by T. A. Grey
Pulling to a stop out front of his house, Grayson didn’t think—he ran. His mouth was dry as the desert and tightness squeezed his chest. He felt like he was suffocating.
Inside the front door he slammed to a stop as if he’d run into an invisible barrier. The stench. Oh, god, the stench of blood. It permeated everything. It might as well be painted on the walls. But where was it? Where were the guards that TJ had ordered?
When he swallowed it felt like he was eating nails. “Anita!” he roared, desperate to hear an answer. Not a sound. Not even a whisper.
Heart pounding like a jackhammer in his eardrums, Grayson made his way to the hallway. There, he found it. The walls were painted with blood. The blood of guards. Their dead bodies had been tossed in the hallway like bags of trash. Dead Weres, dead vampires. He recognized their faces. Every single one of them he’d worked with. They were great, the best.
“Anita,” he said again, this time much softer.
He knew. Deep in his gut he already knew. Stepping over the bodies, he made his way to the back of the house. To where the nursery and their bedroom sat. The pressure in his chest became suffocating, making his lips part just to suck in desperate breaths.
The nursery door stood ajar. Light spilled out from the room. Grayson closed his eyes feeling wetness there, wetness he hadn’t felt in god knows how long. With the push of his hand he sent the nursery door open—and opened his eyes.
Oh no. Oh god. No! It can’t be. Not her. Not his Anita.
His knees gave out and he collapsed. Hot tears spilled down his cheeks. He crawled to the lifeless body lying in the center of the nursery floor. The blood had soaked deep into the carpet staining it red around her in a morbid halo.
“ ’Nita?” He spoke to her as if there was any chance of her survival when her head rested a foot away from her body, detached.
She still wore the same white nightgown from yesterday. Her hair was matted from where they’d grabbed her and used her hair as leverage while they cut…
He couldn’t finish thinking the thought.
With trembling hands he pulled her head back down to the severed skin of her neck, making her look joined once more.
“ ’Nita!” The scream came suddenly from his throat, from a desperate sense of hopelessness and loss. Tears came harder, hindering his view of her. He wiped them away furiously as he cradled his dead mate his arms. “I didn’t save you. I didn’t save you.”
Warm blood coated his fingers. She was covered in it. He didn’t know how long he lay there holding her but it wasn’t long enough. It would never be long enough. Using his fingers he combed and smoothed her dark hair around her pale face. He closed her open eyelids and pressed a kiss to her lips.
On her neck in blistering red skin was the Donato stamp. They’d stamped her before they killed her. The skin was irritated and he knew it’d hurt like a son of a bitch when they pressed the silver stamp tight to her neck.
Below the stamp they’d sawed her head off. It wasn’t even a clean cut. It looked ragged like they’d used a serrated blade meant to deal the most pain. They’d wanted this to hurt. She’d died in agony. Streaks of tears had dried in paths down her face.
He hadn’t been there to protect her. He could have saved her.
You couldn’t even save her from the bottle. You really think you could have saved her from the Donatos?
Ugly thoughts ate him up inside, twisting his innards into knots.
Grayson lay next to Anita with his arm across her waist while memorizing her face when the others showed.
Vas, Graham, the whole team had come. The rest of the Blackmoore family soon followed. They tried to talk to him but he had nothing to say. Not a single thing.
When they tried to touch her, to move her, he snapped, slammed his fist into the unlucky person’s face—it was Dominic, his older brother. Dom didn’t attack back, merely backed away, nodding. It wasn’t time yet. They couldn’t take her away. Not his bruid. Not Anita. She was the only thing he had.
Eventually they did wrest him away from her. It was a battle. He fought until all three of his brothers had to pin him against the wall to keep him from going after those who touched her. Only after a crew of people wrapped Anita’s body in white gauze and took her away did Gray finally collapse into his brothers’ embrace.
CHAPTER 6
Grayson insisted on being here for the process as the Passers, ordained morticians, prepared the body.
A great fire crackled in the center of the room. On top of a sacred stone pyre deep beneath the earth, Anita of Redenver house’s body had been stripped, cleaned, and adorned in a fresh linen gown and wrapped once more in gauze. They would place her body on the flames to place her body to rest.
He’d watched in morbid fascination as they’d sewn her head back onto her neck so they could properly wrap her body. Grayson watched the whole process feeling raw inside and out.
It’d been three days since his bruid was murdered in their own home. In the baby’s room.
His stomach churned like a wheel spinning in water. His eyes hadn’t stopped burning from the time his tears began. He’d cried a lot during the past few days. The tears just came, sometimes at unexpected times, when he saw a photo of her or remembered something special. Then, the waterworks would come. The cold numbness that weighed his body down didn’t allow him to stop those tears, didn’t allow him to even care that he was doing it.
His family kept talking at him. They wanted to know so many things. Things that didn’t matter. But they didn’t see it that way. They didn’t understand. They’d never lost a mate. Good, bad, or ugly, it was his job to protect Anita. And he’d failed that job with staggering results.
Amazing how Grayson had spent his whole life becoming a protector, a bodyguard. He’d always wanted to save lives. Sure there was some bullshit psychology behind it. Dr. Rudy had already revealed Grayson’s own inner-workings. Apparently Grayson felt the need to save those weaker than himself. Even now just thinking the thought made him stand a little straighter. It was true. The need to help others, to protect them, had been engrained in him from the moment his mother’s drunken lover beat her. He’d watched that beating in utter horror as a little boy. He didn’t even have to think hard to conjure up that first time. He could still hear his mother’s cries as if they were happening right now. The sound of flesh beating flesh in violence—could never be unheard.
His mother had sustained a beating that day. But the next time…the next time that nameless man came around, Gray had reacted. He’d only been eight when he beat the man with a tree branch and threw him out of their house. If the man hadn’t been as slobbering-drunk as he was, he might have fought back better. Who knows how Gray would have turned out if that night hadn’t happened? It’d changed him.
And now he stood at the next turning point in the road. His life had come to a staggering halt the moment Anita died. Ahead of him he could only see one path to take. Just as a kid, after that first act of violence, Gray went deep inside his head and began planning.
He was going to kill the Donato family. They wouldn’t receive easy deaths. No quick kills, but slow torture until they were in so much pain they begged him for their lives. Only, they’ll never get it. The Donato family will die.
Vampires and Weres filed into the mortuary in stony silence. Family from both houses came. When the room was full, a Passer picked up a wooden torch. The Passer wrapped the end of the torch in white cloth, then dipped it in oil. Slowly, he walked to Grayson. Bowing his head, he held the torch out. Grayson took the torch without a word.
All eyes were on him. He didn’t recognize most of the faces. When his gaze finally stopped it landed on Anita. Wrapped in the gauze, she resembled a caterpillar in a cocoon. Beautiful, yet alien.
As he lit the torch in the fire he couldn’t help but wonder how his hands didn’t shake. Out of all the times in his life he’d been scared now was the time when his hands stayed calm. His own body made him feel even mo
re like a failure. He should be shaking. Because he was about to burn his bruid’s body to ash.
Two Passers stepped up to the stone pyre. They carried a golden oil lamp in each hand; engraved on it was a prayer for the deceased. They sang a slow song filled with ache and despair.
Grayson swallowed. A lump was caught in his throat the size of a fist.
He took the three steps up to the pyre where her body rested, peacefully. Maybe now she could find solace. A tear slid down his cheek and splashed onto her body. He was supposed to say something. What for? What good would it do? She was dead because of him. Because he hadn’t been careful enough, smart enough…
Grayson realized he’d been standing with the burning torch in his hand for some time before his step-mother came up beside him. She startled him. Diane Blackmoore had grown to be as much like a second mother as one could be. She’d already been mated to his father, Argonzo, when Grayson was born. His father had several sons by several mothers. Only when they reached a certain age did Argonzo fetch them away to give them better lives. What a load of a shit.
How is this life possibly better than what he could have had as a poor vampire living in Turkey?
Diane wore a black dress and veil. “It is time,” she said gently.
Grayson gazed down at his dead mate. He still couldn’t believe it, any of this. That he was here. That she was dead. That any of this had happened stupefied him. This wasn’t how things were supposed to happen. In such a short period of time his life had been spun upside down, kicked inside out, and thrown into a burning hell.
His brain knew it had to lower his arm to burn Anita’s body. But, his body refused to move. He hovered above her beautifully covered body. Weaved into the gauze were strands of gold thread and white lace. Her face was obscured, but if he looked hard enough he could make out the features of her face.
Lower your arm. You have to do it.
His hand made no intent to move. He ground his teeth, gnashing molars into chalk.
“Son, it is time.”
Diane’s gentle words shook him. Shattered something fragile inside him. It broke lose. Only then did he cry. Only then did his grip on the torch waver. The flame danced nervously, flickering. With each and every single breath he had to smell that foul odor. The filthy stench that covered her body. It smelled sickeningly sweet like lemons and flowers. His gut churned and churned. Bile shot up his swollen throat which he swallowed back audibly.
“I cannot,” he said.
He heard his step-mother moving, felt her hand upon his shoulder. “I know you can.” Spoken from a woman who truly did know? Because she lit the torch for his father. How hard that must have been for her. He remembered how quiet she’d been, resolved. All this time he never knew that on the inside she’d been screaming in agony.
She left him.
And, finally, Grayson lowered the torch. The oil caught fire in a burst of light. The orange and red flames licked up her body like a sickness. It began at her feet where the torch touched and crept up her legs. The gauze blackened and curled like a dead spider tucking its legs inward. Black smoke, smelling faintly of lemons and roses saturated the air in a cloud.
As the flames climbed higher, grew hotter, Grayson didn’t back away. The heat from the flames scorched him, made sweat drip down his face, but he didn’t move. Not even when the flames died down and her body turned to ash.
He’d been unable to save her from two miscarriages that had doomed their connection. Then he’d been unable to protect her from the alcoholism. Nothing he’d said or done was enough to make her want to stop. The pain was too much for her. She hadn’t known a way to cope. And then, in a final moment of failure, he’d gotten her killed.
A shell of a woman he’d loved lie on that stone pyre. The white beauty from before turned a bitter black.
He didn’t say the words aloud. He said them to her, wherever her spirit was.
I’ve always loved you, ’Nita. Rest in peace. Your death will be avenged.
With those parting thoughts, Grayson Blackmoore left his mate’s side for the final time.
CHAPTER 7
Three Weeks and Four Days Later
The sun would rise soon.
That thought floated through Grayson’s mind as he stepped into the clearing where Alpha Zeke Hunter’s tent stood. The alpha’s guards already knew he was coming since he’d entered their land. One of the guards, already shapeshifted into a grisly looking creature, bared its fangs and growled, spittle foaming at the gum line.
Weres were dangerous creatures. Their bodies could transform into vicious, smart werewolf animals. Only these creatures barely resembled their namesake—the wolf. They were great hunters, fast in combat, and if transformed, their teeth and claws could rip a man open.
Grayson strolled past the growling were with little care. The only thing that interested him was getting in to see Zeke. A guard came up to block his path. “State your business. Your stench is twisting my nose hairs.”
“Perhaps that isn’t me you’re smelling but your dog over there. Seems he doesn’t know the meaning of keeping one’s mouth closed,” Grayson said.
The guard was a bulky, strong man with a bald head. He carried an assault rifle strapped across his chest which would be loaded with silver bullets.
“That’s Benjie,” the guard said.
When the guard waited as if expecting Grayson to say something, he muttered, “Good doggie.”
“He’s my brother,” the guard responded. His expression had gone from cool to frozen.
“Is this a family reunion or is Zeke here?”
The guard narrowed his eyes. What, it wasn’t like Gray had time to fuck off. His mate’s body had been put to rest the nearly a month before. He couldn’t sleep, couldn’t eat. All Gray could do was plan. Finding the Donatos was out of his reach. He needed some help and the only person he knew powerful enough to track the Donatos was the alpha himself.
“He’s here but if you want to see him you have to do a little something,” the guard said.
“And what’s that?” Grayson asked with measured patience.
He’s wasting my time. I could already be talking to Zeke.
“Fight my brother. Rules are simple: you pin my brother down, you win. If he pins you, you’re outta here. Got it?”
A fight just to see the alpha? Grayson cracked his knuckles. Heady anticipation opened his veins allowing blood to rush to his body. His fangs dropped as he scoped out his target—the salivating Were. “And if I put him down permanently?”
The guard’s gaze narrowed. “Then you’ll be joining him afterward, vampire.”
There was no bell to ring ding, ding, ding. There was no referee to judge the match. And there was only one rule.
How simple.
Gray spun around but he was too late. The Were was already on its haunches, body curled and ready to strike. In a burst, they both moved. Gray dodged slash after slash by using his speed to evade side to side. With a vicious uppercut, he caught the Were’s chin, snapping his head backward. A bone in its neck cracked in protest and the Were howled. Reacting, the Were lurched forward muzzle-first. Gray doubled back to keep from having his arm bitten off in a single bite.
The fight turned nasty. They both started hitting faster. Things got dirty as they rolled in the dirt. Fighting a four-legged animal was not Grayson’s preference nor specialty. The mangy beast smelled like wet dog and foul breath.
Gray flexed the arm he had wrapped tight around the Were’s throat. “Give in,” he demanded.
The Were squirmed and bucked. It cried out a whinnying sound but did not relent. It snapped its teeth hard, chomping, sending spittle down Grayson’s arm.
“You know that’s disgusting. Now give in.” Finally, Gray maneuvered his legs into the mix until he had the beast fully in his control. Getting low to its ear he hissed, “Yield, before I take your throat.”
The beast stiffened then finally stopped fighting. It became docile in his arms.
Grayson met the bald guard’s glare. “I win.”
Behind the guard stood Zeke. The alpha was grinning at the show looking entirely too pleased for Grayson’s liking. Gray stood, brushing grass and dirt off his pants.
“Grayson Blackmoore, never thought I’d see you gracing my doorstep.”
“Since when does a tent flap count as a door?” Gray responded.
“Why do birds sing so gay?” the alpha responded.
Grayson’s hands curled into fists. “Now is not the time for your foolery. My bruid’s been murdered.”
“And, let me guess, you need my help. Why, oh why, are the Blackmoores forever landing at my doorstep?” The alpha sighed wearily. “If not for the great kindness in my soul your brother would not be working under me right this very minute.”
“What happened between you and Dom is just that—between you two. I could give a shit. Did you not hear what I said, alpha? My bruid is dead. Now are you going to see me or what?” Grayson was done with Zeke’s ridiculous conversation. There was never sarcasm or humor in Zeke’s voice. He used the same southern-boy charm to talk about a stupid door as he did committing torture. It was because of the madness; it had messed up his mind and given his eyes an irrational glint.
“I know your bruid’s dead. It’s all over V-Society magazine.”
Boom. Boom. An invisible sledgehammer slammed against each of Grayson’s temples making every second an agony. His body was sore in a few places from the fight. The blood on his hands looked like spilled wine. His situation, the recent events in his spiraling life, made Grayson’s fuse grow shorter and shorter. His hand itched to curl into a tight ball and hit something.
The alpha spoke of the famous vampire magazine. V-Society was little more than a gossip column for paparazzi to stalk the vampire elite—the ton. The Blackmoore name filled the pages, or so Gray had been told. He’d never seen a page of the magazine in his life. Could give a shit what people thought of him.
