“The bastard’s in my head,” Zack whispered.
Takashi’s eyes went wide, and Zack didn’t need his vampiric ability to understand the fear in his eyes. There was no safety, no place to hide, if Seamus could slip into his mind and read whatever he liked.
With Seamus’s rage filling him, Zack was filled with a burning fire of desire for violence. Seamus was providing the fuel and the flame already, but Zack’s anger was a burst of fresh oxygen, bringing even more life to the emotion roiling inside. He clenched his fists so hard that his fingernails cut into his palms, and blood dripped.
The scent of his blood was so different than the mortal girl’s. His smelled of earth, of a tang of ozone, like his scent of the grave did.
And suddenly aware of what he could smell, he picked out two other blood scents nearby. The mortal girl’s coppery blood. And Takashi’s grave scent. His blood was exposed nearby.
His blood is on the girl’s lips. Zack whirled his attention to Takashi. “Did you fuckingturn her?”
“We can talk about that later. What do you mean, Seamus is in your head?” Takashi asked.
“I can fucking hear his thoughts.” Zack shoved Takashi into the room.
The mortal teenage girl who had been yanking on her bonds had finally figured out how to use her magic and undone the rope on her right wrist. She was hurriedly trying to untie her other wrist. When Zack stalked through the door after Takashi, she fumbled with the knot, scrambling to get free.
She reeked of fear, less so than the girl who was still sobbing, but she was full of juicy blood and tangy fear, and she would taste so fucking good. But he’d killed already that night. And he didn’t want to keep killing. He didn’t want to hurt the world the way he was hurting inside. Carver had held up a mirror to him and told him to stop being a shithead like that. He was better than this.
Kill. Feed. I don’t fucking care, the Seamus voice—no,Seamus, said in his head.
I can hear you. You can hear me. You can feel my rage. My desires. Just as much as I feel yours. Zack ripped a painting from the wall and threw it at the corner. The frame shattered, and the canvas tore. And the destruction felt good. He hoped the damn thing cost a small fortune because he was going to find some measure of control in this. He was not going to be like Seamus. Not this part of him.Never this part.
“Get them free,” Zack growled.
Takashi said, “Zack?—”
“I don’t give a shit what was going on earlier. We’ll talk. But those two, they’re fucking leaving, and they’re doing it before Seamus gets done with whatever the fuck he’s doing.”
“The guards?—”
“I wouldlovean excuse to break bones into pieces, and the guards are at least supernatural enough to heal,” Zack said. “There’s a car, right outside the front door. All they have to do is get in it. Help them get free. I can’t do it. I’ll … fuck, it’s taking everything I have, Takashi. All I want to do is break the world around me. Break anything.”
Takashi started to move toward him, but Zack used his superior agility to zip back out into the hall. He took another vase off another side table. All the fucking endless roses in the house would never cover up the rot that was Seamus’s soul. And yet he kept trying.Bastard. Zack threw the vase as hard as he could. Hardly a flicker of satisfaction passed through him as it sailed down the long hall and smashed into the wall at the end. What was that distance, a hundred and fifty feet? Two hundred?
Movement caught his attention, but the smell and press of the girls’ fear was too much like an echo of his own that he’d once seen before. It’d been forever ago. That first mission he’d been on, in Detroit. The girl he’d saved.
I wish strangling him would do something, Seamus thought.
Who?
Him.
Zack ran his hand through his hair, dimly aware of the smattering of his own blood going across his cheek. The girls were running down the hall, feet and hearts racing as they made their way toward the front door. The predatorial urge in Zack longed to catch one. To rip open a throat and drink deeply.
He started to stalk down the hallway. One of the girls saw him, and she let out a terrified yelp before turning forward and rushing to get ahead of her friend.
But as he followed them, as he sought to shove his mind to a place of control rather than the endless screaming rage that Seamus pumped into him, he brushed across a new psychic disturbance. Something deeper. Something just as primal as the killer in his skin and yet completely different.
It held a fear he recognized. One he’d felt long, long ago.
Rescue the damsel had been a stupid game. Children pretending to be their parents, pretending to hunt the monsters. But in order to hunt, there had to be the villains and the heroes, and for the heroes to have any meaning, they had to rescue someone. That was the point of the game. Save the helpless victim. Cal and Cousin Denny had always campaigned that the gender of the damsel shouldn’t matter. Damsel was just more fun to say than victim. Made it more of a game, they claimed. And if Cal or Denny got to pick, or were just loud enough to annoy their other cousins into agreeing, they’d choose Zack.
Zack had wanted so desperately to be one of the big kids, be like everyone else, to play with them, that he’d go along with it. He’d complain about getting tied up. Complain about getting chosen for the role of victim again. They’d still choose him when they could, and he’d still go along with it.
So he’d gotten good at sliding out of ropes.
So the “monsters” started leaving a “guard” with him.
