Questions… so many. Where to start.
“Grayson. How are you here?”
“I was cursed. Like you, my Lisbeth.”
His use of that term melted over her. Splayed her insides sending a quake down her center. She missed that voice. Those lips. Those coal gray eyes that knocked her knickers off… she didn’t wear those any longer.
The moment of pleasant memory lapsed. Reality taking hold.
She stepped further back.
“You’ve been killing people.”
“Not by choice. I swear it to you.”
“Then why? Explain to me now, because there is a death sentence on your head.”
He approached like a lion stalking his prey. “I will tell you everything. Please believe me when I say these acts are not by my choice. My death was not by my choice. And my resurrection hurt like bloody hell.” It came out as a snarl mixed with a warning. I suffered, for you. Now I’m back, and you’re mine…
Lizzy was powerless to stop him. Not just because of his strength or speed. Because of that same magical power he’d always had over her. His arms wrapped around her, mouth smashing into her pouty lips.
Lost.
Falling.
Into a pit of confusion.
Memories of their time together pressured to the surface. Her first encounter with him. Taming him. Teaching him. Changing him from bloodsucking monster to a gentleman she loved. Didn’t she? Hadn’t she? Was this memory correct?
Embellished and romanticized perhaps, through the distance of time.
Wasn’t it only earlier that afternoon she’d begun to question her feelings for Grayson, wondering if they’d been misplaced.
But it hadn’t mattered. Not really. Because he was dead. And she’d moved on.
How did she tell her supposedly dead fiancé she was dating a werewolf?
And what the hell was she going to tell Charlie?
Her heart was torn in two, each man clinging to their half of it.
She needed time to process.
He let out a throaty snarl, releasing her lips from his divine mouth prison.
“I’d prefer to continue, but we have company. Don’t worry now, my Lisbeth. I’ll get that werewolf’s stench off you soon enough.”
Lizzy inhaled with a gasping choke. Her eyes falling on a shape towering just inside the entrance to the cavern.
If he’d had any doubts, he didn’t now.
She pushed her way out of Grayson’s arms.
“Charlie…” it was barely a whisper and filled with anguish.
“Oh come now, Lisbeth. He’ll get over it. We are engaged after all.”
Those words burned at Charlie’s eardrums. “You said he died.” He ignored the vampire, silver fixed to her in a hardened stare.
“I thought he did.”
“Surprise,” Grayson sang smugly.
Charlie didn’t give two shakes about the vampire and his attitude. He’d deal with the bastard after he dealt with Lizzy. Right now, his temper raged at her.
“You were engaged to a vampire? A fucking murderer?”
She shook her head in denial. “No. It wasn’t like that.”
“What was it like exactly?” he gritted through his teeth.
“Charlie, please.” Tears reached her eyes, the reality sinking in, hitting hard.
“Easy wolf,” Grayson reasoned flatly. “That’s my fiancé,” Charlie cringed at the word, “you’re insulting.”
Charlie staggered under the weight of it all. How had he deemed Lizzy the perfect woman for him? So strong. And sure, and calming. And smart. And engaged to a goddamned vampire. Who was still alive.
“I was going to tell you about it, Charlie. It wasn’t a secret. It just hadn’t come up in conversation yet.”
Charlie had opened himself up, made himself vulnerable, setting himself up for instant defeat. Lizzy had a past he knew so little of. He’d rushed in, head first. Wrong head, he chastised himself… and not correct either. It had been heart first. If he’d used his head, his actual brain, he’d have gone slower. Overthinking didn’t look so bad now. Hadn’t he already learned this lesson? Rushing into anything never worked out.
“Enough of this,” Grayson clamored. Fangs dropped. A hiss purling through his lips. “She’s mine, wolf.” He planted his coal stare on Lizzy. “You’re mine, Lisbeth Deane. You always have been. And you’re the only one who can break this curse on me.” He snarled at Charlie, taking on a primal stance. A fighting stance.
Winner takes all… prize being Lizzy.
“Stop this, please.” She got between them.
“Oh but why, dearest Lisbeth? That Charlotte fucked me up nice and nasty.”
“Tell me about the curse,” said Lizzy as calmly as possible.
“Not here. Not with him. You have to come with me.”
Charlie projected a no-way-in-hell growl. His anger at Lizzy dissolving into the mist. So help him God, it hurt, more than any injury he’d ever suffered, to know Lizzy loved this thing. Still loved this thing.
Regardless, he wanted her. Needed her. Was crazy head over heels in love with her. And he sure as hell wasn’t allowing this monster to lay another finger on her. Or chance Grayson might hurt her, even by accident.
The vampire came up behind Lizzy in a dash.
“Let. Her. Go.” Charlie crouched to lunge.
Lizzy stuck in the middle of a testosterone-crazed battle.
She the prize.
Grayson her past.
Charlie her future.
Both tugging on her like a rope beginning to fray. But which side the winner?
Grayson was faster. He grinned wildly, wrapping his arms possessively around her tiny frame. Charlie gnashed his teeth, Lizzy could tell mere seconds from letting the wolf scream free. One or both of them would die. They were deadly to each other. Ring on his finger or not, she feared what might happen to Charlie. And to Grayson.
Time. She needed time. Some way to push pause.
Air sucked out of Lizzy’s lungs. Grayson and she a streak of movement. Not quite fast enough. Charlie guessed the move and the vampire stopped before crashing into the muscled fortress that was the wolf’s body.
Charlie wasn’t fully transformed, but just about. A weak human essence still lingered. Control on the verge of breaking him. His will almost overpowering the ring in pure need to protect Lizzy.
Grayson shoved her to the ground out of the way.
“Say goodbye to your werewolf, Lisbeth,” he hissed. “I do feel for you wolf. But she’s mine.” He lunged. Charlie leaped… out of Grayson’s path. Charlie now an impenetrable wall between Lizzy and the vampire. The exit to the cavern right behind the vamp.
“I suggest you leave. Or I will kill you.” Charlie’s snarl was deadly. His body raging with pulsing muscles just looking for an excuse to workout.
An arm tearing out of nowhere.
A gasp.
A crank.
A snap.
Grayson’s head flung to the side, broken. Eyes bulging. Body sliding down. The ground its new home.
Lizzy fell to her knees. “Oh, Jesus.”
Courtney Jessup’s arms hung in the air, a stone cold pose of death.
“Take that you sick prick!”
There was a rush of something surging through her dead veins. Satisfaction. Adrenaline. The act an instant high, something she was surprised at, thinking only blood could get a vampire high. But this wasn’t like a sugar buzz, or a caffeine kick… this was power. Control. Authority. Domination.
All things that suddenly made her high plummet down into the depths of the earth.
These things were not her.
What the hell was happening to her?
Oh, right.
Vampire…
Wow. This could be some trouble.
The wolf receded. By his own power, or the ring, Charlie had no idea. He hadn’t fully transformed, keeping some tiny measure of control. His clothes were stretched and torn, falling off h
im a little. His breaths ragged and temper cooling in a slow few seconds that dragged on forever.
Lizzy crawled over to Grayson. She whispered his name, her voice a tidal wave of confused longing that cut Charlie from head to toe. How many times could he stitch himself back together before the seams refused to repair anymore?
He didn’t look at the vampire who’d heal and wake again too soon. Lizzy met his pained stare with one of equal torture. The questions with no answers chilling their bones.
Charlie sucked in and got back to business. He grabbed his phone and dialed.
“Courtney, keep the werewolf blood and stake handy, just in case.”
Lizzy said nothing.
Courtney nodded, her agreement less enthusiastic as it might have been a few minutes ago. Charlie dialed Mack. Explained where they were, sifting through details, asking her to get a car here so they could take Grayson to the mansion.
“We’ll lock him in William’s cell for the night,” he told the sheriff. “We need a little time to… sort things out.”
A wave of nausea passed through Lizzy. He was doing this for her. Otherwise, Grayson would be dead. She fumbled to her feet, grabbing onto the stone alter a few feet away. Where her first life had ended, her second life had begun. A second life she’d promised to live to the fullest. So many things she wanted, that she had not in her previous life.
Exactly where did Grayson fit in?
Did he fit in?
Didn’t she owe him, for loving her enough to take his own life after she’d died. If he’d been cursed, like her, and wasn’t responsible for his actions, and could be freed and return to the way he was living while with her before… when they’d gotten engaged… Lizzy blew out a long, exhausted sigh. She thought she’d had it all figured out. Boy had she been knocked down a few pegs.
Mack would have preferred swifter action, but there was clearly more going on here than she understood. So she agreed with Charlie’s plan and told him she’d get the police car there as quick as possible. With a side warning of she’d need some kind of decisive action, soon.
The cavern got quiet. Tense. Cold. Unspoken anguish getting stuck in the misty air seeping inside. All things Courtney hated more than anything, but she kept her post, and announced when the police car pulled up outside.
Before lugging Grayson out to the car, Charlie forced a vial of the werewolf blood down the vampire’s throat to make sure he stayed weak if his broken neck healed during the drive home. They piled Grayson into the backseat of the police cruiser.
Michael hopped in the front seat with Mack, leaving room for Lizzy. Courtney told them she’d meet them and screamed off toward the mansion at vampire speed. She’d beat them all.
Lizzy stalled from getting into the car.
Now, of all times, she wished she could be speechless. Not have to talk. So much, and so nothing, to say.
“You coming?” she asked Charlie in a weak attempt at engaging him.
“No.”
Such a short swift telling answer.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I can’t come up with anything else to say right now. I can’t answer why he’s alive, or why he’s like this now. He was a good man when I knew him. Not so unlike William… at least in that he didn’t drink from humans.”
There was only one question Charlie cared about the answer to at this moment.
“Do you still…” he stopped himself. He wasn’t ready to hear the answer. And he already knew it.
She reached out to touch him but stopped when he pulled away. Not harshly, but away from her reach. Lizzy held back a whimper and sank into the car.
Crying? Seriously? Not her style. So much emotion, being in a living body again. Apparently she’d reached the limit where breakdown was inevitable.
Her head twisted, her eyes taking in the unconscious fiancé in the back seat. What had happened to him? This wasn’t the Grayson she remembered… and yet it was so him. The smugness. The ownership he claimed over her. The jealously… but not the loathing behind it. And not the drinking and killing of humans…
The sight of them in the same car, just a few feet from each other put murderous ideas into Charlie’s mind. The wolf wanted to burst out of skin and sink its teeth into the vampire, ending him, rather than see Lizzy within his grasp. Even if it killed him to do it.
Thinking of her picking the vampire over him sickened him.
Imagining that vile creature’s hands roaming over her body brought up a dry heave.
The only thing he could cling to was Lizzy. That he believed in her, and trusted her, in essence, it was the same as asking him to believe in Grayson Moone.
But damn that vampire if it tried to touch her…
Mine…
Mine…
Mine…
The possessiveness and depth to which he believed this scared him. Because no matter how many times he said it, his heart already accepted it as gospel, and his overthinking brain warned him it was not to be.
All in, or all out.
This middle ground could go pound sand.
CHAPTER 22
Lucas waited to bombard Lizzy until they’d gotten Grayson locked into William’s cell, bound by a chain laced with werewolf blood to keep him weak. Lizzy said nothing the entire time. Just stared. Her face stoic. He guessed, in shock.
They had to pull her out of the room to lock the door.
She stumbled her way up the stairs, a hollow echo of her usual well-spoken self. Lucas followed behind her, meeting up in the kitchen with Courtney, Melinda, and Michael.
Mack had left them to sort out the details, having paperwork to fill out for the dead body of the young woman Grayson had killed hours before. She’d been sure to remind everyone of that, more than once.
“What the hell is going on Lizzy?” Lucas finally asked the question burning at everyone’s tongues.
“I need a shot of tequila first.”
Michael gladly handed her the bottle, but only after taking one himself.
She downed one mouthful. Followed by a second. The sting swallowing some of the shock. She balanced her hands on the kitchen counter releasing a slow, even breath. How tables had turned… she’d already begun to think of this kitchen as her own. She lifted her head to explain.
“In my old life, before I was ghasted, Grayson Moone, the vampire currently locked in the basement, was my fiancé.”
They’d pretty much put this part of the story together.
“When I met him, he was a little wild. Fun. A bit of a jealous streak in him, but loyal to me. A protector, when I had only myself after my father died. We had a good time. Things got more serious. He was not so unlike William when I knew him. He did drink from humans before I met him. Never killed them. But I helped him stop this practice completely. He diet was human blood free when I died.”
“Looks like he’s back at it,” Michael shredded out the accusation.
“Obviously. But I need to understand why.” A bit of the stubborn Lizzy they were used to surfaced. “Grayson said something about a curse. His actions may not be his fault. We all know how curses work…”
Like they needed a reminder of Riley and his rampage.
“Curse or not, Grayson has killed a lot of people, just here on the Isle,” Lucas argued. “Imagine how many others there are we don’t know about. You were ghasted a long time, Lizzy.”
“I am aware of that,” her voice clicked, emotional upheaval balancing on a steep edge. “But look at it this way, if it was Riley down there, which was the case not too long ago, and he’d actually killed William because of the curse he was under… what would you all have done? Condemn him? Kill him? Put him in jail?”
“That would have been one death,” Michael argued, as kindly as possible. A terrible one being it was William. “And we know Riley was cursed…”
“So, no. You would not have condemned him,” Lizzy finished. “I’m just asking you to be open minded to the possibility this situation is out of Grayson’s
control. As for what comes after, I have no idea any more than you. I will do my best to also remain open minded. He may be guilty, and if that’s the case I will… deal with that.”
Melinda pleaded silently with her brother to let it go, for tonight. Not press. But he was not so ready to relent. His concerns, not just on the murderer locked in the basement, or the fact that this was another out-of-the-blue Deane problem… but Charlie. How the hell was this going to go down for his brother? He hadn’t said anything, due to a million excuses he’d take years to list, but he liked how Charlie was around Lizzy. They were a good match for each other and admit it or not, he wanted to see his brother happy after all the shit they’d gone through these last few years. And the years before that after Charlie was bitten. Defensive was all he could be right now.
“You claimed your fiancé died. Jumped off the same cliff you had supposedly jumped off.”
“When I didn’t really die either,” reminded Lizzy. “He did die. As far as I knew. I watched Grayson’s body blister and burn in the morning sunrise. Until he was nothing but hardened ash. His last act was to jump over the side, ending the rest of him. At least so I believed all these years.”
Her private guess to all this: Charlotte Howard had somehow cursed Grayson after he refused to turn her into a vampire, and he had suffered like she had while in her ghastly form. Unable to ask for help until the right circumstances finally aligned.
“So how is it Grayson has picked now to show up?” Michael’s attack continued. “Just a short while after you came back to life? And your brothers showed up?”
“You think this is all planned?” Lucas said, surprised.
“Timing seems too perfect.”
“Back at this again,” Lizzy groaned.
Michael had never fully accepted the Deanes being here. After the battle with the Feyk he’d seem to come around. But now, losing Emily, William’s departure to parts unknown, Riley and Melinda… and his brother potentially losing a girlfriend over this sudden appearance of Lizzy’s old fiancé… it was all too much. Something snapped. Someone needed to take the blame. Deanes were the easy candidate.
His gaze penetrated Lizzy’s, his empathy tendrils attempting to reach in and sense her feelings. What he got was sincere forlorn surrender. “I don’t know what to think anymore,” surrendering himself.
Vampire Interrupted (Wicked Good Witches Book 8) Page 27
