Edge of Night (41 page)

Asher’s fingers curled into the neckline of her shirt, snapping her attention back to the frightening present. Her heart tripped and slammed against her breastbone. She wished she could control her reaction, because the vampire would be able to sense it. Sweat broke out on her forehead, cold and clammy.

“I bet you didn’t know that blood magic can be used for more than just sexual pleasure, did you?” His expression was tender, a sharp contrast to his words, to the deadly points of his talons pressing against her flesh.

Everything in her recoiled from Asher using what had been so precious with Luca to harm her. No. God, no. She gritted her teeth to fight a sob. Resistance was pointless. She couldn’t escape, couldn’t defend herself. She was helpless against him, and even if she wasn’t, it was two against one. But it wasn’t in her to passively take what he dished out. She took a breath and collected herself. The only way she had left to fight was with words, so she met his gaze squarely and smiled. “Go fuck yourself, you pathetic, dickless piece of shit. You’re half the vampire and a tenth of the man Luca is. And he’s better in bed.”

Flinching as if she’d slapped him, Asher hissed. “I’ll make you forget he ever existed.”

“You’ll have to kill me first.” Her words were flat truth. She didn’t want to die, but forgetting Luca wasn’t possible.

“I think we’ll need this.” He pulled out a long, thin strip of cloth. Before she could register what he was doing, he’d shoved it into her mouth and tied it behind her head. Tight. He patted her shoulder. “We wouldn’t want to disturb the neighbors.”

And she was the idiot who hadn’t tried to scream already. Fuck.

Asher ripped the neck of her shirt down to expose her shoulder and bared his fangs. He lunged forward and sank them into her jugular. Pain exploded within her, and she choked on a shout. She jerked, her body struggling to escape without any direction from her mind. The ties around her ankles bit into her flesh, her wrists chafed. Weak, shaking, she watched him throw his head back, her thoughts growing fuzzy.

“Ah,” he sighed. “I’d forgotten how sweet you taste, how intense your energy could be.”

His gaze glowed red, and she watched her own blood dribble from the corner of his mouth. Licking his lips to catch a lingering drop, he shuddered. Erin’s stomach heaved when she saw how the front of his pants tented. God, he’d gotten hard from hurting her. She didn’t even want to think about what that meant—what that could mean for her very near future.

The way his fangs flashed when he smiled made her fists clench tight behind her, her body bracing for what would come. She tried to focus, to stay conscious, but there was only so much blood he could take before that wouldn’t be possible. She was trapped like a rabbit, her heart pounding, waiting for a predator to swoop in for the kill. It wasn’t a matter of
if
, it was a matter of how long he would toy with his prey first. He might claim he wanted her back—that he wanted a relationship—but she couldn’t give him what he wanted. That meant at some point, he’d grow tired of the game and end it. Whether Luca and Gregor got here before then was another question entirely.

She blinked, found that a few moments had passed without her awareness. Tina was leaning in to look at the puncture wounds on her neck. The vicious glee on her face was so foreign Erin blinked again. Tina wasn’t vicious. She was Erin’s friend. It didn’t make sense. Then she remembered the mesmerizing. Her senses swam as reality warped.

Asher pushed Tina away, but she clung to his arm. “You can’t want her, Asher. I love you.
She
doesn’t.
She
cheated on you. Just kill her and get it over with, then we can be together.” Her voice rose hysterically. “I love you!
What about me?”

Backhanding her sent her reeling across the kitchen until she slammed sideways into the counter. She crumpled, clutching her ribs, but her gaze was still adoring when she looked at Asher. She was completely under his spell.

Seizing Erin by the hair, he jerked her head around and back. Her scalp burned, her neck muscles protesting the awkward angle. His red-glowing gaze locked with hers, and her lungs froze as his power gripped her. Blood magic. She tried to resist its insidious pull, but he’d consumed enough of her blood that she was too weak to fight anything. He roughly fondled her breast before he slapped his palm over her heart. It skipped a beat, syncing her pulse with his.

The sense of violation was total, consuming. He’d taken what she wasn’t willing to give, what she only ever wanted Luca to have. At the moment when pleasure should have coursed through her being, what she felt was tearing, searing agony engulf her.

Behind the gag, a scream ripped out of her, the sound almost inhuman. She snapped up in a hard arc, fighting like the trapped, wounded animal she was. The bonds around her ankles and wrists sliced through her flesh, and blood filled her shoes and dripped down her fingers. The chair rocked under the force of her struggles, and Asher leaned in to hold it down.

“Do you still remember him?” His gaze turned red from iris to edge, glowing like hot coals.

The captivating pull of his mesmerization dragged across her mind. There was only Asher. She would give him anything, do anything,
be
anything if it pleased him. No one else mattered. She swayed toward him, and the pain in her bound wrists brought a tiny niggle of reality back. Luca’s face filled her thoughts. Luca laughing, Luca passionate, Luca angry and frustrated and protective and possessive. Luca loving her. He wouldn’t want her to give in—to give up. But he wasn’t the only one. Darren and Angela, Holly and Jack and Selina. People who loved her and who she loved in return.

“Do you remember him?” Asher snarled.

She nodded. Yes, she remembered. Soul stripped bare by pain and exhaustion and terror, there was only her love left to protect her from him. Nothing was stronger, and even that he’d try to take from her.

A fresh wave of his blood magic hit her, so penetrating she lost all sense of time, of space, of conscious thought. His fangs pierced her neck again, and he sucked too much blood. She shrieked into the gag until she had no voice left to do more than croak, until the echoing screams were only in her mind.

She was so hot, burning from the inside out. It felt like her blood boiled in her veins. If she’d had enough coherency left, she might have prayed for death, but the pain devoured her until there was nothing else. The universe narrowed to agony. Every second, every heartbeat, her entire being was endless anguish. She couldn’t hear, couldn’t see, couldn’t do anything other than exist in the torment.

The world erupted in chaos around her, something slicing across her cheek. Her eyes opened, though she couldn’t remember closing them. The room spun around her and she could barely keep her head aloft, the muscles and tendons in her neck throbbing. But it was real pain, not the magic-induced kind. The door had exploded in, and the window that made up the top half had broken. Spraying glass shards had hit her face.

She saw everything as if in slow motion, with all the sounds muted over the roaring in her ears. Percussive booms came from a distance, but she didn’t know what they meant. What was happening? A yowl rent the air, and an orange tabby cat launched itself through the gaping maw of the doorway. It leaped at Asher’s face, latching on, and the vampire screamed and spun in circles. Balthasar. A streak of something that was almost too fast to see went by her. It was large, man-shaped, with coppery hair on top. Something larger and darker followed in its wake. She didn’t know why this was important, but her brain nagged at her that those shadowy shapes had significance. Asher wasn’t looming over her anymore, and that was what mattered most.

She drifted for a moment, grateful that the pain had receded to a dull ache. At some point, she’d lost control of her bladder, and she sat in an uncomfortable puddle. She didn’t have energy to be embarrassed about that. Rest sounded so good, like heaven. If she could just shut her eyes and sleep, it would be all right.

Something crashed into her, spinning her chair sideways into a cupboard. She tipped over and landed hard on her shoulder. The force of the impact left her gasping, but reality snapped back into focus. Luca and Gregor were here. She heard vampiric hissing, splintering wood, the impact of flesh on flesh.

She felt bruised from the inside out, as if her body was too swollen to move. She tried flexing her limbs. Her knees slowly straightened, and she realized that with the chair on its side, she could slip the ties down and off the legs. Her wrists were bound to each other, not the chair, which meant she could now wriggle up and escape. Her hands were still lashed behind her, but she could at least move around a little.

There was glass on the floor, and someone had knocked stuff off the counter. The remains of a toaster were flipped upside down next to her, a butcher block lay on its side with knives littering the linoleum, and a cracked ceramic utensil holder spewed spatulas and wooden spoons. Blood smeared the tile around her, and she thought it might be her own. There seemed to be a lot of it, especially after Asher had taken so much. Alarm tingled up her spine, but she didn’t want to think about what all that crimson might mean. Luca. She needed to find Luca, see him, know he was okay.

Trying to avoid most of the sharp glass and cutting implements, she rolled to her side. She didn’t have enough strength to stand, but she could figure out what was going on. She saw Luca locked in vicious combat with Asher, their fangs and talons ripping into each other. A few feet away from her, Tina knelt with a gun clutched between her hands. Gregor was doing some incredible acrobatics to dodge the bullets she fired at him. The redhead leapt from floor to table to counter to ceiling, hissing at the Normal woman, who looked wild and enraged. It wasn’t until she stopped firing that Erin realized he’d wanted her to run out of bullets.

The sickening crunch of snapping bones brought her gaze back to Luca. Her heart stuttered as she watched Asher hit the floor, his blank eyes staring. His neck was ripped open, his head twisted sideways and almost completely severed from his body.

It should have been the most horrifying thing she’d ever seen, but instead she just felt numb. Cold. She shivered, suddenly freezing.

“Erin!” Luca landed on his knees beside her. He pulled the gag away from her mouth and sliced through her wrist bindings with his talons, but then his hands hovered over her body as if he were afraid to touch her.

Movement behind him caught her eye, and she saw Tina pivot to point the gun at his back. Was she really out of bullets or had she been faking? Erin couldn’t risk finding out. She groped for one of the knives and used every ounce of strength she had left to throw the blade at the other woman. It slammed deep into her arm, and the hand holding the gun went limp. Gregor was on her before the pistol hit the floor.

“I think you just saved my life,” Luca commented. He pressed his fingertips to her throat, and a wave of nauseating pain hit her as he touched where Asher had bitten. A punctured artery, she realized. This was not good.

“Too much blood.” Her voice was breathy, almost soundless.

“Yes.” He nodded. “You’ve lost too much blood. Hold on, sweetheart. There’s an ambulance on the way. Just stay with me. You’re going to be all right.”

No, she wasn’t. She could tell by the awful look in his eyes. She wasn’t going to be all right. Darkness was already creeping in on her vision, but she kept her eyes open as long as she could, focusing on his precious, beautiful face.

“I love you.” Her lips moved, but no sound emerged. Still, he understood her, because his eyes filled with tears and he brought her fingers up to kiss.

He kept speaking, asking her things she couldn’t comprehend. His voice was sharp, desperate and he shook her, but it didn’t hurt the way she knew it should. She felt like her mind and body were drifting apart, floating. She tried to smile for him, tried to hold on, wanted to stay with him more than anything in the world, but the darkness won.

“Erin!” Luca got into her face, screamed like a madman. “Erin, stay awake!”

She stared at him, and he watched the light in her eyes dim. Her heartbeat fluttered, faltered, and he knew that once again, he was too late. A sob exploded out of him, tears coursing unchecked down his cheeks.

“I’m sorry, Cavalli.” Gregor’s hand closed over his shoulder, clamping down hard in sympathy. “So damn sorry.”

Luca loved her so fucking much. Everything he’d ever felt for any other woman paled in comparison to this. No one would ever fit the man he was right now the way she did. He wanted centuries to explore what was between them, to learn all of her, to grow with her and learn more.

He couldn’t lose her. He
could not
. Everything within him rejected the very idea of a world without her in it. Turning her without permission could result in him being put to death—that was the punishment for what he was considering. He didn’t care. For once, he didn’t give a damn about the laws he’d sworn to uphold. This was bigger than that, bigger than him.

There was still life in her, but the number of heartbeats she had left could be counted on one hand. It was now or never. Her head lolled limply as he lifted her.

“What are you doing?” Gregor’s hand tightened, but Luca yanked away.

“It’s her only chance.” He sank his fangs into her flesh, felt the sluggish flow of blood through her veins, but he pulled enough in to make the spell work. The only kind of spells vampires were any good at. He bit into his wrist to let the crimson fluid run freely, forced her mouth open, pressed his arm to her lips and pushed the magic into her along with the blood. Vampiric magic. Turning.