I try to shoot Ben in the face. “Fuck your fun,” I rasp. He laughs, he dodges the bullet easily but he doesn’t dodge the one I put in his knee. He drops with a scream. “You fucking bitch!” He shoves the other vampire forward. “Get her, Jason!”
Jason the vampire lurches towards me like he doesn’t know how to walk and maybe he doesn’t. I’ve seen him around. Mostly squatting in the old longshore huts and doing meth in the alley near the newspaper. I was disgusted by him before and now I’m going to kill him.
I take aim at him but Jason gets his sealegs and manages to get the gun out of my hand. He catches my wrist and throws it to the side. It lands somewhere near where the female vampire is whimpering and covering her eyes. Jason starts to choke me and I drop my bag, breaking his hold. Fuck. I can’t get to my taser.
“Get back here!” Jason yells when I manage to break his hold. I kick him but he catches it and yanks me towards him, but I bring my other leg up and throw my weight on him so we both go down.
“Fuck!” Jason loses his grip on me when we hit the ground. I roll away, wheezing and seeing double. Everything is going in and out of focus and my body feels heavy. I shake my head to clear it and force myself to fight.
I am not dying here.
I refuse to die here.
I stand and grab the knife from my boot. Jason’s eyes go wide when I launch myself at him and drive the knife into his throat. It doesn't have quite the same effect as it did when I slit Mike’s throat but it slows him down enough that I stab him again. I try to stab him a third time but my hands are clumsy and I fumble the knife. A second later I’m yanked off Jason by one of the other vampires and slammed to the ground. The world goes out of focus and then comes back a second later, and when it does I see all three vampires standing over me.
“I’m going to fucking eat you,” the woman snarls. Her fangs are sharp and her face is already healing.
“No!” I scream and try to swing at her when she reaches down at me but I can’t control my arms anymore. I can’t move. She grabs me by my jacket and pulls me to her, and I can’t fucking stop her.
I’m going to fucking die here.
I close my eyes and think about Julian. I’d rather think about him than what’s about to happen to me. They might kill me but I don’t have to watch it happen.
“Julian,” I whisper and everything goes black.
Forty-Eight
JULIAN
Ichased Rosanna all the fucking way to Canada. Right to the top of that damn border and into Alaska. Even if I was stronger than Rosanna, she was cunning and knew how to hide. There was a reason she’d survived for as long as she had with her poor impulse control. It was only when I saw the sun rising over the mountains that I realized where the fuck I was. I was standing out on a frozen river with Rosanna up ahead. She laughed and turned back like she was making sure I was following, but that was because she was.
That fucking bitch was making sure I was following her, and I’d done it like an idiot.
“Maris.”
That was why. Rosanna’s lackey wasn’t with her. He was after Maris, most likely directed by our psychotic bitch of a maker to kill her. I turned around then and headed right back to Vesper Point. I heard Rosanna behind me for an hour or so but I was faster than her now that I wasn’t tracking her. I’d make it to Vesper Point with plenty of time to spare before she caught up with me again. The good thing was that if she was trying to catch me then her new toy hadn’t succeeded in killing Maris.
“I killed them all.”
“Claire.”
Rosanna’s confession echoed in my ears. She was the reason that I had been in the graveyard the night she turned me. She’d been watching me. Plotting and planning. She murdered my wife to turn me into a shell of a man that she could control.
When I had Maris safe with me I was not going to rest until I found a way to destroy Rosanna. I’d drag her right to the Varolacus my fucking self if it meant she could never harm the woman in my life again.
The woman that I loved.
I loved Maris.
That was a truth that I came to on my long run back to Vesper Point. I didn’t care if she wasn’t my mate. That it was her siren’s blood and the call that had me wanting her. It might have been that at first but it wasn’t now.
I wanted Maris. Thorns and all. I wanted my dark storm cloud with a penchant for murdering annoying men. I wanted the woman that wasn’t scared of me, and even when she was she still forced herself to face me down. I had never met another human like her and I never would again.
Maris was my wife. Mate or not, I wasn’t going to release the claim I had on her. I’d die before I freed her.
When I reach Vesper Point it’s nightfall. I look around the town as I walk in and immediately tune into the fact the energy is off. There’s more police cars than usual. The same goes for people. I might not have been here for long but I did see what Vesper Point looked like on a normal night and it wasn’t this.
There’s people walking in groups and huddling near the police cars like they expect a gun fight to break out. Every restaurant looks like it’s at capacity too and I hear live music playing. You would think it’s a warm summer night, not a freezing and rainy winter night.
