CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE || BRYAN
“ B ryan,” Liz greeted me an hour later, peering at me from the other side of the front counter as I walked in. Concern flashed in her face. “Are you checking out already?”
“I am,” I agreed. “I need to leave tonight. I appreciate everything, though. You’ve been very kind.”
“Did he find you? He came here, you know. I’m sure it was your ex. He tried to rent a room. I told him we were full up.”
“Tobias?” I asked, startled by her admission. After a long, incredulous moment, I almost smiled. That’s why he’d been sleeping in his car. “No, he’s not the bad guy here. There are two men, though. They’re not very nice men at all. And they’ll come looking for me. They’ll be asking questions.”
“I won’t tell them a thing, I swear.”
“I know that.”
I felt a wave of guilt about what I was going to do next. But I was protecting her, wasn’t I? This wasn’t the same thing as bending someone else’s will to get my way. I was doing this so that she wouldn’t be in danger when Michael and Danny came knocking.
I let out a breath, inwardly steeling myself. “You won’t be able to tell them anything.” I paused, letting power flow into my words. “Because you’re not feeling well.”
“But I feel fine.” Her eyebrows drew together as she studied me with confusion evident on her face.
I caught her eye and pushed. “No, you’re not. You’re feeling too sick to work tonight, Liz. You can’t be here right now. You need to go home.”
She blinked, her expression going glazed as the hypnotic power in my voice swept over her. “I—I think you’re right. I’m not feeling well.”
Giles had commanded me to compel innocent mundanes to act as human shields any time he forced me to hurt the witches he wanted dead. Presumably, it was so the witches wouldn’t fight back with lethal force and break his toy— me. And doing it had been effortless. My hypnotic gift had always been powerful, even when I’d first been turned into a vampire. Veronika said it happened like that sometimes. Vampires are still individuals and some of them are outliers.
It was effortless now, too.
But it felt very different, this time. I wasn’t using my gift to hurt someone else. I was saving her from danger. My intentions made it feel different to me.
The power I possessed wasn’t bad on its own. I had been forced to use it for evil ends, but it was just a tool, like any other. It was a hammer. It could be used to either build a house or to inflict grievous harm. It wasn’t the hammer’s responsibility to choose.
It was mine.
“You’ll feel much better once you’re home, I promise. In fact, you still feel well enough to drive, but not to work. You know you can’t be here tonight. You’ll obey every traffic law and go straight home. Then when you go to bed, you’ll get the best sleep of your life.”
Liz nodded, frowning at me as my words sank in.
“Huh.” She grimaced, a moment later. “I do feel like shit warmed up. Well, this came on suddenly.”
“I’m sure it did,” I replied softly. “And if those bad men come looking for me, you won’t be here. You’ll be safe at home. They won’t be able to hurt you or scare you. And in the morning, you’ll know that I was just some guest you helped. A stranger, passing through. You won’t remember me much at all.”
Liz nodded, then massaged her temples. “I have the worst headache.”
“I’m sorry about that,” I replied, casting a nervous look at the door. Were Michael and Danny on their way here now? How much time did we have? “You really will feel much better once you’re home.”
Liz nodded again. “Sure,” she replied absently, as she hastily logged out of the computer and gathered up her coat. “I’ll charge your card tomorrow. Check out is at eleven, so you can stay that long if you like.”
“I’m leaving soon. In a few minutes, probably.”
Tobias was in the room, packing.
She hurried past me and paused at the door. Then she turned and gave me a worried look. “You’ll be safe?”
I blinked at her, startled. It was difficult for mundanes to push through a vampire’s hypnotic powers. Liz must have had a very strong will. Somehow, that part didn’t surprise me at all. And something tightened in my chest at her words, that she still had the presence of mind to be concerned for me, a total stranger to her.
I suddenly felt fiercely glad that I was keeping her out of harm’s way.
Though, belatedly, I realized I might be messing things up for her here at work. I had been so worried about her safety that I hadn’t considered whether this would create problems for her. Granted, it was probably far better that her boss be upset than having the hunters getting violent with her because they were looking for information about me. I wasn’t sure they were capable of hurting an innocent woman, but I was certain that I wasn’t willing to take that chance.
“Yeah,” I told her, trying to mean it. “I’ll do my best to be safe.”
She smiled, some of the glazed blankness leaving her expression. “You remind me of my son, you know. You’re a lot like he is, I think. I get a sense about people sometimes. And my gut tells me that you’re a good kid. And, anyway, I’m a mom—I worry. It comes with the territory.”
I smiled at that. “You don’t need to worry about me. You won’t remember me well, but you’ll always believe I ended up safe and that good things happened to me. No matter what else happens, you’ll know that. You can leave here tonight knowing that everything is going to be okay.”
I didn’t push her hard, but it was enough that it would have short-circuited the will of most mundane folks. But Liz was stronger than that by far. She frowned at my strange words, but after pausing for a long moment, she nodded.
“Yeah, I hope so,” she replied, flashing me a tired smile.
Then, with that, she pushed out the door, leaving me staring after her.
This was it. In a few minutes—however long it took for us to pack up the motel room—I was leaving Poplar Creek. And I had accomplished what I had set out to do. I vanquished the evil ghost. And in the process, I had managed to run afoul of a pair of very dangerous hunters, bring an innocent woman back from the brink of death, and fall for Tobias Hawthorne all over again.
But I knew I wouldn’t hunt again. Not unless I had no other choice. Because what Tobias and I had done for Annie was what mattered to me. I didn’t want to hurt anyone—not even a supernatural bad guy who probably had it coming. But healing people… well, I could put everything I had behind that.
If not for Teresa Dames.
Because I wouldn’t be stepping out of my body again any time soon, would I? Maybe she’d give up on trying to haunt me.
Eventually.
But my blood was still powerful. Even if I wouldn’t be helping Tobias fetch any lost souls and bring them back to their bodies, I could still heal. I could still fix what was broken on a purely physical level. Even that seemed like a better way to spend an eternity than fighting monsters.
But where would I go next?
I had no idea. The smart thing was probably for Tobias and I to go our separate ways. He had the coven and people who cared about him back in Seattle. But I couldn’t go back there yet. I couldn’t see my sister or my parents yet. Or any of the places I had once known before any of this happened. I knew I might be able to face it all someday, but not yet. I just wasn’t ready.
Which meant I should leave alone. I should hold Tobias to his vow, that he would leave my side. That we wouldn’t see each other again for a long time, if ever.
Ethan’s vision suggested that there was still darkness inside me. And I knew that, didn’t I? His words came back to me. “It could happen.”
I could end up hurting someone if I wasn’t careful.
And Teresa haunted me, even still. If anyone could have understood what happened to me, it was a witch. But she still seemed to think that I deserved her vengeance.
And maybe I did.
But I had learned something in all of this, hadn’t I?
Mostly, I was sick of other people telling me what I was and wasn’t capable of. I was sick of other people—and even more so, myself—making me feel afraid of what I might do.
I wasn’t fixed. And I knew that I probably wouldn’t be for a long time. Maybe even never. Maybe this was my new normal. Maybe I would always worry, always be overly cautious, always have nagging doubts in the back of my mind about my own goodness.
But I was letting all of those things take everything from me.
I was letting those fears take Tobias from me. And he was, hands down, the best man I had ever met. And he was a formidable warlock. And he was genuinely kind and good, on top of all that. So, if anyone could pull me back from the ledge, if anyone could help me stop myself from hurting anyone else ever again, it would be him.
Plus, I was madly in love with him.
I had been from the word go, ever since he had first looked at me with a grave expression on his face, his eyes filled with sheer wonder at the sight of me and said that everything would be okay. And in that moment, I had realized, with a strange clarity I’d never had before, that I had no choice but to believe him. I loved him immediately, before I even understood all the reasons why I should. It was instinctive, impossible to resist.
But now it was far different. Now it wasn’t just chemical or mystical or whatever else it is when you meet your mate and just know. It was different because I understood him now. I knew that he wasn’t just the shining golden boy of his coven. He wasn’t the white knight swooping in to rescue me. He wasn’t even my golden retriever bodyguard, ready to fulfill every wish of my heart without a single question asked.
He was a real person, with his own pain and flaws, his own hopes and fears, all of which were every bit as real and important as my own. And I loved those parts of him too.
I cherished all of him and I always would.
And despite everything he knew, he had still chosen me. He had set aside his entire life to let me lead him on a wild monster hunting goose chase, all so he could protect me and keep me safe from harm.
Didn’t he deserve to be loved if anyone did?
And yeah, maybe I was a hot mess. But maybe I could be his hot mess. And maybe I could be a bit less of a mess every day if I really let myself try.
I knew he would make space for that. I knew that, because I would do anything for him, too. And I was sick of lying to myself and trying to pretend like anything other than that simple truth mattered at all.
The idea of leaving without him was like jagged glass cutting me up inside. It was impossible to even really consider it fully, to picture it in my head. I had done it once before and I knew I didn’t have it in me to do it again.
The answer for what came next was as simple as it was life-changing when it really hit me.
Tobias was my mate. And there was no way in hell I was running from that fact any longer. I wasn’t going to run from him any longer. I would figure the rest out as I went, but I would do it with him by my side.
I had stood there for only a few minutes, probably looking like a total idiot, staring off into space. But a huge grin split across my face and I felt my heart swell as I realized that we could have a whole future together if I would just stop being dumb and let him in.
It would take work, maybe months or even years of work, but I could do it. I would do it.
I would do anything for him.
Now, in the eleventh hour, I was finally ready to try.
I practically ran from the office. I didn’t quite use vampire speed, but I was tempted, any hapless onlookers be damned. It abruptly seemed pivotal to see him, to tell him everything I had just realized.
To tell him that I was ready to start our future together.
I reached our motel room moments later.
The door was ajar.
When I pushed it open, there was a half-packed duffle on the bed.
The lamp had been knocked to the floor, causing all the twisted veins of shadows in the room to climb up the walls.
The scent of freshly spilled blood choked the air.
And Tobias was nowhere to be found.
Horror flooded through me at once.
The hunters had found us while I was having my grand epiphany downstairs. But they hadn’t come for me, after all.
Instead, they had taken Tobias.