Chapter 16
All the air flees my lungs. I fight with everything in me not to give away with my silence—with my horror—that I know who he is. The syrabraxa wails up and down my back, restless for the kill.
“Nora Abbot,” my sister says, shaking Deacon’s hand.
My eyes cut to Deacon. Why is he here with the uncle he claims to hate?
Has he been working with the High Thane all along?
But if he were, wouldn’t he have turned me in?
Told Caspar who I was? And based on the full-blown disinterest I’ve received from Caspar, the High Thane has no idea the aeon he’s searching for is standing right before him.
The subtle dread cresting in Deacon’s eyes, hidden behind a demeanor of calm, tells me he’s as horrified to see me within spitting distance of his uncle as I am to be here.
My mother pinches my side but I hardly feel it. “Viv,” she nudges. “Don’t be rude.”
“Hi.” I thrust my hand into Deacon’s. Both of our palms are sweating. “Nice to meet you.”
“You’re almost as handsome as your uncle,” my mom coos.
He offers up that half grin, charm returning to him like a second language. “You’re almost as good a liar.”
My mom, Caspar, and Stan chuckle. I try miserably to breathe.
“Excuse my daughter. She’s never been the best at first impressions.”
“Or second,” my sister says in an attempt to ease the tension.
But I can’t even access shame. Whatever spell Driscoll had used to hide himself from my aeon senses, he must have cast on Caspar too.
Just like Peter had told me last year, “A powerful turned witch could mask themselves or others.” The High Thane has been hovering around my mom for years, and I didn’t even know.
I’m going to be sick. I’m going to spew canapés all over the High Thane of the Brood.
“Viv, why don’t you tell Caspar and his nephew about some of the work you’ve been doing with Fiona for the gala?” My mom turns to Caspar and Deacon. “Viv is Fiona Hyde’s assistant.”
“I…” My mouth is made of cotton. Deacon glares at me. Get out of here, his eyes say. “I—”
“She’s a lot smarter than she’s sounding right now,” my mother jokes, squeezing my shoulders. “I promise.”
Caspar smiles at me—a politician’s smile. A serpent’s.
Ripping pain seizes my back so hard I nearly collapse right there in front of all of them. My stomach twists—I haven’t had an episode since that night outside Shiloh when I’d thought Peter was about to be turned…
Another bout of furious pain licks through me, and my vision warps until Caspar’s heart beckons like a target. I could land my blades so swiftly…
“I’ll be right back,” I manage before bolting from the group. I have to get out of here. A medley of seafood and pungent wine swims in my nostrils as I shove my way through the crowd. My spine constricts and trembles.
Kill, it tells me. Kill.
Not now, not now—
In my rush for a restroom or Fiona or something, I don’t see the carving station and nearly trip clean over it, sending an entire prime rib sailing. A broad hand grasps my inner arm just in time to yank me back onto my feet. “Easy, tiger.”
“Deacon,” I rasp. My eyes are beginning to mist over with red. My daggers burn at my thigh and waist. My back groans in pain.
He studies me once, jaw like granite, nostrils flaring as he realizes what’s happening.
And then his long arm drapes elegantly around my shoulder as he guides me through the party.
I must be gray and sweating bullets, because when a woman gives me a horrified look, Deacon says, “Bad crab puff, excuse us.”
“Viv?”
In my bloodlust daze, there is nobody I’m more horrified to see when I crane my neck around than James. I try to stall my feet but Deacon is stronger, urging us from the tented backyard and toward the house. “Wait,” I gulp. “That’s my—”
“I got this,” James says, stepping into our path. “I can take her.”
“Don’t think that’s true,” Deacon hums, sizing up James.
“This is my—” I gasp around a sharp surge of pain ratcheting through my scar. “—ex-boyfriend. James.”
“Him?” Deacon says to me under his breath. He sounds genuinely disappointed. “Really?”
“Stop.”
“Feeling sick?” James asks.
“A bit,” I croak.
“No more shellfish for this one.” Deacon’s grinning, though I can feel his grip tightening as he becomes irritated.
Don’t let Deacon kill James, I think, even as the sickness inside of me chants Let him kill them all and drink their souls with a twist of lime.
“We’re going to go find a medicine cabinet. ”
James frowns as sweat drips into my eyelashes. “What’s bothering you?”
Deacon’s muscles tighten. “Nosy morons, apparently.”
James crosses his arms as he leans in close. “Viv. You can’t really be dating this guy.”
“I don’t know about dating,” Deacon muses, hoisting me up as I begin to slip in his grasp. “But the sex is outrageous. Bye now.”
And then Deacon ducks us back inside the Pine home. At his urging I stumble down a marble hallway until he drags us into a guest bathroom. I’m too disoriented to fight, which means if he did come here with his uncle to end me, I’ve essentially given him the go-ahead.
When the door shuts and we’re alone, I begin to hyperventilate. “Don’t touch me,” I stammer, fishing for my blades beneath my dress. My fingers snag on the nylon of my sheer tights.
The look on Deacon’s face could curl the floral wallpaper off the powder room’s walls. “If I wanted to hurt you, Vivienne, you’d be bleeding already.”
Maybe he’s right. I don’t know. I can’t think—
I double over in pain as it snakes up my back. “It’s happening again.”
“The syrabraxa?” Deacon doesn’t look worried, but he’s assessing me in a way I don’t like. As if he’s a doctor and I’m a panicked child, afraid of the X-ray machine.
“Yes,” I manage before I dry heave. “It wants—it’s demanding—”
“The kill. I know. We should get you out of here.”
“I can’t—” I inhale a too-big breath. “This fundraiser means everything to my mom.” Another breath. “It cost more than my tuition at”—inhale—“Belaire School for Girls.”
Deacon raises a brow in approval. “Hot.”
I dry heave again.
“If my uncle realizes what you are, he’ll have his Brood massacre every person at your mom’s tea party just to snatch you up. Probably blame STC criminals and use it to help his cause.”
It’s not a concern for my well-being—or the innocent guests of the tea party. Caspar will break open the Chasm. Demons will reign. My back seizes with pain and the craving for deviant blood.
“I just need it to—” I suck in another breath. Each one feels like my lungs are lined with rusted nails. “Pass.”
“Here,” he says, shrugging off his jacket to reveal a white T-shirt underneath, of course. “Try this.” Then, though I cannot fathom why, Deacon lifts his shirt and bares his abdomen to me.
Sure, I’m on the verge of a bloodlust-induced panic attack, and yeah, I despise Deacon Graveheart and everything he’s ever done, believed in, or stood for, but here’s the thing: I am a human woman. And there’s no denying the sight before me is…distracting.
Deacon—with his perfect nose and curved, crooked lips and that painfully masculine jaw—is leaning back against the door of the bathroom, broad chest exposed as he lifts his shirt. His immaculately cut abdomen flexes and contracts as he breathes. Heavy. Tense. Mouth slightly open.
That ever-present silver chain hangs beside the foreboding tattoos on either side of his neck.
The few scattered down his arms—eyes and locks and swords and dice—ripple with the subtle shift of his muscles.
My eyes travel lower. To another tattoo, inked over his ribs—a sailor’s heart with the word Mom scrawled inside.
Another, covered halfway by the low-slung waistband of his dark trousers.
Slight blond hairs dust below his navel.
His too-long legs are splayed wide to lower him to my height.
Unfortunately, girls across the country would plaster this poster on their bedroom walls.
“What are you doing?” I’m not sure which one of us I’m speaking to.
“Dagger me,” he instructs. “It’ll take the edge off.”
And it’s true, alongside the unwelcome realization that Deacon is physically appealing is a pulsing urge, a needy desire, to end the predator before me.
“You’re not going to let me kill you,” I breathe.
“No,” he says slowly as if that’s obvious, despite his naked chest and the shining blades beneath my clothes. “But you can have a freebie shot if it’ll bring you back down to earth.”
My mind is wandering. I lift the hem of my skirt slowly and hear his intake of breath as he sees the silver dagger strapped to my thigh. I retrieve it and feel the cool hilt in my palm. A pleasurable rush splits through me.
“Vivienne,” he warns. “Don’t make me knock you out.”
“It’s Viv,” I hum, pain in my back briefly forgotten. “I know you know that.”
“Gut only. Be smart now. I’m faster than you.”
His heart beats loudly in my ears. Not pulsing with fear, but something else. Something I can’t articulate. A different rhythm than I’ve heard before. It would be so easy to drive the fine point of Angel into the ribbiting organ. Finish him for good.
In a flash, I plunge the dagger into Deacon’s side, between his bottom two ribs.
He releases a low, muted groan and slams his coiled fist into the marble countertop.
Fractures spiderweb across the stone, and the red mist clears from my vision.
The agony in my back and chest recedes to a manageable, dull ache.
“Shit,” I breathe, watching the blood seep from his wound down to the tiles at our feet.
“You’re welcome,” he grunts, yanking my dagger from his side and letting it clatter to the floor. Using a handful of paper towels, Deacon stanches the bleeding. “Feeling better?”
Despite everything, I nod. My bloodlust is nowhere to be found, a quiet shame at my own actions in its place. But also, a bone-deep relief. “How did you know that would work?”
“Back in 1781, Baz knew an aeon in France who was a host, like you. Said the spell distorted his bloodlust. Made it fueled by rage, not duty.”