Reborn Yesterday

by Bailey, Tessa

  It didn’t seem possible that her flighty stepmother had been the figure in the crimson robe that appeared in her dreams and was now working for the High Order. That her prediction had nearly been the catalyst for Ginny’s murder.

  Twice.

  It made sense now, why Larissa never seemed to age. Although…why had she tried so hard to convince Ginny to leave Coney Island with her? To keep her away from Jonas, and thus the wrath of the High Order? Had Larissa been truthful about loving Peter Lynn? Ginny hoped so. Badly. The wool being pulled over her own eyes was one thing, but Larissa duping her sweet father was unacceptable. Ginny couldn’t think of that now, though. There was too much on the line. Her future with Jonas. His life. Hers. And she could only keep up the pretense of struggle for so long before the High Order realized she’d been acting.

  “Look at him. Suddenly back to being so noble.” The king’s disgust was palpable. “Thank goodness the prophecy has amended itself. This council would never have survived under his weak leadership.”

  “You are stronger than anyone I’ve ever known,” Ginny whispered, pushing up to speak right against Jonas’s ear. “Jonas. Now or never.”

  They locked eyes briefly and she tried her best to communicate her total confidence in him. How rock solid it was. How much she loved him. He must have translated her look correctly, because he took a shuddering breath and closed his eyes, as if soaking in her words in as deeply as he could.

  When he opened them again, they shone like emeralds.

  Whereas minutes ago, he’d been ashen, barely able to stay on his feet, he resembled a determined warrior now. Fierce. Unbeatable.

  He tilted Ginny’s head to one side and leaned down, pausing with his fangs an inch from her neck. “Please forgive me for the pain. Stay with me through it all. Stay with me.”

  “Eternally.”

  His fangs slid into the thick vein of Ginny’s neck and her limbs turned limp. She gasped at the ceiling, recognizing the difference instantly in the way Jonas took her blood. It was fast and ferocious and purposeful. He’d been afraid of killing her before, but now…in a way, killing her was the point.

  Dizziness assailed Ginny, her eyelids growing heavy. Jonas’s hand twisted in the material of the hotel maid uniform Elias had stolen for her to wear, pulling her ever closer, his gruff sounds of satisfaction turning into desperate growls. This was it. The change he’d told her would come over him—his true nature as a predator. She wouldn’t be around for much more of it, because her vision was already growing dim and she couldn’t feel her feet, her hands, her lips.

  Her head lolled backward and she caught sight of Larissa creeping backward into the shadows, pulling the hood back over her head. Maybe Ginny’s lack of blood had her imagining things, but she swore the seer gave her a quiet nod.

  “Enough,” said the king, but of course, Jonas didn’t listen. At being ignored, Clarence’s fist rapped off the throne and made Ginny’s head pound. “Enough.”

  Whispers rose like a funnel cloud in the hall.

  He’s turning her.

  He’s turning her to circumvent the rule.

  A searing pain ripped into her neck and Ginny bit down on a whimper, but it wouldn’t be contained and it turned into a full-fledged scream. Jonas almost broke away then, but she somehow found the strength to reach up and hold him fast. With a choppy sound of alarm, laced with definite hunger, he pulled deeply of her blood, taking her all the way down to the floor and quite simply preying on her, his full weight pinning her to the carpet.

  The pain in her neck dulled.

  Everything dulled.

  A light appeared in front of her eyes and helplessly, Ginny followed it—

  Jonas’s weight left her suddenly and in the hazy distance, she heard a loud crash. Someone picked her up and wind licked at her skin, before she was set down once more. When she managed to crack open an eyelid, she found herself at the bottom of the wide staircase she’d come down…hours ago? Minutes?

  The numbness inside her dropped out and the pain lashed back in, holding her organs hostage in a clenched fist. Her mouth opened on a silent scream and she started to shake. Was this it? Was it happening?

  “Jonas,” she whimpered pitifully. “Jonas.”

  Ginny clawed at her chest, ready to rip it open to reach the agony in her heart and it seemed to go on forever, cracking like a whip to the rest of her insides, inflicting damage—and she experienced every brutal second of it. No way out, there was no way out and the human inside of her searched for help on instinct, turning onto her side and attempting to call out.

  No one heard her. Not with the battle taking place.

  The High Order no longer sat in their thrones. They surrounded Jonas in a circle, their robes in tatters. And Jonas…she’d never seen him as he was. Like a God. He fended off the attacks they hurled in his direction, capturing their energy and sending it back twice as powerful. Felling them one by one.

  But they continued to rise, regroup, attack again. Unfazed.

  “You shouldn’t be able to last a minute against us,” said Clarence, awestruck. “Where did you gain such power?”

  Elias appeared at Jonas’s side, his gaze rife with meaning and emotion. “Threaten a vampire’s mate once, he grows stronger to protect her. Take her life? Threaten it again and again? You’ve created your own worst nightmare.”

  “We don’t have nightmares anymore,” droned Jonas’s sire. “We don’t sleep.”

  Not acknowledging Clarence’s comment, Elias instead nodded at Jonas. “It’s time. You’ve got this. I have your back.”

  “How touching,” Jonas’s sire sneered, sailing a bolt of opaque air in Elias’s direction. Elias rolled to the side, but not before he was winged by the moving force field. With gritted teeth, he got to his feet and started to rejoin Jonas in the middle of the circle, but something caught his attention and made him smile. It didn’t take Ginny long to realize what it was. Tucker.

  Tucker…and an army. Hundreds of men and women.

  They thundered down the stairs around her with a deafening war cry, running head first into the fray with Tucker at the lead. The army moved at such a high speed, there was no mistaking them as vampires. One man in particular fought balanced on a prosthetic leg, a baseball cap pulled low on his forehead. Several of them were knocked to the ground before they could reach the High Order—who were now unmistakably the enemy—but it was impossible to stop them all.

  Despite the miserable state of her body, Ginny couldn’t help but watch in breathless triumph as the High Order were captured, one by one, held down and subdued by the makeshift army. This was it. The rightful beginning of Jonas’s rule. It all started here and she was proud of him. So proud.

  Jonas stood over Clarence, his shoulders rippling with ferocity. “You die now in her name,” he rasped, raising his right hand, fisting it until his sire started to choke, scratching at the invisible hands around his throat.

  “Don’t you see she is dying?” The king gasped a laugh. “She is dying.”

  Jonas’s fist dropped to his side. He stiffened and twisted around, his gaze landing on her immediately. “No,” he whispered, reaching her side in an instant. “You…” He frantically ran hands over her body, brows drawn together in confusion. “You’re not supposed to be conscious. Ginny.”

  She tried to speak. Nothing came out.

  “Elias,” Jonas roared, his eyes wild. “What the fuck is happening?”

  The light she’d been trying to walk toward loomed brighter, swallowing her, but she only made it halfway through, darkness crushing in on one side, searing heat on the other. She was being rent in two.

  “Did your venom release?” Elias shouted.

  “Yes.”

  “All of it?”

  Their voices faded little by little as Ginny started to move away from her body, like fog rolling off a bay. Jonas’s anguished below made her fight. She clawed her way back to full wakefulness, even though that was where the pain resided.
Better to be in agony than separated from Jonas at the end.

  “I don’t understand,” Jonas rasped, tipping her face up. “Her heartbeat is strong, but her skin cools so quickly.”

  Ginny tried to communicate with her eyes that nothing was his fault. That she would find him again in the next life and the one after that…but a movement just beyond his shoulder caught her eye. Jonas was drowning too deeply in his misery to notice Clarence had broken loose of the vampires holding him down. The king disengaged their hold, spun around long enough to grasp a stake and fly in Jonas’s direction, weapon raised. Vaguely, Ginny wondered if the king’s movements would normally appear as a blur to her and nothing more, but now? She could pinpoint every step, could see the revenge flame in his eyes, hear the carpet fibers move under his feet.

  And with Jonas in jeopardy, her body took over.

  Power ripped through the cobwebs of pain and spiked in her stomach, shooting out to her fingertips, legs, hair follicles. Denial followed. The weight of responsibility. Without a formal command from her brain, Ginny lunged to her feet and threw herself in between the king and Jonas.

  “Ginny!” Jonas boomed. “No.”

  Yes.

  Surprise was on her side or she would have been toast.

  Her fist knocked the stake free from the king’s hand and it clattered to the ground, at her feet. The king stared at Ginny in shock for a millisecond, before springing forward—propelling himself right into the stake she’d picked up at an unfathomable pace and now held in her fist. Air left his open mouth like a deflating ball, his eyes ticking to Jonas, holding, and he became nothing but embers, then ash.

  The remaining members of the High Order screamed, the sound echoing off the hall’s high ceiling. Ginny fell like a stone, her final reserve of energy expended.

  No more.

  She couldn’t stay another second. Numbness stole through her and she collapsed onto her back in a fit of trembling.

  Jonas’s frenzied expression filled the space above her. “Elias, give me your knife.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  Distantly, Ginny sensed the exchange taking place. “What my gut tells me,” Jonas said raggedly. “I have no choice. I refuse to walk this earth without her.”

  She cracked a single eye in time to watch Elias blade slash diagonally across Jonas’s wrist, blood welling in the cut—and something inside her swelled eagerly. He held the wound above her mouth, letting several droplets fall before bringing it flush to her lips. A drop slid down her throat and Ginny’s back arched off the floor. A moment ago, her hands were devoid of strength, but they clung to Jonas’s wrist now, holding his hand immobile while more and more blood dripped into her mouth.

  Her heart scrambled, pumping harder and…louder than she could ever remember, as if she was listening to an ultrasound at full volume.

  The taste was paradise.

  It was partially her own blood, yes, but it carried Jonas, too. Somehow her taste buds could pick out the individual molecules that held his essence and she savored them most of all, moaning as they slid down her throat.

  “That’s it. Come back to me, love.” Tears clogged his tone. “Ginny, please.”

  Her eyelids fluttered down and she dropped into the scene from her recurring dream, but the perspective changed. She was now Jonas standing beneath the tree, watching herself approach. A different version of herself, but herself nonetheless. The bone-deep yearning, the hunger, the obsession was Jonas’s. All for her. She shook in the face of it.

  Next she saw herself in the embalming room, dressed in her green plaid dress and white coat. Thirst wrapped around her throat and squeezed, inner willpower wrestling back the urge to pounce, to subdue and conquer. Claim. Had he really been fighting such ferocious urges in her presence? How had he managed it all this time?

  Relentless had been his ache. Not touching her had been nearly unbearable for him. Leaving her before sunrise had left him bereft, over and over again, to the point of despair. That despair infiltrated her now and she understood it.

  Now she was living his reality, her human love colliding with something elemental, something animal and irreversible. Exploding.

  She let go of Jonas’s wrist, turning boneless on the floor, hands flopped out at her sides, but she had to reassure him. Craved his easement so much that she smiled. “Oh, thank God,” he said, falling forward to writhe his forehead on her belly. “I almost lost you. I almost fucking lost you.”

  You didn’t, she wanted to whisper, but couldn’t locate her vocal abilities.

  “Listen to her heart. It never fully stopped.” Jonas lifted his head, sounding awed. “That means…I’m…her mate, too. The bond was already in place. Even when she was still human?”

  “That must be why she felt your pain.”

  “We can sustain each other,” Jonas whispered.

  “She won’t have to be woken by her mate,” Elias said, crouching down beside his friend. “Her heart never slept.”

  Jonas leaned down and kissed her mouth softly. “I’ll never let it go silent.”

  Ginny looked up into the eyes of the man he loved, noticing four separate shades of green for the first time. His breaths caressed her eardrums. She could feel the bow of his muscles through two sets of clothes, hear the friction of clothing on his skin—and she had to spear her fingers into the carpet to keep from pulling Jonas down on top of her, craving the press of his body, his mouth on hers.

  Jonas’s mouth curved against hers. “Still going to have a problem being calm, are we?”

  Oh Lord, the sound of his voice. It unwrapped her like a present. “I was led to believe we wouldn’t need to be…calm anymore.”

  The tips of their tongues met on the barest stroke. “I’m really looking forward to that.”

  “Me too.” A throb landed in her throat. “I’m sorry…about Clarence. He was your father, in a way—”

  He cut her off with an incredulous sound, his eyes whipping with intensity. “I have need of you and no one else.” Jonas’s hands shook as he cupped her face. “Some things a man doesn’t get over so easy,” he said, quoting The Quiet Man and making her heart soar. “Loving you is one of them. I will do it eternally, Ginny. But if you ever put yourself in danger again—”

  “Without consulting you first?”

  “Yes…”

  “Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?”

  Emotion swept his features. “Who knew I could be so grateful knowing I’ll be having the same argument about compromise for thousands of years?”

  Jonas picked up Ginny and cradled her against his chest. He didn’t take his attention off her once as he crossed the hall and settled into the throne where Clarence had sat. Then he looked out over the gathering of vampires he’d helped in their time of need, his face impassive as they each took a knee and pressed a fist to their chests.

  Their voices rang in unison. “To the king.”

  Jonas drew Ginny closer. “And his queen,” he said.

  EPILOGUE

  Three months later

  Ginny looked down at the bouquet of roses clasped tightly in her hands. In a word, they were pink, to match her wedding gown. But they were so much more. Tiny dew drops clung to the buds. The green leaves were shot through with tiny, intricate veins of varying sizes. If she listened carefully, she could hear the moisture being carried through them to hydrate the roses.

  Wonder curved her lips and she hugged the bouquet to her chest.

  Her feet were planted on the roof of the funeral home, but she could have been levitating, for all the hope and optimism in her heart.

  Today she married her love.

  Her mate, her best friend, the king to her queen.

  Ginny stood behind a veil of flowers, waiting to walk down the aisle, and even though she was aching from being separated from Jonas—even by mere yards—she needed to savor the moment. To acknowledge the journey toward reaching such…completion.

  There was a quiet hum of convers
ation coming from the guests on the roof and she could pick out each individual voice. Elias and Tucker sat in the front row, beneath a waterfall of fairy lights and roses, Tucker no doubt exceedingly uncomfortable in his suit. The rest of the voices were newer to Ginny, but growing more and more familiar. They belonged to the Silenced Jonas had counseled over the years, now members of his royal court. Jonas ran his kingdom the way he did everything else. With heart, fairness and wisdom and the vampires who served him were loyal, not only to Jonas, but to Ginny.

  When Jonas took the throne, he’d immediately begun making changes to the High Order’s policies and was in the process of sending ambassadors to all major cities to guide vampires through their transition from human to immortal. Feeding from humans was still illegal. And now Silencing humans at will and thus, leaving them without guidance was no longer allowed, either. But at Ginny’s urging, Jonas had compromised and decided to make rulings over Silencing matters on a case-by-case basis.

  After all, weren’t they proof a vampire and human could fall in love and choose to spend eternity together?

  Compromising with her fiancé was a beautiful thing…if sometimes a bit of a challenge.

  For instance, Jonas had been adamant that Ginny remain with him at the High Order’s underground palace, which they were in the process of giving a much needed makeover. But she’d reminded him of the importance of her father’s legacy. Not only that, while her preferred location was by her future husband’s side, she wasn’t the kind to sit back and let everyone else do the work.

  P. Lynn Funeral Home was a funeral home no longer.

  They’d sealed off the windows, turned the morgue into a series of bedrooms and it was now a halfway house for freshly Silenced vampires.

  At first, Ginny worried that she would miss being a mortician terribly. Being entrusted with the important job of sending the deceased off with care and respect. But, in a weird way, she was still doing relatively the same thing, wasn’t she? Vampires came to her and Jonas, confused and alone. Through counseling and giving of resources, they were able to send the undead off to a new life, armed with the support they needed. Her new undertaking even fulfilled her with a sense of family that had been missing in her prior line of work. Now she had friends and a purpose.