His pressed a kiss to her lips, achingly tender. “Always.”
* * *
Cliff continued to hunt with Bastien. He also resumed seeing Emma every night.
Or almost every night. As they both had known, the psychotic break he experienced the day Whetsman shot Linda was not his last. More seized him in the months that followed. Sometimes he recognized how close he was to having one and asked Melanie or Linda to sedate him. Sometimes they struck without warning. Either way, Emma didn’t see him on those nights because he ended up tranqed.
But Cliff was surrounded by friends who loved him at the network. Melanie and Bastien. Linda. Aidan, a Celtic immortal who practically lived there now. Stuart. Miguel. The other vampires, who began having psychotic breaks of their own. And they all kept Cliff from hurting any mortals in his vicinity… or himself, which helped him recover faster so only one or two nights would pass without her seeing him.
Though his love for Emma only seemed to deepen—as hers did for him—he smiled less and less when they were together.
“Take heart, Emma,” Bastien told her on one of his rare visits. “When Cliff isn’t with you, he doesn’t smile at all.”
She took no comfort in the knowledge. She wanted Cliff to be happy. She missed his smiles and treasured all the more each one she was able to coax forth. Every laugh, too. Those were few and far between now. But she knew he still drew solace from her company and the affection she offered him.
Some days that and his desperate desire for a future with her seemed to be all that held him together. The voices in his head grew louder. So loud that when the two of them sank onto her sofa and watched movies together, his muscles never completely relaxed. When he held her, she could feel the tension thrumming through him. And he’d stare at the screen as though some other movie were playing in his head. A muscle would twitch in his jaw while he clenched and unclenched his teeth. His eyes would begin to glow.
The first time he erupted in anger around her, they were watching a sci-fi flick. She couldn’t say whether it was a good one or a bad one. She only half paid attention to it because worry coursed through her. Cliff was tense. More so than usual. Instead of relaxing back against the cushions and tucking her up against his side with an arm around her shoulders, he leaned forward with his elbows on his knees, twisting his dreadlocks. Every once in a while he shook his head a little as though he were silently arguing with someone and disagreed with whatever he or she said. His eyes began to glow, creases forming at their corners as he squinted them ominously.
Lips tightening, he lowered his hands and let them dangle between his knees. His fingers curled into fists. The muscles in his biceps and forearms flexed and jumped. His eyes brightened.
“Shut up!” he bellowed suddenly, so loud they could probably hear him in the next county.
Emma just about jumped out of her skin.
“Shut up! Shut the fuck up! That isn’t who I am! That is not who I am!”
She stared at him, pulse racing, heart aching for him as it slammed against her rib cage.
Cliff glared at the coffee table a long moment, muscles coiled so tight she thought he might spring to his feet and start punching the walls. Then his fists unclenched. His eyes widened as he sucked in a breath. Swiveling to face her, he gave her a look of such agonizing dismay. And she knew it was because he could hear the frantic beating of her heart.
Emma couldn’t bear it. He was already fighting asshole voices in his head. She wouldn’t let him kick himself for startling her, too.
Sitting up straighter, she gave him a decisive nod. “Damn straight. You tell ’em, honey. Give those voices hell.”
Cliff blinked, a look of surprise sweeping over his face, so comical that despite the gravity of the situation, she couldn’t keep her lips from twitching.
A big, beautiful grin banished the darkness in his features.
Emma so rarely saw that expression on his beloved face anymore that she drank it in like water in a desert.
Shaking his head, Cliff drew her onto his lap and claimed a kiss. “I love you so much.”
She smiled back and tapped his forehead. “You’re just saying that because I’m so good in bed, I shut those fuckers up.”
He laughed. And the sound of it made her so happy you’d think she’d just won the lotto. “You aren’t good in bed. You’re fantastic.” He kissed her again and arched a brow. “Speaking of which…”
Looping her arms around his neck, she rubbed noses with him. “Want to go see just how quiet those voices can get?”
“Hell yes.” Rising with her in his arms, he carried her to the bedroom.
Chapter Nineteen
Cliff braced his elbows on his knees, dropped his head into his hands, and closed his eyes. Tension thrummed through him as the voices in his head called for him to commit grisly acts of violence, their cries relentless. It took every ounce of strength he had to refrain from acting upon them.
Roughly a year had passed since he’d attacked Whetsman. And the growls and snarls in his head did their damnedest to deafen him now, the impulses they sparked overpowering.
The only time he ever slept was when he was sedated or when he held Emma in his arms. The sun had not even reached its zenith today, yet Cliff had to fight like hell to remain in control. He wouldn’t be able to hunt with Bastien again until sunset. How could he possibly hold out that long?
Loosing a growl, he slid his fingers into his dreadlocks and strained to hear Emma’s voice up on sublevel 1. There had been times in the past when just listening to her shoot the breeze with Cynthia, banter with Sadie, or hum under her breath while she worked had helped. The thunderous demands screeching through his head, however, had reached such levels that he could barely even hear the goings-on in sublevel four.
He curled his fingers into fists, the tugs on his hair punishing. Gratifying.
He had waited too long. He was terrifyingly close to losing himself entirely. There were still fractured pieces of him in there, remnants of the Cliff he saw in the photos Emma had snapped, but the twisted monster rising within him seemed to devour more of them every day.
He never wanted Emma to see that monster.
He would die first.
The past few months, he had poured himself into helping her remodel the rest of her home. He had retiled her bathroom, painted the cabinets, and installed new faucets. He’d replaced most of the light fixtures throughout the house and—much to her relief upon learning he had no actual experience with such—hadn’t discovered what electrocution would do to a vampire. He’d sanded and painted her kitchen cabinets. Restained her wood floor.
Emma thought he did it because working with his hands distracted him from the war perpetually raging in his head. And the distractions did help. But he really did it because…
Well. He did it for the same reason a man whose doctor had told him he only had a few months to live might. He was getting his affairs in order, taking care of things now that he knew he wouldn’t be around to do later. Emma loved that house. Cliff did, too. It felt like home to him now. She made it feel like home to him. A home he had fantasized about filling with decades of love and laughter. Boisterous children and barking dogs.
She’d told him how she intended to fix it up, all the changes she’d like to make when both time and her budget allowed. She’d even asked for his input and suggestions, still clinging to the hope that they would have their happily-ever-after together.
And the more she’d included him in her plans, the more Cliff had wanted to make those changes for her himself. He wanted to be the one to transform her house into her dream home. He needed to be the one to transform her house into her dream home, to leave her that tangible evidence that he was more than what the madness was making of him, to give her something good to take away from their last months together. When she opened a cabinet in her sleek kitchen a year from now, he wanted her to remember him smiling over her singing off-key
while they bobbed their heads to music and installed the new hardware. Not him destroying romantic dinners by bellowing at people who didn’t really exist but wouldn’t stop yammering in his fucking head. And an infusion of funds from Bastien had helped him pursue that goal.
He’d been reluctant to take the money at first.
“Why?” Bastien had asked. “Everyone who hunts vampires is supposed to be on the network’s payroll. Just consider me the middleman. Reordon pays me to hunt. Then I pay you to do the hunting for me so I can sit back, relax, and think up new things to try with Melanie the next time I get her naked.”
Cliff didn’t so much do the hunting as the killing, but Bastien’s argument had made enough sense for him to accept the funds. Because it enabled him to accomplish what he needed to.
Cliff knew how hard all this was on Emma. Yet she offered not a single complaint. She didn’t grow short-tempered or weary of his sudden angry outbursts, none of which he directed at her. Nor of the creepy way he would mutter to himself, engage in snarled one-person arguments, and pace when agitated. Nor of the way he would sometimes pounce on her as soon as she opened the door, tear her clothes off, and take her rougher than he intended in a desperate bid to shut out the damn voices.
Remorse would always sour his stomach afterward. Some nights he didn’t even say hello first. He had even left faint bruises on her where he had gripped her too tightly and had panicked… until he harkened back to a conversation he’d overheard Melanie and Linda having once in which they had laughed about their immortal lovers leaving the same marks on them.
That alleviated some of the fear. Emma, as usual, dispatched the rest.
“You weren’t too rough,” she’d mutter sleepily. “You gave me three orgasms, honey. You think I’m going to complain about that?”
But he knew she must miss the gentler, playful couplings they’d shared in their early months together.
Cliff tried so hard to balance the bad with some good.
When he was gone, he wanted Emma to only remember that man in the pictures. The one who had saved her life the morning mercenaries had attacked. The one who treasured even the most mundane moments with her.
The man who loved her.
If he didn’t end it soon…
He tugged harder on his hair and shook his head.
What if she saw the monster that grew inside him?
If he didn’t end it soon, how would that monster manifest itself to her?
He never, ever wanted to frighten Emma, let alone harm her. And while he’d never had such impulses around her before…
No. He couldn’t bear to think it. Melanie seemed sure Cliff would never harm Emma. Cliff would like to think the same. The violent impulses he constantly battled had certainly never focused on her. But the words his father had spoken to him shortly before Cliff went away to college came back to him again and again:
“Whenever you’re contemplating an action that comes with even minimal risk, son, ask yourself this question: Is it a gamble you can afford to lose?”
This was not minimal risk.
And this was not a gamble he could afford to lose.
He would not let the madness win. And there was only one way he knew of to ensure it wouldn’t.
Melanie and Bastien would take it hard. Melanie would blame herself for failing to find a cure in time or a way to reverse the brain damage. Bastien would stoically deliver the death blow if Cliff asked him to, no matter how much it ate him up inside. But that wouldn’t stop either of them from offering Emma whatever support she’d need once he was gone. He knew he could count on them for that. Todd and Cynthia would be there for her, too.
Cliff ground his teeth as the voices howled in his head, rejecting his intention to eradicate them.
Emitting a bestial growl, he pulled at his dreads.
Light thuds reached his ears.
A deep voice with a Scottish accent spoke. “It’s Aidan. I’m coming in.”
Aidan had landed himself in hot water a couple of years ago by breaking into network headquarters, bypassing their security protocols, and altering the memories of multiple guards and employees so he could obtain a list of gifted ones he hoped might lead him to a woman who could love him and alleviate the roughly three thousand years of loneliness he’d experienced.
Once he’d gotten back into Seth’s good graces (Reordon still held a gargantuan grudge), Aidan had befriended Cliff and asked him to assist him in his quest to find love. Cliff had been shocked speechless, something that had made the ancient immortal burst out laughing. But the peculiar request had made sense. Cliff had resided at the network for over three years when Aidan came to him. And he’d spent much of that time listening to the lives of the employees play out like a massive soap opera. Who better to help him sift through the list of gifted ones from the network’s employee roster and select those who might be amenable to the Celt’s approach?
Cliff didn’t think he’d be up to the task today, but he was desperate for a distraction.
The lock on the heavy door clunked. Clinging to control by his fingertips, he didn’t look up as Aidan entered.
The ancient immortal closed the door, then sat down beside him. Aidan had been born with several astonishing gifts, one of which was telepathy. It shamed Cliff to know that Aidan could hear the vile demands of the voices and see the horrific images that flickered through his mind like loathsome subliminal messages.
Aidan never blamed him though, or disparaged him. Having glimpsed what transpired in Cliff’s fractured mind—the things Bastien and Melanie could only guess at—Aidan actually seemed to respect Cliff and hold him in high esteem for being strong enough to reject it.
His big hand clasped Cliff’s shoulder. “Do you trust me?” he asked softly.
“Yes,” Cliff whispered, trying hard to modulate his tone and resist the urge to shout over the noise only he heard.
“Stand up,” Aidan ordered.
Lowering his clenched fists, Cliff did so and focused on his friend.
“Don’t be afraid,” Aidan murmured.
Before Cliff could respond, a feeling of weightlessness engulfed him as darkness replaced his apartment.
In the next breath, blindingly bright light bathed him. Not indoor lights, but…
Oh shit.
Sunlight.
Cliff tensed.
Aidan’s fingers tightened on his shoulder, preventing him from bolting for the trees nearby. “Don’t.”
Panic flooding him, Cliff threw up his hands to shield his face and gritted his teeth against the pain he knew would come. The violent voices in his head shrieked and wailed.
A moment passed.
Agony failed to surface. Flaming pain did not sear his skin. His eyes hurt a little from the brightness, driving him to squint. But other than that…
Nothing.
Slowly lowering his hands, Cliff stared down at his exposed arms.
His smooth brown skin remained healthy. No blisters formed. No pain struck.
The heartbeat that had begun to slow picked up once more as he looked up at Aidan with wide eyes. “How is this possible? Am I hallucinating? Is this…? Am I having another psychotic break?” If he was, he hated to admit it but he hoped it would last a little longer. He’d been a vampire and only ventured out at night for so long that he no longer even dreamed of being in the sun.
“No.” Aidan smiled. “I can heal with my hands and am using my gift to heal the damage the sun is doing in real time.”
Astonishment rippled through him. “You can do that?” He’d never heard of such a thing.
Aidan nodded. “I wasn’t sure I could until I tried it with Ethan. I can’t say he was very pleased about being my guinea pig, but he owed me.”
A little huff of laughter escaped Cliff. “Well, you did transform his wife for him so she’d be superstrong.” As the last of his fear drained away, Cliff closed his eyes and tilted his face up to the s
ky. “It’s warm,” he murmured with a hint of wonder. “I’d forgotten how warm sunlight can be. That you can feel it on your skin.” It even banished the chill contemplating his own demise had spawned.
“With your heightened senses, you feel it a little more now.”
A lump rose in Cliff’s throat. Even this simple bit of normalcy had been denied him for six long years. When he opened his eyes, he had to blink back moisture. “I never thought I would feel it again. Not unless…”
Not unless he decided to spare Bastien and Melanie by choosing to end things by walking into daylight and letting the sun sear the madness—and his life—away.
Aidan squeezed his shoulder. “Every day you hold out, Cliff, every day you keep fighting, I’ll give you this. I’ll give you the sun.”
Cliff stared at him, stunned speechless, afraid to grasp yet another tenuous thread of hope. “Doesn’t it hurt you?”
The Celt shrugged. “It’s a mild discomfort at most.”
Bullshit. Aidan might be ancient enough to tolerate some sunlight. But Cliff wasn’t. As soon as sunlight touched him, he began to sunburn and blister, something that had tipped him off something was seriously wrong after he’d transformed. And the longer Aidan healed him, the more pain the immortal siphoned away from Cliff and into himself.
Yet there he stood, doing just that and promising to repeat the action every day if necessary. “Why would you do that for me?”
“Because you’re my friend,” he said simply. “My brother. And this is what brothers do for each other.”
The two had become good friends since Aidan had transferred to North Carolina.
Cliff now considered Aidan one of his best friends. And when Emma’s voice surfaced in his mind, asking him if he would do the same if the tables were turned, Cliff nodded. “I would do it for you.”
After a moment, Aidan arched a brow. “You hear that?”
Cliff cocked his head to one side, listening. “What?”
Aidan grinned. “I think we shocked the voices into silence.”
It was true, Cliff realized with amazement. All he heard was birdsong and the rustle of leaves as a breeze passed through the trees.
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