The god next to me waved to the cheering masses with a smug grin.
Something sharp lanced through my chest. Seth took the hotel I was in charge of and made it his personal playground. It wasn’t about the stunt. It was about firmly putting two feet into my territory and pissing in the sand.
I wasn’t the only one who noticed.
Miranda took a step closer to Seth, her grip tightening around her sword.
“Miranda,” I said in warning. Her gaze locked on mine, and words passed between us without either of us uttering a single one.
Back down.
I don’t like it, Timothy. Something’s off about this.
I agree, but there’s nothing we can do right now.
Miranda stepped away, lowering Bob with great reluctance.
My attention locked on the stuntman in the spotlight. Something in the tilt of his head, the wave of his arm, crawled under my skin. But the glow around him confirmed something I suspected as he rode down Sinopolis.
He wasn’t human.
“I think you two deserve to meet the daredevil of the hour,” Seth said. “I’ll be just a moment.” With that, he disappeared down the stairs, flanked by his guards.
“This feels an awful lot like he’s getting people to worship him,” Miranda said, glaring after him. “Drawing power he’s not supposed to.”
“I agree, but I don’t sense any swell of power. This isn’t worship, and they seem more likely to fall at the feet of that stuntman. But he is trying to undermine my authority by performing this stunt on my turf.”
“So kick his ass, put him back in his place,” Miranda pitched.
I shook my head. “I can’t. Technically, he’s broken no rules.”
“Timothy,” she said with open exasperation, “sometimes the rules aren’t as important as the effect. Don’t let that dick pickle by on a technicality. You have to rule the other gods here, and he just made a clear move against you.”
Boots thudded on the platform as the rider joined us, though Seth was nowhere in sight. My next words died on my tongue.
The rider tugged his helmet off, and blood roared in my ears. My heart did a sick, skipping hiccup that left an ache in my sternum while my mouth instantly dried.
Aaron ran a gloved hand through his hair. It tumbled out in golden waves, sweat-dark and longer than I remembered. The precise cut of his jaw, the crook in his nose, and the glint of mischief in his smile were so beautiful it physically hurt to look at.
“Miss me?” he asked.
Shock hit first, sharp and breath-stealing, and then the want followed, heavy and disorienting. My chest locked, my pulse tripped over itself, and a cold awareness slid through me as my body reacted faster than thought.
Not only because the man I woke up and fell asleep thinking about was in front of me. This close, the crystallized glow surrounding him was painfully obvious.
Aaron’s soul was no longer a fluid, transient energy. It had hardened like a diamond. Frozen and preserved for all eternity in a body nearly just as indestructible.
The truth detonated within me like a bomb. The shock and horror of his transformation rippled through my frame, threatening to bend my bones.
Aaron was a vampire.
3
AARON
Iwished Timothy had looked at least slightly less beautiful than the last time I saw him. But unfortunately, my vampire senses betrayed me.
My new eyes soaked in every perfect detail in high definition. Not a single pore visible, not one hair out of place unless he wanted it to be. Each angle of his East Asian features carved by a divine hand, the symmetry of his face was the kind of perfection artists spend lifetimes trying to capture. Even the air around him seemed clearer, more vibrant. It seemed I was seeing reality itself bend slightly to accommodate his divine presence.
