by Lucinda Dark
For a moment, I couldn’t find the words to respond. They were locked inside my throat, unable to break free. “Why?” The question was hoarse as it escaped. “Why do you even like me?” I asked. “For all intents and purposes, I used you, Mav. I’m a complete and utter bitch to you. I’m the reason you can’t really live a normal life anymore. You should hate me.”
He moved closer until the heat of him felt like it would burn right through our clothes. “If that’s what you consider using me, Barbie,” he whispered back as he found the skin beneath my pajama top and moved over it, distracting my wayward thoughts. “Then I hope you have a reason to use me like that again and again.”
I shook my head. “I’m being serious, Mav—”
“So am I,” he snapped, interrupting me with a growl. I glanced up, frowning. “I’ve never been more serious in my fucking life,” he said. “So tell me what I have to do to get you to see me.”
“I do see you—”
“Not like him you don’t.”
“Like … Torin?” My heart pounded against my ribcage, fighting to get out—racing like a scared rabbit.
He closed his eyes. “You look at him like—fuck—” He broke off, dipping his head as he hissed out a breath between clenched teeth. “I just want you to look at me like you want me.”
“You think I don’t want you?” I blinked. We’d had sex. How could he say that? Unconsciously, my arm lifted, my fingers grazing his side. His whole body jerked at the touch and then relaxed as if the mere brush of my fingers was the key to his salvation. He rested his forehead against my collarbone as I touched him more, letting my fingers drift up and over his shoulder until I had wrapped my arm around him. So trusting.
“I do want you,” I whispered the confession. “I trust you, Mav. You were quite possibly the first one I trusted. Don’t think you’re less than. Please.”
“I want you to need me,” he said, his words muffled against my shirt.
“I don’t want to need you,” I countered. “I want you to be happy, I want you to stay away from me. I want you to live a normal life. I want to take back all of your knowledge of vampires and murder and give you a life I always wished I’d had.”
Silence coiled around us, light and easy. Slowly, Maverick lifted his head. When his gaze found mine, he dipped down until our mouths brushed. “I don’t regret anything,” he whispered against my mouth. The kiss left me trembling, yearning—needy as he wanted me to be. I closed my eyes and sank into the feel of his tongue against mine. My lips parted and I pushed up into his embrace, wrapping my other arm around him until I was plastered against his chest. His hands moved to my thighs, gripping them and lifting me up until I was seated on the counter. He pushed against me, the length of him hard in his pants and even harder against my core.
“I’m done,” he breathed against me, his mouth finding my throat. “I’ve never begged for anything in my fucking life, but I’ll do it if you need me too.”
I didn’t want him to beg, but at the same time, I wasn’t really sure what I wanted. There was something about Maverick McKnight that made me feel far more alive and far less lost than I had been before him. It was dangerous. He was dangerous. If I let him, he could convince me to let go of all of my vengeance and I wasn’t ready to do that.
I pulled away first, pushing him back lightly. “Ask me again after I kill Torin’s father,” I said. “I’ll have an answer then.”
Maverick let me down from the counter, but I could still feel his gaze following me as I left the kitchen and went back to my bedroom. When I crawled back into bed, I almost wished I could’ve brought him with me and that only served to prove that I’d made the right choice. I’d get justice for my family and then … maybe I could have something for myself. I thought of Torin as I curled around my pillow. Maybe I could have a few somethings for myself.
Thirty-Four
Maverick
Cold, recycled air smacked me in the face as I moved along the tiny ass aisle of the airplane. The seats, each squished together as close as fucking possible, were filling up fast. Ahead of me, Barbie's blonde head bobbed up and down as she wove in and out of people filling the aisle. Unfortunately, with my bulk, I couldn't do the same. I scowled as a man stopped in front of me and jammed his luggage up into the overhead compartment.
Once he was done and had taken his seat, Barbie had already reached our seats. I followed after, scowling down at anyone who even looked like they wanted to get up and start moving around the cabin. We had another eight to thirteen hours in this fucking rattling deathtrap, and we hadn't even taken off yet. I was going to lose my shit.
An aggravated presence beneath my skin began to move through me, irritation and discomfort tightening my muscles. I paused by Barbie and waited for her to move over so that I could slide into my seat by the window. I settled in and closed my eyes as the rest of the travelers found their seats and proceeded to get ready for the long, overnight trip to Rome.
Barbie shifted against me, having positioned herself—wisely—between Torin and me as he took the aisle seat—glaring at me all the while. With his money, he could’ve flown in first class, but since that night at Esperanza’s, Torin hadn’t been far from Barbie’s side. Not that I could blame him. Neither had I.
I reached up and touched the medallion the old witch had given me as it rested against my chest beneath my shirt. The cool metal warmed beneath my fingers as if the creature inside rose to meet me. I pressed my lips together as I recalled the warning Esperanza had given me three weeks before.
"I need power."
Esperanza stared at me for a brief moment, roving her murky gray-eyed gaze over me. I didn't like it. Though she looked blind, I knew she wasn't. Not completely. Whenever she focused on me, I felt like she was peeling back the layers of my soul. It was fucking uncomfortable. "And what will you do to attain that power?" she prompted. "What will you sacrifice? What will you give up? What will you do?"
The answer was simple. I'd already resigned myself. "Anything," I said. Barbie wasn't going to do this alone. It wasn't that she wasn't willing to. God fucking knew she'd do it. Demons. Vampires. Torture. Vengeance. Her life had already been dropped smack dab into the darkness. Whereas I was still on the fringes. I still had a choice.
Perhaps if I'd been smarter, if I'd felt less for her, I would've taken a step back and made the intelligent choice. I would've left and pretended that I didn't know what I did. But what kind of fucking man let the woman he loved sink into the abyss without doing something? And that was the catcher. I fucking loved her—every feisty, fucked up, revenge-seeking, demon-possessed inch of her. Somehow, someway, she'd dug her way through the surface of my flesh and now she was perfectly ensconced within.
"Be careful," Esperanza warned quietly. "This is a choice you will not be able to take back. Once you step over this line, there is no going back."
There was already no going back. "What can I do?" I asked. "How can I get the power I need to protect her?"
Esperanza turned away from me and for a moment, I thought I'd failed whatever test she'd meant for this to be. But she merely shuffled across the kitchen and reached up to a cabinet in the corner of the room. She withdrew a long key from beneath her dress and pulled the string that attached it around her throat from her neck and used it to unlock the cupboard. I moved forward, curious.
"Are you willing to change?" she asked me as she turned around and looked up at me as I hovered nearby. "Are you willing to forsake your humanity and become something ... other?"
"Will I die?" I asked. She shrugged. Great, that wasn't a fucking answer. I scowled. "I'm willing to change," I answered. "If that's what it takes."
She reached out, opening her palm face up and for the first time, I caught a glimpse of what she had retrieved. It was a circular piece of metal, something like a thick bronze coin. But the surface of it was smooth. There was no image on it. When she continued to hold it out as if she meant for me to take it, I reached for it. My f
ingers slid against hers as I grasped the piece and I jerked when I realized how fucking cold she was. Her skin was like a goddamn glacier. I stared at her as I held the object in my hand.
"Feel it," she said simply.
With a breath, I returned my attention to the coin. It was even heavier than it looked. A thick circle with a definitive weight. It encompassed about a quarter of my hand but felt four times as large.
"What is it?" I asked.
"It is a medallion, carved from the base of an extinct volcano," she answered.
"A volcano?" I turned the thing over in my grasp. It didn't look like anything volcanic. The stone was bright, shining as if it'd been painted a deep copper, but there were no brush strokes. Volcanic rocks didn't look like this.
"Yes," Esperanza huffed at me. "You are to wear this always. Let it rest against your skin. Keep it with you and it will bring forth an ancient beast."
"Like..." I couldn't help but think of Barbie. "Will it possess me?" I asked.
Esperanza tilted her head to the side, her dark hair sliding off one shoulder. "In a manner of speaking, it might," she replied. "But not like your friend. This kind of beast is old—much older than anything that has ever existed on this plane of existence. But like the girl's demon, it, too, requires a living portal to manifest. You are to become this portal and if you tame the beast, it will do as you say. With the beast's powers, you very well might see your life extended far beyond what you ever imagined. If you manage to ingratiate yourself to the monster, you will find yourself with a loyal and eternal companion."
That ... sounded exactly like something I needed. Power. A tool to use. A way to show the others that I wasn't the fucking weak link. "Thank—" I began my thanks as I curled my fingers around the medallion, but Esperanza's hand latched onto me, her nails digging into the muscle of my forearm, halting my words.
"But be warned, Maverick," she said, her voice low and stilted with severity, "if you prove too weak for the beast, it will consume you and you may very well suffer a death that I would not wish on any living creature. With great risk, comes great reward. If you make an adequate sacrifice, the beast will be yours. But if you cannot bear to use it, it will kill you. Understand that now. I cannot tell you more than this because even I—as long as I've carried that piece of magic—don't know what kind of beast will emerge. It was passed down to me from a dying coven with that warning. If it does emerge, I may not be able to help you. But know this, should you choose to walk this path, you will be irrevocably changed."
My hand tightened on the circle of metal. "It's too late for that," I said, my voice barely above a whisper as I met her clouded gaze. "I've already been irrevocably changed." By Barbie. By Torin.
"You may see your humanity as a curse now," she said. "But be careful. Keep it as long as possible. To be underestimated is a gift in and of itself. Use it wisely and only use the medallion when it's absolutely necessary."
"How will I know when that is?"
"When the time comes, the creature will speak to you, and you will know."
I stroked my fingers over the circle against my chest and reopened my eyes as the plane began to taxi down the runway. Outside the window, fields whizzed by in a blur and the cabin shuttered as the machine lifted from the ground—one moment, stable and the next, airborne.
“Torin?”
He lifted his head up over Barbie’s. “What?”
I lowered my voice. “Did you get the weapons on board?”
Torin’s eyes darted to the aisle for a brief moment before he turned his head and nodded. “Beneath,” he answered.
“I don’t even want to know how you fucking managed that,” Barbie said with a sigh as she sank back into her seat and reached down to untangle her headphones from inside her bag.
“Did you want to leave them behind?” Torin asked, quirking a brow.
“Of course not,” she snapped, stopping her movements. "I also don't want to get pulled by TSA or customs or whoever the hell checks that shit in Italy."
"We won't be," Torin said, turning and crossing his arms over his chest.
I arched a brow. "You sound sure about that," I commented dryly.
He met my gaze over Barbie's head. "I am."
Of course he fucking was. Because he was part-vampire and I knew, first hand, the powers they had. I sat back in my own seat and gritted my teeth as I recalled just how I'd gained that knowledge. But that wouldn't be a problem anymore, I reminded myself as I reached up and fisted the medallion through my shirt. Esperanza said they’d need me in Italy. And I needed them.
Everything had changed. Had been changing. Might change more.
Now I would, too.
Thirty-Five
Barbie
Rome wasn't just old, it was ancient. It was startling to see modern conveniences—fast food restaurants and cars—in a city that was held up with thousand year old pillars. The people who lived within the city were either immune to its charms or unimpressed. The class tour guide led us as a group through the middle of the city even though exhaustion pulled each and every one of us low.
I'd barely managed a good three hours of sleep on the plane and as soon as we'd landed, we'd been ushered onto a large charter bus and dropped off smack dab in the middle of the city, right next to the Vatican. The sun beat down mercilessly on our heads. Sweat dripped down my spine beneath my shirt and within minutes of leaving the bus, I'd pulled off my cardigan and wrapped it around my waist.
"Have you ever been to Rome?" Maverick's question pulled my attention from the old ruins of what looked to be a small building roped and gated off on the side of the main road. People just moved past, no pictures were taken. They didn't even stop to realize how strange it was. Nothing in America was this old.
"No," I answered.
"What do you think?" Torin asked.
"It's..." What did I think? It was ancient. It was crumbling. It was ... beautiful. And dangerous. I had to remember that. It was the real reason why we'd all come on this school trip. "It's pretty," I settled on. Torin nodded, his lips twitching with self-contained amusement, though I didn't know at what. As the group turned a corner, I reached out and snagged the backs of both their shirts as they moved to follow. Both stopped and looked back.
"When are we going to do something about Arrius?" I demanded.
Torin exchanged a look I couldn't interpret with Maverick and I frowned. They hadn't been talking much in the last few weeks, but somehow—an understanding had settled between the two of them. At least, when it came to me, they had. "Well?" I prompted, dropping my hands away from them. "What's the plan? Are you going to be approached by someone or—"
Torin held up a hand, interrupting me. "It's hard to say," he finally answered. Glancing over his shoulder, he noted the distance of the group and how they'd stopped to listen to the guide drone on about something they were all looking at as they snapped pictures. He nudged me back with gentle hands and Maverick followed until the three of us were in the shadows of a particularly narrow alleyway. "In the past," Torin continued, "I was taken directly to him. But this is a school trip. One he knew I'd be attending. I have a feeling he merely made it seem like it was convenient to have me see him while I'm here, but I don't think that's the case."
"Why not?" Mav asked, frowning as he settled his back against the wall and propped his foot up against a rock jutting out from the side, nearly level with the ground. I folded my arms over my chest.
"He's been calling his people to him for a while. First, Eloise—"
"Who's Eloise?" Mav interrupted him.
Torin closed his eyes and reached up, pinching the bridge of his nose with his thumb and forefinger. "She's unimportant," he said as he drew in a breath. “Just someone who was staying with Katalin and me. She's one of Arrius' personal advisors. I didn't think anything of it, but just before I was summoned, he called my sister to Europe as well."
"You think he's planning something?" I asked.
He dropped his
hand and looked at me. Hard hazel eyes swirled with intensity. I swallowed roughly, feeling an echo of demonic power rise as if pulled by a string directly connected to the man in front of me. "I do," he said. "And we have no clue what it is, so we need to be cautious, especially considering the city we're in."
I eyed him speculatively. "What does that mean? What does the city have to do with anything?" I asked.
Torin settled back against the opposite wall, but with how close together the buildings on either side were, it was still less than a foot from me. I turned my cheek as Maverick shifted against the stones. I could feel the heat of his arm against me. As far as I was concerned, he'd helped me when I needed it. It was a life or death situation. We didn't need to turn it into a big deal. Even if the thought of him getting hurt on this trip made me feel like I'd swallowed acid.
"Old cities like Rome attract supernaturals," Torin explained. "Especially long-lasting ones like vampires. The older the city, the more they flock to it. Ancient cities remind them of the past, kinda like their glory days, I suppose."
"Shit." I dropped my arms and clenched my fists as my eyes darted to the mouth of the alley and the people passing by. Rome was over two thousand years old.
Torin tipped his head down and scrubbed a hand over the long strands that flopped over onto his forehead. "Yeah." He sighed.
"It's daytime now," Maverick said. "So, we should be fine, but we'll be extra careful at night."
"No," Torin said, jerking his head up and leveling Mav with a dark look. "You need to be on guard at all times," he hissed. "Even if vampires can't travel during the day, humans can be a threat, too. Humans are even worse. They can be bought or bribed to do almost anything and there are so many of them..." He trailed off, looking in the same direction as me. "We don't know who we can or can't trust."
