“Yeah, but I should have told you when you decided to come along.”
He shrugged. “Why? Wouldn’t have made any difference. You told me you had to rescue somebody from the Vampire Cathedral. You do. The only thing that telling me you had to rescue mermaids would have done was make me even more excited to come. Didn’t even know those things still existed, or even if they had. Wouldn’t have passed that up for the world.”
“And Finn?”
He let out a loud laugh, for some reason bringing Wrell to my mind once more. I’d never heard the merman laugh and doubted he ever had, but I was certain this is what he would have sounded like if he did. “Why the fuck would I care about an ex-boyfriend? It’s not like you even knew he was here.”
“Well, still—”
“Dude, you gotta knock it off. You did no wrong by me, okay? Hell, even if you had known the guy was here, and even if he had still been your boyfriend, I probably would have still signed up. I hadn’t had sex like that in a long time. Not gonna pass that up. What you choose to tell your boy is your business. But that isn’t even the case. So who cares?”
I couldn’t say I liked the insinuation that he wouldn’t have minded if I was cheating on someone with him, but like he said, I hadn’t been, so it was all beside the point.
I sat up, mimicking his position so we were on eye level with each other. “Well, either way, this whole thing got a lot more complicated. I wasn’t even sure why you were coming with me before. You sure don’t have to now.”
“Are you kidding? This thing got easier. Like the fairy said, the more power we have, the better. Granted, I would choose about any other power over witch and fairy. Some more wolves or demons. Even a rogue vampire or something, but power’s power, and now we have more of it. And if we can get your warlocky ex-boyfriend and the other fairy to team up with us, maybe even the sister, if we can get her out… well, I’d say we nearly got ourselves an army.”
I considered his words. He was right. Kinda. Maybe not an army, at least not one that should take on the Vampire Cathedral, but still. It would be a lot better than the two of us. Or just myself, like I’d thought it would be.
He grinned at me, the smile on his handsome face making him look boyish and highlighting the lines that were beginning to deepen around his eyes and mouth. If I hadn’t known Finn was nearby, I would have wanted to take the last few minutes of privacy and put them to good use.
“Why are you doing this?”
He flinched back slightly. Not much, but enough that I noticed the uncomfortable expression that crossed his face. “Why not? I told you it was time for an adventure.”
I narrowed my eyes at him, inspecting. “Nah, there’s more. You’re not just doing this for adventure. Why risk so much? You barely know me, and you don’t know any of the others at all. Plus, you don’t like water. I don’t believe you’re that interested in mermaids.”
Again, he tensed for a moment, then shrugged and let his shoulders relax. “Like I told you, you didn’t need to tell me everything. You don’t owe me that. You said you needed to help someone, and you do. That sounded like a good thing to me. Yeah, it’s an adventure, and that’s something I’m always up for.”
He paused again, searching for words.
I leaned back, trying to give him space but still hoping to understand.
He raised both hands in a gesture of surrender, then let them fall to his lap. “Let’s say I’ve got a past and there’s plenty to make up for. Helping you out seemed like a good way to start putting some of that right. The fact you’re hot as fuck and can fuck as hot as you look was a bonus. Now that I know there’s even more at risk than I realized… that there’s an entire species needing help…. Well, can’t it be enough that I’m trying to put some things right for once?”
Coming off of his claim that it wouldn’t have bothered him if he’d been screwing around with someone else’s boyfriend, I was a little taken aback by his declaration of atonement of sorts. He seemed genuine. More than.
Thirty-Five
Brett Wright
“Do youreally expect me to fall for this?”
I didn’t answer, only stared at him as he stood on the edge of the surf, the bright moonlight illuminating his body from the darkness of the forest at his back. More than ever before, I was astounded that such a weak-looking man could have been the cause of so much pain and death. His thin frame was better suited to a computer geek than a creature of such destruction.
His volume rose as he took another step closer to me, his foot submerging. “And naked? This is your plan, to seduce me into this trap?”
My gaze flicked to the blackness of the trees, to where the others were hiding. Waiting. The vegetation seemed to creep forward. Not a threat to the vampire, but to me. Its vines snaking from the trees, darting into the water, and wrapping around me, pulling me into its dense darkness. Taking me forever from the safety of the sea.
With the water lapping below my waist, the leering jungle seemed to hold more threat than the vampire. It was foreign. Sinister. How much more so for the countless mers who had been taken from the sea and dragged into this alien world?
Despite my proclaimed control and knowing he was no real danger to me any longer, fear shot through me. The water bubbled around my naked hips, steam wafting over the skin of my stomach.
“Is your body supposed to lure me out into the sea, demon? Like it did to that boy? Are you going to boil me? Is that the new way to kill a vampire?”
A low chuckle wafted to me over the water, refocusing my fear to where it should have been. I’d forgotten for a moment. It didn’t matter what he looked like. He was the monster who killed Sonia, who’d nearly killed Peter. He started everything that night in the alley. The boiling water began to surge in earnest, in fury.
The vampire cocked his chin to one side, angling his head to project his voice over his shoulder. “Did he tell you that, witch? Did you know your brother was fucking a demon who boiled a boy to death on the beach? He just left him there, dying. A melted mass of flesh.” He brought his attention back to me, his emerald eyes bright as sunshine, cutting through the distance. Then in an instant, the vampire closed the space between us, not making a single ungraceful move as he stepped through the water. I flinched but held my ground, reminding myself that he couldn’t hurt me. Not really. “And they call me a monster.”
