Page 39 of The Midnight Order (The Thorngray Vampires Duet #1)

Asher

She’s in her chair on the back veranda. Hot coffee steams between her hands as she holds it beneath her nose. If I remain still, she won’t even know I’m here.

But what fun is that?

“Good morning,” I tell her, rustling my clothes as I walk so as not to startle her too severely.

I know she and Lowell fucked last night. I can smell him all over her, inside her.

Not only that, but how she screamed her orgasms through the house nearly drove me mad. The markings on my back would alarm her if she were to see them. They’ll heal, but I was hard on myself last night. It’s what I required.

“Morning. I didn’t bring you any coffee…” There’s a haunted look in her eyes; one I didn’t expect from her this morning.

“I think I’ll live.” I smirk as my immortality joke falls flat.

“Corvin is held up in his lab this morning, and I finally exhausted myself in the basement, so I’ve been wandering about for a while, looking for something to do.”

“Exhausted yourself?”

“Well… last night was—” I sigh, not knowing how to approach the subject with her.

“Oh God. Oh… everyone knows? Everyone heard? I don’t know why I forget about the supernatural hearing thing.”

I grin. “It’s fine. There will be times you’re with one of us and not all of us, Sweet Silver. Lowell made it abundantly clear he was to be your first, and we all gave him that luxury. Though it was difficult.”

“What exactly did you do to yourself in the basement?” she asks, sipping her coffee as the look in her eyes grows impatient and heady.

“That’s a subject for another time, I think. Fuck, I don’t think it’s something we should even discuss. It’s more something I could show you.”

She licks her lips, and I follow the path of her tongue with my gaze. All over again, my body pleads with me for any scrap of attention it can get.

Silver has this magnetic pull about her that makes it hard to remember that she might not be the key.

We should maintain our heads and keep our distance, but instead, I’m confident each of us has already begun to fall.

“I’ve seen some of the things down there,” she says.

“And? Do the things you’ve seen scare you?”

Flashes of holding her against the cross in the dungeon, my fingers sliding through her wetness, dance in my brain like raindrops off asphalt.

“No. If anything, they intrigue me. I don’t think I knew anything about myself before coming here. Well, we know I don’t know myself. But… you know what I mean.”

“One never knows their likes and dislikes unless they try new things.”

She smirks, setting her coffee on a small table between our chairs as she turns in hers, facing me. “What’ll happen if we find out who I am, and I’m not who you all think I am?”

“What do you mean?” My brow knits in confusion at her question.

“What if I’m an enemy or something? I don’t know how this world works.”

My laugh seems to bother her. “Silver, you could never be our enemy.”

I reach for her, and she stands, easily sliding into my lap and allowing me to hold her. For a moment, we just bask in one another’s presence, both staring over the vast grounds of the manor.

Trees encircle the grounds, and a dilapidated fountain in the middle of the backyard, covered in ivy vines, adds to the mysterious feel of the manor.

“I don’t understand how I questioned nothing before. I was perfectly fine moving through my life like a robot, never looking too deeply into missing memories or time.”

“It most likely has to do with whatever glamour was done on you. It’s not your fault.”

“You’d think the mind would be stronger than magic,” she whispers.

“Mmm, I happen to believe the magics in the world will never be understood; therefore, they are the most powerful thing we’ll ever come up against.”

“Magics? Plural?” Her inquisitive eyes swing to mine. Her hand toys with the little hairs on my neck, driving me mad. I can’t think straight, but I want nothing more than for her to keep going, to drive that touch lower and lower.

“There’s more than just the magic we possess. There’s the magic of love. The magic of life.”

She snorts. “You never struck me as such a romantic before, but when you’re on your own…”

I poke her side, relishing in the warmth that bleeds through her shirt into my fingers. “What did you peg me as?”

She bites her lower lip. “Oh, you know.” Her smirk pulls her full lips away from her teeth.

“No. I don’t. Do tell.”

“You have to know that you embody the bad boy stereotype. Your tattoos, your body, the sharp way you look at everyone.”

I can’t think past how attractive she’s made me sound. Therefore, she must be attracted to me. Even though I can smell that evidence when I’m in her presence, hearing it is something else entirely.

It’s like I’ve won something.

I curl my hand over her ear and shove some of her fallen hair back. “You have no idea, Sweet Silver.”

She shivers, and the way it affects her has my arousal swelling all over again, and I can’t afford to spend the day in the dungeon.

“Why don’t I show you some more of the grounds?” I ask in a veiled attempt to get to know her more and to get her off my lap before I try something more indecent.

She has to be sore after the way she screamed for Lowell last night, and I want to give her time to heal.

Even if there’s a darker side of me that wants to prod the sore spots and derive every ounce of pain from them while driving her pleasure as high as I can.

“I’d like that. I didn’t realize I hadn’t seen everything.”

“Well, there’s the chapel and then the pool house. There used to be a very well-kept greenhouse, too, but the roof caved last summer during a storm.”

“A chapel?”

I grin. “Come. Get your coffee and grab some shoes.”

Thirty minutes later, we’re walking arm in arm as I lead her past the irreparable fountain that Lowell broke in anger and toward the tree line engulfing the back of the property.

Leading her toward the chapel, where she seemed the most interested. I listen to her breathing change as the forest deepens around us, and the smell of earlier rain permeates our senses.

I can nearly feel the moment her nostrils flare, and she sucks the thick, musty morning air into her lungs. “Why is the chapel so far from the house?”

“For privacy,” I answer quickly, not realizing how low my voice dipped, giving the word “privacy” a touch of innuendo.

“You all built this house? Well, the property?”

“We did.”

The chapel comes into view, covered in vines and greenery as the earth tries to reclaim it. It’s moss-covered, weather-beaten, and forsaken. The windows are all blown out, and parts of the crumbling roof are open to the elements. It’s still beautiful, even if it’s a ghost of its former glory.

There are whispers of the past in each derelict stone; if you listen hard enough, you can almost hear them.

“You wanted somewhere to worship, even though you’re all…”

“Undead? You can say it.”

She smirks sadly at me as she stops walking, her gaze returning to the chapel that’s seen better days.

Fuck, how long’s it been since I came out here?

“We were all raised very religious, the only exception being Lowell. He allowed us our frivolities, however. We had a priest who’d come on Sunday mornings in the early years, but that was so long ago…” I sigh as the memories sting through my brain.

“What happened?” she asks.

I don’t answer. I simply tap the mask adhered to my face.

“Ahh.”

“There wasn’t much left to believe in once we were cursed. Nothing good, anyhow.”

“That’s sad. Losing one’s faith has to be like losing a part of oneself.”

“Like losing the ability to look at yourself,” I mutter.

“I didn’t mean to offend you.”

“You didn’t. Not much offends us anymore, Silver.”

“It’s so heartbreaking. All you’ve been through, and then each time someone breaks through the wards, you go through the highs and lows all over again, only to remain cursed. I don’t know how you do it.”

“We don’t have a choice.”

“On one hand, I hope that I am the key. I’d love to see each of you whole and be the one to free you, but on the other…”

“Speak plainly.”

“How can I be the key to everything for four vampires when I don’t know who I am?”

“Maybe that’s the magic in it. Maybe we’re meant to find one another, to fix one another. Maybe we’re your key, the same way you’re ours.”

“That’s a beautiful notion, isn’t it?”

“Want to see the inside?” I ask, changing the subject when the atmosphere around us grows tense.

“Sure. Is it safe?”

I toss an arm around her shoulder, leading her closer to the chapel. “You’re always safe with one of us beside you.”

Another shiver worms through her, and I grin that I caused it.

Inside, the building reeks of disuse, but it remains beautiful—the colored panes depict scenes from the Bible, including the birth of Jesus, the Last Supper, and the Resurrection. Each of which bathes you in magical light when the sun is just right in the sky.

Overhead, the barest hint of sun shines through a window over the tabernacle.

The pews are stone and cold to the touch as we pass, and I dust my fingers over them.

“It’s beautiful.” Her voice is whimsical and shaky as she scans the room.

“You’re beautiful.” My eyes can’t leave her, not to look over every lost detail of the chapel I haven’t stepped foot in for years, not even to clear my mind of racing thoughts.

She’s in her dressing gown and an overcoat, and her messy hair only adds to her beauty. A small smile lights her face when she turns and captures me in her stare.

“It would be a shame if all this went to waste.”

I knit my brows. “The chapel? I think it’s been laid to waste for a decade or so. You’re too late to save it.”

“No, not the chapel,” she muses. “Although I think I could save it. I meant all of this between us. I know you feel what I do; I don’t know how I know, but I know. If it turns out that I’m not the key, all this that we feel will be for naught, it’ll…”

I cut her off, tugging her closer by gripping her wrist.

Her chest presses to mine, and I’m hyperaware of how fast she’s breathing. “Don’t think like that. Fate is at the wheel now, and all we have to do is let it steer.”

“You’re so confident when the rest of us are so questioning. How?”

I shrug. “Maybe it’s ignorance.”

“I think it’s your strength.”

Her hand cups the unmasked portion of my face, and I close my eyes. I’m unable to help myself in her presence. It’s like she’s the piece of me that has been missing all along.

“I think you’re becoming our strength, Sweet Silver. You’ve revived an order of vampires that was slowly petrifying. You’ve breathed life back into the halls of Thorngray Manor.”

Now, let’s hope she doesn’t take that life with her for any fucking reason. I know deep in my soul that we wouldn’t survive it.

Her kiss has my mind clearing and my soul aching, and I hug her close to me as hunger grows in my stomach, clawing its way up my throat in a burning passion.

“We should get back,” I manage, pulling away from her tempestuous lips.

“Just a little longer,” she whispers against my lips.

Just a little longer.