“My necklace is a tracker,” she explained. The lack of transparency had caused the rift in their relationship, but Olivia knew the truth now. And since they were experiencing a momentary return to their friendship, she opted for honesty.
“It’s also a panic button,” Bel continued. “It links me to Eamon, and it doesn’t rely on cell service. I can be anywhere in the world, and he’d find me.”
“He tracks your movements at all times?” Olivia looked as if she were trying not to let her mouth fall open.
“Everywhere I go. Each time I’ve been taken, my kidnappers left my necklace on. It’s so small and harmless. People remember to toss phones and keys but not book charms, so Eamon had military-grade tech installed inside it.”
“I can’t decide if that’s comforting or terrifying.”
“Ethan Rollo.” She might as well confess everything. “He didn’t just kill the cast and crew members of Aesop’s Files. I got in his crosshairs. I was the better cop, but it didn’t matter because he wasn’t human.”
“Rollo wasn’t human? Our Deputy Rollo?”
“He was a werewolf.”
“They exist?”
“They do.” Bel absentmindedly rubbed her scars. “So it didn’t matter that I’m a better shot in a crisis. I can’t compete with indestructibility and claws. So my necklace is a comfort. One click of a button, and the worst monster of them all comes to find me. He’s been too late so many times, but with Ethan Rollo, he wasn’t. He got to me first. Now, I never take this off.”
Olivia inhaled a shaky breath as another crash of thunder shook the car, and she released Bel’s wrist to lean back in her seat. “How many monsters are out there?”
“I don’t know.”
“Eamon told me he was the worst of them. Are there others like him?”
“No, he’s the last of his kind. When he dies, so does the Dhampir.”
“Do immortal creatures like him die?”
“No.” Bel rubbed her necklace between her fingers. “He’ll have to kill himself if he wants to die.”
“Like he’d ever do that,” Olivia scoffed.
“He will.” Bel’s memory snapped back to their conversation and the reality that she would never bear children if Eamon Stone were the man she bound her life to. “When I die, he’s promised to enter death with me.”
“He’s going to die with you? Is that something Ewan would’ve done if we had…” Olivia trailed off, her features pale below the curtain of rain.
“No, I think shifters are mortal,” Bel said. “Not Eamon, though, but he doesn’t want to live beyond me. So we’ll leave this world together.”
“I don’t understand how evil like him can be so capable of love.”
“I don’t either.”
“But you love him? Really love him?”
“Call me a monster too, because I do.”
“But you knew, right?” Olivia asked. “He told you from the start that he wasn’t normal.”
“Explicitly.” Bel touched her scars. She’d forgiven Eamon for his sins, but she’d never forget the way his teeth ripped through her flesh. She would never forget the sound her tearing skin made or the pungent scent of her own death. She knew exactly who Eamon Stone was, but she’d absolved him of his part in the curse that demanded her sacrifice.
“That’s the thing.” It was Olivia’s turn to look like she might cry. “I might have loved Ewan if I’d known. I might have forgivenhim. But I’ll never know if I could’ve looked past his nature because, unlike Eamon, he never gave me that chance.”
“Wet puppy incoming!”Eamon boomed over the thunder as he flung open the SUV’s back doors and shoved a soaked Cerberus inside.
“Baby Beast!” Bel recoiled as her dog spewed water all over her interior, but the second he stilled, she leaned into the backseat to capture his face. “Hi, good boy. Did you go for a ride?”
“Everyone okay?” Eamon asked, the rain beating down to plaster his shirt to every muscular curve of his chest. The detectives had been stranded on the roadside for over half an hour, and the storm had yet to relent, drenching him the instant he exited his truck. “You hit the panic button, but I figured it was because you had no service since I couldn’t reach your cell.”
