Chapter 3
LEAH
Ispend hours prepping the house, igniting the containment spells in the floorboards with my blood, hoping that the spark of slayer magic in it is enough.
My wards are weaker than my great-aunt’s were, and I fear the containment spells won’t be enough.
Every time I think about it, I grip the handle of the dagger I inherited from her and force myself to forget.
I’ve killed at least fifty vampires in the ten years I’ve been a slayer.
I’ll kill Marcus Antonius too.
I sleep on the couch that day, with the wards wide open. Just an unsuspecting bunny waiting for the big, bad wolf. I have four daggers strapped to me and three ash stakes. The stakes keep digging into my side, but I finally sleep around noon.
I wake with a start around seven p.m. My eyes adjust blearily to the dim light of the living room. I still my breathing. I heard a sound. I know I did. There it is. A squeak of wood in the front hall, then nothing.
If I can hear him, he can hear me. I fight to slow my heart rate and slip off the couch.
I know every creaky, ancient floorboard, even with the lights off, and I avoid all of them as I pad barefoot toward the hall.
The strongest containment spell is there, under the iron chandelier where the hall branches to the living room and kitchen on one side and the library on the other.
A shadow is cut from the darkness. It stills.
I raise my dagger. The weapon is fourteen inches, and I prefer it to the more fragile stakes, especially when my opponent has range.
Stakes can’t slash like knives can. They’re best pulled when you’re going for a killing blow.
An ash stake through the heart will kill a vampire instantly.
A blessed silver dagger will bleed and slow them down.
The darkness blurs, shadow slipping against shadow in the hallway. I feint left, but I’m slammed against the solid wall of the hallway with breath-stealing force. I gasp, a fish out of water about to die a bloody, violent death if she doesn’t recover.
“You,” Marcus Antonius snarls. All I see are fangs the length of my pinky and eyes so silver they seem to act as their own light source. His hand tightens on my wrist.
“Me,” I manage before I break the wristlock and duck, instinct from numerous vampire encounters propelling me under Marcus’s thick left arm. My lungs burn. I’m nearly blind in the dark.
He surely isn’t.
His eyes glow, slowly bleeding black, until all I see is the faintest hint of silver, like the sun’s corona.
My heart is rabbit-quick in my chest, even though I wanted this. I went to sleep hoping for this fight. He came.
It’s too fucking dark. And he’s too quiet.
The stories say he plays with his food. Marcus is a former Roman gladiator. A pit fighter, risen to general. A leader of armies who was never fully tamed. Vicious. Vindictive.
Like all vampires, he must enjoy the taste of fear.
It’s sharp on my tongue as my breaths heave. I fumble for my ash stake. All I need is one quick strike. One small chance. He’ll be dust.
Come on, Leah.
My eyes search the shadows, nearly frantic. I can feel how wide my pupils are. I swear it’s never been this dark in the hallway before, but he seems to steal all the light.
I force myself to focus, to reach out with my slayer senses, the heightened hearing I got from my mom. You’re better than this. I’m no match for him in strength or speed, but grit? Motivation?
I sense him in the dark, an oddly pleasurable coolness at the back of my brain, like someone ran a finger down my spine, then whispered in my ear.
There.
I whirl. Lunge.
Miss.
He’s faster. Arm to my throat. Fangs in my face. And those eyes. Silver as the cold fires of hell. Where he belongs.
“Vampire.” I bare my teeth.
“Slayer,” he snarls. “You have erred gravely.”
His accent is like none other. Latin. He grew up speaking Latin. It shapes his words, rough and round and low.
I fight for air. His gaze seems to spark as he watches my face. His lips part on a silent snarl.
I slash wildly at him with the dagger. My vision is black around the edges, and I force myself to think. I have a stake up my sleeve, on a quick-release trigger. I go limp and raise my wrist. I need air, need air, need—I gasp as the release triggers at the same time as he grabs my wrist.
The stake punches through my hand. I scream at the burning pain. Marcus leaps back, fangs extended, eyes wild. His nostrils flare as he circles me.
My hand is hot with blood, but my fear feels cold. I can’t grip anything in my left palm. The fingers of my right hand clench around my dagger.
Never bleed around a vampire.
Marcus is famous for starving himself before fights. He’d enter berserkage at first blood in the arena or on the battlefield. He slaughters indiscriminately. Friend. Foe.
My parents.
I imagine this is what they saw before they died. Black eyes. Fangs like daggers.
The thought propels me forward, feinting left before I swiftly pivot right. He dodges.
Why isn’t he fighting me?
“What have you done?” he grates. “How did you pull me here?”
I swear, I can sense his confusion, his doubt, there at the back of my brain. I shake my head. My injuries are messing with me.
“A spell,” I snarl, before I lunge.
“Fool,” he hisses.
I half expect him to dodge again, but he lowers his shoulder and plows into me with enough force that ribs crack. I have no time to dodge. No time to do anything except pray to the Goddess that I don’t die like this. My vision wavers as he slams me to the floor.
“How dare you?” he growls. “You think to bind me?” His fury takes up all the air and makes me shiver.
Get it over with, Leah. I can’t last against him. His punches can crack bones.
I knee him between his legs, and we roll, my legs wrapping around his hips, hands scrabbling, fists connecting with sternums, spit flying.
Every breath sends pain dancing along my nerve endings.
Whatever hesitation he felt before is gone now.
His fangs are fully descended. His eyes fully black.
He smells spicy and male, even though he’s not a man.
He’s a murderer.
My focus narrows to nothing but killing him. I’ve been training for this, pushing myself every night, going to sleep shaking and exhausted.
He pins my wrists over my head. I want to shout at how futile this feels, how much stronger he is, how not a single ounce of my training seems to matter in the slightest against him.
“Die,” I snarl. I crack my forehead against his. A last resort of the weaponless. I use his distraction to fumble for a stake with my good hand.
“I will not die bound to another.” Anger shakes his voice.
I push against his weight, fighting for leverage. “I don’t care,” I rasp. “You ruined my life.”
“And you are ruining mine,” he snarls. “I won’t be bound by anyone again.” His gaze is frantic, dipping to my neck, then away.
I just need to get a stake between us. I just need—pain short-circuits my thoughts as he lifts me from the floor.
My lungs are burning. My legs are weakening.
I want to curse or cry. I will never be strong enough to kill him.
Never. He slams me against something, growling that I need to remove the spell.
A wall. A piece of furniture. I’m not sure. But I hear a crack.
My back?
I wait for pain.
No, I am pain.
I am drowning in it. Somehow, I take a single, jagged breath.
My fingers are limp around the stake I’ve somehow drawn.
I can do nothing but wait for more. Marcus’s arm bars my throat.
His hand anchors my hip, fingers digging cruelly into the thin skin.
I wriggle against it, and he growls low in his throat.
I can see him deciding how to kill me. My demise flickers in the silver-black of his gaze.
How dare he be so strong, so ruthless, so much better? I feel like a gnat in front of a lion. Not a hero, but a fool, like he says. I will die here, in this darkened hallway, and he will walk away, with barely a scratch. The way he did twenty years ago.
“Remove the spell,” he demands. His voice is rough and savage, and I feel his fury. It’s a cold brand at the base of my skull.
“Can’t.”
He snarls and shakes me. My vision wavers. I sip at the air. He is watching me avidly, probably drinking my pain, savoring it. I will my face to be blank, even as I fight the storm inside my chest.
I am no better than my parents. I am just as helpless as I was at eight, and I rail against their memory like I did then. How dare they leave me alone? And then shame follows my anger, shame that I did nothing, that I dare to be mad at them when they loved me enough to die for me.
He killed them and he made me weak.
I hate him.
I try to rasp the words. I push against his arm until my vision blackens. My lips part. His hold on my throat eases slightly, as if he’ll permit me to speak.
“I despise you.”
His eyes widen. “I can feel you.” That low, vicious, voice is tinged with shock. “Is it you in my head?”
I blink. He can feel me? Like I can feel him?
“I can feel how much you hate me.” He marvels briefly before his eyes narrow. “Killing you will break this spell. It’s not real.” A shake of his head. “None of this is real.”
He displays his fangs. I’m fighting to stay conscious. Why? I’m not sure. I suppose I want to meet death head-on.
Above us, there’s an ominous rumble, another crack.
His focus is elsewhere for a precious second.
I wrench my wrist free and stab wildly with my stake.
Not at him. At my wounded left hand, tearing at the wound, pulling a whimper from my throat and sending pain cascading up my arm.
I can’t aim in the dark. I need a spray of blood.
Enough to trigger the spell that’s under his feet.
The spell ignites in a shower of pink sparks. I sag in relief. It’s done. He can’t leave.
“What have you done, slayer?”
I bury my stake in his chest and smile.
Another crack.
Then darkness.