Chapter 44
Forty-Four
JULIAN
I’ve never wanted to kill Rosanna but right now I do. What the fuck is she doing?
Why is she here?
“Julian, answer me,” Maris whispers. There’s command in her voice that wasn’t there before. I can hear it even if she’s not aware of it. She doesn’t realize the power her voice holds. Her will. Rosanna isn’t lying about what Maris is. How the fuck did I not know it?
I look at Maris. She’s pale and shaking.
For all the danger Rosanna poses hanging off the side of her house, it’s not her that Maris is concerned with.
It’s me. A myriad of emotions rise in me.
Maris isn’t my mate. It’s her blood, the Siren’s Call that calls me to her.
Everyone knows the legend of the Sirens, the mythical and murderous women of the sea that lured sailors to their death with their beauty. With their voices.
Maris is the perfect embodiment of the mythological siren. In all my time I’ve never met a siren. Sirens were only figures in stories. An old wives’ tale, but here she stands. I know what Rosanna says is the truth. I felt her power when she made me let her go.
I didn’t understand Maris for what she was because I didn’t believe she existed.
She swallows hard and holds out a shaking hand to me. “Julian. Please.” All it takes is the break in her voice and the shaking of her hand for me to understand she didn’t know. Maris never knew what she was. Her parents are dead. She’s the only one here. Who would have told her?
No one.
I step forward and take her hand. I pull her to me. Maris melts into my arms and buries her face in my chest. I can feel her hands twisting in the material of my shirt as she pulls me tight. She can’t stop shaking.
Maris lifts her head to look up at me and there’s tears in her eyes. “What’s happening?”
“She’s not your fucking mate, Julian! NOT. YOUR. MATE,” Rosanna screams from the window. Maris starts to look Rosanna’s way but I stop her.
I catch her face and make sure she keeps her eyes on me. “Don’t listen to her.”
“But she-”
I shake my head. “She’s bitter. She’s only here to cause chaos,” I look at Rosanna and see my maker baring her fangs at me, “the only thing Rosanna is good for is chaotic bullshit. She’s lying to you.”
“The only one lying is you. Are you really that desperate for a replacement wife? I thought I taught you what happens when you love a human, Julian. I killed her last time, remember? Ripped her head right off in front of you.”
She’s right. She did kill her. Louise had been the woman I’d been obsessed with in Paris. The attraction hadn’t been love but it had been as close as I had managed to come after Claire.
Until Maris.
“Come with me,” I nudge Maris away from the window and towards the stairs that lead upstairs.
“She can’t come in unless she’s invited.
As long as you’re in the house, you’re safe.
” Maris looks doubtful, even more so when Rosanna rips off part of the window and chucks it inside at us.
I bat it aside and move in front of her and shield her from Rosanna. “Ignore her. I do.”
Maris goes with me, but we only make it a step when Rosanna says something that stops me in my tracks.
“I killed them all,” she croons. “Because you are mine. You’ve always been mine, Julian. As much as you try, that halfbreed siren isn’t going to give you what you need. Only I can.”
“What did you say?” I look at her over my shoulder.
Rosanna giggles. She slams a hand against the house, no doubt digging her fingers into the siding. She leans back and tips her head up so the rain hits her face and laughs.
“Rosanna!” I take a step towards her. “What do you mean all?”
“Julian. No,” Maris grabs my arm and pulls me to a stop. For a second, I don’t know if it’s me or her that’s controlling me but I stop all the same.
“Answer me, Rosanna.”
She giggles again and comes close to the window with a saccharine smile. “I mean, all of them. The witch,” she shakes her head with a sigh, “for an old crone she was stronger than I thought she might be. Lots of power in her blood.”
My gut twists. I thought Anne had died of age. No one was there to ask when I returned. Her daughter was gone, the hut she lived in was cold and her hearth full of leaves. No one had been there for years. It had been Rosanna all along.
“And of course, my favorite one of all and yours too.” Rosanna tips her head to the side, her dark wet hair is plastered to her head and neck. It makes her look like a snake.
“Don’t you fucking say it,” I whisper because I already know the name my maker is about to say.
Rosanna ignores me.
“Claire.”
For a second, the world ceases to exist. Everything goes white and then black. My body feels like it’s been ripped apart, each limb and organ working on its own. Lost and floating like it never was a part of my body. Just as quickly as I come apart, everything comes rushing back and I attack.
I lunge for the window. Behind me Maris screams but I keep moving. Siren’s Call or not, she’s not going to stop me from ripping Rosanna’s black heart out of her body.
I go right through the window and take Rosanna with me. She shrieks gleefully, hands clawing at me. She’s not fighting me, she’s trying to get closer, to touch me. Disgust rolls over me. I throw her off of me and into the side of Maris’ porch. She slams into it and lands on the ground with a thump.
She laughs and looks up at me. Her mouth is bleeding. Rosanna wipes at her mouth and stands. “Don’t act surprised, Julian. There had to be some part of you that wondered. ‘Did she do it?’ After all our time together you had to have known that I would have.”
“I’m going to end you.” I rush Rosanna when she turns to escape.
She makes it halfway across Maris’ yard before I slam into her.
Rosanna and I have fought before. You don’t spend over a hundred years with someone and not fight.
Vampires are territorial. We’re prone to fights.
But in all those fights with Rosanna, I never let her see my full strength, not after Anne spelled me.
Rosanna goes flying into the fence and takes half of it down with her.
“Why?” I demand.
“Arsenic.” She gets up from the ground and flips me off. She throws a fence plank at me. “That’s how I did it. Funny, isn’t it? Claire was never sick. She was poisoned. I poisoned her!”
I catch the plank easily. “I didn’t ask you how, I asked why,” I say and snap the plank over my knee into a stake.
Rosanna’s eyes zero in on the stake in my hand. “You wouldn’t fucking dare. You love me.” She smiles at me. That smile I woke up to and fell asleep to for decades makes me snap. While Claire was dying and wasting away in front of me it wasn’t sickness that took her, it was Rosanna, and Anne.
Anne spelled me to keep me alive and what did she get in return?
Death.
And now here Rosanna is, setting her sights on Maris, and she’s smiling. Smiling.
I’m going to rip that smile off her face.
“Come here, you fucking bitch.”
Rosanna doesn’t wait for me to move, she turns and runs.
The road Maris’ house is on doesn’t go much further than hers.
The road dead ends in a copse of trees before it turns into a forest. Rosanna makes it to the treeline before I chase after her.
There’s no sport in killing her if it’s over too fast. Behind me I hear Maris yell my name but I don’t turn around.
All my focus is on Rosanna and I’m going to make this last.