Bring Me to Life (11 page)

She did her best imitation of his man growl and set to work getting her food out. She was starving. The last thing she ate was half a pickle and a slice of American cheese sixteen hours ago. “Ten years. I can agree it’s felt like two hundred.”

“Dollface is in rare form tonight, I see,” another large male said.

She glared at him as déjà vu hit again, only this time she screamed, almost lost her perfect dinner, and shot to the corner of the room. “Who the hell are you?”

“Gregori,” he announced as if she would know. Before she could recover from that one, the last man walked in and Vincent closed the door. “And our middle brother, Caleb,” Gregori said. Another round of déjà vu hit. Her skin crawled again.

“You know, Vincent,” she said in a tone close to a whimper. “Your friends seem really nice, but they’re freaking me out.”

Vincent moved his massive warrior’s body between her and the other men who were sprawling out in the room. He sat down on the bed next to her. “I know. I want you to eat before I shock you anymore.”

She started to protest. What could possibly be more shocking than finding her dead boyfriend walking around and visiting his own grave? She would have said it, but he spooned fried rice into her mouth when she opened it.

Heaven.

Vincent never did like how much she ate. He spent a considerable amount of time feeding her when he’d been alive. She grinned at him and the other men were almost forgotten—almost. The one with a ponytail propped up against the door—Gregori, she thought his name was—was still making her shiver when she looked at him, so she simply focused on the scar on Vincent’s face. The more she saw it the less horrible it became. Vincent didn’t stop feeding her until half of the rice was gone, she’d eaten one of the eggrolls and two fortune cookies, both of which told her important decisions were coming—well, duh. She scooted back on the bed and accepted a jumbo coffee with whipped cream.

Only then did she eye up the freaky men again. “Okay, why do I feel like I’ve met all of you before and bad things happened?”

They all looked at Vincent. He shrugged and moved back a space on the bed. “Um, because you have and they did.”

She was sure her brain was going to twist. “Okay, please, let’s remember the live girl doesn’t understand dead cryptic-speak.”

Vincent laughed quietly, and then his face sobered. “Each of them made one attempt at saving your life.” His amber eyes started to glow. “And they each failed.”

“Oh damn.” She looked at them as her bottom lip quivered. “Thanks for trying?”

“Bryna,” Vincent said, moving so he was the only person she could see. “You died saving their lives.”

Then she was angry. Her fist pounded on the mattress she was sitting on. “Then why am I still here? Doesn’t that mean I get to do whatever it is you’re doing?”

“That explains that,” Gregori said.

She glared at him. “What are you talking about?”

Vincent growled at Gregori. It was a low, craggy sound. Bryna was reminded that he wasn’t exactly human anymore. “Back off, Argent. She doesn’t need your commentary.”

Gregori shrugged and leaned back against the door. “With an attitude like that, there isn’t a way in hell you’re gonna keep her alive.”

Vincent came up off the bed at a lightning speed. Bryna was already moving. She planted both of her hands on his chest and glared up at him. “He’s baiting you. We both know he’s right. As much as I want to try, for you.” She looked over her shoulder at Gregori and narrowed her eyes. “Don’t upset him. I might have saved your life in another reality, but you have no idea what I am capable of doing.”

Caleb whistled low. “Bryna, baby, it’s good to see you with some spark.”

Her eyes moved over each of them as a sinking feeling washed over her. With nicknames like dollface and baby she hated to think what she might have done with Vincent’s friends. She started to ask the question, and then shied away from them, not wanting to know the answer.

It was Derrick who answered in soft tones anyway. “It never happened. As much as some of us might have wanted it to happen.” His eyes drifted toward Gregori and then were back on her again. “We have too much respect for you and for Vincent to allow it.”

She stood there blinking at him. She couldn’t remember the last time a man said the word respect when referring to her in a sentence. It was disconcerting. She moved away from him.

Vincent growled as he hooked an arm around her and moved her back to the bed furthest away from his friends. “Thanks for the reassurance. Now I don’t have to gut anyone,” he snarled out. “And actually,” he went on in a more conversational tone, “I’m not looking for help keeping her alive. I need a plan on how to get that son of a bitch Draven.”

They all became very interested in the ceiling before, one by one, their eyes fell on Bryna. Her eyes went huge, and she leaned back on the bed, nearly causing herself to fall between the gap between the wall and bed. She stabilized and resituated herself before glaring at them. “Wait a second. Hell no! You don’t expect me to kill him, do you?” Pickles-and-peanut-butter not good. This man worried Vincent. She was like a tiny little nothing next to him, and he had dead guy powers she didn’t have. “No way.”

Gregori cleared his throat. “You’ve been the only one able to get a pulse to kill him in any reality.” He gave her a charming grin. “Thanks for that. I think my brothers would have missed me if you hadn’t.”

“Why can’t we go back to that reality, then?” she demanded.

“Because it also sent you to Oblivion with him.”

That didn’t sound at all good. “Oblivion? What’s that?”

Caleb pulled at his scruffy chin and gave an apologetic look. “It’s our version of death. Everything about you stops existing. It’s worse than Hell, or so I’ve been told. It sounds kind of peaceful to me.”

Gregori promptly hit him in the back of the head. “Don’t tell her that.”

Caleb shrugged. “Careful, you might be proving my point.”

Bryna ignored them. She was busy turning over this Oblivion information in her head. She’d used the term before herself, but she hadn’t quite meant exactly what Caleb described. She’d always thought Oblivion was just like sending a being to Hell. And here she naively thought nothing was able to make Vincent any deader than he was. “And this Draven has the ability to pulse? That’s what sends something to Oblivion?”

“Yeah,” Vincent said.

It wasn’t every day she found out she had a more spectacular death than Vincent’s, even if she didn’t remember it. “Then how am I still alive?”

Vincent sat down next to her and looked at the window between Derrick and Caleb. “We call it time walking. We can move backward and forward in time at will, to where we’re needed.”

She made a face at him. “So then history isn’t static? It’s always changing?”

“Kind of,” he said. “Beings who can pulse can also time walk. The other side time walks into the past to change something to be in their favor, and we go after them to change it back to ours. You were never supposed to die. Your death causes a ripple effect that will lead to the end of the world.”

“Just add a little more pressure,” she snapped at him. She didn’t want to hear any of this. It was making her head hurt. For a heartbeat she wondered why Vincent hadn’t gone back and saved himself, but then, why would he if he hadn’t believed there was any reason to go back. Then she pinned Vincent down with a look. “Then go back and save us. If you can walk to anywhere you want to go in time, save us!”

He looked down at the blankets on the bed. “I can’t. If I change what I am, then every demon, every vampire, every everything I’ve ever stopped and killed would come back to cause havoc.”

“But—” She stopped herself. It was selfish to demand he do it when there was the whole existence of the world to worry about. “Then we kill Draven, and I—” Her eyes closed as she willed back what seemed to be a constant flow of tears. “I figure out my life.”

“Bryna,” Vincent started.

“Don’t.” She gave him a wobbly smile. “We get what no one else does, remember? We just have to make that be enough.”

*

Vincent wasn’t going to accept that as the answer. He was missing something. There was a piece of information he didn’t have. Once he found it, he knew he’d be able to give Bryna everything she ever needed. He pulled her into him and ignored the other men in the room. They didn’t and couldn’t understand what he was going through. They’d died before they had a chance to be touched by love. It changed a man in ways he couldn’t begin to describe. Now that he had her in his arms again, he couldn’t see how it was right in any reality for her to not be with him. He’d always felt they were stronger together, and now, it had to be true. If her pulse was able to send Draven into Oblivion, then the key had to lie somewhere in that dynamic. He just needed to figure out the missing part.

He rubbed his hand down her back and tilted her face up to meet his. “We’ll figure this out, Bryna, I promise. I’ll do what I have to do to save you.”

She leaned into him. “I know you will, just don’t get sent to Oblivion. I think I could live knowing you’re a universal hero. Things could get bad if you didn’t exist anymore because of me.”

She did love to make his chest ache. “Hey, not even death kept me away from you.”

She pulled back and snorted at him. “It took you what? Two hundred years to get back to me? Vincent, I don’t have that kind of time to figure things out.”

He poked out his lip in a mock pout. “If it makes you feel any better, Felix hasn’t ever let anyone else go back to save their girlfriend.”

“No. It doesn’t. I don’t know this Felix person, and I really don’t think I like him. If I’ve gone to Oblivion three times, why the hell didn’t he just make me what you are? You can pulse, right?”

“Yeah, but life changes the mechanics of it.”

“How?”

He cringed and look to Derrick for help, but he only shrugged. He’d always been told that, but he’d never thought to ask the how of it. That part didn’t concern him.

“You don’t know?” Her hands fisted in his shirt, and she pulled herself up to eye level with him. “Vincent! This is probably very important and probably the reason I die when I try to kill Draven.” She stopped yelling. Her face scrunched up before she let out a dramatic sigh. “I think I want to go visit my old friends in the psych unit.”

“What?”

She overexaggerated the nodding of her head. “Yeah, this is fucking nuts.” She muttered an apology for swearing and continued, “Even for me. You’re saying a pulse affects the living, the dead, and the undead differently, but you never bothered to ask why?”

“I’m really effective against the undead, thank you.” He puffed out his chest. “Why would I ask questions that don’t concern me?”

“Maybe because what I have is different than what you have?”

His brow furrowed. “I didn’t know you could pulse until Felix told me two days ago.”

“Are you trying to get hurt?” she snarled at him. “This kind of information would be helpful.”

He did his best good-guy grin. “That’s why I brought my friends along to help. I figured one of them might know.”

Bryna swung her head around and looked at them with an arched brow. “Well?”

The ceiling was suddenly interesting again, and she found herself looking up to see if maybe someone was smart enough to write the answer up there. Wait! “How did you contact them?”

He pulled a crumpled piece of paper out of his pocket and handed it to her. “I write on that and my message gets to where it needs to go.”

See? This was why he needed a woman in his death. If that scrap of crumpled, dirty paper was his life line to everything, why the hell didn’t he take care of it? She took it out of his hand and very carefully uncrumpled it.

There were flashing orange letters on it. “I think you forgot to pick up your messages,” she said dryly and read it.

History is changing! The Phobia Demon you killed last week is attacking London again. What the hell are you doing? You’re supposed to save her, goddamn it. Don’t make me come down there!

She read it again, but out loud this time. Oh no. This wasn’t good at all. The only thing she could think that might have changed history would be…she looked up at Vincent with wide eyes and asked in a small voice, “Is this because we had sex?”

Vincent’s brain did a full twist inside his skull. He was sure of it. He put up a hand toward the other men and snarled, “One comment and I’ll rip out your spines.” He wasn’t sure he could actually do it to his own kind, but he’d done it to the undead before, so he thought he might have a chance to follow through with the promise.

The last thing he needed was for Bryna to think history was changing because he’d loved her. He captured her face and leaned down so they were at eye level. “No. Something is happening here that I’m missing, but…shit.” How was he going to explain this without becoming a bigger bastard than he already was?

“Sex never changed history on you before,” she supplied in her most helpful—and hurt—tone.

He kept his eyes leveled on hers. Damn it. This was so fucked-up. “Right. It’s something else.” Still, part of what was messing with his brain wasn’t Bryna freaking out. She did that easily enough, and he was learning how to work around it. The thing was he couldn’t remember killing a Phobia Demon in London ever. He’d killed one in Paraguay, but Felix was insistent he wasn’t allowed to kill demons unless there was no other choice.

“Vincent.” The sound of her voice made his cock go hard the way it always had. “We need to get over it. You were dead. I wasn’t. It was a reasonable assumption to think we’d never see each other again.”

His brain snapped. He snarled at her and caught her up in a hold that could easily crush bone if he weren’t hanging onto control by a thread. “Do not speak of yourself in terms of death.”

Her eyes went huge, but there was no fear in them, just surprise. “Sorry, I didn’t get my grammar right. You know, for a guy who was failing English, you sure are touchy when someone doesn’t use it correctly.”

He dropped his head onto her shoulder. He was shaking. Damn it. Why the hell was the thought of her dead affecting him so much? He knew what was on the other side. She could pulse. Felix would snatch her up for his cause in an instant. But he hadn’t done it yet. That was the sticking point and why it was pissing him off to think of her as dead. If it happened to her, he’d lose her forever and that was something he needed to avoid at all costs. He wasn’t even sure Oblivion could stop him if she was sent there. “You know I’ve never handled failure well,” he said, instead of the other things going through his head.