The handsome face of that stranger started to form in my mind, but it faded before any aspect of him became distinguishable. His face had long ago vanished from my mind, but the agonized terror in his screams threatened to drown out everything around me. I’d never told anyone but Finn. It seemed impossible the vamp could even know about the boy.
His hand clutching my chin brought me back to the present, shattering the past. The emeralds held my gaze, not requiring any compulsion to keep me from looking away.
“You like to pretend you’re the victim in all this, don’t you? That you’re the key to everything. The reason it all happened. That if only I hadn’t found you that night, hadn’t taken you in that alley, it all could have been different?”
The vampire’s voice lowered to a whisper. “The only thing you were was a blood bag. And a piece of ass. I’ve taken better. Your little fortune cookie of a roommate, for instance. Now, she put up a much more believable fight than you.” He pulled my chin forward and twisted, bringing my ear to his lips. “Funny that she’s our queen now. The stupid cunt. She was something. You were worth nothing more than the mer blood in your veins. I’ll give you that. Because of you, I uncovered the key to what I’d been searching for my entire existence, but I claimed it elsewhere. I didn’t even really need you.”
Yanking my face back to be even with his, he bared his fangs. “None of this has been about you. You were nothing compared to those around you. The human bitch outshined you. Even the sniveling witch boyfriend was important. But you?” Another laugh. “Even now the more interesting are hiding behind me in the trees.”
We hadn’t dreamed he’d actually join me in the water. Hadn’t really thought he’d be lured by my body. It had all simply been an invitation to play the game.
He’d accepted, and here he was, exactly where I needed him and where we’d not begun to hope he’d allow himself to be without a fight. With just the two of us secluded in the water, I could light him up without an ounce of effort on anyone else’s part. All I needed to do was let myself.
One thought. One instant of truly letting go, and we’d be engulfed in flames. And yet, as with every other time I’d been in his presence, I did whathewanted. I bowed to his desires. This time was no different. He didn’t even have to use his coercion. Even as I spoke, I cursed myself for rising to the bait.
“If that’s so true, why are you out here in the water with me? Why play the game? Leave the country. You can walk in the sun now. You could be free, but you’re waiting to see what I’ll do, like always.”
His free hand came up and began to caress my chest, letting his fingers twist through the hair before his fingernails sliced through my skin. “The cost of the sun was not cheap. I have a century of debt to pay to our king. My second assignment? Report the goings and comings of the witch and fairy.Boring.”
His nails paused in their slicing, and he began to pull out small clumps of chest hair.
I managed to keep from grimacing, even though I couldn’t stop the water from boiling more furiously around us.
He leaned closer once more, his hand now dropping to grip the hair around my penis. “I’m commanded to let no harm come to those two clowns. I’m not under any such compulsion about you. Thegreat kingdoesn’t even know, or care, that you exist. However, before I end this pathetic thing you call a life, I wanted to give you one last bit of knowledge.”
Simultaneously, he ripped hair from my groin, and with his other hand, pulled my ear to his mouth once more. So close that his fangs scraped my earlobe. “At the end of my servitude, I’ll take that witch boy of yours the same way I did you in that alley. I’ll tell him it’s a gift from you.”
Instead of fire, water surged between us. The force lifted the redhead out of the ocean, sent him airborne over the surf, and pummeled him onto the sand.
Before I was fully aware that I was the one responsible for tossing the vampire through the air, the force of my tidal wave faded, falling like a diminished rainbow over the surface of the water between us.
In the second the vampire moved to lift himself off the sand, the darkness of the jungle descended on him in a rage. Blood sprayed skyward in an arc.
In the time it took for my senses to catch up with what my eyes were seeing, I was able to recall what the original plan had been. Lure the vampire to the ocean’s edge, surprise him with a rush of water, a power he didn’t know I had, and then Shane and the others would battle him for the few moments it took me to get to shore and torch the fucker. The vampire had bypassed it all and come right to me, making it so simple. Only one fiery touch needed.
Shane’s fangs slashed down, again and again over the vampire’s throat, his massive wolf body holding the thin vampire down.
And then his black form was flung back into the shadowed forest, disappearing into the darkness.
“Again, Brett! Again!”
This time my brain was functioning as it should have minutes before. Water was arching toward the vampire before Caitlin had even needed to shout at me. It crashed over the monster with force that would have crushed a human’s bones.
I was able to make out the wolf’s silhouette easily now as Shane bounded back toward the vampire. The animal’s gait was slower and less fluid than his first onslaught.
As Shane reached the vampire, I called back the water, once again letting it crash over the distance. Instantly, the wolf’s fangs tore into the vampire.
From behind them, out of the darkness, Caitlin and Newton ran forward. Newton’s hands were blurred as they made some formation in front of him, and Caitlin’s voice rang out in an incantation.
The vampire screamed in pain, though it was impossible to tell if it was from Shane or whatever spell Caitlin cast. His body began to rise in the air, writhing in agony, his claws swiping at Shane, who continued to tear at his flesh.
Shane’s hind legs slid off the vampire as he began to lift into the air, but he managed to catch his balance on the sand, never letting his front claws slip or pause in his vicious assault on the vampire’s face and upper torso.
I’d just broken free of the water and was rushing toward them when one of the vampire’s flailing hands snagged on Shane’s left front leg. He grasped on and twisted with a yank.
A splintering snap vanished to the sound of the wolf’s howl of pain. As Shane lost his balance and slipped from the vampire’s body, the clawed hand released his leg and shot up toward his head. One talon-like fingernail sliced through the soft skin under the wolf’s muzzle and exited his jaw.
The force of the vampire’s grip lifted the wolf off the ground as whatever power Caitlin and the fairy invoked continued to cause the vampire to rise.
