by Katie May
“Hello, vampire bitch.” The man smiles, revealing a row of perfectly white teeth.
“Don’t touch her.” Instead of enraged like I would’ve expected, Cal’s voice is a low and seductive purr, curling around me and dampening my panties. Immediately, I realize that he’s fighting Alex’s dad in his own way—through pure seduction.
Hunger momentarily blazes in the man’s dark gaze before he shakes his head vigorously.
“Your seduction isn’t going to work on me,” he hisses menacingly, still holding that damn blade to my neck. One look confirms it’s a god-blessed dagger. Because why the fuck not? It’s been almost an hour since someone tried to kill me. I consider that a pretty good run.
“Let her go,” Cal hisses, any and all pretenses diminishing. I can feel his presence behind me, but I don’t dare look over my shoulder. I know he won’t do anything to put me in danger, including step closer.
Out of my peripheral, I spot Barret standing there with a perplexed expression on his face. He isn’t looking at me, however, but at Alex, the skin between his eyes crinkled.
Fuck, I can’t let this man hurt Cal or Barret. I need to keep him distracted long enough for them to sneak away—if they can get their heads out of their protective asses for more than a minute and realize that leaving me is their only chance at survival.
“Why do you hate me so much?” I ask bluntly. “And shouldn’t I get the name of my potential murderer?”
He laughs humorlessly, the noise scratching at my heart. “You don’t deserve my name, pathetic bitch.”
Okay, Bitch it is, then.
“Bitch” continues to glare at me with unveiled animosity. He looks as if he wants to shove the dagger into both of my eyes, then up my nostrils, then in my mouth, and finally end the night with some kinky anal knife play.
“You killed my brother,” Alex answers when it becomes apparent that Bitch isn’t going to.
“What?” I screech. Yeah, I killed a few people throughout my life, but most of them have been hunters sent to kill me. Tit for tat, or however that saying goes.
“You didn’t even have the decency to bring his body back to his family,” Bitch hisses, spittle flying in my face. “Instead, you kept his head like some demented trophy.”
Kept his head…?
Oh, fuck.
“Bob?” I squeak, remembering the severed head I preserved and kept in my bedroom. He was the first man I’d ever killed—and for a just reason.
“His name was Patrick,” Bitch bites out, his face crumpling with pain. “And you killed him.”
“You don’t understand,” I plead, lifting my hands in surrender. “He tried to rape me.”
Bitch doesn’t stop his relentless pursuit, but I notice Alex’s inscrutable expression tense. The hand holding the knife lowers marginally.
“What?” he gasps, staring at me as if he doesn’t quite recognize me.
“I was younger, maybe thirteen or fourteen. He cornered me in an alleyway and slapped a hand over my mouth. He began to pull down my pants.” I tremble at the memory. I remember how scared I was, how small I felt, as his cock pressed against my ass.
“Don’t scream, little one.”
And I hadn’t. Instead, I had spun around and sank my teeth into his neck, pulling away skin until blood bubbled out. He died instantly.
“My son would never do that, you lying whore!” Bitch screams.
Alex is shaking his head vehemently, denial clear on his face. His eyes harden suddenly as he steps around his father, his blade raised.
“You’re going to die for what you did to my family,” he growls, pulling his arm back.
“No!” Barret races forward, shoving me away just as Alex plunges his blade into the man’s heart. Barret’s face creases in confusion as he stares at the dagger protruding from his chest, sickly green blood pooling around him. Genuine fear flashes in his unfathomable eyes as he glances helplessly at me and then Cal before crumpling to the ground.
“No!” Cal screams in anguish, charging towards Alex and his dad. Before he can capture them, they dematerialize in a cloud of black smoke. “No!”
“Barret?” I ask, dropping to my knees beside the giant man. Blood bubbles from his lips as he opens his mouth to say something, his eyes pleading with my own. “Barret?” I whisper again. Tears begin to trail down my cheeks as I stare at my best friend lying in a puddle of his own blood.
“Please, stay with me. Stay with me. You’ll be okay,” Cal sobs as he drops on his other side, his hands pressing down on Barret’s chest. “Violet, do something!” he screams. Refocusing on his best friend, he begins to cry harder. “You’re going to be okay, alright? You promised me. Friends forever, remember? You can’t leave me alone.”
Barret opens his mouth a second time, but only manages to cough up more blood. His eyes turn glazed, the light gradually leaving them, as he stares at the sky.
I’m shaking, my own tears cascading down my cheeks and landing on my slightly parted lips.
Not Barret. Not him. No. No. No. No.
“NO!” Cal screams in a voice rich with denial and agonizing pain. He drops his head to Barret’s still chest as a slight green mist begins to excrete from the monster’s pores. It cocoons his body in a vibrant glow as thousands and thousands of bugs appear where his body once was.
Barret’s dead.
Alex killed him.
My heart stutters to an abrupt halt and then cracks, weeping blood. A strangled sob gets lodged in my throat as I throw my head back and wail my pain for the entire world to hear.
There’s no escaping this pain, this heartache. It strangles me like a piece of wire that has been wrapped around my neck.
My wail turns into a scream, a battle cry, demanding blood and vengeance.
Once that fades, I’m left with nothing but a dizzying loneliness and a crippling depression—a Barret-shaped hole in my heart. Trembling, I collapse on the ground beside the collection of bugs and curl into a ball, my tears drying on my cheeks.
Even when I close my eyes, I can still hear Cal’s anguished screams.
CHAPTER 30
VIOLET
“We have to go.” My voice is soft, quiet even, but it breaks through the anguished cries like a gun being shot.
“No!” Cal screams, pulling at his pink hair while he paces.
Feeling numb, as if I’m no longer in control of my body, I repeat, “We have to go.”
Cal whirls on me, eyes burning with pain and fury, but whatever he sees in my expression causes his shoulders to slacken and his face to crumple in defeat.
“You’re right,” he states, squeezing his eyelids shut. Movements mechanical, he extends a hand to me. “Barret would want me to get you out of here. There’s no way in hell I’m losing you too.” He stares at me with dead, impassive eyes.
When I remain immobile, staring at the spot I’d last seen Barret, Cal thrusts his hand farther into my face. “Violet,” he warns, and I stare at the proffered limb, unable to muster the will to take it. After a moment, I reluctantly interlock our fingers and allow him to pull me to my feet. He releases me immediately, almost as if my touch is toxic, before striding in the direction we were heading before…
Before…
Before “before” became such a horrendous word.
Cal’s all business, the lines of his body taut with tension and barely suppressed pain. I know that sooner or later, he’s going to fall apart so completely, so irrevocably, that he’ll barely resemble the man I know and care for. Death has a way of doing that to a person.
Barret’s dead. That one thought loops through my head, each time bringing about a blistering stab of pain like a hot poker being shoved through my chest.
Stubbornly, I hold my tears at a bay as we move farther and farther down the road. I can’t help but notice that the once-vibrant green grass turns a brittle brown the farther we get from the city. And there, in the distance, is the silhouette of the hospital.
It’s an ol
der building that rises majestically over the boughs of trees, ribbons of red and orange from the setting sun illuminating it in a fiery glow. Instead of relief, all I feel is a sense of foreboding as I stare up at the brick structure. Unlike the rest of the buildings in the arena, the windows appear to be intact, if a bit dusty. An abandoned ambulance rests beneath a low-hanging awning, its doors thrown open, as if the humans had been in the midst of an evacuation.
Without trepidation or even fear, Cal stalks up to the glass automatic doors.
“We need to be careful,” I caution, peering into the surrounding forest and searching for any threats. The eerie silence makes it feel unnatural—disturbing, even. It makes me itch to run away and hide.
“We need to get inside,” Cal counters, voice bereft of any emotion, his grief overshadowing logical thought.
Before I can protest, a figure materializes between two trees at the edge of the forest, the asphalt shaking with each step he takes.
A cyclops.
He stands over ten feet tall, his single eye a jaundiced yellow color. His greenish skin is tinged with shades of gray and black, almost as if he is ill. When he roars, spittle flying, I see only four teeth in his mouth, each a hideous shade of amber and lengthened into sharp points.
“Oh, fuck.” I begin to hesitantly back away, gesticulating wildly for Cal to join me. Instead, he spreads his pink wings and takes to the sky, soaring over the cyclops’s head once before landing on its shoulders. He wraps both of his arms around the creature’s neck, and I watch the cyclops buck and kick in an attempt to remove the added weight.
“You motherfucker!” Cal barks, his arms tightening around the monster’s neck. His hands are just barely able to touch at the center of the cyclops’s throat, his muscles straining and rippling. Smoke wafts from Cal’s body, and his eyes erode over, the pupils swallowing the irises.
I take another step backwards, but this time, it’s not in fear of the cyclops. It’s in fear of Cal.
There’s something primal and otherworldly about him, something that causes every hair on my body to raise. When he bares his teeth, I see sharp incisors that hadn’t been there prior.
The cyclops releases another roar, the vibrations threatening to rupture my eardrums.
As they both fall to the ground, Cal still clinging to the monster like some sort of demented spider monkey, I can’t help but see the violence in his eyes, teetering on the brink of complete and utter annihilation. He’s a tsunami rapidly approaching the shoreline, bringing nothing but death and destruction in its wake.
Cal begins to rain down punches on the cyclops’s back, each blow causing the creature to grunt and hiss in pain. I have no doubt that the cyclops is stronger than Cal, but the cupid’s rage is giving him an edge in the fight.
Unable to watch this assault a moment longer, I race forward with my vampire speed, aim my gun, and fire into the cyclops’s single eye. Droplets of blood splatter my face and arms, the texture slimy as I vigorously wipe it off.
Still, Cal keeps hitting the dead monster, his knuckles cracked and bruised.
“He’s dead,” I whisper, unable to raise my voice. “Cal, he’s dead.”
He doesn’t seem to hear me, his movements jerky in his agitation. Tears run in rivulets down his face as his sightless eyes remain focused on the threat.
“Cal!” I lean forward to touch his arm, and he jerks away, falling off of the giant’s body. He stares at his hands as if he doesn’t recognize them, as if they belong to someone else entirely. His body shakes as he holds up his blood-soaked palm before lifting his eyes to mine.
“What did I just do?” he whispers brokenly, pulling his knees to his chest and wrapping his arms around them. “What did I just do? Did I…? Did I hurt you?” He sounds aghast by the prospect, his lower lip trembling as he fights for control.
“No, you didn’t hurt me,” I assure, dropping to the ground beside him and wrapping him in my arms. He desperately claws at my skin, as if trying to burrow himself inside of me. His head lands on my shoulder as his body vibrates with silent sobs. I push down his unruly pink hair as I try to comfort him. “I miss him too.”
“He was my best friend,” he chokes out. “My only friend.”
“I’m your friend,” I say immediately, the words instinctive. Swallowing, I continue, “I don’t know if it’s any comfort, but I’m your friend, Cal. I always have been.” He pulls his head up to stare at me with glassy eyes. Fuck, seeing him in pain destroys me. Absolutely guts me. His grief combines with my own until I’m suffocating on it. It feels as if there are claws wrapped around my heart, the nails digging into the sensitive organ until it’s weeping blood.
“I can’t believe he’s gone,” he laments. “We shouldn’t have joined this stupid fucking game.”
All I can do is hold him even tighter, hoping some of his pain will transfer into me. Though I’m not sure if I’ll survive any more.
“It’s getting dark.” I press a kiss to his forehead. “We need to find the way out of here.”
Cal nods once, jerkily, before stumbling to his feet and pulling me up with him. His hand remains on me for a moment longer, as if assuring himself I’m still here, still alive, before he releases me and steps away.
“We’ll have to look through every door,” Cal warns as we move to the entrance. The glass doors slide open, and we enter a waiting room with a single receptionist desk, stark white tiles, and a collection of plastic chairs. The entire room gives me the creeps. It was designed, no doubt, to be sterile and clean, but instead, it feels unwelcoming and stuffy.
“I fucking hate hospitals.” My lips curl upwards in disgust as I sidestep a fallen wheelchair. “Dad used to make me go and pretend to be a patient so he could steal blood from their blood vaults. He once shoved a hammer into my ear because he thought it’d be hilarious to see the doctors and nurses scream and fret over me. Another time, he told me to tell them to ask for a face transplant. I was six then.” I’m babbling, I know it, but the only other alternative is to surrender to my pain. To allow the ice-cold waves to drown me until I’m nothing but withered skin and bones.
“Your dad sounds charming,” Cal deadpans, opening up a closet behind the receptionist desk.
“He’s an odd man, that’s for sure,” I agree. I can’t help but wrap my arms around myself. There’s not a chill or even a breeze, but I can’t escape the cold feeling traveling through me. The feeling that we’re being watched.
“Barret once hid underneath a desk for an entire day trying to scare someone in detention,” Cal muses, his breath hitching. His pain is so raw, so real, that my heart aches for him a little more. I didn’t even think it was possible. “But what Barret didn’t know was that I had already killed the man.” He laughs sharply, humorlessly, the despondent sound tightening the nerves in my stomach. “I miss him so fucking much.”
“I do too.” I didn’t know Barret like Cal did—we had only been friends for a short while—but already, I feel his absence as keenly as if my liver had been removed. In the short time I have known him, he has become a part of me, embossing himself on my skin. He’s a tattoo that I don’t want to ever remove.
Shuffling captures our attention, and we both turn towards the left hall. I raise my gun, desperately trying to recall how many bullets I have left. Cal bares his fangs and steps in front of me, wings fluffing out around him.
The silence is strained as the footsteps approach. Every muscle in my body is coiled, ready to spring into action. Fear pulses through me, pounding like the beat of a drum, but I ignore it resolutely, prepared to fight.
“A gun?” a familiar, dry voice remarks as Vin steps through the door, Mason and Frankie directly behind him. “Really, Violet?” He scoffs once, but his eyes soften with relief when he sees that I’m unharmed. “Do you really think that would stop me if I wanted to kill you?”
CHAPTER 31
HUX
Darkness.
It’s all I know, all I’m aware of. It tighte
ns around me like a steadily shrinking vise as I curl into a tight ball.
“Jack?” I whisper, my pulse skittering as I peer through the inky darkness.
But I can’t feel my brother. I can’t even sense him.
Instead, I’m shoved into the farthest corner of our shared mind like a piece of scum.
I’m not afraid of the dark. No, after centuries of pure and unrelenting darkness, it’s impossible to truly be terrified of it. There are a lot of things that can hide in the darkness, but I much prefer that over the light. There, you can see and experience everything—you’re forced to watch the monsters charge at you with their claws extended and fangs bared. At least in the darkness, you can pretend that you’re alone.
Unease skates down my spine, as if the Grim Reaper himself is trailing an icy finger across my skin.
I don’t like this. I don’t like this one fucking bit.
Since we met Violet, we’ve been able to coexist in relative peace. I can hear all of Jack’s thoughts and see through his eyes when he’s in control of our body. That differs from before, where only one of us was in charge and the other was relegated to the darkness.
I need to find my way out of here; I need to find my precious treasure.
With a roar, I begin to pound on one of the onyx walls of my makeshift prison. The only reason I know it’s there is because my fist meets resistance whenever I throw a punch. My knuckles begin to ache fiercely, but still, I rain down blow after blow.
When it feels as if my body is no longer capable of fighting, as if my knuckles have been scraped of all skin and are red with blood, I collapse back on the ground, one arm curled around my legs. I reach into my pocket and instinctively grab the chocolate bar Violet gave me when I first met her.
It’s my first gift. My first present from a person who wants nothing from me except my love and acceptance. For so long, the love bestowed upon me was conditional, and I constantly failed to meet their expectations. Even my own parents referred to me as a monster and beast. Jack may be my brother, but even he never trusted me enough to set me free longer than a month or two at a time. He always wrangled me into the deepest recesses of our shared mind while he once more took the reins.
