by Lucinda Dark
"Barbie..." His voice deepened, growing gruff as he stretched his neck to the side. I narrowed my eyes on him. He was avoiding looking at me. I just knew it. Maverick cleared his throat. "I don't … that's not something I think we should discuss."
"Just tell me if that's why you've been such a dick," I said. "I think I have a right to know. I mean, I know I shouldn't have done it. I'm sorry, I just—"
"We're not talking about this now," he gritted out.
"We have to talk about it at some point," I pointed out. “If it’s affecting you this badly—”
“It’s not affecting me,” he growled.
“Yeah, sure, you look so fucking unaffected.” I pursed my lips.
“And just what about you?” he snapped. “What the hell was that back there?”
My spine straightened and I sat up. “What do you mean?”
“I tried to tell you I needed the practice,” he said. “But you fucking rushed in and almost got yourself killed. If I hadn’t ignored your fucking orders and followed you, I would’ve been outside when that second vampire almost attacked you. And it would’ve had I not been there.”
“I didn’t know there was a second one,” I replied, sinking back down into my seat and turning away.
“That’s my fucking point.” His hands gripped the steering wheel, the leather creaking. “You didn’t know and you didn’t want me there. Do you have a fucking death wish?”
“Of course not,” I said. “But I’m more equipped to handle vampires than you are.”
“Bullshit,” he cursed.
“Months of training doesn’t make you a master now.” I let ice fill my tone as I stared through the windshield.
Silence greeted me and then, “We’re not doing this again until Torin gets back.”
“You don’t make that call,” I said.
“Oh yes I do,” he growled, removing his foot from the accelerator and slamming down on the brake. The truck came to a shrieking halt in the middle of the road, throwing me forward against the restriction of the seatbelt. I grunted as my body dropped back against the seat once again. Maverick turned on me and yanked the truck’s emergency brake up. “You’re not doing what you did tonight again,” he said. “If you go on a hunt, you take me with you. Always. And we’re waiting until Torin gets back before we go on another one.”
“You seem pretty fucking confident that I’ll follow this command of yours.” I folded my arms and stared back at him.
“You will or I swear to fuck, Barbie, I will tie you up and leave you at the house for the foreseeable future.”
“Kinky,” I deadpanned.
“I’m not fucking kidding.”
I rolled my eyes. “Why is that when a man has had his tongue in your mouth, he suddenly thinks he can order you around?” I wondered aloud.
“Goddamn it, Barbie!” He slammed a fist down on the console, shaking the contents. The black plastic cracked under his angry punch. “You kissed me,” he seethed.
“And you kissed me back,” I pointed out, keeping my voice even, my emotions on lockdown. Inside, I was broiling. Adrenaline surged through my veins. I found myself staring at his mouth, wanting to take it again. I wanted to redo the whole thing or maybe just see if it was as hot as I remembered.
Maverick turned away, facing forward. The steady thrum of his pulse beat in a vein in his neck, throbbing. His jaw clenched and unclenched as he tried to work through his own anger. “I told you I didn’t want to fucking discuss it,” he said coldly.
I threw my arms into the air and sat back against the leather seat once more. “Fine, have it your fucking way. You want to pretend like it never happened, be my guest. But you don’t fucking control me, Maverick,” I snapped. “And you never will.”
Maverick slammed the brake back down and the truck started forward again. Neither of us spoke the rest of the way home. I bounced my knee with impatience. As soon as we pulled up to the McKnight house, I hopped out of the truck and made my way towards the front door without a glance back.
It was unlocked, so I went in. Beth's head popped around the corner. "Hey." She smiled brightly as I stepped into the foyer, Maverick not far behind me. "How was the movie?"
"Fine," I lied. "It was fine."
“You were out pretty late,” she said.
“It was a double feature,” Maverick replied before I could get a chance.
Her mouth opened again—probably to ask which feature we saw—but I didn't stick around to find out. I stormed up the stairs, leaving Maverick to deal with her. She was his mother after all. Not mine.
I went straight for my room and slammed the door, flipping the lock for good measure. It was a stupidly childish act, but fury boiled in my blood. I turned away from the door and just collapsed against the mattress, face planting right into the pillows with a loud thump.
Maverick might not have wanted to talk about the kiss tonight, but it would have to be dealt with at some point. Everything would. Torin. Maverick. And … Satrina.
Two
Barbie
I worked the blade down the sleeve of my t-shirt as I approached her from behind. Dressed in a bright, bubblegum pink sarong and bikini top, Satrina diligently lathered up her skin with a bottle of sunscreen. The reason why was anyone’s guess. The sun wasn’t real here. Everything was just an illusion. She was the true sun of this piece of my soul and all of the pieces were snippets of what she created with nothing more than a snap of her fingers.
My feet were silent as I made my way towards her. Even so, when she spoke, I nearly stumbled and dropped my sword. “I’m really getting tired of these attempts on my life, darling,” she said lightly, working the lily white lotion up one arm and down the other. “But please, try, if it makes you feel any better.”
“Well, if you insist…” I swung the blade towards her head—no hesitation. I aimed for her neck. One second my eyes were open and watching her intently as I went for the kill strike, and the next, the world flipped. Gone was the luxurious glimmering pool beneath the sunlight. We were in an abandoned graveyard. The tombstones stuck up in random odd sections. There were no names. My sword was gone.
Satrina stood over me with her hands on her hips, still clad in her sarong and bikini. “Seriously?” She lifted an eyebrow.
“You said to give it a try,” I said, getting up off my knees.
“I thought you’d finally see the futility of trying to kill me.” She paused and added with a direct look, “Again.”
I shrugged. “What can I say? I’m a glutton for punishment.”
Shaking her head, Satrina turned away and lifted an elegant hand, snapping her fingers—and with it, the dream world—back into place.
I looked at the stone walkway now beneath my feet and then at her back as Satrina strode to the rocky swimming pool, relieved herself of her sarong, and dove headfirst into the crystal waters. A moment later, her head popped back up and she swam to the side where she folded her arms over the lip as she looked my way.
“Well,” she started, “to what do I owe the pleasure of your company this time?”
“You wanted conversation,” I said with a forced shrug as I made my way towards the edge of the pool. “I’m just fulfilling part of our contract.”
“I also believe I said no trying to kill me,” she replied.
“You may have said that,” I agreed, “but you stipulated in the contract that I wasn’t to exorcise you. Killing the piece of you squatting in my soul isn’t the same thing.”
There was a brief pause and then she threw back her head of dark corkscrew curls and laughed. When she was finished, Satrina lifted one hand and wiped under first one and then the other eye as she smiled up at me. “Spoken like a true demon,” she said. “Always looking for loopholes. Good for you, girl.”
“I’m not a demon,” I snapped, frowning. “You’re the demon.”
She pushed away from the edge of the pool and floated on her back. “Yes, but now I’m a part of you. I feel I should
warn you before you continue on your path and attempting to kill me on your own”—she cut herself off, chuckling a bit as if the very idea was preposterous—“but killing me would also be killing off a piece of yourself. No, you’re not completely a demon, but Barbie, I am a part of you now.”
“So, I kill off a piece of myself, so what? Will that leave me a slightly psychotic broken mess like you left Rachel?”
Satrina lifted her head and let her body drop back below the surface with a sigh. “No, not exactly, but don’t you think it would be more beneficial for us to work together rather than work against one another?” She arched a brow at me as I folded my arms across my chest. “You can’t say you don’t like the power I give you. The speed, the strength, better eyesight, better hearing—you’re developing all of these because of the little piece of my spirit that resides within you.”
“You’re nothing but a means to an end,” I said.
“And so you’ll continue to try to kill me?”
I answered with one decisive nod. What else was I going to do? I was a vampire hunter, but demons were no better than vampires. Torin had confirmed that they both originated from the same place. Demons were, arguably, worse than vampires.
Satrina swam to the end of the pool and slowly ascended the rocky steps. I left the edge and met her halfway. Towering over me with her larger than life beauty, she stared down with a passive expression. There was no hostility in her gaze, but there was also no understanding. Her lips firmed as she pressed them together.
“Do you wish to see what would happen if you succeeded in killing me?” she asked.
My mouth opened in surprise. I hadn’t expected that response. I watched her for any sign of deception, but she didn’t speak again, simply waiting for an answer.
“I guess…”
“Alright then,” she said with a nod. “If I show you what’s in store for you should you succeed in killing me and you still want to try, I’ll let you. Mind you, I won’t just sit back and let a piece of myself be destroyed by a little human teenager.” There was that tone of voice again, full of self-satisfied amusement. The edges of her lips curled. “But you can still try.”
“I could still try either way,” I reminded her.
She shrugged. “True, but why not have all the facts before you start up with that again?” Satrina didn’t allow me a second to reply, she lifted her hands and clapped them together so loudly that the sound echoed in the space around us.
Before my very eyes, the world shifted once more. The rocks beneath my feet, the pool, the bikini on her skin, all fell away and were replaced. Dressed in a white dressing gown, she turned and showed me the scene that had fallen into place.
There were grunts followed by the sounds of swords clashing. Torin darted before me, his face tightened by rage, blood pouring from his mouth, coating his hands. Eyes red. Maverick leveled a gun on someone unseen somewhere in the dark and pulled the trigger. The sharp noise sounded again and again. But still, there was no sign of me. What were they fighting in the dark? Was it vampires? Demons? Other creatures?
Satrina looked down at me and then she stepped back and moved farther away. I turned to follow.
“Where are you—”
“Barbie!” I snapped and swung back to the scene when Maverick’s shout startled me. A blade blackened with blood—darker than anything I’d ever seen before—pierced through the thick, dense fog of shadows and slammed into my gut.
I gasped out, my hand immediately going to close around the sword to stop its forward momentum, but it was too late. It cleaved through my back with a sickening squelch and then was directly yanked forth again, leaving my body as I fell to the floor. Blood erupted from between my lips. I spat it out and somehow couldn’t stop. It kept coming as it leaked from both my back and poured from my stomach. I tried to cover the wound and stop the blood as much as possible, but it wasn’t happening. I collapsed, moments later, lifting my head as a figure stepped in front of me.
Torin’s whole body shook as he stared down at me. His teeth clenched, eyes wide, nostrils flaring. Shit. Shit. Shit. What had I done?
“Tor—” I coughed up another wad of blood and it splattered the ground at his feet. I wheezed and gasped, unable to speak. What the fuck? Why couldn’t I move?
He continued to stare at me, but as if someone had spoken to him from somewhere in the fog, he turned his head—his attention falling away from my dying body. I tried to say something, tried to call him back, but his eyes—as red as they were, grew dull and lifeless. His movements as he strode away became robotic, legs and arms moving sharply, jerkily. The rough pounding of footsteps announced Maverick’s arrival as he knelt at my side. His hand went to my face, his eyes wide, lips ajar. Before he could touch me, however, the same blade that had stabbed through me, came from out of nowhere, slicing down and straight through his neck.
My lids snapped up. I hadn’t even realized they’d been lowering. “No…” The hoarse whisper was ripped from my throat. All of the pain in my body didn’t fucking compare to the shock and horror of seeing Maverick’s body sitting over me as a single line of red welled up across his neck. His head slid forward, leaving his shoulders and landed squarely upon my bleeding wound, bouncing once and knocking out what was left of the air in my chest as it rolled away.
“Satrina,” I rasped. There was no answer. “Satrina,” I tried again. And again, nothing. I struggled as Maverick’s body fell forward over mine. Pain made my chest squeeze tighter than any vise. I sucked in a breath, letting the agony of what it did to my chest and stomach roll through me. It didn’t matter. The pain was temporary. This wasn’t real, I tried to remind myself. That didn’t make the burn and ache of my wound go away, but it did mute the amount of thought I put on it. My lips parted. “Satrina! Enough!”
The scene disappeared. My wound vanished. Maverick’s decapitated body dissipated. I sat up, gasping for breath. When Satrina strode forward once more, a mask of indifference was centered squarely on her face as she stared down at me.
I struggled to get to my feet, my stomach cramping with phantom pains. “What the fuck was that?” I demanded.
“A future in which you don’t have my assistance,” she said quietly.
“That wasn’t a fucking—”
“There is more to this world than you realize,” she interrupted, leveling the combination of her one gold and one blue eye on me. “There is more to your story that hasn’t yet been revealed to you. I told you that in using the spirit channels to project a piece of my soul on Earth, I have access to information you don’t and I meant it.”
“Who stabbed me?” I asked.
She shook her head. “I cannot reveal the secrets that I’ve learned. It’s against the laws of the spirit world, but keeping me around, with the knowledge that I have, will ensure that events such as the one that just occurred either do not transpire or can be overcome.”
I couldn’t stop my shaking. I trembled from head to toe, my chest tight, my throat raw. “The things that you’ve shown me…” I started. “They’re events that will happen?”
Satrina tilted her head to the side as she looked me over. “There are events that cannot be changed in the timeline of human history, and there are events that can be manipulated. I am not privy to which events are which. I also cannot show you everything that I’ve seen that might come to happen—that’s why you couldn’t see who stabbed you. What I can tell you is that, with my power, you may be able to change these. Your timeline puts you up against vampires, witches, demons”—she paused and her facade finally cracked as she released a small grin at the last creature named—“as a human, you will have little chance of survival. Almost none.”
“But as a human possessed by a demon?” I asked.
“Your chances increase,” she answered. “Not exponentially, but enough to give you hope.”
“Why would you help me?” I asked, narrowing my eyes. “I know you need a body, but I’m sure you could have found easier
prey. I’m not going to ever let you possess me to the same level you did Rachel. I won’t allow you to use me to kill people.”
“I don’t need to possess you to the same level,” she said. “Suffice it to say, though, that I expect our contract will give me more to do. You’re far stronger than the last girl, both in body, soul, and mind. And knowing what I know, your future proves to be far more entertaining.”
I pursed my lips as I glared at her. “So, you’re just doing this because you’re bored then?”
She shrugged. “When you live as long as I have, you’ve pretty much seen it all. All I know is that with you,” she said as she stopped and poked one long nail at my chest, “boredom isn’t exactly something I’ll have to worry about. The only thing I’m really worried about right now is the level of power I’ve been giving you, and yet, you haven’t heeded my warning.”
“What warning?”
Satrina pursed her lips at me. “You need to have sex.”
I scoffed. “Not this again.” Even knowing it was useless, I turned away from her. She popped up in front of me again, stopping my retreat.
“I’m serious, Barbie. Human bodies are fragile things. You have to relieve the stress your body is under.”
“I’m not doing this with you,” I growled.
Satrina huffed. “You’ll need it sooner or later. I think you’d prefer for it to be on your own terms,” she advised.
My heartbeat slowed and I glared at her. “Is that a threat?”
“It’s a suggestion,” she replied. “Now or later, you will need sex or you’ll start experiencing side effects.”
“What kind of side effects?” I asked.
“Haven’t you noticed it already?” She tilted her head to the side, the golden azure tint of her gaze glimmering. Satrina moved closer, brushing past me as she circled my body. I didn’t look back, though I could feel her presence so eerily close. “Don’t you feel the heat building up inside you.” A ghostly finger trailed across my upper back making me stiffen. That heat she spoke of flared to life. I sucked in a breath, arching away from her touch. “Don’t you find yourself lingering on the thoughts of what it would feel like…” Satrina’s body hovered over me, her arms encircling my shoulders as she dangled down—weightless. “You want it—sex, love, desire. Soon enough, you won’t be able to stop yourself from taking it.”
