I added those images to the box. They’d cripple me if I didn’t. I let myself think of the most infuriating thing I could, besides Cash.
Blade.
The guard stopped in front of a door, not knocking on it, not giving me any further information. I tried the knob, and it turned easily. Cash didn’t need to lock the door. Nothing scarier than him was ever going to break in.
“Nice to see you tonight, Mistress.” He smiled at me in the mirror as he trimmed his beard. “I’m flattered you’re such a fan of my art.”
Moving as fast as I could, I got myself between him and the mirror, grabbing him by the wrist of the arm holding the razor. “That’s not art, its torture.”
He shrugged, his eyes sliding down my body. “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. And you should be glad for that, Mistress.”
Twisting his arm down fast, I smiled when I heard the bone snap. “This isn’t about me. This is about Lennon, and all the other girls you’ve done this to. She was in love with you, do you know that? And you gnawed on her like a crazed animal!”
“Lennon is a whore.” He grimaced with the pain of the broken bone. “When someone sells their body for money, they can’t be picky about what happens to it.”
I brought my knee up to his groin, similar to the move Rachel had made on Tony. I hoped his balls came out his mouth. “And you’re not selling yourself, to this audience, turning tricks for ticket sales? Lennon’s a gorgeous girl, or was, before you chewed her half to death, so she was making the most of what she had. Just like you.”
Cash cradled his bad arm in his good arm, both pressed against his groin. He’d sunk to his knees in front of me, his eyes red and his fangs bared as he worked through the pain. “At least she’s got something to offer,” he growled. “You, you just fuck whoever gets in your way if you think there’s anything to gain from it.”
“Bullshit.” Now my eyes glowed red, and I felt my body getting hot.
“You’re just lucky, but it doesn’t make you any less of a whore.” Cash came to his feet slowly. I was painfully aware he still had the razor in his hand. He positioned his feet so they were on either side of mine, leaning against the counter and trapping me with his body. “Maybe your luck just ran out.”
He wrapped his good arm around me, pulling me into his body. Even injured, he was stronger than me. His fangs ripped down the side of my face, making me scream. He pushed me down on the counter, covering my mouth. “Shut up,” he commanded through clenched teeth. “No one is coming to save you, Mistress.”
He ripped my shirt open, slicing my skin with his dirty fingernails, probably caked with Lennon’s blood. My skin burned, and I thought I might ignite, myself.
My mind flashed to Blade, angry and possibly trapped at Ryder’s house. His thoughts were so strong, I could pick them up across town. I knew they were his, because I picked up nothing but an orange cloud of flames, fueled by hatred.
I concentrated on the flames as hard as I could, ignoring Cash pulling my jeans away from my body. My legs kicked and flailed in protest, but it was wasted energy. Physically I might not be able to overpower Cash. But mentally, I could certainly try.
I pictured the flames forming all around my body. When I opened my eyes, I saw them, just inches from my skin.
“What the fuck?” Cash exclaimed, and jumped back. I sat up, and willed the flames to chase him, to follow the oxygen that had moved into the space he’d been in. It was like moving them with a magic wand. The fire attached itself to his body, like a swarm of bees attacking, and now it was my turn to watch him kick and flail as he burned.
“Rachel!” I called to her just in case I couldn’t control the fire. She’d put it out once to saved Tristan, hopefully she’d be able to do it again if I needed her to.
The fire grew more powerful, but the outline of Cash’s burning figure shrunk as it melted. A black puddle formed on the floor, black as his heart. Soon he was nothing put a small pond of burning goo on the floor.
“Oh my God.” Rachel stopped at the door, shocked by what she saw. “Are you okay?”
I looked in the mirror at my ripped clothes and shredded skin. My body was already trying to heal, sealing the wounds with pinky purple new skin. I turned and smiled at her. “Never been better. How’s Lennon?”
“She’s out right now,” Rachel said, and my heart sunk as I realized what she meant. “In a couple days, we’ll know for sure.”
The guards didn’t question anything. They knew how this worked. I took out their leader, now they answered to me. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.
I shuddered at that thought, as we drove west towards Ryder’s house. I liked to think I was better and kinder than Cash or Blade, but I wasn’t. Cash wasn’t my first kill. And no one was horrified by it but me.
Everyone was silent. Rachel was lost in her own thoughts as she drove, it hadn’t been an easy night for her, either. Lennon lay unconscious in the backseat, her body hopefully regenerating and making peace with its new vampire blood. I could only hope now that her body didn’t reject it. She’d gone through so much, she deserved to live for all of her efforts.
And I needed her.
Most of Soul Divider met us in the driveway when the SUV pulled in. Two of the guys, I felt bad that I couldn’t remember the other two who weren’t Ryder or Josiah by name, carried Lennon’s stiff lifeless body inside. Completely covered in a blanket, she looked like a corpse on a stretcher.
“Do we have a safe place she can rest?” I asked Ryder, my brain refusing to consider the option that Lennon might not make it.
“Yeah. Well, sort of,” he said. “I’ve only got the guest room, I turned the third bedroom into a studio. Tristan’s in there now, but I think he’ll be able to go home with you tonight.”
I gasped with relief. “Really? The way he looked when I left, I wasn’t sure what I’d be coming back to. That’s amazing.” That was the best news ever. For all I knew, he could have been a pile of ashes and bone by now. I knew the fire could burn internally.
Now we needed Tristan’s good fortune to extend to Lennon.
“Yeah, go see him. He’s doing great.” Ryder smiled, and I didn’t give him a chance to say anything else before running into the house to see for myself.
I found Tristan sitting up in bed, watching TV. Like he’d stayed home from school sick, not like he’d found himself in the fryolator of angry vampire. The deep red burn marks had disappeared, but his skin still looked like old, tough leather.
“Hey.” Tristan’s face lit up when he saw me. “I was wondering when you’d come back.”
“Not a moment too soon.” I sighed as I crawled into bed and let him put his arm around me. This time I didn’t worry about his skin being so sensitive that my clothes might hurt him. I looked down at myself and laughed a little. One of the Cirque Macabre costumers had to give me something from the show to wear home. All the glitter looked ridiculous right now. I rested my head on his shoulder, relieved that he no longer smelled like burning flesh. His hair had even begun its recovery, tickling my torn cheek as I laid my head on his shoulder.
“What happened to you?” He said softly, his finger trailing over the scar on my cheek. “Are you alright?”
“I’m fine.” It didn’t sound convincing. “Lennon…she’s going to be one of us. I hope. She’s in bad shape. Like worse than you were earlier when I saw you. I hope she can recover. She was human when it happened to her.”
“What happened?” Tristan’s muscles stiffened. He’d become well acquainted with the worst case scenario.
I pictured her lying on that couch, waiting to die, and shook my head. “Cash attacked her. Like a rabid beast.” I blinked back tears. “Lennon said he’d confused her with a nurse from a mental hospital that Talis had condemned him to, but he was always talking about whores. Why do vampires have something against prostitutes?”
“Lennon never did that, did she?” Tristan said in surprise.
“No, but she stri
pped back in Nashville. I think Cash lumped the whole thing together. But he and Blade seem to have it out for those girls. It’s disturbing.”
“It’s messed up.” Tristan pulled me in a little tighter. “And it’s just them. The only reason I can think of for it is Blade is so angry with you for getting him mixed up with Talis, and Cash sounds like he had just as big of a grudge against Talis. Maybe their way of taking it out on you, was taking it out on them.”
“Oh, God.” I dissolved into tears at the thought of being someone’s motivation to inflict pain like that on another person. How could I be responsible for such pain? I never meant to hurt anyone. “They did it because of me.”
“Shh.” Tristan tried to calm me down. “It’s not your fault they’re crazy.”
I picked up my head, feeling guilty that after all that Tristan had just gone through, he was comforting me. In all fairness, it had been a pretty rough day all around. “Cash was crazy.”
“Was?” Tristan’s eyebrows rose.
“After I found Lennon, I was so angry that anyone would hurt her that I channeled the only person I knew who was capable of the kind of madness that could take him down.”
“Blade.”
“I set Cash on fire.” I wasn’t surprised when Tristan shrank away from me. “I pulled it out of Blade.”
“Wow.” Tristan’s voice sounded far away. “Can you do that a lot?”
“Well, isn’t that how we feed? Off of energy?”
“I can feel other people’s emotions, but I’ve never been able to project it on to someone else,” he said. “That’s some crazy strong mind control there, Mistress.” He leaned back in to kiss me, and I smiled against his lips.
Cash had said the others didn’t want to help me because they feared me. Who knew I could borrow their powers like a library book? That meant whatever power a clan member had was available to me.
I wanted to know what else I could do.
We kissed for a long time. Both of us needed healing. Suddenly, I remembered the other reason I came in here.
“Lennon needs this room!” I exclaimed, pulling away from him. “Shit, she’s just God knows where in a blanket, and we’re making out like nothing’s wrong.”
Tristan pulled away from me. “Alright, get up. We need to change the sheets though, I’m gross. Burns ooze.”
Once we found clean linens and changed the bed, we brought Lennon into the room. I gasped when we unwrapped her from the sheets, she just looked dead. Her eyes were closed, and her mouth was slightly open. Her body had yet to start healing.
Her limbs were hard. And heavy. “Are you sure she’s going to be okay?” I whispered to Tristan, as if I’d wake her by talking too loudly. I could only wish.
“This is what you looked like while you were turning. Besides the wounds,” Tristan said, staring down at Lennon’s body. “It’s scary.”
“What can we do to help her?” I asked, turning into his body.
“Nothing. All we can do is wait.” He kissed the top of my head. “Let’s leave her be, and go home.”
“But Blade is here,” I protested.
“An even better reason to go home.” Tristan smiled. “He’s locked up.”
“He might escape.”
“I doubt it.” Tristan pulled me away from Lennon’s bed. My feet didn’t want to move right away. “You need to rest. No one can be expected to take out two crazy vampires in one night.”
What the hell was I going to do about Blade?
My body shut itself down as scheduled, but my brain ticked on. Tristan laid next to me, with his head nestled in the crook of my shoulder, his arm slung across my stomach. Everything felt the same, but everything had changed.
Now I had to deal with it. People were going to notice that Cash Logan had gone missing. Huge personalities like that didn’t just go away. There were people with tickets to his show, wanting to be a part of his magic, having no idea it was murder.
When I killed Cash, I inherited everything he had. To the winner go the spoils. He must have had a staff, so now I must have a staff. And the show was in town long before he had any involvement. The show would go on, we’d just have to figure out a way to explain why Cash wasn’t there anymore. We’d find someone else. The only thing he was doing that other magicians couldn’t do was killing people.
No one in Las Vegas expected anything to last forever. Right now, that worked in my favor.
Could I kill Blade like I had Cash? Deep down under all the hatred and resentment, I still loved him. I loved who he had been, who he had wanted to be. I loved that at one time he’d only seen the best in me. It didn’t matter what awful things he did to me, I still considered Blade the vampire and Blade my ex-boyfriend two separate entities. But if I killed Blade the vampire, my ex-boyfriend died along with him.
Even once I finished battling with myself whether or not I could do it, the question really was could I physically and mentally overpower him? He was the strongest vampire I knew. No other vampire had powers strong enough for me to borrow to take him down. Tristan was only able to best him at a fight once. Rachel could neutralize the flames, but that just left us dancing around in the same circles.
Tristan stirred when night fell. I opened my eyes, lids still heavy, and looked over at him. I couldn’t believe his transformation.
It was like nothing had ever happened to him.
His hair, reaching down the middle of his ribcage, shined like it was made of glass. His muscles, last night wasted from the fire, strained against his skin. His tattoos, which had looked like a box of melted crayons had dried on his arm last night, were as vibrant as if he had just had the whole thing done while we slept.
I ran my hand down his spine and circled the small of his back to make sure what I was seeing was real. His skin felt smooth, and even the little blonde hairs on his back had come back.
“That feels good,” he sighed, crawling up to look me in the eye. “Your face is better.” His hand slid under my tank top to check out my stomach. “Beautiful as ever.” He leaned down and kissed me right above the belly button.
“I feel like I got run over by a steamroller.” He kept kissing my stomach, and I didn’t stop him. “I didn’t sleep at all.”
“How?” He looked up at me, his lips still on my skin. “It’s like an off switch.”
“My brain never just shuts off. Don’t you have weird dreams?”
“Mm-mm.” He’d moved up to my breasts, and he no longer had any need for words. The feel of his lips and mouth against the delicate new skin almost lulled me into real sleep, but that was a luxury I had no time for today.
And speaking of luxury, Tristan didn’t have nightmares? Why was I surprised? He didn’t have to worry about much of anything. Everything was taken care of for him. And part of that would be me taking care of him. After all, that’s what I came here for. And now as his clan leader, I had a responsibility to do just that.
“We need to go back to Ryder’s.” I pulled my top down, making Tristan laugh as I pushed him away from me. I sat up, a little too fast, still drained from the last two nights. “I just want to get this over with.”
“Can we talk about something first?” Tristan had rolled over on to his back.
“Yeah.” He never wanted to just talk. That was usually my line. But a near death experience would probably make even Tristan think things over. “What’s up?”
“So the guys in Soul Divider are pretty cool,” he started.
“Yeah, as long as we can trust them.” Who could blame me for having trust issues?
“I think we can,” he said. “You realize that no one in Immortal Dilemma was at that house, right?”
Good point. “No, I hadn’t.”
“How often do we hang out with them?”
“Almost never.”
“Exactly!” Tristan sat up, resting his arms on his knees. “The Soul Divider guys are together all the time. They’re a band. They’re not a bunch of musicians put together to make
other people money. They do this even when there’s no money coming in. Because they love it, and they have to make music.”
“That’s what you want,” I said softly.
“Yes!” He leaned forward, wrapping his arms around me. “Being there, I realized I’d never been in a real band before. Even before Immortal Dilemma happened, I was bankrolling everyone I played with. They used me for the money. No one cared about the music. And they didn’t care about me. My own band left me to die.”
I closed my eyes and leaned against him. Jesus, what a realization. “You’re going to leave the band.”
I felt him nod. “I want to make music. I don’t want to just play. If I’m never in another band, so be it. But when I am, it’s going to be for all the right reasons.”
“I think that’s the best decision you’ve ever made.” I tipped my head up so I could kiss him. There was something different about him. He was just Tristan. Not the rock star. He was the Tristan I loved and not the Tristan I tolerated because it scared me more not to be a part of his life.
After his revelation, we got sidetracked. A celebration of his declaration. Tristan might have finally figured out what he wanted, but it didn’t make the rest of our problems go away.
“I just want to get this over with,” I said to convince myself more than anything else as I pulled my jacket on. The desert got cold at night when it wasn’t summer. Had I not experienced it, I would have never believed it. The cold didn’t really affect us, but to keep up the charade, we had to dress appropriately.
And if Blade tried to burn me again, I’d feel the cold afterwards. But I didn’t want to think about that.
With Tony gone, Tristan had to drive us back to Ryder’s. “Pick a number,” he said.
“What? Nineteen.”
“Cool, you picked a Ferrari.” Tristan grabbed the keys out of a lock box.
We Own the Night (The Night Songs Collection Book 3) Page 20
