“Stop,” I screamed as Liam and Brax came together in a crash, each landing several blows in seconds. I shouted at the draugr. “Is this what you wanted?”
I held the locket and watch fob up.
His black gaze was suddenly riveted on my hand. “Mine.”
He advanced on me, his gaze held spell bound by the two trinkets.
I backed away, almost tripping on a root before recovering. I needed to get some distance between him and the other two creatures.
“You’ve got them. That’s good,” the sorcerer said.
He stood a few headstones down from me and several rows over.
The draugr’s attention shot between the two of us. “No. Mine.”
He bared black teeth.
“Just toss it here so I can end all this,” the sorcerer ordered.
I was tempted. It’d be so easy to let someone else handle this. Bonus, it would take care of several birds with one stone. Get the draugr away from Liam and Brax. Cancel out my debt.
It would also hand the sorcerer an extremely powerful weapon. What damage could the draugr cause in the hands of someone with a little more power and brains than Victor and Angela?
“Please. It’s mine. It’s all I have left. She gave them to me.” The draugr made a weird waffling sound, black leaked out of his eyes, adding further stains to his pale skin.
He was crying, I realized. Not real tears, but tears nonetheless.
“How?” I asked.
The sorcerer canted his head. “How what?”
“How are you planning to end this?”
“Does it matter?”
It mattered.
The draugr suddenly didn’t seem that menacing, just sad and confused, like he’d had his whole world ripped away and didn’t know how to handle it.
“Give the sorcerer the trinkets,” Liam ordered. “You still have his mark.”
Sure enough, I could still feel the lion with thorns lurking on my arm, the power stretching in a thin line between me and Peter.
“He’ll own you for a hundred years if you don’t.”
“And you’ll own me for a hundred years if I do.”
Liam paused in his forward motion. “The vampires will be much kinder than a sorcerer.”
“I only have your word for that.”
“I don’t know why you persist in thinking of vampires as the bad guys. We’re not the monsters you have painted us as.”
I never thought they were. I just wanted to live my life the way I wanted to live it.
“If I go with you, will you let me live here? Stay in contact with my parents?”
I saw from the expression on his face that the answer to both those questions would be no. They might not be monsters. I might even be able to find a place in their world, but I was done with orders. The sorcerer I could manage. I wouldn’t be able to manipulate Liam and his ilk.
