17. The Deepest Cut
The Deepest Cut
‘Are you going to tell me where we’re going?’ I ask, as Micah shelters me from the wind that rushes past. I can barely hear myself, but I know he can easily.
I‘m trying to distract myself from the sheer terror of being this high up. The city is spread out before us, a glittering array of lights beneath the rainbow Skyway. Even the cars speeding along the lightning-rod lines are small from this distance, like toys.
But I trust Micah. His powerful wings beat a rhythm his heart no longer does. There’s power and majesty, an innate grace in his movements.
I don’t want to think about what just happened.
It’s not taking Micah’s blood that I have a problem with.
It’s the feelings it evoked. He can call it bloodlust all he wants, but it brought back too many memories of how it felt to live with the constant need to be near him, to want to have him look at me like he did earlier.
To have him brand me with his lips, tease and torment me with his seductive mouth.
‘The Coven,’ his breath against my ear sends a shiver through me, and he pulls me tighter against him, thinking I’m cold. But despite the air temperature up here, there’s a blaze raging inside me.
His words echo through my soul. The Coven that became home for me, where I healed after tragedy, piecing myself back together again so very slowly. My new family, until we had to leave.
It wasn’t one thing that led to it, but the tipping point is etched into my heart and mind. It was no one’s fault, but I always blamed myself.
‘Stop thinking about it,’ Micah says firmly, his voice a warm caress against the chill air. ‘It wasn’t your fault.’ I press my face tighter against his chest, my hands clenched around his neck.
‘You left because of me,’ I say the words that have been burning inside me for far too long. The self-recrimination I’ve buried down deep.
‘I left because I chose to, Evangeline.’ He pauses and reaches up with the arm cradling my back, his hand winding into my hair. I’ve been steadily focusing on his chest, but now I tilt back my head so I can see his face. ‘I never do anything I do not wish to do.’
My eyes catch on his smiling lips at the words. I trace every perfect line, his chiseled jaw and cut-glass cheekbones, before finally meeting his gaze. His midnight eyes glint with mirth and a challenge.
I huff out a laugh of my own. ‘Everyone knows Micah Saint James does what he pleases,’ I tease him, and damn it feels so good, so normal, so right.
But I sober quickly, my eyes flicking between his as I ask what I’ve been too much of a coward to before. ‘Micah, what happened to Brad?’
The newly made Vamp who almost lost control around me, around my human blood.
We had become friends, and we thought we were safe.
But neither of us knew the full extent of the bloodlust that drives a Vampire after being Turned.
He was only nineteen, young to be given permission to join the Coven, to be granted immortality.
At eighteen, I was excited to have someone near my age.
So we started hanging out, enjoying the same jokes, celeb gossip, holos, and social feeds.
I shared mine with him because a Vamp’s microchip shorts out once they die.
But one day, he had gone too long without feeding. One more holo, I’ll be fine. I’ll get some synthetic blood after this.
I remember screaming, visceral fear ripping through me as I fought him off. It was Lila who tore him away, right before his fangs slid into my throat.
Brad was horrified, and I was hysterical, remembering another night, another Vampire. My parents dead and drained of blood, while I screamed and waited for death to claim me too.
Micah and I left for the castle that night.
Now, he stills against me, and for a few moments, there’s only the sound of his wings spread out behind him and my heartbeat against his chest. His arms anchor me to him and the present. Even now, I think he knows me better than anyone.
‘Nothing happened to him. He was young, and it was no more his fault than it was yours,’ he finally tells me.
‘Then who was punished?’ I know Coven rules.
It’s illegal to take human blood without consent.
And many humans would prefer if it were made illegal altogether.
But the World Treaty is relatively new, and what we gained was hard won.
There are Vampires worldwide who are against humans having any say in their affairs.
It’s the same with Lycanthropes. There is only so much they will concede to.
There will always be humans willing to give blood, and after tasting Micah’s, I understand a fraction of what it’s like to want to lose control.
I can only imagine what it would be like to feel the flood of intense pleasure at having fangs in my neck.
Every part of me had wanted to beg Micah for it.
It was as if all rational thought had flown away.
‘The Vampire who Turned him. He was her responsibility.’ There’s no emotion in his voice, no inflection in his words. It’s a fact, nothing more.
‘And…and what was Louisa’s punishment?’ I don’t even know why, after all this time, I’m asking him.
Why I have the sudden, desperate need to know.
Louisa was my friend, and I don’t like this feeling, this new realization about myself.
That I ran from the Coven, and then I ran from Micah.
And part of me has been running ever since.
But no one can run forever. The past is slowly, inexorably, catching up with me.
‘Do you really want to know?’ Micah’s eyes search mine, his face carved from granite in the shadow of his powerful wings.
I can only nod in answer, my throat constricted.
‘She was starved for six months.’ His words are uncompromising, unforgiving, and unapologetic. He’s the leader of the NYC Coven, respected and feared around the world. His word is not only law, it’s justice.
The horror of what he’s revealed shoots through me, and my eyes widen on his.
‘Stop taking on burdens that are not yours to carry.’ His eyes are wholly black, not a silver star to be seen, his mouth a hard line.
Micah’s hand tightens in my hair, his arm a band across my back, rigid and unyielding as he stops me from looking away from him.
He’s right. None of it was my fault. I need to let go of the secret guilt I’ve been carrying with me for eight years.
Flying toward the Coven after all this time has brought it to the surface.
Starvation is torture for a Vamp, but six months isn’t long for an immortal.
Louisa wouldn’t have had time to fully desiccate, and I know she would have been given drops of blood to keep her barely functioning.
‘Why are we going to the Coven?’ It’s not for a trip down memory lane.
Not to reminisce, or so I can catch up with all the Vamps I used to know.
Some of whom keep in touch, which I am sure Micah is not only aware of but gave permission to.
Ruby and I have drinks and go dancing with Lila and a few others.
None of them ever mentions Micah to me or what happened.
I’ve never told Lila the truth about why I left the castle and Micah, but I’m sure she’s guessed.
Dawn is fast approaching as Micah spreads his wings taut and banks hard.
The Skyway looms closer as he spears for a part of the city I have rarely been in over the past several years.
The bright laser rails with cars shooting across them loom closer.
Micah is looking at me with a grin on his face as he dives right for them, wings tight against his back.
I scream as we free-fall, pressing myself further into him.
It reminds me of skydiving, that rush of adrenaline that leaves you breathless with excitement, even as sheer terror floods your veins.
I don’t close my eyes, don’t want to miss any of this as he shoots between the streets suspended in the sky, colors a blur as we pass.
Then the city is before us, the tallest buildings almost within touching distance as Micah levels out, laughing, his eyes lit up in a way I’ve never seen before. And I’m laughing at the sheer joy he gets from flying, wishing we had done it sooner.
The Coven Estate spreads out before us as we glide down through buildings to the street below.
‘Lila is dead,’ Micah says, the light dying from his eyes. And then we’re landing, his wings rising behind him like a monument.
I have a moment of disorientation, of thinking I misheard him. Lila cannot possibly be dead. She’s his second, his liaison with city officials and the police. She’s my friend.
‘I’m sorry, Evangeline.’ He’s holding me close, his body hard against mine, but his hands are gentle. I cling to him and bury my face in his shirt. For one moment, I let myself feel her loss, tears prickling behind my tightly closed eyes.
My disbelief gives way to questions. Micah has brought me here as Detective Eve Sinclair, head of the Paranormal Police Squad. Which means this is murder.
I pull away sharply, pushing against his chest. Micah sets me down gently, his hands on my arms to steady me.
His wings disappear, shadows replacing them to wind over his arms and shoulders like a caress.
I’ve always wondered if he gets comfort from them, from the darkness they hold, shielding him from the light.
I stare unseeing up at the building rising before us as I gather my thoughts.
The Coven isn’t only one building; it covers an entire block in the center of New York City.
It’s an estate, Micah’s own custom-built fortress.
An impenetrable black fence surrounds it, blocking the first level from view.
But the upper levels rise above, a monolith of modern architecture, all glass and steel.
The glass is triple-UV coated and tinted to prevent the sun’s rays from penetrating the interior while letting in light.
No dark, Gothic monstrosity for these Vampires.
Inside, it contains everything they could ever need.
It’s decadent and opulent, while also being practical.
One part holds self-contained apartments, both permanent residences and guest suites.
Mine had been everything I could have dreamed of, with a large living area and balcony overlooking a park; a kitchen always stocked with food; a holo screen covering one wall, along with several i-screens; and the largest bathroom I’d ever seen, with a sunken jacuzzi set against a glass wall.
As far as I know, I’m the only human who has ever resided here.
Very few even visit, and they stay in an area separate from the rest of the sprawling complex.
Micah wants those with living family to have the freedom to visit.
The transition is difficult enough, he once told me, without being cut off completely from their former lives.
But few humans are comfortable being in the same space as Vampires.
There are indoor and outdoor parks and gardens, a holo theater- which also plays old movies and TV shows- a bowling alley, pools, gyms, and saunas.
Three blood banks with synthetic blood and several cafes are spread throughout the complex.
There’s even a bar where blood is served alongside alcohol.
It’s open to humans who want to drink and dance, providing both privacy and anonymity.
I steady myself against the familiarity of it, glancing up at the Vampire towering over me.
He’s gilded in reds and pinks, the oranges and golds of the sunrise just spreading their glow above the park opposite us, high rises and apartments spread out in the distance.
Against the backdrop of the dawn, his face is cast in shadow, but I see the devastation he’s not bothering to hide etched there in stark relief.
Tearing my gaze away from his perfection, I become aware of the quiet surrounding us. The lack of police presence, med and tech bots…the ME. I’m not sure what to ask first, struggling to push aside our tentatively renewed friendship to become the detective that’s needed.
Micah came to my home in the middle of the night to bring me here. He trusts me. And more than that, he’s letting me know he respects me as a professional.
‘How?’ The words are raw when I finally push them past the constriction in my throat.
‘You need to see for yourself.’ He takes my hand as the gates swing open before us, and he leads me into the heart of the Vampire Coven for the first time in eight years.