Dark Secrets (7 page)

She gave me a sad smile and cupped my hand to her face,
holding me there. “I’ve always been in your world.”

And she had. Time to change the subject.

“What did Roy say before he passed out? Lama something or
other.”

Hannah’s eyes lit, eclipsing some of her worry. “Laminas
Animarum.” The words rolled off her tongue in what I guessed was perfect
pronunciation.

“It’s Latin for ‘Blade of Souls’.”

I sniffled back the last of my tears. This felt normal. That
was if I ignored the fact we were having a clichéd heart-to-heart in the
bathroom. “That sounds ominous.”

“Right?” Hannah snorted. “Combined with Richard and black
market, yes. As soon as I get home, I’ll find out what it’s for and gather any
information I can get on it.”

“Darlin’.” Dante’s voice sounded through the bathroom door. “Doctor’s
got an update.”

I grabbed Hannah’s hand, laced our fingers together and
squeezed.

“You ready for this?” she asked me.

“No.”

In the waiting room, Hannah and I met with a doctor who was
just an inch taller than me. His trimmed white beard was a sharp contrast to
his dark skin and eyes. I stared at him and braced for the worst possible
outcome—Roy hadn’t made it.

“Your uncle—” the doctor started.

I held my breath and closed my eyes.

“Suffered a major heart attack, which then led to a stroke
and seizures. We’re prepping him for bypass surgery now. Assuming all goes
well, when he comes out, we will induce a coma to let his body heal. In these
types of cases, patients wake up and try to pull out their breathing tubes,
IVs. This is the safest route. We won’t know the extent of the neurological
damage, if there is any, until he wakes up.”

I blew out a breath. He was still fighting. Some broken
pieces of me fit back together. Like my weapons had anchored me, the news that
my uncle was still fighting filled with me strength. If he could survive this,
I could get over my bullshit emotional trauma.

I straightened my shoulders, not even aware I’d been
sagging. “How long before we can see him?”

The doctor checked his watch. “A few hours. You can stay
here, or there’s a hotel across the street. One of the nurses can call when he’s
been moved to a private room.”

Hannah reached out and grabbed the doctor’s hand. “Thank you
for taking care of him.”

He gave us a grim, haggard smile before walking away.

My sister turned to me with tears shimmering in her eyes. “I’ll
stay here with him. The sun will be up soon. Go home and get some rest, we’ll
do shifts.”

I didn’t want to go but couldn’t think of an alternative
method of not catching my eyeballs on fire and terrifying the humans milling
around us.

“You’ll call me?” I asked hesitantly.

“Anything changes, I’ll call. I swear it.”

I rose on the tips of my toes and kissed her cheek before
heading for the exit. Micah’s footsteps echoed behind me, the sound of them
something I’d memorized months ago. The minute we cleared the emergency room, I
turned to him.

“Now’s not a good time.”

He caught my arm and drew me away from the shadowed alcove I’d
planned on phazing from. Heedless of my protests, he dragged me—all bossy
like—across the circle drive to the parking lot where his car, muscled, shiny
and black, stuck out from the minivans and SUVs.

“What are you doing?” I struggled against his grip.

We stepped in front of an oncoming car and Micah waved off
the honking horn, his steps never faltering. We both knew if he stopped and let
me get the upper hand, I’d kick his ass.

“I’m driving you home,” he all but growled at me.

“I can get myself there, thank you very much.”

“No way.” He lowered his voice and looked around at the few
people within hearing distance. “You try to phaze there, who the hell knows
where you’ll end up. You’ve gotten better, but it’s not perfect yet. I’m
driving you. End of story.”

I looked for the spot inside my head, the one where I
concentrated on people and places so I could transport myself there, and found
it murky. This made me scowl. I’d learned how to phaze using trial and error.
Mostly error. He might have had a point, not that I was telling him that. Ever.

“You’ve been drinking.”

He shook his head. “I don’t get drunk, not anymore—you know
that.”

Women’s cologne wafted from his jacket, a mocking reminder
of our earlier fight. “Well, you reek of cheap perfume.”

Never letting go of my arm, he dragged me the rest of the
way to his black GTO and pushed me against the passenger door. I had fond
memories of us against this very spot. I pressed back against the cold metal
and Micah followed, caging me in with his body. Lust slammed into me, heating
me from the inside out. A family of four strode past us. I couldn’t help but
notice the way the mother shot me a dirty look and gathered her two small
children close when they rushed by.

Uncaring of anything except us, Micah cupped my cheek and
forced my gaze to his. “You want to talk to me about reeking? Julian’s scent is
all over you, like you fucking bathed in him. I close my eyes—even for a
second—and all I see is him all over you.”

Fatigue settled in and I rested my hand on the center of
Micah’s chest. Under my palm, his heart drummed. “I didn’t let him kiss me.”

“Doesn’t make the image go away. Doesn’t erase the history
between you two. Doesn’t change the fact that he expects you to put on that
fucking dress he bought you and hang off his arm. Doesn’t change the fact that
he was there for you when I should’ve been. There’s this hard, morphing ball of
fire in the pit of my gut. Now that I know what those flames look like
streaming through the air, I can actually visualize it growing inside me—feel
my palm burning with the need to relinquish it. All I see is red, like the
world is painted in blood and I can’t turn it off.”

Violence and mayhem radiated. Would he hurt someone? Turn
into something that I, a few months ago, would have put down without blinking an
eye?

“Micah,” I said, letting some of my hostility go. Hannah,
who knew everything, had made some solid points. I knew in my heart that I’d
blown the fight between us way out of proportion.

Micah’s gaze hardened and he stepped back—misreading my
hesitation.

“You know what, following you out here was a mistake. Phaze
home—take some time to figure out what the fuck you want, because it doesn’t
seem to be me. I screwed up, broke your trust. Fine—I take accountability for
that. But right now you aren’t acting rational.”

And here we went again. “My uncle just had a heart attack!”

“Which really fucking sucks, but that’s not what I’m talking
about. Your emotions are all over the place, like you swallowed crazy pills or
some shit. You aren’t my Ella. My Ella fights, kicks, punches and screams. She
doesn’t cry. Doesn’t let her undead prick of a sire get within touching
distance.”

His words, similar to Hannah’s, were like a slap to the
face. What was wrong with me? “Micah, I didn’t—”

He shook his head. “Save it.”

Anger swept away everything else. “You’re a real asshole,
you know that?”

If he answered, I didn’t hear him. I closed my eyes and dug
through the murky images. I pictured the area just in front of the house I’d
lived in for the last several weeks. In my head, I saw the massive trees that
surrounded the Victorian house with its steep roofs, tall windows and fading
orange-red brick walls. My chest constricted as my world spun. Colors whirred
behind my lids. I held on to the vision in my head and when I opened my eyes, I
was home.

The second my world stopped spinning and the sprawling house
came into focus, I pressed a hand to my stomach to keep in the vomit. I put my
head down and drew in slow, deep breaths. Cold air whipped around me, blowing
my hair in front of my face.

There was a certain scent lingering in the night. Blood.
Violence. My fangs pulsed and the shadow living within woke, desperate for the
fight I’d been depriving it from for weeks.

“Vampire whore,” someone hissed.

I looked up as four men, dressed in brown and beige fatigues
that were tight enough to show off their finely honed muscles, materialized
from the trees. I knew these men, had trained alongside them for years. One of
them, Jared—the one who’d so affectionately called me a whore—had stolen my
first kiss at a Shadow Agency party when I was twelve.

“My problem isn’t with you, go home,” I said, tried to rein
in the temper Micah had stoked and these assholes had fed.

They strode in my direction and the closer they got, the
more potent the aroma of death became. The man in the middle—black hair, blue
eye and an ass crack for a chin—threw something on the ground.

The darkness shifted as my vision homed in on the object
rolling to a stop at my feet. Even though I could see it, I had a hard time deciphering
it. The “it” was a severed head, blood oozing from the raw, meaty neck.

Something else thudded to the ground, rolled to me, and my
chest squeezed tight at the realization. I knew these headless corpses. Wolves.
Ja-air and Hellix. They were members of the Fenrir—men under my protection—men
who had worked to keep me safe.

Now they were dead.

Rage fought through my control. I looked up, into the
unforgiving faces of the Shadow Agents and I bared my fangs. The line between
duty and honor vanished, leaving me with a clear outlook on what it meant to be
queen—what it meant to be me. I’d been raised to hunt, knew how to kill, had
perfected the technique. Lizbeth might have had the passion to rule the
vampires, had the ability to keep them loyal to her using her girlish wiles,
but she lacked the necessary ability to fight.

But not me. I stepped closer, a wild, restless energy
vibrating from the tips of my fingers and making them tingle. The hint of
violence fed the darkness inside and I came alive for what felt like the first
time in days.

“What have you done?” My voice was low and furious.

“Ridding the world of fifth,” Jared said, his words ice
cold.

I wasn’t the girl he’d chased when we were kids. I wasn’t
the girl who’d punched him in the stomach after he’d shoved his tongue in her
mouth.

The lethal vampire I struggled to keep caged since staking
Lizbeth filled me. My fangs lengthened with the need for vengeance. Blood.
Their collective heartbeats hammered my senses and I licked my lips in
anticipation of the kill. Their thoughts whispered through my head, an
addictive buzz that made my heart soar.

“We decided not to wait for the trial,” one of the men said.
“Tonight, you die, bitch.”

I crossed my arms over my chest and notched my chin up in
challenge. My hair blew in the wind and tickled my cheeks. I trailed my burning
blue gaze slowly over the men who’d once been my allies. Hatred shone in their
eyes. Now, like so many others, they were my enemies.

The line I straddled blurred and I could see my inner
vampire wrestling with my morals in some strange internal battle.

Kill them and be done with it.

Another more rational side of me screamed, “No!” I could
just as easily incapacitate and leave them hogtied on Richard’s doorstep
alongside a bag of flaming shit.

These men were human, bigots sure, but were they to blame
for how they’d been raised?

Rip out their fucking throats.

The moral part, the one I clung to with both hands, told me
their deaths would be murder.

“Why should I die?” I said after a long beat of silence. “What
gives you the right to be my judge, jury and executioner?”

As a single unit, they blinked as if they hadn’t expected me
to protest. I’d once been as ignorant as them. Not once had I ever stopped to
think of an alternative to death. My temper, already aflame, burned brighter.
My heart kicked up a notch, adrenaline prepping me for battle. My senses
traveled through the darkness until I could taste their fear and hatred.

No one else lurked in the woods, only these four agency
hunters who’d decided to take matters into their own hands. After Micah and I
were fired, Jared had taken the lead. He always dropped his shoulder before he
struck. I’d beaten vampires and demons, these four were child’s play.

“You’re an evil, blood-sucking bitch, that’s why. Ever since
you took over, the number of human fatalities has tripled. When you’ve got a
problem, you start at the top and work your way down,” Jared stated.

I crouched, sank my fingers into Ja-air’s silky soft hair
and positioned the head so the hunters could see his face. He’d been a
submissive in the pack, or so Eli had told me, fierce in battle but gentle and
meek in his human form. And while I’m sure he’d committed a great many sins
during his time with the pack, I didn’t think he deserved to die like this.

“Was he at the top?” I asked.

Jared sneered. “He was a fucking dog.”

I swallowed back the red-hot rage and took control of my
emotions before I did something stupid—or something incredibly cool, depending
on which bipolar part of me you asked.

“You want to play? Fine.” As I rose, I pulled my blade free
from its wrist sheath. Silver glinted in the night. Adrenaline rushed through
me and I forgot how much I missed the freedom to let me be myself.

In sync, the men lifted their guns and pulled the triggers.
I concentrated on the space behind the biggest guy next to Jared whose hair was
shaved close enough for moonlight to reflect off his shiny bald head. I closed
my eyes and vanished. Bullets thudded into the brick house and bounced off the
windows as I reemerged behind my chosen hunter.

The jerk-off hardly knew what hit him. I hooked an arm
around his neck, squeezed hard enough to cut off his blood supply. For a
second, maybe two, I imagined twisting. I fought my instincts. He gurgled and
kicked before he passed out, his limbs going completely limp. I dropped his
body to the ground with a gross thud as the other three hunters realized where
I was and what I’d done.