She grabbed Celia around her slim upper arm, meaning to shake some sense into her. Celia’s eyes shot towards her again and the fire she saw there was enough to make Megan drop her hand.
“Celia,” she stammered, “you’re going to hurt somebody.”
“I might. I might not. Does it matter?”
“Of course it does. Why wouldn’t it?”
Celia turned her body fully towards Megan and she couldn’t help but take a step back. It was utterly bizarre to stand in front of someone who made it feel like she was standing in front of a mirror that didn’t move in the same ways that she did.
Celia, who looked like she was dressed in costume and whose face was much harder than her own, but who still looked like her twin. But they weren’t twins, that was very clear. Megan had never considered human casualty to be such an insignificant thing.
Celia, as if she could read her mind, smiled, her face softening so that she looked like a sweet young woman again. It was disturbing, how quickly she could switch between one face and another. It made Megan think that perhaps the voice inside of her head was real and that it was very likely right.
This woman, whatever she was, was not the right avenue to take. She was dangerous. Just how dangerous, Megan wasn’t sure, but she did know that she wasn’t too eager to find out.
“Because, dear, the longer you live the more you learn. Part of what you learn is that sacrifices are necessary. They’re necessary in order to move forward and only having your priorities straight will allow you to see clearly enough to do what you must.”
“My priorities? What are my priorities?”
“Power. Survival. Immortality. Those are your priorities, and those are the things I can teach you.”
“No, Celia. You won’t teach her those things. I won’t allow you to corrupt her. Not now, not ever.”
Celia and Megan both turned at the exact same time. They both recognized the voice but their reactions to it were very, very different.
“Philip!” Megan cried, never in her life thinking that she would be so happy to see the man she had very recently run away from.
“Hello, my love,” Celia crooned in a low, dangerous voice, “it’s been a very long time. What would you say, about a century or so?”
*
“Thanks for the ride, asshole. You’ve saved me a phenomenal amount of time.”
Ramsey did not speak. His only response was a hissing noise from deep in his chest. The residue of the purple dust Ramsey had used to get them here, still hung in the air and made everything around them feel foggy.
Philip shook his head rapidly to clear it and when he looked up saw Ramsey reaching for another vial of the stuff. He bared his teeth and took a menacing step forward, startling Ramsey just enough to give him the upper hand. He lunged forward, knocking the potion out of his hand and the man off his feet.
“So this is your specialty, huh? The way you got Megan to Paris so quickly? What’s it called?”
Ramsey didn’t answer, just lay there on the floor looking up at him with wide, half dead looking eyes. It was almost like he wanted to be hurt, like he was a masochist or something.
It didn’t make a whole hell of a lot of sense, but Philip had seen stranger things and he was having one hell of a day. If this guy wanted to play with fire, that was what he was going to get. Philip grabbed him by the throat, pulled him up and shook him as he licked the tips of his teeth.
“Answer me!” he roared, feeling the little amount of patience he had left quickly waning. “Answer me unless you want me to drain you right here.”
Ramsey opened his mouth and for a moment, Philip honestly believed that he was going to get his answer but what he saw horrified him and showed him that an answer was something he wasn’t going to get.
At least not from this guy. He had no tongue. Caroline had told him that Celia’s methods had become utterly savage over the years and he hadn’t had a problem believing it in theory but seeing the product of her work in the flesh was horrifying.
He felt his gut heave and was stricken with the sudden need to say he was sorry, but he didn’t have time. The poor Ramsey took his free hand and uncapped the purple dust, swallowed it all. Philip waited, expecting to see the man disappear or something. After all, that was what the stuff was for, right? To get him from one place to another? But something about this time was different.
Something was wrong. Ramsey was starting to disappear, that was definitely true, but he was writhing in pain as he did so and Philip saw that he wasn’t just vanishing, he was dissolving. First his skin, so that Philip’s hand was holding a mass of muscles and tendons which he quickly let go of in disgust. He jumped backwards and watched as the man dissolved further, for a moment just a skeleton and the stump of a tongue wagging inside of his mouth and then there was nothing.
All that was left of the witch that had been Ramsay was an ashen afterthought. There would be nothing left of him to bury, nothing left to mourn. As if there was anyone left who would mourn him. Anyone who truly cared about him at all. That was what the life Celia promised led to. A cold, brutal death at the end of an empty span of immortality with nobody around to care when you finally did kick the bucket.
He had to find her, to wade through Celia’s maze of a house and take Megan away before it was too late. Megan seemed so woefully vulnerable to him and she did not know that he would come for her, that he cared about her.
The things he had learned from Caroline had hurt him, there was no doubt about that, but it had freed him as well. The anchor that had held him down for all of his existence as an immortal being was the way he had met his death.
Celia, there was always Celia hovering above him and taunting him as he passed and then there was nothing until he came to and saw Antoine ushering him into his new life. His biggest ghost, his biggest failure, had always been Celia and Caroline’s information had unburdened him of all of that.
Celia had killed him because that was the kind of thing she did. Not all of the time, but when it was necessary. She was part of an ancient line of witches, the oldest one, the truest line. Even when he and Celia had been lovers, Celia had been around for a very long time. He hadn’t known that of course, when he had been making plans for her to become his bride, but that hadn’t made it not so.
She had killed him and it hadn’t even been because he mattered to her. It had been out of the desire to keep living her immortal life. In her sorcery, she had found a way to cheat death and once cleaved from those of her order who were witches of the light, had amassed an order of her own who had no love for humankind at all.
Megan was supposed to be the key. That was the reason Celia wanted her so badly. Because if she chose the light instead of the dark (and wasn’t that always the struggle?) as Celia hoped to instruct her in, it would be Celia’s downfall.
“Megan?”
He whispered the name, hoping against hope that he could take her away from this place while putting her in as little danger as possible. But of course that wouldn’t be the way of it. That’s never how things like this went down. But he had one thing working in his favor, and that was how wonderfully Celia had underestimated him.
It may have been true that Philip was a brat and that he had been for the majority of his life, but he had loved Celia. He really had and he remembered her home very well, including her favorite part of the place. He knew where she would be and he knew exactly how to get there. He had walked this pathway a thousand times, if not in reality, then in his waking dreams. He walked those well-worn stairs and crept into the library where they had wiled away many an afternoon and that was where he found the woman he had believed he loved and the woman he thought he could very well love for his future.
Celia and Megan, like mirror images of one another, except for the looks on their faces. Celia looked beautiful as always but also completely full of hate. The expression on Megan’s face was heartbreaking. She was at war with herself, her desires and her humanity were at
war and Celia was doing everything she could to help her to choose the wrong thing.
“My priorities? What are my priorities?”
“Power. Survival. Immortality. Those are your priorities, and those are the things I can teach you.”
“No, Celia. You won’t teach her those things. I won’t allow you to corrupt her. Not now, not ever.”
He hadn’t even realized that he intended to speak until the words came tumbling out of his mouth but when he did, both women turned to look at him and he was afraid. He was never afraid and it was difficult to wrap his head around the fact that he was feeling it now, but he was and it wasn’t for himself.
He was afraid for Megan. He was afraid that he would look into her eyes and see the beginning of that same darkness that had swallowed Celia up such a long time ago. If he saw that, he thought that he might very well lose his will to fight and then he really would die because there was clearly no love lost between him and Celia.
“Philip!”
Megan’s body strained towards him and just like that, all of the fear was gone. It appeared that just as Celia had underestimated him, he had underestimated Megan. There was no darkness in her now and looking at her he could see that there never would be. There was only light there.
It was all there ever would be and although a little voice spoke up in the back of his head and asked him how exactly he thought things would work out between a creature of the dark and a creature of the light, he pushed those feelings away.
There would be time for him to work out the complicated nature of his being and the possibility for love later (he hoped). For now, he just needed to get Megan out of this and help her discover all that she could really be.
“Hello, my love, it’s been a very long time. What would you say, about a century or so?”
“About that, yes. Celia, what are you doing?”
“Whatever do you mean? I’m doing what I’m made to do. And I’m taking care of my family. Although I must say, I’m surprised to see you here. You don’t die as well as I would have liked.”
“Wait a minute. I don’t understand.”
“Megan-”
But Celia held up finger to her lips and made a shushing sound, then wagged her finger in a motion that told him to keep his mouth shut.
“I’m sure you don’t, Megan, and this is a harsher part of our reality than I would have liked to expose you to so soon, but keeping ourselves alive indefinitely doesn’t come without its consequences. It requires sacrifices, as I said. He was one of mine.”
“But why? Why would you do that?”
“Because he loved me. Because the blood of someone who loves you is the strongest thing there is and when used in the correct concoction, it keep you going for a long, long time. It wasn’t personal or anything like that, although I’m starting to grow a strong dislike for him.”
“But that’s awful! Are you telling me that’s what it means to be what you are?”
Celia smiled at Megan and Philip could see before she even moved that Celia was going to hurt her. He wanted to stop it, to get to her, but he just couldn’t move fast enough. All those years ago, Celia had been five steps ahead of him and it seemed that it was still the case.
In one fluid motion, Celia took Megan into her arms, almost as if to engage her in a lover’s embrace. But there was no love here, only a little silver knife. Was it the same one that had been used in his almost murder? He thought that it might be, that something like that was just her style. She took it and pressed it against Megan’s neck, her face never losing that sweet, disturbingly angelic look.
“Sweet little dear, of course that’s what it means to be what I am. How do you think he’s managed to stay alive this long? Do you think he’s a vegetarian? Power is messy, it’s a dirty business. I’d love to say that I could give you more time to think it over, but I’m afraid our lover has taken that away.”
“I don’t need more time,” she choked out in a voice that was so much stronger than it had any right to be, “I don’t want any part of it. I won’t ever be like you.”
“Well alright,” she said with a sadness that never touched her eyes, “if you’re really sure. I was so hoping that I could persuade you but in lieu of that I’ll take the next best thing. You have no idea how powerful your blood is. This will sustain me for a long, long time.”
The things that came next happened very slowly and very quickly, all at the same time. Philip saw Megan shut her eyes, saw the solid resolve to go out being the person he thought that she might have just recently decided she wanted to be. He saw the faintest movement in Celia’s delicate wrist and the gleam of the knife in the air. It acted like some kind of electricity on him, like some elixir of life, and his feet came unstuck from the molasses they had been encased in. It was almost as if he could fly, he moved so fast, and in the blink of an eye it was Celia in his grasp instead of Megan in hers.
“One more lovers’ embrace, is that what you want? Sweet boy, you always were too emotional.”
Her hand raised into the air, the fingers splayed and shaking, and Philip saw in Megan’s eyes that whatever came next was going to be fatal.
He held Megan’s gaze for a moment that seemed to stop time, begging her with his eyes to forgive him for what he was about to do. Then his lips drew back and his teeth plunged into her perfect neck, felt the force of her life leave her body and flow into his.
Epilogue
“Mmm. Morning, mister. How long did you let me sleep this time?”
Megan rolled over to look at him and Philip was struck by how goddamned beautiful she was, the same way he was struck by it every time he looked at her. He thought that he could look at her for every day of his immortal life and never grow tired of looking at that perfect face. At the moment, said perfect face was giving him that ‘I’m not a fan of being woken up’ look, but they both knew that it was a joke.
It was a part of their ritual. One of those little rituals that he supposed every couple had but knowing that didn’t mean that he was any less thrilled by the rituals they held between them. It was something he know many men found boring and the only thing in his decades of life that had held his attention for any real length of time.
He thought about how he wouldn’t have been ready for something like this when he had merely been a man, about how grateful he was to have been given this chance at making his immortality really mean something.
He could have gotten lost in those thoughts and those mesmerizing green eyes and he probably would have, too, if the eyes hadn’t taken on a mischievous look he knew very well as her hand snaked down beneath the covers.
“Oh good,” she said merrily, “you didn’t forget my new rule.”
“How could I?” he laughed, feeling like a teenager again. “It was a very specific kind of a rule.”
“As far as I’m concerned, it’s only fair. If I have to be woken up it should only be by a very handsome, very naked man.”
“Of course, it’s only fair.”
Her hand continued down, her fingertips tracing the length of his abs and then lingering along the line of his hips. His breath quickened, his eyes shut, and when her teasing fingers finally closed around a member that was instantly (always, he thought, always and forever) aching for her, he let out an animalistic moan.
“Do you like that?” she whispered in his ear, her sweet breath brushing against his ear and causing all of the hairs on the back of his neck to stand up.
“Don’t tease me, woman,” he growled, “you know I don’t like to wait for things.”
“No, you don’t, do you? Not at all.”
Her mouth moved from the whispering to his lips, sucking on his bottom lip before slipping her tongue inside of his mouth and licking along the line of his incisors. Even after almost a year together, he was amazed by how much of a turn-on it was to be able to be all of what he really was with a woman.
He had always been a fan of sex, just like every other male on the planet, but
he had never known good sex until he had known sex with Megan. With all of the secrets, all of the confusion gone, there was no veil or barrier between them.
He could still remember the way that he had worried that her being of the light and him being of the dark would mean that they wouldn’t be able to be together and he felt that same rush of gratitude for that not being the case.
Caroline had explained it all to the two of them. Far from being star-crossed lovers, them coming together had been the perfect balance of the forces. It had been the stars aligning, the balance of power being righted. However you wanted to explain it, it had been right.
It was why they had been so drawn together from the beginning, why she hadn’t been able to stay away from his home and he hadn’t been able to keep from going after her. It had given him something he had given up on a long, long time ago. Real, lasting love.
Saved By Blood (The By Blood Vampire Series Book 3) Page 16