We Own the Night (The Night Songs Collection Book 3) (30 page)

“Shh.” Tristan tried to calm me down. “It’s not your fault they’re crazy.”

I picked up my head, feeling guilty that after all that Tristan had just gone through, he was comforting me. In all fairness, it had been a pretty rough day all around. “Cash was crazy.”

“Was?” Tristan’s eyebrows rose.

“After I found Lennon, I was so angry that anyone would hurt her that I channeled the only person I knew who was capable of the kind of madness that could take him down.”

“Blade.”

“I set Cash on fire.” I wasn’t surprised when Tristan shrank away from me. “I pulled it out of Blade.”

“Wow.” Tristan’s voice sounded far away. “Can you do that a lot?”

“Well, isn’t that how we feed? Off of energy?”

“I can feel other people’s emotions, but I’ve never been able to project it on to someone else,” he said. “That’s some crazy strong mind control there, Mistress.” He leaned back in to kiss me, and I smiled against his lips.

Cash had said the others didn’t want to help me because they feared me. Who knew I could borrow their powers like a library book? That meant whatever power a clan member had was available to me.

I wanted to know what else I could do.

We kissed for a long time. Both of us needed healing. Suddenly, I remembered the other reason I came in here.

“Lennon needs this room!” I exclaimed, pulling away from him. “Shit, she’s just God knows where in a blanket, and we’re making out like nothing’s wrong.”

Tristan pulled away from me. “Alright, get up. We need to change the sheets though, I’m gross. Burns ooze.”

Once we found clean linens and changed the bed, we brought Lennon into the room. I gasped when we unwrapped her from the sheets, she just looked dead. Her eyes were closed, and her mouth was slightly open. Her body had yet to start healing.

Her limbs were hard. And heavy. “Are you sure she’s going to be okay?” I whispered to Tristan, as if I’d wake her by talking too loudly. I could only wish.

“This is what you looked like while you were turning. Besides the wounds,” Tristan said, staring down at Lennon’s body. “It’s scary.”

“What can we do to help her?” I asked, turning into his body.

“Nothing. All we can do is wait.” He kissed the top of my head. “Let’s leave her be, and go home.”

“But Blade is here,” I protested.

“An even better reason to go home.” Tristan smiled. “He’s locked up.”

“He might escape.”

“I doubt it.” Tristan pulled me away from Lennon’s bed. My feet didn’t want to move right away. “You need to rest. No one can be expected to take out two crazy vampires in one night.”

W
hat the hell was I going to do about Blade?

My body shut itself down as scheduled, but my brain ticked on. Tristan laid next to me, with his head nestled in the crook of my shoulder, his arm slung across my stomach. Everything felt the same, but everything had changed.

Now I had to deal with it. People were going to notice that Cash Logan had gone missing. Huge personalities like that didn’t just go away. There were people with tickets to his show, wanting to be a part of his magic, having no idea it was murder.

When I killed Cash, I inherited everything he had. To the winner go the spoils. He must have had a staff, so now I must have a staff. And the show was in town long before he had any involvement. The show would go on, we’d just have to figure out a way to explain why Cash wasn’t there anymore. We’d find someone else. The only thing he was doing that other magicians couldn’t do was killing people.

No one in Las Vegas expected anything to last forever. Right now, that worked in my favor.

Could I kill Blade like I had Cash? Deep down under all the hatred and resentment, I still loved him. I loved who he had been, who he had wanted to be. I loved that at one time he’d only seen the best in me. It didn’t matter what awful things he did to me, I still considered Blade the vampire and Blade my ex-boyfriend two separate entities. But if I killed Blade the vampire, my ex-boyfriend died along with him.

Even once I finished battling with myself whether or not I could do it, the question really was could I physically and mentally overpower him? He was the strongest vampire I knew. No other vampire had powers strong enough for me to borrow to take him down. Tristan was only able to best him at a fight once. Rachel could neutralize the flames, but that just left us dancing around in the same circles.

Tristan stirred when night fell. I opened my eyes, lids still heavy, and looked over at him. I couldn’t believe his transformation.

It was like nothing had ever happened to him.

His hair, reaching down the middle of his ribcage, shined like it was made of glass. His muscles, last night wasted from the fire, strained against his skin. His tattoos, which had looked like a box of melted crayons had dried on his arm last night, were as vibrant as if he had just had the whole thing done while we slept.

I ran my hand down his spine and circled the small of his back to make sure what I was seeing was real. His skin felt smooth, and even the little blonde hairs on his back had come back.

“That feels good,” he sighed, crawling up to look me in the eye. “Your face is better.” His hand slid under my tank top to check out my stomach. “Beautiful as ever.” He leaned down and kissed me right above the belly button.

“I feel like I got run over by a steamroller.” He kept kissing my stomach, and I didn’t stop him. “I didn’t sleep at all.”

“How?” He looked up at me, his lips still on my skin. “It’s like an off switch.”

“My brain never just shuts off. Don’t you have weird dreams?”

“Mm-mm.” He’d moved up to my breasts, and he no longer had any need for words. The feel of his lips and mouth against the delicate new skin almost lulled me into real sleep, but that was a luxury I had no time for today.

And speaking of luxury, Tristan didn’t have nightmares? Why was I surprised? He didn’t have to worry about much of anything. Everything was taken care of for him. And part of that would be me taking care of him. After all, that’s what I came here for. And now as his clan leader, I had a responsibility to do just that.

“We need to go back to Ryder’s.” I pulled my top down, making Tristan laugh as I pushed him away from me. I sat up, a little too fast, still drained from the last two nights. “I just want to get this over with.”

“Can we talk about something first?” Tristan had rolled over on to his back.

“Yeah.” He never wanted to just talk. That was usually my line. But a near death experience would probably make even Tristan think things over. “What’s up?”

“So the guys in Soul Divider are pretty cool,” he started.

“Yeah, as long as we can trust them.” Who could blame me for having trust issues?

“I think we can,” he said. “You realize that no one in Immortal Dilemma was at that house, right?”

Good point. “No, I hadn’t.”

“How often do we hang out with them?”

“Almost never.”

“Exactly!” Tristan sat up, resting his arms on his knees. “The Soul Divider guys are together all the time. They’re a band. They’re not a bunch of musicians put together to make other people money. They do this even when there’s no money coming in. Because they love it, and they have to make music.”

“That’s what you want,” I said softly.

“Yes!” He leaned forward, wrapping his arms around me. “Being there, I realized I’d never been in a real band before. Even before Immortal Dilemma happened, I was bankrolling everyone I played with. They used me for the money. No one cared about the music. And they didn’t care about me. My own band left me to die.”

I closed my eyes and leaned against him. Jesus, what a realization. “You’re going to leave the band.”

I felt him nod. “I want to make music. I don’t want to just play. If I’m never in another band, so be it. But when I am, it’s going to be for all the right reasons.”

“I think that’s the best decision you’ve ever made.” I tipped my head up so I could kiss him. There was something different about him. He was just Tristan. Not the rock star. He was the Tristan I loved and not the Tristan I tolerated because it scared me more not to be a part of his life.

After his revelation, we got sidetracked. A celebration of his declaration. Tristan might have finally figured out what he wanted, but it didn’t make the rest of our problems go away.

“I just want to get this over with,” I said to convince myself more than anything else as I pulled my jacket on. The desert got cold at night when it wasn’t summer. Had I not experienced it, I would have never believed it. The cold didn’t really affect us, but to keep up the charade, we had to dress appropriately.

And if Blade tried to burn me again, I’d feel the cold afterwards. But I didn’t want to think about that.

With Tony gone, Tristan had to drive us back to Ryder’s. “Pick a number,” he said.

“What? Nineteen.”

“Cool, you picked a Ferrari.” Tristan grabbed the keys out of a lock box.

Tristan tried to talk to me while he drove, but I wasn’t in the mood for small talk. My stomach tied itself in knots. We didn’t know what we were walking into. As far as I knew, my cell phone was still lying on the floor of Lennon’s living room. Tristan had been in no shape to swap information with anyone. Disaster seemed to be the most likely outcome, and I needed to prepare for it.

Nothing seemed unusual as we made our way up the walk. I clutched Tristan’s hand tightly. More than anything else, I was worried about Lennon.

“Is she awake yet?” I asked Melanie, who looked as exhausted as I felt. She was as worried sick about Lennon as I was. And she couldn’t have possibly gone through anything like this before.

“Not yet,” she sighed.

No news was good news, right? She still had a chance. And when she did come back to us, she’d be among friends. That’s all anyone could really ask for.

I didn’t sit, and neither did Tristan. They’d welcomed him in, too. All the guys were doing those guy handshake, half hug thingies I would never understand. Girls just hugged. Guys had to do some weird dance to cover up the fact they were hugging.

“What’s going on with Blade?” I hated to bring the reunion to a crashing halt, but we had things to take care of.

“He’s still under wraps, and pissed off,” Rachel said. “I’ve been neutralizing him so he doesn’t burn the house down. I don’t know how much longer I can keep it up. It takes a lot of energy.”

My heart sank. “So we need to act quickly.” We couldn’t lose Rachel. Without her, we had no chance.

“What do you want to do?” Ryder asked.

“I don’t think I can kill him,” I said quietly, settling on the arm of the sofa. “What can I do to stop him that doesn’t require actually destroying him?”

“Oh, come on!” Tristan groaned, rolling his eyes and running his hand through his hair.

“I can’t physically overcome him. You should know better than anyone.” I hated that he doubted me. “So I want to know how to make him go away without hurting any of us.”

“We could bury him,” Ryder suggested. “It will be a bitch, but we can do it.”

“Where?” I asked. There was never a practical place to hide a body. The last thing we needed was a neighborhood dog to dig up the vampire we intended to punish.

“The house doesn’t have a basement.” Ryder ran his hands through his hair and sighed, as he tried to figure out a good spot. “The garage would probably be the best place. We’d have to break through the concrete, but the same tool would be able to cut through the rock underneath, and then we could seal it back up with concrete.”

Concrete. Holy shit. We weren’t fooling around. But if we did this, it needed to be as final as possible. Nobody wanted to deal with the consequences of this months or even years from now.

“Will he be able to dig his way out?” I asked.

“Honestly, I don’t know. He’s powerful. Anything is possible.” Ryder looked worried, and it made my stomach flop.

“How are we going to get him in there?” Melanie asked. “He’s crazy.”

“He’s chained up now, so he can only fight so much, but if we all take a limb, we should be able to get him in the hole.”

“But the fire!” Melanie’s arms flailed in protest. “We can’t lose all of you.”