Page 28 of Fated In Blood (Nocturne Vampire Clan #1)

28

EVANGELINE

T he bastard did it.

He left me alone in the bedroom in nothing but a shirt that wasn’t even a shirt with Blake the Snake, who glared at me like I was a pile of steaming excrement.

Even worse, the darkness that curled around him almost seemed to come alive, the very air thrumming with some vicious, unseen intent.

“I’ll make this simple. Rohr has volunteered to keep you fed for the next week, so I don’t have to lay eyes on you except when absolutely necessary. Once you’re through your transition and we have a chance to evaluate your strengths, we’ll use you to get close to Tyrell. Once that fucker’s dead, you go your own way, preferably to the other side of the fucking planet. Got it?”

“Why do I have to leave? Why don’t you go to the other side of the fucking world and rot?”

“Because this is my home and you’re trespassing, because you were stupid enough to get caught up in Tyrell’s net.”

“I came to this shit town to save my sister, asshole. The bastard took her and I’m here to get her back.”

“She looked happy enough to me with those fresh puncture wounds on her pretty little neck,” Blake taunted softly, and I swore the room around us darkened, but maybe that was just me.

“You blew up his castle, got caught, and tried to off yourself. If that’s the only skillset you bring to the table, I’ll tell Rohr to kick you to the curb now and be done with this. You’re a walking, talking disaster that we don’t need right now.”

I’d heard the term ‘seeing red’ plenty of times in my life, but I’d never experienced the phenomena myself. Blood howled in my veins and pounded in my ears, my knuckles cracking when I clenched my hands.

“My sister is not happy. She did not choose this life any more than I did. Tyrell did something to her. He’s…controlling her.”

Just like Riordan made me kneel.

That had to be it. Tyrell had Angel under his control .

“I know what glamour looks like, and your sister is fucking Tyrell of her own free will. Face it, Slayer, she’s in his bed because she wants to be. Maybe you were a shitty big sister and she was so eager to get away from you that a desiccated ghoul like Tyrell looked appealing.”

I launched myself at him, fingers outstretched like claws, my scream echoing, the sound nothing short of feral. I barreled through the empty space where Blake had just been and slammed face-first into the shelf beside the fireplace, wood shattering, books tumbling down over my head.

When I turned, he watched impassively from the other side of the room, that faint hint of shadow curling around him, with a smile as cold as death. “So fucking slow. You should slink off into the night and disappear. Nobody will even miss you. I’ll bet your sister’s forgotten you already.”

Rage urged me to lunge toward the bastard again and rip his eyes out, but years of training held me in place while I evaluated the situation.

He was older. Faster.

Knew how to move better than me.

I’d toyed with enough inexperienced fighters to know I was completely outclassed right now.

I couldn’t overpower him with brute strength or skill. That didn’t mean I couldn’t use another tactic to hurt him, though. My father had taught me to wage many kinds of war on my victims. All I had to do was find his weakness.

“Have you ever heard of something called projection, Blake? That’s when you take all your little insecurities and project them onto someone else to make yourself feel better.” I relaxed my stance, settling onto the balls of my feet. “Were you a shitty big brother?” I mocked, knowing I’d hit the mark when the shadows around him turned darker.

“Is that what’s been eating at you? Did you fail your sister the day she died? Or was it all those times before when you let her down?”

I never even saw him move.

One second, Blake was a safe distance across the room. The next I was pinned down beneath his heavy body, his fist slamming down beside my head with enough force to splinter the parquet into pieces.

Shadows surrounded us, every tendril thrumming with magic, skating over my skin with sharp, greedy claws, as if deciding where to dig in first. This was his magic, not an illusion.

These shadows were deadly .

“One more word, Slayer, and it will be your last. I should have let you bleed out on Tyrell’s floor and never looked back. I will curse my decision for the rest of my days.”

I didn’t give him an inch, all my rage from these past days spilling over into my glare. “So will I, asshole, so will I.”

I shifted, trying to wiggle out from beneath him, my bare legs twisting against his, and then he was gone, chest heaving, more of that odd gray smoke curling around him, eyes…solid black. Holy fuck his eyes were black , like in a horror flick.

I pushed up off the floor, never taking my gaze off him. “Get out.”

“You are my enemy.” His soft voice warped and bent, like the sound was echoing down a long hallway. “If you ever speak of my sister again, I will kill you where you stand, and I won’t lose a second of sleep.”

Fear clenched inside my chest, leaving an echo of pain wrapped around my heart and thieving my vision until the only thing I saw was his cold expression and glittering, frightening eyes.

He meant every word.

I wasn’t often so cruel, but he’d hurt me. Taken something that was precious and tossed me away, like I meant nothing. His cruel words fed all my guilt and fear and regret, and in return, I’d pushed him too far.

I lifted my chin. “When this is over, I’ll be glad to put this shithole town to my back and never see any of you again. I only came here to find my sister. Once Tyrell’s dead, I’m taking her away from here forever.”

His cold expression turned speculative, but some of the darkness leached from his eyes, enough I saw a flash of hazel-gold. “How did you find her in the first place?”

My hands clenched tighter while I debated with myself whether to lie or tell him the truth. But the sooner we got this over with, the sooner he’d be gone.

“She was taken in Ohio, but I tracked her across Pennsylvania to western New York.” I left out the gritty details. Hitchhiking at night, sketchy truck stops, freezing in the woods last winter.

“I…I’d heard rumors about Thorndale, so I hung around for a few days. Then someone mentioned Vincent knew everything that went down in this town. I got a job waitressing and a few weeks later learned everything I needed to know about Laurent Tyrell and his spooky castle on the edge of town. It didn’t take me long to deduce that’s where Angel was.”

Well, my keen powers of observation combined with cage fighting for scraps of information from Vincent. But I’d found her.

“You knew it was vampires who kidnapped her?”

“They left their scent all over our apartment in Cleveland. But because your kind moves the way you do…it took me months to track them here.”

Their rank scent had overlaid the droplets of Angel’s blood, the residual sourness of her terror. They’d killed the security guard and a neighbor to get to her. I’d arrived moments after they took her, and still, it took months of painstaking work to follow the trail here. Only a lucky guess and some half-remembered comment of my fathers about Thorndale being a hotbed of vampire activity brought me to the right place.

But I wasn’t about to tell this asshole that. Better to let him think I was some expert tracker. There was added value in that.

His speculative look sharpened into something lethal. “So you have been trained to hunt us.”

I opened my mouth to… do what, I didn’t know. Protest, maybe ?

“Don’t bother denying it. All that means is you aren’t completely worthless after all, Slayer. You’re telling me you can scent our kind?”

I winced. Outing family secrets would have gotten me beaten to a pulp back in the day, but now, the truth could very well get me killed. But my father had to catch me first.

“Sometimes,” I hedged. “Not always.”

“God, you’re a terrible liar. I hope you’re a better fighter.” He headed for the door. “Tomorrow at dawn. Meet me in the training room. Riordan wants me to gauge your hand-to-hand and weaponry skills so we know how much of a liability you are.”

Oh, he wanted to gauge my hand-to-hand ? Tomorrow at dawn I was going to kick his ass so hard he’d never walk right again.

He raked me with a cold glare. “I hope you have something to wear besides that.”

“Only if you let me go back to my apartment. I have clothes there.”

And my go bag, and an extra set of silver knives imbued with wolfsbane. I couldn’t help the smile spreading over my face when I thought about stabbing this asshole.

Numerous times, in various sensitive parts of his male anatomy.

“Fucking hell, I suppose it’s too much to hope that you could just”—he waved his hand at me like I was a dog with mange—“find something here to wear?”

“This was the only piece of clothing in this entire cesspool you call home. But fine, go fetch me some suitable clothing while I breathlessly await your return.” I made a show of sniffing the holey material, nose wrinkling. “Or we can go to my apartment, where all my stuff is, and I can get out of this fucking shirt that stinks of mildew.”

Bile flooded my mouth when Blake dumped me onto the floor of my apartment, which truthfully didn’t smell much better than the mausoleum. My head spun so violently, it took me a couple tries to catch my breath while taking in the worrying number of dust bunnies congregating beneath the couch.

“You did that on purpose,” I hissed, climbing to my feet while holding down the hem of the shirt so it didn’t ride up over the tops of my thighs. “You almost ripped my arms from their sockets.”

“You wanted to be brought to your apartment, here you are. If you think I’m going to touch you any more than necessary in the process, you’re delusional.” He jerked his head toward the only door in the apartment. “Get on with it, then.”

Without a word of warning, he’d grasped my arm and yanked me into a whirlwind of chaos and shadows. My head was still spinning and every joint burned, strained from being whipped viciously about on our way here.

“I’ll be walking back, thank you very much. Or taking an Uber.”

He looked appalled. “Vampires don’t Uber.”

“This one will.” I headed for my bedroom, so nauseous I figured I’d better throw up and be done with it. “Stay here. I’ll be out when I’m ready.”

“Like hell I’m letting you out of my sight for a single second.” His heated breath skimmed the nape of my neck. “Your go bag is in the footlocker beside your bed and there’s a fire escape outside your window. Nice try, Slayer, but I wasn’t born yesterday.”

I skidded to a stop and he slammed into the back of me, sending me stumbling headfirst into my bedroom. I spun around and poked him in the chest. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m here to get changed into something decent.”

“You so much as try stabbing me with one of your little play knives, I’ll snap your neck.” His smile sent a shiver skating down my spine as I yanked out a drawer and picked out a clean, soft shirt. “You’ll heal, but trust me, the experience won’t be pleasant.”

“Funny how your version of trust me has changed so drastically in the last twenty-four hours.”

“Funny how a name turned you from an ally into a stone-cold murderous bitch.”

“Then at least turn around.” My cheeks heated, the niggle of doubt in my stomach growing stronger when that cold appraising gaze coasted down over my half-naked body with deliberate slowness.

“I’ve seen it before anyway. Nothing special.” His dismissive snort had my eyes pricking before I yanked out my bottom drawer and started hunting for jeans.

My entire life I’d dreamed about the special man who I’d give everything to, including my heart. The one who was supposed to be my forever.

Maybe because my life had been nothing but pain and fear and a desperate fight to survive, I’d shaped this particular romantic fantasy into something special. Something sacred. Something for me to hold on to during the darkest of nights, when everything seemed so hopeless.

True, there hadn’t been candlelight and roses with Blake, but to have him turn what we’d shared into something dirty and meaningless knocked the breath from my lungs.

I’d never been classically pretty like Angelique, nor did I possess the quiet beauty of my mother. Looks, I’d always reasoned, were fleeting. Brains lasted forever and, combined with determination, would always take me further than beauty ever could.

I’d worked for years to build myself up, to make myself strong enough the world couldn’t hurt me. Prided myself on how well I protected my sister…until I hadn’t.

But all it took was one snide comment from Blake to cut my self-esteem off at the knees.

I hated that I could be destroyed so easily and with so little.

I shrugged my stiff shoulders. “Fine. Have it your way. That night meant nothing to me, either.”

“Just so you know, that’s the sort of thing someone says when it does mean something.” His lips curled up. “Did you have a nice bath this morning? His eyes dropped to my right hand, his tongue rimming his bottom lip. “Were you thinking of me, Slayer, when you touched yourself?”

Blood rushed to my face. Had that been him, listening ? “You were spying on me.”

He just shrugged. “Rohr asked me to talk to you, I just got there a little early. I have very, very good hearing.”

I was seriously going to stab him.

In the eye.

The second I had pants on.

“Oh, you can try, little slayer. Tomorrow in the ring, you can try to stab me to your heart’s content. I’ll even let you use your deadly little knives.” The bastard crossed my paltry bedroom in two strides, threw open my battered footlocker, and yanked out my bag. “There, now concentrate on getting dressed so we can get out of this fire trap.”

My temper simmered at a low boil as I weighed the chance he’d simply made an educated guess I had an emergency bag hidden in my ancient locker that had once belonged to my mother. That he knew how badly I wanted to stab him.

“You can read my mind.”

His lips curled back and he hoisted my bag over his shoulder, hardware clinking. “I’m over ten times older than you, and you don’t have a clue how to guard your own thoughts. Of course, I can read your mind, you’re a fucking open book. Consider this our number one lesson and don’t ever forget it.”

Internally, Blake’s every word made me flinch, but on the outside, I didn’t so much as blink. If there was anything I could thank my father and uncle for, it was beating the fear out of me. I had a feeling I’d look back on those rosy days fondly compared to what lay ahead, because from the expression on Blake’s face, he was planning to make me suffer.

Good thing suffering was what I excelled at.

I whipped the black concert t-shirt over my head. The fucker wanted to stay? Let him stay. Let him watch like some bloodsucking creeper, because he would never lay a finger on me again.

I reached for my panties, my gaze sliding to his face.

His expression burned with pure, undiluted hunger, gone so quickly anyone not trained in the minutia of expressions would have missed the split-second flash of emotion. But not me.

Now it was my turn to smirk.

The bra clasp took entirely too long for my trembling fingers to fasten, and when I shimmied into my jeans, he masked a choking groan beneath a clearly fake cough.

Ha, good to know Blake was suffering.

My favorite boots were back at Crimson House, but I laced up my Converses and pulled my hair away from my face. “I have to make a stop on our way back. And before you open your mouth to argue, know this. It won’t take long, and I will make your life a living hell if you tell me no.”

I looped a plain black hair tie around my pony and drew it tight to my scalp, then tucked it beneath the dark hoodie I zipped up to my neck. “I only have one coat and it’s not here.”

“Where, pray tell, did you leave your coat?”

“At Valentine’s. Like I said, it’ll only take a minute for me to get it, then we’ll be on our way. I won’t even give you any trouble.” Until after I have that jacket in my possession, anyway.

Blake snorted. “Did you already forget I can read your mind as clearly as if you’d said that out loud?” I winced slightly beneath his withering stare. “You’re some kind of fucking vampire savant, according to Rohr. Yet you can’t remember the most basic facts.”

He filled my vision completely when he stepped closer, brows drawn together. “You try to run, and you will be sorry, Slayer.” His voice was so quiet I strained to hear him, forcing myself to hold his gaze without blinking.

“Your family took everything from me, so if you think I’ll go easy on you because you’re a female, you are wrong. I’ve dreamed of the day I’d have a Silverwood at my mercy, and I have a fucking lifetime of anger, so it’s taking every ounce of my willpower not to kill you where you stand.”

“I take no pride in my surname.” I lifted my chin, showing him I wasn’t afraid. Much .

“You shouldn’t.” His voice was the kind of threatening that made every hair on my body stand up, the kind that told me I was about as close to death as I’d ever been. Here, in my apartment, closed off from the rest of the world, nobody would find my body until I started to smell.

“The Silverwoods have been a scourge upon this world as long as vampires have existed.” His lips curled in a surly smile. “In darkness we stand as light.”

My mouth fell open, my heart barely beating.

“That’s your family motto, isn’t it, little slayer? The almighty Silverwoods, the last line of defense against the monsters who hide in the shadows. Good against evil, right against wrong. How easy it must be to imagine yourself on the side of the righteous.”

My dry throat worked to come up with some clever retort, anything to shut him down, but nothing came out. I’d never faced this sort of raw, bone-deep hatred, fury gleaming in his eyes, his face twisted with pain.

“How does it feel, little slayer, to know you’re one of us now? A depraved monster hiding in the darkness?” That horrible smile turned even uglier. “What will your family think when they see what you’ve become? I’ve heard what Silas does to the turned, and I doubt you’ll be spared, especially since you share his last name.”

Blake was a bastard, and he was only trying to hurt me, but he spoke true.

When my family found out Angel and I had been turned, we’d become prey. Because the Silverwood motto Blake quoted so eloquently had a second part, known only to those in the innermost circle of our bloodline.

Our legacy, their end.

In my world—my old world, anyway—there was no such thing as pity or compassion or second chances. Only hunting down our vampire prey to the ends of the earth and eradicating them, until not a single bloodsucker roamed free.

And now I was the quarry, not the hunter.