Ezra twitched, and his eyes went fully black. Dark sludge oozed from his nose. It wasn’t blood, but the water itself, as if his body were rejecting it outright. Was it because he was the oldest vampire in the world? Maybe. He wasn’t trying to fight it though. Maybe because Meg was dying, and the Darkness was dying with her.
“Meg…” Black tears poured from his eyes, leaving long stripes on his cheeks as they fell. “This is all my fault. I failed you. I am so sorry.”
“Give yourself,” she crooned, “to me.” The voice wasn’t hers anymore. It was much darker now and sick, a terrible sound that produced shivers in your spine. She was no longer Meg anymore but the Darkness that saturated her body, desperate for a foothold in the world.
Ezra smiled, still perfectly calm. The smell of him changed, and my wolf’s nose could detect that from across the room. Blood that smelled sweet, despite being ancient, now smelled like rotting lemons and mud in your mouth.
“I cannot.”
Meg coughed, splattering Ezra’s face with black pitch. The shadows burrowed deeper into Ezra’s body, fighting for control over his blood, but his heart was already spoken for and there was no hollow place for them to hide.
“I should,” Meg said slowly and agonizingly, “have killed you.”
Ezra smiled grimly. “And I should have let you die.”
TWENTY-ONE
Dulcie
There was a brilliant flash of deep red light. When it cleared, they were gone.
“Dulcie,” someone said. I blinked a few times and the face of an olive-skinned Loki with longish dark hair swam into focus.
“Hi,” I said softly.
“My name is Marco,” he replied, holding up two fingers. “How many fingers do you see?”
“Two.”
“Good. You have wounds on your stomach. May I lift your shirt to check them?”
“Yeah, go for it.” Fuck, why did my tongue feel so heavy?
Henry came over to sit by me while Marco examined me. “We did it,” he said, wiping his nose on his sleeve. When I looked at him again, the weird light was all drained out of him. A long cut ran across one eye that was gushing blood.
“Fuck,” I said.
“What?”
“Your eye.”
“My eye?” He reached up to touch his clear eye and frowned.
“The other one,” I said dryly.
He palpated his wounded eye tentatively and nodded when it came away all red. “Oh. Huh.” He shrugged at me. “I didn’t notice it.”
I laughed, which hurt like hell. “Of course you didn’t.”
“Angelo!” called Marco and a pale, blond Loki appeared seemingly from nowhere. He was wielding bandages and rubbing alcohol as if they were holy artifacts. Marco pointed to Henry and his bleeding eye, and Angelo held up his supplies.
“Can I fix your face?” he asked.
Henry chuckled. “I think it’s probably a lost cause, but you can try.”
Angelo sat cross-legged beside us and poured a little alcohol onto a swath of gauze. “This will sting a bit,” he said as he patted Henry’s eye with it.
Henry did his best not to flinch. “Are you okay?” he asked me.
I nodded. “Fuckin’ rosy.”
Marco held out his arm to me. “Drink,” he said, “but slowly.”
I did. His blood tasted sweet. I still wasn’t used to drinking blood but I needed it. And there wasn’t anything quite so potent as Loki blood. It wasn’t lost on me that I was drinking from the wrong Loki but I shoved the thought away.
“Oh, good,” said Henry. “Did we really get rid of the Darkness?”
“I think so,” I said, releasing Marco’s arm and wiping my mouth.
“I think Meg was acting as an anchor or something, and without her, the Darkness doesn’t have anything to keep it from wandering. Or something like that,” I finished.
There was a loud crash on the other side of the room.
“You will pay for this,” said Bram, his voice dropping into thick, defensive octaves I’d never heard from him before.
“Bram, what the fuck?” said a Loki. It was Gabe, one of Knight’s oldest friends. He was on the ground, after being shoved roughly aside. Bram was kneeling in front of Knight, both hands around his throat and blood gushing over his fingers.
Knight wasn’t moving.
“Oh, fuck!” My heart was suddenly thundering in my throat. WTF had gotten into Bram?
Half the Lokis were outside, and half were still here. Everyone that wasn’t hovering over Casey and Sam was staring at Bram and Knight. Two of them surged forward to pull Bram away.
“No,” Knight snapped sharply, and they ceased, looking confused.
“He’s trying to kill you,” one said.
Knight stared Bram squarely in the face. “I know.”
Bram had a twisted smile.
“Bram,” Gabe said slowly as in a warning.
“Bram, what are you doing?” I demanded.
“I saw everything. I saw it all,” said Bram. He had his nails in Knight’s throat, pressing deeper and harder every second. The smell was enough to make me dizzy. “I saw what he did.”
Meg made them see something, I thought, remembering the fire she sent after them before they collapsed. “Bram,” I said slowly, “Whatever Meg showed you wasn’t real. Bram, look at me.”
His head snapped towards me, his eyes red, and his fangs dripping with Knight’s blood. Knight made no move to push him away. The Lokis eyed each other nervously, clearly wanting to jump in—but fearing Bram would rip Knight’s throat completely apart if they did.
“Bram,” I said again. “It’s over now. It. Wasn’t. Real.”
“No,” said Knight, his voice scratchy. “What he saw was real.”
I squinted at him. “What?”
Knight wouldn’t look at me, only at Bram. The former burning, visceral hatred filled every inch of his bloody face, yet he almost seemed to relax. “What happened that night wasn’t portrayed in its entirety but it was real enough. What you saw wasn’t fabricated even though Meg conveniently left out some of the details. But those details don’t matter anyway. What happened that night is something I’ve had to live with all this time. Something I’ve been living with.”
Bram’s eyes flared red, beacons in a cave, bright enough to light up Knight’s entire face. He knelt and grabbed Knight by the hair, slamming him hard into the wall. Knight made no move to stop him.
“Bram, what the hell are you doing?” I screamed at the vampire. I had no idea what Knight was going on about or what Meg had shown them both.
“Let me kill him,” Bram hissed. Knight was looking into Bram’s red eyes now, totally devoid of emotion, without fear or anger. “Let me avenge you, Dulcie. Let me end him before Hades can be bothered to try and stop me.”
Knight laughed, and it was tight and breathy. “Hades is long gone.” He grinned. “It’s just you and me now, buddy.”
“Avenge me?” I asked. Fuck, maybe he knows what happened with Meg and Knight. “Bram, that’s none of your business.”
Bram dug his nails into Knight’s skull, the fine, crimson lines instantly trailing down his scalp onto his cheeks. “Oh, but it is.” Bram turned to me and his expression softened. The color in his eyes dulled until they were more brown than bloody. “You are a treasure, Dulcie, one I have freely abused and deceived, sometimes even taken for granted, but I have not visited upon you a fraction”—he took his hand from Knight’s hair and wrapped his fingers around Knight’s throat again, squeezing it, until the blood poured over his knuckles—“of his rather spectacular failure.”
“It…” I wet my lips while taking a deep, shaky breath. My personal thoughts about Knight and Meg were mine alone, and now wasn’t the time to talk about them, not with Bram running in high gear on murder mode. “Knight was glamoured, Bram, it wasn’t his fault. Not…” completely, I almost said, but I caught myself. “It wasn’t his fault. Meg made him do what… he did.”
<
br /> A soft, buoyant laughter bubbled out of Bram as he took Knight’s chin in his red hand and turned Knight around to face him. “Meg, she says. She thinks this is about Meg. Listen to that, Vander, she is defending you. What have you to say to that?”
“Bram, that’s enough,” I said.
Bram looked at me for a long moment, panting like an animal for my benefit, since he didn’t need to breathe and so angry that he was practically regressing to the human version of himself. He tightened his grip on Knight’s shirt, ripping the fabric. He inhaled slowly and exhaled, as if he simply lost his temper and hoped to regain it. Although in a body built for rage and violence, I could only wonder how much calmer it made him.
Eventually, he released Knight and took a single icy step backwards. He adjusted his shirt and spent a brief moment frowning over a missing button. Knight remained motionless against the wall. I couldn’t see the expression on his face.
“Fine,” Bram said and he disappeared in a rush of black smoke.
Knight dropped to the ground, panting.
One of the Lokis said, “Vander? You good, man?”
“Get back out there! Make sure they’re all gone,” Knight demanded.
“Dude, we already—”
“We have a world to protect,” Knight snapped. He didn’t look up. “We’re good here, Marco. There’s nothing more you can do. Take them and go.”
They did too. They picked up Sam and Casey and left through the holes in the walls. We were barely steps from the front door, but it hung open lamely, letting the cold, wet air sweep over the bodies—dead for good this time.
I remained silent for a minute before I said anything. “Knight?”
Knight didn’t move but stared at the floor the way a kid does after he’s broken something expensive. His fists clenched and unclenched, and every now and then, he flinched sharply.
“Knight. Look at me.”
He did and we stared at each other for a long, painful moment.
“Dulcie,” he said. The sound was vague and whispered, almost beyond human hearing. His heart was pounding in a slow, thundering way. I could feel the vibrations through the floor.
Henry coughed and looked between us, pursing his lips, sensing the awkwardness. “I’ll, um. Go.” He gestured toward the door before limping out of the room.
I don’t know what I thought I should say to Knight. It didn’t matter what he saw, I wasn’t about to say anything good. Nothing helpful or profound. Just something confused and dumb and angry. I wasn’t even sure I felt angry anymore about any of it. My heart was racing and after seeing my childhood home full of blood and smoke, I didn’t know what to feel about anything.
That didn’t matter. Before I could decide what to do, he started talking.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I know that means jack shit, but I am sorry for everything. Not just for losing control with Meg, but for…” He wet his lips with his tongue and looked away, running his hands through his hair, and pulling hard. “For… fuck…” He forced his eyes back to mine, flinching, and nearly shaking, as if it physically pained him just to look at me.
“Knight, what did Bram see?”
Seven seconds or seven years might have passed before he answered. “The Denali. On the side of the road. After I arrested you when you returned from saving my goddamn life.”
“What…” I started to ask, but the pain seeped out of him and flowed into me, and I instantly knew what he was talking about. I swear, for a moment I could see what happened playing out again behind his eyes. My blood ran cold. “Oh. Fuck.”
“Yeah.”
“You’re sure that’s what Bram saw?” I asked.
He nodded. “Yes, because I saw it too. Meg attacked us both with visions of the past because she knew what Bram would do if he knew. She wanted to turn us against each other so she wouldn’t have to fight us both.”
I swallowed hard. “But you said she didn’t show the entire situation?”
“She didn’t. She left out the part where you said you wanted me. She also omitted the parts where your body reacted to me… in good ways.”
I drew in a breath at hearing that but Knight shook his head.
“None of that matters now,” he said. “What she showed us was real and true; and it’s never stopped haunting me.”
“You never told me that,” I said.
He chuckled without mirth. “I could never find the words to bring it up. I wanted to but every time I tried, I got so ashamed that the words never came.”
“I don’t think about what happened the way Bram does,” I said softly. “I actually haven’t thought about it since.” And that was the truth. Funny how the thing that stung me the most, the thing I couldn’t get past, had nothing to do with that moment so many years ago.
Knight put his hands into his pockets and had to visibly force himself not to look away again. “I don’t… I can’t say anything else. Nothing can fix any of this, especially not…” He swallowed hard and finished, “Especially not that.” He took a deep breath and started to talk as he exhaled. “Toss in what happened between Meg and me, which you witnessed, and what happened between you and Sebastian. It really is just too much.”
I couldn’t argue with him so I didn’t. I just felt numb.
“I’m a fucking disaster, Dulcie,” he said. “I give Bram so much shit for the things he makes you do, but I’m no better than him. Not even a little. Hell, I’m worse because I didn’t realize it. Bram at least is aware of himself.”
I almost laughed, but “Um” was the only sound I could make. My heart was freezing from the inside out and my blood wasn’t moving anymore. I opened my mouth but couldn’t remember how to speak. “Um.”
“We can’t continue to do this,” he said as he frowned at me. “I can’t look at you without my guilt and anger overcoming me and I’m sure it’s the same for you.”
It was the same for me. Like taking a hammer in the gut. It took me another second to remember how to breathe. “Oh.”
“I’m so sorry for everything. For Meg. For what happened on the side of the road. For you. For me. For us. And what we’ve become.” He reached toward me, maybe out of habit more than anything else, and immediately snatched his hand back like I was on fire. “I’m so sorry, Dulcie.”
I couldn’t say anything. A lump the size of Splendor was lodged in my throat and I was doing a very bad job of trying to keep it down. I just stared at him as he looked at me. I’m not sure how long we both lasted like that.
“You deserve so much more than me,” he said on a soft voice. “You deserve the world and I wish I could have given it to you.”
I couldn’t say anything at all. I felt like my tongue was choking me and I couldn’t even utter a sound. After a long silence, Knight turned around and walked out the door, stepping over the burnt carpet and scorched hunks of fallen ceiling. His clothes were singed, his skin coated in smoke, and he resembled a corpse more than any cadaver I’d ever seen.
“Knight.” I took one step towards him. Just the one. “Please.”
He was gone before I could figure out what I wanted to ask him.
TWENTY-TWO
Dulcie
Bram was standing outside, staring at the puddles of rainwater that were now perfectly clear. Behind us, the house was burning. The tiny fires I set throughout the whole building were finally spreading and destroying the stupid house. The Darkness was gone, and even if the fire couldn’t keep it out for good, it felt like the right thing to do. The cathartic thing, anyway.
“Ezra thought he could save her.” Bram crossed his arms and looked away. “He told us she was lost, but I doubt he ever believed it.” He turned to me, a curious light in his eyes. “Pity. He seemed so interesting.”
Ezra. I crossed my arms. “Interesting? Excuse me, but when did that sad, little anthropologist in your heart suddenly emerge? Or are you just mad that you didn’t get to kill Ezra yourself?”
Bram scowled at me. “I simply mourn the l
oss of knowledge. Ezra understood many things, and now we will never discover what they were.”
“Right,” I said softly, staring at him, wondering if that were completely true. All at once, I realized since Meg and Ezra were both dead, Bram was the oldest living vampire in the world. A really lonely thing to be.
I took his hand without knowing it until Bram looked down in surprise and gave my hand a squeeze. Always before, his hands were so cold in comparison to mine. Now that we were of a kind, he didn’t feel so cold anymore. We stared at the rising fire, watching the stars appear in the smoke beyond it.
I sighed. “We did it,” I said. “Sort of.”
“Sort of,” Bram agreed. And there was a long, uninterrupted pause.
###
Bram
“I never told you,” I said, standing with Dulcie out there in the dark. “I never had occasion to tell you, but…”
“Spit it out, Bram. Bumbling around for words isn’t your style.”
“I was very impressed with you,” I said. “I taught you a little about resisting glamours before we parted ways—”
“Resisting glamours? Um, you glamoured me into making myself look like that fucking porn star Tinker Bell in your basement,” she said without sounding resentful. She was not amused either, certainly not! But neutral was much more than I could have hoped for after such a comment.
Somehow, that made me bolder. “Yes,” I said. “And you did well with that, remarkably well, but neither I could have prepared you to face Meg’s raw power, nor anyone else. You, alone, broke her hold over you. You escaped the labyrinth she wove inside your mind, and I…” Hades, I was flustered, just like I became in the car before Vander and I went after Dulcie and got caught. When he’d accused me of loving her.
“You… what?” said Dulcie, looking at me expectantly. Her eyes narrowed, but no more than usual.
I took a breath. “I was impressed,” I said after a long moment. “I am impressed. You impressed me, Dulce O’Neil. And you continue to. Very much so.”
“Oh,” she said as she smiled, but she looked a little confused. This was most likely already something she knew, but it seemed to catch her off guard all the same. “Bram, did you just give me an honest-to-Hades real compliment? Is that what just happened?”
What Screams May Come Page 25
