“You can control it,” I said, fighting to keep my voice calm as I watched him suck the blood clean, his eyes rolling in his head.
The beast within him growled, the sound echoing in the small space of the kitchen. If he jumped me here, I was pretty sure I knew who would come out on top. The only weapon I had left on me was the Bone Blade, and if I used it on him then nothing would bring him back from the oblivion it would bring. Then again, if he left me with no choice…
“Byron,” I said, the word whispered between us. I reached behind my back, my fingers closing around the handle of the blade still tucked into my jeans.
The beast growled again, but instead of lunging toward me he spun back toward the kitchen counter. He slammed his hand down on the granite top, the stone splintering beneath the strength of his fist. He roared, a long, pained sound, and I could see his claws retracting as his body curled in on itself.
Seconds ticked by, and I finally let out the breath I’d been holding as he trembled on his knees on the floor.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered.
Keeping my distance, I crouched next to him. He lifted his face and stared at me with his familiar brown eyes.
“It’s the sickness, not you,” I said.
“I can feel it spreading inside, Darcey, and…” He trailed off, his trembling momentarily worsening.
“You’re frightened,” I finished for him.
“Yeah. I am. I know I’m not supposed to admit that. Alphas aren’t supposed to feel fear, but I feel this disease spreading inside me and I can’t stop it. By tomorrow night’s Huntress Moon, I won’t be fit to stop it. If I hurt you…” He sounded utterly defeated, and my heart broke for him.
“The Huntress Moon is coming, but I’m not going to let it take you,” I said with more confidence than I actually felt. The look in his eyes after he’d kissed me had reminded me of the rogue in the woods. If that wolf couldn’t control himself, if the human he had once been couldn’t pull back from the brink of destruction, then how would Byron? Hell, he hadn’t even shifted and he’d almost lost control.
“I thought the fae couldn’t lie?” A small smile curled his lips.
“We can’t, so that proves it to you.”
Byron let out a warm, inviting laugh that drained some of the tension from my shoulders.
“We should get some sleep,” he said, glancing out the living room window toward the sky streaked with the red glow of sunrise.
“You sleep,” I said. “There’s someone I need to go and see.” I pushed up onto my feet.
“You need to rest too,” he said. “I’m counting on you.”
“I’m a banshee. Rest isn’t really something we need tons of.”
He nodded and carefully climbed back onto his feet, keeping well out of reach.
“I am sorry, Darcey,” he said, his eyes trained on the floor.
“Look, I know it wasn’t you.” I dismissed his actions with a wave of my hand.
“No, it wasn’t me, but that doesn’t make it right. My father was an asshole, used to beat my mom black and blue.”
“I’m sorry,” I said, unsure what else to say.
Byron laughed, but this time it held no warmth. “You know, he used to say that to her all the time, and I think he actually meant it. But then a little time would go by and her bruises would fade, and he’d be right back to beating on her…”
Byron walked stiffly into the living room. I followed him, giving him his space as he settled onto the couch.
“What happened between them?” I asked, without really wanting to know the answer.
“He killed her.” Those three words dropped into the silence like tiny explosives. “I tried to stop him. That’s where I got this.” He gestured to the scar that ran down his cheek.
“Your own father did that to you? How old were you?”
“Yeah, he half-shifted one night, and I heard her crying, begging him to stop, to leave her alone, but…” He stared out the window. “I was ten.”
I didn’t push him—if he wanted to tell me the story, then he would.
“I went into their room and found her on the bed bleeding… He kept ranting at her, that she was useless, that she was supposed to give him more than just two pups. I saw red, threw myself on him, and just started hitting him over and over… But he tossed me away like I was nothing at all…” Byron paused, and a lone tear tracked down his cheek.
“You were a child,” I said. “There was nothing you could do.”
“He took a silver knife that he carried everywhere with him,” he continued, as though I hadn’t spoken. “I can still remember the smell of his sweat as he held me down on the floor and sliced the blade down my cheek.”
My stomach twisted with the raw vulnerability of Byron’s pain. A parent was supposed to care for you and love you no matter what, not carve you up like a Sunday roast.
“He looked me dead in the eye and said if I ever came between him and his bitch again, he would rip my heart from my chest and eat it while it was still beating.”
“Christ,” I said, unable to keep the thought to myself.
“But my mom, she was brave… I tried to fight back as he used the knife on me, but despite what he’d already done to her she shifted and tore into him…” Byron’s voice grew gruffer with each word. “She hit the wall as I climbed to my feet and shifted back to human, and before I could do anything he was on top of her, clamped around her throat, and there was this weird sound… I didn’t know what it was at the time, I just knew it was bad, really bad. I know now it was the sound of her neck snapping as he shook her… She died instantly. For that, at least, I’m grateful.”
“Byron, I’m so sorry,” I said, unable to come up with anything better. In some ways, it was easier to comfort the dying than those who had been left behind. Nothing could ease their suffering, nothing could take away the pain of their loss. Words were just that—words. Empty and meaningless.
“There was this wailing afterwards… Made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up, and my father…” Byron stared out the window. “God, his face when he shifted back and realised what he’d done…”
“He knew what he was doing,” I said.
“He did, but he said he wished it had been me instead, that if I’d just stayed out of the way she wouldn’t have died…”
Byron dropped his face to his hands and wrapped his fists into his hair. “I should have been able to stop him.”
“You were a child. That wasn’t your job.”
“Part of me knows that, and yet…” He lifted his face to mine, and his hopeless expression tore at my heart.
“What happened to your father?” I asked, but I had a feeling that I already knew the answer. Wolf packs had a hierarchy, and alphas were usually only toppled when successfully challenged by another alpha. In rare times, they died of something else, but that usually led to the disintegration of the pack. I knew for a fact that Ash was now in control.
“I grew up, challenged him to combat, and tore his throat out in the ring the same way he killed my mother,” Byron said without emotion. “He raised us after she died, and I use that term loosely. It was basically a series of beatings and getting locked up as punishment. He called it training, but everyone else considered it abuse.”
“So why didn’t you stay to help the pack?” I asked.
“Because I could see myself turning into him, and that frightened the hell out of me.” There was an honesty in his voice that I hadn’t been expecting.
“You will never be like that,” I said.
“I nearly killed you in the kitchen, all because the beast inside me got a little overly excited,” he said, bitterness infecting every word.
“I think I proved the first time we met that I’m more than capable of taking care of myself.”
Byron laughed, and the tension in his shoulders eased, making him look younger.
“You need to get some sleep,” I said. “If we’re going to get to the bottom o
f this disease, then I need you in tip-top shape.”
He nodded and lay back on the couch. “I really am sorry,” he said again.
“Stop saying that!” I got up from my perch on the edge of the chair and crossed the small space toward him. When I gestured for him to scoot over, he stared up at me in surprise and moved so I could lay down beside him.
“What are you doing?” he asked, his body rigid.
“Proving that you’re nothing like your father and that you don’t need to keep apologising.” I wrapped my arm around his waist and rested my head on his chest. The rapid beating of his heart beneath my ear betrayed his panic. If it wasn’t so poignant, his reaction might have been comical. But it wasn’t. He had been betrayed by the ones who were supposed to protect him. Forced to kill his father for crimes committed in the past.
Byron’s arm slowly came around my waist, drawing me closer.
“You said you heard a wailing outside when your mother died,” I said.
“One of your kind—a harbinger. It hadn’t been the first time either… I’d heard it a full week before he attacked her, but I didn’t know what it meant. When my father heard it, he cursed it, said that the banshee did it on purpose and was deliberately stalking people and drawing death down on their heads…”
“Explains why you were so hostile the first time we met,” I said.
“We’re wolves, it’s in our nature to be hostile toward things we don’t understand.” His voice seemed far away, and his breathing deepened as he teetered on the verge of sleep.
When he finally drifted off, I lay there for another few minutes listening to the steady sound of his breathing and the pumping of his heart. I couldn’t begin to understand the cruelty he had endured—it all seemed so pointless, and the senseless murder of his mother left a bitter taste in my mouth. But he had been right when he’d said she was brave. I’d heard of mothers doing extraordinary things to protect their children—lifting cars from their bodies after traffic accidents or fighting off those who would do their children harm, even at the expense of their own lives. I’d witnessed mothers being forced to watch their children pass from this world to the next, and the agony I felt, the grief I screamed to the four corners of the earth, to the gods who would listen, could never compare to the silent tears of a grieving mother.
Slowly extricating myself from Byron’s grip, I stared down at his peaceful face as he continued to sleep. I would help him. I had to. He’d shared a piece of himself with me, something private and painful, and I knew it hadn’t been easy for him to show a raw and vulnerable side, especially as an alpha.
Byron was different, which was what gave me the faith I needed to know that he would hold on, that he would fight against the sickness with every fibre of his being. I just hoped I could find the cure fast enough that he wouldn’t have to fight too hard.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Making my way across the city on the motorcycle, I let my thoughts drift. Byron had survived far more than what was asked of many people in a lifetime, and for him to finally succeed against his father only to give it all up to his brother was heartbreaking. Something just wasn’t making sense; I couldn’t quite put my finger on what it was, but I knew to trust my instincts.
I stopped the bike on the road leading down to the mansion and killed the engine. The sun was almost up, its glow growing stronger with every passing moment. Swinging my leg over the seat, I tugged out the machete I’d packed in the bike’s saddlebags and started toward the house. Bearding the vampires on their own turf was risky, but I had the sun on my side. They wouldn’t be down for the day, especially the really old ones, but if the meeting went to shit, I’d at least be able to cut and run.
I felt the security team’s arrival seconds before they stepped onto the tree-lined avenue. Typical vampires and their human servants. It made sense—if I were vulnerable during certain hours, I’d probably want someone to protect my homestead, but that was the difference between the vamps and the fae. Unlike them, we weren’t ever vulnerable.
“Look, I’m not here to cause trouble,” I said, raising the hand that wasn’t holding the machete.
“Sure doesn’t look that way to me,” one man said, stepping forward, his skin so black I was sure I could see sapphire undertones in the faint morning light. He stood before me like a warrior poised for battle; his black tactical gear made me look somewhat underdressed for the occasion, and the semi-automatic machine gun slung across his chest didn’t make me feel much better.
“I’m here to see the queen,” I said, dropping my arms to my sides.
“She’s not taking visitors,” he said. He didn’t bother checking with the guards up at the house, which told me he was the one running the show security-wise.
“You’re one of hers, aren’t you?” I asked, stepping closer to him. “Can she see me right now?”
He leaned toward me and sniffed the air near my face, his movements much faster than any human I’d ever met. “She’s not taking visitors,” he repeated.
“I’m here to discuss the little matter of one of her masters taking over some fae territory,” I said.
He paused for a moment and tilted his head to the side, as though listening to something only he could hear. When he opened his mouth to speak again, I waved his words away. “Let me guess, she’s still not taking any visitors?”
His smirk set my teeth on edge, and I flexed my fingers on the handle of the machete.
“Tell her I killed that master today,” I said, and his smirk froze in place. “Does she want to take visitors now?”
As I stared at him, his face went slack and his eyes lost their focus. The sudden shift left me feeling off balance. What the hell was going on? From where I stood, it looked as though he’d upped and left his body. Perhaps he had.
“She will see you now,” he said quite abruptly, his expression switching back to neutral as his personality flowed back into his features and his eyes refocused once more.
“See, that wasn’t so hard, now was it?” The urge to taunt him washed over me, but that would be too petty of me, especially since I was here on official Court business. They wouldn’t look too kindly on my actions if everything went pear-shaped; of course, if it did, I’d probably be too dead to care.
The security guy turned away and started up the drive, his pace unrelenting as though he was being drawn forward by an invisible thread. When we reached the house, the other soldiers, who had fallen into formation behind and to the sides of me, broke away and circled back toward the house’s perimeter, each moving like a finely tuned machine.
My escort took me up the steps and into the main foyer. Once inside, he paused and turned to face me.
“Weapons,” he said, gesturing to the very visible machete in my hands.
“Not a hope,” I said.
“Then you go no further.”
“Look, whatever your name is, no way am I walking into the hive with no weapons… I’ve been on the planet a lot longer than you have, and I know that vamps aren’t to be trusted.”
“She gives her word you will not be harmed,” he said.
I laughed, the sound echoing throughout the marble foyer. “Her word? She’s a vampire, so her word isn’t worth much. Especially if the truce has been broken,” I said, adding the bit of knowledge I’d gleaned from the master I’d killed in the derelict mall.
He seemed to consider my words for a minute—well, I supposed the queen bitch herself was the one doing the considering. After a couple of seconds, he nodded. “Very well, you can keep your weapon as a sign of good faith.”
Without waiting for an answer, he turned and made his way out of the hall, leading me deeper into the house. Rich tapestries covered the walls, showcasing wars long past, scenes of debauchery that would put any good brothel to shame, and the obligatory images of the vamps leading their kind to all sorts of victories.
We descended steep, curved stairs, the walls surrounding us lit with huge sconces that illuminated t
he red-veined marble beneath our feet. Upon reaching the bottom, I could see a huge, solid iron door at the end of the corridor stretching out before us. The sight of it caused my palms to break out in a clammy sweat, and I followed the human toward it as the old adage of leading a lamb to slaughter sprang to my mind.
How many of my kind had been forced to walk toward the same door?
The human servant reached the door before I did and shoved it open, the muscles in his back bunching beneath his black jumper. He glanced back at me. “Are you coming?”
Without hesitation, I crossed the threshold into a marble room. The entire space was so bright that my eyes took a few seconds to adjust to the glare that seemed to bounce off every surface. Floor-to-ceiling white marble gave the room the appearance of being the inside of a mausoleum, and the scent of rotting roses only accentuated its tomb-like qualities.
At one end of the room, perched on a dais, was who I assumed to be the queen of the hive. Her blonde hair, shimmering around her like a cloak, was draped across her naked body. Her lips were the brightest red I had ever seen, and her skin was as pale as the marble surrounding us. As I stared at her white marble throne accented with gold, I couldn’t help but wonder how her ass wasn’t frozen to the cold surface.
“I expected you to be different,” she said, her voice girlish and high. I felt her piercing blue eyes take me in, raking over my body and then falling on the machete. A small smile curled her crimson lips.
“If you were a man, I might ask if you were compensating for something.” She lifted one perfectly manicured hand in front of her as she gestured to the blade.
“Sorry to disappoint you,” I said.
“Not disappointing at all. Most of the fae who have visited me came with no weapons other than their arrogance and ego. You seem to have enough sense to know I deserve, at the very least, the respect of an exceptionally long blade.” She seemed to roll each word around in her mouth, tasting it before serving it up to me.
“You came here to report the death of one of mine?” she asked, her curiosity catching me off guard.
Huntress Moon (Bones and Bounties Book 2) Page 17
