. They tried breeding her because they knew she had created greatness once,” Ella says in a whisper.

  “This was before the species mixing was cast into purgatory,” Chaz whispers.

  Dice leans up. “Hell, it’s probably the true reason why it was cast out. According to that page, they wanted an army of creature gods and wanted to find the correct bloods to make it. They couldn’t accept that fate left it at random.”

  “What?” I ask meekly, still feeling queasy.

  “Slade’s parents were both bred and brutally tortured when they tried to fight back. They never stopped fighting,” Ella murmurs under her breath. “His father sacrificed himself to save his wife and his two sons. It says the boys were too new to magic to fight his power. Their father was a dark user—a strong one. With a wave of his hand, he cast his sons and wife too far away for them to return in time to fight at his side. Again, this was before the mixing was stripped.”

  “And you’re just now figuring out it was about him?” Dice asks, trying to read the book over Ella’s shoulder.

  “It said they’d created creature gods, but it didn’t call them twins or refer to them as the Gemini twins,” Chaz defends. “And we seriously had no idea Slade was that old. Hell, he could have written this damn book for all we know.”

  Swallowing down my own issues, I take a deep, calming breath. Just having Zee’s arms around me keeps the images of Slade and his wrath out of my head.

  “His family was brutalized by my ancestors,” I say in a quiet summary, feeling my stomach lurch. “Treated like lab rats for their own sick uses. No wonder he hates me.”

  “It’s not your fault,” Chaz quickly points out. “That’s been so long ago that it’s not even dated.”

  “Doesn’t matter,” I tell him, looking up to meet his gaze. “I’ve studied sociology since I started college. It’s why I took the job with Marilyn. Some families hate each other over a land dispute that happened centuries ago. I once wrote a paper about two families that hated each other because one man stole another man’s pig over two-hundred years ago, and the descendants still held their own grudges. This is far more severe than that. His anger has to be directed at someone, and I share the blood.”

  “That’s not all,” Ella says on a long sigh, still reading. “It says the Aquarius only got close to his family because his mother befriended one in an effort to declare peace between them and us. The female Aquarius tricked the female hexer into trusting her enough to learn of the power her sons would one day yield. She learned a lot about our kind through that friendship, while selling falsehoods about the anointed to the hexer who was too compassionate and idealistic to see the truth.”

  My eyes close, and I blow out another breath.

  “Slade’s family was not only brutally murdered, but they were tricked and betrayed by my ancestors. To him, I’m just history repeating itself by befriending all of you.”

  Dice shifts. “Maybe we should do a truth spell on her.”

  Ella cuts her eyes at him, and a stab of pain hits my heart. I hadn’t thought of them not trusting me.

  “Magic doesn’t work on her,” Thad states, acting as though he’s thinking it over as well.

  Roslyn cuts her eyes toward him. None of the men seem onboard with me all of the sudden, and I start feeling very defensive and unwelcome. If it wasn’t for the sheet I’m wearing and Zee’s arms clamped around me, I’d walk out of here right now.

  “Some magic works,” Dice goes on. “She can be dematerialized and healed. We know that much. And we haven’t tested her boundaries now that she’s supercharged. We don’t know what being sired by Zee even means for her. All of the typical rules seem to be damned, and Zee isn’t typical either.”

  Ella gets quiet, and her eyes keep moving from her doodles to another book as she keeps the two side by side.

  “What?” I prompt, hating the look on her face.

  Her lips tense before she meets my gaze. “The symbols he drew on you… Zee took them off, but I saw them before he took you. I’ve seen them before, and I didn’t remember where until now.”

  “What?” Chaz asks, leaning up to see what book she’s looking at. He closes his eyes and pushes the heels of his palms into his eye sockets while groaning and leaning back.

  Ella looks up at me. “In some of the older tribes, they believed the souls of the victims couldn’t rest until revenge had been served and marked as sacrifice. Since he never got the chance to lay their souls to rest—according to legend—with the true murderers, you were the next best thing.”

  Cursing, I try to get up, but Zee clings to me for a second before allowing me to stand. He blinks rapidly like he’s getting out of a coma, and he releases me completely while practically sprinting up the stairs.

  “At least he’s him again,” Dice says with a shrug.

  I follow, only to find him tossing a bunch of shit in a duffel bag.

  “Going somewhere?” I ask dryly.

  “Away. It’ll help break the bonds down. The others can walk you through the process.”

  He won’t even look at me, when five seconds ago he was acting like he couldn’t let me go.

  “Can we skip this part?” I groan.

  “What part?” he asks distractedly, still throwing whatever random clothes he grabs into a bag.

  “The part where you feel immense guilt and do this running away thing you’re attempting. I seriously don’t have time to deal with your meltdown when there’s a lot more important shit going on. For one, there’s an entire group of my kind out there hunting for me, and we need to make sure I don’t unintentionally lead them right to you and your friends.”

  He pauses what he’s doing, and he looks up at me with narrowed, confused eyes.

  “Are you sure I sired you?” he asks, and I think he’s being genuine.

  “Um… Yeah.”

  I let my eyes flash blue, feeling the power float through me and sizzle, and then I shut it off, because it’s still a mystery what will happen if I let it stay in place for too long.

  He still studies me, and he even tilts his head from one side to the other.

  “You’re aren’t acting—”

  “Like a newb? Yeah. Heard that. We can skip that part too. I’m also not mad that you did this to save my life, because I really didn’t know how not ready to die I am until I almost did die.”

  His jaw ticks, and he goes back to shoving shit in his bag.

  “I could have called Dray.”

  “You could have. He might not have made it in time. You were seriously not yourself. At the end of the day, you risked your own life to protect me. That’s all that matters. You saved me, Zee.”

  Chapter 26

  ZEE

  She thinks I fucking saved her. Maybe the bonds are a little less obvious since she’s not standing there with hearts in her eyes and calling me Sir or something. But she’s definitely not right if she thinks I saved her.

  Just as I start to toss something else in my bag, a hand comes up and grabs my wrist. Leah shoves me against the wall with a hell of a lot more strength than she should be able to use against me, considering the bonds.

  She smirks when I look down at her, and she lets those damn night stalker blues show again. She’s making it hard to feel guilty when she’s acting like she enjoys the way she feels.

  “I guess this means I can turn you on like you turn me on now,” she says, even though I know it’s a tactic of deflection.

  I cock an eyebrow at her, and she continues to hold me against the wall. I could easily push her off me, but I won’t.

  “I think we both know you already turn me on. Which is why you were even in this position to begin with.”

  She steps into me, pushing her front against mine and craning her head back so she can continue looking up into my eyes.

  “Is that all it is to you, Zee? Hot sex? Lust? Because I don’t see you risking your life over and over to save a girl just because you l
ike fucking her. You aren’t the kind of guy to lose all control just because you want in my pants. You aren’t the kind of guy to fight everything in him to keep me close but push me away when it mattered. You risked everything on a daily basis to be with me. And now you think I’m just going to let you go?”

  She takes a step back, keeping a challenge in her eyes. I don’t say anything, because I really don’t know what to fucking say. This is the worst thing that could have happened. I never wanted to sire anyone. I sure as hell didn’t want to sire the only girl I’ve ever really wanted.

  I wanted to protect her.

  I wanted to save her.

  Instead… “I’ve ruined you.”

  She grins. She fucking grins.

  “I guess I should have heeded the warning. I thought you were just a cocky asshole accountant doing the bad boy vampire role play thing because your real life was just too boring. At best you were crazy. At worst you were psycho. Turns out, you’re exactly what I’ve always wanted.”

  She’s crazy.

  She turns and pushes the balcony doors open, and I watch as she walks out onto the balcony. “I’m pretty much indestructible now, right?”

  My eyes narrow, and she smiles again before falling backwards. A curse tears from my lips before I dematerialize and quickly reappear in time to catch her before she hits the ground.

  She laughs when I cradle her to me, barely catching my breath. When she looks up at me, her eyes are full of amusement.

  “See?” she prompts, leaning up to brush her lips against my jaw. “You can’t ruin me, Zee. At least not the way you think. You’re too much of a hero for that.”

  I groan as she climbs down from my arms, swishing her ass in that damn sheet that she has tied around her.

  Roslyn steps out, watching us with curious eyes. It wasn’t too long ago Thad demanded I sire her… before he knew what she was. Now I understand why he was so desperate to keep the girl he wanted. To keep the girl he needed.