CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE #2
I said nothing as Kate and Taylor were horrified. Alexius was efficient. He grabbed her jaw with his other hand, twisting and pulling quickly until he broke her neck. It could heal, but he took the body out of the room with him to finish the job.
“We’ll give rooms to the other two and make sure they’re okay. She was showing signs of being a bigger problem than I am willing to tolerate. I heard what she said to you earlier, Alexius, about joining the nest.”
“Fair enough. She would have been your responsibility,” I said, shrugging before walking out, seeing Alexius was finishing the job in a more open space, so blood didn’t have to cover everyone. Her head was lopped off quickly enough. Other vampires started cleaning up without needing to be asked.
“Your nest is very efficient,” I remarked as Maria stopped next to me.
“Thank you. I take a level of pride in it. Now, you should go and get cleaned up yourself. And now he should, too.” She nodded toward Alexius. “Let me show you to your rooms.”
“Fine. Declan?”
“No damage worth noting. Typical bruising and the punctures of the bite. Lexi handled him very well, considering.”
“What would happen if something is broken during this phase?”
“With proper care, nothing. It’s really just about respecting the process the body is about to go through. Respecting the person even more so. There are some stories, but I don’t want to tell them tonight, and considering what you are dealing with, I certainly wouldn’t tell them to you.”
“Okay.” I didn’t have it in me to argue.
“I’m here to take you two to your rooms,” she said, leaving the topic behind. “They’re a suite, so you’ll share a center living space and have separate bedrooms.”
“Typical,” Alexius said, wiping his hands. He was by my side again, hovering closely. “But appreciated.”
“It’s standard guest quarters,” she said and left us at the door.
I didn’t pay much attention to what the room looked like. I found a couch and fell on it. Our things were already here, in the middle. Alexius moved all of that between the two rooms, but I knew we weren’t unpacking. We weren’t staying here for long.
He finally came to me, dragging a chair closer and sitting down.
“Do you want to talk about anything?”
“He was crazy,” I whispered. “And I think he hated me because I’m a woman.
” No, that wasn’t entirely right. “He hated that I wasn’t the right type of woman.
He talked about setting up rules, and of course, I spread my legs for you…
But he never…” I blinked back tears. “He never hinted at any of that kind of stuff earlier on. And so now… how did I mess up so badly?” I rolled over, my back toward Alexius, the hollow emptiness in my chest feeling like it was trying to swallow me whole or drag me into the abyss.
“I failed my brother,” I whispered. “I was arrogant, and I missed signs that I still can’t—”
“Stop doing that to yourself,” he ordered.
“If I had captured the vampires earlier, we would have known their connection to Henry, but he would have acted faster. We captured them. He waited for Declan and Lexi to be vulnerable, off the phone, and took him. He knew we’d cornered his little thrown-away playthings. ”
“See, he wasn’t even smart,” I snapped, sitting up. “He was fucking crazy. He just threw them away, thinking no one would find them or put it together.”
“Everly… we’re the only two people on earth who would have thought the vampire who wanted to be called uncle was your uncle.
Perhaps Isaiah. Because I know you and Declan.
Maria would have never put it together. A combination of her distance from us and the fae magic hiding James Bishop’s previous identity.
James Bishop didn’t have a niece and nephew who were several generations removed and human.
He knew what he was doing. He was trying to get them killed.
He was plotting to get Declan, perhaps biding his time.
And everything that was happening, you and I being here, caused him to panic.
” Alexius shifted closer, making sure I would look at him.
“If you think about how he changed his identity, hid it from his own creations, manipulated you, lived close but non-suspiciously so to Declan… your uncle was actually quite smart and a very good liar,” Alexius said, his words gentle.
“He had manipulated Jacob; that much was clear as well. Henry lost it at the end. His fantasies were overruling the reality that had kept him in line for so long, I think.”
“Declan is the one who paid the price,” I whispered, the guilt crashing over me.
“Yes, now Henry’s insanity has left us with a man who never wanted the immortality he’s going to wake up to. But he’s your brother, and I will take him back to Savannah for you. He’ll need you to adjust. I’ll be there for the training. He probably won’t want to do the job we do.”
“Definitely not,” I said, sighing. “Callahan is going to fire him, isn’t he?”
“I wouldn’t have any idea, but that’s the least of our worries.”
“Henry has ruined my brother’s life.”
“He’s dead now. You killed him for it.” The flat way Alexius said that told me everything about how he felt. He did not care at all that Henry Abbott was dead. The man was a waste of air and blood. His death was no loss.
I nodded.
I had done that.
I looked down at my hands.
I did it with these. No gun. No weapon. I ran him down. Let him get distracted, stalked him like a predator. I had toyed with him for a moment, just so I could yell at him. Then I brutally killed him.
It all came back at once. Every minute of that world in red. I was angry. So angry.
“I lost it,” I whispered.
“If you were older, more powerful, more like me, I’d call you a berserker like me,” Alexius said. “In fact, while it was happening, I did.”
“That was probably weird,” I muttered.
“I hope this doesn’t offend you, but it was beautiful, and I think the werewolves know more about that I ever wanted them to.”
“Don’t tell me—”
“They would have smelled how I felt, the whole myriad of things I felt. No, I wasn’t…” Alexius leaned back, then got up and left.
And for the first time in hours, maybe even the entire night, I laughed.