Dark Cravings (6 page)

My legs were stiff, my head throbbed, but at least the
lingering pain behind my eyes had vanished. The cold floor radiated from my
feet up to my calves and a shiver ran along my spine. I realized I was dressed
in the long-sleeved shirt I’d watched Micah pull over his head at the hotel
room. I fought the urge to hug the shirt around me.

Pathetic.

I stopped in front of the silver mirror that had been in my
family for generations. All thoughts, all sensations, dropped away. My eyes
were no longer brown. They were vibrant, unnatural and undeniably vampire blue.

I stared into the mirror. Blinked. One blink turned into
three. Four. Five. Yet still the image didn’t change. I didn’t want to see, but
I couldn’t look away. My eyes were not the blue of the summer sky but the blue
of a bolt of lightning. The shade was electric. The shade was damning. More
telling than fangs to a vampire was the unnaturally vibrant blue of their eyes.
I was exaggerating. Not all vampires had electric-blue eyes. The ones in the
thrall of the bloodlust had red, glowing irises. Maybe I should be thankful for
the new color.

Not likely.

Moving closer to the mirror, I pressed my forehead to the
cold, slick surface. With each pant, my reflection blurred a little more, until
it disappeared under the fog. Through the haze, I could still see that I’d been
fully changed.

Drinking blood had been the catalyst. Even though my heart
was hammering inside my chest, I wasn’t human anymore. Not even close. I took a
slow, shaky step back. If only moving away from the mirror would change the
image. Distance made it worse. The mist faded and the only thing I recognized
about the full-body reflection was the chipped polish on my toes. The woman,
the thing in the mirror was not me.

My bouncy auburn curls and the healthy flush of sunshine on
my cheeks were nothing but a memory. Now the matted strands of my hair were
limp and resembled old motor oil. That, I suppose, had more to do with not
showering. Contrasted against the pale skin, the shadowed circles under my eyes
were startling. Around the glowing blue irises were branches of red lines.

Was I crying watered-down blood? Was this a permanent change
or an aftereffect from sun exposure? As I watched, a rose-tinged tear appeared
from the corner of my eye and fell to the floor.

I understood what Micah had been trying to tell me in the
hotel room.
Your eyes.
He’d seen the change and known what it meant. I
also now knew why Roy couldn’t meet my gaze.

Hannah’s gasp shattered the terse silence. “Oh my god.”

I turned to face my sister with a silent vow to never look into
another mirror. I swiped the moisture from my cheeks with the back of my hand.
On the verge of a hysterical breakdown, my voice warbled when I spoke. “How
pissed will you be if I break all the mirrors in the house?”

Tears filled Hannah’s large, pale-green eyes. The tip of her
nose reddened. She bounded off the cot. With her long legs, she managed to
reach me in only a few strides. As if she were twelve, not almost twenty, she
wrapped her thin arms around my waist, bent and buried her face into my neck.
She dissolved into tears.

“I’ll never forget what you looked like when Micah carried
you inside the house. There was so much blood and I…I thought you were going to
die just like Mom and Dad.”

Hannah never would forget. Guilt surged at adding yet
another memory she wouldn’t get rid of. While I’d been gifted with speed and
agility, my sister had been born with a photographic memory. Anything she read,
heard or saw was stored in her head. The good and the bad.

I hugged her tighter and ran my hand up and down her back in
a way I knew calmed her. “I’m so sorry, Hannah. You shouldn’t have had to see
that.”

Her hot tears ran down my neck and soaked my shirt. When her
hiccupping sobs quieted, she pulled back and looked into my eyes. Hannah pushed
my hair behind my ears and sniffled. “You’re like a real vampire now, aren’t
you?”

I gave her a watery smile. “I’m pretty sure I was a real
vampire before. At least my heart is still beating, though.”

She brushed away the last of her tears and wrinkled her nose
at me. “Just so you know, you smell really bad.”

I half laughed, half sobbed. “I love you too, Hannah.” I
looked at Roy and willed my voice steady.

“I’m going to take a shower and get dressed. Can you take me
to the hospital? I need to see Micah. I don’t know what happened to us but…I
just have to make sure he’s okay.”

Roy sighed and I wasn’t sure if the sound was a yes, or a
no. “Hannah, go on upstairs and make sure all the blinds are closed for Ella.
The sun won’t fully set for about another thirty minutes.”

My sister looked between us and narrowed her eyes. She
crossed her arms over her chest. Her bare foot tapped the ground. “You know I’m
not a little girl, right? Whatever you have to say to Ella, you can say in
front of me.”

“No one thinks you’re a little girl,” Roy said in a gentle
voice reserved solely for my sister.

Hannah was five foot eight and blessed with the bone
structure of a model—no one in their right mind would mistake her for a child.
She
was
innocent, though. We all went to great lengths to keep her away
from the violence of what we did at the Shadow Agency.

“Whatever. Don’t include me in the conversation. But if you
think for one minute I’m not going with you guys to go see Micah, you’re sorely
mistaken.”

I pulled my lower lip between my teeth. “Ah, I don’t think
the hospital is the best place for you considering you pass out at the sight of
blood.”

She huffed. “Then you better be ready to catch me. I’m going
and that’s final.” Hannah turned in a flourish of long blonde hair and stormed
up the basement stairs before slamming the door behind her.

Roy turned to me and I braced for whatever he had to tell me
in private. Three long seconds passed. “Micah indicated that you two had
intercourse. He doesn’t remember checking into the hotel or gaining your
consent to—”

My chest ached at what Micah must think. “It wasn’t rape.”

“Okay. Good. Good.” He coughed. “I’m assuming you didn’t use
protection.”

Protection? Oh.
That
. My cheeks heated. Were we really
talking about this? “No, but I’m on the pill.”

“The same pills you haven’t taken since before you and Micah
were attacked?”

Holy motherfucking shit.
I’d missed a pill. The
breath swooshed from my lungs as if someone had just punched me in the stomach.
I wasn’t ready for babies. Hell, I wasn’t even sure if I
could
have
children considering I was mostly vampire. My hammering heart pounded just a
little faster—a reminder that I wasn’t a normal undead creature of the night.

As if he was oblivious to my inner freak-the-fuck-out, Roy
kept speaking. “It’s too late for a morning-after pill. However, considering
your recent
changes
I feel it’s unlikely that you’d become pregnant. I’d
like to draw some blood. I’ve got a private lab in mind we can send the sample to.”

“Wait, what do you mean too late? How long were we gone?”

“Four days.”

My knees gave way and I collapsed on the floor in an
ungraceful heap. I looked up at my uncle. “I’ve been gone for
four
days?” My voice was barely above a whisper.

“Yes. Now, are you positive it was a succubus that attacked
you two? Succubi are not known to target a couple and they don’t leave their
victims alive.”

“Micah is in the hospital!”

“Because of you, Ella, not the demon. Eli tracked Micah to
the Lazy Eight Hotel when he and Hannah hacked into his credit card records.
You two checked in and never came back out. A hotel that rents by the hour does
not stock food. Neither of you ate or drank any water for days. It is a miracle
he survived. I’ve seen the tattoos and the…bites. On both of you.” Roy
clarified when I started to open my mouth.

Four freaking days? How is that even possible?

“Magic moves between you two, but I’ve never seen anything
like it before. You should have seen Micah when he and Eli brought you to me.
He was beside himself when Eli tried to touch you. He shoved him, actually
threw him across the room and bared his teeth like he was a rabid beast.

“In the last three days we’ve suffered earthquakes and
tornados, neither of which is native to our state. Eli and I have closed six
different demon portals, which as you know is rare. We’ve also had an
unprecedented number of demon attacks, so many the cleaners can’t keep up. The
Agency has spun some bogus story about a gas leak to explain some of the
sightings.”

He withdrew a folded piece of paper from his back pocket and
handed it to me. As he spoke, I opened what appeared to be a map of the state
decorated in a cyclone of color-coded
X
’s.

“I’ve been charting the reported attacks. As you can see,
they are closing in around us. The ones in black happened four days ago and
were outside our city limits. Blue was three days ago and red represents the
violence last night.”

The pattern cleared. We were at the epicenter. I looked up
at my uncle with something akin to guilt tightening my chest.
Vampire Queen.
Demon Son. Destruction and mayhem.
Were Micah and I somehow the catalyst
for all of this chaos? “The succubus said we’d bring about destruction and
mayhem. Are Micah and I responsible for this?”

“I’m not sure, not until I gather more facts.”

“Is it safe for Hannah to even leave the house? To be near
me?” I asked.

“Until we know what’s causing this disturbance, I feel she’s
safer with us than without. I know you don’t want to hear this, but we can’t
shield her forever.”

My mother’s lifeless body flashed before my eyes and I
recalled the porch swing she’d been propped in for my father to find. While I
could still hear the creaking chain and see the nearly black pool beneath her,
the other details were hazy. Hannah, who’d been four at the time, could still
tell you what the weather had been like. What kind of ice cream we’d been out
getting and how many red lights we’d stopped at to get home. Worse, she could
still smell the blood. She could recall the exact angle of broken bones and
list each cut and bruise that had flayed open our mother’s pale skin. Six years
later, the nightmare would repeat itself when my father was murdered.

I shook off the memories. “She has enough horrible things
locked inside her brain. I won’t add any more, not on purpose.”

“You’re right.” Roy ran a hand through his crazy hair.
“There is some news about Julian I think you should hear.”

My chest grew tight at the mention of his name. Over the
years, he’d morphed into some private demon who existed solely in my head. No
one around me dared mention him. Not when he’d so cruelly changed my life and
then broken my heart in a way it had never fully healed. “What about him?”

Roy stuck his hands into the pockets of his wrinkled
corduroy pants. I watched emotion fill his eyes. He swallowed and I traced the
bob of his Adam’s apple.

“It’s come to my attention that he’s spent the last seven
years imprisoned at the vampire queen’s mercy. He allegedly broke free the same
night you and Micah vanished.”

I pressed a hand against my stomach. “The queen? Are you
sure? Seven years would mean—”

“Among other things, that his abandonment might not have
been planned. Tread cautiously where he is concerned, Ella, I fear he doesn’t
have your best interests in mind. Let’s not make the same mistake twice.”

I rose from the ground and met my uncle’s eyes. “I let
Julian cloud my judgment for two years before I discovered what a bastard he
was. Trust me—I won’t make the mistake of trusting him or
anyone
else
with my interests ever again.”

Roy stepped close and cupped my cheek. “It pains my soul to
see you so jaded. You’re only twenty-five, Ella. Not every man you meet will
break your heart. Love is a precious gift if given to the right person.
Remember that.”

Unable to speak or to process, I nodded and did the zombie
shuffle to the stairs. I pulled myself up the staircase of the old house my
great-grandfather had built. My fingers glided over the smooth, wooden railing.
I was afraid if I let go of the banister I’d fall.

I’d had sex with Micah, my self-acclaimed sworn enemy,
multiple times without a condom. Julian was back and already stirring up the
hurts I’d struggled to bury for the last several years. What in the hell was I
going to do?

Shower. I walked blindly to the bathroom. Putting one foot
in front of the other was all I could manage. I made it inside the bathroom
without running into Hannah. One look at me and I was terrified my sister would
somehow sense the small kernel of relief I felt at knowing maybe Julian hadn’t
left me on purpose.

In order to avoid the oblong mirror over the sink, I rested
my forehead against the closed bathroom door. I didn’t want to look. Like the
coward I was turning out to be, I closed my eyes and walked blindly to the
bathtub. I didn’t open my eyes until I was safely behind the thick green
curtain. I pulled off Micah’s shirt and threw it over the shower rod.

The ice-cold water hit me like a thousand needles. I gasped.
Pressing a hand against the wall in front of me, I struggled to draw in a
breath. After I was clean, I let my shoulders slump, giving myself over to the
confusion.

I never knew what hit me.

Julian pounced and a barrage of emotions slammed into me.

Ripping pain seared through me. I grabbed onto the slick
shower curtain in a poor attempt to keep from falling. Plastic ripped. Metal
rings scattered and hit the floor with a clinking echo. My knees hit the
porcelain basin with a reverberating crash. Every bone in my body experienced
the jarring impact. In defense, I curled into a ball. How did you protect
yourself from something you couldn’t see?