Wicked Sun: Vampires & Vices No. 3, page 16
My wager pays off. His touch sends a wave of drowsiness through me, but not enough to put me to sleep. I’m all out of patience. All out of good ideas. All out of mercy.
There’s nothing left. Not for these people.
Still manacled, I snatch Fredrico’s wrist in my hand and tug him to me, making good on my promise. It’s so quick. The flesh of his throat is warm and soft under my razor fangs. I slice him right open, his blood splattering across the room, and drink him in before biting deeper, ripping his throat out.
So much glorious blood.
It pours down me, and then I’m dropping his body at my feet, rivers of red slipping down my chin. “Who’s next?”
More screaming––more for me to feed on.
Now they’ll stake me. It’s over. But they’ll have to be brave enough to get near me first.
“You!” I growl at Greyson. “You’re next. Come join your uncle.”
Tate pushes his son out the door while the healer screams, grabbing onto Fredrico’s body and hollering about her husband. Even now, she’s trying to heal him. It won’t work. And if she gets any closer, I’ll kill her too. I’ll kill every last one of them if given the chance.
Camilla is saying something to me in Italian that I hardly care to listen to. Something along the lines of comply or die, but I drown it out.
I expect to deal with a stake at any moment, but I don’t get one. They all leave, dragging the body out with them, a smear of crimson marking the floor. Tate picks Eva up and carries her away. Just as they’re closing the door, I catch her eyes. They hold onto my gaze, possessive and strong. She’s no longer crying.
Is she on their side or mine?
Night must come because hours inch by, but there’s no way for me to know for sure. They keep me locked up. Isolated. Waiting.
At least I fed. I feel amazing, and I don’t regret what I did. Maybe I should. But I never pretended to be anything other than what I am. I’ve killed before, and I’ll kill again. They’re the fools for thinking they could expect anything else from me.
Anything less.
Hours pass. Days? Minutes? I don’t know anymore, until the door swings open again. Four pairs of legs walk toward me. I gaze up, assuming the De Lucas are back, but it’s Evangeline standing before me with a grim expression on her pretty face. At her sides are her two hunter friends, Felix and Seth. I’m surprised to see them. But not as surprised as I am to see the fourth person.
“Mangus,” I breathe. “You came.”
Eva must have used the “In Case of Emergency” number that I’d programmed into the phone. Does that mean she trusts me again? Will she leave with me? I don’t know what I’ll do if she breaks me out of here but refuses to come along.
“At your service, brother.” Mangus nods. “Now let’s go. We’ve got things to do. People to see.”
He’s got nothing to do or see, but leave it to Mangus to keep things light. Eva gets to work on my chains, producing a key to attack the locks. I have no idea how she managed to get a key, and I want to kiss her in gratitude. Felix and Seth stand in the corner, apprehension evident on their faces, but here nonetheless. I guess I’ll let the fact that they’re vampire hunters slide for the moment considering they’re here to save my ass.
“And where are we going then?” I ask Mangus just as Eva manages to get me unshackled. The relief is palpable.
“Don’t you know?” Mangus laughs. “There’s this Gateway that everyone is fighting over. Guess we’d better get there and make sure the wards are still strong. You’re in luck because I know just where to go.”
CHAPTER 27
“How did you manage to get to me?” Adrian asks, bewildered. His hair is a bloodied halo around his face, rings of exhaustion circling shallow eyes. But at least he’s still alive. The Gateway must be important. I thought for sure they would have staked him after he killed Fredrico.
I’m still angry with Adrian, but I’m also proud of myself for coming this far. The fact that I’m here is nothing short of a miracle. “It was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to pull off. Now hurry up, let’s go, and I’ll explain on the way.”
We sneak back out into the hallway, and I handle any silver in our path, grateful that only bothered me during the three nights of transition. Adrian is weak so Mangus holds him up under an arm as they shuffle along. “I’ve never heard vampires make so much noise,” I hiss, and they stop.
“Is she always this pleasant?” Mangus asks Adrian.
“Only in the mornings,” Adrian replies dryly, and my cheeks burn. Felix and Seth exchange a disgusted look that makes me want to slap them both, but there’s no time for that. And I shouldn’t be so smug because we could be caught at any moment.
“Follow me,” I whisper-yell.
The house has silver bars on the windows and doors, but Mangus got in, so I’m determined to get out. The best route won’t be through any of those doors or windows, and that’s because it won’t be what the De Luca family will expect. I quickly lead them out of the dungeon and up to the center atrium on the main floor, passing the guards the four of us gagged and bound on the way.
Just as we sweep into the muggy room with the overgrown plants, unseen alarms blare, and my heart drops.
“You can levitate, right?” I ask Mangus, and he snorts.
“What do you take me for?” he says, “Of course, I can levitate.”
“Well, Hugo couldn’t, so it’s not an unreasonable question.”
Mangus turns on Adrian. “What does she know of Hugo?”
My cheeks warm. “Later. What about you, Adrian? Do you have enough strength?”
“Yes, and I’ll carry you.” He’s mighty confident for having just been tortured, beaten, and held captive for the last forty-eight hours.
“Adrian, you carry Seth. Mangus, you carry Felix. And I’ll worry about myself.”
All four men stare at me, and before I can address their obvious lack of faith in me, I’m floating in midair.
Mangus whistles low. “Impressive. How much venom did you get?”
“Enough to do that,” Adrian says.
Felix and Seth’s jaws drop, and Mangus mutters something about having seen it all now. Then he throws Felix over his shoulder, and I almost laugh at my large Cuban-American friend’s protests.
“They’re in here!” a man yells, and footsteps sound from the hallway outside the atrium.
“We’ve got to move!” I hiss. “They’ve got silver bullets!”
Adrian scoops Seth up, and then we’re all flying for the ceiling. I curl in on myself, my back a battering ram as I fly through the glass. I hit it hard, shattering the pane around me, shards raining down. I press on, concentrating. I’d practiced in a room a bunch over the last few days but figured that all it really took was concentration, otherwise it was easy. But that was a few feet off the ground, and this is entirely different. We continue up into the sweeping blackness, and my gut clenches. I try not to think about falling, so instead, I focus on the cool, still night to distract me. The moon hangs bright and full in the sky, and with the added benefit of the venom, the world is illuminated to near daylight.
We zip up and away from the Casa, and I allow myself to relax. And then giggle, thrilled that levitating has come so easily. Just as that thought hits me, I plummet and yelp, the ground coming at me fast. Someone swoops ahead of me, catching me in his other arm. Mangus.
I cry out with relief. “Don’t get cocky,” he says, “that’s how people get killed.”
“Thank you for catching me,” I say through ragged breaths. “I always thought you didn’t like me.”
“I didn’t,” Mangus responds, “but I like Adrian, and he likes you.”
“Can we not have this conversation right now?” Felix groans from Mangus’s other arm. His eyes are round saucers taking in the blur of landscape as Mangus flies us over the city and out toward the sea. “I think I’m going to be sick.”
“Get sick, and I’ll drop you,” Mangus warns.
“You wouldn’t,” I snap. To Felix I add, “He wouldn’t.”
Mangus only growls, indicating that he, in fact, would. It doesn’t matter though, because Felix doesn’t get sick, and soon we’re flying over lapping ocean waves and toward a small island off the coast. Adrian isn’t far behind us, and even over the rushing wind, I can hear Seth saying something about not being a good swimmer.
We land on the island, which is nothing more than a big rock with an old lighthouse and a dock with a couple of boats tied up.
“Our ride will be here soon,” Mangus says. “Hang tight everybody.”
“How did you do it?” Adrian turns on us. “You saved me.”
“You could’ve gotten out,” Mangus argues. “You always do. How many times have you been in situations like this before?”
Adrian shakes his head. “This time was different. I lost my temper, I killed one of the higher-ups. They would’ve kept trying their powers on me until I grew weak enough for them to actually work. They wouldn’t have let me live much longer.”
So supernaturals aren’t entirely immune to angelic gifts, which explains a lot of what I saw two days ago during the interrogation. I tuck that information away for later.
I think he’s right about them killing him, but I don’t say it. The De Luca family has been a mess since Fredrico died, and their anger has been as thick as smoke. “I faked Greyson’s little torture bit,” I explain. “It worked at first, but I was quick to fight it off. I already knew that was his thing, so I pretended the shadows were still after me, and everyone bought it.”
Adrian nods, leveling me with a stare that makes my insides twist. “You’re a good actress, Angel.”
Angel . . . I’m not sure I like that nickname anymore. I shrug. “When I need to be.”
Once Adrian had killed Fredrico, the entire Casa fell to pieces. People were crying, whispering in corridors, there was even some wailing behind closed doors from a few of the family members. All those emotions hitting the house at once made it easy for me to do what I needed to get Adrian out of there. It was the perfect distraction.
“They expected me to be out of it as I recovered from his attack on me. So I walked around like a zombie, and nobody talked to me for a while. The first thing I did was lift a phone off a staff member and called that ‘In Case of Emergency’ number you left for me.”
“You lost the phone I gave you?” Adrian raises an eyebrow.
“You gave her a phone?” Seth interrupts. “When did that happen?”
I snap my fingers. “None of that matters anymore. Listen. I called it, and your pal Mangus here answered. When I told him you were in trouble, he immediately offered to rescue you, and we worked out a plan.”
Truth be told, I was floored when Mangus answered and so quickly offered his help. The guy never liked me, but this wasn’t about me, it was about Adrian, which showed me how much he cared for him. It gave me hope and a reason to do the risky thing I did next. “Getting the keys off Camilla had been a lot harder.”
“Yeah, that woman doesn’t seem like the type you could pull one over on,” Felix admits.
“And she’s scary as hell,” I let out a laugh.
“She’s not so bad,” Seth argues. “Remember what Tate said? She can be trusted.” He turns and gazes out at the water. “Maybe we should go back. They’re not that bad.”
The vampires scrunch up their faces, and I quickly explain how my friends have been continually manipulated by Tate’s mind tricks. Not that either of these guys have room to talk, considering vampires compel humans. It’s almost the same thing.
“Go on about the keys,” Mangus interrupts, gazing at me with new eyes. “I want to hear this part. You’re more interesting than I gave you credit for, Angel.”
“Don’t call her that,” Adrian hisses, “Only I can call her that.”
“The only person who has permission to call me that is my mother.” I roll my eyes and go on. “Anyway, I went to visit her in her study to offer my condolences. She’d been an emotional wreck, not like herself at all, and I hate to say it, but I took advantage of that and snagged the ring of keys when she wasn’t looking.”
I pull them from my pocket now and toss them out to sea, my superhuman strength sending them whizzing ridiculously far. I still feel a little bad about taking advantage of Camilla, but I’d realized that these people weren’t on my side the moment they’d taken me to that party to feed on human auras. Everything had gotten so complicated since walking into the casino that day back in August. I’d always seen the world in black and white, and both the vampires and the nephilim had me questioning that, making me feel like everyone was a solid mix of gray.
I don’t want to be gray.
There have to be good guys out there, and I’m going to be one of them. I have a choice of doing right or wrong, and I’m going to do what’s right, and if I end up making a wrong choice, then I’m going to correct it. Staying with the De Luca family would’ve turned me into someone I’m not. I think of my dad. How hard it must have been for him to get away from them. That choice ended up costing him his life. I’m following in his footsteps, and just have to hope I get a better ending to my story.
Felix breaks the silence next. “I’m pretty sure that’s when Eva came and got us,” he says to the vampires, “she asked us to come with her, and since we swore to Tate that we wouldn’t leave her and that we’d protect her no matter what, we had no choice but to agree to her terms.”
Mangus’s nostrils flare, and his pupils dilate. “You’re hunters, though? And you’ve made promises to Tate?”
My friends nod slowly and it’s like an invisible goes up between them and the vampires.
“You’re lucky you’re not dead,” Mangus says. “That I didn’t kill you the second I saw you.”
True to his word, the viking vampire prince had shown up at my door an hour ago. He’d broken into the house, claiming that he was stronger than most vampires and therefore had no trouble getting into homes, even if they were inhabited by neph. I hadn’t questioned him––the older the vamp, the more powerful and skilled they can be. I don’t know when vikings were around, but Mangus is as old as them.
My friends are clearly uncomfortable and inching away from the vampires. They don’t have stakes or guns on them. They’ve got no defense, and the sun is still hours from rising. At any moment the vampires could kill them for being hunters.
“They can be trusted,” I say to Mangus, trying to comfort my friends, although a thread of fear weaves down my spine. “The fact that they’re here and didn’t cause any issues getting Adrian out is proof enough.”
Mangus doesn’t seem convinced. “One mistake, and I’ll kill them.”
I gape at him, then at Adrian. He shrugs. “You’re my priority, Eva. If they attempt to double-cross us, then I’ll kill them if Mangus doesn’t beat me to it.”
And I know he will. These men mean every word, which is exactly why my friends must go home.
CHAPTER 28
“Do you guys have your passports, money, things like that?” I turn on Seth and Felix. When they nod, I muster up the courage I need to do the right thing, even though it’s going to hurt the relationships I’ve spent weeks rebuilding. “Then you should go.” I point to the boats bobbing at the docks. “Take one of those and get out of here. Go back home and return to your lives.”
“We’re not leaving you,” Seth replies first, surprising me.
“Yeah, Eva, whatever this is, we’re in it.” Felix nods, eyes earnest.
“Eva is right,” Mangus says, “it’s not safe for you.”
“It’s not safe for any one of us,” Felix argues, jabbing his fingers at the vampires. “You just don’t want hunters around, but guess what? I don’t trust you with Eva any more than you trust me with her.”
“We could make you go,” Mangus snarls. His temper flares, and it might be the first time I’ve seen him like this. He’s usually so cold and aloof. He’s different than he used to be, but that was when his wife was still alive. I know she died being blamed for his death, which is part of why I was so stunned when he’d been the one on the other end of that “In Case of Emergency” phone number.
Seth stands taller. “We’re not old enough to be compelled. So what are you going to do about it?”
The tension between our little ragtag group is as dangerous as a taut wire about to snap, and whoever pulls on it next will likely end up getting hit. “That’s enough.” I hold up my hands in surrender and turn on my friends. “I appreciate everything you’ve done for me. I love you guys, but the people who are after me could hurt you, and you’re not going to be able to fight them off.”
Because now I’ll have vampires and nephilim on my tail.
“When are you going to get it?” Felix rakes a hand through his dark curls and levels me with an exasperated look. “We’re here by choice. Sure, we made a promise to Tate but that was only because we care about you. Protecting you is what we wanted, too. Don’t treat us like a liability.”
But that’s exactly what they are.
“I’m sorry,” my voice cracks, and their faces fall, but I can’t give up on them. Not yet. “I’ve tried to tell you multiple times, but every time I do, you just gloss over it like it’s nothing. The truth is that Tate is the reason you care so much about my safety. He used his mind manipulation to get you to trade in your normal lives to be here for me. I mean, just think about what you’ve been saying tonight. Don’t you see that I’m right?”
It seems so obvious. He even said himself that Tate made them promise.
Felix shakes his head and steps forward. “You’re wrong, Eva. You’re my sister’s best friend and have been a part of my family for years. It wouldn’t matter what Tate did or didn’t do, I’d still be here.”
Is that true, though? Because while he always treated me well, it was never like this. Our relationship has been a rollercoaster since August, and I need to get him out, for his own sake more than anything. “I’m no good for you,” I say, reaching out and squeezing his hand. He squeezes back. “You had such a bright future until all this happened. Think of your family. They’re probably worried sick about you. And think of Ayla.” Last I saw her, she’d gone into an agoraphobic depression and locked herself in her room and everyone out of her life. “She needs you now more than ever. She’s your family, not me.”
