Chapter 2
Red Flag
Karson drew in a deep breath and let it out again, another tiny sign the encounter had caused him distress.
He waited until he heard the car drive off before he spoke. “You can stop hiding now, Amelia.”
I cursed under my breath. Sometimes I forgot his hearing was exceptional. My legs felt shaky as I stepped out from behind the wall. “I’m not hiding.”
Karson cocked a brow, before his gaze drifted back to the headless woman, without a trace of emotion on his face. He spoke to someone lingering in the doorway of the sitting room. “Clean that up.”
Leon, one of Karson’s guards, came out of the sitting room with long strides. He stopped, rubbed his brow when he saw the body on the floor, then sighed. “This was not a good idea.”
“I’m not paying you to tell me if it’s a good idea or not. I’m paying you to clean up the mess.”
Leon shook his head in disbelief. “Some messes are impossible to clean.”
“Noted, now please do your job.” Karson didn’t wait for a response before he flashed up the stairs and stood right in front of me. There was definitely emotion now, a glowering annoyance. “I’ve told you if I have company to stay in your room until I let you know it’s safe.”
His dark hair fell over his forehead, matching eyes that were darker than their usual hazel color. His eyes darkened when he felt one of three emotions: desire, hunger, or anger. Like now. Which was considerably better than the red glow that burned when he was furious and everyone was about to die.
There was a thud as Leon slung the dead witch’s body over his shoulder. I tried not to notice how her torn flesh was jagged, or how a white bone jutted out, and how blood splashed to the floor like a shredded red flag.
My stomach churned. I tore my eyes away and willed my face to remain blank. Death and violence were a part of his world. It was about to be part of my world too, if I was expected to fight. I was going to have to kill. I couldn’t fall to pieces every time someone bled.
“Who was she?” I asked, dismayed to hear a whine in my voice.
He wiped his bloody hand down his slacks. “I don’t know, and it does not matter. Aside from the one witch in front of me, the only good witch is a dead one.”
The comment shouldn’t impact me, but it still struck hard. When Karson was a young boy, witches slaughtered his parents, so I understood why he hated them so much. I too would hate someone who murdered people I loved.
He must have noted a change in my face because he said softer, “Most witches are cold-hearted, traitorous creatures. They can never be trusted. They would sell their souls to the devil if it meant they could gain power. You will do well to remember that, Amelia.”
“Oh, you started dinner without me, how rude,” Monique’s voice purred, drawing my attention away. She stood in the doorway, smirking down at the bloody pool on the floor.
“There’s enough for a little witchy banquet.” Pixie, a vampire with tiny features, dark hair and big brown eyes, grinned.
“Sounds delicious.”
A growl rumbled from Karson’s throat. A rabid dog would sound less threatening.
Pixie’s eyes widened as she took us both in. Then she dropped her head, and in a flash of movement she was out of the door.
Monique muttered something under her breath as she strutted into the sitting room.
Karson took hold of my arm and guided me back down the hall. “Let’s get you back to bed, which is where you should have stayed!”
“What if you needed my help?”
Karson rolled his eyes. “I’ve survived centuries without it. I think I can manage a few witches without you rushing to my aid.”
I rolled my eyes in return and kept my voice casual, even though inside clattered like drums. “You do realize managing witches doesn’t mean you have to kill them. There’s an art that involves conversation that can be quite effective. You should give it a try.”
“Yes, well, there’s only one witch I’m interested in having a conversation with. And right now, she should be in bed, getting her beauty sleep.”
I tilted my head to the side. “Are you saying I’m ugly?”
“On the contrary.” He tucked a strand of hair behind my ear gently.
I tried not to notice the blood stained in his fingernails.
I tried not to pull away. It’s strange to know the same hand that could tear heads off was capable of such tenderness.
“You, Amelia, are the most exquisite little creature I’ve ever seen. ”
Butterflies raided my stomach. I forgot about the blood, about the dead woman—at least for a few seconds. One single line and I was a pathetic, love-struck fool. I could feature in one of those dark romance novels I loved to devour.
He opened the bedroom door and ushered me through, then went to the bathroom to wash his hands. I grabbed a bottle of water off the bedside stand and took a few heaping mouthfuls. My silk pillow had a dark, wet stain. Just from sweat, not from anything exciting. Shame.
Grabbing the pillow, I yanked off the cover and knocked the water bottle over. Water slugged out, splashing to the rug. I muttered a curse as I dropped the pillow and picked up the water bottle.
“I’m not certain what’s worse, hearing your screams at night and wondering if you are up here dying, or listening to the lewd comments that come out of your mouth.” To say he didn’t appreciate it when I swore was an understatement; it was rather uncouth for a lady to swear, in his archaic eyes.
He appeared in the doorway, wiping his hands on a towel.
“Don’t pretend you don’t like it when I talk dirty.”
His lips twitched. You could hardly call it a smile; often with him, it was a slight curve of his lips, the sparkle in his eye, and then it would vanish as quickly as it had appeared.
I smiled back. But my insides twisted. Truth was, he hadn’t touched me since those few weeks ago when I nearly died; hadn’t done more than kiss me on the cheek or forehead.
Hadn’t attempted anything beyond what could be considered a friendship.
I missed him. Missed his arms around me, the warmth of his body next to mine, the sound of his voice whispering my name.
I missed his presence awakening something inside like moons against the dark.
I was lonely and bored being cooped up inside all the time.
I’d always been an outdoors girl; I loved the forests of Church Heights.
I missed running. I missed home. I missed Ethan. I especially missed Ethan.
I caught the towel he tossed to me and wiped up the water. “Can you stay home tonight?”
There’s that fucking whine again.
“No. I need to keep searching.” He sounded weary as he stretched his shoulders back.
Disappointment curdled through me, but I kept my tone neutral. “Any news? Has she been seen in Portland?”
He shook his head. “No, nothing. I doubt she would be foolish enough to come here.” He began stripping the silk sheets back, revealing a large damp patch on my side of the bed. I had to change my sweat-soaked sheets most nights.
He placed the knife I kept hidden under my pillow on the bedside table, its silver blade gleaming in the dim light. No news was good, and yet I couldn’t help feeling we were in the eye of the storm, seated in a perfect calm, teetering on the cusp of all hell about to break loose.
“And yet you still search?”
“She’s unpredictable, and that is what makes her dangerous.” The traces of tiredness dissipated, as if the mere thought of her returning invigorated him.
The moonlight peeked through the crack in the curtains, falling on his face.
His dark hair tumbled over his forehead as he bent down and removed the cover.
He didn’t need to sleep as much as a human, but he still needed to sleep, and he’d barely had any these last few weeks.
He spent every night prowling the streets, looking for hints or signs that Sarah was here.
Last we heard, she was spotted in Paris.
That’s where Ethan was, with Sarah’s father, Bob, searching for her.
Georgie’s terrified, desperate face slipped behind my vision.
Her throat red raw from the thin rope around her neck.
Her long dark-brown hair clinging to the sides of her sweat-soaked face.
Her body trembling wildly as she stood on her toes, precariously perched on the chair’s edge.
The fear in her eyes was by far the worst memory.
The desperation as she pleaded with me to do something, anything.
I took a deep breath and forced the image away. “She’s a psychopathic bitch,” I muttered.
Karson headed to the walk-in robe and came back out with fresh sheets.
“How two people as nice as Bob and Marg ended up with a child like her.” I shook my head. “I have no idea.”
“She’s a firstborn,” he said by way of explanation. A firstborn vampire who was hellbent on revenge. The combination was lethal.
He began to remake the bed.
“You’re a firstborn and you’re not a psycho.” I twisted my back to him and pulled off my damp nightgown, which was not really a nightgown but one of his long gray t-shirts I liked to wear so I could smell him in his absence. I threw it onto the pile of sheets on the floor.
“Some would debate that,” he answered. There was a short pause and then he said in a soft voice, “The bruising is taking a long time to fade. Is it still painful?”
I stiffened. I had forgotten the cover of darkness was no hinderance to his eyes.
My back was still a mess of various shaded bruises and strained muscles.
A scar ran down my shoulder blade where a bookcase had snapped off and ripped into my flesh, and another red scar zigzagged across the bottom of my stomach.
I could feel his eyes sweeping over yet another sign of my weakness, a reminder of my fragility, the reason he kept me under lock and key.
I glanced back at him. He was sitting on the edge of the bed, his fingers interlocked between his thighs. Was that guilt I could see on his face?
“No, it’s fine.”
He patted the bed, and I moved over to sit beside him and took his hand in mine.
At the touch of our skin, a bubbly warmth flooded into my fingertips, rushing through my body, filling me with the urge to slide them up his arm, run my fingers over his chest, down over his corded stomach muscles—lower.
“I really think you should stay home tonight. You have eyes and ears everywhere. If someone sees something, you’ll be the first to know. You need sleep, Karson. You can’t keep going like this.”
Karson fixed his gaze on the fire reflecting on the windowpane, his voice coming out rough. “I cannot stop until we have found her.”
“And if that’s months?”
A twinge of something hard in his gaze. “It won’t be.”
I wanted to ask him how he could be so sure, but something kept my lips sealed. “Surely I could be of some use. I could go to bars and ask around at the very least.” I tossed out my hand in annoyance. “Rather than sit here like a useless ornament.”
“But you are by far the most captivating ornament I’ve ever had the privilege of viewing.”
If he thought I’d smile he was wrong. I scowled.
He studied my face in a way that made me think he was trying to read my mind. Probably he was. “Ask?” I huffed.
He smiled softly. “I’ve no need to ask. Even when I can’t peek into your head, you wear your emotions on your face like a picture.”
“Is that so? And what can you see?”
His thumb brushed over my knuckles, his voice husky. “I see determination. I see a fire burning in your green eyes.”
The way he was staring at me, with softness and hunger …
The urge to lean into him coiled around my body, a raw, primal hunger to take his fingers and slip them between my thighs.
Touching, tasting, bodies tangled together.
Wetness pooled in my core, an aching throbbing desperate to be filled.
I wanted him to hold me, take me, and make me his. Fuck me.
As if he read my thoughts and didn’t want that—didn’t want me—he rose quickly, then bending down, he kissed me on the cheek, his lips lingering for a long moment. I closed my eyes, savoring the feel of his soft, full lips on my skin.
“Get some sleep,” he murmured, and with a puff of air, he was gone.
I clutched my hands together and clamped my thighs—empty without his touch—and stared at the closed door.
“Sure, why not. What else am I going to do?” I murmured.
I didn’t sleep, not for hours.