Chapter Ten
Hawkyn caught Aurora as she slid out of the chair.
Dammit, he shouldn’t have dumped so much information on her so quickly. The
doctors at Underworld General had assured him that she was physically fine, so
she must be in shock, horrified as hell by his admission.
How could she not be? It was seriously fucked up that people
like Drayger, the worst people to have ever lived, had been, and would continue
to be, protected from harm while decent people suffered.
Tucking her against his chest, he carried her over to the
couch, a retro velvet floral thing that didn’t look like it could hold her
petite frame, let alone his. He wondered why she favored ‘50s and ‘60s décor.
It was curious... He was hundreds of years old, and there
was no single period in history that he looked back upon with fondness. Life
sucked for humans for most of their history, and in some places, it still
sucked. Really, he liked modern times, the technology,
the entertainment, the food.
The females.
In modern times, females wore fewer clothes.
Even Aurora, in calf-length gray paisley leggings and a long
V-neck teal sweater that complimented her creamy skin and bright blue eyes, was
showing more of her curvy body than the women of his youth. And a good
percentage of his adulthood, come to think about it.
In his arms, she started to stir, and he had to fight the
sudden urge to hold her close instead of putting her down. She was the first
female besides his sisters he’d held against his body in centuries. Even then,
back when he’d thought he was human and before he was forced by Memitim rules
into celibacy, contact with females had been purely sexual, quick fucks in
alleyways and stables.
He’d been devastatingly poor, a thief when he couldn’t
scrounge enough work to feed himself, but he’d been handsome and charismatic,
attracting females like a magnet. Those moments, as fleeting and seedy as they
were, had been his only source of pleasure and his only escape from a life of
misery.
“Sorry,” she rasped as he set her gently on the sofa. “I
think I used too much energy to power the protective ward around the house.
I’ll be okay in a minute.” She shifted so she was sitting up, braced on the
armrest, legs tucked beneath her. She was too pale, her eyes bloodshot, but she
radiated an inner strength Hawkyn could feel like an electric current on the
surface of his skin. “Did you really say that the bastard who tortured me and
wants me dead is under your protection?”
There was no way to sugarcoat his answer. “Yes. He’s what we
call Primori, and I have a duty to keep him safe.”
“Okay,” she said, a lot more calmly than he would have if
the situation had been reversed. “Let’s come back to why an angel would be
protecting a serial killer and focus on why that means I can’t go to the
police.”
There was no way to sugarcoat this, either. All he had was a
bunch of bitter pills to swallow. He could at least offer her some water to
take them with.
“You can’t go to the police because I fucked up.” He sank
down in the surprisingly comfortable aqua chair that matched precisely nothing
in the house. “I interfered in the parking lot and you
blasted me instead of him, potentially changing his fate.”
Her skeptical expression would have made him laugh if they’d
been talking about anything other than a psychopath bent on butchering her.
“Um, correct me if I’m wrong, but doesn’t that mean that I
would have killed him? So what’s the big deal about
going to the police? Or, you know, killing him?”
“We don’t know that you would have killed him,” he
explained. “It’s possible you would have missed. Or only injured him.” It was
also possible that Atticus was wrong and Drayger wasn’t entirely human or that
he was protected by an enchanted object or a mystical spell. “You could still
have ended up being abducted.”
“Then why did you rescue me?”
Because apparently he was good at
compounding mistakes. “Because I didn’t want to take the chance that you
weren’t supposed to be abducted.”
She sat up a little straighter, eyes flaring the way
Suzanne’s did when she was about to lay into him, and he braced himself. “So you’re telling me that if you hadn’t been there but you knew he’d taken me, you wouldn’t have
rescued me?”
“Memitim can’t interfere with the actions of those we watch
over.”
“You asshole!” Color flooded her cheeks and her gorgeous
eyes flashed angry fire. “You would have just watched me be slowly taken
apart?”
“Well, I wouldn’t have watched...”
“Get out!” She picked up the bright red vase from the end
table and hurled it at him, just like something out of a movie. He ducked as it
whooshed past his ear and shattered against the wall. “Get out of my house!”
Clearly she needed some time to
absorb all of this. Unfortunately, she also needed to be safe. “I’m not going
anywhere until you put up the protection spell again.”
He’d be sure to cast a protective ward on the house as well,
but he wouldn’t leave her for long. Wards weren’t his specialty and they tended
to wear off quickly.
Jaw still clenched with anger, she averted her gaze, taking
sudden interest in the coffee table. “I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“Because my power is drained,” she ground out. “I don’t have
enough to light a candle, let alone weave a complex protection spell.”
“How do you recharge?” At her hesitation, he leaned back in
the chair, hoping to appear less threatening, the way kind people had done to
him during his childhood. He’d never forget how small gestures—a smile, a crumb
of food, or merely a little patience had helped him survive. To be powerless
was bad enough, but having to explain your vulnerability only made it worse.
“It’s okay. I get it. I have to
recharge too.”
She glanced over at him, the wariness in her gaze dimming
slightly. “You do?”
He nodded. “It’s another one of those inherited things from
my father. Some of us, like my sister Suzanne, don’t usually experience a
complete drain on their powers. But most of us do.”
This time when she looked over at him, she didn’t look away.
“And how do you restore your energy?”
“Sleep or time. Or...” He opened his mouth to reveal his
fangs. “We feed.”
“Oh.” Her eyes flared in surprise, but
darkened as she looked at him. “Oh.”
He already knew she was special somehow, given that she
could feel his shadow wings, but now her sultry voice flowed through him like
hot honey, slow and sweet, and his body responded, awakening from a
centuries-long coma. The thaw had started when he’d sensed her fleeting touch
on his wings, but this was even more intense. He felt a little logy but at the
same time euphoric, as if he’d shotgunned a barrel of Champagne.
This was bad. He’d spent dozens of years teaching himself to
suppress his carnal desires—at least, the ones that
involved him and a partner. Memitim were supposed to avoid self-gratification
as well, but masturbation had fallen into a “don’t ask, don’t tell” thing over
the last few decades, and he’d never really obeyed anyway.
Now he was getting all kinds of feedback from the body he’d
always considered perfectly trained and conditioned, mentally, emotionally, and
physically.
This was exactly why Memitim weren’t supposed to interact
much outside of the Memitim community. This was exactly what he lectured
Suzanne about.
And this was exactly what could get him eliminated from
consideration to be appointed to the Memitim Council.
“Who...who do you feed from?” Aurora asked, her curiosity
overriding her residual anger.
“Whoever we want, really.” His mouth started to water just
thinking about it. “My brother Maddox can only restore his power by drinking
from demons. Some of my siblings prefer feeding from their Primori, but I’ve
always preferred to feed from people who prey on others.”
She shuddered, but when she spoke, her voice was steady. “Is
their blood stronger? Better fuel or something?”
Her theory made sense, given that Primori were all special
in some way, and human predators were a special kind of scumbag, but no, that
wasn’t why he did it.
“I feed from people who hurt others because it forces them
to feel the pain and helplessness they inflict on their victims.” When Memitim
fed, they were supposed to do it while their donors were sleeping, but that was
one of the other guidelines he chose to ignore. “We can feed without causing
pain... We can even make it pleasurable. But some people don’t deserve that.”
“A friend of mine claimed she was bitten by a vampire once.”
Aurora’s slim fingers stroked her throat absently, as if imagining a set of
shiny fangs buried deep. “She said it was amazing.”
He’d never understood the fascination with vampires, nor the
erotic nature of feeding, but the idea of latching onto Aurora’s vein and
taking her inside him for nourishment was suddenly his number one fantasy.
Shut it down, man. She just went through a traumatic
experience.
“I’ll take her word for it,” he said, but damn, now he
couldn’t get the idea out of his head. “Now, what about you? How do you
recharge?”
For a long, drawn-out moment, she eyed him, probably trying
to decide if she should tell him. And then, just as she opened her mouth,
Drayger’s heraldi sparked to life, vibrating with a proximity alert.
“Shit.” He shoved to his feet and raced over to the window.
There was no one in sight, not even a passerby with a dog. But he could feel a
dark presence. And it was close. Drayger had brought his evil side out to play.
“What is it?”
“Not what. Who.”
“Drayger.” She leaped to her feet and shoved them into the
black flats under the coffee table. “Where?”
“I don’t know, but we need to get out of here.” He took her
hand and flashed to Sheoul-gra...
Except he didn’t. They were still standing in her living
room.
She looked up at him. “Is this the part where you do
something to get us out of here?”
“I was pausing for effect.” He tried again. Nothing. Fuck.