by Erin Embly
His fangs disappeared as his eyes caught mine, both of us unmoving in the mind-fucking time warp this hellish cavern had become.
“Simeon,” I said, the name tinged with a new level of spite.
And there it was, the fierce smile lighting up his broad face. Most people looked younger when they smiled, but not this man. Instead of becoming jaded over his long years, he had become more joyful, learned how to experience happiness more fully.
Even in the most royally fucked of all fucked moments, like this one, he had the carefully cultivated determination to let himself enjoy it.
It was the thing I’d loved most about him when we were together, the thing that had made him irresistible to me. I’d grown up thinking happiness was weakness, because for me it always had been, and it was intoxicating to see such powerful evidence to the contrary.
It was the reason I’d let my guard down in the first place, the reason I’d failed to protect him, because he’d sucked me in and made me believe that if he was strong enough to be happy, then I could maybe be the same around him.
I’d tried my damnedest to put that smile out of my mind since his death. Seeing it now, with his arms wrapped around the neck of someone I cared about, it made me hate him even more than I’d loved him before.
“Darcy,” he said, letting Adrian fall to the ground as he got to his feet. “How I’ve missed you.”
16
Simeon’s voice was different than I remembered. Still deep and powerful, but raspy instead of rich. And as he walked towards me and my eyes fell on the ragged scar at his neck, I realized his vocal cords must have been permanently damaged when his head had come off.
“It was you,” I said, wanting to step back as he came closer. “With Gary, bringing the blood to that statue in the club. I didn’t recognize your voice when I heard it then.”
His fingers reached up to brush against his throat, as if he’d forgotten it had ever been cut. “I recognized the sound of your heartbeat,” he said, moving his hand from his neck to my chest.
I could feel the icy cold of his palm through the thin fabric of my shirt, and my heart beat faster despite my inner protests.
“You knew I was there,” I said.
“Of course. But Reginald did not. And he would have made sure you were killed if you had seen me.”
“I . . .” I blinked. He’d been protecting me. When it had always been my job to protect him. But he’d never really needed me for that, had he? Even when I’d thought I’d failed, he was still alive. He must have known all along that he wouldn’t die, even with his head rolling on the ground. I gritted my teeth, trying to keep the stinging from my eyes. “I saw you die.”
“Yes, well. I suspect that was the point,” he said with a small smile. “Soma wanted me out of the picture. He disagreed with too many of my policies but couldn’t oppose me publicly because it’s imperative for our kind to present a unified front.” He sneered, his voice taking on a mocking tone I’d never heard him use. “If we can’t make peace amongst ourselves, how can we possibly live in peace with humans?”
I reached out and touched the scar on his neck, working to stop my muscle memory from taking over when it wanted me to grasp him fully, press myself against him, never let go again. The scar was soft, too soft, where once those muscles had been powerful and thick. “But this?” I asked.
“A secret.” He brought a finger to my lips, smiling as he shushed me. His voice became a rough whisper. “We are weakest here, but we can still heal if put back together again.”
“Why is that a secret? If I had known, I—”
“It was decided long ago,” he said. “Even before we were in the public eye, so hunters would think they had killed us when they had not. A survival tactic.” He shrugged. “But to keep this secret, we had to hide. Any one of us with the scar had to live underground for centuries, until his existence had been wiped from the memories of the world and it was safe for him to return. Reginald is one such example.”
I drew my brows together, confused. Maybe this nonsense was what Kat had been determined not to tell me. The best-kept vampire secret I’d ever encountered . . . But when Simeon said Reginald he meant Gary, who didn’t seem old enough to have been hiding underground for centuries.
“He is old, but he is weak,” Simeon said, correctly guessing my thoughts. “Beheaded as a young thing for his own foolishness. He will never be an elder like Soma.”
“And you . . .” I narrowed my eyes at him, my brain finally starting to catch up to this new reality. “You’ve been in hiding this whole time? If you had just told me, I could have lied for you—put your thick skull back on your shoulders and pretended it never happened and fucking dressed you in fancy scarves.”
I stumbled over the last few words as my throat tightened and too much blood pooled behind my cheeks. As I said it, I felt the desire aching in my bones, the longing to go back and do things differently. To stay with him. The feeling might have been easier to ignore if I’d still thought he’d fucked with my head and taken my memories, but now that I knew it was Minnie who had done all that . . . I only had myself to blame for becoming so vulnerable around him.
He let out a soft chuckle, which turned some of my longing into anger. He could have stayed with me, and he’d chosen not to. All my suffering after his death had been completely unnecessary. Even as close as we’d become, Simeon still hadn’t trusted me with his life in the end.
“You’re a fucking coward,” I said. “After everything you worked hard for, all the changes you wanted to make, your big plans to make it easier for everyone to live together without violence . . . What? An elder throws a tantrum and you just bury yourself and play dead?”
“Not exactly.” He grinned a little wider as his eyes wandered around us. “I have new plans now.”
I raised my eyebrows, not sure whether I really wanted to know what those new plans were. The man in front of me here might have the same exuberance as the man I’d loved, but there was something off about him that I couldn’t quite place.
“An elder throwing a tantrum means more in my world than you could understand. I could have worked around Soma in the public eye easily—but in private? He has command of resources I couldn’t dream of, the support of a network of elders who would never betray one another. If I hadn’t submitted as I did, he would have come after me with fire the next time. A permanent death. There would have been no way to stop him, even for you.”
I thought again of what Kat had said, that she was working for a vampire who was trying to remove Soma from power, to overthrow him and become an elder in his place. “Are you the one flooding the markets with bad blood?”
He waved his hand in the air. “That was only a distraction.”
“From what?”
“Dying was a wake-up call,” he said, eyes distant even as they stared into mine. “I realized I would never get anything done if I had to forever bow to the whims of the elders.” He paused, focusing on me again. “I watched you, you know. I saw your pain, your determination to seek justice for me. I knew you would find me eventually, so when I heard rumblings of an organization wanting to kill you . . .”
I stopped breathing for a moment, head spinning with the change of topic and what he was implying. “You’re the one who sent the first assassin after me?” The assassin who had looked like a possum, who had wielded the ice of the Sweepers’ god and worn the same ward of the woman who had beheaded Simeon. The assassin who had made me think the Sweepers had ordered Simeon’s death until their leader had told me otherwise.
“I wasn’t sure if it would fool you, but I had to try. And in doing so, I found my true path.”
I swallowed against the feeling of betrayal, not liking the way he’d worded that. And when he lifted his hand and began to produce ice crystals at the tips of his fingers, I knew why. No one in the world had ever talked about finding their “true path” who wasn’t either a religious fanatic or a bullshitter. The Simeon I’d known had bee
n neither, but this wasn’t the Simeon I’d known.
I finally took a step back, unwittingly moving away from the magic I knew a vampire should never have command over. “You’re a witch,” I whispered.
“Not yet.” He stayed where he was, allowing me the distance I’d put between us, and somehow that made me all the more uncomfortable. “I haven’t finished proving my worth to my new god.”
“What . . .” I tried to remember what Ray had said about the god in question, the same one that had backed the Sweepers before abandoning them. A god of ice and death, one who wouldn’t stop until the whole world was cold and dark. “What exactly are you doing to prove your worth?” My voice shook. Deep down I’d already guessed the answer, which sent the heat that had been building behind my eyes finally spilling down my cheeks.
“Sacrifices to the abyss.” His eyes wandered around us again, and I finally allowed myself to realize that Simeon had been the one to take the kids—he’d been the one causing the recent underground murder sprees. I still wasn’t sure how, but that didn’t matter much to me anymore.
My fingers twitched. I wished I hadn’t dropped my blade when I’d seen him. Nothing much mattered to me anymore except the knowledge that he had to die. For fucking real this time.
He must have seen the coldness in me, because he finally stepped forward, his expression softening. “It’s not pleasant, but necessary,” he said. “With the power of a god behind me, I can finally stand up to the elders. Come back into the world. Be with you again.” He reached out and took my hands as he finished, and I shivered at the cold of his touch, much colder now than it ever had been before.
“And then what?” I pulled my hands away. “This god won’t stop until everyone is dead—everyone. Maybe he’ll take a liking to you and your kind because you’re already all cold and dead, but he won’t support your plans for finding balance and peace with humans. He’ll want me dead, too.”
“That isn’t what he wants,” Simeon said, but I could hear the weakness behind the words and wasn’t sure how much he believed them. “He won’t want you dead if you join me. Darcy . . .” He lifted his icy hand to my face, letting the crystals melt and mingle with my tears as he brushed my cheek with his fingers. “You’ll always be mine.”
Stepping forward, he brought his face close to mine and touched my forehead with his, like he had done so many times before. I used to love how it made me feel grounded, connected firmly to him and his exuberance in a way that wasn’t overwhelming.
Now it just made me want to peel the skin off my face and throw it in an inferno.
I shut my eyes so he wouldn’t see the loathing in them, slipping a blade out of my sleeve with my right hand as I curled my left behind his neck. His lips touched mine, and I tried to focus on the familiarity more than anything else.
We’d done this a million times before. I knew exactly how it would feel, how he would move, the shape and size of every part of his body underneath my hands.
So I didn’t have to see or feel to know where his ribs were as I pushed my knife between them into his heart.
Searing pain pierced my sides as Simeon went still, paralyzed against me, his weight threatening to knock me over. I let out a short scream at the unexpectedness of the sensation, the panic of not knowing what was hurting me.
I tilted my head down, where red crept into my blurred vision. Small splotches of blood, spreading slowly out from under the sides of my jacket towards my belly. Simeon’s strong fingers had dug all the way through the leather, his sharp nails poking holes into the soft skin at my waist.
His last movement before I’d immobilized him, grasping me tight in his clutches. If not for the knife in his heart, I imagined his next movement would be to tear me apart.
Gasping at the pain, I pried his bloody fingers away from my sides one by one. He stared at me the whole time, eyes still projecting dominance even as he was entirely at my mercy. As long as my knife stayed in his heart, he would be. I lowered him to the ground as gently as I could, laying him face down so as not to dislodge it.
Even without his eyes on me, I could feel his gaze linger. His assurance that I would join him. That he still had my love. That I would always be his. And I was, as much as I wanted to hate him entirely. My skin crawled with my love for him, which I couldn’t dig out of my insides like I had dug out his fingernails.
He would always have it. And that horrified me more than any notion I’d once had of him using his magic on me and fucking with my mind.
Before I could second-guess myself, I snatched my sturdier knife from where I’d dropped it and cut through Simeon’s neck.
But obviously, that wouldn’t be enough.
I had the urge to keep cutting, to mutilate his corpse and dismember him the way Minnie had done to hide the body of the vampire who had attacked me outside her cafe. I had no way of making fire at hand, but if I could turn him into vampire confetti . . . I didn’t know if it would kill him for good, but it would make me feel better.
I closed my eyes for a moment and breathed in, licking the nausea away from my lips. Then, working quickly, I took off my jacket and slipped off the ripped gray t-shirt underneath before putting the jacket back on.
I couldn’t even feel the pain in my sides anymore, although the cuts were bleeding freely, red liquid now trickling down to seep into my jeans. The smart thing to do would be to use the fabric of my shirt to staunch the wounds. But I needed it for something more important.
I laid the shirt on the stone floor and used the sole of my shoe to roll Simeon’s head onto it, careful not to touch any part of him with my bare skin. If there was ever someone I didn’t want the phoenix to revive . . .
Breathing out, I picked up the corners of the shirt and tied them into the sleeves, making myself a neat little severed-head pouch that was quickly turning red.
I might not be able to burn him to ash or turn him into confetti just yet, but the least I could do was make sure his head stayed separated from his body in the meantime.
My mind spun for a moment with the wild feeling of a world turned upside-down, my greatest aim now to keep Simeon dead instead of protecting him. Then my fingers tightened over the knot on the shirt as my eyes landed on Adrian, who was still lying unconscious where Simeon had dropped him.
A new lump formed in my throat at the sight of him, and I rushed over and dropped to my knees beside him. My fingers found their way to his neck as I rolled him to the side. Closing my eyes, I pressed firmly and let out a small cry when I felt a pulse.
The relief was overwhelming, almost as much as the fear that followed it. He looked so vulnerable lying there, for all intents and purposes asleep, and I wanted intensely to protect him. From what, I wasn’t sure. It didn’t matter.
All it did was meld the idea of him in my mind with the last man I’d wanted to protect—the one whose head was currently dripping blood through my t-shirt.
The fear I’d let go of earlier was replaced with a new one, a far less rational one. That anyone who inspired this feeling in me must be a monster, or would become one eventually. Even if for no other reason than the power they had to make me suffer.
Peals of laughter bouncing off the stone around me didn’t help. All they did was conjure an image of Noah with a monster’s head, whether real or imagined, to drive the point home.
Were they coming after me now, finally? Was this what it felt like to go insane? Would I cut off Adrian’s head in a minute after losing control of myself, like the shifter I’d seen lose control on the train?
I shook my head, resisting the urge to slap myself across the face. Simeon may be dead-ish, but Gary had gotten away with Brady’s blood and still needed to be stopped.
Brady. I needed to make sure he and the other kids got to safety before I could do anything else.
I squeezed my eyes shut tight, trying to regain control of myself. As much as I’d practiced putting my emotions aside to do what needed to be done, those emotions weren’t usua
lly so hugely personal. But I would only feed into the feelings if I let them stop me now. It would only prove that I was right to be so wrecked.
My cold gaze fell on Adrian as I opened my eyes. I’d have to leave him here for now, because he was a lot bigger than Dirk and I wasn’t sure I could move him anywhere that would be worth the risk of me damaging him further in the process.
I ran over to the hole in the wall, slight relief filling me with every step I took away from Adrian even as the blood dripping from Simeon’s head followed me in a crimson trail.
When I peered in, Brady was nowhere to be seen. Thinking he might have climbed up the ladder, I walked up to it and shined my phone light around.
Nothing.
And to make matters worse, my phone had no service at all—so I’d have to leave Adrian for real if I wanted to call for help.
“Brady?” I yelled as loud as I dared. The sound echoed around me, deeper but more muffled here in the enclosed wet space.
“He’s safe, not to worry,” Miriam’s voice called back from above. “They all are. How’s it going down there?”
My eyes narrowed. I wanted to punch that woman and hug her all at the same time, but I supposed I should be getting used to that by now. “What the fuck, Miriam?” I said. “Get your pink jiggly ass over here already. Adrian’s down, so you don’t have to worry what he might think.”
“Well, there’s no need to be rude abou—”
“Wait,” I yelled as she lowered a pointy heel down the hole. “If you have any signal up there, call Dirk and tell him to bring me a fucking flamethrower. We’re going to need it.”
17
Miriam poked and prodded Adrian’s unconscious body, her lips pursed.
“What did you do to him?” she asked finally, looking up at me with a disapproving glare.
“I didn’t—” I started, then sighed. “He was grappling with a vampire. I thought he just got choked out, but maybe he hit his head?”
