by AJ Myers
For a long time, neither one of us said a word. Then, I remembered he hadn’t answered one of the questions I had from the day before. In fact, it was the only question he hadn’t answered. I chewed on my lip as I tried to figure out to bring up the subject. Judging by the road signs we were passing giving the distance to Grams’ house in Red Rock Bay, I guesstimated we had about an hour. That was plenty of time to pull the story out of him.
“Will you tell me what happened?” I asked softly, knowing he was always listening to my thoughts.
I didn’t need a clinical play by play, but I did want to know what had happened to make him a card carrying member of Club Fang.
“It’s not a pretty story, Ember.”
“I didn’t think it was.” He looked kind of surprised when I reached for his hand and held it between both of mine.
“Do you have any idea how wonderful that feels?” he asked, staring at our hands where they rested in my lap. “I miss that, you know. Being warm, I mean.”
“Are you never warm, then?” I asked, allowing him to stall for a few more minutes. His face went as hard as stone and he looked away before he answered.
“Only when I feed from a live donor,” he said stiffly. “Other than…” His eyes flickered to the scarf around my neck and I saw him flinch. “I haven’t done that in a very long time. That means I’ve been cold for a while.”
I didn’t know what to say to that. He didn’t really feel cold to me. Cool, maybe, but not cold. I could see how he would see that differently, though. Being warm was just another thing he had lost when he had become what he was. The absence of that warmth was a constant reminder.
What possessed me to do what I did next, I don’t know. I just wanted to make that bitter look on his face go away, I think. Or maybe I wanted to make him feel as warm as he made me feel. Whatever the reason, I made the decision to put myself out there and take the chance of him shooting me down and breaking off a chunk of my heart in the process.
“Can you pull over for a second?” I asked quietly, letting my hand slide up his forearm. His eyes snapped to mine and I smiled at him before leaning closer and whispering, “Please?”
He looked down at my hand where it rested on his arm and I saw a painful kind of longing turn his eyes molten. Therefore, I was surprised when he gently removed my hand and placed it back in my lap.
“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” he said, his voice sounding tight and strained. “I don’t seem to have a lot of control where you’re concerned. Maybe we shouldn’t tempt fate.”
I looked away from him before he could see the hurt that flashed in my eyes. I had never known anyone to run so damned hot and cold. One day he was holding me while I slept, the next he didn’t even want me to touch him. It was confusing and hurtful and just plain cruel.
“I was turned after my father and brothers killed the mate of a fearsome vampire by the name of Mikhail.” I looked toward him, curious despite the hurt eating a hole in my insides, and felt like recoiling when I saw the cold, inhuman expression on his face. “She wasn’t a vampire, but they chopped off her head and killed her anyway. When Mikhail returned home to find his one true love lying in a pool of blood with her head ten feet from her body, he vowed to avenge her death in the most gruesome manner possible. He entered our home in the dead of night and slaughtered everyone who crossed his path in revenge.”
His hands were wrapped around the steering wheel so tight that I was sure his fingerprints were permanently imprinted in the leather, his eyes directed straight ahead. I still saw the pain of his memories on his face, though, and wished with everything I had that there was some way I could take it away. Nobody deserved to have to live with that kind of agony.
“My mother died trying to keep him from killing my sisters, twins who were less than three years old. He didn’t care that they were just babies. He tore their throats out in front of her. I could hear her screaming on the opposite side of the castle. Only when he had bathed in her children’s blood did he show her mercy and kill her, too.”
I swallowed convulsively, torn between crying and becoming violently ill. I had wanted to know, but I had never imagined it would be so terrible. And why was he telling me in such detail? Was he trying to scare me? Well, in a way, he was. There was something about him as he told the story that scared the hell out of me. That fear more than doubled when he turned to look at me and I saw the anger—and an animalistic kind of hunger—glowing in his eyes.
“He killed every single member of my family, taking his time with my father and my brothers. But, when it was my turn he…stopped. I will never forget the way he looked at me. It was almost as if he had found something precious. He said there was something about me that interested him, a burning light deep inside me that he wanted to explore. He feared it would bring him bad luck to kill me, but he couldn’t let me go unscathed, so he turned me.”
He stopped speaking as abruptly as he began, and I just stared at him, too overwhelmed and sickened by his story to even comment. It seemed to me that he had told me that story in such bloody detail for more reasons than one. It was almost like…he was trying to warn me.
“I am trying to warn you, Ember,” Nathan murmured, turning off onto a freshly graded gravel road I couldn’t have found in a million years. I couldn’t have found it, but I knew it. I had to have driven down that same gravel drive with Grams a million times. So much for my hour. It had taken us less than twenty minutes to get to Grams’. “I want you to know what you’d be getting into with me, and I’m praying you’ll have the sense to run. I want you to see that behind the pretty face there is something dark and terrible, something with no conscience and no love for anyone or anything but blood. ”
“Oh, I see,” I said coldly. And I did. I saw what he was trying to do very clearly, and it pissed me off. “You’re trying to scare me. If you can make me despise what you are, despise you, you can walk away without feeling bad about it.”
“No, baby, I’m trying to save you from me,” he said sadly. His hand twitched toward me like he wanted to reach for me, but my less than welcoming expression changed his mind pretty quick. “I’m trying to make sure you get to have a life.”
The shaft of pain in my heart at those words was so vicious that I felt it from my head to my toes. I was so done. I was done playing his games and falling for his lines and his sexy little smiles. I was done with the rejections and the soul-bruising sense of loss I felt every time he pushed me away like I was contaminated only to reel me back in the very next chance he got.
In fact, I was done with him. Period.
“It’s you, not me, right?” I asked, the pain in my heart making my tone more malicious than I had ever thought I could be. “I think that might be a record of some kind. We skipped the dating and the falling in and out of love stages and jumped right to the breakup.”
“Ember, baby, that’s...”
“I’m not your baby,” I snapped, too hurt and too angry to care what I might be doing. “You don’t give a damn if I live or die. You don’t care about me at all. What could Grams have possibly done for you that was so wonderful you would agree to dealing with me in return? I hope it was something really amazing. I hope you got something awesome in return for all your hard work.”
“I did,” he whispered, giving me a pleading look.
“Oh, yeah?” I asked with a bitter laugh. “Just who the hell did she find for you, Nathan?”
“My soul mate,” he whispered.
What was left of my heart disintegrated then and there, leaving nothing behind but a big gaping hole. And like the black hole it resembled, it sucked everything out of me. It took my anger. It took my pain. It took my hope. It sucked in everything, leaving nothing inside me. In that moment I became a shell, a mere ghost of myself.
“What are you still doing here, then, Nathan?” I asked, wondering why my voice sounded so strange and distant. “You should go get her. Why are you wasting your time with me when you could be
with her?”
“I’m not wasting my time with you, Ember.”
His voice was so soft and sad that I couldn’t meet his eyes. When I tried to turn away, everything inside me screaming for me to get away from him before the sucking black void in my chest decided to give up what it had taken, he grabbed my chin so that I couldn’t move.
“Please, Nathan, let me go.” I focused on the window directly over his shoulder rather than look at him and did the only thing left for me to do. I told the truth. “In two days you’ve managed to work your way under my skin, something no one else has ever been able to do, and it was all for nothing. I’m not the one for you, and that’s okay, I understand. I even envy you that you know for sure that the perfect woman is out there waiting for you. And that’s where you should be, not here with me.”
“Ember, please—”
“No, Nathan.” I shook my head, pulling my chin free in the process, when he started to say something else and he immediately fell silent. “Listen, I can handle this. I don’t really need you.”
Turning away from him, I gazed up at Grams’ creepy old Tudor manor. Why she lived in that big old house alone was beyond me. Then, if she was a... Nope, still not going there. And there, her sweetly familiar form silhouetted in the light from the doorway, was my Grams herself. I took it as a bad sign when I could see her frustrated expression from where I was.
I couldn’t seem to make myself reach for the door handle. Even knowing it was the only way to get away from Nathan, I still couldn’t seem to do it. But I had to. I had to know if Nathan had told me the truth when he said I was a witch, and why that secret had been kept from me for so long if he had. Knowing how I had gotten myself into this mess was the only way I was going to be able to find a way out of it.
So, why was I still sitting in the car?
Get out of the car, damn it, I told myself, reminding myself that I was strong enough to handle whatever they threw at me. Come on, Em. Show them what you’re made of. When did you become such a chickenshit?
That voice was right. I had to have answers, and the only person who could give them to me was a few steps away. I took a deep breath and reached for the door handle, but it opened before I could touch it.
I pointedly ignored Nathan’s outstretched hand and got out of the car on my own. I avoided looking at him and concentrated on my Grams instead. She was looking between me and Nathan with a troubled look on her face. It morphed into a smile of welcome as I started up the steps toward her, though, and I felt the warmth of that smile surround me.
If I had any curiosity about how I would look in fifty years, all I had to do was look at my grandmother. We had the same fire-red curls—though Grams had quite a bit more gray in hers than I had in mine—the same build, the same everything. The only difference was our eyes. Where mine were a deep Caribbean blue, Grams’ eyes were the color of spring leaves. They were really beautiful.
To me, my Grams had always been beautiful, though. There was just something majestic about her. Even as a child I had seen her that way. You couldn’t look at her and not see it.
The instant I was within reach, I was enfolded in her arms. I sighed and let her hold me for a minute. She smelled of cinnamon and herbs, a familiar perfume from childhood.
“Oh, Ember, it’s so good to see you again,” she said, holding me at arm’s length to take a good look at me. There was a twinkle in her eye when she said, “You’ve certainly filled out, sweetheart. The last time I saw you, you looked like a runty stork, all arms and legs. Now, you’re the perfect shape for child bearing. Nice wide hips and full breasts.”
No. No way. I had not just been told I had a fat ass and nice boobs by a woman in her seventies.
In front of a guy.
And not just any guy, but Nathan!
“Yeah, thanks, Grams,” I muttered, blushing scarlet as a choked laugh echoed behind me.
I wasn’t going to have to worry about having children because I was about a second away from dying of humiliation. I wondered if the Bad Karma Fairy that had been following me around the last couple of days could be convinced to do me a favor and open a hole under my feet I could fall into. I decided the chances weren’t good. In fact, she was probably rolling around laughing at my discomfort.
“Well, come inside—both of you. We have a lot to discuss.”
I glanced at her sharply and she gave me a sad smile.
“I think I’m going to take off,” Nathan said quietly, still out of my line of vision. “This is witch business. It doesn’t have anything to do with me.”
I waited for Grams to go off on him for calling her a broom-riding old crone, but she didn’t. In fact, she just rolled her eyes at him and sighed. A good sign of things to come?
I think not.
“Nate, why do you always have to make things difficult?” Grams asked, her brow furrowing in exasperation. “Tell me you can walk away with a straight face and you’re free to go. But, I don’t believe you can, can you?”
I forced myself to turn around and look at him, knowing I was only going to hurt myself by doing it, and found him standing by his car, one hand already on the handle in preparation of making his escape. Slowly, he let go of the door handle and turned back to look at us, and I felt a little bubble of hope spring to life in my heart. The second his eyes fell on me, though, I knew it was all over. He winced just before I dropped my eyes, and I knew that he knew it, too.
“Let him go, Grams,” I whispered, feeling the sting of rejection that her presence and my embarrassment had temporarily overshadowed beginning to creep back in again. “I’m here, so let him go.”
Grams, unfortunately, had a different opinion on the matter. She gave me a long, probing look and then slowly shook her head back and forth, making me wonder what she was thinking. Then again, I wasn’t sure I really wanted to know.
“Go ahead then, Nate,” she said finally, turning to look at Nathan over my shoulder. “But before you go, I want you to think about something. The second you’re gone, I will tell her everything. And I do mean everything. Do you really want that?”
“You wouldn’t dare,” he hissed. “You’ll only hurt her by doing that, Shea.”
“Try me,” she said, shrugging. “Now, are you coming in or not?”
Why did she do that? I thought, frowning at her. He obviously didn’t want to be there, not that I blamed him. I didn’t want to be there, either. In my case, though, I didn’t have a choice. I had a demon stalking me and setting me on fire in my dreams. So, yeah, I kind of needed to stay and figure stuff out. Nathan, on the other hand, was free to walk away whenever he felt like it.
I didn’t get a chance to ask her what she was up to before she ushered me into the house with an arm around my waist. I didn’t look back to see if Nathan followed. Instead, I faced resolutely forward and pretended not to care.
Grams led me directly to the kitchen, her favorite room in the house. I sighed in contentment as the scent of dried flowers, herbs—some bitter and some sweet—and, surprisingly, the delicious aroma of crumb cake baking in the oven washed over me.
Grams always baked crumb cake when I visited.
She knew I was coming, I realized, glaring at her as she hurried over and took the cake out of the oven. She had known all along that Nathan had me. It had been Grams Nathan had been talking to that night at the hotel. And she had let him kidnap me and threaten me and treat me like his own personal Barbie doll that he could play with whenever the mood struck him. And she hadn’t done a damn thing to help me!
Fuming, I crossed my arms and glared at her some more, trying to decide the best way to get myself home. She pointedly ignored the fact that I was looking less than loving all of the sudden, busying herself with putting the cake on the cooling rack on the counter instead. If she thought we were going to have a nice family reunion now that I knew she had been a party to my kidnapping all along, she was crazy.
I knew the second Nathan entered the room. I felt a change in the
air, like an electric charge I couldn’t ignore. He took up a stance against the stone fireplace behind me—which was full of nothing but ashes, another sure sign that Grams had known I was coming—and his scent wrapped around me, making my heart ache. I closed my eyes, just breathing it in, and then wanted to kick myself for being so pathetic.
“You two are in more trouble than I thought,” Grams said, chuckling. When she turned around to face us again, there was a devious little smile on her lips that made me want to run for cover.
“And whose fault is that, Shea?” My head snapped around at the totally pissed tone of Nathan’s voice. It wasn’t just my ears playing tricks on me, either. His eyes had gone pale silver again, and he was glaring at Grams, his expression black. “If you hadn’t decided to mess with my life, this wouldn’t have happened. Now, tell her what she needs to know. Then I will drive her to the airport and put her on a plane back home before I run as far and as fast I can in the opposite direction.”
“You can walk away, knowing what you do and knowing how she feels about you?” Grams asked, her eyes narrowing. Nathan didn’t even stop to think about it. His answer was automatic.
“Yes.”
Rejection hit me so hard I felt sick. Right then, I could have curled up in a ball and hidden somewhere no one would ever find me. If I had needed any further proof that he didn’t see me the same way I saw him, I had it. Even if Grams didn’t, I got the message loud and clear.
“And what about the demon?” Grams asked, her eyes narrowing even further. “Are you really going to leave her to deal with that on her own?”
Nathan opened his mouth to reply, then immediately snapped it shut again. I could see the indecision on his handsome face, but I already knew what choice he was going to make. I wasn’t important enough to him for him to stay. I was on my own.
“Leave him alone, Grams,” I told her, refusing to let her guilt trip him into staying with me. I winced when I realized I sounded as devastated as I suddenly felt. “It’s my problem. I’ll deal with it.”
