Dark Cravings (5 page)

Time slowed to a crawl, just long enough for me to glance at
the figure on the other side of the doorway, fist raised as if he were about to
knock. If I’d had time to process it, I might have wondered at the shock on
Elijah McGregor’s face. What was Micah’s younger brother doing here? Eli’s dark
gaze flickered to Micah, to me, back to Micah and then returned to me. The
brown of his eyes became just a little bit darker when the pupils grew large.
Was he staring because I was naked or because I was covered in blood?

In the microseconds before all hell broke loose, I had time
to notice the messier-than-usual mop of dark curls, which were long enough to
reach Eli’s ears. I took in the dark circles under his eyes and the vines of
red coloring the whites of them. Then the sunlight curled around his body and
crawled into the room. My skin tingled and the warmth, for just a second, made
me smile. I wasn’t truly a vampire. My heart beat. I didn’t have the unnatural
blue eyes all normal vampires acquired after the turning. Sunlight, a fiery
fatality to the undead, had no effect on me whatsoever.

At least it hadn’t before the succubus had gotten me.

I screamed. The ground was suddenly beneath my knees. The
jarring pain of it didn’t compare to what bubbled up from deep inside. If I
thought I’d known pain before, I was wrong. I pressed my closed fists into the
sockets where the worst of the pain exploded and consumed. Searing,
gut-wrenching, soul-stealing agony shot through my eyes and straight into me.
The smell of burning flesh made my stomach roil through sensation after
sensation.

“Fuck, Eli, close the door!” Micah’s voice sounded distant and
was drowned by my unrelenting shrieks.

I clawed at my eyes, tried to rub out the fire. My cheeks
were slick with moisture, but it was too thick, too hot, to be tears. Spine
boneless, I fell. The stiff carpet abraded my elbows when my cheek collided with
the ground. Strong arms encircled me. Hands gripped my wrists, forced my balled
fists away from my eyes. I kicked, bucked and fought the panic as if it was
something real.

As Micah pulled me off the ground and cradled me against
him, he secured my arms behind my back. I knew it was Micah holding me only
because I felt his heart hammering with terror. The beat mimicked mine. In that
moment I wished for death because the pain was more than I could handle. Micah
panted against the top of my head, breath sawing in and out with hot gasps as
he struggled to restrain me.

I whimpered and writhed, fought through the unearthly pain.
Micah and Eli were shouting something at each other over my screams. I could do
nothing but give into the pain. For the second time in I don’t know how many
days, the darkness took everything away.

This time, though, I welcomed it.

Whatever my offense to the karma fairy was, it must have
been a big one. The next time the long, dark tunnel appeared inside my head, maybe
I shouldn’t be so eager to dive into it.

I brought a palm to my forehead and groaned. Yet again, I
found myself waking up with a throbbing headache, a warm body next to mine and
no idea where I was. Pain radiated from my eye sockets and streaked across my
cheekbones. Now I knew how it felt to have red-hot pokers shoved into your
eyeballs.

A quick draw of breath gave me enough strength to scoot away
from the person spooning me from behind. As I sat up, my lids fluttered. I
cracked open my left eye. When nothing more stabbed through me, I opened my right.

Through the rush of tears it was hard to tell how much
damage there was. Everything was blurry and distorted. I could make out shapes,
blobs of color, but not much else.

The more tears I blinked away, the more the images began to
clear. The first thing to come into focus was the rat’s nest of my sister’s
tangled blonde hair where she lay sleeping at my side. Hannah muttered
something in her sleep before rolling onto her back. Rings of black mascara
shadowed the crescents under her eyes and shimmery pink lip gloss smeared
across her left cheekbone.

I’d never been so happy to see anyone in my entire life. I
wasn’t blind. And if my sister was here sleeping, I was safe. I smoothed my
hand over her silky-soft hair and looked up. Directly across from me was a wall
of gleaming silver and black weapons. Ranging anywhere from four feet to six
inches, my family’s generations of Brimstone knives and Silverstone swords
shone in the glow of flickering candlelight.

I was in my basement.

Without wanting to, I did an automatic search for Micah. I
had no idea how to interpret the need filling me. I had to see him, to touch
him. Under the lingering scent of Hannah’s jasmine perfume, the rich scent of
sage clogged my senses. The herb filled the room. I detected no leather. No
spice. No Micah. The only heartbeat pounding through me aside from my own belonged
to Hannah. I listened more intently, with more desperation, until I picked up a
third beat. Whoosh, thud-thud. Whoosh, thud-thud. The distinct sound of Roy’s heart
murmur was unmistakable.

I tensed at the disappointment. Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.
Micah wasn’t in the basement or in the rest of the two-story house. Why should
he be?

Because he belongs to you.

The darkness deep in my gut pulsed with the stray thought,
almost as if the unspoken words had belonged to it, not me. Oh no. I pictured
the misty shadow intertwined with my soul, uncoiling like some great big viper
ready to strike. My heart hammered. Despite the cold chill stealing over my
body, I wiped sweaty palms on the blanket. Something was alive inside me like
it never had been before. I was connected to it on a visceral level. Whatever
the darkness was—my inner vampire maybe—I got the distinct impression it was
displeased.

Too fucking bad.

Footsteps echoed against the concrete floor and resonated
off the walls. They thudded up one side of the room, then down the other. I
stopped my blind search for Micah and brought my uncle’s short, stocky frame
into my clearing vision.

When Roy began to pace, smart people hid. A pissed-off
wizard was a scary wizard. Magic radiated from him in pulsing currents and
caused the two dozen candles in the room to flicker. The blaze of light dimmed
and flared with each step. The last time Roy had been this worked up, he’d
found out about my relationship with Julian.

“I will not stand for this, Richard,” Roy snarled into the
phone clutched in his hand.

The floor-to-ceiling bookshelves lining the entire back wall
of the cellar rattled. Dust plumed. Multicolored spines danced on the shelves.

Unmindful of the havoc he was making, Roy pushed a hand
through the thick wave of his half-gray, half-brown hair. The too-long strands
stuck straight up, like he’d just stuck his finger into a socket. Despite the
pounding in my head, I found his resemblance to Albert Einstein charming.

“They were attacked by a demon, put under a spell! He is
just as responsible. No, you cannot hold what happened against her.” There was
a long pause. Three candles blinked out. When the knives vibrated with his
fury, I really started to worry. “I’d like to see you come down here and try
it.”

If Roy didn’t stop yelling, either my head was going to
explode or weapons were going to start flying around the room. I wasn’t waiting
to see which would happen first.

“Could you maybe, I don’t know, not yell so loud?” I croaked
from the corner of the basement.

The moment I spoke, Roy spun to face me. The relief in his
whiskey-colored eyes warmed my heart. My lower lip started to tremble.

“She’s awake. I will only continue this conversation with the
rest of the council.”

The phone snapped shut. I would have felt relieved if it
weren’t for the firm, straight line of his mouth. His short legs carried him
across the room in record time. He crouched before me, his knees popping, and
settled his serious gaze on my face. I tried not to dwell on the new lines that
made his eyes droop. For a man in his early fifties, he looked closer to
seventy. I’d done nothing but make this man’s life difficult. Roy cupped the
side of my face in his warm, gentle palm and used his thumb to stroke my cheek.

Before I could stop it, a tear rolled from the corner of my
eye. I had the oddest urge to hurl myself in my uncle’s arms and let him hold
me. I wanted him to tell me everything was going to be all right. The last time
I’d sobbed my broken heart out on his sturdy shoulder was the night ten years
ago when my father had been murdered. But I wasn’t fifteen anymore.

“How do you feel?” Roy’s gaze might have been aimed at my
face, but he wasn’t looking me in the eyes.

My defenses went on high alert. I straightened my shoulders
and pulled away until I no longer had the comfort of his touch. Over my
shoulder I glanced at Hannah’s closed eyes and tried to determine if she’d
managed to sleep through Roy’s outburst or if she was faking it. Considering a
category five hurricane probably wouldn’t wake her, the slow rise and fall of
her chest was most likely authentic.

“How bad a situation are we in?” I asked. I recalled the
succubus, the hotel room, the new marks on my body and finally the cruel, cruel
sunshine.

“Bad?” Roy huffed. He didn’t sound amused. “For the first
time in a long while, I don’t know where to start.”

“Why were you were talking to Richard McGregor?” Unease
curled my stomach in to a knot at the mention of Micah’s father, the leader of
the Shadow Agency. I knew exactly what they were talking about. Me. Micah.

Roy clenched his jaw. When he blew out a gust of breath, the
pungent odor of liquor invaded the small space between us. “Our lives just got
very complicated.”

“Because of Richard?” I asked.

“There are things you don’t know, things your father never
wanted you to discover.” Another couple of candles snuffed out.

Without any effort, my eyes adjusted to the dip in light.
The darker it got, the better I could see. I’d always had terrific night
vision, but this… In the left corner of the basement, just past the worn, black
punching bag was a spiderweb the size of a dime. I saw each complex, interwoven
strand. Small flecks of dust adhered to the sticky lines and shook the strings
as if a bug had just landed.

When a hairy, beady-eyed arachnid dropped down from the
ceiling on a quest for its dinner, I looked back at Roy.

“Spit it out.”

He stood and began pacing in front of me. “Richard has
always had a perverse fascination with you.” Roy swallowed and I could tell the
words he was about to say were painful. “Even when you were a little girl.”

With the last ounce of good sense I possessed, I kept my
mouth shut. I crossed my arms over my chest and ran my hands over my
goose-pebbled flesh. I didn’t want to hear this.

“The day after your father died, Richard petitioned me, as
your legal guardian, for your hand in marriage.”

“What? That’s crazy.” The bile in my throat tasted bitter. “I
was only fifteen! Richard has a good thirty years on me.”

The moment I said the words, I thought of Julian. At over
four hundred years old, the vampire defined the word
old
. The age gap,
as vast as it was, was too preposterous to dwell on. At least when I was
sixteen and all aflutter with hormones it had been. After one hundred years,
who cared? The real question was, why did a thirty-year gap bother me? The
answer was a vain one. Julian looked, and would always look, like he was in his
mid-twenties. Richard suffered from male pattern baldness and had a spare tire
under his shirt.

Roy brought me back to the conversation. “Which was why I
told him no. Richard was quite persistent, as was I in my refusal. I’m afraid
Richard has never seen clearly where you’re concerned. His affections have
turned into something cruel, you know that. He is using what happened between
you and Micah as a means to exact his revenge. Richard won’t say as much, but I
know the truth. You should have heard the pleasure in his voice when he told me
of his plans to bring up charges to get you expelled permanently. If his plan
works we’ll lose everything. The house. The weapons. Worse, he’ll try to move
for an execution.”

“They can’t take our home, Granddad built this place…” I
whispered as Roy’s words spun in my head.

“This land belongs to the Agency, Ella. Everything in this
room belongs to them.”

God, how had I not known what a sleaze Richard was? Had I
been so wrapped up in the guilt and horrible grief of losing my father that I’d
missed what was really going on? I tried to look back on my father’s funeral. I
tried to remember the way Richard looked at me, the way he touched me. The only
thing I could recall from that night was Julian’s piercing, blue eyes staring
at me from across the room, and my curiosity as to why a member of the Vampire
Court would be at the memorial.

“That’s fucked up,” I blurted.

The lines around Roy’s eyes deepened with his displeasure. “Really,
Ella, must you use such foul language?” He shook his head. “Richard is using
the fact that you bit Micah as means to terminate your contract and prove you’re
a threat to society. He has documentation that could be damning.”

Apparently, Micah
had
tattled on me.

I had a wrenching vision of Micah’s lean body behind mine,
his strong hands cupping my breasts as he brought my back against his chest so
he could thrust deeper inside me.

I’d slept with Micah, the man who had the power to destroy
me. And I guess he had.

Oblivious to the way his words were tearing me apart, Roy
kept on talking. “With your knowledge and kinship to the vampires, he fears you’ll
lead an all-out assault on the agency.”

Breathe.

“Did Micah know,” my voice cracked, “about his father’s
interest in me?” I held up a hand when Roy opened his mouth. “No, don’t tell
me. Richard knows I sank my fangs into Micah. What did Micah do, run off and
tell him what happened the second I passed out?”

“I know what you’re thinking. Micah didn’t betray you. His
admittance into the emergency room was telling enough. Blood loss and
dehydration. Micah brought you to me in a panic, said your eyes caught fire at
the first glimpse of sunlight. Just before he fell face first at my feet, mind
you, he told me about the demon you encountered and what he remembered of what happened
after. The fall split his head open and I had no choice but to call the
ambulance.”

“Oh my god.” I pressed my trembling fingers against my
mouth. “Is he okay?”

For the first time since I’d woken up, Roy met and held my
gaze. “He will be. Micah’s health isn’t my main concern.”

As I swallowed, I dropped my hands into my lap. “It isn’t?”

“Ella, drinking blood has changed you.”

Punch right to the gut. “I, we weren’t in control…”

Roy shook his head and I closed my mouth before I could
explain about the succubus attack he apparently already knew about. Did he know
about the tattoos and the bite marks as well? Just how much had Micah told him?
How much did Micah even remember?

“I don’t care about what you and Micah did. What’s done is
done. Go look in the mirror,” he commanded.

What I wanted to do was crawl back under the covers with
Hannah and pretend the last few days had never happened. Roy gave me the look
that said he wasn’t my uncle but my mentor. When your hunting advisor told you
to jump, you asked how high. When he told you to run, you asked how fast.
Training made me get out of bed. A ripple of magic pressed against my skin.
Looking down, I realized Roy had drawn a protective chalk circle around the
cot.

Why had Roy put me in a circle of protection?

My bare foot smudged the runes on the ground. Julian. The
press of my sire’s fury slammed into my head and I understood Roy’s precautions.
He was shielding me. The hand I held against my clammy forehead did nothing to
ease the pressure. Vicious, stinging words began forming in my brain. I shook
my head from side to side in an attempt to get rid of them.

“Focus, Ella,” Roy ordered.

I stopped shaking my head and closed my eyes. With an
indrawn breath I concentrated on the wall inside me. My shields were riddled
with holes I imagined had been chipped out with an ice pick. Very carefully, I
filled each one until Julian vanished. I couldn’t deal with my sire right now.

“I feared Julian might take advantage of your weakness. I
should have warned you,” Roy said.

Weakness? How badly was I injured? Too many questions and
not enough answers.

“He’s gone now,” I said as I made my way to the closest
mirror.