“I’ve muzzled Michaela, but not for long. If you choose to disobey me, then there will be consequences. I will give her free rein, and you do not want that.”
“Do you even think about the words that you say before you actually let them come out of your mouth? Or is thinking before speaking beneath you? Perhaps the sounds of words in your head are just as annoying as they are coming out of your mouth?”
A dark grin lifted the corners of his lips into a snarl as his eyes narrowed on me with ire that he was ready to act on. “Sky, do you not understand your position? Quell is gone because of you. Michaela’s very unhappy about that, and the only thing that is standing between her retaliating in the only way that she knows how is me. Contrary to what your hubris has led you to believe, your fate is entirely in my hands. Give me back what is mine!” His voice was drenched with the air of privilege that was notoriously the vampires’ brand, and it annoyed the hell out of me.
And I’m supposed to be the arrogant one.
“I’ll entertain you. Fine. I’m not going to lift a finger to get Chris back for you. When she’s ready, she’ll come back, and if she doesn’t, which will probably be the case, you’ll live with it. Poor you, now you only have just your partner to be with. You don’t have your mistress. Life must be so hard for you. Why don’t you write about it in your journal?”
“How arrogant you and your pack have become. You are still just wild animals, barely domesticated enough to be entertaining. The pack forgets it takes days to make a were-animal and still many don’t survive; those who do require some training to be of any use.” Then he looked in David’s direction. “He could be part of my Seethe in twenty-four hours. When he wakes, he will be strong, fast, and a viable adversary. You all train and have to work at being a fraction of what we are at rebirth. Remember that.”
I listen to his haughty soliloquy, waiting patiently and hoping that was the end.
“Chris and I have had disagreements before. I’ve long tolerated her tantrums and rebellion, but it is time for her to come back to me.”
“I’m sorry you’re getting bored with your mate and your mistress doesn’t care to be bothered. Kind of sucks to be you.”
“Do you really want to challenge me?” he said. His dark eyes clouded with anger, and he bared his fangs.
“You bore me. It’s the same song and dance every time, and frankly you and Michaela need new material.”
He lunged. I sliced my hand through the air, and he smacked into the wall hard. Feeling the magic that I had denied for several days pulse through me, dark, deadly, and raw, I didn’t deny or fight the darkness that took over. I willingly accepted it as it washed over me. I took out the sword that I kept in the umbrella stand, an idea I had borrowed from Chris and Winter, and plunged it into his stomach.
“Unlike whatever strange crap goes on between you and Chris, this is neither foreplay nor a bizarre display of affection. Understand, this is me getting ready to kill you.”
I didn’t care about retaliation from the Seethe, or unspoken rules about not killing its Master, or the so-called debts we owed him for siding with us once. He and Michaela were pains in the ass. The only thing that had stopped me from killing Michaela was that it would hurt Quell, but he was gone because they had sent him away. When it came to the vampires, I had absolutely no more care to give.
And then Maya peeked through. I could taste, feel, and smell her presence, but I couldn’t give her credit for any of the ominous thoughts and feelings that I felt. I embraced Maya with a comfort that should have bothered me, but it didn’t. Demetrius gritted his teeth and bared his fangs, reconciled to the pain. I jammed the sword deeper in. Then I ripped it out. He slumped down, his head drooping and obscuring his neck. I grabbed him by his hair, yanked his head up and tossed him back. I then secured him against the wall with magic, in a perfect position to behead him.
“Bye, Demetrius.” Just as I drew back the sword, a bloodcurdling scream rang through the air. A slim, pale body lunged at me. Dark hair and limestone-colored skin were just a blur as it soared through the air. All I saw was hair and nails that clawed at my face and ripped at my hair. Michaela was a wild, savage creature reduced to barbaric retaliatory tactics as she pounded at me. Her legs wrapped around my waist, and shrieks rang in the air. I tried to pull her off me while keeping Demetrius secured against the wall. Her nails raked over my face, and I closed my eyes to protect them when I felt the magic slip. With a thud, Demetrius was released from his spot on the wall.
I grabbed a handful of her hair and tossed her over my shoulder. I grabbed the sword that had fallen at my feet and swung it in an under arc. She rolled, and I missed her by just inches; I lunged forward, determined it wouldn’t happen again. Demetrius pulled me back, his arm wrapping around me, restricting my arms to my side.
“Good-bye to you, Skylar.” Sharp fangs sank into my neck, pain seared through me, and blood squirted from the puncture wound. I pounded my fist into his head, but he wouldn’t release me. It wasn’t until I pressed my thumbs into his eyes that he moved. He jerked back. Through the fuzzy vision and lethargy, I whispered a spell; both Michaela and Demetrius were thrown across the room. I cast another and waved them away, tossing them out of the front entrance as they took the door with them. The last thing I was able to do was erect the ward before I dropped to the floor, holding my blood-soaked hand against my neck to keep pressure against it.
David’s voice was off at a distance. I fell on the hard wooden floor. “Keep your eyes open,” David commanded.
I tried to keep them open as they fluttered. David’s panicked voice remained in the background.
“What am I going to do with you?” Dr. Jeremy asked when I opened my eyes.
“Help me kill Demetrius and Michaela,” I offered, my voice hoarse and rough. “And can this be done like yesterday?”
He chuckled, but I could see the concern as he used his finger to turn my head. When his fingers ran over my neck, I winced. “Sorry, but it was a bad bite. Don’t play with vampires for a while. Okay?”
I tried to sit up, but he stopped me. “I’m not sure what type of freaky BDSM things go on in your life that you consider this playing, and I really don’t want to know,” I said.
Dr. Jeremy rolled his eyes and pressed me back into the bed when I tried to sit up.
“Is she okay?” I heard David’s voice but I couldn’t see him. Minutes later he was hovering over me, his usually vibrant peachy skin blanched and his eyes red, with noticeable blood vessels in them as though he had been crying.
“I’m so glad you’re okay. I thought I did the wrong thing.”
“How did I get here?”
“I called Sebastian. I wanted to call an ambulance, but I was afraid of”—he leaned in to whisper—“your condition being found out.”
“You don’t have to whisper. Everyone here has the condition, too.”
“Oh, twinkie, I forgot.” Damn. I sent up a silent wish that if I died, he wouldn’t be the one to order my tombstone. I could only imagine what it would read: “Here lies cupcake, snickerdoodle. She was a wonderful buttercup and my special little kitten when she wasn’t being my poodle-puff. When I wasn’t calling her ridiculous names, my partner and I were doting on her and thinking of more ridiculous names to call her. Between stints of name-calling, we liked to ogle the guys at her house. May she rest in marshmallow Heaven.”
Sebastian’s smile held a level of tolerance and understanding as he watched David from across the room.
“That was a pretty nasty bite,” Sebastian said, now hovering over me, too.
“It didn’t feel good, either,” I said.
At least Sebastian managed to remain a lot calmer than Ethan. I could see him walking on the delicate edge of losing it. He kept closing his eyes, taking slow breaths, and balling and opening his hands, the incipient stage of his anger apparent. He worked hard to control it, and the effort was noticeable.
“Is he okay?” David whispered.
“He’s an intense one, isn’t he?” he whispered, or he used what he thought was a whisper. In any other room, it would have been one, but even Dr. Jeremy, who had taken a seat at his desk, looked over at Ethan.
“His bark is bigger than his bite,” I assured him. It was a total lie, but I felt like David needed to hear it. He had been thrust into this world, and everything about it revolved around death and violence—I needed it to be more to him. Despite the evil look Dr. Jeremy shot in my direction, I sat up.
The hard look of pent-up violence remained on Ethan’s face, and it was starting to make David uncomfortable. Winter walked in and looked at Ethan and then David. She ushered a dulcet smile onto her face, and David immediately noticed it because it was something he always commented on. He referred to her as the Dark Swan and often said she was so beautiful, but her resting angry face always made her look dark and cruel.
Her smile welcomed him. “David, why don’t I show you around? Trent should be here in a few minutes.”
If his partner, Trent, was being brought to the retreat, they must have figured he was in danger as well.
I forced my voice to be sprightlier than I felt. I wanted to sleep and put ice on my neck to keep it from throbbing. But I also wanted Ethan to stop padding through the room like he was ready to pounce on anyone who dared to get his hackles up.
“Ethan.”
He turned to look at me. I smiled; one look at him, and I knew he wasn’t going to return it. “I’m okay,” I said.
“He’s a fucking coward. He and Michaela were gone,” he growled. That might have been a good thing. This wasn’t going to end well, but we needed to address the curse and Kelly first before dealing with them.
When he was close enough to me, I rested my head against his shoulder. “They probably need to nurse their wounds. I wasn’t very gentle when I tossed them out, and Demetrius will not be looking out his right eye anytime soon.” That seemed to offer some comfort, but not much.
As soon as David and Winter were out of earshot, Ethan asked, “What happened?” His tone matched the look on his face: he was having a very difficult time finding a calm place.
I didn’t have to ask—Sebastian and Dr. Jeremy took the cue and stepped out.
He touched the bandages on my neck. I had no idea how many hours had passed and if it had been enough time for the punctures to have healed. If they still looked bad, it wasn’t going to help the situation. He removed the bandages and examined my neck, and then relaxed a little bit. “It’s not that bad now. There was a lot of blood.” He paused for a moment and looked at it again, lightly tracing the area. “Why did you let him in?”
“He had David and threatened to kill him if I didn’t.”
He nodded and appeared to understand, but I knew that he didn’t. But he was aware enough of how I felt about David and Trent not to say what I was sure was the first thing that came to his mind, which was probably that I still shouldn’t have let him in. Michaela had dropped a dead body in the middle of my living room floor, a woman that Quell had befriended, just to get back at me. She was someone that he’d fed from and liked, and Michaela, out of jealousy and the delusion that she was being replaced, had killed her.
“Chris?” he asked.
I nodded. “He expected me to return her to him as though she’s property.” I couldn’t relax the frown on my face at the way he’d made her seem like a shirt that he needed returned.
A long stretch of time passed, and Ethan finally relaxed. “She’s gone. Josh seems concerned about that.”
The knowledge of her being gone noticeably eased him. I couldn’t help but wonder what about her presence in his brother’s house bothered him the most. Was it because she had settled in with Josh or that he needed her far away so that he wouldn’t think about her? I knew he’d said that I didn’t have anything to worry about, but jealousy kept rearing up in me. I was riddled with questions about what had drawn them together; nothing about their relationship had been the foundation of anything good, and a litany of things about them seemed to have guaranteed that it would have failed the moment they’d met. Her dedication to her job and his to the pack were the main ingredients in a recipe for destruction, and yet they had been together for years. I’d lied to myself long enough, thinking it didn’t cause me some concern that whatever was going on with Chris and Josh might be rekindling whatever it was that had drawn her and Ethan together. I winced at the thought.
“What’s the matter?” he asked.
“My neck is bothering me. Maybe I need to lie down for a little while.” I lay back down on the bed, rolled to my side, and caressed the pillow, considering the most torturous way to kill Demetrius and Michaela and vowing to do it as soon as I could. Ethan stood over me for a moment. I closed my eyes, but I knew he was there—his scent, his presence, the odd prickle of magic that came off him that was stronger these days. And if those things weren’t a giveaway, his body blocked out some of the light that filtered through my lids.
The bed depressed, and the warmth of his body brushed against my back. He kissed my ear and then whispered, “If you are going to make lying your thing, at least get better at it.”
I didn’t sleep, but we stayed there quiet—something that I hadn’t realized I’d needed so much. “What happens with Demetrius?”
“I’m going to take care of it.”
“It’s not wise to do anything right now. Let’s get Kelly back and remove the curse from the others and deal with everything else later.”
The crisp, heavy breath he exhaled showed that he agreed with me. No one was opposed to an altercation with the vampires, but their interference was too much right now.
The hour I’d taken to sleep was enough. The search for David and Trent wasn’t daunting, just annoying. I was surprised not to find him in the absurdly large and even more absurdly decorated entertainment room, with a movie theater–sized TV, pool table, smaller TVs with game consoles, a small bar, and pretty much anything that could be distracting. I figured it was something they would desperately need. Instead they were in the gym. David’s face was a mixture of aversion and disgust, and Winter held a sword in her hand. She was still wearing her forced genteel, cloying smile, and it seemed to be taking more effort to hold it. Taking one for the team.
The sweet smile made what she was saying all the more disturbing. Well, at least for David. His partner seemed oddly intrigued. “I’m going to loan you this. One swing, it will take the head clean off.”
What the—
“Josh will ward your home with a blood ward. It’s pretty hard to get past one. In fact, nearly impossible. But it’s good to always be prepared. It will not stop humans. If you didn’t invite humans, they might be part of the vampires’ garden and will do anything for them. If you didn’t invite them over, they don’t belong. It’s a threat. Take their heads off, too. Same with a witch or anyone else who comes through the door.”
No wonder David looked disgusted: the Dark Swan’s way of introducing him to defending himself in the otherworld was promoting a felony. “This is sharp—really sharp. Don’t engage. Swinging a sword is an easier way to protect yourself than staking a vamp in the heart.”
Oh, but when I say using a sword is easy, all you have to do is swing and hit something soft, I’m the silly one.
“Winter, are you sure you want to instruct them to cut off heads and ask questions later?”
That brightened her hazel eyes the same way that participating in and discussing violence always did. “I’m positive. If a vampire comes in your home, cut its head off. That’s a lesson you need to learn as well. No talking or reasoning with them. You cross the threshold, you lose your head. Easy enough rule to follow.”
David’s look was just disgust at how casually Winter discussed and accepted violence. I fondly remembered that look because it was the o
ne that I’d given them all before, when I’d considered them monsters. So much had changed in the last few years, but the most drastically changed thing was me—I couldn’t deny it, I wallowed in the sewage of violence and toed the line between ethical and unethical behavior. What I wanted to do to Demetrius and Michaela would make someone think I was devoid of humanity. I didn’t look at Winter as a monster but as a person who had seen what I had, if not more.
I inched closer to David, and his gaze moved from me to Winter and back again. “Hey.”
“Hi.”
“You don’t need to chop anyone’s head off. Josh’s ward will hold. But it’s not a bad idea to take the sword just in case. I’ll be across the street, okay?”
He didn’t look like he felt any better, but at least I hadn’t cosigned the chopping off someone’s head rhetoric that Winter was proposing.
I was okay, he’d been given a sword, and Josh was going to put a ward up on his house—that seemed like more than he wanted to discuss or know about. When I offered to take him home, he agreed quickly and nearly knocked me over getting out the door. But he didn’t make it out before Sebastian had given him the details of who was going to be guarding him until this matter was under control. As he’d received Winter’s sword and head lecture, I knew he had an idea of what was meant about the situation being taken care of, because he chewed his lips and looked pallid.
As Sebastian spoke to him, reassuring him of his safety, he looked in my direction, and I tried not to show the guilt that I felt. Just a couple of years ago, David had approached while I’d been on my morning jog, unaware that it would be the catalyst that removed his life from normal. Now he was having the “how did things get so fucked up?” moment and couldn’t seem to shake the look. His hair, which was always assiduously styled, was messy from his fingers running through it. I hadn’t seen him in jeans, let alone a rumpled shirt or pants, and now his clothes were disheveled and had bloodstains. His gray eyes were dull and reflected the day he’d had.
Moon Cursed (Sky Brooks Series Book 5) Page 18
