Chapter 25 #2
Yasmine looked up, as if for permission. The creatures all shook their heads in one decisive, seething, no.
“You should leave,” Yasmine replied shakily, not turning around. “Your mom is right about me. Even if she’s a shitty messenger.”
Bella scoffed, but it wasn’t mean-hearted. “She’s a pathological liar, Yasmine. And even if she wasn’t, I know you didn’t kill your parents.”
Yasmine saw a flash of their bodies on the floor again. The creatures laughed, as if they were reveling in the memory. She winced.
“You weren’t there,” Yasmine snapped. “So how would you know? I was there, front and center, and I can barely remember what happened.”
Bella took an unexpected step forward, pushing their bodies flush together; she laced her fingers around Yasmine’s stomach. She was as warm and inviting as a campfire.
“I took an elementary abnormal psychology class in freshman year of college, and do you know what I learned?” she asked. “Cold-blooded killers don’t spend their lives consumed with guilt, trying every day to repent for some unabsolvable sin. Nor do they grow up to be really good mothers.”
Mothers.
Goosebumps raced down Yasmine’s arms, and she let out an unbidden sob.
She knows. And she doesn’t hate me for keeping it from her.
It was almost enough to make her flip around, but she was still too scared; all she could do was tremble in Bella’s arms.
“You have a son,” Bella said in the most tender, understanding way. “Not a nephew.”
Yasmine wanted to deny it. She wanted to believe she could still keep Wallace safe through purposeful omission, but even she knew that veil had long been stripped.
“I… I do,” she confessed, a tear streaking down her cheek. It felt like a release just to say it. “Wallace.”
“Wallace.” Bella inhaled softly, like that was the most wonderful revelation. “He’s human, isn’t he?”
“Yes.”
“That’s why you want to understand immortality. You don’t want to lose him.”
She’d never quite said that bit out loud, had she? “Yes.”
“Turn around, Yasmine. Please. I’m not that scary to look at.”
Yasmine let out a shuddering breath. The fleshy, half-human creatures blinked and twitched at her. Bella would certainly be a nicer visual alternative.
But there was still something stopping her.
“I can’t,” she whispered, guilt and shame enwrapping her like a winter coat. “If you look me in the eyes, they’ll leech onto you. I can control it under usual circumstances, but not now. It’s still so raw. They’re right there.”
Bella leaned her forehead against Yasmine’s shoulder, and, after lingering for a moment, pressed a kiss there. It struck Yasmine like a brief shock of lightning.
“Bella, what are you—”
“I just told my mother to fuck off for the first time in my life. First time in two thousand years, mind you,” Bella said, her breath landing hot on Yasmine’s exposed skin. “There’s not a demon from hell that can get me off that high. So try me. Look me right in the eyes, and scare me.”
Bella sounded so sure of herself, Yasmine almost forgot it was all theatrics. She almost turned around.
“You don’t understand how bad it can get. It sends you to a very dark place.”
“The woman you just met once trapped me in an unlit closet for four years. I might actually be uniquely prepared.” Bella pressed another kiss to the nape of Yasmine’s neck, like this was some game.
“Or, you could just look at me, and if I start to scream, you could just kiss me. That seems to work in the movies.”
Bella didn’t give her an opportunity to come up with another excuse. She grabbed her waist more firmly, then turned her around, forcing her away from the darkness.
And there Bella was, smiling adoringly, with one fang sitting over her bottom lip.
And God—fuck—Yasmine was—
Yasmine was so—
“You have wings,” she observed with a shaky breath, because if she said what she was really thinking, she would have nowhere to hide anymore.
Bella blushed, and gorgeous black feathers folded inward, hiding shyly behind her back.
“They were more useful before helicopters and airplanes. Now I can’t do anything fun without being registered as an unidentified flying object.”
Yasmine laughed, actually laughed, and the hissing wind in her ears went down a decibel.
But she was still too scared to look Bella in the eyes.
“I think they’re very nice,” she said instead.
Bella scoffed. “I think you’re very nice. And the wings are ugly, but tolerable.”
“Ugly, but tolerable,” Yasmine repeated. “I think you once said something similar about my personality.”
“God, you really always need the last word, don’t you?”
Bella reached for her chin, and Yasmine shivered as she raised it up. The movement was so quick and gentle, she couldn’t help the basic instinct to look—look into Bella’s eyes, which were as red and soft as a field of poppies.
Yasmine wasn’t sure she’d ever seen such a violent color look so pretty.
But then, almost as soon as she let herself be comforted, she felt it. The jolt of electricity that passed between her and a victim. The nightmare spreading.
Bella’s soft eyes darkened, and her smile fell. The creatures flew out from behind her, globbing onto Bella in a giant, fleshy mass.
Yasmine cried out.
She was about to start tearing them off, prying them off of Bella with bare hands—even if she knew it was useless—when the mass of monsters pulsed, once, like a heartbeat.
And then they… disintegrated into dust.
Blown out with the wind, into the oak trees. And Bella stood there, as unaffected and casual as a gas station girl on her lunch break.
“Huh,” Bella said, blinking several times. Her eyes quickly regained their spritely brightness. “Your powers taste like… like, something I used to eat when I was younger. I can’t really put a name to it. Maybe a custard?”
“I’m sorry, taste?” Yasmine sputtered, astonished. “How are—are you okay? How did you do that?”
Bella rolled her eyes in amusement.
“Do you usually ask the oven if it’s okay after it burns your food?
” When Yasmine just looked at her with further bemusement, Bella tucked a hair behind her ear with her gloved hand.
“I’m a furnace, babe. My powers disintegrate things.
I wasn’t sure it would work on your demons, but it seems I’m an equal opportunity blowtorch. ”
“Oh.”
Oh.
Yasmine couldn’t believe it.
“So, that makes you…immune,” she said weakly.
“Yeah. Sorry. A bit anti-climactic,” Bella said with a small laugh. “I did think about pretending for a few seconds, so you might try and kiss me Sleeping Beauty-style. But I figured that might backfire.”
Yasmine let out a rushed, incredulous laugh. And for the hundredth time since they first met, Yasmine felt like maybe she’d dreamt this woman up.
It would have been the first pleasant dream she’d had in a long, long time.
“You smug fucking idiot,” Yasmine muttered, even through her tears. “You don’t have to trick me into kissing you.”
And because she really did always need the last word, she leaned forward; Bella met her there with an equal desperation.
Something built within Yasmine as she wrapped her hands around Bella’s slim waist in that gorgeous dress, as she traced the rough edges of her wings under the fabric; Bella made a soft whimpering sound that went right to Yasmine’s stomach; and Yasmine thought—
I want to keep her forever.
Yasmine’s heart lurched, and before she could spend even a moment with that thought, or what it meant, Bella’s lips slipped away from hers.
“Yasmine… where is Rebecca?”