“Witch,” I snarled.
“You’ll not win this one, Fire Starter,” she said as she took a couple steps away from Danaus. “You are outnumbered and outgunned. Veyron needs you dead and that is what I shall deliver.”
The nightwalkers and lycanthropes charged as one. Rowe launched himself at one nightwalker with lightning-fast agility, while Stefan sought to corner Ferko, tearing apart one lycanthrope in the blink of an eye as he moved to protect his alpha. Three nightwalkers flew at me but suddenly dropped to their knees, clawing at their flesh. A familiar warmth filled the air, brushing against my bare cheek and down my neck. I turned to find Danaus standing with one hand extended toward the nightwalkers, killing them with his special gift.
“Here,” he grunted, tossing me a knife from his belt with his free hand.
With a wide grin I launched myself at the remaining nightwalkers. Slicing through tendons and muscles, crushing bones and lacerating vital organs, I left the nightwalkers shrieking in pain as they lay writhing in a pool of their own blood. They had chosen their path, siding with Veyron, and by extension Macaire. I’d had enough of the Ancient’s games. Washed in their blood, I vowed that I would end this struggle for power with Macaire once and for all. I was tired of dodging shadows and running from every perceived threat, whether real or not. I wanted my life back, and I knew it would start again when I finally took out Macaire.
Placing a hand on the chest of each nightwalker, I set them on fire, ending their suffering as I burned them from the inside out. I was too close and too focused for Sofia to be able to stop me this time. They screamed but for a moment, and then were silent forever.
Sliding easily on the balls of my feet on the blood-covered hardwood floor, I turned to face Sofia, who was watching me through narrowed eyes. Her face was twisted with rage, but she suddenly wiped it clean and turned to Danaus.
“Please, Danaus! She’s gone mad! You have to protect me. The nightwalkers want me dead. I’m just some pathetic human for them to play with,” she cried, clutching his arm again.
“Release him,” I hissed, pushing into a standing position. It took all my will not to set her on fire. “He doesn’t believe you any longer. He knows you’re a witch. He knows you tried to use and trick us.”
“It’s a lie! She’s insane!” Sofia screamed, growing more frantic. She was a superb little actress, but my patience was growing short and I was in no mood for games.
“Who stopped my fire attack?”
“How am I supposed to know?”
“Tell me what Macaire’s demands were. What did he require of Veyron and Odelia?” I demanded.
“Macaire? I don’t know who this Macaire is,” she continued. She took a step away from Danaus for every step I took toward her.
“I’m quite confident that you do. I have no doubt that Macaire directed this entire farce. You already confessed that your goal was to come between Danaus and me. Separate us and force us to fight each other, to kill each other. For who better to kill me than my greatest ally? Definitely a plan of Macaire’s making.”
“Please, Mira, I never meant you any harm.” Sofia extended shaking hands toward me, but there was an evil glint in her eyes. She was plotting something. “Veyron is the one that locked you up. I went to Danaus because I thought he could free me from Veyron’s grasp. I never meant to come between you.”
“I don’t believe you and neither does Danaus. You locked me up with Rowe in hopes that he would do your dirty work for you. Macaire could then go to the rest of the world stating that a naturi killed me.”
Sofia looked over at Danaus, but I refused to drop my gaze from her face. The witch dropped her hands back to her sides and then frowned at me. “A lot of good that did us,” she finally confessed. “The naturi is now fighting with you when he should have spent the day ripping your insides out with his bare hands.”
My hold on my temper finally snapped. Flames whooshed up around Sofia, burning through the carpet, drapes, and furniture. She kept the fire from consuming her but remained trapped in a tight circle. I stepped through the flames with my blade in hand. Above the crackling of the flames I heard someone shout my name, but I didn’t look up. I couldn’t take the chance. Sofia was a witch and I was sure that she still had a trick or two up her sleeve.
As I stepped into the circle of fire with her, she disappeared from my sight. I immediately extinguished the flames and scanned the room. I had felt the brush of power when she disappeared. She didn’t have enough power to go far. She wasn’t as strong a witch as I had thought, which was more than a little surprising. But then, Macaire wouldn’t have been able to control a powerful witch very easily. Regardless, she was mine for what she had done to Danaus and me.
“Where did she go?” I shouted, my eyes whipping from one end of the burned and bloody room to the other.
“I feel her outside,” Stefan replied after a second.
I darted outside, my blood-soaked stockings slipping on the hardwood floors. Gravel and snow bit into my feet as I hit the yard. With a wave of my hand the tires of the car that Sofia was climbing into exploded as the rubber melted under the fires that suddenly burned around them.
A roll of thunder rumbled in the distance, but the sound was approaching us. Rowe was outside and finally in the clear to use his own powers. The wind swirled around us, throwing up flakes of snow and the occasional dead leaf. I didn’t need to look overhead to see the black clouds beginning to pour across the sky. Rowe wanted Sofia dead as much as I did. She was one of those responsible for his imprisonment.
“She’s mine!” I shouted, pointing at Rowe.
“Not if I get her first!”
“Macaire!” Sofia screamed in terror, but it was too late. I lunged across the yard in a blur of color and grabbed her by the neck. I threw her away from the car and followed after her, narrowly missing the lightning bolt that came streaking from the sky to smash into the car. She landed in a mound of snow with a heavy rush of air expelled from her lungs. I landed on top of her and sank my fangs into her neck before she could make a sound, before she could even raise a fist to push me away.
As I drained her of blood, I pushed deep inside her mind. She felt me in her thoughts and tried to scream, but it came out as only a low gurgle. Once there, I showed her the horrors I had witnessed over the years. I convinced her of the torture that still awaited her when I was finally through feeding off of her. Her heart pounded in her chest until I was sure that it would soon explode, pumping her warm blood that much faster into my cold frame.
When I had drunk all I could, I lifted my mouth from her throat but not my presence from her mind. She stared off into oblivion, not seeing the world around her, but the horrible world of bleak terror and pain that I painted for her. After only a couple seconds longer, her heart finally gave out and she uttered a shuddering gasp. She died in the tight grasp of fear, convinced that a long existence of pain awaited her.
Wiping my mouth with the back of my hand, I rose to my feet and backed away from her corpse. Her blood still leaked from her neck, staining the white snow red. I felt both rejuvenated and disgusted simultaneously. It had been a long time since I’d last killed someone in that manner. Locked in fear, I left their mind a shattered mess of chaos and pain in their final minutes. It always left me wondering if the soul ever escaped those grim horrors when death finally came or if those same fears followed them through the rest of eternity. I didn’t like it. Killing someone was a matter of blood, violence, and hopefully a quick death. This was a slow torture that damaged both mind and soul.
I had killed Sofia like that out of hatred and pain. I hated what I’d done, but at the same time I couldn’t salvage any feelings of regret. Despite my distaste for the act, I still hated her with every fiber of my being. She had stolen Danaus from me.
“Mira?” Stefan said, drawing my gaze over to where he stood with a blade pointed at Rowe. The naturi glared at me, his hands lowered but open, showing that he held no weapon. For now
he was abiding by our agreement. He had only struck at Sofia, the nightwalkers, and the lycanthropes that had attacked us. Rowe had made no move against me and mine.
“Let him go,” I said in a low, weary voice.
“Are you insane?”
“I’m beginning to think so,” I muttered. I had already heard that enough from Sofia. I was starting to question my sanity.
“Mira, he’s the one you’ve been after all these months! He’s been trying to capture you. He’s going to kill you. We won’t get another chance like this,” Stefan argued, taking a step closer to the naturi. Rowe never moved. He just stared at me with his narrowed eyes flashing in the light coming from the house.
“I know that!” I shouted back at him. “Do you seriously think I don’t know exactly who he is and what he means to do to me? I said, let him go!”
Stefan glared at the naturi for another second before he finally straightened his stance and put the knife he was holding back into a sheath up his sleeve along his wrist. He walked over toward me, partially standing between me and the naturi as if he were still determined to protect me.
Rowe arched one brow at me while the corner of his mouth tweaked in a smile. “I am . . . surprised.”
“Just go now before I change my mind,” I growled.
Rowe hunched over as a pair of massive black wings sprouted from his back. He extended them to their full length, catching the wind that was still snaking through the city. As he lifted off the ground, I took a step toward him.
“Find Cynnia!” I shouted up to him.
The naturi hovered in the air like a piñata waiting for me to take a whack at him. Rowe cocked his head to one side in thought. “You think killing her will win me back to Aurora’s side?”
“No, but I think you will find a home with Cynnia that you will never find with Aurora. Live your life, Rowe, while you can, instead of chasing after death.”
“Same to you, Mira,” he murmured before rising into the night sky. I watched after him for several seconds until he completely disappeared from sight. I knew he would leave Budapest. All the other naturi here were dead, and he knew that I wouldn’t be remaining there for long. I wasn’t sure he would actually seek out Aurora’s renegade sister Cynnia, but for him it would be a step in the right direction. I had a feeling that Cynnia would accept him, scars and all, where Aurora never could, no matter what he accomplished for her.
Closing my eyes, I buried my face in Stefan’s chest. The nightwalker wrapped his arms around me, blocking out some of the cold wind that beat against my exposed flesh. I had killed Sofia, and soon I would have to face Danaus, but I wasn’t ready. Not yet. Not tonight.
“Take me back to the hotel,” I whispered, barely getting the words past the lump in my throat. I needed to be away from this place. I had woken up to find myself locked with my mortal enemy, a pawn in an elaborate game to turn Danaus against me so he would be forced to kill me. I’d had all I could take for one evening. I needed somewhere safe where the world could touch me no longer.
Chapter Twenty-Six
I stood in the shower for nearly an hour. Blood and dirt washed off me, but the gritty feeling of death and torture still lingered in my mind. I couldn’t escape it, couldn’t rinse it away no matter how long I stood in the steaming hot water. I washed my hair twice and scrubbed every inch of my body so that my flesh was rubbed red, but the memories and the pain stayed.
As the water finally started to chill, I turned off the spigot and towel-dried as much as I could. Wrapping a robe around me, I walked back into the bedroom as I rubbed a fresh towel through my wet hair. I paused just over the threshold, my hands growing instantly still. Danaus was in the hotel room with me. The door had just slammed shut and I could now sense him moving through the room.
My first instinct was to summon Stefan back to my side. He could take me away so I wouldn’t have to face Danaus and his scathing words regarding my murder of Sofia. But I couldn’t keep running from Danaus. I just wished I’d had enough time to become numb on the inside so that his words wouldn’t have the power to reach my heart.
Pulling the curtains closed, I lit a handful of candles around the room with a wave of my hand, casting the room in a soft glow. I started to walk over to the closet when the bedroom door swung open and slammed shut.
“Just give me a minute to get dressed,” I said softly.
“You left me,” he replied. His voice was rough and ragged, as if it had been dragged across the concrete.
A sigh escaped me before I could catch it. “I’m not ready to do this now, Danaus.”
I didn’t have a chance to argue. He roughly grabbed my upper arm and spun me around. His lips found mine in a violent kiss as the back of my head hit the wall. Both of his hands cupped my cheeks as he kissed me again and again until his ragged breathing danced across my face. My eyes fell shut and I kissed him back, not questioning whether this was an illusion or just a hallucination of my own fractured mind. I didn’t care. I would welcome death of this sort so long as he didn’t stop kissing me.
My hand drifted down to his chest and I could feel his beautiful heart pounding beneath my fingertips. I knew the beat as if it were my own heart. His smell swam around me, that distinct scent of some distant sea and the soft caress of the summer sun. I wanted to drown in the smell so that it washed away my own scent. I wanted to become a part of him for a little while, just enough so the world would slip by us both unnoticed.
Danaus deepened his kisses, tasting me. My hands slid up to his arms and I kissed him back with the same passion, getting swept up in everything I had dreamed about for too many lonely nights. But he suddenly pulled back. He had pricked his tongue on one of my fangs—we hadn’t had enough practice kissing each other to escape a little bloodletting.
“I’m sorry,” I said, hating to ruin the mood. I didn’t want to shatter it, didn’t want him pulling away from me already. “I’ll be more careful.”
A frail smile crossed his lips as his eyes danced over my face, as if trying to soak in the sight of me. “I think my eagerness was to blame,” he murmured before leaning in to kiss me again. I tried to pick up exactly where we had left off, but he pulled away again. His large hands caressed my cheeks and swept down my neck. “I thought I had lost you,” he whispered in a wavering voice. “I came back to the hotel as they were leaving. They shot me. It knocked me out and I lost a lot of blood. I wasn’t conscious again until you reached out to me. I had nightmares. I thought you were gone. Thought you were dead forever. I thought I had lost you.”
“I’m here,” I replied in a shaking voice, leaning my forehead against his. “I thought I had lost you too. Sofia . . . I . . .” I stammered. I didn’t want to say the words out loud.
“I knew you were telling the truth. She was careless tonight, not bothering to cloak her powers. She used me,” Danaus said, and I knew that I had been forgiven. Everything had been forgiven for tonight. Tomorrow there would be more words, and more arguments waited on that distant horizon, but not tonight.
“Kiss me again. I want to forget,” I murmured, brushing my lips against his. Danaus leaned into me again, pressing me harder against the wall. He exhaled and I inhaled, drawing just a little bit of his soul into my body as he kissed me. My hands roamed down along his hard chest until I finally found the edge of his shirt. A low groan escaped me as I finally touched bare flesh. How long had I dreamed of the satiny warm feel of his skin? I wanted to run my lips along every inch of his skin, tasting him, memorizing him, but for now my mouth was trapped by his.
“Mira,” he growled at me as my hands slid under his shirt, exploring the sides of his stomach as they slowly worked higher.
“I need you, Danaus,” I said as his lips slid down my jaw to my neck. The edge of his teeth scraped across my flesh, sending a shiver down my spine and lighting a fire deep inside of me that I knew I would never be able to put out. “Please say yes. Say you need me too.”
He grabbed both of my wrists and st
retched them above my head, where he held them with one large hand. He reached between us with the other hand and untied my robe, spreading it open so he could see my pale skin against the black silk.
“You’re enough to break any man,” he said in a low voice.
I smiled as I lifted my right leg and wrapped it around his left leg, pulling him back against me. “I don’t want you broken,” I purred in return. “It’s more fun when you’ve still got some fight left in you.” I’d run the tip of my tongue along his jaw and down his neck when I felt him stiffen but not pull away. Pressing a kiss to his neck, I nuzzled him once, chuckling. “I promise, no matter what happens I will never bite you.”
“Thank you,” he murmured before capturing my mouth in yet another rough kiss. His free hand slid up from my waist to cup my breast, leaving me squirming beneath his touch as I struggled to get closer to him. His hand was strong and firm, caressing me and pulling at the nipple until he finally got a moan out of me as I arched my whole body against his.
“Release my hands,” I commanded, but he only laughed at me as his lips drifted down from my mouth to my neck. His hot breath trailed along my collarbone, lighting little fires down my body before he finally took my breast in his mouth. I jerked and groaned, my head falling back against the wall. He touched my hip bone before slipping around to cup my bottom, keeping me pressed tightly against him. I could feel his body growing harder beneath me, and the thought wrung another moan out of me.
“Release me, Danaus! I need to touch you!” I choked out as he switched from my left breast to my right.
“Are you not enjoying this?” he asked, sending his hot breath against my wet nipple. “It certainly sounds like you are.”
“Damn it, Danaus! You’re killing me. I want to touch you,” I said between clenched teeth as I struggled to hold onto a single thought amid the pleasure shooting through my frame. It was unfair. I was standing there completely naked and shivering in pleasure, while he was still fully clothed and completely in command. Closing my eyes, I arched against him again, pressing as close as I possibly could. “I’ve dreamed of touching you for so long,” I said, lowering my voice so it ran like a hand over his cheek. “I need to touch you.”
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