Bring Me to Life (5 page)

“Bryna,” he made his tone as soft as he could make it. “I shouldn’t have said that. I’m sorry.”

“Why be sorry for the truth?” she said, so low her tone was almost a whisper. “I don’t know how many guys there have been, or really when it started.” She refused to meet his gaze. “After his…” Her face crumpled and tears leaked from her eyes. “After the funeral, everything just kind of blurred. There were illegal substances, and I’m sorry I don’t want to know half of what I did. I’m sorry. But I…” She closed her eyes and took in a deep breath. “I’m not talking about him anymore with you.”

“Bryna—” he started.

But she cut him off. “Just stop. I get I was an evil, horrible person for killing him. Since apparently I can’t pay for that without bringing about the end of the world, it’s probably best we stick to topics exclusively dealing with my survival. Vincent isn’t it.”

“All right,” he said, his tone rough. “Where do we go in this time and place that is easily defended and out of the way of innocent people?”

She shrugged. “Probably my uncle’s old fishing cabin. I think it’s still kind of habitable.”

“That place was disgusting when he still used it,” he said before he thought not to say it.

She turned a sharp look at him. Her eyes moved over his cloaked figure for moment and then shrugged. “Yeah, but you asked. That’s the answer I have. I need to talk to Darby before we leave. I have to make sure the rent here doesn’t spike the moment I don’t come back.”

“You’re gonna survive this,” Vincent said in somber tones.

“But not the day after,” she said in a conversational tone.

Bloody hell. No wonder she killed him. He was a damn bastard. Had he been like this in life? Was this why she’d set him up? Not expecting to deliver the death blow in whatever way she thought she did? “I think we’re gonna have a long talk about this death wish you can’t seem to make up your mind about.”

She snorted at him. “Maybe I’ll reconsider it if you can manage to keep your mouth shut. I know my sins. You don’t need to keep shoving them in my face.”

He was about to respond when there was a loud pounding on the door.

“Damn it, Bryna, open up the damn door!”

*

Bryna rolled her eyes. “Guess I don’t need to make the special trip to chat with Darby.” She brushed past Vincent and answered the door. Darby was a short man—well, he was taller than she, but that was easy to do. But by average standards, he was short. He had sharp weaselly features. His hair was greasy, and he smelled kind of funny. Fortunately, if a person was drunk, he was easily forgettable. She lifted a brow at him. “I paid my rent last week. What do you want?”

“I hear you have a man in here with you. We had a deal.” His face was flushed with anger, and his fists were knotted up.

“Why, yes, I do. That’s not against the rules of the building, and there is nothing in my lease that says I can’t. Your extra payment isn’t due for another week.”

There was a blur of motion behind her. Darby was pulled into her apartment, and the door was slammed so hard it nearly exploded. Wraith had him around the neck and a full foot off the ground. His eyes glowed from beneath the cover of his hood. “You will change your business practices. The woman is not your plaything to use at a whim.”

Darby sputtered and gasped for air. The front of his pants became dark with urine.

“Do you understand?” Wraith demanded. “The death you see before you now will come true if I find out you have not changed your methods.”

“I…understand,” Darby rasped out as he clutched at Wraith’s wrist and struggled to get free. Wraith dropped him.

Darby fell to the floor, popped up, and then whipped around. He stared at Bryna for a good long thirty seconds before he mumbled. “No extra payments this month—or ever.” Then he bolted out the door like the devil was after him.

Bryna followed him out into the hall and watched as he ran to the end of the corridor and then turned the corner. She went back into her apartment and looked up at Wraith. “Um, I’m not sure I want to know what you did to him, but whatever it was, I hope it’s as effective as it appears to be.”

Wraith stood in the middle of her living room clenching and unclenching his hands at his sides. The golden glow of his eyes bored into her before he turned and strode over to the window. “How long has he been receiving these extra payments?”

She suppressed the need to roll her eyes. Here was the part where the big scary supernatural dead guy got all holier than thou about sex. She didn’t need this crap. Once, yeah, it had been special. Now it was usually an easy means to a needed end. What was five minutes of drunken sex once a month compared to the lives of twenty-five seniors? “If this is the part where you tell me I’m supposed to save myself until I find that special someone, save it. I might have to puke in the sink again if you do.”

“Bryna—”

She put a hand up to stop him. She didn’t want to hear what he had to say in that bone-melting tender voice that was so familiar, and yet she couldn’t pin down why it was so haunting. “Don’t go there.”

He let out a sigh of aggravation. “Is this how your life is? Filled with things like this?”

She moved around him to start the final check on her backpack. She’d need to stop for a food supply. It wouldn’t take long since she didn’t need to worry about Wraith. It wasn’t the first time she stopped something horrible from happening to the general populace. She’d call Andy before leaving town. He wouldn’t like her leaving, but he’d just have to deal with it. Other than herself, he was the only other person she knew who could fight vampires and survive. She zipped up her bag. “It doesn’t matter,” she gritted out. “Don’t start feeling sorry for me. I don’t want or need your pity. Let’s just avoid the end of the world, and then you can go back to whatever fucked-up existence you have, and I’ll continue to try to end mine.”

Vincent was beginning to realize he’d gotten the better end of the deal the day he died. His only regret was Bryna’s betrayal. However, seeing that every time he opened his mouth she either ended up in tears or angry, it seemed likely he might have deserved his death. It didn’t take away the god-awful pain the betrayal caused each time he thought about it. He’d loved her. Beyond anything, he’d had that lifelong magical kind of love that never should have been his—or, at least he’d thought he did.

The trunk of her car was filled with all the supplies they would need to survive a supernatural siege in a rickety old shack in the middle of nowhere. She had an arsenal in her backpack along with several changes of clothes and two coolers filled with the food she’d need for a week.

She’d been fighting more than one kind of demon since that night. It fucked with his head in a way nothing else could. Any desire for revenge was quickly fading. The Bryna he knew was as dead as the boy Vincent. In her place was a woman who barely existed. He’d listened to the calls she made before they vacated her apartment. Her life was one giant train wreck and all because she wouldn’t pull it together after he’d died on her.

The thought startled him, and he grumbled with irritation.

“Would you stop rattling the car,” she said with exasperation. Her voice was tired.

“Why don’t you let me drive,” he offered. They’d been on the road for eight hours already, and they still had a ways to go.

She let out a long sigh. “Because you don’t have a license? Because I really don’t want someone pulling us over and have the cops find the grim reaper in the driver’s seat? Because I don’t want you driving my car.” She blew out a breath. “I think we’ll pull off at the next rest stop. I need some more coffee, and we still have another five hours before we hit home sweet home.” Her mouth twisted on the words.

“I’m here to help you,” he said in a soft tone.

“Ha! You’re here to remind me why life sucks,” she snapped at him. Then she pulled off to the side of the road. “I think I need that break now.” She sat there in the driver’s seat, just staring ahead.

“Bryna—” he started.

“I thought we decided it was best if we didn’t try the chatting thing?” She pulled the emergency brake and cut the engine.

“It’s gonna be a long week with no chatter if we have to go without.” He tried to inject some humor into his tone.

She did crack a smile. “So now I’m acceptable? Are we gonna do it with that hood covering your face, or do I get to see why your eyes are all glowy?”

There was a hint of the girl he remembered. “They glow because at first it helped with the intimidation thing, and now it’s just habit. I can stop if you want.” He held his breath as he waited to see how she was going to respond.

She gave him a sidelong glance. “It must really suck the intimidation didn’t work on me.”

He laughed quietly. “It’s interesting, but since you’re a demon hunter, I guess it makes sense why you wouldn’t be scared of the glowing eyes.”

It was her turn to laugh. “I don’t hunt demons. I avoid them at all costs.”

“All right,” he said in the most agreeable tone he could manage. “You have the ability to kill them, but you don’t hunt them.”

Her head bobbed, and then panic hit her face. “Oh, damn it, Wraith, you can’t be near me if things get all freaky, okay? I can control it now, mostly, but if I’m really scared or about to die, I can’t always control the blast. I don’t know what it would do to you. It does whatever it does to the undead easily enough, and I don’t know what to classify you as.”

He nodded once. “Thank you for telling me. I can block the pulse when needed.” He simply had to pulse himself, which would protect him and anyone close to him from another’s pulse of energy.

She blinked a few times, and then she looked at him, her mouth going crooked. “I’m not sure if that makes me feel better or worse.”

He had the irresistible need to touch her and couldn’t stop from reaching up and brushing the back of his knuckles down the side of her face.

She flinched back. “Don’t. If we do have sex, that’s all it’s gonna be, okay? I don’t need to develop any kind of feelings for another dead guy.”

Vincent snatched his hand back. Where his skin touched hers had a warm buzz that was spreading out and making him tingle in a weird, but not unpleasant, way.
Shit
. He was in so much fucking trouble it wasn’t even funny. He hadn’t been with her twenty-four hours, and she was already getting to him. He went to push his hood back when a sharp pain pricked behind his ears. His body went rigid, and every extra sense he had was pushed out. He started a low string of curses. “We need to—”

“—run,” she finished for him as she pushed open the car door just as a large snarling undead beast landed on the roof of the car.

Vincent grabbed the backpack and hooked an arm around Bryna simultaneously. He jerked back, throwing all his weight against the passenger-side door. The door pushed out under the assault of his supernatural force. He rolled out with his body caged around Bryna. Amazing how she so easily became the sacred protected possession in the face of a howler pack. Bloody goddamn it. Vampire hounds. They were in the gnarled shape of a man and wolf combined. Fur-covered skin stretched too thin over bones. Giant fangs dripped with saliva. Claws like razors curled over their hands, and they were staring right at Bryna. How the hell had they tracked them all the way out here? Didn’t matter. One lunged. Bryna’s scream rang out as the snarl of fangs, claws, and poison launched off the top of the car and landed directly in front of Vincent.

“We want the girl,” it rasped out.

Vincent handed the backpack to Bryna as he rolled to his feet and stood to his full terrifying height. He pushed back his hood as he drew the deadly bastard sword at his side.

“The Wraith,” he snarled out.

His name chorused in a whisper of snarls as the hideous pack of creatures assembled around them.

Bryna turned around in a small circle. She made a small whimpering sound. “Wraith, I can’t kill all of them.”

“It’s okay, sunshine,” he murmured softly. “Just stay behind me.”

“But they’re behind you.”

His arm hooked around her and pinned her to his back. The pack was closing in on them.

“Hop up,” Wraith murmured.

*

Some otherworld instinct took over, and she hopped up onto his back, curling her arms around him and hooking her legs around his waist. She squeezed her eyes shut tight and held on for the crazy ride. His muscles moved under her body as he attacked. She heard the squeals and shrieks of pain as one howler after another fell under Wraith’s blade.

He was knocked backward.

“Let go!” he bellowed.

And she did just as they hit the ground. She skidded across mud and rock before she rolled into a tree. Pain shot through every limb. The howler was hunched over Wraith. He wrestled with the thing. Poison-tipped claws sank into his skin. He roared with the pain of it.

Bryna dragged herself along the ground. As far as her extra senses could tell, this was the last one. Her leg hurt, and she was sure stars were a new part of her vision, but if she aimed for the howler in the middle, she knew at least she wouldn’t get Wraith killed too. When she was close enough, she grabbed her injured leg and pulled it in front of her so that she was able to sit up and reach the howler. Her hands wrapped around the filthy, furry hind leg, and she closed her eyes. She projected every ounce of fear she felt into her hands and then out.

The shock waves rattled through the monster. It let out an anguished screech and then puffed into a cloud of bony dust. She pulled her shirt up over her face to keep from breathing it in as she dragged herself up toward Wraith’s face. “Please don’t be dead. Please don’t be dead,” she repeated over and over again.

She smiled when he groaned. Then he forced his massive body up into a seated position. He shook his head a few times with a hand covering his face while he massaged at his temples. “You’re hurt,” he said between gritted teeth.

“Yeah. You’re poisoned,” her tone worried as her smile fell. Great. Just what she needed to do. Send Vincent’s friend from the other side back to limbo. For as long as she could remember her fear turned into a pulse of energy she could use as a weapon. Her father had helped her learn how to control it before his death, but after Vincent’s death, she no longer trusted in that ability. It was used only as a last resort in a fight, or more likely when her body decided it wasn’t a good time to die. Thankfully her fear had allowed her to use it destroy the howler, but it might be too late. She didn’t know what howler venom did to someone like Wraith.