She giggles again and comes close to the window with a saccharine smile. “I mean,all of them. The witch,” she shakes her head with a sigh, “for an old crone she was stronger than I thought she might be. Lots of power in her blood.”
My gut twists. I thought Anne had died of age. No one was there to ask when I returned. Her daughter was gone, the hut she lived in was cold and her hearth full of leaves. No one had been there for years. It had been Rosanna all along.
“And of course, my favorite one of all and yours too.” Rosanna tips her head to the side, her dark wet hair is plastered to her head and neck. It makes her look like a snake.
“Don’t you fucking say it,” I whisper because I already know the name my maker is about to say.
Rosanna ignores me.
“Claire.”
For a second, the world ceases to exist. Everything goes white and then black. My body feels like it’s been ripped apart, each limb and organ working on its own. Lost and floating like it never was a part of my body. Just as quickly as I come apart, everything comes rushing back and I attack.
I lunge for the window. Behind me Maris screams but I keep moving. Siren’s Call or not, she’s not going to stop me from ripping Rosanna’s black heart out of her body.
I go right through the window and take Rosanna with me. She shrieks gleefully, hands clawing at me. She’s not fighting me, she’s trying to get closer, to touch me. Disgust rolls over me. I throw her off of me and into the side of Maris’ porch. She slams into it and lands on the ground with a thump.
She laughs and looks up at me. Her mouth is bleeding. Rosanna wipes at her mouth and stands. “Don’t act surprised, Julian. There had to be some part of you that wondered. ‘Did she do it?’ After all our time together you had to have known that I would have.”
“I’m going to end you.” I rush Rosanna when she turns to escape. She makes it halfway across Maris’ yard before I slam into her. Rosanna and I have fought before. You don’t spend over a hundred years with someone and not fight. Vampires are territorial. We’re prone to fights. But in all those fights with Rosanna, I never let her see my full strength, not after Anne spelled me. Rosanna goes flying into the fence and takes half of it down with her.
“Why?” I demand.
“Arsenic.” She gets up from the ground and flips me off. She throws a fence plank at me. “That’s how I did it. Funny, isn’t it? Claire was never sick. She was poisoned. I poisoned her!”
I catch the plank easily. “I didn’t ask you how, I asked why,” I say and snap the plank over my knee into a stake.
Rosanna’s eyes zero in on the stake in my hand. “You wouldn’t fucking dare. You love me.” She smiles at me. That smile I woke up to and fell asleep to for decades makes me snap. While Claire was dying and wasting away in front of me it wasn’t sickness that took her, it was Rosanna, and Anne.
Anne spelled me to keep me alive and what did she get in return?
Death.
And now here Rosanna is, setting her sights on Maris, and she’s smiling.Smiling.
I’m going to rip that smile off her face.
“Come here, you fucking bitch.”
Rosanna doesn’t wait for me to move, she turns and runs. The road Maris’ house is on doesn’t go much further than hers. The road dead ends in a copse of trees before it turns into a forest. Rosanna makes it to the treeline before I chase after her. There’s no sport in killing her if it’s over too fast. Behind me I hear Maris yell my name but I don’t turn around. All my focus is on Rosanna and I’m going to make this last.
Forty-Five
MARIS
“Oh, what the fuck. What the fuck is going on?” I run to the window and look outside to see Julian and his maker going at it. He wasn’t lying about being stronger. He’s just thrown her through the fence.
“Julian!” I yell but he doesn’t turn around. He’s there and then gone in the blink of an eye chasing his maker down the street. There’s nothing there but a dead end and the forest’s edge. “Julian, wait!”
I sprint through the house and throw open the door. It’s hard to see anything with how hard the rain is coming down. I step out onto the porch ready to go after Julian when I see someone. There’s a man standing at the gate.
I stare, trying to see his face but I can’t. He doesn’t move, just stands there and stares at me so I do the same.
“Hello?” I call out. The rain swallows up my voice. Lightning flashes and I finally see his face. Neither of us move but I know I fucked up by coming outside.
“She can’t come in unless she’s invited.”
It’s Brian.
