He couldn’t get the words out as new vines, armed with thick, long thorns, joined the fray. Blood seeped out between the verdant green as Alric screamed in agony.
The sound wasawful.Coupled with the sight and smell of blood, it sent ice through my veins. The fire inside me went out, the rage dissipated, and suddenly I was looking at a man being tortured to death.
Fuck.
Nausea swept through me, and it took all my control not to throw up. The thing was, I knew Alric was evil. If he died, we’d be saving an innumerable amount of innocent lives. But there was a difference between dispatching a dangerous foe and outrighttorturingthem. And sure, he had done much worse things to other people and most likely deserved whatever I could do to him, but that was the difference between him and me. He wanted to hurt people.
I wanted to save people.
“Stop! That’s enough!” I called to the plants, and the energy within me completely fizzled. I half-expected them to lose all their vigor with that, no longer fueled by the storm inside of me, but they went on as if I hadn’t said anything at all. Still squeezing. Stillhurting.
“I said that’s enough! Just end him!”
The plants didn’t listen to me, and when I tried to grab hold of that same energy I’d had before, I simply couldn’t find it. It was frustrating. It was horrifying. And I couldn’t help but feel like a giant hypocrite for chewing out Leo for what happened at Chadwicke’s.
What if the plants kept going after destroying Alric? I clearly didn’t have any control over them. What if in my desperate attempt to save my love, I’d created a force that would kill us all?
“I saidstop!Just end it!”
Maybe it was in my own head, but it felt like a ripple of energy went through the plants. A moment later, the vines around Alric’s neck tightened even more, then jerked to the side, and a sickening crack echoed through the room.
It was finally over.
I stood there, trembling, as the reality of everything that had happened rushed through me. I didn’t know what to say, didn’t know what to do, could only watch as the plants slowly reverted back to normal and disappeared into the ground. At least my fears about them turning on us turned out to be unfounded.
Still, as I looked around the carnage of the room and at Alric’s mangled, bloody corpse, I couldn’t help but wonder what I had just done.
What the hell was I?
32
LEO
Something was wrong with Ven.
It had only been a day since our encounter with Alric, and I figured at least half of it had to be stress from the battle, but I sensed it was more than that. She was so jumpy, and despite the fact that the house was full of pretty jubilant celebration, my love seemed withdrawn. She smelled stressed as well, almost like she was grieving.
None of that made any sense. While I was still upset with her for getting so involved in the battle, she hadn’t been hurt. I couldn’t remember chunks of what happened, and a lot of it was blurry and unfocused, but as far as I could recall, she’d been a huge help. Also, she’d had incredible aim with those little smoke bombs. They had been incredibly effective on all the non-shifter enemies apart from the brothers.
“Hey, where should I put this leg of lamb?”
I looked away from the kitchen window to the shifter who had entered. He was a large, strapping fellow, and related to America in some way, but I couldn’t remember his name.
“In the freezer. We’ve got enough fresh food that we won’t be able to get to it for a bit.”
That was certainly a change for us. Although Ven had been a truly incredible host and worked quite hard to make sure we had enough to eat, I knew it had been difficult on her. She didn’t make a lot of money, and the demands of the shifter diet wereintense, to say the least. Thankfully, Ricky’s hunting had really supplemented things, taking the expensive protein demand off Ven’s beautiful shoulders, but now… well, we were practicallyswimmingin food.
A lot of shifters and magic folk were grateful we’d returned their kidnapped family members. It hadn’t been easy as some of the enthralled ones had fought us tooth and nail, but those effects wore off as the hours passed after we’d eliminated the two brothers. As for all the shifters stuck in their animal forms, it had taken a simple kiss on the snoot from Ven to break the curse.
I still didn’t understand how that worked, but I knew better than to question it. There had always been somethingmoreto Ven that I couldn’t quite explain. She wasn’t a shifter, and I knew for a fact she wasn’t a witch or some kind of mindwalker. But that didn’t mean she wasn’tsomething.After all, I knew better than most that the world was full of strange and unexplainable things. Why couldn’t the woman I was desperately in love with also be a little strange and mysterious? I owed her everything, and I would quite happily spend the rest of my life making it up to her.
“Sorry, man, your freezer is full.”
“Huh?” Oh, right. The shifter with the leg of lamb. My memories about the prices of things were still pretty hazy, but I was fairly certain that lamb was an expensive treat Ven couldn’t usually afford. Definitely not something I wanted to waste.
“Perfect timing!” America said, popping her head in from the living room. “One of mytíasis bringing a big ol’ standalone freezer for you.”
I smiled. That was one problem down. “You really don’t have to.”
