Page 19 of Absolution
I shook my head at him and took back the controller to un-pause the game. “Kill some zombies damn you. You’re supposed to have my back.”
“I do, my friend.” And we played.
Chapter 7
Seiran arrived an hour or so later and kicked Con out. He shooed me into his room with the command that he would be helping me prepare for my date. A date with Luca. How did that happen? He hadn’t even asked, just assumed. Not like it was a bad thing. He was good looking, smelled good and tasted like chocolate and spice. I should be excited. Instead I was nervous.
“You’re pretty grumpy. If I give you some blood will you stop being so miserable for five minutes?”
“I don’t need your charity, Ronnie,” I groused at him needing to be contrary just because teasing him actually felt good. “Go back to your Roman lover and leave me to my brooding.”
Seiran grabbed my hair and yanked me around hard enough to hurt. I had to meet his eyes or have the hair ripped from my scalp. His grip wasn’t human, and even as a vampire I couldn’t free myself. Shit this was the Father Earth power. Apparently, I’d pissed off the earth witch.
My filter must have been malfunctioning because I said, “I thought you didn’t like it rough, Ronnie.”
“You’re a really ungrateful little bastard, Sam. Gabe is bending over backwards to keep the Tri-Mega and Dominion from just putting you out of all our misery. And you spit in his face.”
“I never asked for—”
“Not done,” Sei interrupted. “None of us want you dead. You don’t even want you dead cause if you really did, you’d have found a way by now. So why don’t you pull up your big boy britches and suck it up. Do this thing right.” He shoved me onto his bed and climbed on top of me, holding me down, like I had a chance to move anyway. He could crush me if he wanted to. “You’re making Gabe unhappy. Unhappy Gabe means unhappy Seiran. You know what happens to people who make Seiran unhappy?”
I sighed. It was about time the witch showed his true colors. I’d pushed him hard before but apparently not hard enough. “You fuck me up. I get it.”
“I don’t think you do.” He closed his eyes and suddenly the room went black, or maybe that was just my sight. I fell out of myself and landed hard in a heap—surrounded by dirt and wood. A grave. The feeling of life poured into me like Luca’s blood magnified by ten thousand. I gasped as it kept coming until I was sure I’d burst. Then it was torn away and I died again, slowly, painfully, lungs gasping for air and cold bitter water filling them. He slammed the life back into me again just as I was ready to give up to death only to pull it away again. The cycle continued several times until I was sure it was going to be my fate to live it forever, then as suddenly as it’d begun it ended. I sat in the dark, all sense of feeling gone. I couldn’t move, or even scream, it was just a void. Was this the true death?
“It’s your choice this time, Sam. No more blaming others. Do you want to live or die? The earth is willing to take you back. I can give you to it.” Seiran’s voice whispered in the dark.
Christ, anything had to be better than this miserable emptiness. Was this what Con was talking about? How a vampire truly lost his humanity? The void of everything? No pain or joy. Fuck. I wasn’t ready for this great box of all-consuming nothingness. I wanted to live. Even if that was as a blood sucking vampire freak. Christ Almighty I wanted to live.
The room came back into focus and I sucked in a deep breath. Seiran sat beside me, no longer holding me down, but his arms around me. I trembled. He stroked my head like I was some frightened child. I suppose in a way I was. Dead at nineteen. Stuck undead forever just shy of drinking age. Tears seeped down my cheeks. It was an odd feeling, but it’d been so long since I’d let myself feel something other than anger.
“It’s okay. You’ll make it. You’re strong enough. I know sometimes it feels like you’re not, but you are,” Sei whispered to me. He smelled good but the bloodlust had faded. Not that I could have attacked him even if I wanted to. He got me like no one else did. Had been through a lot of the same horrors. Matthew had twisted us both. It had just taken me longer to realize it.
“Those memories don’t control you. The bad things he did to you don’t define you. Being a vampire probably sucks, but it’s better than the alternative. Kelly didn’t want you to die. Gabe and I don’t either. I know it’s hard but can’t you stop living in the past and try to find something to make yourself happy?”
“With Luca?” I asked him. “You get that he’s Max Hart’s kid, right?”
He sighed. “I wondered about that, but whatever. With Luca or someone. I sorta hoped you and Con would bond.”
“We have bonded—as friends. Romantically, that’s not happening. He’s breakable.”
“He’s not. If he was, Andrew Roman would have broken him.” Seiran sighed. “You realize he’s probably powerful enough to be the Pillar of Air, right? And that you’re an amplifier? Meaning you’d make him stronger? As much as we claim we are human, witches aren’t. There’s something more in our DNA. It makes us less breakable the more powerful we are.”
That was a sad truth. I’d seen plenty a dead witch in my time, but regular humans were little more than ants on the spectrum. I really had to stop thinking of Con that way. “He’s terrified of vampires. Of being bitten. That’s become part of sex to me.” And fuck didn’t I hate that.
“So bite Luca and fuck Con. Hell, fuck them both. They’re attractive, right?” He stared at me. “You strike me as more of a top than a bottom. How did Matthew convince you otherwise? That monster never bottomed.”
And wasn’t that the truth. “I’m verse.” I couldn’t believe I was having this conversation with Seiran. If there was any person on the planet I was less sexually into, I had yet to meet them.
“And have two hot guys who’d give it to you anyway you want. I sort of thought your sparring with Luca had come to that…but he said no.”
“He offered.”
“And?”
“Why did I say no?”
Seiran nodded.