Chapter 45
LEAH
“Don’t move,” Julian says. I can feel the madness rolling off him. My slayer instincts hum in warning. His blood drenches my back from the dagger I shoved into his stomach. It barely bothered him. With my hands bound, it’s magic or nothing.
His hand tightens painfully around my wrists. He forces my back to arch and my neck to tilt invitingly.
Marcus pulls himself slowly to his feet. He is five feet away and covered in blood. He leans heavily on his sword. His left arm hangs limply from his shoulder. My heart wrenches.
His eyes dart between us. He takes a hesitant step, and Julian’s fangs graze my throat.
“One more step, brother, and I will kill her.”
“He’s going to kill me anyway,” I grit. I slowly spin a thread of magic up from the well inside me. Slowly, so painfully slowly, even with Marcus’s blood singing in my veins. I wrench my neck to the left and try to break his hold.
“Strong,” he croons. “No wonder my brother is so taken with you.” His voice is nearly conversational, and I’m happy for him to keep talking while I grasp at the flutters of magic and tuck each of them away. “Why haven’t you turned her, brother?”
Marcus’s gaze crawls over my face. I send images down the bond, of magic pulsing and growing. His nod is a mere dip of his blood-drenched chin. I can feel his agony down the bond. Even standing is nearly too much for him. His chest gapes. I look away before I can be sick.
“She loves sunlight,” he says simply. He coughs, and blood sputters up and out his nose. “She loves morning coffee. Baked goods. I would never take that away from her.” He lists to the side, and the sword sinks into the lawn.
Julian hums. “So sentimental.” He sounds like he doesn’t understand the emotion. The magic inside me is a puddle now, but it’s filling more rapidly. It’s pulling me under, and I’m not sure if I’ll be able to gather enough before it bursts free. Julian’s grip is bruisingly harsh.
“I wonder, brother, if she’d still like you if she knew the truth.”
Even through the haze of pain, I see Marcus tense. Naked longing is on his face. He takes another step, and Julian scores a fang across my throat. My magic flares in answer. I welcome it. Anything to make this go faster.
“Take me instead,” Marcus grates. “My life, for hers.”
Julian chuckles. “Oh, brother. How noble. One last effort at atonement, hmm?” His nose grazes my hair, and I shudder. The magic is a lake now, and my body vibrates with the effort to contain it. I have no daggers left, nothing to focus with. No way to stab him. It’s magic or nothing.
“Atonement?” I ask to keep him talking.
“Why, yes, slayer. Didn’t you know? I might have killed your parents, but Marcus was there to clean up the mess.”
“Mess?” My chest hollows. My gaze locks on Marcus, who looks hurt but not shocked. He knew. Or at least, he suspected.
“Leah,” he pleads. I’m not sure what he’s asking for. For me to believe him, or for me to end things. I shut my eyes against his gaze.
“The blood. He helped me cover the crime, kept the slayers off my back. Considerate of him, don’t you think? He’s always been so good, so responsible, my older brother. So deliciously guilty,” Julian growls. My entire world is edged with pain.
The magic spins inside me but I barely register it over the roaring in my ears, the images that dance madly behind my eyes. Was I blind to the truth? Should I have known? Was Marcus’s deal borne from guilt?
Maybe he never needed me at all.
Maybe I was just a scale to be balanced. Just one of Del’s cats he needed to save to make himself feel better. Worse, maybe I was simply a liability.
Just like I was to my parents that long ago night. The magic threatening to dissolve me is nothing compared to the guilt. It pushes up into my chest and fills the hollowness.
“I do not have the compunctions my brother does, and I think you’d make a fantastic vampire.” Julian says. “Especially bound to me.”
Marcus roars and charges. Julian bites.
The magic bursts from me in a painful rush. Julian cries out. My body sings with power. Finally, my magic seems to say. Finally. It spirals out of me and binds him, slowly, too slowly. A stream when I need a river. My magic is strong, but it’s not enough to keep him from tearing out my throat.
I barely feel it over the breaking of my heart.