The Wicked Within (10 page)

I exited at my stop and then made my way down the dark street to the house. Before the house came into sight, I heard the furious beat of drums echoing through the neighborhood. Sebastian was home and he was playing hard and fast—this couldn’t be good.
That makes two of us in a bad mood, then.
Sebastian worked out his emotions through playing, and tonight it sounded intense and angry.

I found Dub sitting on the floor in the living room with another pile of stolen grave goods spread across the coffee table. I passed the room with a wave, and then took the stairs two at a time.

In my room, I dumped my pack onto my bed, then stood there drawing in a deep breath and letting it out as the vibrations from the drums snaked through the flooring and into my feet.

Instead of hunting him down about the meeting and Gabriel’s vague accusations, I sat and pulled off my shoes, lay back, tucked my hands behind my head, and listened to Sebastian’s thunder.

He played for the next hour, the tempo eventually slowing until it stopped completely. I drifted somewhere between wakefulness and sleep. A door shut downstairs. Footsteps and muted voices came from below.

I sat up and undid the twist in my hair, raking my fingers down my scalp and through the strands. Basically putting off the inevitable. Now was as good a time as any to talk to Sebastian. But part of me was afraid of what I might hear.

I went down the hall. His door was shut. It was quiet. I stood there, torn between knocking and going back to my room. Instead I stepped to Violet’s room, where hundreds of reflections spilled from her open door, painting the hallway with bright dots. I gave the door frame a light rap, sticking my head inside.

Violet’s room was a surreal, magical place, filled with masks, beads, jewelry, and gowns. Piles of them lay on the floor, a few were on her bed, and some hung over her dresser and footboard. Masks hung on the walls and were stacked on top of the dresser and were looped over the posts on her bed. The light from the lamp bounced off thousands of rhinestones, crystals, and sequins.

In the center of a pile of gowns, a red mask pushed onto the top of her head, Violet sat, looking so tiny in the heaps of material. “Dub brought me a new dress.” She lifted up a gauzy blue prom gown.

“It’s pretty.”

Her slim fingers played over the bodice. Pascal waddled out from under the dresses and padded to the small, plastic kiddie pool Violet had put in the corner of her room.

I sat on the floor, resting my back against her dresser, and drew in my legs. “The witch the other day . . . do you think he can lift my curse?”

Violet’s expression turned pensive. Then she shrugged. “He thinks he can,” she answered, as though that was all that mattered. If the River Witch thought he could, then he could, apparently.

I played with the hem of the blue gown. “Why did he say those things to you? About sacrifice and putting yourself in harm’s way?”

She kept her gaze on the dress, fiddling with one of the rhinestones at the neckline. “He says that stuff all the time.”

“What else does he say?”

She lifted her chin, her dark gaze looking so huge and fragile. “That I’m a treasure,” she whispered. “The crowning jewel. A great, shining star. A diamond, black as night and tougher than the gods.”

Shivers ran through me. Her answer was uttered with such . . . hope it made my heart hurt. I wondered how many times she’d heard those words, wondered if they’d sparked her obsession with building her own treasure, her own shining things. She wanted desperately to believe that she was valued and important. To me, she was.

“He’s old,” I commented after a moment, not wanting her to feel like this was an interrogation, but at the same time, I couldn’t dismiss the River Witch’s involvement in her life and his connection to Athena.

She nodded. “And he loves shiny things too. His treasure room is better than mine.” She flipped the gown over. “Sometimes the zippers are stuck in the back or ripped. Then I have to fix them. This one is good, though.”

The River Witch didn’t strike me as one to like “the sparklies.” But a greedy son of a bitch? Sure. In that way, he might be one of the greatest treasure hoarders alive. Who knew? “Where does he come from?”

“From the earth. Far away. I don’t know. Where did you come from?”

“Memphis,” I answered with a smile.

She thought about that and nodded.

“Violet?”

“Yes, Ari?”

“Do you know what you are?”

Her hands stilled and fell into the folds of the gown. Her throat worked as she swallowed. My breath held. Her eyes seemed to grow rounder as she stared at me. Her lips thinned. She shook her head, her bob swinging. “I don’t know.”

I reached over the gown and took her tiny hand. At my
touch she crawled over the material and into my lap, hugging me tightly. “I don’t know,” she whispered against my neck. The fear in her voice caused tears to prick my eyes. She didn’t know and it frightened her.

She pulled my hair around her, nestling in the white shield as though it would protect her. “I’m a treasure,” she assured herself, her voice the barest whisper. “The crowning jewel. A great, shining star. A diamond, black as night and tougher than the gods. Like you, Ari. Just like you . . . ”

“You
are
a star,” I said, rocking her. “No matter what, you are the best of all the treasures in all the world.”

Sometimes love took time to grow. Sometimes it came quicker, pinging you right between the eyes. The connection I felt with Violet was like that. She was right, too. In a lot of ways, we were the same. When I was her age, I hadn’t known what I was either. I only knew that I was different, that a darkness lurked inside me.

“I love you, Violet.”

Her voice was muffled. “I love you, too, Ari.”

Black as night,
Violet had said. I’d often felt that way, but now it wasn’t a negative thing anymore. My darkness was a fierce thing, a strong thing, a powerful force that could kick ass and stand up to bullies like Athena.

As I held her, I stared up at the ceiling. Today had been
one emotional ride after another.
When it rains, it pours.
First my father and now Violet. And I still had a whole lot of unanswered questions.

I held Violet as long as she wanted, but it wasn’t too long before she pulled away and crawled back under her pile of gowns. “See you in the morning,” she said from under layers of fabric and netting. Pascal crawled from the pool, leaving a wet path behind him as he nosed his way beneath the gowns.

“See you in the morning.” My legs were stiff as I rose and shuffled out, closing Violet’s door behind me. Once in the hall, I didn’t know if I had the emotional fortitude left to confront Sebastian.

But I didn’t have to decide, because his door opened.

He stilled when he saw me standing there, my hand on Violet’s doorknob. His hair was wet from the shower, face flushed, eyes bright. The hallway seemed to shrink with his presence. My breath grew shallow as all sorts of chaotic signals fired through my body. The instant reaction pissed me off. I gritted my teeth.

“Feel better?” I asked, the first thing that popped into my head.

“What?”

“Your drumming . . . Never mind.” I bit the inside of my cheek, trying unsuccessfully to keep Gabriel’s words from getting the best of me. “Were you with someone last night?”

His entire demeanor changed. He walked back into his
room. He hadn’t shut the door in my face, so I followed him inside, closing the door behind me as he leaned his hip against the dresser.

I’d intended to ask him about the meeting with the council, but instead “Another vampire? Were you?” came out of my mouth.

Damn Gabriel! Damn me for my weakness, and damn Sebastian, because he wasn’t even denying it.

“Is that where you were all last night and today?” I asked.

His eyes sparked and his mouth drew into a tight line, the agitation in him filling the room. He gave a short, disbelieving laugh, disappointment written all over his face. “You’re really asking me that?”

“I am, and you know what? It pisses me off that I am. How would I know? You won’t tell me anything. I have no idea when you feed, how you feed. . . . I’m in the dark, Sebastian. So, yeah, I’m asking.”

“It is what I am now. I feed. I have to. And trust me, I like it a hell of a lot less than you do.”

“Yeah, I hear it’s terrible.” I hated the sarcasm that leaped out, but I was unable to stop it. “Look,” I said in a calmer voice, “I’ve learned enough to know feeding is some kind of high, a really good one. When you bit me . . . ” Heat filled my face, and my pulse sped up. I know what I felt, and it was far from terrible.
“You can’t tell me you didn’t . . . ” Enjoy it? Love it? But maybe I was wrong, maybe he’d had an entirely different reaction from me. And if that was the case, I was digging myself into one hell of an embarrassing hole.

Quiet filled the room; the memories of his bite were still so vivid. The way he’d held me pinned against the wall. His hot mouth on my neck. His tongue flicking out to lick, teeth piercing skin . . . I swallowed.

“Never mind. Just forget it.” Why did I even go there? I should have kept walking right out of Violet’s room and back to mine. I stepped to the door, but his hand slapped it shut. His body hovered behind mine, his hand staying braced on the door in front of me. Seconds passed. Then his other hand lifted a strand of my hair. A shiver went down my back. I let my forehead fall against the door and closed my eyes, as a whirlwind of emotions swirled through me.

Sebastian moved closer and gathered my hair, draping all of it over one shoulder and baring the other. I went to turn toward him. “Don’t,” he commanded in a low voice.

My breath went shallow as he dipped his head and brushed a light kiss on my exposed shoulder, then my neck. His breath was so warm. My fingernails dug into the door as his lips trailed up my neck and to my ear. “I did like it,” he murmured. “I loved it.” His words sent tingles dancing along my nerves. “But it’s a dark thing.”
His hand closed around my hip. “I wanted to use you, take everything you had to give until I was satisfied. I almost killed you.”

He turned me to face him. “I almost killed you,” he repeated.

I wasn’t sure how to respond to that. My heart pounded like one of his drums. “It was the first time,” I said. “And look at the situation we were in. You were tortured and starved. That you were able to stop . . . with me . . . that says a lot. Aren’t you getting better at control?”

He didn’t answer.

“You wouldn’t hurt me.”

His forehead touched mine, and he shook his head. “I would. I’m only a couple of weeks old. I would.”

“Do you feed from others?”

“I have. I am what I am. Accept it or not,” he said defensively, “this part of me is not going to change.

“I want to accept you, but it’s kind of hard when you haven’t told me how you feel, what you need. How can I accept anything if you won’t let me in, Sebastian? I don’t know anything about it, when you need to feed, who you do it with, if you have feelings for that person when you do. . . . None of it.”

He moved closer again, pressing his hips to mine, wrapping his arms around me. I couldn’t hold in my feelings. “I don’t like it. I feel like we were damned before we even began.” I hated picturing him holding someone else, putting his mouth on their skin.

Granted, I got that he was afraid he’d lose control with me because I meant something to him. And yes, he was only a couple weeks old and playing it safe. He was a good guy, to worry about hurting me. But taking what he needed from others—I didn’t have to like it. And I didn’t understand why he couldn’t open up and let me in.

Sebastian was the first guy I wanted to be in a relationship with. I hadn’t known him all that long in the scheme of things, but we sort of made up for time in that we’d been through things most people would never go through in a thousand lifetimes. The horrors and triumphs we’d faced linked us. We had a strong bond. But our relationship was just beginning. We’d connected, and I’d wanted to see what would come of that connection. But where I was once hopeful, now I was not.

“I don’t like it either, Ari. Just . . . let me work it out, okay?”

“Damn it.” I pushed him away. “No, it’s
not
okay. You want to touch me like this and I’m supposed to be okay with it after you’ve been holding someone else? I’m supposed to just agree with whatever you want while you keep me in the dark?” I jerked open the door. “Maybe I need to work out some things too, like whether or not that’s
okay
with me. Oh, no wait. Don’t need time to figure it out. It’s
not
okay!”

I slammed the door, but it met his hand again as he followed me out of the room, ready to fight.

A horn blasted from outside.

Someone was laying on the car horn out front like it was nobody’s business. Pretty sure it was Crank outside, I marched into my room to grab my weapons.

By the time I was done and downstairs, Sebastian was already walking out the front door. As I crossed the foyer, Henri and Dub’s arguing carried from the kitchen—something about the proper way to chop potatoes.

Outside, Crank’s truck was parked halfway up on the curb.

“About time!” she called, leaning out of the truck. “Hurry up, will you!”

I finished strapping my blade to my thigh and pushed through the gate.

“Get in. One of your teachers told me to come find you and bring you to the square.”

“Bran?” I took a guess, lifting my hand to model his height. “Big guy . . . ”

She popped a bubble with her gum and leaned her forearms on the huge steering wheel. “Yeah. Big dude. Brown hair. Nice tats.”

I nodded. “Did he say what he wants?”

“Nope, but it sounded pretty urgent. So, he wants you to come. Like pronto.”

I walked around to the open passenger side and got in.
Sebastian knelt in the empty space between our seats, holding on to them both for support. I wanted to tell him not to bother. Bran hadn’t asked for him. But one glance told me he was coming whether I liked it or not.