Midnight Falls (Sky Brooks Series Book 3)

by McKenzie Hunter

  “Thank you,” he said quietly.

  CHAPTER 20

  I walked up the gravel pathway to Logan’s house again, still unable to get the image of the four dead faes out of my head. Desperation makes fools out of people, and I was desperate. I needed the curse removed and I needed the Aufero. The rest I would have to figure out later. In the back of my mind, I kept thinking that if he could help me then he could do the same for Josh.

  The smell of juniper wisped through the door, much different than the scent of brimstone and lemon that I had always smelled at Gloria’s home, the first Tre’ase I had met. Logan opened the door before I could knock, the broad smile welcoming.

  “Do come in,” he said. He kept looking past me expectantly.

  “Ethan’s not with me,” I said. When he continued to look behind me, I said, “Winter isn’t with me either. ”

  He said Winter’s name softly to himself. “It is quite fitting for her.” He said her name again, just as low as before. “You came alone.” His brow raised and his voice was light with amusement. “Is there a reason you left them behind?”

  What was this, an interview? “I wanted to talk to you alone.”

  He moved closer, his smirk gilded with deviance. “I’m flattered. How can I help you?”

  I looked around the room, trying to figure out how to handle this. Practicing over and over on the drive there didn’t help. He didn’t follow the script I had in my head. “Can you remove a curse?” I asked.

  “Done by whom? Witch? Fae? Elf? Or Tre’ase?”

  “Witch.”

  “Of course I can.”

  He slowly moved around the room, his hands clasped behind his lower back. “Their magic is strong and complicated, but if you’ve dealt with them as long as I have, you find a workaround to all their little tricks. If I remove this curse for you, then will you accept that you owe me a debt?” His odd lavender eyes bored into me, expanding and relaxing as the art on his arms roiled up his arm, moving and changing. “Do we have a deal?” he asked, extending his hand to me.

  “No.”

  “No? Did you come here for a visit? Because I am all out of free favors.”

  “I will not make an open debt with you. Give me specifics. I need to know exactly what you want from me in return.”

  He assessed me for a long time before he walked into his living room and took a seat. “Come sit with me.”

  I hesitated. Was he trying to make me comfortable so that I’d let my guard down? I followed him, but stood instead of taking a seat in the chair across from him.

  “Oh, sit down, you silly woman. I need to explain what I want.”

  I sat down, keeping a careful eye on him. He was absolutely relaxed, sinking back into the chair.

  “I’ve lived many years and very few people interest me. Those that have, die. I need someone that has a little more longevity and that I am fond of. Chris is a vampire, am I correct?”

  “Yes, for about three months now.”

  He nodded slowly. “Did you know that vampires can be bound to humans?”

  “No. Bound in what way?”

  “Like the bond between that of a vampire and the one that created them, but it is stronger—much stronger.”

  “Okay, and?” Since I wasn’t considered wholly human, I wasn’t sure why he was telling me this.

  “Well, a bond between you and Chris can be established.”

  “I am a were-animal. Some only consider us part human.”

  He smiled. “Those people are fools and wouldn’t believe such things if they had seen your origins. Nevertheless,” he waved away the thought, “as long as you are like this—in human form, it can be done.”

  “How does Chris being bonded to me benefit you?”

  He chewed on his lips for a while, and when he released them, there was blood. His tongue slid over it. His voice lowered to almost a whisper, barely audible even from my location just a few feet from him. “She’ll be your servant, and answer to your wishes. The spell that binds you will not allow her to deny anything you request of her.” He smiled, leaned forward in his chair and waited a long time to finish. “You can wish her to me,” he said.

  I guess he thought enough time had passed that he could slide that little tidbit in unnoticed.

  What?

  But I hadn’t opened my mouth to say it out loud. Was he kidding? “You want me to form a bond—”

  “A servus vinculum,” he interjected. “That is what it is called,” he offered in a casual tenor.

  “I don’t care what it’s called. I am not forming a magical bond with someone so I can give them to you as a gift!”

  He relaxed back in the chair. “Then the curse, it is something you are okay living with?” he asked coolly.

  I should have just left. Stomped away with my self-righteous anger in tow after giving him a piece of my mind—but I didn’t. Instead, I said, “She’ll never let it happen.”

  “We will hammer out the specifics later. Do we have a deal?” he said with a smile, his eyes widening, the marks on his arm scrolling slowly over his arms and his lips moving lazily in an invocation.

  “No.”

  Everything stopped: the art halted mid-movement, his eyes shrank to normal, and he bit back his words.

  “What will you do with her?” I asked. “Are you going to hurt her?”

  “Of course not. She would be my companion and come and go as she pleases, but she would return to me when I wanted her to. Nothing nefarious about that, is it? I will live a long time, inevitably outliving the connections I have. She will be that link, and liaison to the outside, the companionship I long for. Why would I hurt her in any way?”

  That didn’t seem bad, yet it didn’t sound good either. “Fine, if that’s all you are looking for then I can visit you daily,” I offered.

  His long sweep of disinterest trailed over me as he dismissed the idea. “That is not an offer that interests me. I would agree to your friend—Winter, isn’t it? But I don’t know of a spell that can bind a were-animal to another. I doubt she will stay as long as I like or visit as much as I desire without some form of incentive. Therefore, I would need someone more acquiescent. Winter doesn’t strike me as the type.”

  “Chris isn’t either. You’ve met her, right?” I asked, knowing it was ridiculous to be offended by his rejection, but it didn’t stop me from feeling that way.

  “With the servus vinculum, she will be far more cooperative,” he offered.

  I crossed my arms over my chest and started pacing the floor, unable to ignore the satisfied look that remained on his face as I pondered the situation. I couldn’t believe that I was considering this. But if the roles were reversed, there wasn’t a doubt that Chris would do it to me. “You will not hurt her?”

  His lips drew into a tight line. “Hurt is a subjective word. One person’s pain is another’s comfort. She will never be damaged by me under any circumstances,” was all that he offered.

  And I was desperate enough to cling to that as a promise that he wouldn’t hurt her. But I just couldn’t commit, although he took my extended consideration as a tacit agreement.

  “As long as you are alive, she remains gifted to me. I would then have a vested interest in keeping you alive. I think that is a good thing for you. Am I wrong?”

  “But she is immortal, I am not. She will outlive me, too.”

  “You’ll live longer than most. I am confident you will not outlive my interest. Perhaps if it does, she will not need to be bonded to desire to stay,” he said in a wistful tone.

  A Tre’ase who benefited from me being alive was a very good thing. But did it trump the very bad thing I needed to do to achieve this?

  His deep, assessing gaze settled on me, waiting for an answer I couldn’t freely give. Finally, he said, “I will give you time to think about it. But if you decide this is a good deal for you—and I believe you will—take this.” He walked over to a cabinet and pulled out a small ring with a sharp prong on it. He
pulled out a small vial filled with a pink shimmering liquid, whispered a spell, and the liquid sparked into a vibrant blue before he dipped the ring in it. “Wear it on your finger. All you have to do is prick her with it. She’ll be disabled for just a couple of hours. You will too if you stick yourself. Do be careful. Then bring her here. And I can perform the servus vinculum.”

  He placed it carefully in my hand and I looked at it. In my mind, I tossed it at him and stormed out the door. In reality, I left quietly with the poisonous ring in my open palm, walking away as though it would detonate at the slightest movement.

  I drove away from Logan’s home, wishing the feeling of indignation would somehow rear its head—but nothing. Instead, I could only think about Chris trying to kidnap me and give me to the vampires to be killed during a ritual. To her, I wasn’t a person, I was just a job. I was doing the same thing. This was a job. My job was to keep me alive. Wasn’t it poetic justice that I do the same thing to her? It was justified. Right?

  I didn’t think about Logan’s fascination with death or what he wanted to do with her. I put aside his fondness for her. The entire drive to Chris’ home, I dredged up the memories of her trying to kidnap me two years ago. Because I needed to remember what she was capable of.

  I had a job to do. My job was keeping me alive. And I repeated that over and over until it was a loud, distracting loop in my head.

  And it continued to play as I walked up to her door and knocked on it. The ring was on my third finger, the only one it would fit on.

  She opened the door with a sheer look of annoyance, her tone bitter and uninviting. “Look, Bambi—”

  I lunged at her, but she quickly moved. A hip toss forced me to the ground with a thud. I swept her leg and she landed next to me. Chris was faster than I was, faster than Winter. She hovered over me. Two quick right hooks landed squarely on my jaw, and blood spurted in my mouth. I blocked the next blow, and when she tried to hit me from the left I grabbed her wrist. The prong of the ring pierced her skin. Making a futile attempt to release herself, she yanked at my wrist, hammering at the inside of my arm and finally her fingers started to rake across my face when she collapsed on top of me.

  The drive back to Logan’s home seemed shorter than the original thirty minutes it had taken to get to Chris’ home. I slung her over my shoulder and slowly went up the gravel path, playing the mantra over and over in my head. Her body, cool against my shoulder, was a constant reminder that she was a vampire who had died during an alliance with us, presumably at the hands of Michaela for whatever reason. My pace slowed the closer I got to the house.

  Once I was nearly thirty feet away, Logan opened the door and started towards us. Pleasure drenched his appearance as he moved in a slow, languorous gait, savoring each moment as he approach, making the debauchery of the situation worse. The longing smile found an ugly place between salaciousness and joy. His eyes twinkled , and whether it was intentional or not, his glamour dropped for a few seconds, longer than the time it had with Ethan.

  This is a job. My job is to keep me alive. I need to do my job. But the little affirmation wasn't enough. It wasn't my job to do it at the expense of others. Collateral damage was a concept eloquently and flippantly thrown around, one that I had started to think of as an inevitability. But was it? Treating people like pawns was something I just couldn’t do.

  The reality of the situation felt heavy on me, shocking me back into myself where desperation had somehow allowed me to abandon who I was. I was delivering her to a monster— as a gift. The bile was thick and nauseating as it clogged my throat, making it hard to breathe.

  When I slowly backed away, his pace quickened.

  I turned and was at a full run back to the car when I heard him growl, “No!”

  The pounding of his heavy steps slapped against that pavement. Something brushed against my back, hands, claws, making an attempt to grab me. I sprinted. Running as fast as I could toward the restrictive magical barrier that prevented him from leaving the area, I slammed into the car, dropping Chris. As I gathered her in my arms, I forced myself to look at him. His odd-colored lavender eyes glowed with anger as his glamour faltered. Long teeth protruding from his maw. The gruesome elongated snout widened as he snorted. Horns lifted out of his scalp. He inched closer to the barrier and lunged toward it and then crumbled to the ground, howling in pain. Scooting back from it, his body folded into itself. He looked up, and the anger was gone, replaced by sadness and desperation. I mouthed an apology, but I knew it wasn’t enough. Cold, narrow eyes followed me as I placed Chris in the car.

  Nearly ten minutes later I was on a side street, next to my car, hunched over everything I had eaten that day and most of the day before. The monster that Logan had shown me was nearly as ugly as the one that he had unleashed inside of me. I slid to the ground and sobbed. I didn’t know how long it was before the tears finally stopped and I could move without them forming again.

  Lying on the sofa in her home, Chris looked as limp as she had when we found her lifeless body in the woods several months ago, before she was turned into a vampire, except this time she wasn’t brutalized beyond recognition. I couldn’t just leave her without making sure she would awaken. She stirred, just for a moment, and then again. She vaulted up with a start, screaming. In one swift move, she pushed the sofa back with her feet, picked up a gun I had not seen and stood and aimed it at me. Her trembling wouldn’t stop and I raised my hand, prepared to duck if the twitching caused her to accidentally fire.

  She used her other hand to try to steady the gun and keep it on me. The breathing was habit and it came hard, I am sure as an effort to calm herself. Her gaze darted around the room, looking for others, then refocused on me.

  I eased to my feet, keeping my hands up in surrender. “Put the gun away. If you were going to use it, I am confident you would have already,” I said.

  She blinked several times and looked around the room. It took a moment before she slowly lowered the gun. After extended moments of contemplation, she placed it on the table and returned to her seat on the sofa, across from me. “My head hurts,” she said.

  “I bumped it pretty hard.”

  The extended silence continued. “Who was it for?” she finally asked in a low, detached voice.

  I shook my head. I had messed up. This never should have happened and I wasn’t going to tell her so she could get revenge when it was entirely my fault.

  “I will eventually find out.”

  “Perhaps, but it will not be because of me.” I said, taking a seat. She kept holding her head. It must have really hurt. “I have aspirin in my purse, do you want some?”

  “No, I handle pain pretty well.”

  Why did she think that was a good thing? What had occurred in her life that made her consider the ability to endure a great deal of pain an attribute? I’d always wanted to hate her, and in fact she really deserved it, but I couldn’t help but wonder, as I did with Quell, what had happened in her life to make her like this. What horrific things had occurred in the real world that made people seek comfort in the otherworld?

  She quickly came to her feet and I jumped to mine, but she went to the kitchen and came back with two glasses and a bottle of vodka. She filled them both up too full and slid one of the glasses in my direction. She drank hers down, filled it again, and had nearly emptied it by the time I had taken a couple of sips from mine.

  “I’m sorry for what happened to you. For what I did and what happened to you to cause you to become a vampire,” I said.

  “Don’t be,” she responded in a curt tone. Cool marble eyes scrutinized me for a long moment. “I know this seems like it is going to be one of those ‘kumbaya’ moments, where we give our apologies, reveal personal things about ourselves, and you start to feel like you really misjudged me. Then we become cordial to each other and maybe eventually friends. And eventually during one of our fun girls’ nights out we get nostalgic and reminisce about the horrible shit we did to each other and how w
e overcame those obstacles to become best gal pals. I can assure you that is not going to happen.”

  “Your optimism is infectious. I’m absolutely giddy right now,” I said, taking a sip from my glass.

  She emptied her glass and poured another. “I am realistic. You still look pallid and nauseated and I am sure you will be for a while. You’ll leave here and unnecessarily castigate yourself for what you did. You’ll do that while I will speculate about it: what has you so desperate that you reduced yourself to kidnapping? Who have you left righteously pissed off because you didn’t complete your job by bringing me in? And do I want revenge for what you did to me? And now you are going to think about it too and be thankful that you have the pack. But I am sure you're not concerned about the revenge thing, because I did something similar to you? Right?”

  I considered finishing the glass. I really needed it. This had been one of those nights that I wanted to be too drunk to remember, but instead I placed the half-full glass on the table before I headed for the door. “No. I don’t consider it the same thing, because I doubt you would have changed your mind. You would have completed the job,” I said.

  “You’re right. I wouldn't have changed my mind, because I am good at my job,” she said.

  “Yeah, probably one of the best. I will never be good at anything like that because I don’t want to be what you have become. But looking at your lot in life, how is ‘being the best’ working out for you?” And with that, I closed the door behind me.

  By the time I had made it to the car, she was just a few feet from me. Her jaw worked in an odd manner, chewing on the words that were having trouble coming out, so she simply bit them back.

  I waited for her to say something, but instead she stood still, her face absent of anything decipherable. I nearly jerked away when she lightly touched my arm and squeezed it gently. And it stayed there for a long moment. She remained silent. Her mouth moved ever so slightly, but the words were obstructed by her pride.