by Lucinda Dark
“You were going to tell us how it’s possible that Torin was born since, technically, a vampire isn’t supposed to be able to have children,” Mav prompted, leaning forward and propping his elbows on his knees as he leaned his chin on his woven fingers.
“The creation of new life always comes with some sort of sacrifice,” Esperanza began. “For humans, it’s the changing of the woman’s body. She takes a seed from her partner and an egg from her own body and gives it so that a child may be born. For supernatural creatures, the sacrifice usually requires something a little more substantial.”
I glanced to Torin, wondering what sacrifice was made to bring him into the world. Whatever it was, I thought to myself, I wonder if my life would have been easier if it hadn’t been given. I scowled at him even as he turned and met my gaze. His eyes softened, but I turned my fucking head away. I didn’t want to see the apology in his eyes. It made me want to gouge them out. I’d let myself fall into an ease with him I hadn’t found elsewhere. Between him and Maverick, I’d started to trust. I’d stopped thinking about leaving as soon as high school was over. They had both given me hope. I’d started to see a future where I wasn’t alone.
Hard as it was to admit now, Torin had been my friend. This kind of treachery wasn’t easy to absolve. It was far easier to forgive a stranger or an enemy than it was to forgive someone I’d cared for, someone I’d considered a friend. A part of me wanted to hear what Esperanza had to say. There was a kernel of hope that all of this could make some sort of fucking sense. At the same time, however, there was a darker part of me that wanted to cut Torin out—permanently from both the world and my heart—and never look back.
It would behoove you to listen to the old bat, darling, Satrina’s lyrical voice drifted through my head, making my spine stiffen. She is much older than she looks, and I sense a great wisdom and experience from her. Listen. I am curious as to what she has done in her lifetime.
As much as I didn’t want to follow Satrina’s suggestion, my curiosity had planted me here for a reason. It was greater than my desire to pummel Torin Priest into a bloody mess just before I carved his hybrid heart from his chest—if only just slightly.
“For the creation of a vampire and human child, one parent must obviously be human and one vampire. Since females are the carriers of children, female vampires are unable to carry such a creature. Therefore, Arrius managed the consent of a human woman to bear his child—several of them, to be exact. Many died during pregnancy. Many died during birth. And as such, many of the subsequent children created were stillborn.”
“All of them,” Torin said quietly, my ears pricking at the sound of his voice—gravelly and low. “All of them died.”
“Yes,” Esperanza said, using her cane to hobble across the living room and take a seat by the red brick fireplace. “All of the human mothers perished as a sacrifice to their children.”
It wasn’t surprising to hear. Women often died in childbirth, sacrificing their lives so that their children might live. Even in the modern age, with all of the technology and medicine, some women still died. I didn’t see what was so different.
“That doesn’t really explain anything,” Maverick pointed out for me.
“When a normal human dies, she is given to the ether,” Esperanza said. “The conception of heaven and hell. Those who have committed irredeemable acts go to the darkest parts of the ether, and the rest go into the afterlife. Some are reborn and others remain there. Not so for these women. The sacrifice they gave—even for failed births—was final, it sealed their fates. Their souls were sucked into the ether and dispersed. They will go to neither place in the ether nor will they be reborn.”
I frowned, sitting forward. “How do you know that?”
“Because, my dear, I am the one who unraveled them.” It wasn’t Esperanza’s words that dropped the temperature of the room, but suddenly, a chill slid down my spine and Satrina’s voice echoed in my head.
That is forbidden magic, Satrina spoke through a hollow tone, devoid of emotion. Irreparable. Irredeemable.
Esperanza must have seen the effect of my demon’s words on my face because as her head tilted my way, she gave me a slow nod. “As the tool through which these women were unraveled into the ether to create a forbidden life, when I die, I will go into the darkest part of the ether and remain into eternity. This kind of spell and sacrifice is forbidden for a reason. Torin’s mother was the only one who managed to survive the birth, though she died shortly after the ceremony was completed. Her death sealed his life.”
“A life for a life,” I whispered. It was a quote from one of my mother’s old historical books. The quote escaped me but the meaning didn’t. A foreboding sensation washed through me as I finally turned my cheek and looked at Torin. His head was bowed now, sunk into the palms of his hands.
“There can be no gain without loss—no life without blood or without sacrifice,” Esperanza said. “And Josephine Priest—Arrius’ last bride—gave it.”
I covered my mouth with my hand. The meaning behind Torin’s existence was one soaked in blood and horror. Death and suffering. His mother hadn’t simply given more than her life, she’d given her very existence to create him. It was a wonder what a mother would do for her child.
And his father … Arrius Priest. He lived on even after convincing several women to make such a sacrifice. It wasn’t right.
Torin lifted his head once more and this time, when he met my gaze, I didn’t look away. His lips parted, his voice croaking through a throat that sounded as though it’d been put through a shredder. “I want to kill him,” he confessed, the words ringing in my ears with a certain definitiveness. “I’m willing to help you, Barbie, but not at the risk to your life. Or Maverick’s. There’s been too much done already. He’s killed too many to be redeemable.”
“What makes him so powerful?” Maverick’s question echoed between us, but my gaze remained centered on Torin’s.
“He’s nearly impossible to predict,” Torin answered. “Everything he does has some sort of meaning. Every step he makes is carefully planned. Even me—his creation of me means something, I know that, but I don’t know what.”
I couldn’t imagine what that must have felt like. Perhaps like being swept along into a vast ocean. You knew there were sharks, but you could never be certain if they were near or far.
“I’m truly sorry, Barbie,” Torin said, interrupting my thoughts. “I swear to you, I will help you, but I knew that once you knew, you wouldn’t want to stand still. You wouldn’t be content to sit back and wait, and taking someone like my father down will require precision and careful planning.”
I nodded. The anger, the rush of wrath that was directed at him seemed to disperse, leaving my limbs feeling loose with languorous energy. At the same time, though, a determined weight settled on my shoulders. Arrius Priest would die and we would be the ones to kill him. A son against his father, forbidden existence and all.
“How?” I asked.
The whole room felt smaller as Torin dropped his hands and rose to his feet. As one, Maverick and I did too. “He’s summoned me to Italy,” Torin said.
My lips parted. “The school trip,” I whispered.
He nodded. “He knows about Esperanza and I’m pretty sure he knows about you and Maverick.” Torin’s gaze slid to the side.
“What does that mean for me?” Mav asked, meeting his stare head on.
“I’m not sure,” Torin answered. “But it can’t be anything good.”
“Well, if you’re thinking about asking me to stay behind, you can go fuck yourself,” Maverick said with a scowl.
“Of course you’d say that,” Torin deadpanned. “It would be far too simple and easy if you wanted to live.”
“The fuck is that supposed to mean, asshole?” Maverick stepped forward, but I put a staying hand on his chest.
“Torin’s right,” I said. “You’re human, Mav. You wouldn’t stand a chance against someone like Arrius Priest
. You can’t come with us.”
Warm fingers wrapped around my wrist, Maverick glared down at me, slowly lifting my arm up and out until he was pulling me into his chest. With a frown, I let him. His other hand came up and wrapped around the back of my neck as he leaned close. My spine locked up as he moved closer and for the briefest of moments, I thought he’d kiss me again. In front of Torin. But instead, he merely dropped his lips down to graze my earlobe—sending a shiver cascading down my spine—as he spoke in a low, dangerous voice. “I think you’ll find, Princess,” he whispered as his face neared mine. “I can do whatever the fuck I want when I put my fucking mind to it.” The synapses in my body revolted as he pulled his face away again and dropped my hand. Maverick lifted his head. “I’m going.”
I turned, putting some distance between the two of us even as I swallowed around an unexpectedly dry throat. “Take him,” Esperanza said before either Torin or I could say anything else. All of us turned to the old woman. She stared back at us through her unseeing eyes.
“Esperanza?” Torin frowned as the woman lifted her cane and brought it back down with a resounding crack against the hardwood floor.
“You will need him,” she said. “If your friend doesn’t go, I see a loss neither of you can come back from. Heed my warning, children. It is either the three of you or none at all.”
Satrina? For the first time, I sought my demon’s advice. What do you think?
I think the witch sees things you cannot, she answered. If she believes you should take the human, I would take him.
“Okay,” I said with a weary sigh.
“No.” Torin shook his head.
“Yes,” I replied as I turned away. I strode around them towards the entrance to the living room and paused to look over my shoulder. “He’s coming,” I said.
“Barbie, he could very well die,” Torin argued.
Maverick clenched his fists and growled low in his throat just before his lips parted as if he would say something. I intervened before he could. “We all could,” I countered sharply. “Any one of us could die at any moment. Our lives are no reason to ignore Esperanza’s advice. My demon agrees. Maverick goes. I guess it’ll be up to us to make sure we come back alive.”
With that, I turned and left the room, feeling the resounding echo of my footsteps down the hallway like the slow thump of a dying heartbeat. What a fool I’d been.
Thirty-Three
Barbie
In the weeks following the night at Esperanza’s something had slithered its way between the three of us. It hovered on the fringes of our relationship, not yet inside—an enigmatic feeling that waited patiently as if it were only a matter of time before we would come to recognize it for what it was. Change. For the most part, Torin and Maverick were back to normal, but we hadn’t talked further about what had happened. It rankled. They appeared normal, and it consumed my waking—and sometimes sleeping—thoughts.
I grumbled and rolled over in bed, punching my pillow with a grunt of frustration as the clock on my nightstand clicked past 2 a.m. It wasn’t a school night, but I hadn’t been able to fall asleep until late like this for days. There was nothing in the room to give me the passage of time—the minutes I spent turning from my back to my front, staring at the ceiling. No old clock ticking—since my electronic clock made no noise. No whistling of wind outside my bedroom window. Nothing. Nada. Zip. Zilch.
Leveraging up on my elbows, I took another look at the clock. Great... A whole five minutes had passed and somehow the endless silence made it feel like I’d been laying there for another three hours. With nothing else to distract me, I got out of bed and ambled through the room, pulling on a pair of sweats over my underwear before sneaking into the hallway.
I passed the workout room, pausing briefly to look inside, but unlike the last time I’d gotten up in the middle of the night, it was empty. It was probably for the best that he wasn’t there. Early morning darkness always felt like a vulnerable time to me. Perhaps that was why vampires preferred the dark—other than the serious aversion to burning to a crisp in the sunlight that is. With Torin around so much, I sometimes forgot that other vampires weren’t like him.
My feet touched the floor at the end of the staircase and I froze as a small sound echoed down the hall to the left. I peeked around the railing, cursing myself for not bringing a weapon along. Then again, as I inched down the hall towards the sound emanating from the kitchen on silent feet, if it was Beth or Jon, I’d have a hard time explaining a sword to their throat.
The hiss of something followed by a quiet, but familiar, masculine curse gave me relief. Pushing through the doorway of the kitchen, I paused and rested against the door’s frame. Maverick still hadn’t noticed me as he removed the tea kettle from the back burner on the stove and shook his hand as if he’d burned himself. He flexed and stretched one arm as he moved to the cabinets, reaching up and retrieving a mug and a blue can.
“Hot chocolate?” I piped up. “I didn’t peg you for the type.”
He jumped, slicing me a glare before reaching up and retrieving a second mug. “How long have you been standing there?” he asked.
“Not long,” I replied, coming fully into the kitchen and taking a seat at the island.
“Do you want one?” he asked.
I shrugged. “I’d rather have coffee.”
“If you can’t sleep, coffee isn’t going to help.”
“No, probably not, but I like the taste better.”
He didn’t reply as he bustled around the room, scooping cocoa mix into the mugs, moving back to the tea kettle and pouring hot water over the mixture, and mixing it with a spoon. Maverick put everything back and then brought me a mug, setting it down before me as he sipped his drink. It wasn’t even that cold outside anymore, but there was something to be said for drinking hot chocolate in the quiet of early morning.
By this time next week, we’d be in Rome, Italy. At least there I’d get some damn coffee any time I wanted. I chuckled at the thought.
“What?” Maverick set his mug down on the counter.
I shook my head, sipping my drink. “It’s nothing.” His muscles bunched beneath his white cotton shirt, flexing as he sighed and reached for his cup again, lifting it and downing the contents in one swift swallow. Easy to do now that the heat had cooled considerably. I tracked him as he moved to the kitchen sink, landing particularly low on his back where his shirt rode up to reveal a glorious view of the twin dimples above his ass as he bent beneath the sink to get a new sponge. My mouth watered. I clamped my lips shut, turning my reddening face away as he finished up and moved back to the island.
“So, what brought you down here so early?” he asked.
“I could ask the same of you,” I shot back.
He sighed. “Always so defensive,” he chastised.
With him? Always. Though I couldn’t say why. I shrugged and continued sipping. When my mug was empty, he took it from me and set it in the sink. “Thanks,” I offered lamely as I got off the stool. Maverick reached out and grasped my wrist, stopping me from leaving. I looked down at where he touched me and then back up into his burning sunset gaze.
“Just gonna run off then?” he asked.
“Um … well, I was going to go back to bed.”
“You and I both know you’re not going to get any sleep,” he said.
Irritation skittered down my spine. I tugged at my wrist, but instead of releasing it, Maverick used his hold on me to draw me closer against his chest. He turned so that my back was placed against the lip of the counter and I had to crane my neck back to keep my eyes locked with his.
“Not with you holding me hostage, I’m not.” The corner of his lips quirked at my words. Sweat began to bead at the base of my spine and I swallowed around a dry throat. Lashes lowering over my eyes, I broke his gaze and fixed my attention on where his fingers gripped my wrist. Against him, I was pale. Small. His fingers overlapped around my limb, reminding me just how much bigger he was. A wa
ll of muscle against my chest.
“How else am I supposed to get you to talk to me?” he whispered, leaning down as his other hand edged closer to my waist, his hand clasping the counter as he bent towards me.
“Talk to you? A-about what?” I asked, coughing as I tried to force nonchalance in my tone. It was hard when every nerve ending was firing off at his nearness. Flashes of us naked and twined around each other assaulted me, stealing the air from my lungs.
“What happened,” he said, the warmth of his breath against my cheek and then my neck as he moved lower. “Between you and me. I’m tired of acting like it didn’t happen.”
“It wasn’t—I mean, it didn’t mean anything. You were there. I needed help. You provided. We don’t have to—”
“What?” Maverick’s head shot up as his hand left the counter and gripped my chin, tilting my skull back. He glared down at me. “You wanted to act like nothing happened, then? Why would you want to do that? You liked it.”
His lips were barely a few inches away. They consumed my entire vision. Of course, I knew we were still in the kitchen, but for a brief moment the rest of the room disappeared and all that was left was him and me. “This…” I panted, dragging oxygen into my lungs like it was going out of style—or I’d run out. “This can’t happen, Maverick.”
“What can’t happen, Barbie?” His fingers released my wrist, wrapping around my back and dragging me even closer.
Why the fuck did he have to make this so hard? “You and … me,” I clarified. “We—this—it can’t happen.”
“Because of Torin?”
I shook my head. Torin was another matter and he certainly didn’t make things easy, but it was for more than that. I jerked my chin out of his hold and licked my lips, trying to restore some semblance of control.
“It’s just you and me in here, Princess.” Maverick’s words slid over my skin, causing pinpricks of awareness to assault me. “What are you going to do about it? Are you going to run away again, like you always do? Or are you going to stay and give me a real answer?”
