by Anne Malcom
Strange.
“Hey, team, what’s cracking?” Chace cut in, giving me a playful punch on the shoulder and obscuring my vision of the strange vision of Duncan being… tender?
“My coven just tried to kill me,” Sophie said in a weird dreamy voice, her eyes moving from the dead witch to the group at large.
Chace’s grin disappeared. “Well that sucks. I’m sorry, Hermie,” he said with genuine feeling. She and Chace were good buds, hence the reason for him being able to call her ‘Hermie’—short for Hermione—without getting cursed.
I glanced to where her wolf was ripping apart corpses in a rage.
Well, there was one thing I liked about him.
I focused on Sophie. She still had that strange, shocked, hurt painting her face. She felt betrayed. This was her family, the only kind she’d ever known.
I could relate.
The first time my family tried to kill me, it stung.
“Yeah, well your coven are huge dicks,” I said, not unkindly. “I’m thinking the alliance with the witches is going in the ‘didn’t work out because they’re total fucking twats’ category,” I continued, trying to get Thorne to retract his grip on me so I could desecrate some corpses in my anger for my girl like the wolf had been doing.
He did not do so. I scowled. “I’m also thinking we’ll get wolfy to tell Rick, because if he does get mad enough to kill someone, it’s no great loss,” I said with a grin. Rick had been bugging Sophie about getting a meeting with the witches about all this.
Speaking of killing…
I glanced over to where a previously prone Scott was trying to struggle to his feet. He was not doing well.
“Duncan,” I snapped.
He looked up from where he’d been torturing a hybrid—he was so depraved, it was awesome. The female slayer was nowhere to be found.
“What?” he growled, obviously pissed about the absence of his slayer.
I jerked my head in Scott’s direction. “There’s a damsel who needs saving. Go make sure he’s not brain damaged.” I paused, thinking. “Or more than usual.”
Duncan scowled like a kid told they had to stop playing with their toy in order to help their sister with their homework. Actually, it was the vampire version of that exact situation.
I turned my attention back to the group. “Okay, Soph, it does totally blow that they tried to kill you, but that means now we can try and kill them right back.” I grinned, showing fang. “And when we try, we succeed.”
She glanced around, then at me. “No, I think that’s exactly what they want,” she said after a long silence. “These were all low-level witches.” She grimaced, focusing on a younger, pretty teenager lying splayed to the left. Her face moved in recognition, then in sorrow as she rushed to the corpse. The head was at a strange angle.
“I’m thinking there’s no interrogating to be done there,” I said, slightly worried. “Unless you want to go dark side and bring her back from the dead to torture her. Sure, that would be fun and all, but is it worth Hades taking your soul and your youthful good looks like he did Malena?” I asked.
She ignored me, holding her hands above the corpse, closing her eyes and bringing a sweet scent to the air.
I jabbed Thorne in the ribs. “Do something,” I hissed.
He glared at me. “What the fuck do you want me to do?”
“I don’t know, go punch the wolf. Or better yet, kill him. That’ll make her mad enough to stop trying to bring bad witches back from the dead.”
Thorne focused on the wolf who had obviously noted the smell in the air and had rushed to Sophie, clutching the back of her neck.
She didn’t even glance at him, but steam rose from his hand and he jerked it back, blackened and blistered.
“Don’t think that’ll make her angry enough,” he muttered. “Plus, my hands don’t heal like a werewolf’s.”
I pushed out of his arms. “Well mine do, and I’m not scared of a little burn like you babies.”
Before I could grab Sophie’s hair to yank her back from the abyss, her eyes snapped open and she stood abruptly.
“Okay, is this the real Sophie, or has the dark side of the force taken over?” I asked with suspicion.
She glared at me. “You’re choosing a Star Wars reference? That’s fucking weak, dude.”
I glared back. “Okay, it’s just the regular bitch, not the Darth Vader style.” I stubbornly stuck with my Star Wars reference.
My gaze, along with everyone else’s, was focused on the dead witch, all expecting her to wake up and start trying to eat brains. I intended to sacrifice Scott, though it wouldn’t keep her sustained for long.
“Oh come on, I didn’t go all Dr. Frankenstein,” Sophie snapped at the group. Chace flinched.
“Pussy,” I teased.
“What in the fuck were you doing, piccolo guerriero?” the wolf growled, clutching her shoulders and shaking her.
He called her his little warrior. That was kind of cute.
Wait, I was meant to hate him.
“You know calling to the death magic endangers your very fucking being,” he hissed, voice guttural as it turned animal.
The utter fear saturating his voice and the desperation in his eyes told me that he knew more about Sophie’s scary powers than I did, and that really pissed me off.
I was totally back to hating him now.
She glared at him, not flinching at the beast behind his gaze. “I wasn’t practicing death magic,” she hissed, ripping from his arms—with a healthy dose of magical help by the looks of his grimace—and turning to face me. “They were cursed, Isla,” she said, her voice not as strong as it had been when facing the wolf. She held her face tight, her eyes drawn, and I knew she was fighting against sorrow.
Against tears.
I’d never seen her cry.
Apart from the day we found out the world lost Kurt Cobain.
Now her eyes were glittering. “She was just a kid,” she yelled, thrusting her hand out toward the corpse. Chace, who happened to be standing behind the body, jumped as if he expected blue fire to shoot out of Sophie’s fingers.
It would’ve been funny if I hadn’t half expected it too.
She barely noticed. “She wasn’t bad. Fuck,” she hissed, running her hands through her choppy layers. “They’re spelling young witches to fight against us, to fight with the fucking enemy,” she snarled. “Using humans, fellow sisters as soldiers. As fucking shields. They knew they’d die out here, but they sent them anyway because they knew I’d be here. But why would—” Her face paled. “Oh fuck,” she cried.
Then she disappeared.
Like right into thin air.
I gaped at the spot where she’d been standing.
“Oh fuck is right.”
It was safe to say the wolf didn’t have as mild a reaction to Sophie literally vanishing from the face of the earth.
I just had more temper control than the animal. While my outward reaction was mild, inside I was freaking the fuck out, thinking the witches had gotten all the Infinity Stones or something.
But my phone vibrated a few frenzied minutes later. I sagged when I saw the caller ID.
“Bitch, if you’re calling from the future and didn’t even have the decency to take me along, I’ll be pissed,” I hissed into the phone, relief making my threat seem flat.
“They tried to take her,” she said through gritted teeth.
“Take who?” I demanded. “And please clarify whether you’re speaking from the future or present. And if it’s the future, tell me if I’m still hot. Oh, and alive. It would be great if I were still alive.”
“I’m not in the fucking future, Isla. How would I be calling if I was?”
I shrugged. “Maybe you’ve got a really good long-distance provider, I don’t know, Sophie.”
The wolf had obviously heard Sophie’s husky and irritated voice and tried to charge at me, presumably to snatch the phone. I jerked my head at Duncan, and he snatched wo
lfy by the back of the neck with a grin.
“Now, how about we let the lasses talk,” Duncan asked pleasantly, obviously happy to take out some of his frustration on his not-so-furry friend.
I grinned as the wolf struggled.
“I’m in my office,” Sophie snapped. “They tried to take Malena. The bitches used the younger witches as sacrifices in order to fucking come here and try to spring her.” I heard a crash through the phone. “But they failed because my magic is too badass, even for them, and those kids, they died for fucking nothing.” Her voice broke slightly at the end.
“Everyone dies for nothing in the end,” I said softly. I waited a beat, entertaining myself while watching both Duncan and a slightly more healthy-looking Scott try to restrain the wolf. “Your little dog is going postal over here about you disappearing,” I said after a moment. “Want to educate me on that nifty new power?”
She sighed. “I don’t know. I just got real freaked out about Malena being loose and… I was here.”
“Well, how about you get real freaked out about some excellent Italian wine and bring me back some merlot,” I suggested, thinking of a great red from Florence that you could only buy from the winery.
It was at that point that the wolf burst free of Scott and Duncan and charged at me, snatching my phone and hissing into it as he stormed away.
I scowled. “That wolf has manners of… well, a wolf,” I said to the group at large. I glanced at the corpses surrounding us, feeling a lot more at home standing amidst death and victory than I did in a fucking library.
Which was good, considering there looked to be a lot more death to come.
Victory?
I wasn’t sure about that.
“Isla,” Thorne growled, stalking toward me as the door shut, signaling Scott’s departure, the last of the hangers-on since the witch battle. Duncan had disappeared in a huff, talking about “stubborn human females.”
“We’re all like that. The good ones, anyway. Human, vampire, witch—doesn’t matter,” I called to his back.
He flipped me the bird.
Obviously the courtship was going well.
The slayers had gone to tend to their wounds, since they didn’t heal like us. How annoying to have to recover after every battle. As it was, my chest still stung and had an angry bruise marking it. Fading, but not quickly enough. Thorne’s eyes had been on my chest the whole evening, and not in the good way.
He was stalking toward me in a kind of good way. I tasted his desire, his blood calling to me as my throat burned for it. I’d only fed off him that morning, but he was somewhat addicting, and I seemed to heal quicker with his blood. Plus we couldn’t have sex, so I was supplementing. He hadn’t been complaining so far.
Sophie had left to find a witch elder she trusted to tattle on her naughty coven.
“Not before you finish your spell or potion or voodoo doll to get me laid again,” I snapped.
She eyed me, her wolf darn near attached to her back, as he had been since she’d met us at my apartment. That was after he’d snatched her out of the air and they’d disappeared into the library for a suspiciously long time.
I couldn’t even judge if Sophie’s mussed hair was due to sex—it was like that all the time.
But she was definitely flushed. And that made me even more pissed at her. Not making the spell and then flaunting her sexuality in front of me like some brazen hussy. I was the brazen hussy to be doing the flaunting.
“You think your sex life is more important than one of the biggest betrayals of the craft’s gift since the beginning of time?” she asked.
“Of course I do,” I snapped. “If it’s not happened since the beginning of time, there’s a grace period or something. I do not have a grace period. And when I get sexually frustrated, I start killing werewolves,” I said with a grin.
She huffed, her face taking on the drawn and drained look of exhaustion. It punctured my selfish bubble for a hot second, and I was about to tell her I’d get a stress ball or something.
She spoke before I could. “Fine,” she sighed.
I clapped in glee, firmly back in the bubble.
“But you’ll owe me a favor,” she said, pointing at me.
“As long as we have a safe word, I’m down for anything.” I winked.
She shook her head before turning to leave, taking the glaring werewolf with her.
Scott stuck around for a hot minute longer to fill me in on the little projects I had him doing on the side. The news about my father not doing anything to immediately show he was part of the rebellion should’ve made me happy. The second part about another person who was in my rebellion should’ve made me very happy.
Neither did. It was a lot caused by the lack of sex, and also by the troubles each pieces of information raised.
“You need help with this?” he asked hopefully, though he looked a little drained himself. The spell he’d taken on was not just any charm, and Sophie was too tapped to heal him properly. It wouldn’t do for him to die right now.
I patted his shoulders. “No, Scotty. You go hit up an old folks’ home or something, get your cruelty-free blood and make sure you’re prepared for the next death match.”
His eye brightened and darkened at the same time. It was an interesting thing to witness, a one-eyed vampire getting excited about the prospect of being part of a gang when he’d been ostracized all his life, and alternately facing the knowledge that the aforementioned gang might be the reason his life ended.
“When?” he asked, excitement winning out. He was literally willing to do anything to be included. Even die.
I rolled my eyes, my selfish bubble popping yet again to feel a little pity and warmth for my favorite half breed. “I don’t know, buddy. We’re lucky to get twelve hours of peace around here, so be prepared.”
“I’m always prepared, Isla,” he chirped. “You know that.”
I opened the door. “All too well,” I muttered, then paused. “Hey, Scotty?”
He turned, eye bright now.
“Thanks… for today,” I said. “You know, trying to come to my aid. You didn’t need to, because I was fine. In fact, you made things more difficult for me and yourself, but I appreciate it all the same.” I paused, feeling awkward. He was so fucking pathetic, but I liked the little idiot. I searched for a nice thing to say to him. “You’re not a complete pussy,” I said finally.
He lit up like I’d just slapped a gold star on his Captain America hoodie—yes, he was wearing that, and yes, it took all my effort not to rip it off him and strangle him with it.
Then, like flipping a switch, the joy left his face and he leaned forward, squeezing my hand.
The only reason he got away with the gesture was because I wasn’t expecting him to be so brave—yeah, he’d fought a witch, but trying to touch me with affection? Much more dangerous.
“It’s going to be okay, you know,” he said quietly, his one eye glittering with something so deep I didn’t think Scott had enough inside him to reach. “It’s an ugly world, and I think it might just get uglier before all this is over. But—and you’ll hate me for saying this, maybe even chop off a limb—we’ve got each other, and I think that’s the most important thing in all this. They’ve got something they want to fight for, that they’ll sacrifice people for. But we’ve got something we need to fight for, that we’ll sacrifice ourselves for. I think that’s going to be the difference.” He smiled dumbly, slightly off center. “You’re going to punch me now, aren’t you?”
I blinked at him. Considered punching him. But my fist didn’t seem to be working, that stupid heart of mine beating so loud I could barely think around it. “No, loser, I don’t think I’ll punch you,” I whispered. “But get out of here before I change my mind.”
He grinned, wider that time, then waved at me and darted off.
I stood in the doorway long after the elevator took Scott to whatever ridiculous comic book-laden apartment he lived in.
His wor
ds hit me. Physically. Harder than that spell earlier. Harder than any spell ever could.
But I couldn’t focus on that. Because then I’d focus on my worst weakness. The one that very well might get me killed. It had nothing to do with a witch’s spell and everything to do with that fucking L-word.
I closed the door, turned. And there was Thorne, standing in the middle of the room, staring at me. No, it was something more than just staring. He was scorching his attention onto my skin, eyes crawling over me with something more than just desire, though there was plenty of that.
That’s when he growled my name.
Stalked toward me.
And then I was against the closed door, my hands above my head, circled by his wrists.
“You took unnecessary risks today,” he rasped, fingertips trailing across the bruising on my chest.
My body hummed for him, and his blood sang to me. I ached to have it inside me. I ached to have him inside me. The need for him paralyzed me. “If I didn’t take unnecessary risks, you wouldn’t be here right now,” I murmured.
His lips trailed along my jawline.
“You’re my biggest risk, Thorne,” I whispered. “My weakness.”
His eyes met mine, his hand ghosting downward to caress my breasts. He hissed out a breath. “And you’re mine, Isla,” he replied, voice thick.
My knees quivered as his hand reached into my panties. His eyes never left mine.
“But my ultimate weakness is the thought of you not being right here,” he murmured. His finger entered me, and I threw my head back against the wood of the door.
His lips met mine. “Of me not being right”—his fingers moved upward in brutal tenderness, teasing my climax—“here,” he breathed, jerking his finger forward, stroking the perfect spot inside me.
I exploded around his hand, crying into his kiss as he took my mouth while his fingers continued moving, relentless, building me up before I’d even finished the first time.
“So that weakness, you, that makes me the strongest man on earth,” he rasped against my mouth, his voice deep and shallow at the same time. “Because it means I won’t let anything, anyone take you from me. It’s not me who’s supernatural, babe, but my love for you turns me into that. And you’re determined not to let me fight your fuckin’ battles, but I’m not fighting yours. I’m fighting mine. And I expect you to fight along with me.”
