Page 23

I push my curiosity aside, focusing entirely on Gwyn’s friend, and make a note to ask him about it later.

Nico doesn’t talk about the decades before he came to our coven—ever.

Maybe one day he’ll tell me just how many people he’s turned.

After my own experience with the cruelty of craving that came along with turning Gwyn, I wonder how he’s been able to withstand it more than once.

“Is it true that she’s a hunter and a vampire?

” Caitriona asks as I position myself to lift my knee from Hale’s body.

She hovers over the scene with hands in her coat pockets and a crease between her brows.

I suppose this all must be so goddamn fascinating to someone blessed with the ability to walk the fuck away.

“Yes,” I say, and she makes a contemplative sound. I ignore her because I don’t give a single fuck what she thinks.

“You ready?” I ask Nico, and when he tells me yes, I lift my knee from Hale’s collarbone and get out of the way.

The man gasps the moment his airway is free, eyes open and terrified.

The whites of his eyes are blood-red, destroyed by lack of oxygen.

He doesn’t seem to know what’s going on as he takes deep breaths that rattle his entire body.

I stand nearby, pacing as I watch Nico’s wrist bloody Hale’s lips.

“Hale, oh my god, I’m here. I’m here,” Sasha cries. “I’m so sorry Hale, oh my god I’m so sorry. This is all my fault.”

The frigid December air begins to steam as the heat of Hale’s life source hits the ground.

“ Drink ,” Nico commands, pressing his wrist against Hale’s lips.

Like Gwyn, Hale’s lips don’t seem to cooperate at first. He’s gasping, mouth opening and closing like a fish, and the blood gushes out of his sliced neck.

I swear, remembering that our commands would likely be useless against a sorcerer.

“Can he even swallow?” I ask, not knowing if that muscle could have been impacted by his injury. My stress doesn’t abate as Sasha crawls over him, her wailing beginning to hurt my ears.

I’m thankful for the privacy wards I bought to use on my property. Prying eyes—and ears—won’t know what’s going on here tonight, and no well-intending or nosy neighbor will be able to interrupt things.

Hale’s motions are slow, and his eyes go glassy. I don’t think he’s able to drink nor does he have any understanding of what’s going on, so I order Nico to make the cut on his wrist bigger.

My friend sighs, doing as he’s told, and then holds his wrist to the sorcerer’s mouth. His own blood pours freely, and Hale will choke on it if he doesn’t drink soon. Eventually, between his own blood and Nico’s, it dribbles over his lower lip.

I can’t threaten to kill someone already dying, so I do the next best thing.

“Hale, if you don’t swallow that blood, I’ll kill Gwyn. I’ll kill Sasha. I’ll even kill the fucking dog. Because if you don’t live, then Remy doesn’t live, and then there’s no point to any of them living. So if you don’t swallow right fucking now?—”

And then he does.

Slowly at first, just barely sucking on Nico’s skin, and then ravenously. He uses both hands to hold the blood supply to his mouth, and he draws deep.

Sasha cries tears of relief, sprawled across Hale’s stomach, and I listen to his thready pulse grow weaker and slower, even as Hale continues to gulp Nico’s blood. His heart stops beating altogether.

He groans when his heart starts up again—slow and steady. And alive.

“Oh, fuck,” I say, swiping my hand over my mouth as I put my hands on my head and walk a circle around my yard. The pain of Gwyn’s silver bullet stuck between flesh and bone keeps my relief from being too potent. It reminds me of what I stand to lose.

Will it be enough, I wonder? Will Gwyn be content with this?

I find out far sooner than I thought I would.

“What the fuck are you doing?” her voice asks, cold and quiet.

I turn around, and she’s pushing her body up from where she’d been laying.

Her long hair has fallen around her face, and I don’t know how she can even see what’s happening.

Finally, she sits up. She rubs her temple, as if she’s sore.

If she hurt herself falling to the ground, it certainly would have healed by now, but she squints as if she’s confused.

I wonder if the spell Caitriona put upon her made things hazy.

“He was going to die,” I say, and Gwyn’s head snaps toward mine. Perhaps she simply needed her hatred to center her. Like a hawk, golden eyes flare with fury before she narrows her gaze on me—and then past me.

She must see Emile’s body where it lays—something I’m trying to ignore—because she heaves a sigh of relief.

And then she goes still. Painfully fucking slowly, she draws her gaze to mine.

Gwyn doesn’t say a word, but she knows this was me.

She swallows and breathes through her mouth before looking away.

“Did he say it was okay?” she asks, directing her question toward Sasha.

Gwyn stands and gathers her balance for a second, before moving toward her sister on wobbly legs.

Sasha is still sobbing as she lays across Hale.

He’s drinking with a fervor, and I don’t know how much longer it will be before he tries to bend Nico over in front of us.

Thank god my friend has been around long enough to grow bored with eternity and broaden his sexual horizons to include men. He hasn’t brought anyone back to the compound in a while, something Margot has teased him about, so maybe it won’t be that much of a sacrifice for him.

I give my friend a look, and all he does is shrug.

I don’t really know what the fuck to do with that.

I have the faint notion that somehow I’ve pimped out Nico by allowing him to turn Hale.

But I don’t have time to ponder it before Gwyn and her sister start arguing.

Gwyn’s aggravated tone is enough to make me pay attention.

“What do you mean he didn’t say?—”

“Gwyn, this wasn’t a choice. He was going to die,” Sasha argues, looking up at her sister. The moonlight reveals tracks of tears that she’s shed, and her curls are stuck to her cheeks in places.

“Yeah, but he might not have wanted…” Gwyn trails off, sitting down beside her sister. “This is my fault.”

“Actually, this—” Sasha’s voice is soft, easily drowned out by Gwyn’s increasing volume.

“I shouldn’t have let you guys come here. I shouldn’t have let you guys leave the?—”

Raw and restrained, Sasha grits words out through clenched teeth.

“For once, this isn’t fucking about you.

Maybe we shouldn’t have been here, but that was our choice to make.

But I fucked up, okay. I wasn’t paying attention and we got separated while we were following the stupid pendulum to find Emile, and then and then—” Sasha moves, inching closer to Hale.

He’s slowed down, almost as if he’s falling asleep—or dying.

It’s not what happened with Gwyn. Once her heart restarted, she was…

I don’t let myself think about it. I know something isn’t right though.

Nico urges Hale to continue, and Sasha rubs a hand over his arm.

He doesn’t stop drinking, but the urgency doesn’t return. “It doesn’t matter.”

I think about Nico and the fact he supposedly distracted Sasha, but I wonder if there was something else to it because she doesn’t seem as ashamed as I’d think she’d be if it were mere distraction.

I say nothing, unsure of what to do. Maybe clean up my uncle’s body?

But I don’t exactly want to do that either.

I’ll have to burn him, just to make sure there’s nothing left for his heart to grow back into.

I don’t think resurrections like that are common, but I’d rather be safe than sorry.

Because if there’s one thing I’m certain about, it’s me who killed him.

My choices killed one of my only remaining relatives.

But I’d do it all over again for Remy if I had to.

“This was my fault, not yours, and it was my responsibility to fucking fix it. He’s… Hale is my best friend, and it’s my fault.” Sasha cries.

But it’s Gwyn who seems like she’s in pain. She sits back on her heels, and her face loses all emotion. But I see it in her eyes. I wish I didn’t, because it means I still know parts of her. Some of her lies had been aged in truth, and it pisses me off.

Because I still want her, and that’s the reason why. Because some parts of her are true. And then other parts aren’t, and I want to slide a blade between her ribs and root out the rot.

I can’t have both things.

Sasha twists the knife into her heart, and I live vicariously through the hurt she inflicts. “He’s my friend, my best friend . We’ve been through a lot when it comes to you, without you, just all of it. For once, something isn’t about you.”

Sasha turns her back on Gwyn, resting a hand on Hale’s thigh. The man whimpers, and I’m surprised to see Nico caressing his forehead, softly encouraging him to keep drinking. He’s somehow both gentle and bored, and I think he must have done this quite a few times

“I want a half million for my silence.”

I nearly leap out of my fucking skin as Caitriona appears beside me.

I don’t look at her, somehow unable to take my eyes off the scene before us.

My uncle’s body lies on the ground behind me, and I’m afraid if I turn to look, there will be consequences to my conscience that I’m not willing to face right now.

“Silence about what exactly?” I ask, unsure about what stipulations she might have. She clearly intends to do something with Gwyn’s DNA, and I don’t know if I should care about that or not.

Not. Definitively.

“That you killed your uncle to protect a hybrid thief.”

“A hybrid?” I ask, laughing. “She’s not a dog. Although I guess she is a bitch, but not in the traditional sense of the word.”

“They’ll come sniffing soon, I’m sure. You don’t want them knowing you allied yourself with her once. Trust me.”

She’s probably not wrong.

“Fine.” I rattle off Margot’s phone number. “Give her your details and she’ll make it happen.”

“I suggest running the fuck away from this if I were you. She’s bad news.”

At that I laugh, and my voice booms through the crisp night air like a clap of thunder.

Gwyn stops staring at Hale and Sasha, and begins to unfold her long legs before standing up.

The leather is tight on her flesh, and the sound of it is almost comforting as she walks over.

A sense memory pushes its way forward in my mind, and I can see my mother rummaging around in her leather purse as she places it on the front passenger seat.

It’s a quick glimpse, one of the rare windows into the memories of my mother, but it’s no less vivid.

“Cool disappearing trick,” Gwyn says to Caitriona.

Her hair is a tangled mess, and her full cheeks have a faint tinge of pink to them.

She’s just as beautiful now that she’s Ascended, lacking that strange otherworldly sensation after being turned that most vampires have.

Hale’s appearance will be unsettling to her for a while. But hers never changed, not really.

Because of Agnarr’s blood. Because of what she is.

“You knew there was no spell on him, right? But you had to get your payout, didn’t you?” Gwyn’s ire is a laser, getting straight to the point. Little does she know, the payment was a violation against her.

I won’t be cluing her in either.

“From one con artist to another, your work here has been impressive,” the witch replies, before turning on a heel and walking away. Though her footsteps are quiet, the change in her pace as she steps over my uncle’s body is deafening.

Frowning, Gwyn watches the witch leave as she crosses her arms. She doesn’t look at me. “He’ll be sworn to Nico, now, won’t he?”

“Yes.”

“Give me your phone.” She holds out her hand, long fingers gently curling upward. For whatever reason, there’s a shift in her demeanor, and I fish the device out of my pocket.

She opens up my messages, clicking Margot’s name at the top of it. Quickly, she types in a few numbers then a word.

“You’ll let me stay at the compound until after Hale is done Ascending, I hope?” She turns the phone, passing it over to me with the message open. I look at it before I reach out to take it. It’s an address.

I go still.

“What the fuck is this, Gwyn?”

“Remy is sworn to me, and Hale is sworn to you. Well, to Nico, but same thing. There’s no sense in?—”

“Remy’s here? At this—where? Is he—You’re just going to—” I’m trying to say too many things at once.

I’m rattled, and it pisses me off. “What the fuck was the point of all this? Why, why do all this if… And you’re going to leave after Hale is done Ascending?

You take my coven, then you don’t… then you don’t even want it? ”

My hands twitch, eager to wrap around her delicate throat. It’s at odds with the expansive relief of knowing where my brother is. All of this is her fucking fault, I remind myself, because the urge to both kiss her and kill her wars inside of me, searching for the path of least resistance.

“I’ll command them to swear to you,” she says, glancing back over her shoulder at Hale. She doesn’t bother looking me in the eye. “I’m giving the coven back.”

“You think I want it back?” I ask, deathly quiet. “You can take your illusion of power and choke on it. You wanted it, you’ve fucking got it.”

“Take it or I’ll make each and every one of them kill themselves,” she says, equally furious.

This time, she meets my gaze. Her threat holds weight, and I swear.

Her chin juts forward, confident and unyielding.

I wonder if killing everyone had always been her plan.

“I’ll still bring you Agnarr’s heart. To give you…

the power won’t be an illusion if you have his heart. ”

“Why bother when I could just have yours?” I say, taking a step closer and crowding her.

Her body does the opposite of what it should.

Her limbs loosen, and she leans close. Her full lips are parted, just a bit, and the corners tip up as if I’m about to kiss her.

As if I’ve offered to give her the best night of her life.

And maybe I have.

Sex and self-loathing are a match made in hell for Gwyn Parsons.

Every part of me wants to indulge her. I can imagine reaching between her perfectly rounded tits as she bounces on top of me, every jiggle of her flesh bringing me closer to the edge.

I could finish inside her before burying my hand beneath her skin and taking from her what I should have stolen from the start.

But somehow, I resist.

Lifting my phone to my ear, I call Margot. Telling her where to meet me, I step over my uncle’s corpse, and walk away from the woman who keeps me teetering on the edge of madness.