Destined For a Vampire (26 page)

“That ought to release some of that poison. Nasty stuff, isn’t it, Bo?”

Bo was gasping and pulling at the blade, to no avail. There was no doubt that the metal had pierced his heart. As I watched, the telltale gangrenous blackness crept out from the handle and spread across Bo’s chest, assuring me that there was no doubt about the poison either.

“Now,” Sebastian began amicably. “Shall I make some introductions?” He looked from Bo to me and back again. No one said a word. I suspected that no one probably so much as breathed. We all waited to see what bomb Sebastian would drop.

“My name is Constantine. I am your father and you are my son. Boaz, the son of the angels.”

My heart, my very soul, dropped into my shoes. Remembering the wings that had arisen from Sebastian’s shadow, it made much more sense now. He was a dark angel, a fallen angel.

It’s true! It’s true!
Dear God, help us, it’s all true!

Bo and Boaz were one and the same. Bo was the son of two rebellious angels. Bo was the boy who can’t be killed. He was the boy destined to kill his father.

Beneath the thin sheen of sweat that covered Bo’s face and the cracks that marred its perfect texture, I saw him pale.

“My father?” It took Bo only a fraction of a minute to put it all together and, in him, I could sense a storm building. “So, you’re the one…” Bo trailed off, his eyes darting toward me, only they didn’t look at me. They looked behind me. “And you must be Heather.”

She said nothing, though I imagined that she was smiling. She seemed devilish that way.

“Ah, is that the click-clack of puzzle pieces I hear, finally falling into place?”

Sebastian mocked.

“But how? Why? Why would you hurt innocent people?” Bo managed.

“Don’t be naïve. No one’s innocent. The people I chose to be your ‘parents’

were simply the most convenient choices to fill the position, as they all have been.

And the how, well, if you must know, my blood is more powerful than anything you can imagine. Feeding it to you was ridiculously easy and it made controlling your memories like child’s play. And humans? Even more so. Isn’t that right, Ridley?”

He looked back at me and I could do nothing but stare in astonishment, mouth agape under Heather’s fingers.

Sebastian turned back to Bo. “She had no idea that she was drinking my blood. You’d think that losing hours of her life might’ve made her suspicious, but she’s just as adorably oblivious as you always have been.”

I felt blood heat my cheeks as it flooded the skin of my face. I’d wondered about those couple hours I couldn’t remember that night, when I’d awakened on the couch downstairs. Naively, not once had I considered Sebastian might have had something to do with it.

Idiot!
I scolded myself.

“You’ve done this before?” Bo asked incredulously.

I could tell that Bo was having a hard time with the information, especially just having suffered such a devastating wound. It was a miracle he could think at all.

“Of course. How do you think you’ve spent the last few hundred years?”

Sebastian chuckled, a series of sardonic barks. “Oh, that’s right. Your memory is…

well, it’s a little
faulty
now. Has been for a while. I guess it’s all the tampering. Not that it matters now anyway. You’ll be immune to it in the future since you’ve had the blood of your mate, but you’ll never get those memories back. Or erase the painful ones from this life.”

Sebastian’s eyes glowed with pleasure, his handsome face a cruel mask. He actually enjoyed torturing Bo, enjoyed telling him hurtful things and watching him squirm.

Bo closed his eyes. At first I thought he was in pain, and he was. Only this pain was of the emotional variety. He was still grieving for the only parents he’d ever known.

“And the woman who was my mother, will you kill her?”

“Not yet. But ultimately, that will be up to you.”

After giving it a couple seconds to sink in, Sebastian continued. “Well,” he said, clapping his hands together. “I suppose it’s time to get this show on the road.

That’s all the time we have today for a heartfelt reunion. Now, we must get down to business. I’m sure you’ve heard the stories, so you know that I’m here for one thing and one thing only: to kill you.”

According to Lucius’s stories and the translated texts in Sebastian’s office, killing Bo was an impossibility. But even so, it still terrified me to hear an angel talk about taking the life of the man that held my heart.

“Go for it,” Bo ground out between labored breaths.

“Well, there is a little something that I must learn first. That’s why I’ve asked sweet Ridley to join us,” Sebastian said dramatically, sweeping his arm toward me.

“If you hurt her…” Bo spat.

“What was that?” Sebastian cupped his ear theatrically. “I couldn’t quite make that out. I guess it’s the silver dagger sticking out of your heart. Makes it hard to understand you.”

“I’ll rip you apart,” Bo huffed weakly.

“Mmm, let’s save that for another time, shall we?”

Sebastian walked back toward me, stopping at my side.

“She’s quite stunning, you know,” he said, reaching out to take a lock of my hair that had fallen down across my breast and twirl it around his finger. “It must be a father-son thing, the love we have for beautiful women.” Sebastian faced me full on and said quietly, “And their love for us.”

Reaching around me to a small table that sat to my right, Sebastian took hold of an oddly familiar wooden stake. I don’t know why it seemed like I’d seen it before, but I was certain I recognized it. He hefted it in his hand, as if testing the weight, and then he turned and hurled it across the room at Bo.

With a loud thump, the stake buried its tip in Bo’s side, to the right of his navel, evidently penetrating his body to embed in the wide beam behind him. When he cried out in agony, it felt as if I had been impaled as well. His pain lanced through me in a physical way, piercing my guts like a scalpel.

“No!” I screamed, but once more it was smothered by Heather’s hand.

Sebastian faced me again. “Not enough? Would you like to see more?”

With that, he reached for another stake and, in one fluid motion, pivoted and threw it unerringly at Bo. This one landed deep in his left thigh.

Bo must’ve gasped in anguish and gotten choked. He coughed and sputtered, blood spewing from his mouth.

The room swayed before my eyes so I squeezed them shut, unable to watch, unable to bear his torture.

Viciously strong fingers grabbed my face and my eyes flew open. Sebastian was glaring down at me, his lips thin and set in a straight, angry line.

“More?”

In horror, I watched as he took yet another stake from the table and flung it at Bo. It penetrated his knee with a splintering sound. I knew it wasn’t the stake giving way; it was Bo’s bone.

“Oh, God, please,” I mumbled behind Heather’s hand.

Sebastian turned back to me, rage etched on every sharp angle of his face.

“God? You dare to call on Him in my presence?”

Furiously, Sebastian grabbed another thick chunk of the familiar whittled wood from the table. I shook my head desperately, but still he turned and launched it at Bo. I watched his arm extend and his hand release the stake, each motion slow and exaggerated, as if he was moving in molasses. I saw every rotation the projectile made on its way to Bo. I heard the hiss of Bo’s breath as it neared him. I felt the way he braced himself against the pain, felt it as surely as if it were happening to me.

As the wood buried itself in Bo’s right shoulder, blood spurted out, droplets flying through the air and peppering his gorgeous face. I surveyed his broken and bloodied body, my heart wrenching inside my tight chest. The anguish I felt for Bo began to meld with another sensation, one that I’d felt before. It was more than fear, more than love, more than helplessness or anger. It was a sweet hurt that I immediately recognized and embraced.

Yes, the terror was there and the rage, but also the feeling that an old friend—

a trusted friend, a powerful friend—had arrived to lend a hand. And with one shaky breath, I let her have her way.

Inside me, she built more quickly this time—the familiar pressure in my chest that oozed into my stomach, where it churned angrily. Within seconds, she had flooded my veins, mingling with my blood and carrying my tie with Bo to the surface, where it throbbed and pulsed just beneath the covering of my flesh.

I knew what was coming next, and when it did, I welcomed the razors that sliced at me, welcomed the exquisite agony of my skin pulling away to let free the power that prowled inside me. I shook with it, trembled with it. It vibrated through me, forcing Heather’s hand away from my mouth.

I closed my eyes as a glorious laugh spilled from between my lips. It was followed by the scream that had been brewing in my chest. I felt my love for Bo pouring through me—the desperation of it, the overwhelming force of it. It promised to save us both and I let it flow.

When I opened my eyes, they found Bo’s like a magnet. My body, my life, my soul was attached and attracted to him, finding him with an undeniable certainty.

Through the heavy slits of his weary lids, Bo’s ebony orbs watched me.

From across the room, I saw in them understanding.

I turned my gaze on Sebastian, ready to unleash the wrath that swelled within me. He stood near the stairs, with Heather by his side, but when I saw him, my anger died instantaneously. I couldn’t bring myself to hurt him as he was.

He held Lilly in his arms.

I looked at her peaceful, still-sleeping face and then back up to Sebastian’s.

He was wearing a smile that reeked of satisfaction, one that silently proclaimed his victory.

“Bravo,” he said facetiously. “You’ve just proved that you are the one.”

As the anger and the power burned off, my mind reeled with confusion.

“What? I don’t understand.”

“You’ve given me the one true weakness of the boy who can’t be killed: his soul mate.”

Far beneath all the tragedy of what was going on, a bright light of pure pleasure beamed within me, hoping upon hope that he was right, but only about the soul mate part. Then, quickly, I forced my focus back to the present.

“But I’m not his weakness.”

“Oh, but you are. Heather here has made sure that you have enough venom in your blood to turn ten beautiful young girls into monsters, which leaves Bo here with a decision to make.”

My blood ran ice cold and drained away from my face. What had she done?

What had
he
done?

I felt panic clawing its way up inside me, threatening to have its way, but I tamped it down, knowing it was something I couldn’t afford to worry about right now.

I looked back at Bo. He was glaring murderously at Sebastian from his place against the wooden support beam. Judging by the look in his eye, I was the only one who failed to understand what Sebastian was talking about.

“What decision?”

“You’re soon to be a vampire, sweet Ridley. Bo here is smart enough to know that if he kills me, he will become mortal, and that means that he’d leave the love of his life to walk the earth for eternity…alone. Once he attains mortality, there is no going back. Your misery, your heartache, your loneliness—it would all be his fault.”

My head swam as if it were filled with hazy liquid and nausea sloshed in my stomach at the mere prospect of the future that he described. I shook my head, literally putting my fingertips to my temples in an effort to control what was happening inside it. And then, with a determination I didn’t believe myself capable of, I violently shoved those selfish thoughts aside.

“And what makes you so sure that I won’t kill you? Maybe I’m the weapon that will take your traitorous life.”

“Well, if that’s a theory you wish to test, then I suppose there’s not much I can do about it. But let me warn you of this, Ridley. If you were to try such a thing, I would be forced to take innocent Lilly’s life.”

I gasped.

“You would do that to your own child?”

“You ask that when I just put a dagger through the heart of my beloved son?

But the answer is yes, I would it again, only I wouldn’t have to.”

“What? Why not?”

“Because Lilly isn’t my daughter.”

“Then who’s—”

“Lilly is more closely related to you than she is to me,” Sebastian interrupted gleefully. He was obviously alluding to a secret juicy enough to find great pleasure in revealing.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I don’t suppose it will hurt to tell you that my Iofiel has found out some very interesting, very valuable information in the past few hundred years. For instance, did you know that the blood of a child born a vampire holds unique power?”

I shook my head. “No, but what does this have to do with—”

“With you? Well, I would’ve thought that your niece’s life might mean something to you—the last little piece of your sister—but I guess I could’ve misjudged you.”

“My niece? But I don’t have a- a…”

I trailed off as silver blue eyes floated through my head. A bell-like laugh and gleaming auburn locks, only these didn’t belong to Lilly. They belonged to Izzy.

“But Izzy died. And so did the baby,” I muttered quietly, still befuddled.

“Did Bo happen to mention that his ‘mother’ worked at the hospital?”

My mouth dropped open, working fruitlessly to wrap my lips around words that I couldn’t find.

“You’re lying,” I whispered.

“Heather, let’s give Ridley here a little memento of what she stands to lose…

again.”

From her pocket, Heather pulled out a silver rectangle and tossed it to me. It landed on the floor with a clatter and skidded to a halt in front of me. I looked down and recognized Izzy’s cell phone where it lay at my feet. This was why it had never been recovered. Sebastian had stolen the phone when he’d turned the baby inside her womb.

“Amazing what the blood of an angel, a vampire angel, can do for a fetus, isn’t it?”