She turned to Zeke and to Damon, who had appeared behind him. She even turned slightly to look at Loch behind her. His face was no longer open, and yet it was so open to her.
She could read mountains of emotions in his gaze. Damn, how had she ever thought he looked like their father? No, Loch was nothing like the monster she was chasing. Young Loch was too timid, too much like their mother to ever truly be Fae.
But not Eire. Eire was the cold, hard edge of steel she needed to be.
What had Zeke thought his speech would gain?
Her breakdown? Her surrender? The complete weakening of her shields?
Lochlan Trappe had taken from her.
Now, she would become him entirely and send his rotten soul to the Underworld. Hades would love a Fae to torture for eternity. They were his favorite playthings.
“Eire, I think it’s time that you go,” Damon said as he moved to Zeke’s side.
“You’re cold, aren’t you, Damon?” Eire tilted her head to the side, glimpsing her oldest brother with this new sight. She’d never viewed the world with such absolute clarity and she relished the change that had come over her.
He twitched at her comment. “Not as cold as you,” he replied firmly. “Leave now, Eire Lillith Donovan. You are not welcome here.”
Her name. He used her name with power and force. She felt the pull of his statement. She shouldn’t have. Her Stone made her immune to the naming. But her Stone was absent. She’d pushed it down to embrace her Swords, her coldness.
She felt a pang, but she buried the passing hurt and accepted her brother’s curse.
She was not welcome. Had she ever really been welcome? She again ignored the still, small voice that whispered, Yes, once you were loved. Once you were free. Once you had everything. And you can have it again.
Fuck. That. Noise.
Her brothers, although steady, looked scared, and she licked up that fear, letting it settle in her bones. She saw them all flinch when she fed off their fear, and she knew she could go deeper, could feed so entirely, there would be nothing left of them but the shells of their human skin.
And oh, but she wanted to.
Wanted to suck that pain down and eat all of their power up until there was nothing that could ever make her feel her own insecurities again.
But she wouldn’t. She’d spare them. No use in letting the moment turn to anything nasty.
“Eire Lillith Donovan, leave this place,” Damon repeated, his hands gripping at his hair. Ah, yes. He’d felt the pull on his emotions. Her body moved of its own accord to the door, obeying the naming in a way that irritated her, but which she had no control over.
She was all Fae now. She could smell it. Where before she hadn’t quite had that flowery scent that her kind had, now… Yeah, she’d finally come around. She’d finally stopped and smelled the roses. And now, she was a badass motherfucker who could kill the man who’d destroyed so much.
She’d prove Zeke wrong. She’d prove them all wrong, because this time, it really would be the end for her father and her grandmother in turn, because she had no intention of failing again.
She walked slowly down the back stairs and out the door, her brothers in tow. She glanced back at them and barely missed running right into the Vuković who had tried to weaken her.
“Eire, I came to—”
It was Nicky’s turn to take a step back. His face held such horror and pain that her façade almost slipped. She looked back to her brothers and while Zeke’s face held anger and hurt, Damon’s face was impassive. Loch, however, looked determined.
“You smell different,” Nicky moved in to her, and she touched his arm in spite. She knew he’d feel her shocks now where he hadn’t felt them before, and her intuition did not disappoint.
Nicky removed her hand, showing only briefly his fear, his remorse, his anger. Then his face went blank.
“Good boy, Nicky. Never let anyone see your emotion. You might be a worthy partner now,” Eire added, and her satisfaction went deep when his jaw ticked. He rubbed the scar on his chin and looked back to her brothers. She didn’t bother following his gaze. She just needed one thing.
She leaned into him and let herself touch his face, his scar, his tight jaw that was so beautifully toned she wanted to nibble it. But she wasn’t a nibbler. And she wasn’t here for fun.
She felt her Stone stir and her eyes dimmed for just a second, despite the pain of Nicky’s touch. She brushed aside the warmth of his proximity and the weakness abated. He didn’t fight her movements. He probably thought she was about to give in, to admit things she would never admit, to concede weakness and defeat.
Her lips touched his in what she knew was ice-cold precision, but this wasn’t about the kiss. She let her tongue glide out, let her breasts mold to his abdomen, let her foot come up onto the bike behind him, so he could feel her own sexual warmth, and then she took her claws and slashed his back before turning him around and throwing him to the ground at her brother’s feet.
“Have fun, boys,” she said, smiling and turning the key in the ignition of the bike. She threw the helmet off the back of the bike and the dog tags and the wallet that were in the concealment area toward her brothers who had rushed to the wolf’s side. Let them deal with that issue. She didn’t need that shit.
Not shit, Eire. You are better than this. Go back. Go back to your fated mate. Go back to him.
She ignored the voice. Goddamned Stone would not return this time.
She turned back to her brothers only briefly, not wanting to miss a moment of their pain. “A Fae of Swords’ poison is a killing bitch. Speaking of bitch, tell Alexia there’s more than one way to skin a cat. I don’t need their help. I’ve got this shit. Lochlan and Nessa Trappe are dead.”
She drove off quickly. She didn’t need her shit from the wolf’s place. She just needed to get back to her trailer and plan. She’d also needed to move her trailer and hide her scent. Fucking Gimp would try to track her down, save her.
She laughed to herself.
Maybe not.
Not after the wolf was dead from her poison.
It was time to find her father and show him and Nessa just how worthy she’d become.
She’d learned the lesson so many times before, but she finally felt it to the very core of her being, no wavering emotions getting in the way now.
The only person Eire Donovan could count on was herself.
Nicky’s tongue felt heavy in his mouth, and all he could taste was the acidic froth as his stomach tried to expel the poison, which he knew was traveling through his blood.
He couldn’t see. Pitch black surrounded him, and he wanted to close his eyes against the vast pool of emptiness, but he knew his eyes were already closed.
All he smelled was burning and poison, so strongly he wanted to plug his nose, turn tail, and run.
But he couldn’t move.
He couldn’t move because despite his normally strong hearing, sight, and sense of smell, his sense of touch was the most heightened of all in the moments leading to his death.
Fire.
Knives.
Slicing pain, radiating…
Radiating through his body like shards of glass covered in alcohol solution and acid, then rubbed into a newly opened wound.
Voices beat around him like a steady thrum of noise that he couldn’t seem to truly hone in on.
He tried to focus, tried to remember how he had ended up in so much pain, but the cacophony of feeling was too much, too intense, too fearfully debilitating that he struggled to catch his breath. Struggled for control. Struggled back to himself. He felt cold touch his forehead, and his chest was slowly exposed as one word rang through the noise. One word that elated him and angered him in the same moment.
Air.
No, not air.
Not air, like breath.
Eire.
His Eire. His fated mate. The woman who had done this to him. His rage bubbled up, but as the rage hit, so did the pain…<
br />
His whole world centered on the feelings of intense pain…
He felt his heartbeat rising…
Felt the organ beating furiously as the poison spread its way through his system, overtaking everything until he knew he’d be dead.
Knew it to his core.
Knew this was it. There was no coming back from this.
No coming back from the poison his own fated mate had put in him.
Why?
Why had she done this?
He knew of course even as his anger beat at his temples in a tap-tap-tap that resounded like a mallet across his nerves, eliciting a scream from his throat.
But he knew Eire. He knew why she’d done this, even if he hated her for it.
They were two assholes in the same pod. Two fuck-ups who hid their pain and their history below a million layers of self-prescribed, self-inflicted ostracizing. Two fuck-ups who were so selfish, they kept those around them at a distance, afraid to fall, afraid to fail, and ultimately thinking they’d be happier behind their self-imposed walls.
Self. Self. Self. That was the theme. He hadn’t meant for that to be the defining main idea in his life. And he didn’t think Eire either. He guessed he’d never know. But they really were two selfish fuck-ups, and now he was too late.
Too late to show Eire that life was more than this, more than being closed off and hard and so full of pain.
Too late to change his own ways.
Too late to ever apologize for the pain he had caused.
Too late to talk to his parents, who he’d been avoiding for months now. Fuck it. Not months. Years.
Too late to see Isabella again. She’d be serving overseas still when she heard of his death. His baby sister had lost too much.
Too late to work his way to being a better man. For Eire. For his family. For Alexia and the community she and Devon were building.
For himself.
Yeah, irony was, there was a different path he could have taken. He liked his space. He liked his mountains, but he’d missed out on a lot.
He’d questioned whether Alexia trusted him just a few weeks back, and truth was, of course she didn’t trust him. He didn’t trust himself half the time. Didn’t trust that he wouldn’t get someone else hurt.
Except he had.
He’d lost his fated mate to the Darkness.
And now, as his heartbeat slowed back down, and his mind slowly faded, he realized that he’d lost his chance at being the man he could have been. A man Graham would have been proud of.
He had ignored the emptiness, the black expanse surrounding him, but now that the pain was receding and his heartbeat was near nonexistent, he looked again.
Not entirely black. No, once his eyes adjusted, he saw the outline of the house in the distance, a house so familiar and yet not.
He felt the ground beneath his bare feet, and then he focused on the sensations of the moment. He was standing in leaves, wet leaves that felt cold, but not like the cold of winter. No, more like the cold after a thaw or the cold before the winter hit. The cold was refreshing against his calloused feet and he centered himself, letting his feet sink into the nitrogen-rich soil.
He didn’t trust his sight in that moment. Really, he shouldn’t trust anything, but this place was trying to tell him something. Didn’t matter that he was dying or dead.
He could have one last adventure.
He closed his eyes once again and moved at a steady pace in the direction of the smell of pine and citrus.
He wasn’t one to cry. In fact, he could count only three times in the last eleven years of adulthood that he’d shed even a tear. The first time had been when he’d written that letter to Alexia. She’d been a future he had hoped for, but she’d never been for him. The second time had been when he’d fucked up and caused so much grief and loss. And the third time had been when he’d lost his mentor, his friend, his second father.
A man who smelled like pine and citrus.
Except, when he opened his eyes and found himself in front of the familiar home, Graham was not who greeted him.
“Hello, Nicky,” Mally Garda said as she leaned against a front porch post, guarding the front door of the cabin he’d known so well as a child. His home away from home.
“Mally,” he whispered, drawing out her name and tasting the syllables he hadn’t spoken in such a long time. Not even with Alexia. He berated himself. He could have given that to Alexia in life. Some memories she’d lost.
They still didn’t know how she’d lost those memories. The accident? Trauma? Her own protective barriers? Either way, he remembered so much more about Mally than even Alexia had, and he could have shared more with her. Now, he’d never be able to.
“Alexia will be fine, sweetie,” Mally said, moving her dark brown hair behind her ear, and smiling at him. She’d always seemed so much older, but Mally had only been thirty-eight when she’d died, and he realized now how young she really had been.
Her skin was still wrinkle-free, still pink in the cheeks and clear of any of the lines of age. Her hair was the fresh brown of someone in their thirties, and her eyes spoke of only the short amount of years she’d had to endure the pain of living.
Except, there wasn’t just pain in living.
There were good things, too. Things those around him had started to build, but that he had cut himself off from.
“Oh, Nicky,” Mally whispered in comfort, moving down the steps to pull him in. He wanted to object, to step back and avoid the hug, but Mally…this was Mally.
This wasn’t the fourth time he cried as an adult. No. But it was damn close. He felt her slowly pull away and smile up at him. That was another thing. He’d been a child the last time he’d stood next to her. She’d seemed larger than life when he’d been a child.
“They’re ready for you.” Mally took his hand, looked back at him with a motherly smile, and pulled him toward the cabin. He didn’t fight the movement. He was wary, but he trusted Mally, trusted her clean human and lavender scent. Trusted the hope and joy he saw in her eyes. Trusted her guiding presence and her very real touch.
“They?” He stopped for a second. He’d expected Graham for sure, but who else was in the old homestead?
Mally stopped as well, and took her other hand to give him a pat on the hand she had dragged him by, and the look in her eyes and her touch stopped him cold.
“No,” he said, but she canted her head to the side. Had she not heard him? She hadn’t. He’d been that quiet. “No.” He said the word more firmly this time. “I can’t.”
“Nicholas Arviso,” Mally said, her voice chiding him while at the same time offering the motherly comfort she had always exuded in life. “This needs to happen. You need to fix things. You need to make amends. And then you need to forgive yourself and help your fated mate.”
“My fated mate is unreachable now. She’s turned. No human scent to her. She is full Fae.”
“Have you all learned nothing?” Mally asked, exasperated. “Let’s go.” She dragged him to the door. He wanted to fight, but Mally was determined and frustrated. There were many things he remembered about her, and one of them was to never mess with her when she had her ire up and her face was set in determination.
He stubbornly closed his eyes as she pulled him through the door. The wood storm door banged shut as they took a step forward, and he breathed deeply.
Damnit all to Hell.
He was not a coward, and he needed to do this.
Graham Vuković stood before him, but he looked younger, less burdened. His dark eyes were no longer shadowed and lined with age, his skin less wrinkled than it had been in life. Even his hair had grown out to the length of his youth, nappy and dreaded like he’d had it back in the 90s.
He was healthy, and he was whole.
And he was standing next to Kai.
Nicky grabbed the couch in front of him for support and looked around the room, taking the time he needed to compartmentalize.
The
cabin was exactly how he remembered Graham’s home. He wondered briefly what had become of the cabin in Dunham. It had been left to him, but he hadn’t been there since before Graham’s death. Was it overrun with critters? Were the pipes frozen over? Or had his parents kept up with the place like they’d said they would do, even though he’d told them not to.
He suddenly hoped they had as he looked around at the dark wood of the cabin. The place wasn’t large and open, but it was cozy. The living area had spacious couches and a reclining chair Graham had used more and more as he’d gotten older. It looked brand new again here. Even the throws on the couches, some that Mally had made herself, were less threadbare.
The area rugs protecting the thick boards of sanded and varnished wood flooring were bright and new looking. The staircase to his left and at the back of the room, right next to the kitchen entrance, wasn’t damaged by years of muddy boots and rainy clothes, like it had been after Mally’s death.
The place was timeless, and he guessed that was appropriate.
“The Afterworld.” The words were pulled from him and he knew them to be true as soon as they were spoken.
So, he truly was dead.
“Sort of,” Graham said moving into his side. Nicky could feel Graham’s presence, could sense his strength, his energetic but always peaceful and joyous nature. That was Graham. Not steady per se. More like life-affirming. That was perhaps why him and Ginny had always gotten along. They both understood the urgency of life, and yet they both also understood that one needed to ‘stop and smell the roses’ as the saying went.
Graham and Mally had complemented each other in that way.
“Yes, we do,” Graham said, Mally moving into his side while Nicky took them both in.
“You can hear my thoughts,” Nicky stated. Why he wasn’t angrier about that, he didn’t know, but it was comforting. Comforting to know that he didn’t have to hide.
Except that Kai was there.
“Nicky.”
The strong thrum of his brother’s voice echoed through the room like a bell that could never be unrung, but oh, that he could unring it. Oh, that he could go back in time and change what Kai had experienced. Oh, that war had not taken what was never its to begin with—
Rage Against the Devil (Wild Beasts Series Book 2) Page 20
