Just like I can’t escape certain memories. They threaten to creep up on me whenever I’m alone, like now. My mind—the traitorous bitch—likes to drift to the past.
To an alley in London that smelled like garbage and rain. To rough hands pinning me down. To laughter. To pain so overwhelming it fractured my mind, split me clean in two.
I remember Lucian’s face when he found me. Cold fury, barely contained. I remember the way he carried me like something precious, something already lost.
That was the night he turned me and I was born anew. The part of me that had been the vulnerable one for those sick fucks to rape out in the open like that dissolved into nothingness and left only a thing full of white-hot rage and with a cold, unfeeling heart. A creature built for revenge.
And that was all I was for a long time. Especially the nights after, when Lucian let me hunt each one of those shitheads down and kill them in the most gruesome ways I could imagine. One by one, I picked them off, but instead of my darkened soul healing, it only grew darker still.
I had been corrupted into my full potential. And I loved it.
It was Lucian who gave me immortality; he gave me my chance at revenge and a place by his side at VMR.
Whether that makes him my master or…something else has never been clear, and thinking about it always makes a headache pound, so I stick to what I know.
And that is that Santiago crossed a line.
I adjust my grip and haul myself up another foot, the muscles in my arms burning pleasantly. Immortality is many things, butstrength is the part I never get tired of. The part that still feels like a gift instead of a curse.
The window I want is dark, curtains half-drawn. Third from the left. I’d memorized the layout days ago, watched the patterns of movement, the way Santiago’s security ebbed and flowed like a nervous pulse. Tonight, it’s just him. He’s been paranoid since Elliot went back to Lucian. Even more so after the fire.
Good.
I hook my fingers under the window frame and ease it open, slow enough not to creak. Inside, the flat smells like expensive cologne and old fear. Leather furniture. Minimalist art that tries too hard to be expensive for a man pretending that taste can make him respectable.
Slipping inside, I pull the window shut behind me, landing without a sound.
Lucian would kill me if he knew where I was, what I was doing. He’s been…happy. It’s unsettling. He and Elliot are sickeningly in love, and she’s softened him in ways I didn’t think were possible, turned sharp edges and rigid control into something almost warm and soothing.
But I suppose I can’t complain too much.
At least he bosses Elliot around now instead of me.
And the little damsel turned vampire—as annoying as she is—is starting to grow on me. Especially after she turned. She wears immortality differently. Less like a crown, more like a weapon she’s still figuring out how to wield.
Still…being near them both for too long could make even a vampire long for death.
I move through the flat, silent as a thought. The bedroom door is closed. Light leaks from beneath it. Santiago isn’t home yet, but he will be soon. He always hunts around this time, and eventhough part of me would prefer him weaker for an easier kill, the other part craves the challenge.
I settle into the shadows near the entryway and wait. It takes exactly three minutes, then the lock clicks.
I still.
The door opens, and Santiago steps inside, shaking rain from his coat. He looks thinner. Older. Maybe not to anyone else’s eye, but I notice it. Fear does that, even to vampires. He tosses his keys onto a table and exhales.
“I knew I should’ve stayed in Madrid,” he mutters to himself, accent thick. “France is?—”
I step out of the shadows. “Bonsoir, Santiago.”
He spins, eyes wide, instincts screaming too late.
I don’t give him time to run.
I slam into him, driving him backward into the closed door hard enough to crack the wood. He snarls, fangs flashing, nails raking across my shoulders as we crash to the floor.
We fight like animals.
He’s stronger than I expected, mostly desperate strength fueled by survival and rage. He gets a solid hit in, fist connecting with my ribs with a wet crunch. Pain flares, but I laugh through it and headbutt him, feeling cartilage give beneath my forehead.
