CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX #2
As ferocious as the girls had become, no one looked more angry than Yael when his eyes fell on me. “Covered in blood?” His words were low and quiet, but they sliced right through me as though he’d screamed them in my ear. “Why were you covered in blood?”
“I’m too drunk and exhausted to do this right now,” I replied before turning to leave. “I tried to tell you last night, but you were apparently too busy to care, so now you can wait until tomorrow.”
Yael’s immediate objection was swallowed up by the trio’s angry shouts echoing through the street as I raced into my building.
I hoped their ire would occupy him long enough for me to escape into my apartment and lock him out for the night.
I knew it wouldn’t deter him forever, but with any luck, I would get one night of peace.
Tomorrow would be another story altogether, but I could deny that for the time being—a perk of inebriation.
But that perk evaporated when a vicious pounding nearly ripped my door off the hinges.
“Open the door, Myra!” he yelled between fits of battering the weathered wood. “Now!”
As much as I wanted to just go to sleep and leave this particular problem for the next day, I knew that I’d know no peace if I didn’t do as he asked.
With a sigh, I got up, walked over to the door, and unlocked it.
Not even a second later, it flew open as Yael stormed into my apartment, prepared to do battle with something—or someone.
He stopped on the other side of the room and glared at me, body coiled so tight it looked like he might explode.
“I’m done playing these games,” he said through gritted teeth, a last-ditch attempt to curtail his growing rage. “Now tell me what the fuck is going on.”
Since I had zero interest in being on the receiving end of that rage, I laid it all out for him.
“I was attacked at the bar last night,” I said as my shoulders rounded in defeat.
“Ravi had just left to run a quick errand while I was closing, but I should have been fine there on my own. I hadn’t had any weird run-ins in the neighborhood for a couple days—”
“Weird run-ins?” he asked, eyes narrowed to menacing slits. “What do you mean ‘weird run-ins’?”
Shit.
“I meant to tell you about that, but there never seemed to be a good time—”
“Then consider now your best option.” I quickly explained the breaking windows and the weird feeling of being watched that day, and how Ravi had made sure I was accompanied to and from work from that point on.
Yael looked positively murderous as he stared at me across the room. “But he left you alone at the bar.”
“I was locked in, and he was only going to be gone a few minutes. It should have been fine—it was fine. And then two shifters and a vampire broke in and tried to take me.” My arms folded around my waist as I shuddered at the memory of them storming into the bar.
“I managed to use the Siren’s Song on one of them to make him kill the other two, then I bolted out the kitchen door.
I thought I could intercept Ravi on his way back,” I said softly, remembering the feeling of being tackled to the ground. “But I didn’t.”
My moment’s hesitation was enough to drive Yael forward a pace from the shadows. “Where did the blood come from, Myra?” he asked in a voice so deep I barely recognized it.
I closed my eyes and let the clear memory of what had happened next assail me.
“I hadn’t really thought through my command before I compelled that shifter,” I admitted as I squeezed myself tighter.
“He must have been so occupied with one of his buddies that the other got away. That one tracked me down, and since he’d seen what I could do, he made it so I couldn’t get my hands on him or speak.
I thought I was done, but then out of nowhere, blood was raining down, and suddenly he was dead,” I said, swallowing hard at the memory of what I'd seen next. “Because you’d ripped his heart out…” When I dared to open my eyes again, I found Yael standing silent only inches away from me with a midnight storm brewing in his stare.
The tension in his expression only increased my unease. “But it wasn’t really you.”
“Are you saying he shifted to look like me?” he asked with a note of confusion. “How is that even possible?”
“Maybe it was another of my power glitches and it affected his shifting somehow? I don’t understand how that would even work, but what I do know is that I thought it was you, and I dropped my guard, just for a moment.
That was all it took.” Yael’s dark stare narrowed further at my words, making him look even more foreboding.
“I thought it was all over for me, but I managed to create an opportunity to use my power on him again, and I sent him away after compelling him to forget everything that had happened. Then I ran back to The Riff Raff and Ravi.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?” he asked, the strain in his voice undeniable.
“I tried!” I snapped, stepping away from him. “I texted you that something had happened and I needed to talk to you, and you said nothing! No response, as per usual.”
“I never got your message,” he argued. Even thick with anger, the note of guilt in his voice was impossible to miss.
“Probably because you were too busy fucking that ginger in an alley.”
“I wasn’t fucking a ginger!” he snapped back at me, waving his hands wide.
“I was seducing Dreven’s assistant in an attempt to secure a meeting with him so you wouldn’t have to use your Siren’s Song on everyone in the building just to get close to him!
Jesus, Myra, if I had known—” He cut himself off and inhaled sharply as his eyes fell closed.
“If I had known you were in danger, I would have come in an instant. You have to know that.”
When they opened again, the darkness in their depths was gone.
“I don’t know anything any more,” I countered, the embers of my anger stoking back to life. “But none of it matters now; it’s done. Your little interrogation tool is still alive. No need to discuss it any further. Just leave me alone so I can pass out and forget this night ever happened.”
I turned my back on him and walked over to my bed, partly because I was exhausted in every capacity and really did just want to go to sleep, but also because I didn’t want him to see the sadness I could no longer bury under the anger.
I’d felt abandoned and betrayed, and even though it wasn’t actually the truth, it had opened a wound I didn’t want him to see. Not then. Not ever.
“Myra, I—”
“Please, Yael,” I pleaded softly, “just go away...”
I flopped down on the bed, closed my eyes, and waited for the sound of Yael’s fading footfalls that never came. Instead, they grew closer, and he whispered, “go to sleep, little mermaid,” in my ear as something impossibly warm and soft wrapped around me, ushering me into delicious unconsciousness.