E.V.I.E.: 13 Slayers, 13 Missions

by Lexi C. Foss

  I sober up quickly. “What? How?”

  “Trust me. I can help her, but I need your help. Do we have a deal, darling?”

  I’d do anything to help my daughter.

  Anything.

  Even if it means partnering up with Beck to capture the pale-haired twins.

  “We have a deal,” I agree. “Now get out of my house.”

  Beck grins and takes a bow. “We shall speak soon.”

  My eyes latch onto Laurent’s, confused by the way my pulse quickens when my gaze falls to his mouth. Beck pats his chest and they finally leave. The moment the door closes behind them, I suck in a deep breath of air.

  He can help Mercy.

  Holy shit. Beck can help Mercy.

  I burst into tears because it feels too good to be true.

  9

  Laurent

  With each step away from her, I feel less and less in control of my thirst. I’d done well the past three months learning to control my urges, but it’s all been blown to bits by an encounter with Castilla.

  My stepdaughter.

  Last I remember of her, she looked just as her daughter does. Small, innocent, terrified. Protecting her from the impending doom had controlled my every thought and action that fateful day. I’d urged her into the Rune trunk my mother gave to me, knowing the infused magic would give her the protection she needed.

  I knew, eventually, she may even need protection from me.

  Weston and Wynona turned me into everything I feared. A vampire. A blood-thirsty mongrel. Growing up with a mother who never held back in telling me the truth about supernatural beings, I wasn’t at all surprised to see the vampires and knew exactly what they were after.

  Blood.

  The blood of children, according to Beck, is the tastiest and most pure. One of my earliest vampire memories is the scent of Castilla as she’d sobbed inside the trunk I locked her in. I’d been given a tiny whiff of blood from a scratch or a scrape and it was maddening. For years and years I’ve thirsted for that particular taste but always come up short.

  Until tonight.

  She was no longer a child, but I smelled it again, though faintly veiled below a thin layer of skin. I’d craved—no, I ached to sink my teeth into her neck and suck her dry. Then, the more I inhaled and touched her, the more a different craving arose.

  I wanted to bite her everywhere and then fuck her until she passed out from loss of blood.

  Sick.

  I’m sick.

  Those bastards stole life from me and gave me this…animalistic heart where I starve for blood in its purest form. I didn’t realize how much they’d stolen from me until Beck saved me. I owe him everything. After months of his devotion and care, he healed me from the blood disease.

  “Take my arm, Laurent,” Beck says, his voice calm despite the authority rumbling through it.

  I want to race back upstairs and pin Castilla down. Shred her clothes and spread her legs. Shove my cock deep inside of her as I drink from the fat vein in her neck. I’m hard as stone in my pants, eager to take what’s mine.

  Mine. Mine. Mine.

  “Now.” Beck grips my bicep and then flashes us back to his stately castle-like home in upstate New York. “Feeling better?”

  I glance around his den, my eyes landing on the cackling fire, and nod. “I can think clearly again.”

  “Good. Let’s have a bite to eat and we’ll discuss what happened this evening.” He motions for me to follow him into the dining room. I make my way after the man who’s built like a teenage boy and then settle at one head of the table. “How do you feel about Castilla? No judgment. I can’t help you unless you tell me.”

  Irritation washes over me. I’m not embarrassed, just confused. I don’t understand how I want her more than any living creature I’ve come in contact with thus far since turning into this monster.

  “I want to drain her,” I rumble, “while I fuck her raw.”

  He studies me for a long moment as two maids come in carrying silver-domed plates. They set down one in front of each of us, then remain standing nearby. Beck lifts the lid off his tray, moves the fortune cookie aside, and takes the white linen napkin. He tucks it into the top of his shirt, creating a bib of sorts. I do the same, my mouth watering for my meal.

  The maids kneel in unison and then offer their wrists to us. I’m beyond starved, but Beck is proper as hell. Had he known what a loser I was before I was turned, he probably wouldn’t have welcomed me with such open arms.

  I didn’t have a job.

  My only income was my occasional musical gigs at bars.

  I’d married a woman I didn’t love because I’d knocked her up. We fought like hell, but it was worth it in the end because she gave me a baby and I’d also gained a cool-ass kid.

  I lost everything because I failed to protect them.

  Beck, prior to this life, was a warrior. Though he was young, he fought in battles and dethroned authoritarians. Somehow, he made me his pet project and saved me. I’m grateful, but I still don’t understand why.

  “Go on, Laurent,” Beck says, his red eyes glinting as he feeds from his maid. “You’ve shown incredible restraint. Reward yourself.”

  I bring the maid’s wrist to my lips. Without preamble, I nick her flesh with my teeth and then latch on, taking greedy pulls of her blood. While the maids eat a strict diet to keep their blood infused with nutrients we need and the taste an optimum flavor, she doesn’t sate my thirst like she should. Her blood tastes bland. The blood I crave is from Castilla.

  Once Beck has had his fill, he licks away the wound on his maid’s wrist, using his healing saliva to close the wound. I quickly follow suit, mimicking his actions. It was only after Beck saved me that I realized I had powers. I can’t teleport as he does, but I have unique hearing and can dreamwalk.

  “We need Castilla to aid in our agenda,” Beck says, dabbing his lips with his napkin. “I can uphold my end of the bargain with her daughter, but she’ll need to uphold hers in helping me. You’ll have to refrain from taking your prize until we’ve completed this mission.”

  My prize being her.

  “She’s my stepdaughter,” I remind him, my morals fragile and cracking due to time passed and what I’ve become.

  “That all ended the night you were turned,” Beck replies. “Besides, the way you held and touched her tonight says you don’t believe in that relationship anymore. You want another one. And not just to drain her. You want to keep her.”

  A growl rumbles through me. “Damn right I do.”

  “Perhaps you’ll be able to if you can control your urges. She certainly seems taken with the idea of you. Had I not intervened tonight, you might have bedded her and who only knows what.”

  “I’m everything she hates.”

  “For now,” he says. “Next time you dreamwalk, talk to her. Get to know her. Our kind, in the past, have used dreamwalking as a way to forge relationships with our human counterparts. To create a bond between a mate who can sate our needs in every way. In the past, our kind was skilled at mating with someone in order to keep us from devouring every person with a pulse. It’s the greed of those in recent centuries that have dropped those ideals and gone with their instinct to feed rather than mate. I see, though, you’re a lot like me. The urge to mate, claim, own overpowers your thirst. This is something we can work with.”

  “What if I bite her?” I croak out.

  “You will.” He shrugs. “She’ll probably be angry about it too. Doesn’t change the fact that she’s yours and you’re hers. Might should warn the dear girl that it’ll happen and what to expect so she doesn’t drive a stake through your heart.”

  “Speaking of stakes…” I frown at him.

  “Don’t worry, Laurent,” he says with a chuckle. “I left them in the apartment before we left. I wouldn’t leave her defenseless. Not when she has the ruby stakes at her disposal.”

  “Those were my mother’s,” I reveal.

  “I know.” He winks
at me. “Why don’t you go lie down? I don’t want you to miss your dreamwalk. It’ll be dawn soon so you don’t have much time.”

  “Do you hear it?” I ask, dragging my thumb over her plump bottom lip.

  “No.” Her brows furl and she pouts. “Why do I keep dreaming about you?”

  “Because you want me to bite you, Castilla.”

  She gasps in horror. “I most certainly do not want that.”

  “You do,” I tease with a grin, baring my fangs. “And I will grant your wish. But it’ll have to be in person. Your dreams don’t count.”

  Her body relaxes at my words. “You can’t hurt me in my dreams?”

  “I can’t hurt you ever.”

  “But you just said you want to bite me,” she argues.

  “You will like it.”

  “You’re here again.”

  “Every night. I’m a dreamwalker. I can visit every day until your death if I want.”

  She sighs, though not at all annoyed. “Maybe I don’t want you in my dreams.”

  “Then stop letting me in.”

  “I’m not letting you in!”

  “I can’t force what you don’t want, Castilla. It doesn’t work that way.”

  Her body tenses and she frowns. “I’m used to people taking what they want. I fight back now, though.”

  I stroke my fingers through her hair. “Someone hurt you.”

  “He did,” she says, her eyes watering, “but I was given Mercy, so I suppose it’s okay.”

  “It’s never okay for someone to hurt you. I will slaughter anyone who tries.”

  “You’re not my boyfriend.” She huffs. “You’re my stepfather.”

  “Really?” I murmur, dipping down to kiss her supple lips. “Because if that were true, you wouldn’t let me kiss you like this.”

  She moans and I deepen the kiss. Her fingers grip my hair as she pulls me closer. I wish this weren’t a dreamwalk and in reality.

  “Soon,” I whisper against her lips. “I’ll kiss you in real life soon.”

  Each night she argues. Tonight, she doesn’t. No, she kisses me again.

  Now that I’ve come into my powers, I’m learning I can glamour, dreamwalk, and spike—short transport through hard materials like doors and walls. While glamouring is nice to get my way and dreamwalking is great for visiting Castilla, it isn’t until I quietly pass through her apartment door that I enjoy the ability to spike.

  Beck will be pleased at the growth in my power.

  The apartment is quiet. I creep through the dark space, wincing slightly when one of the boards beneath my feet creaks. Tilting my head to the side, I listen for any sounds. Nothing. Just the rustling of the bat in Mercy’s room. I start to step forward when something attacks me, taking me by surprise.

  I hear everything.

  But I didn’t hear this or even sense it.

  Something sharp digs into my flesh beneath chin as a tiny female tackles me to the floor. Red lightning lights up her big brown eyes.

  “Good evening, love.” I grin at her. “I wanted to surprise you.”

  Her features are still twisted in anger but then confusion bleeds through. “Why doesn’t this burn you?” She pulls her ruby stake away and holds it between us.

  “Because those belonged to my mother and were passed on to me. Since, they’ve been passed on to you. But the stakes never forget their owners.”

  10

  Castilla

  I’m puzzled about the ineffectualness of the stakes and slightly annoyed by Laurent’s sneaking in, but I can’t ignore that I’m also secretly excited to see him.

  Which makes no sense.

  I’m exhausted after hunting down the pale-haired twins all night to no avail. Every night it’s more of the same. They leave a trail of bodies or infected vampires, but are quick to hide or run away before I can get to them.

  Yet, I’m feeling quite awake now that Laurent is here.

  As though his presence makes my body thrum and my chest tighten. I should be disgusted over the fact I’m straddling the waist of a vampire and haven’t killed him yet because I’m too drunk on the memory of his dream kisses.

  “Dreamwalking is real, isn’t it?” I ask, frowning at him. “You were there, weren’t you?”

  “I needed to see you.”

  That means, for the past two weeks since he and Beck first came into my apartment, he’s been kissing me and talking to me and touching me in my dreams. Before that, for those three months, he was also there. Every night since that night in the park, I’ve spent with Laurent.

  “You should go,” I grumble, though deep down I don’t mean it, which scares me.

  “I’d rather stay.”

  With those words, he rises to his feet with me in his arms, so quickly my head spins. He prowls through the dark apartment, carrying me to my bedroom. My heartrate quickens when he lowers us onto the bed, this time with me beneath him.

  “Laurent,” I murmur, a weak protest before his lips press to mine.

  Unlike my dreams, this feels real. It took me years to let Jude close to me, but Laurent is storming my heart without problems. I want to push him away and tell him to go, but I like his touch.

  This is sick.

  He’s a murdering vampire who wanted to eat me as a child.

  He won’t hurt me.

  “Doesn’t this disturb you?” I murmur when he pulls away. “The last you saw me, I was a child.”

  “You’re different to me now than you were then,” he whispers. “I still have the desire to protect you with everything in me, though. That never went away.”

  He peels away my gown, leaving me in only my panties. I let him. I let him strip away my only barrier between us. What is wrong with me?

  I don’t care.

  I just want him.

  “Are you glamouring me?” I ask, my chest heaving with each breath I take.

  He pulls away to turn on the bedside lamp. His dark hair is disheveled, and his red eyes shine with need. “I don’t think so.”

  “How can I be for sure?”

  “Take your panties off and spread your legs,” he rumbles, his voice almost musical. My nerve endings flare to life and a whine crawls up my throat. I start to lift my ass to obey when he splays a palm over my stomach. “Leave them on.”

  The fog clears and I gape at him. “You just did it.”

  “Feel the difference?”

  I nod, hating how much of my want is just on me. He’s not doing anything but being himself. I’m to blame for this intense craving for him.

  His lips crash to mine again, his teeth nicking my lip. It stings and the metallic taste of my blood spreads over my tongue. A feral growl escapes him as he sucks my lip into his mouth. His cock—hard and impressive—rubs against my clit, making me whimper.

  I want less clothes between us.

  I want all of him.

  “You taste divine,” he growls. “I want more.”

  The wound on my lip closes and he pulls away, his crimson eyes blazing with lust. I practically pout from the loss of him. His kisses are gentle and reverent as he trails them along my jaw to my neck. He laps at my skin right over my carotid as though he wishes he could bite me there. I almost beg him to but then figure it’s a bad idea considering the location. He continues his trek to my collarbone and then to my breast. When his lips wrap around my nipple and he sucks, I buck off the bed. Each time he swipes his tongue over my nipple, I see stars.

  I want more.

  I need more.

  “Bite me,” I whisper, terrified at my request.

  “I should show restraint.” His teeth tease at the flesh. “I really should.”

  “I want you to. It’s my choice. You won’t kill me.”

  At least I hope not.

  “Never,” he growls.

  A moan escapes me when he pierces the skin on either side of my nipple. An animalistic groan rumbles from him as he sucks in a long pull of blood. Immediately, my body feels as though it’s f
lying. My nerves are buzzing with need and my arousal can be felt as it soaks through my panties.

  He bites me again, this time on my other nipple. The heady, blissful sensation intensifies. Another bite below my ribs. Another one on my stomach. Again, lower, near my pelvic bone, just above my underwear. And then the fabric is being shredded like it’s nothing. His teeth sink into my thigh.

  “Mine,” he murmurs, dragging blood along my upper thigh to the mid portion.

  His teeth bite into me again, this time perfectly on my femoral artery. The room spins as he sucks hard. Light dims and I close my eyes. He rubs his thumb along my clit as he sucks harder. My body weakens, drunk on the bliss.

  “Stop,” a voice commands. “Now, Laurent.”

  I can’t open my eyes. I’m drifting into the darkness. Snarling can be heard and then my wounds are being licked closed.

  “Drink,” the voice orders. I recognize it as Beck. “Drink, darling.”

  Something metallic and tangy drips on my tongue. I wince, but it tastes like something I need. I latch my mouth to his wrist, sucking what must be his blood. Clarity hits me like a freight train.

  What happened?

  When I open my eyes, I’m covered by a sheet and Laurent is gone. Beck frowns at me as he pulls his hand away and licks the wound closed.

  “Laurent can’t seem to control himself around you,” Beck says. “I think it would be best if you don’t invite him in.”

  “He didn’t ask for an invitation.”

  “Next time, whether it be a dreamwalk or in real life, ask him to leave.”

  Tears well in my eyes at his words. I don’t want to send him away. I just found him. I missed him. My plan to kill him—mercy be thy way—feels ridiculous and monstrous now that I’ve kissed him.

  “I don’t think I can,” I whisper.

  “He’ll kill you if you don’t,” he warns. “You’d be dead by now if I didn’t show up looking for him. All it takes is a good bite to a main vein, darling, and your life drains far too quickly. He hasn’t learned to control himself yet.”