Chapter 28
Twenty-Eight
TALULLA
Our fingers interlock the moment he’s out of the cell, and I finally breathe knowing no barrier stands between us.
We move quickly through the corridor, our footsteps silent on the stone floor. The basement reeks of mildew and old blood, but as we reach the wooden stairs leading to the ground floor, Flynn’s jaw locks.
We’re not alone.
“What do you think you’re doing?” My father’s voice echoes from the top of the flight of stairs—a hunter on each side, as if he needs guards. As if he’s royalty.
“Brought company?” I ask, tilting my head to the side. “Are you afraid of your precious copil?”
“Talulla, you can’t let him get away with this. He’s our enemy, for fuck’s sake.” My father gestures toward the vampire holding my hand.
“Where’s Serj, Dad?” I ask, taking him by surprise.
He didn’t expect me to know that the scientist who started this madness also wanted to end it—because he knew what this could become.
“Dr. Albescu and I had to go separate ways,” he replies, cracking his neck.
“Is that your way of saying you killed him because he tried to stop this insanity?”
The person I looked up to for most of my childhood chuckles at my question. “He didn’t understand the big picture, Talulla.”
“I think I’m done with your bullshit, Dad.”
“You were born to do this, to kill their kind. How can you erase hundreds of massacres for a bit of fun in the bedroom?”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about.” My hands clench into fists. “You should know me and my character, but no—you just think you’re always right.”
“Jesus Christ, Talulla, are you even hearing yourself?” he spits out.
“Emil, if you don’t stop talking, I will rip your heart out and make you eat it.
” Flynn’s patience is long gone. The grip on my hand tightens, and I know his restraint is hanging by a very thin thread.
He’s trying to calm himself down because the man in front of us shares blood with me, but the reality is that the person I thought I knew is utterly gone. “Listen—”
“I don’t need your fucking parental advice, bloodsucker.”
Flynn scratches his chin stubble. “I’m just saying—you’re not helping your case.”
“I don’t want to help my case. I want my fucking daughter to grow the hell up and accept who she was born to be.
A hunter. The perfect hunter.” My father shouts to Flynn now, his voice echoing off the stone walls.
“With your blood, she’ll be unstoppable.
And I can’t wait for her to stake you for good. ”
“That will never happen,” I whisper, my jaw locking into place.
I feel paralyzed at the sight of my father—blood of my blood—trying to change who I am. Again. Over and over, because what I want was never important to him.
The only person who truly understands me is Flynn. Yes, he might take time to tell me things, might keep some things to himself, but he did everything in his power to make sure I’m okay. To let me have what I need and want.
When I told my father I wanted to finish my studies and not pursue my destiny as a vampire hunter, I was cut out of the family. He thought I wouldn’t resist.
But I did.
And Flynn found me.
The day he looked at me for the first time while he was going to meet with Eric, I knew something had shifted. That I would be okay.
I tried to deny it at first, but we’re made of the same essence, and fate found a way to let us meet again.
And if I knew at the end I’d get to have someone like Flynn at my side, I would have patiently waited for my night sky to show me the stars.
“Copil, step aside. You might suffer now, but you’ll get over him.” My father makes a move toward us, but he stops as I put myself in front of Flynn to shield him.
Flynn tries to move, but I stop him before he gets the chance.
I devoted my life to him because there is no other possibility.
He’s not just a crush like my father implied.
He’s part of my soul. Sure, I could live without my soul, but that would mean surviving a bare life.
I’d be a shell of myself. Empty. A finite amount of numb days until death would hit, diminishing my lifeless existence.
“If you want him, you have to get through me first,” I say, my voice firm, nostrils flaring as anger flourishes from every pore.
“Always a disappointment.” My father spits the words out before eyeing the two beasts on his sides. “Get them. I need him alive. Do whatever you want with her. That’s no daughter of mine.”
The words hit me like a physical blow.
My jaw drops. I expected many things, but not this. My own father is ready to kill me as long as his blood bank remains intact.
My vampire chuckles from behind me. “Emil, you just said the one thing that gives me permission to kill you without me breaking my promise to Talulla,” he says, shifting from one foot to the other.
“You better run, because when I catch you, it will be fun.” I stare at his face as the stoic expression turns into the most predatory smirk I’ve ever seen. “For me.”
The two hunters launch at us, and the dance finally begins.
The first one comes at me fast—too fast for a human. His movements are sharp, enhanced, his pupils dilated from vampire blood. I sidestep, feeling the air displace as his fist swings past my face. The smell of sweat and adrenaline floods my senses.
I duck under his second swing and drive my elbow into his ribs. The crack is satisfying, visceral. He grunts, stumbles back, but doesn’t fall.
Flynn moves beside me like liquid shadow, his movements precise and lethal. He catches the second hunter by the throat mid-lunge, slamming him into the stone wall hard enough that the impact reverberates through the floor. Dust rains down from the ceiling.
The first hunter recovers, circling me now. His eyes are wild, feral—too much blood, too much power, not enough control. He lunges again, and this time I let him get close. I grab his wrist as he swings, twist, and use his momentum to flip him over my shoulder.
He hits the ground hard, the air knocked out of his lungs.
But he’s already rolling, already getting up.
Fuck, this is going to be harder than I thought.
Flynn is a blur of motion—fists, elbows, knees. The second hunter tries to fight back, but it’s useless. Flynn is five hundred years of battle experience condensed into pure, controlled violence. He’s not even breathing hard.
I hear the snap of bone, a choked scream, and then silence.
The first hunter charges me again, and this time I’m ready. I plant my feet, let him come, and at the last second I drop low and sweep his legs out from under him. He crashes to the ground, and I’m on him in an instant, my knee on his chest, my hand reaching for the stake at my belt.
But then I see it—the syringe in his hand.
Shit.
I grab his wrist, twist, and the syringe clatters to the floor. He bucks beneath me, trying to throw me off, but I’m stronger now. Flynn’s blood courses through my veins, amplifying everything—my strength, my speed, my reflexes.
I drive my fist into his face once, twice, three times. Blood sprays across the wooden floor, hot and metallic. His head lolls to the side, unconscious.
Standing, I breathe hard and turn to Flynn.
He’s watching me with dark, hungry eyes. And I can see it in the soft smirk how proud he is.
“It’s okay, fangs,” I say, grabbing the stake from the hunter’s belt. I step on the other’s foot, and he jerks awake, loosening his grip just enough. I turn and pierce him right in the heart. “He’ll never touch me again.”
“That’s rude. You took away all the fun,” Flynn almost whines as he tosses the second hunter’s lifeless body aside.
The third hunter—the one I didn’t see—runs toward me as if he could scare me off. I knee him in the balls, grab his neck, and twist.
The crack echoes through the room.
I turn to look at a very annoyed Flynn, his arms crossed over his chest. I skip over to him, tiptoe, and brush my lips with his. “Let’s get out of here.”
Flynn’s eyes soften for just a moment.
But it’s just enough time for my father to appear behind me.
The gunshot is deafening.
My ears ring, the world tilts, and I fall to the ground. The damp spot on my side spreads fast—hot, wet, wrong.
Fuck. That hurts.
“No.” Flynn’s voice is loud, but it’s muffled as it reaches my ears. I can’t even scream. The pain is too much.
“You’re a fucking dead man,” my vampire adds, and I know his restraint is completely gone.
His eyes go fully dark. The pupils turn burgundy as his fangs poke out, longer than I’ve ever seen them. He doesn’t look human anymore. He looks like death itself.
Flynn launches himself at my father.
I close my eyes and rest my head on the cold floor as a symphony of rips and tears fills the room. The smell of blood and carcass grows stronger and stronger. Yet I know he isn’t indulging in my father’s blood—no, he would say it’s not even worth the drink.
I turn to the side and find the will to open my eyes.
The scene in front of me is lethal. I should try to stop him, but the man I once called father is completely gone. Maybe he never existed. The monster filling my vision is not my vampire, but the person who helped my mother give me life. And he’s about to get his very own sentence.
Death.
Flynn’s hands are holding my father in place, his fingers digging into Emil’s shoulders hard enough to crack bone.
“You might have tasted my blood, Emil,”—his hand grips tighter—“but you toyed with my patience a little too much.” He then turns his neck to the side slightly.
“And I refuse to control my rage for such a worthless excrement.”
Then, as if it’s the easiest motion known to man, Flynn rips my father’s head off and tosses it aside.
It rolls across the floor, coming to a stop near the stairs.
“You—” I cough, trying to move. “—really like that move.”
His breathing is heavy as he tries to bring his anger down and turns to look at me.
This is when I feel a hand caressing my head.
My mother.
She’s here, and she saw everything.
Flynn rushes to me. “Talulla,” he calls my name.
I turn to look at him, and a small smile appears.
If this is how I go, at least I get to do it with my mom and Flynn on my side.
“Talulla, my love, I have to take the bullet out and give you more blood, okay?” he starts, kissing my forehead. “I’m going to fix it. You’ll be okay.”
I simply nod. I’m alive because I have a small residue of his blood in me, but it’s clearly not enough to let me heal.
“Mrs. Popescu, Nora, keep her still.”
My mother’s arms hug me tight, and she starts singing a lullaby in my ears. “All will be okay, my sweet baby,” she repeats over and over, like a chant, a spell, a manifestation. “We’ve got you.”
Flynn’s touch calms me until it reaches the wound.
He slowly pushes his thumb and index finger inside of my body, trying to get a grip on the bullet.
The pain is blinding—white-hot and all-consuming. I bite down on my lip hard enough to taste blood, and I know I’m not helping the situation.
His groans grow louder, and as I turn to look at him, I can tell he’s in excruciating pain. Of course the bullet is made of silver, and probably enchanted too.
“Flynn, you can’t—” I say in a whisper.
“Yes, I can, and I will.” Flynn’s laments continue, and they’re a bigger torture than the pain I’m under. No wound feels as painful as seeing him in agony.
Then I feel it. He gets a grip on it and pulls it out of me, and we both get to breathe as he tosses it aside.
He brings his wrist to his mouth and bites down, letting blood flood out of him. “Here, my love,” he says, bringing his arm to my mouth. “Drink.”
And I do as he says.
The crimson liquid reaches my tongue, and an instant state of ecstasy comes back. With that, the physical pain leaves as well.
“Funny how yesterday you were so against blood sharing, and today you’ve fed me twice,” I say, the corner of my lips lifting into a devilish smile.
Flynn chuckles and sighs. His forehead rests on mine as he inhales my fragrance. “Welcome back, love,” he says, brushing his lips to my temple. “Don’t try to save my life ever again.”