Chapter 29
29
brOGAN
I woke with a start, my senses immediately alerting me to the empty space beside me. Esme's warmth, her scent, the steady rhythm of her heartbeat—all gone. Panic gripped my chest as I ran my hand over the indentation her body had left in the sheets. Her side of the bed was cold, and for a moment I wondered if I'd dreamt the whole thing. Grabbing the pillow beside me, I shoved my face into it and inhaled deeply, catching the lingering notes of her scent.
Not a dream, then.
"Esme?"
Sliding out of bed naked as the day I was human born, I walked to the door and cracked it open. Across the hall, the bathroom door was wide open and the light was off. Sticking my head out farther, I listened to the rest of the house, but other than Dae and Elias snoring in their separate rooms, Lizzy's steady heartbeat, Wiggles’ snores, and Killian’s light breathing, the house was quiet.
I hurriedly threw on some clothes, not even bothering to check if they were clean. The only thing on my mind was finding Esme. I tracked her scent through the quiet house, my bare feet padding silently across the hardwood floors. When I reached the back door, her trail continued outside. I didn't pause to grab a jacket or shoes, despite the chill in the night air. My instincts told me to hurry. To get to her.
As I closed the door softly behind me, I inhaled deep, but her scent was gone, lost on the breeze that whispered through the courtyard. A mixture of panic that she would sneak off by herself, sorrow that she still didn't trust me enough to wake me up, and fucking fury that she'd put herself in danger made my fangs punch through my gums before I could control my reaction. My upper lip lifted in a snarl and my throat burned with the sudden thirst to have my mate in my arms where she was safe, my fangs locked deep in her throat. The pavement chilled my bare feet, but I barely noticed—all my senses straining to pick up any trace of Esme. My fingers curled into fists at my sides as I fought against the primal urge to tear through the darkness, ripping apart the city until I found her.
I should’ve gotten her oath that she would stay at the house, where it was safe.
Closing my eyes, I listened again. Not with my ears this time, but with the blood flowing through my veins. I listened for the call of my own blood. I listened for the call of my mate's blood.
It only took a few seconds to feel the pull.
I followed it, moving through the pre-dawn streets of New Orleans like nothing more than a shadow. The only humans outside were the trash collectors and a middle-aged woman carrying supplies into a small bakery to prepare for the morning rush, but I was there and gone with the slightest flicker of the streetlights.
The connection between Esme and me pulsed stronger with every step, guiding me like a compass needle to its true north. I didn't need to think about where I was going—my feet carried me forward, driven by instinct and the deep-seated need to find my mate.
The cemetery gates loomed ahead, dark and foreboding in the moonlight. Honestly, I wasn't surprised to be here again. Of course, she'd come back to this place, where the veil between worlds felt thin and magic practically crackled in the air.
I heard Esme’s voice, and she wasn’t alone.
The old iron bars creaked slightly as I slipped inside, moving with preternatural stealth, careful not to make a sound that would betray my presence since I didn’t know what I was walking into. The sweet, spicy scent of Esme’s blood hung heavy in the cool night air, mixed with the waxy aroma of recently extinguished candles and that same strange, ancient scent of unfamiliar magic I'd smelled at Lizzy’s shop.
Staying low, I crept between the rows of tombs, following the soft murmur of voices until I spotted her. Esme and Alice Moss stood facing each other between two mausoleums, their figures illuminated by the pale moonlight filtering through the tombs. Remnants of magic floated in the air, making the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end.
Why the hell was Esme sneaking out to meet with Alice? I ducked behind a weeping stone angel, listening to their hushed conversation without revealing my presence.
"—haven't told them," Alice was saying, her voice barely above a whisper. "Judy would never understand."
"She's going to find out," Esme told her. "Marcus will make sure of that."
"I know. But this is our best chance."
My blood ran cold, the mention of Marcus's name setting off alarm bells in my head. I pressed myself against the cold stone of the tomb, barely noticing the rough texture biting into my back through the thin material of my shirt.
"Tomorrow night then," Esme said. "I'll meet you at the place we discussed."
"Yes. And Esme? Be careful who you trust with this information."
Esme gave her a solemn nod. "I understand. You, too."
I was about to step out from behind the statue and make my presence known when my skin prickled uncomfortably. Glancing up at the sky, I cursed under my breath as the first rays of dawn threatened the horizon.
With one last, frustrated look in Esme’s direction, I ran from the cemetery and raced back to the house, dodging the humans on their way to get coffee and beignets before work.
Fuck me.
The sun fucking hurt .
By the time I slipped through the back door of the house, my skin was burning painfully from the first rays of sunlight. I locked the door behind me and leaned back against it, sliding down to sit on the cool tile floor when my legs wouldn't hold me up anymore.
That was too fucking close.
Absent-mindedly, I held my bare arms out in front of me. The skin was red, but hadn't started to blister yet. My face probably looked much the same. Just in case, I ran a hand over the top of my head to make sure it wasn't smoking.
"Brogan? Jesus Christ!"
Killian dropped to his haunches in front of me, his eyes roving over my face before he checked my arms. "Are ye alright?" he asked, slightly calmer when he didn't find anything that wouldn't heal itself in a few hours.
“I’m okay,” I told him. “Just cut it a little too close this time.”
"What happened?" Killian asked, helping me to my feet. "Where's Esme?"
"Cemetery," I muttered, stumbling toward the kitchen. I felt like I was drunk, but the effects of sunlight were brutal on a vampire. Even one as old as me. "With Alice Moss."
Killian's eyebrows shot up as he helped me onto one of the stools at the counter. " Alice ? And Esme? What the hell were they doing together?"
“I’m not sure exactly, but I think they’re planning to take down Marcus.”
“By themselves?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know. I didn’t hear the entire conversation.”
He said nothing for a long time. “Tell me everything," he ordered. “From the beginning.”
And that's exactly what I did. Ending with waking up to find her gone. Following the call of her blood to the cemetery. Every word I'd overheard, and my desperate run home.
But with each sentence I said out loud, an uneasy feeling began to uncurl in my gut. Something didn’t make sense here. I stuttered to a stop as a sneaking suspicion arose. Not so much anything they’d said, but my intuition screamed that something was off with that meeting.
Killian tried to catch my eye. “What is it?”
I shook my head. I didn't want to tell him. Because I didn’t want to believe it. It couldn’t be true.
Could it?
“Brogan." Killian's voice had that edge to it—the one that made it impossible not to answer him.
"I think..." My throat constricted around the words, even as the sense of wrongness intensified. Gritting my teeth, I forced them out. "I think I’ve been wrong about her. About Esme. I think she’s working with Marcus. They both are.”
Killian didn't immediately dismiss my concerns, which only made it worse. He just watched me, his golden eyes calculating. “Why do ye think that?
God. Was I really so fucking stupid? I didn’t want to believe it, but I couldn’t shake this feeling. “Why else would they be sneaking around together? Meeting in secret?” I looked to Killian so he could tell me I was being ridiculous.
But he shook his head. “I don’t have an answer for ye, lad. Truth be told, it does seem rather suspicious.”
It suddenly occurred to me exactly who Alice had been referring to when she told Esme to be careful. She wasn’t talking about just anyone. She was talking about me .
ME.
She was telling Esme not to say anything to ME. Alice had probably sensed my blood inside of Esme the moment she saw her tonight. Just as she could sense Kenya's in Alex and Jamal's in Angel as any witch would. And she knew exactly what that meant.
My fangs ached to descend as fury and betrayal battled inside me. Had Esme been working with that bastard this entire time as I first suspected? Was this whole thing—was Esme herself—just an elaborate fucking trap?
I wanted to confront her. To make her feel what I was feeling. Yet I could do nothing but sit here and wait for the sun to go down.
But the physical threat to me paled in comparison to the storm building inside me, ripping me apart. I wanted to run. To fight. To do…something.
Esme had played me for a fucking fool. All this time I thought she was actually into me—the way she'd shown up at the club night after night, watching me, following me outside, asking questions about what I was, distracting me with kisses, with sex, with her blood—it hadn't been attraction or coincidence. It was calculation. A setup from the very beginning.
And I'd fallen for it completely, like the attention starved idiot that I am.
My insides churned as I started pacing. What a fucking fool I was. She'd practically stalked me, for Christ's sake. And not the way a normal woman—witch or not—was attracted to a vampire. I’d seen the red flags when she kept coming back to The Purple Fang, refusing to take no for an answer. When she conveniently showed up at Lizzy's shop looking for a job. When she somehow knew exactly what I was. I’d seen the red flags, but I’d ignored them.
I should've fucked with her head as soon as she started getting too curious, instead of humoring her questions because I liked the way my entire body buzzed with electricity whenever she was within twelve feet of me.
She’d known what she was doing all along. She'd been working with Marcus from the fucking start.
The thought of her in my bed, of her blood in my veins, made me want to flay my own skin off. Slice my wrists and drain myself dry. I'd told her everything , made her my mate, bound myself to her in ways that couldn't be undone. And this whole time, she'd been planning...what? To hand us over to Marcus? To help him destroy us?
The taste of betrayal was bitter in my mouth. Worse than dying of thirst, worse than the memory of the cult elder's belt on my back.
Because I'd chosen to trust her. I'd chosen to believe her.
And the worst part? I was a fucking mess over it.
"And now I'm well and truly fucked," I concluded, dragging my hand through my hair. "As you were so happy to point out, she's my mate now, Killian. The bond is complete. I can't undo that."
Killian rubbed his thigh, his old tell when he was troubled. "The bond does complicate things."
I laughed bitterly. "You think?"
His head suddenly whipped toward the hallway, tilting to the side. "But if she truly means to betray us, yer instincts would have warned ye," he said distractedly as Lizzy entered the room.
Her eyes shot back and forth between the two of us as she put the tea kettle on to boil. She gave me a smile, which grew warmer when she looked at Killian, then gestured to Wiggles to follow her to the backdoor so she could take him outside.
I stood up and went into the kitchen to get out of the way of the door, staring at the granite countertop on the island as Killian watched her leave. I wanted to believe what he said, but doubt gnawed at me. "What if the mate bond overrode everything else? What if I was too...distracted to notice?"
Reluctantly, Killian turned his attention back to me once Lizzy and her old pup were outside. He hated her being outside in the sun alone, even if it was just in our back courtyard. "What are they telling ye now?"
I didn't know what they were telling me. I couldn't feel anything outside of the fear and betrayal rolling within me. "They're telling me I should've just let myself burn on the way back from the cemetery, because it would've been easier than slowly starving to death."
Pain shot through my skull as Killian's anger flooded through me.
"If ye don't stop with that kind of talk, I'll throw ye out there myself," he threatened.
Holding my hands up in surrender, I apologized. "Sorry."
His anger fled as quickly as it came on. “Brogan. It’ll be all right, lad.”
“Not sure you’re right about that this time,” I told him.
* * *
Twelve hours later, I paced the room like a caged beast, each minute stretching longer than the last. Esme still hadn't returned to the house, and all of my calls, and Lizzy’s, went directly to voicemail. Was she with Marcus? Were they looking for that fucking book?
Maybe I was jumping to conclusions. Maybe I had this all wrong. Esme could’ve been talking to Alice about anything. They were probably trying to figure out a way to find the book before Marcus did, or maybe Judy had changed her mind about the coven helping us and sent Alice to tell Esme.
But why the hell would they be sneaking around if any one of those scenarios were true? No. If Esme was on our side, she’d answer her goddamn phone.
The worst part was knowing that I’d been right all along. There was no saving my soul after becoming this monster. There was no redemption for me. Why else would God have chosen Esme as my mate? A woman who didn’t care about me. A bruja who lied and manipulated me to get what she wanted.
The elders were right, and it was nothing less than I deserved. There was no forgiveness for me here on this earth, but perhaps there’d be some in the next.
The sun finally dipped below the horizon, painting the sky with shades of crimson and violet, and there was still no sign of Esme. I walked over to the window and pulled the curtains aside, looking out at the street as the shadows lengthened with the last rays of sunlight. Maybe I should go back to the graveyard. Retrace her steps. I let the curtain fall again and paced away from the warmth of the dying sun.
There was a knock at the front door. Pulling the curtain aside again, I saw Alice Moss standing on our doorstep. Anger rose up inside of me, swift and brutal. Esme wasn’t with her.
"Are ye gonna let her in? Or are ye just gonna stand there peering at her from the window?" Killian strode across the front room and unlocked the door, then opened it wide, avoiding the final rays of sun.
She stepped into the dim light of the living room, giving Killian a smile as she greeted him. Alice was always kind to everyone. Now I knew it was only her way of tricking everyone.
"Alice. How are ye?"
"I'm scared," she told him with a shaky smile. Her words rang with honesty. Seeing me standing off to the side by the windows, she asked, "Is Esme upstairs? Is she ready?"
Killian and I exchanged a glance. I crossed my arms over my chest, not quite ready to set aside my apprehensions about her yet. "Ready for what?" I asked.
A look of confusion passed over her delicate features. "She didn't tell you?"
"Tell me what?"
Instead of answering, she gave me another confused look. "Is she not here?"
Killian answered before I could try to get more information from her. "Esme never came back to the house after sneaking out in the wee hours of the morning."
She hesitated for a moment before responding. “She should’ve come back here this morning," her eyes moved from Killian to me, "right after you did."
God, I was a fucking idiot. Of course, she’d known I was there. Which meant Alice showing up here, alone, was how they intended to cover their asses. Another shock of pain hit me hard, making my eyes water. “So you changed your plans.”
The look Alice gave me would’ve been downright comical if I wasn’t so disgusted at what a great liar she was. Who would’ve thought innocent, sweet Alice was such a great actress? I’d heard them last night. I’d felt Esme’s betrayal.
The more I thought about it, the more certain I was that I’d been wrong about her all along.
Or she would’ve answered her fucking phone.
“Brogan.” Killian’s voice carried a warning. “Let me handle this.”
I ripped my cell phone out of my pocket and hit redial. To Alice, I said, “Maybe you should stop trying to turn this around on me and tell us the truth about why you two were at the cemetery.”
“brOGAN.”
Turning my back, I listened to Esme’s voicemail for the hundredth time that day. I threw the phone across the room, but the damage it did to the wall gave me no satisfaction.
“Did she mention going somewhere else, perhaps?” Killian asked.
Alice’s brow furrowed in worry even as she nervously eyed me. “No. She was coming straight here. She wanted to get back before you woke up,” she told me.
“I followed her there, like you did,” she told me. Her gaze whipped back to Killian. “Wait. You’re saying you don’t know where she is?” Her voice was laced with panic.
Panic that didn’t sound faked.
Had I gotten it all wrong?
“I take it ye and Esme had some sort of plan?”
"Yes," Alice said, her voice high with worry. "We were supposed to meet tonight. All of us. I told her I wanted to help."
"Help with Marcus." Killian confirmed.
"Yes." Alice twisted her hands nervously, glancing at me. "She didn't want to worry you…"
"Get to the point, Alice. Please," I begged. My head was throbbing.
“We planned to meet here tonight to come up with a different way to get rid of Marcus." She glanced back and forth between us. “See for yourself if you don’t believe me. Go on,” she insisted.
“I don’t think that’s necessary…” Killian started.
“Do it,” she told him. “If something happened to Esme, we don’t have time to sit around here with him glaring at me all night.” She gestured to me.
“All right,” Killian told her. “I’m sorry, Alice. But we need to be sure, ye understand?”
“I understand,” she said. Then she waited while Killian went into her thoughts.
A moment later, he met my stare, and I knew from his eyes that what she told us was the truth. The room tilted sideways as the implications hit me. "You mean she's not... working with him?"
"Working with him?" Alice looked horrified. "Gods, no. She hates him. He killed her entire family, Brogan! Why would she be working with him?"
I gripped the back of the couch to steady myself. "But…you told her to be careful who she trusted."
"I meant my aunt Judy and the coven," Alice said. "They refused to help Esme, and Judy decided we were not to get involved unless he came after us directly. I was worried if they found out I was working with her behind their backs, they'd stop us before we could try."
Blackness crept toward the edges of my vision as I realized the truth.
Esme was missing.
"Brogan."
My head whipped toward Killian.
"Listen," he told me. "In here." He slapped his open hand to the middle of his chest. "And tell me what you feel."
It took me a moment to tamp down the hysteria that was building and focus, but when I did, the blood bond between us tugged at something deep inside me, faint but present. She was alive, at least. But something was wrong. Very wrong. All of this hysteria wasn’t mine. It was Esme. Panicking.
“She's alive."
The bond . It was the bond I’d felt this morning. Only I’d been wrong about what I’d felt. I realized that now. I tried to unclench my jaw to ease the horrible ache there, but it only moved to my ribs. Pain exploded through the bond. God, my head…
My legs nearly gave out for the second time that night, and the three of us stared at each other as the terrible truth settled over the room.
“He took her,” I told them. “Marcus. It was Esme’s fear and apprehension I felt this morning. Not mine. Hers .”
Marcus had her.
He had my mate.
And I'd been sitting here all day, burning with anger, convinced she'd betrayed me—while all along she'd been trying to protect us all.
My chest constricted with a terror I'd never experienced before.
I'd been so fucking wrong about her. In all the centuries I'd been alive, I'd never been more terrified than I was at this moment. Because for the first time, I had something—someone—to lose.
And he was killing her.