Chapter 4
LEAH
When I come to, it’s slow. I am nothing but bruises. I try to move my limbs. I can feel my toes. But I can’t move. A horrified whimper rises in my throat before I remember it’s a prey sound.
I am prey.
Marcus is probably toying with me. My brain feverishly comes up with nightmare scenarios—his fangs, my throat.
My thigh. I hate it. He hurts me. Worse, I like it.
He makes it feel good. A shudder racks my spine.
Another whine stoppers in my throat, behind my tongue.
Pushing, pushing. Panic rising. Can’t get free.
Another wriggle. I’m trapped. I die here.
He kills me. No, he leaves me here. He’s gone.
Never would I have thought that being alone would be worse than being with him. I’m alone, I’m alone, I’m—
A thud and pained grunt. I tilt my head. The light from the containment spell is enough to see all of him in terrifying clarity.
Marcus Antonius, architect of my nightmares.
Enemy of my heart.
His shoulders and head are slumped awkwardly against the wall. The rest of him is mere inches from me.
Dead? Something soars inside me, brief, bright, hopeful. If I die, at least I take him with me. His eyelids flicker and that hope dies with them.
He groans and adjusts against the wall. Goddess, he’s fucking massive. The breadth of his shoulders and the hard muscle wrapped around his frame remind me that he is made for killing.
Specifically me.
His gaze is fully black when he meets my eyes. My stake is half-buried in his chest.
“What have you done?” His words rasp wetly.
“I told you. A spell. One that links us together and drew you to me.”
The curse from his mouth is guttural and not in a language I understand. “Not that. Why can’t I move?”
“Another spell. Keyed to me. You can’t move more than a foot in either direction, and my stake is too close to your heart. You will die here. Or at best, you will live a half-life, slowly starving, until you finally go mad.” The thought buoys me. I give him a sunny smile. “See you in hell, Marcus.”
He growls. “I will outlive you, you foolish slayer.” His words are belied by the grating difficulty with which he speaks. He is in pain and my stake could nick his heart at any moment.
“The containment spell will outlast my death. We’ll die together.” The words are feeble. I can’t move my legs. I’m not killing anyone. I very well might die here, next to my parents’ killer. Helpless rage fills my throat.
I squeeze my eyes shut, straining to lift whatever is on top of me.
It’s a stone slab that would crush a human.
It’s a piece of the ceiling, based on the massive hole above my head.
We’re in the old part of the house, before the expansion, which means this is the solid granite keystone that my great-aunt used to ground her magic.
The chandelier swings ominously above my head and I look away before my imagination can run wild.
I inhale and strain every muscle against the stone, trembling.
Slayers are strong, but not this strong.
Not vampire-strong. My ribs protest. Pain races up my nerves from my injured hand.
It’s healing and I’ve torn open the wound again.
I cry out. Part pain, part desperate relief that I still have sensation.
Frustration swells hot behind my nose.
Marcus is silent. When I look back at his face, his throat is working and his fangs are peeking out. A frisson of fear travels up my spine.
“You’re bleeding again,” he rasps.
Fuck. I heal fast, but not vampire-fast.
“Doesn’t matter.”
My animal brain reminds me that it does matter because Karina warned me that a very strong vampire might be able to withstand the backlash of the containment spell breaking. Assuming my blood is strong enough to keep him contained at all.
Marcus’s nostrils flare as he watches me.
I am so careful not to bleed in front of my prey. It spurs some vampires to incredible feats of strength, especially if they’re hungry. The stories say that Marcus is always hungry.
Right now, though, he looks starving. His pupils dilate. His hands fist.
My mouth is bitter with adrenaline, but I can’t do anything but watch him.
With any luck, the ash from my stake is flaking into his blood. His head lolls, but he doesn’t look poisoned. I examine him. I imagine him on a battlefield somewhere, massive and covered in blood, fangs flashing.
His eyes are thickly lashed and set under slashing brows.
His nose is patrician. They may have even invented the word for him.
He looks like a leader of armies. He looks like someone used to giving commands and being obeyed.
His throat is strong and thick, his shoulders and arms made for killing.
Even his hands are large. Deft-looking but large, made for gripping massive swords.
His thighs and calves are thick enough to steer a warhorse while he shouts orders to his legions.
His dark hair and his full mouth are the only soft things about him. His hair is silky-looking. Thick, nearly black, and tousled.
There are slayers out there who have fallen for vampires. Karina is obsessed with the stories. Slayers who found the allure of the undead too irresistible. Fangbangers. Some even become blood addicts. They crave the vampire’s bite enough to give up everything else in their life.
I could never be like them.
Vampires are predators at their base. They lure, and even their looks are nothing more than a shiny object in front of a child.
Marcus is doing it now, head pressed to the stone, eyes heavy. Even now he unconsciously tries to sway me to free him. His mouth parts and a hint of fang shows.
“A deal,” he grates. “Break the spell and I’ll remove the stone.”
“I don’t deal with the devil.”
I push against the slab again, the panic I’ve tried to prevent now rising with dizzying swiftness.
“You are a fool.”
I glare.
He bares his fangs. “Do you know how many times I’ve been near death?
You don’t even have the good sense to take whatever is offered you and survive.
” He scoffs. “I will heal eventually and my body will push out your damn stake and you will die. Unworthy of killing me when you couldn’t even save yourself. ”
Unworthy.
Hate for him steals my breath. Hate made stronger because his words strike at some fundamental part of me. I despise him for bringing me lower and for being right. I despise myself for not having the magic my parents had and for being too weak to take him on.
“I will never deal with you. You killed my parents. You ruined my life. So what if it ends?” I bare my teeth. My voice is shaking. “At least I take you with me.”
He goes eerily still. “I killed your parents?”
“Having a sudden crisis of conscience, vampire?” My voice is bitter.
“When?” His gaze darts over my face.
“I was eight. You killed them just fifty miles from here.”
“Twenty years ago or so?”
“So you admit it?”
“I admit nothing.” He tips his head. “Continue.”
Arrogant. So fucking arrogant. My mind spins. He’s all but admitted he was there. Does he want me to relive the past for his amusement?
“Tell me,” he commands.
“Fine.” I let my arms flop to the floor.
“We were driving home. There was an afternoon storm. You were standing in the road. My parents were careful. So careful. But not that day. I’d been a pain in the ass in the car, demanding snacks, screaming.
I remember kicking the back of my dad’s seat.
” I shake my head. “I don’t know why I’m telling you this. ”
“By all means. We have all the time in the world.” He rasps something that might be a laugh. “Our deaths will be slow, slayer.”
His statement strikes something cold and sharp in my gut.
“You were there. In the road.” The words tumble out.
I’ve turned these memories over so many times that their jagged edges should be dull now.
I should have no trouble telling him. I look back up at the ceiling and away from his gaze.
“I begged my parents to help you. I told them you were a hiker. My mom jumped out of the car, thinking you were injured. My parents had been talking earlier that day about tracking a vampire. A former gladiator. I don’t think she ever expected to see a former gladiator strolling down a quiet country road.
My father realized what was happening and threw our dog’s blanket over me and commanded me to lay down on the floor.
He was still too late.” I try to keep my voice clinical, but even I can hear the way it trembles.
I don’t tell him how time seemed to slow, how every scream seemed sharp enough to pierce my eardrums.
“I saw you. Your mouth was bloody. You hunched over them like an animal.”
I look now. His face is granite-hewn. His eyes are black. “What was I wearing?”
“A long black trench coat. That’s all I saw.”
His lids flutter shut, and his lips move silently before he says, “That wasn’t me. That was my brother.”
“You lie.” The words are wrenched from me.
“I cannot lie. You know that.” His voice seems nearly gentle.
I don’t want his sympathy. I screw my eyes shut, knowing a vampire cannot lie and still refusing to believe it.
I push against the stone futilely, an animal sound coming from my throat.
I want to curl against the hurt, the way I would after the nightmares I had as a girl.
Twenty years. Twenty fucking years of this and I was wrong.
How can that—how could I—my breath is shallow.
“My brother is hunting me. As I hunt him.”
The words cut my thoughts short, before they restart.
“So what?”
I have no use for the politics of vampires. Not when this truth has upended my existence.
“Don’t you want him to die?”
My eyes pop open.
The wheel of my thoughts latches on to his words, to the possibility that this hurt can be forged into action. Anything to not feel it so acutely. Anything to bury it.
His brother left me alone in the world until my great-aunt took me in. He’s the reason I have nothing but memories.
I want it so badly that shivers race up my spine.
Do I want it enough to bargain with a vampire?
“You can help me kill him,” he says softly. “Slayer. Look at me. Partner with me. Get the redemption you seek. Let me move the stone.”
“What do you want in exchange?”
“You remove the stake now. You remove the spell once my brother is dead.”
Marcus’s heartbreakingly beautiful face is still impassive, but he must want the spell removed very badly to make this deal. He must want desperately to survive.
He’s not my parents’ killer.
“Deal.”