Chapter 48
Forty-Eight
JULIAN
Ichased Rosanna all the fucking way to Canada.
Right to the top of that damn border and into Alaska.
Even if I was stronger than Rosanna, she was cunning and knew how to hide.
There was a reason she’d survived for as long as she had with her poor impulse control.
It was only when I saw the sun rising over the mountains that I realized where the fuck I was.
I was standing out on a frozen river with Rosanna up ahead.
She laughed and turned back like she was making sure I was following, but that was because she was.
That fucking bitch was making sure I was following her, and I’d done it like an idiot.
“Maris.”
That was why. Rosanna’s lackey wasn’t with her.
He was after Maris, most likely directed by our psychotic bitch of a maker to kill her.
I turned around then and headed right back to Vesper Point.
I heard Rosanna behind me for an hour or so but I was faster than her now that I wasn’t tracking her.
I’d make it to Vesper Point with plenty of time to spare before she caught up with me again.
The good thing was that if she was trying to catch me then her new toy hadn’t succeeded in killing Maris.
“I killed them all.”
“Claire.”
Rosanna’s confession echoed in my ears. She was the reason that I had been in the graveyard the night she turned me. She’d been watching me. Plotting and planning. She murdered my wife to turn me into a shell of a man that she could control.
When I had Maris safe with me I was not going to rest until I found a way to destroy Rosanna. I’d drag her right to the Varolacus my fucking self if it meant she could never harm the woman in my life again.
The woman that I loved.
I loved Maris.
That was a truth that I came to on my long run back to Vesper Point. I didn’t care if she wasn’t my mate. That it was her siren’s blood and the call that had me wanting her. It might have been that at first but it wasn’t now.
I wanted Maris. Thorns and all. I wanted my dark storm cloud with a penchant for murdering annoying men. I wanted the woman that wasn’t scared of me, and even when she was she still forced herself to face me down. I had never met another human like her and I never would again.
Maris was my wife. Mate or not, I wasn’t going to release the claim I had on her. I’d die before I freed her.
When I reach Vesper Point it’s nightfall.
I look around the town as I walk in and immediately tune into the fact the energy is off.
There’s more police cars than usual. The same goes for people.
I might not have been here for long but I did see what Vesper Point looked like on a normal night and it wasn’t this.
There’s people walking in groups and huddling near the police cars like they expect a gun fight to break out. Every restaurant looks like it’s at capacity too and I hear live music playing. You would think it’s a warm summer night, not a freezing and rainy winter night.
“Did you hear what he did to that woman? Ripped her head clean off.”
“I know, I hope I see some action tonight.”
I look behind me to see two older women talking with their heads bent close over what looks like steaming cups of tea. What the hell is wrong with this town? I pick up my pace through town. They said ‘she’, but who the fuck is she?
It better not be Maris. If it’s Maris I’m going to burn this town to the ground.
It can’t be Maris. She wouldn’t be careless enough to leave her house.
She wouldn’t with Rosanna’s lackey on the loose.
Maris is too smart for that, or at least I think that until I cross the street to make my way up to Maris’ house and I stop in my tracks.
Rose, lemon, that fucking sandalwood.
I smell her.
She’s fucking outside in the middle of this insane block party Vesper Point is throwing right now. I turn and look up and down the street.
“Doctor Vale?”
I turn to find Janet and another attendee standing close together. Janet has a steaming cup in her hand and a pastry in the other which just plays into the whole macabre festival the town has wholly embraced.
She looks me over and then asks, “Are you okay?”
I know why she’s asking. I just ran to fucking Alaska and back. My clothes are torn and dirty. I look like I’ve been put through the wringer, which I fucking have. Goddamn Rosanna.
I nod at them. “Janet. I’m fine. Just, ah, out for some air. Thought I’d come see what this is all about.”
Janet nods and looks around Main Street. “It’s a little weird but we came too. I mean, I didn’t think this is the way people would react to, well, you know.”
I give her a blank look. “I’ve been busy all day. Haven’t heard the news.”
Her mouth drops open. “But Maris…” her voice trails off and the attendee puts a hand on her arm to stop her.
“Janet, maybe you shouldn’t-” they start but I’m not in the mood for this shit.
“Janet, tell me what happened.” I let my glamour hit her full force. I don’t care if anyone sees it. I might if I was keen on playing the role of the kindly doctor but I’m not. After tonight, Maris and I are leaving this fucking town behind.
“Brian ripped Liz’s head off in front of Maris’ house. He was screaming he wanted Maris. He ran off into the woods and no one has seen him but his friends have been causing trouble down at the newspaper office.”
Relief floods my system. It’s not Maris.
“Have you seen Maris?” Normally, I’d be able to track her right down, but there’s too many scents in the air.
“I heard she was at Moretti’s.”
“What is that?”
Janet points just behind me towards the docks. “A bar down by the dock. It’s the last one on the road.”
She’s barely finished speaking when I drop the glamour and take off through the crowd.
I walk fast, fully intending to stay at a human pace but when I turn the corner and Maris’ scent hits me full force I lose the battle.
I take off at full speed and shove my way into the middle of the bar.
No one even notices. There’s so many people here that I’m just another body.
This is the kind of place I would have hunted in for an easy meal when I was bored.
Too many people to notice just one missing.
I’m not here to eat though so I keep moving.
I catch Maris’ scent under the smell of sweat and sickly sweet alcohol.
She’s close by. Her smell is too fresh. I end up on the back patio.
It’s empty but at the back of it I see a gate that’s swung open.
The wind shifts when I step out of the patio and into an alley. Maris’ scent hits me full force.
She’s this way.
I make it down the alleyway when I hear Maris scream. “No!”
Rage erupts hot and quick the second I see why she’s screaming.
There’s three bottom-feeder vamps on her.
Maris is on her back with her arms at her side while a female vampire holds her by her jacket.
There’s a gun and a knife on the ground nearby.
If Maris reached out she could grab the knife but she doesn’t, her arms don’t move at all.
Not even when she turns her head to the side and closes her eyes.
“Julian.”
It’s just a whisper but I hear it. My wife thinks she’s going to die and it’s my name on her lips that she’s decided to use her last moment to utter.
She doesn’t beg for mercy or scream for help. She whispers my name.
I charge forward. I’m too fast for these vampires to sense.
They’re barely better than humans. Whoever made them is low grade tier shit.
There’s a few ways to kill a vampire, fire, beheading, and of course, like anything—the heart.
It doesn’t matter if it’s a stake or a bullet.
You stop the heart, you stop the vampire.
I slam my hand through the female’s back and rip her heart out.
It’s an easy enough aim. You don’t heal the sick for a few lifetimes without knowing where to find the heart.
The female jerks like the batteries just got taken out of her and I guess they have.
I glance down at her heart and squeeze. It deflates, the muscle giving in my grip like tissue paper.
I toss the remnants of her heart to the side and drop to my knees beside Mars.
“Maris.”
Her eyes are hazy. Glazed. When she lifts a hand it’s clumsy and she barely manages to touch my side before it falls to the ground again. She’s been drugged. Roofied from the look of it.
“You’re an angel,” she rasps. “I knew it.”
“One of these days I’m going to show you what an angel looks like,” I tell her. Maris starts to cry. I wipe the tears from her cheeks. She’s so beautiful when she weeps.
Behind us one of the other vampires, a male, yells when he sees what I’ve done. “What did you do to Shainna?”
“Exactly what I’m going to do to you.” I throw the dead female vampire at him and whirl to face the other vampire. He’s on his knees with a horrified expression on his face.
“Who are you?” I don’t bother to answer him. Why would I?
“I’ll be right back,” I tell Maris and smooth her hair back from her face.
She doesn’t say anything, but there’s a smile on her face which is enough. I stand and turn to face the two remaining vampires.
“You touched my wife.”
The taller one, the wiry nervous looking vampire who’s so new I can still smell the humanity on him, shakes his head.
“This isn’t what I signed up for. Fuck this, man!
” He turns to run. I let him get a few seconds of running in.
He really thinks he has a chance now that he’s a vampire.
Probably thinks he’s fast enough to get away, but he’s wrong.
He makes it to the edge of the docks by the time I catch him.
“You’re fast.” I catch him with a hand at the back of his neck and jerk him back.
“I’m faster.” I dig my fingers into his neck and I don’t stop until I have his C1 and C2 vertebrae in my hand.
The Atlas and the Axis. Crucial to holding up your head and turning it.
He won’t be needing them anymore. I rip the vertebrae out of him.
It’s as good as a beheading but it’s not good enough.
Nothing will be for what they’ve done to Maris.
The vampire slumps forward. He jerks and gags, convulses as his body tries to keep him going but it’s not happening. I reach down and it’s another jerk of my hand that pulls his spine out. I toss the whole thing to the side and leave him to rot. The last vampire doesn’t run, but he does beg.
“Please, man. I didn’t-I didn’t know she was your old lady.” He holds his hands up and backs away. “We’re the same. You don’t have to do this.”
I tilt my head to the side and look him over. He was a poor human from the sight of him. Busted workboots, uncombed long blond hair, stained pants, a flannel that’s half unbuttoned to show off the idiot turquoise and silver chains he wears like a fucking asshole.
I stalk forward and grab him by his throat. “We are not the same,” I growl.
He kicks, tries to break my grip and when he can’t he goes back to trying to reason with me. “Look, do you want money? We-my brother’s maker. She has tons of money. Blood. Whatever you need. We’ll hook you up.”
I pretend to think it over. The maker he’s talking about is Rosanna. She’s the one that raised the trash I buried for Maris. Of course she did. She’s always fucking up my plans. My life. My women’s lives.
“Where is she? I’ll talk to her.”
The vampire stops talking then and shakes his head. “I-I don’t know. I’ve only met her at his house.”
“Call her,” I tell him. All fledglings can call their makers. If I wanted to I could do it right now with Rosanna but with her, the trick is hiding, not calling.
I squeeze his neck harder and feel his trachea crunch. He cries out and shakes his head. “I can’t.” His voice is garbled from the damage I did to his throat. Every word he speaks is laborious now. “She’s not…my…maker.”
“Who is?”
“My brother.”
I jerk my chin at the two dead vampires. “He make them too?”
“Yes.”
That explains why they’re so shitty. Any vampire his brother made may as well have stayed human.
They’re just as vulnerable. I think about having him call his idiot brother so I can end this now but Maris moans behind me.
Right. She’s drugged. I have to get that shit out of her system and her somewhere that she can recover.
“I’ll kill your brother on my time,” I tell the vampire in my hold. I start to squeeze and he claws at my hand trying to get away, even though he knows it’s useless.
“Wait, wait, you-”
His words are cut off when I crush his windpipe and keep squeezing. I squeeze until his spinal cord and vertebrae are putty in my fucking hand and then tear him apart. His body hits the ground and I toss his head to the side before going to Maris.
I pick her up off the ground and Maris grabs weakly at my shoulders. “Julian?”
“I’m here. It’s me,” I tell her.
I almost lost her. I almost lost her to three fuck up vampires.
She’s not safe as a human. I have to turn her.
I have to keep her safe. I walk towards the docks.
There’s a building there, an old repair station from the looks of the inside of it but I don’t take her inside.
I put her up against the wall facing the water and pull her jacket to the side to expose her neck.
“Julian,” Maris whispers.
“I’m here,” I whisper back. Maris’ lips curve up into a smile, I feel it against my hand when I cover her mouth and bite down.