Chapter 5
MARCUS
Fucking slayer. My thoughts are dark as I follow her into her bizarre kitchen. The spell tugs at my chest. It tempts me to stand closer to her, to take breaths I don’t need just to pull her scent across my tongue.
I will do anything to rid myself of it. Anything to survive. Even partner with her. But the second this spell is gone, she’s dead, I vow to myself. I might not be able to lie, but I can certainly betray her.
The slayer slides me a glance from under her thick lashes, and I purposely give her nothing. I do not trust her, and I assume she plans to betray me as well. I search her face for any sign that she feels this unwilling attachment, but I am out of practice with reading humans.
She runs her hand under the tap and winces. I look away before I can watch her waste more blood down the drain. I snap my mouth shut against the throb of my fangs.
Her kitchen is impractical, full of plants and books.
This home would be impossible to defend in a siege.
It is all nooks and crannies and softness.
Numerous places for enemies to hide. Objects that serve no real purpose except to gather dust and make defense more complicated.
A couch that seems absurdly large for one person.
A painting on the wall where I would hang a sword.
More proof she is bad at her job. She is weak and foolish for drawing me here, for casting a spell such as this, for making herself prey.
I am a fool for making a deal with her, survival be damned. A stake through the heart might be better than partnering with one of her kind. My lip curls as I think about her arrogance.
She pulled me from tracking my brother. I killed one of his disgusting friends just last night, and I was so close to hunting him down.
She bound me. The memories of my past life scrape at the back of my head, where I feel her. I want to claw her out of it. Slayer or not, I could hate her for this alone.
She slumps heavily against the counter before she begins boiling water and searching through her draws, cursing softly under her breath.
I like the way she moves.
I scowl.
Objectively, she is graceful and economical in her movements, as all fighters are. But I don’t like it.
That spell is messing with my head.
“Will it wear off?”
She yanks open a drawer filled with what look like throwing daggers before slamming it shut and slicing me a narrow-eyed glance. “Will what wear off?”
“The spell you cast, you little fool.”
She slams another drawer. “The book didn’t say.”
“You cast a spell you didn’t know anything about?” My voice is incredulous. This is why I hate slayers. They are a mix of incautious and sanctimonious. Stab first, think later. Or in this case, cast a spell that makes me relive my worst memories and think nothing of the effects.
Maybe I should kill her and hope the spell dissipates.
“I was desperate.” Her words are clipped.
I refuse to be curious as to her desperation. The damn spell is toying with me, making me soften toward her. I fold my arms.
Her gaze darts to them and away. Huh.
I flex and her shoulders go taut.
Interesting. I tuck the information away to use against her later.
“You will remove it.”
She drops a strip of cloth into the water. She moves slowly, like she is in constant pain. Slayers heal fast, but I find myself calculating how much pain she must be in and how quickly it is easing. As any good warrior would do with an opponent.
“Slayer,” I growl.
“I don’t know how, okay?” Her words are clipped. “My witch friend cast it. I’ll find out how it can be removed.”
“Do,” I say acidly. Witch magic. It’s unpredictable and can survive the death of the caster. It will definitely survive the slayer’s death.
My jaw tightens.
Fucking slayer. Her body is clad in a fitted leather top and tight pants that move when she does, like a second skin. Her hair is braided in a crown around her head, revealing a mere inch of her delicate neck above the high collar of her shirt.
That single strip of skin makes my fangs ache.
She has large, dark eyes and thick lashes.
Pink lips with faint lines and a smattering of freckles across her nose.
The spell makes me long to slip my tongue under strip of leather, to taste the salt and musk that gathers at the pulse, to tease her blood up to the surface, to feel the butterfly-light flutter of her lashes against my cheek.
Would she like it?
I shove the thoughts away. A growl looses from my throat. This spell cannot be gone soon enough.
“Sit,” she grunts. “You’re making me nervous.”
I lounge against the wooden counter, because I don’t take orders from mortals. She leans against the opposite, scowling. She is lovely when she scowls. I would give anything to find her hideous.
“Stop looking at me like you want to eat me, vampire.”
I snort. She doesn’t know the half of it. Her damn spell is intoxicating.
“You might like to be eaten. Humans have begged before.”
I have no business telling her this. I prefer bagged blood for efficiency as I hunt. I haven’t taken a blood giver to my bed in years.
Her nostrils flare before she whirls and limps to the stove, where she fishes the strip of cloth out of the boiling water. “I beg only to get out of parking tickets and to secure the last blueberry muffin from the coffee shop in town.”
I don’t know what to say. I’ve never had a blueberry muffin.
“What do you propose? To kill your brother.” She flicks me a glance under her lashes that pulls my spine straighter.
I blink. I nearly forgot about my purpose.
I shake my head, clearing it of her scent, then scowling.
I will not let her distract me. I will eradicate every pleasant thought I’ve had about her in these last few minutes.
I have a mission, and I feel her irritating presence like a scalding brand at the back of my brain.
Like the brands my sire used to burn our fighting records into our skin.
The ones I tried to cut off when I got free.
I will never be controlled again.