by L E Royal
“We don’t do anything.” Scarlett’s eyes studied me, stern. “You, Cami, and Jade just need to stay out of the way and let me handle this.”
I was about to object, but Cami was already there.
“And how exactly are you going to handle it?”
“Are you drunk?”
She rolled her eyes. “Tipsy, maybe, but sobering up rapidly. Now answer the question.”
Scarlett squared her shoulders, and if she succeeded in hiding her apprehension from the others, she didn’t from me.
“I’m going to kill him.”
“Can you do it?”
I thanked God for Camilla and her straightforwardness, her ability to say what we were all thinking but didn’t know how to approach.
Scarlett was quiet.
“He’s head fucked you for as long as I’ve known you, Scarlett. He knows where every single mine in you is because he put most of them there. You’ll get one shot and if you miss…”
“He’ll kill me, or worse.”
Her eyes flashed to me.
“We can use the serum!” Jade cut in excited. “Camilla went to Chase Tower and found the last of Evan’s vampire killing toxin. We have three vials!”
“I thought the Government cleaned house on that?” She seemed genuinely confused, and I noted her surprise that Camilla had tried to help her. It stung and not for the first time, I wished we could do more for her.
Jade shrugged.
“They obviously didn’t get it all because there’s three vials of it sitting in our living room. You can use it on Dad and nobody has to get hurt!”
She was so excited, so naïvely hopeful, and I felt Scarlett’s sadness at having to crush that.
“It’s too risky, Jadey. We don’t know how much he knows about the serum, he could smell it or figure it out before it had time to work, or before I could get it on him or into him. Not to mention it’s dangerous for any of us to handle.”
Adrenaline shot me in the chest.
“But not for me. At least, I don’t think so.”
“You’re half vampire now, and I won’t have you anywhere near this.”
She infuriated me at times.
“So, I can’t decide if I can even try to help, but I have to let you run off on suicide missions every other night and be okay with it?”
She disappeared, a ghost into the wind, and just as I was ready to scream, full of nervous, anxious energy and frustrated by her ridiculous double standard, my feet were carrying me out of the room and I recognized her compulsion in my mind.
I had enough time to tell the other vampires I’d be back soon, before I was striding down the hall, only stopping when I was in our room, and she was looking up at me with her odd colored eyes from her position on the bed.
“This is my fight, Princess. He’s my demon and it’s time I faced him. There’s no reason for you to be involved.”
Her voice was tinged with sadness, and I hated how beautiful she looked held tight in its grasp, bound and determined and broken.
“He’s your demon, but you’re my everything, yet you expect me to just stand back and let you walk into this alone?”
She laughed, a soft, sad sound.
“Sweetheart, since I met you I’ve forgotten what it’s like to be lonely, to be alone. Before I had Jade, but other than that it was just me and all this…blackness and blood. Now, even when I’m gone, I’m never alone because I know I have something to come back for.”
It was sweet, but it didn’t change anything.
“And what if I don’t want to be something you’re always leaving behind? What if I want to be with you, like a partnership?”
“Rayne, if I have to fight with you in the room, I’ll die. One threat to you and I’ll break. I can’t worry about saving you when I’m trying to overcome the person who…broke me.”
She stumbled over the words, and the show of weakness was so rare, it was beautifully heartbreaking.
“I don’t want to live in a world where you’re fighting beside me or pulled into the dark. I want to live in a world where we don’t have to fight, where we’re safe. Where Jade and Cami can have the big ugly wedding I know is coming, and a brood of adorable kids, and I don’t have to leave you alone every night because my hands are always tied.”
“And you think being in control of the entire city will do that?”
Her dark eyes blazed into mine.
“I feel like freeing us of my father, and the Government that wants you dead and turned within the week, is a good place to start.”
I couldn’t find a suitable argument to that truth, and the fight began to leave me. Defeated, I plopped down on the bed beside her.
“Are you sure you can…? I mean… I’m so scared for you…”
She reached out for me, her sadness, her fear, her love shimmering soft against my skin, and I turned and hugged her, feeling my tears, warm against her cool neck. I couldn’t lose her. I couldn’t unsee the little girl on the tapes, begging and terrified and the man who orchestrated it all, cool and uncaring.
“Are you sure we can’t use the toxin somehow?”
She pulled away and brushed the pads of her thumbs softly beneath my eyes, wiping my tears.
“You know we can’t, sweetheart. I know you understand this is the only way, as much as you don’t want it to be.”
A fresh wave of tears flooded my eyes. I hated how much this felt like a goodbye to me.
“When are you going to…?”
“Over the next few days, an opportunity will present itself or I’ll create one, soon. Everyone is already talking about how close we are to the deadline for you to be turned.”
I tried to tell myself all of this wasn’t for me, that there was more at stake, but I knew it mostly wasn’t true. Honestly, I just didn’t feel worth it, worth the weeks of worry I knew we had all felt, worth Camilla getting assaulted by a drunk, Jade getting taken by Wilfred, worth Scarlett risking her life.
“Stop it.”
Her voice cut into the nosedive I was taking, her palms on my cheeks.
“I wasn’t living before I met you, it was half a life, revolving around keeping Jade safe and trying to hang on to some echo of humanity. Then there you were, you were supposed to be an easy target, but I killed the old man and you were just looking up at me, all beautiful and ruined, and thanking me.”
I’d never heard the story of how we met from her point of view and goose bumps rose on my arms.
“I knew you were going to be something to me, even then. I just knew. I told myself I was exhausted from traveling and you were too pretty to waste. I drank from you a little, fixed you, and tried to leave you behind. It didn’t even occur to me we could become blood bound until I was back in the city.”
She slicked her tongue across her lips and paused just for a moment.
“You were so lonely, Princess. I didn’t think anyone in the world had ever felt as lonely as me, but then I met you, some silly little human girl. You’d seen the darkest part of me, and you hardly flinched. I tried to forget you, but we both know how that turned out.”
She kissed me softly.
“You’re my everything. I’d do all this again, a million times over, for one more day with you.”
I wasn’t sure if my heart was mending or breaking, but everything was bitter and sweet and raw.
Warm tears rolled down my cheeks.
“I don’t want to live in a world where you don’t exist.”
It was my biggest fear, finally voiced.
She caught the tears in her hands.
“Trust me, Rayne. Believe in me one last time.”
Chapter Twelve
I MOVED THROUGH the house quietly, surprised to find someone else out of their room. The vampires didn’t have to sleep, Scarlett was living proof of that, but I knew some of them liked it. Jade kept almost a human schedule, on the nights she had nothing else to do.
I cleared my throat as I stepped into the kitchen, and Cami
lla appeared from her spot behind the refrigerator door. I wondered how long she had spent staring into it.
“Don’t worry about sneaking up on me, I heard you coming down the hall.”
Right, vampire hearing.
“Sorry, I wasn’t sure if it was you or Jade or…”
“Scarlett left hours ago, probably the minute your head hit the pillow.”
I swallowed, my mouth dry.
“Could you pass me a bottle of water?”
She complied, and got one for herself too, hovering when I sat at the bar. I wondered if she sensed my need to talk or if she had a need of her own. When she didn’t start, I broke the silence.
“Is Jade asleep?”
She nodded.
“Are you okay?”
She shrugged. This was worse than dealing with Scarlett on one of her off days.
“Did you guys talk through everything?”
I knew she knew I was talking about what happened in Chase Tower.
She sighed, moving to sit beside me. She picked at the label on the water bottle, the brand familiar to me from the outside world. She looked strangely human in her designer pajamas.
“Not everything, but enough to put it to bed. Jade is wonderful, but she’s naïve in so many ways. I love that about her.”
“What do you mean?”
She was shredding the label between her fingers now, lightning fast, and all I saw was the little scraps of paper fluttering down onto the counter.
“I didn’t want to have sex with Drew, but when it became clear that was the means to an end, I didn’t stop it either. He didn’t rape me, but I didn’t allow it because it was what I wanted. Sex is a powerful weapon, not the same kind Scarlett uses, but still…”
I reached out and stilled her frantic hands.
“I’m just not built for this life, always struggling, always threatened… You’ve been to my tower, you’ve met my sister, my family. We’re not like the Pearces. All I ever imagined my life to be was much of what April has now. And then I met Scarlett.”
There was a fondness still present in her voice, but surprisingly, it didn’t bother me like it once would have.
“I love her, and Jade… And I suppose I care for you too.”
The admission made me smile, though her dark gaze on my face convinced me to try to fight it down. When I failed, she just rolled her eyes, the ghost of a smile on her lips.
“I’m not saying I would change it. Well, I would, I would make things easier if I could, but I don’t want to be anywhere else. Sometimes it’s just…exhausting?”
I understood the feeling.
“I think it’s okay to be tired.”
She shrugged.
“Camilla, so much has happened. We’ve had so many scares lately, everything changes around us constantly, and Scarlett is this insane driving force and we all sort of try to live in her wake. It’s hard.”
She studied me.
“How do you love her like that?”
I swallowed, suddenly nervous, shy in my response. Before I could continue, Camilla spoke again.
“There was a time I loved her, beyond being my best friend, being like my sister too. It was like chasing a ghost—she was only ever half there, half gone—and there was always something she would love more than me, something I could never compete with, long before you.”
“What?” I forced myself to ask.
“Her blood lust,” she answered as if it was the most obvious thing in the world.
“For a time, I hoped she would settle down, and one day we’d have what you have with her now. But she gets this look in her eyes when she’s doing…that. And I just knew she would never look that way or feel that way for me. Is it different for you?”
I stumbled over my answer.
“Rayne, I will always love Scarlett, I’ll always think fondly of that time in my life, but I have no desire to go back into that mess with her. Everything I really wanted was in front of me for years, and between feeling like a pervert for lusting after Scarlett’s little sister…” She lifted her hands, making air quotes around the word. “And all the other distractions I used to tell myself were important, I just never took my chance. I’m curious, I want to understand you a little more.”
I took a deep breath.
“I think that will always be a part of her. I’m not really sure what to say…” I struggled to explain it without revealing that we were blood bound. “I think she’s happiest when we have a balance. Sometimes she needs to be dark, even when she’s happy, and I just sort of go into the dark with her… Sorry if that doesn’t make sense.”
My cheeks started to color as I thought about the frenzied, bloody nights we’d shared, and the soft contentment that lived in Scarlett’s eyes for days after. She needed that too.
Camilla studied me.
“I’ve thought a lot about when Helena said that day. I’ve only ever read about being blood bound, but it doesn’t sound terrible.”
We looked at each other in the dim light leaking in from the hall.
I could feel she knew, but out of habit or the strange secrecy and possessiveness that had grown within me around the information, I was not going to admit it aloud.
“I imagine in the right situation, between the right individuals the phenomenon wouldn’t be so bad. It might even help two guarded, complicated beings come to understand each other on a very deep level, from what we read about it.”
So Jade probably knew too.
I shrugged but held her eyes when I replied.
“I think that’s true.”
She nodded, and we didn’t say any more on the matter. A companionable silence hung over us, until the thought that had been on my mind since the decision to kill Wilfred was made finally left my lips.
“Camilla… How do you kill a vampire?”
I knew there was a time when she never would have answered. It had taken her longer to warm up to me than the Pearce sisters. For weeks, months even, I was nothing but a liability in her eyes, likely to land her best friend in a ton of trouble. I still wasn’t sure she would share the information with me now.
“What are you planning?”
Her eyes were suspicious as they studied me, though I knew she was asking more out of concern for my safety than distrust.
“Nothing, I just want to be able to do something, if it comes down to it, if I need to help Scarlett.”
She stared at me and shook her head.
“You really think you can take on a vampire, and her father no less?”
I shrugged.
“Probably not, but if she’s losing, I also know I can’t stand there and watch her die either. I’m just trying to be prepared.”
Something in her eyes softened.
“Rayne, she’s not going to let you anywhere near that fight, not within this lifetime or the next. Not while you’re so breakable, and probably not even if you weren’t.”
She did have a point, but I still wanted to know, to at least have a chance to be forewarned and forearmed with some knowledge. I was about to explain that to her, but she must have seen the determination on my face.
“There are numerous ways. Severing the head from the body is the most effective and only way to kill us indefinitely.”
“No wooden stakes then?”
She scoffed.
“Perhaps it would slow us down—the same for silver bullets, knives, weapons—but unless you get the head, the fight will continue.”
My mind mulled over her words, and I tried to imagine any way I could possibly achieve that. No weapon came to mind to give me an advantage against creatures so much faster and stronger.
“How about a bullet in the head?”
I heard my own words and marveled for a second that I was sitting here in the middle of the night, talking to an honest-to-God vampire about taking a life. My own personal change was brought into stark perspective for me before Camilla hummed.
“Not guaranteed, but it might put them d
own long enough for you to finish it.”
A gun it was.
She studied me in the low light.
“Rayne, don’t do anything stupid, okay? Scarlett’s like a cockroach, bless her. She doesn’t die, even when there have been more times than I can remember the odds have said she should. I know many strong women and men who would never have survived what Wilfred did to her. She’ll survive this too, and when she does, she’s going to need you.”
I nodded my understanding.
“I think the one thing that would actually finish her off, is losing you.”
The admission was quiet in the darkness, and in that moment, I ached for Scarlett to be there.
“Do you really think she’ll make it through this?”
She took a long sip of her water and considered her answer, and that scared me as much as it comforted me. With Camilla, I knew I would get the truth.
“Her father has controlled her since she was a child, he has manipulated her mind on a level I don’t think even she understands. I want to say yes, because I know Scarlett, I know she’s a zealot when it comes to protecting and fighting for the things she loves, but part of me is scared. None of us knows how deep his hold really runs, and I don’t think we’ll find out until she’s staring him in the face ready to kill him.”
My heart sank, and my next question was the only logical jump I could make, faced with the very real prospect that I could lose her.
“Do you think it would be easier just to turn me?”
She nodded instantly.
“You would be infinitely less fragile; no one would have to die right this minute. I think things still would have to change because the city is too interested in you and Scarlett would never let you become like her, but we would have time.”
“But what if I did?” The question was almost a whisper, and I saw the search for understanding in her brown eyes.
“What if I was turned and I did become like her? She wouldn’t have to be ashamed all the time, to always feel like part of her isn’t good enough for me. We could just be that, together.”
Camilla smiled at me soft and sad.
“Rayne, it’s a beautiful and terrible dream, and I understand it, but you will never be like her. Do I need to remind you of some of the things she’s done? You don’t have the stomach.”
