Page 73

The voice hadn’t come from Michael at all. It had, instead, come from somewhere deep inside of me. A part of me that wasn’t quite extinguished yet. Yes, it was still there. Still far more present than it should have been.

I scowled in fury, my eyes narrowing at the moss-covered wall across the room, even though it wasn’t the source of my ire.

But I didn’t bother to respond to the strange inner voice. There was no need. It would be dead soon enough.

CHAPTER TWENTY || MICHAEL

The next two hours passed in a blur. We left the mine. Danny was nowhere to be found. We returned to the abandoned farmhouse. I barely remembered the car ride.

Bryan and Tobias didn’t say much, but they held hands in the back seat, with Bryan staring out the passenger window, tears streaming freely down his cheeks.

Thierry didn’t say a word. But when we arrived back at the abandoned farmhouse, he laid the body of the young man out on the floor in the living room. He would awaken in a few hours. And when he did, he would be after blood. Just like Danny. Would he become something dark and dangerous? Or would he be luckier than Danny had been?

I sensed nothing at all through the bond. As though Danny had somehow managed to close his mind to me. Tobias had mentioned once, in passing, that he’d taught Bryan how to do it.

Had I told Danny that at some point?

I couldn’t remember.

The worst part about it was that I couldn’t think. I could hardly even breathe. My heart felt like it had been torn from my chest, leaving behind a gaping wound, filled with agony. But my whole body felt like it had been turned to stone, just like the female vamp in the cavern.

Like any movement at all might shatter me into a million tiny fragments.

And what had happened in the cavern was playing on a loop in my mind. I wanted it to stop, but it wouldn’t. I kept re-living it over and over, horror on repeat. It was like my mind was trying to make sense of it.

Trying to make it end differently, even though it wouldn’t.

Danny, with the bleeding man in his arms. The sheer instinct taking over his mind, blotting out the man I loved completely as he sank his fangs in, tore out the young man’s throat, and fed upon him untilnothing was left. And the rush of carnal pleasure that shot through the connection, the inhuman animalistic ecstasy and frenzy that overtook him—I couldn’t unfeel that either, no matter how much I wanted to. And then afterward, when he dropped the body to his feet without a single speck of remorse, nothing of him remaining behind.

Except, of course, for icy reason and logic.

Mentally, he was still Danny. He was still the same calculated and rational person, with an encyclopedic knowledge of the occult, monsters, weapons, and battle tactics. He had all of Danny’s memories.

Emotionally, though, he was empty.

Blank.

Like an invisible tide had swept away everything good in him and replaced it with cold reason and never-ending hunger.

He was gone.

I hadn’t been able to stop it.

The same as it had been with Joshua, I was useless.

Powerless.

And most damning of all, he had considered turning me.

And then—

“The boy is going to awaken soon,” Thierry said, coming to sit next to me on the couch. “We will need to get him to a safe place, so that he can adjust to his new condition.”

“Right,” I agreed dully, hardly even aware of what I was saying. “That makes sense. That’s important.”

“I had to,” Bryan whispered from where he was sitting on the floor, beside the young man. His face was still stained with tears. Since we’d gotten back to the farmhouse, he hadn’t left the man’s side. “I had to save him. I didn’t have a choice.”

“Of course you didn’t,” Tobias said soothingly. The warlock sat next to Bryan, with his arm around his mate’s shoulders. But his expression didn’t match his tone. There was a grim look in his eyes as he gazed at the boy on the floor next to him. Bryan had closed his eyes to make it look like he was sleeping. “You saved his life. He might actually get to have one because of you. You did the right thing. He’ll understand that, eventually. Just like you did.”