Chapter 17 #2
I tore the lid off the huge bag of salt used as softener, grabbed the scoop, scooped out a load of salt, and flung it in a huge, gritty arc at Jeremy, taking a gamble that salt in his face would be more effective than wine.
The rain of granules hit him across the cheek.
His bark skin sizzled. Jeremy screamed, recoiled, and dropped Theo . . . into the pool.
The water swallowed him.
Out cold, he would drown in seconds.
No, no, no. That wasn’t supposed to happen!
I dove into the simmering water, just like I had with Fleur, only this time the water was furious at me, at Jeremy, at everything that had been done to it.
It didn’t want me or Theo in it. Bubbles erupted, churning around me, stealing any sense of which way was up.
I sank, pulled down, displaced, going deeper, darker.
This was clearly no normal pool.
I kicked, lungs burning, and then, there .
. . Theo’s body, arms and legs spread, not moving.
Drifting above me, weightless in the water.
I grabbed his wrist and pulled, kicking hard for what I hoped was the surface.
The water sloshed, pushing in, trying to tug me down, like it had when it had grabbed me before.
There was darkness down there, a thick, hungry darkness. The pool didn’t have a bottom, it had a somewhere else . . . Somewhere the Briars would arrive from, if Jeremy got his way.
I kicked harder, fighting the swirling current.
I broke the surface with a gasp, grabbed the pool’s edge, and heaved Theo’s deadweight out of the water alongside me. His head flopped onto the tiled edge, eyes closed, mouth spilling water.
“Hey, hey . . .” I tapped his cheek. More water spilled from his lips.
Damn. This was not good.
I looked up for help, but nobody was around. Jeremy had gone too.
Theo wasn’t breathing.
CPR. Right. Office training days. Think! How’d it go again? Sing the Bee Gees “Stayin’ Alive” . . . one hundred twenty-three beats per minute. I clasped my hands together and pumped his chest to the lyrics of “Stayin’ Alive” playing on a loop in my head.
I could do this, I could keep him stable . . . Surely someone would come?
“Help!”
It went on for too long. Was I hurting him? Not if he was dead, dumbass. Why did Theo always almost die around me? Why was I always the one saving him? Why did I care so damn much about Theo Witherborne?
He bucked, spluttered, and vomited up a load of pool water over me and himself. Then he flopped back, bright eyes open and wild, mouth gaping, fangs there. Long. Curved. Sharp.
“Hey, hey . . . you’re alright,” I told him, holding his shoulder up, to keep him sitting upright so his lungs cleared.
His gaze latched onto mine. “Owen . . .” he croaked, wiping his mouth.
I grinned. Relief rushed through me in a cold, shivering wave. I patted his arm. “Yeah, you’re good. Jeremy’s gone for now, but he’ll be back.”
“Jeremy?” He blinked wet lashes fast.
“Big bad root guy, wants to drain your blood, mix it with the pool, open a gateway for a family reunion. That guy.”
“I don’t understand half of what you just said,” he croaked. “Was I in the pool?”
“Doesn’t matter.” I hauled him to his feet beside me and held him vertical as he wavered, legs wobbly. “Why did you come? I said to stay behind.”
He snorted, then wheezed, still trying to catch his breath. “No way . . . am I going to let you . . . walk into murder mansion . . . on your own . . . Idiot.”
“You’re the idiot who got caught.” Damn, it was good to see him breathing and talking and smiling. For a horrible few moments there, my world hadn’t had a Theo Witherborne in it, and that world had been a duller, more somber place.
I didn’t want to let him go, I realized, standing there watching him pant and drip water all over the ground. His hair had glued itself to his pale face, but his eyes blazed, as though he were more alive now than ever before.
“Yeah, well, you were taking too long inside,” he croaked. “You could have been dead, and Bentley’s a waste—wait, where’s Benny?”
I winced. “Still inside, I think. I’m not sure he made it.”
“We can hope.” Theo bent over and clutched his thighs. “Man, I am not okay.”
“Yeah, but you’re walking, so let’s get out of here while we can.
” I didn’t wait for him to argue, I just took his hand and led him away from the pool, back across the yard toward the Witherborne Mansion.
It was the quickest way of getting out of there.
Once on Witherborne land, Jeremy’s influence shrank to just the pool.
“What did you do to him?” Theo asked, as we passed the pump house.
“Threw salt on him. I figured salt the earth kinda thing. I saw the salt when you shoved me in the shed last week.”
“You threw salt at him?”
I beamed. “Like slugs, right?”
“Slugs?”
“It worked.”
He grinned. Really grinned. It lit up his pale, wet face. “You might be brilliant. You know that?”
I shrugged. “I just did what anyone would do.”
“No, not really, Owen. And you saved me. Really saved me. I was by the pool, and then . . . then . . . you were there.” He stopped suddenly, dug his heels into the ground, and pulled his hand from mine. “Oh, shit.” He looked at his hands. “I’m a vampire.”
“Yeah, we established that. C’mon—”
“No, I mean, I died and you brought me back. Holy shit, I transitioned. I’m a real vampire now.”
Vampires needed to die and come back for the transition to take, to pass over into full vampire adulthood. He’d drowned, and I’d brought him back to the Bee Gees.
This was going to be huge for him.
He’d be stuck at this age, looking like he did now, forever. Not the wet, stressed, bedraggled look. The twenty-something Theo with the sassy smiles and heartbreak eyes.
“Congrats. But we need to keep moving.”
His face fell. “Oh, god.” He was looking at me. Into me. Through me.
“Theo?”
Oh right, the whole “he could see my soul now” thing that Bentley had talked about. Theo could see my soul, and whatever he saw had stopped him in his tracks. Surprise! The pool boy is a bad guy. Damn.
“Hey, Theo.” I stepped closer, standing inside his personal space like he did to me all the time. “Focus on getting out. The rest we can work through later.”
His gaze stopped bouncing around and fixed on mine. In the garden gloom, his dark eyes caught the starlight, pupils widening. His breathing changed, slowing, going deeper. Was there something happening here that I needed to be aware of as a very mortal human being who happened to be vampire prey?
He scooped me up by the back of the neck and pulled me into a savage kiss.
I should have been surprised. But somewhere in all this chaos, I’d almost expected it.
Needed it, even. Needed to feel him close, to know he was okay.
A whole lot of feelings rushed through my body and brain, and after being numb to all of it, the sharp clarity had my heart pounding and lungs breathless.
I clutched his wet shirt, pulled him closer, and let his kiss steal the breath right out of me.
Our wet clothes squelched.
So help me, I wanted to climb him like a pole right there. Wanted to back him into the nearest wall and stop thinking for once in my life. It didn’t make a lick of sense, with every smart part of my brain screaming “run,” but all I could think about was getting my hands under his shirt.
The need had teeth. It chewed through the fear and the good sense and everything else until there was just Theo. The heat of him, the taste of him, my whole body leaning in like it had finally found the one thing it had been missing and wasn’t about to let go just because we were being hunted.
I wanted to ruin him. Wanted to get his belt open and my knees on the ground and find out every sound he made when I had him under my hands and in my mouth.
I wanted his fingers in my hair and his back arched off a mattress, and hours, not the stolen thirty seconds we had on the run.
My whole body had a plan, and the plan was filthy and detailed and absolutely the worst possible thing to be drawing up now.
I could feel exactly how wild it would get between us if we ever got the chance, like a storm about to break. All teeth and grip and zero patience.
And under all that feeling, the real knowledge hit home.
He’d seen me now. All of it. He’d looked right into the worst of me a moment ago, the bad wiring I’d spent two years pretending I’d fixed, and he’d kissed me anyway.
Maybe because of the dark. Like the rot was the part he wanted.
Like I didn’t have to be good Owen or quiet Owen or any version of myself that fit through a normal door.
He wanted the actual me. Warts and worse.
And somewhere under all that wanting I started to understand that I wanted him back the same way, the whole glittering disaster of him.
The mood swings, the drama, the passing out, the family toxicity. All of it.
He broke the kiss.
His cheek brushed mine, his lips brushed my ear when he breathlessly said, “I want you in ways that aren’t healthy for either of us.”
Health was overrated anyway.
“You okay?” he asked.
“Uh yeah, your timing is real bad, though.” I still had him clutched close, afraid to let him go, but over his shoulder, I spotted a small army of shadows making their jerking, disjointed way toward us. “The garden is awake.”
Theo turned, gallantly shoving me behind him as though I was the one who always needed saving, not him. We were going to have to talk about that if we survived the possessed garden.
Jeremy Briar’s bushes had come alive and were forming a half circle in the dark.
“Are those evil topiaries?” Theo asked.
“Yeah.”
I’d known the garden was messed up when it had me walking in circles, but this was a whole different level of horror show.
“I am not paid enough for this.”
The ground trembled. Roots burst from the soil, lashing toward us like whips. Apparently, murder topiaries weren’t enough, we had to have underground murder root worms now too.
“Run!” I bolted.
Theo sprinted alongside me.