by C. M. Owens
“Ace! What’s going on?” I shout, but hear no answer as I continue to search.
Just as I pull up one possibly nasty little emergency potion, my eyes snap back, and the cloaked figure is gone.
I whirl around, constantly feeling a tickle at my back, but nothing, a little more nothing, and even more nothingness is all that surrounds me.
A noise startles me, and I spin back around to see the orange by the gate rolling to a stop near me. Quickly breaking away from the distraction, I whirl around again when I feel a cold breath blow against my neck. With my heart jack-hammering against my chest, I spin again, but once more there’s…nothing.
The drones pass over the area, pausing over the blackened earth, and when I glance back, the orange has gone missing.
“What the hell have I done?” I whisper under my breath as a sick feeling of betrayal inches up my spine.
Where the hell is Ace, and what did he just trick me into doing?
An angry tear rolls down my face as I fight the tremble in my jaw, and I turn to start racing away from the cemetery.
The only thing I can do now is tell the man who kills monsters that I’ve just unleashed something unnaturally fast with sharp claws and red glowing eyes.
Because I’m a stupid, gullible girl.
Only trust me or your father, Violet. Never anyone else. Never.
I should have listened to my mother.
Chapter 29
VIOLET
“But where is he?” I ask Margie after she informs me Mr. Valhinseng is gone.
“I’m afraid I’m not at liberty to discuss that,” she says sweetly before simply shutting the door in my face.
I huff out a breath, and with hands that haven’t stopped shaking yet, I pick up my phone and call him, but it goes straight to voicemail.
Cursing, I jog to my van and hurriedly pull up my business phone contacts, finding Emit’s number.
“Hello?” a woman asks in a bored drawl.
“I really need to speak to Mr. Morrigan, please,” I tell her, trying to keep the panic from my tone.
“I’m afraid that’s impossible. Mr. Morrigan is currently busy with some of his…girls.”
“As in daughters?”
I didn’t know he had kids—
The abrupt, almost hysterical laughter over the phone lets me know that is a stupid question to ask. But…Ohhh. Gotcha.
Not sure why I’m bothered by the fact he’s a man slaking his needs. A wolf man. A monster. A very unimportant factor at the moment.
“It’s incredibly important that I speak to him,” I tell her a little angrily when she just continues to laugh.
“I’m sure it is. Don’t worry. He’s on a mission, as of this morning, so I’m sure you’ll get your turn, dearest. What’d you say your name was?”
I hang up, and angrily dial Damien’s number instead.
Every time it would come in handy to have a monster or monster hunter, I find myself on my own. The rest of the time they’re stalking me.
After ringing forever, it goes to voicemail, and I groan as I talk, “When you get this, please call me back. I’ve very likely done something impossibly stupid, and—” My voice cuts out when the mortifying reality of just how sickeningly gullible I really am sinks in bone-deep, and I exhale harshly. “Just call me. We’ll consider it the trade for the mirror. I’m sorry about your balls. I really hope you’re just angry and ignoring me.”
Hanging up, I quickly dial Vance again, and when voicemail starts talking, I leave another message. “I really want to be found by a Van Helsing right now. We can consider it an even trade for the pocket watch.”
“Anna, where are you?” I shout, wondering why she’s been missing most of the damn day as I hang up.
She pops into the passenger seat as if prompted, grinning at me. “Did you just scream my name or was I dreaming things?”
“I need you to find Damien and hurl his phone at his head.”
“That’d be using my ghostly powers.”
“I’m aware,” I bite out. “But just this once, I really need—”
Her scream erupts as my words cut out, because the brake pedal of the van randomly slam on as if there’s a phantom foot on it. My heart flutters in my chest as the van’s back end skitters sideways in a stomach-churning sensation. With all my strength, I use my foot and try to pry the brake up from the floor, but it’s no use.
Anna does that ridiculous thing where she flies out the window for no reason at all.
My eyes feel like they can’t get any wider, and I have no idea if I’m clenching my teeth or if my jaw is slack. However, I definitely know my ass is clenched, as the van completely slings around twice, miraculously not flipping.
Everything is rocked hard as the van comes up off its wheels for an eternity of a second, before slamming back down to a quiet rattle of a halt. Shera Ward is standing in front of me, red lips curved in an ominously dark grin, and her arms crossed in front of her chest.
I’m so confused about what just happened that I don’t even realize the door is being yanked open until someone is dragging me out by my hair. A hiss of a pained breath is all that escapes my lips as I remind myself not to struggle.
I barely manage to get my feet under me in time to keep from slamming into the hard man’s body as he roughly yanks me again.
Shera struts forward in skin tight clothing that looks like she’s a comic book nerd’s wet dream on her way to cut down zombies. Weapons are hanging from her belt, jingling as her high-heeled boots click against the pavement.
“Smart girl. Don’t struggle,” she says as the man holding my hair starts dragging me backwards.
Struggling leads to unnecessary pain, and my survival doesn’t start until they think they’ve killed me.
I doubt it’s a coincidence that I unleashed something less than twenty-five minutes ago, and now vampires are attacking me at twilight.
“He said not to hurt her,” Shera says in a singsong voice.
“She just needs to know the tone of this meeting,” the man still dragging me by my hair says as I stumble and fall to the ground.
A cry is dragged from my throat when he yanks harder, pulling me across the ground with his hold. It feels like he’s trying to rip my scalp away from my skull, and I try to crawl, roll, stand…anything to lift my head up just a little more.
I’m finally heaved up to my feet and shoved into a dark car so hard that my cheek slams into something hard.
“For fuck’s sake, he said not to hurt her,” Shera says, making the last part louder.
I scramble to curl into the corner when she steps into the back of the car with me. She grabs my chin, and I don’t fight her as she turns my head to get a better look at it.
“You’ll live,” she says as she releases me and shuts the door. “He, however, probably won’t,” she adds on a sigh that sounds as though she’s been terribly inconvenienced by that.
Swallowing thickly, I calmly buckle up, and she watches me with an amused smile as the car we’re in drives us slowly toward a destination that probably doesn’t end well for me.
“I’m guessing this elaborate kidnapping isn’t to force me into that tea I rudely turned down a while back, is it?” I ask, my shaky tone betraying my will to sound calm and composed.
She flashes me a fanged smile, but the fangs recede so quickly that I almost worry I simply imagined it.
“You’re awfully calm for a girl being abducted. This sort of thing happen to you very often?”
“It’s usually the start of a bad day. In this case, it’s just the exclamation mark to punctuate the bad day,” I state evenly, getting my voice under control.
She moves, and I startle a little. I see her grinning from her profile like my fear is pleasing to her. I knew she was crazy.
She pulls two glasses from a compartment, and then she pulls out liquor of some sort. Gin, I decide, when she removes the cap.
My nose wrinkles. It always feels like I’m swal
lowing pine needles when I drink gin. I focus on that instead of the vampire woman beside me.
“Not long ago, I was abducted by vampires,” I decide to tell her as she pours two glasses of the gin, treating this as though two girls are just having a fun drink in the back of a car.
“Oh?” she muses, though I can’t tell if she’s genuine in her oblivion or not.
“I was under the impression it was in no way related to the alpha house in Shadow Hills. However, I’ve recently learned I can’t really trust the source I’ve gotten the vast majority of my information from,” I say on a mostly steady breath, aside from one minor catch in my throat.
She just stares ahead, swirling her glass under her nose as she hands me mine. I take it and drink it without hesitation, swallowing down a liquefied Christmas tree like it’s great.
I’d rather be drunk if someone’s going to attempt murdering me soon.
She doesn’t offer to pour me another, however, as she takes a slow sip.
“Do I get a clue as to what’s going on?”
“You’re so adorably clueless, and I’ve been ordered to keep it that way,” she states patronizingly as she continues to sip her gin.
“So we ride around in silence until you take me somewhere for more vampires to kill me—”
“You’re not to be harmed, Violet. Don’t be so melodramatic,” she says like she’s already tired with my theatrics.
Exhaling heavily and observing the sort of crazy I’m dealing with, I decide I’m definitely screwed. Why can’t it ever be the bumbling first-timers instead of the cold, calculated ones who want to kill me?
I put my one-trick pony saddlebag on standby and let the dread mount as we ride along in uncomfortable silence. Nothing is worse than riding to one’s possible doom in uncomfortable silence.
That’s when Anna lands in the car, and begins talking about dinosaurs in the park. I miss the uncomfortable silence really quickly.
Chapter 30
VIOLET
“Can I at least get a deadline on how much longer it’s going to take?” I ask Shera as she plays a game on her damn phone, still sipping her first glass of gin an entire hour later.
“Just another few minutes.”
The windows are so darkly tinted that I can’t see anything, and there’s a closed divider window in front of us. For all I know, we’re in the middle of a forest.
“You should know, House of Arion certainly did not condone nor play part in the attack on you. I was only just made aware of the attack today. You really should have taken me up on that tea. I could have been a very good friend to have.”
“Could have been?” I ask, noting the past tense of her wording.
“You clearly have a judgmental attitude toward the female monsters of this town, but have no problem leaving your sweet scent in every other alpha home in Shadow Hills.”
I bristle, feeling a little judged all of the sudden. Judged by a vampire.
“I hate to say it, but she has a point,” Anna unhelpfully chimes in.
Judged by a vampire and a ghost.
I’m not okay with this being my new normal yet.
“I’m…sorry?” I try saying.
“I’m sure you’ll be sorry. You’ll really want me as a friend now that you’re about to have him in your life. Try not to be the crying-and-rocking-in-the-corner type. Those girls are tediously exhausting.”
My mouth opens and closes a few times, as she stares down at her fingernails.
The car pulls to a stop, and she pushes her door open, leaving the freezing cold air to shoot into the vehicle. “And for the record, I make the best tea in town.”
With that, she turns and struts away, and I lean forward, staring through her door to the house we’re in front of.
We’ve driven for over an hour, closer to two, and we’re in front of the House of Arion? This is just ten minutes from where I was grabbed!
“Oye! It’s a massacre in here!” Anna shouts from inside the house as Shera passes through her and disappears inside the home.
I really hope Anna isn’t seeing the real world right now.
Lurch is suddenly leaning in and roughly pulling me out of the car, using my hair as a handle once again. A strangled sound of pain escapes me, because I think he’s managed to find the same exact spot that is still tender from the last time.
Stumbling around, I manage to right myself, not making the mistake of falling again, and keep pace at his side.
“See? You’re learning,” he praises, talking to me like I’m some sort of pet.
I make a mental note to never do business with vampires again, once I leave town. I’m tougher than a normal person, and tears are dangerously close to teetering on my eyelids from his rough treatment.
I keep my hands balled at my sides as I’m led into the house I’ve never once stepped foot inside. Warmth hits me, knocking off the chill just a little…until I’m stumbling again at the sight before me.
Lurch yanks me harder, forcing me to walk when I try to stop, and I swallow down any sounds I have, because I really don’t want to draw attention to myself right now.
It looks exactly like my mind feared it would look inside a vampire home.
Blood is smeared across the walls, and I gag a little when I see a heap of bodies lying haphazardly around the stairs I’m being dragged by. I’m actually forced to step over one headless body, as Havana plays over the house speakers.
“I found a hot ginger! Holy grail!” Anna shouts from a room just before I’m steered into it.
Shera is doing the cha cha with a tall, red-haired man, and Anna is turned over and dancing with her ass in the air behind him.
A body rolls down the stairs in the room, slamming into the wall hard enough to crack it, and it lifelessly drops to the ground. Even though there are plenty of others standing and breathing around us, I’m the only person in the room to react, and my hair is yanked again as punishment.
Fresh tears spring to my eyes without warning and almost tumble down my cheeks, as the pain bites through my skull. I force myself to calm and actively stop my heartbeat from trying to slow.
If my heart slowed, there’d be less pain. There’d also possibly be a monster unleashed in a roomful of vampires who know how to deal with…whatever I am.
There’s less blood in here. In fact, all the bodies on the ground look to be completely depleted of blood.
Shera laughs as the man twirls her, and they end the dancing abruptly when the guy kisses her. Meanwhile, a second body comes tumbling down the stairs, and I try really hard to be as stoic about it as everyone else.
My survival plan seems really flimsy at the moment, because the bodies on the floor are dead vampires. Lots of dead vampires. All the eyes have been left black, the same way they were when I killed those four.
If this is what they do to their own…
“Arion, she’s here!” Shera shouts up the stairs.
My heart starts hammering in my chest just as my mind finally clicks together the most obvious picture, leaving me feeling like the world’s biggest, naïve, gullible fool.
My eyes dart to the top of the stairs when a familiar, shirtless man dressed only in a pair of sweatpants that barely hang on his hips starts dancing his way down them, licking blood off his fingertips as his head tips back. He dances up two steps, and then he dances back down the rest of the way, his eyes closed as he moves toward us with the beat of the music.
His eyes open and hone in on mine, sending a trickle of painful awareness and dread coursing throughout me, just as the song changes. A wicked smile curves his lips as he keeps dancing his way down them, hips moving in a salsa rhythm in beat with the music.
I’ve tipped my head back without even realizing it, staring like I can’t believe this is actually happening. At some point, Lurch apparently let go of me, and it’s a struggle to stand on my own when my knees threaten to give way.
“Ace,” I say on a rasp as the devil in flesh grins down at me.
>
“Call me Arion, love. It’s more fitting,” he says like this is all a cordial, friendly affair—monster style.
His smile falls immediately as his eyes dip to my cheek, and he glances over at Lurch.
“Shera,” he says like it’s a command of some kind.
Shera sighs as she pushes away from her dance partner and walks over to Lurch, who looks to shrink a little.
A gentle touch on my chin turns my head away just as Lurch gets bashed over the back of the head by some unknown beast of a man behind him.
I miss the rest, because my eyes are back on Arion’s.
“Is that entirely necessary? You have no idea how fucking hard it’s been to train new recruits since your last tantrum,” Shera’s boyfriend says as he walks by us, groaning.
“We’ll discuss that later,” Ace, also known as Arion, also known as the vampire alpha of Shadow hills, also known as a psychopath of some kind that I just unleashed onto the world, says.
My lip trembles just barely before I can stop it, and he narrows his eyes as he moves quickly. One second I’m standing on the floor, and the next I’m sitting on the bar in the room with him standing between my legs, putting us at eye level.
The breath hisses between my teeth as the dizzying motion almost makes me sway with the abrupt shift in location.
“Don’t be scared, love. The bodies are just my gifts, and they’re the perfect gifts,” he says as he turns and gestures around him.
He really is a murderous psychopath, just like Ace said Arion was.
At least it wasn’t all a lie.
His nose drags along my neck as I remain rigid, and I fight the urge to tremble again as he inhales very deeply and groans in the back of his throat.
This day started out with hope to save my friend.
It’s ending with the murderous vampire alpha sniffing my neck.
All because I’m a trusting idiot.
My life can suck so hard sometimes.
“I’m very much enjoying touching you,” he whispers, his breath chilling the skin on the side of my neck, only adding more all around me. “And you smell even more incredible than I imagined you would,” he adds on a hushed breath that chills me to my core.
