Witch Way to Turn (27 page)

“I need blood.”

“Well, you’re sure as hell not drinking mine.”

“I wouldn’t ask if I wanted yours.” Dandi gave Breena a look that actually sent a shiver racing down her spine. “I put a couple bags in the fridge when I brought the PB and J stuff over. Do you mind?”

So, the food had come from Dandi. If Breena hadn’t been completely pissed off at the vamp for trying to kill her boyfriend, she might’ve found the gesture sweet. “Fine.” Breena walked to the kitchen, grabbed the two bags from the crisper drawer and took them to Dandi.

The vamp drank both in less than ten seconds. Breena could see her draining-a-two-hundred-pound-cowboy-dry comment holding true.

“So what’s the deal?” Breena leaned back against the couch with her arms crossed.

Dandi tossed the empty bags to the side. “The
deal
is, I can’t believe you’d rather be with that unholy lowlife than Myles.”

“I never said that.” Breena made the statement before she’d even thought it through.

“Well, then?” The vampire’s dark eyebrows arched as she stared Breena down.

Breena hugged her legs close to her chest. “Well, what?”

“Come on Ash, why aren’t you with Myles?”

“Uh…” Talk about your loaded question. Where in heaven or hell did she start with that one? She guessed the blood-bond thingy had been one of the worst setbacks. Plus, Myles had lied to her more than once. He’d never actually let her know him, and he’d never told her he’d known her since birth. Yeah, she didn’t really want to work that one out in her mind. God, how twisted would it be if he’d, like, changed her diaper as a baby or something?

No. Stop it. Think about something else.

“I’m not really ready for a serious relationship.” Good Lord, she sounded as lame as Myles and his exhausted “it’s complicated” routine.

“The damned unnatural seems pretty serious about you.”

“Why do you think that?”

“You said it yourself. He would’ve staked me if it hadn’t been for you.” Dandi huffed. Her turn for an eye roll.

“Why do you hate him?”

“He’s the reason I lost my soul.”

That didn’t make sense. Yes, Orin had been a vampire before he became a preternatural, but he’d never mentioned biting anyone with intention to turn. Still… “Did Orin turn you?”

Dandi leaned forward and made an exaggerated puking gesture. “Myles is my master.” Picking up the bags, she walked them to the trashcan in the kitchen. Breena had glimpsed the vamp’s puncture wound when she stood. From what Breena could see through the torn shirt, it looked healed up again. When Dandi reappeared, she added, “All I know, Myles would’ve never turned me if it hadn’t been for what Orin did.”

Breena wasn’t sure she wanted to know, but she had to ask. “What did he do?”

With her hip cocked to the side and her head slanted, Dandi owned the skeptical look. “Myles never told you?”

“Say no more, Dandelion.” Myles stood behind the couch. Breena hadn’t felt him come in, but now that he was close, her skin went all tingly.

“I can’t believe you haven’t told her. She needs to stay away from him. He’s trouble, he–”

“I said
enough.
” Myles shot a fierce look at Dandi.

“Well, I can take a hint.” She flicked her long braided hair off her shoulder as she gave them a smirk. “Don’t miss me too much, Ash. Master.” Then she sped away.

No problem there.

“Breena, I need to tell you something.” Myles took her hands in his, helped her off the floor, and sat down on the couch with her.

It was about damn time.

Chapter 22

“Orin killed my family,” Myles said, with such disgust Breena could almost taste his anger.

What?

She raised a brow. “Myles, what in hell are you talking about?”

“I didn’t know how to tell you.” His eyes were once again a washed-out gray.

“Just tell me,” she urged.

“It was 1861 when it happened. I’d just turned twenty-one and Elizabeth and I had been married five years.”

She watched his thumb rub a circular pattern on the top of her hand.

Myles, married?
She tried to suppress the jealousy. It didn’t work.

“I first met Elizabeth the day her family moved to Rhodhiss. She was strong. Like you.” His lips curled for a second before he went on. “Our mothers did laundry together, and we were left to run up and down the banks of the river. I would track frogs and somehow Elizabeth always managed to stand in the right place at just the right time to catch them. Like she’d appeared out of thin air.

We spent every day together. We were inseparable. Best friends. Betrothed. Then when I turned sixteen and she fourteen, we married.” His gaze was far away.

Breena took a slow deep breath and asked what she thought was the obvious question, “Wasn’t she a little young?”

“Bree, times were different back then. If a girl wasn’t married by fourteen or fifteen she was considered an old maid.”

Well, hot diggity.

Breena was glad she hadn’t lived in the 1800s. She wasn’t sure if she would ever be ready for marriage. No way could she have gotten married three or four years ago. “Do you think I’m old?”

His laughter sounded carefree, and Breena finally realized why it didn’t fit him. “No. Times are different now. Sometimes you do seem more level-headed than I am, though.”

Should she take that as a compliment?

He reached up as if he wanted to tuck her hair behind her ear but pulled his hand away without finishing the gesture.

He continued. “A year later, Alexandria was born. My little Dria. The spitting image of her mother.”

When he talked about his daughter, his eyes focused somewhere else, even though he looked directly at Breena.

A daughter?

No wonder he acted so protective and paternal. Did he think of her as a child? “Dria was your only child?”

“Yes,” he answered.

“What happened to them?” Breena knew they’d died by Orin’s hand. Myles had already said as much. Except, she couldn’t believe it. The preternatural might be an assassin, but to kill a child...

She
needed
to know everything, even if she didn’t
want
to.

* * * *

“I’d spent the entire day plowing the fields with our fathers. I returned home before dusk, exhausted. Normally Elizabeth would be sitting on the front porch, braiding Dria’s hair or watching her pick flowers. But that day, no one waited.”

He saw it all again as if he still stood in front of that door, with fear curled in the pit of his belly.

“I knew something wasn’t right.”

He hadn’t wanted to go into the house. Dria hadn’t been cooing and playing by the fire. Elizabeth hadn’t come to kiss him. The silence had deafened him.

“I called out to say I was home, but no one answered. I searched but didn’t find a soul.”

He’d run through the three small rooms of the house, frantically yelling their names, the panic growing until black spots spun in front of his eyes. In the back yard, bed linens and tiny dresses hanging on the clothesline blew in the wind. When the linens had flapped up, he’d seen her, and felt the blood drain from his face.

“I finally found Elizabeth out back.”

A pool of blue blood oozed from the wound in her chest but her lips had twitched and he had run to her side. He’d grabbed a sheet from the line and held it against her bleeding chest but her blood had soaked through the linen within moments, staining his hands blue.

She had struggled for air. Struggled to speak.
I’m sorry.
Her last words to him had been an apology, and some days it was more than he could bear. The light in her eyes had grown dimmer until it no longer shone. He’d shaken her. Screamed at her.

“I was too late. She…” The words lodged in his throat. Even now. “She died in my arms.”

Who knows how long he would’ve stayed there, bent over the cooling body of his sweet Elizabeth, if he hadn’t heard the whimper behind him.

“Someone else was there. A man with straw-colored hair.”

Hunched over his Dria, his heart.

“He stared at me and pulled a copper dagger from Dria’s chest. I screamed at him to stop but he’d already done what he’d set out to do.” He took a deep, shuddering breath. “I would’ve killed him. I
wanted
to kill him. Make the bastard pay for what he’d done. But when I reached him, he vanished.”

Falling to the ground, he’d scooped his Dria up. A tiny bit of life had still beat inside her. She’d tried to look at him, but her big brown eyes had only flickered for a moment.
Pa,
she’d said.
Pa.
Then she’d taken her last breath and he’d felt her body grow cold and lifeless against him.

Then he hadn’t felt anything. He’d lain down on the ground, cradling her to him for hours, or days, or weeks, or years. Time had meant nothing.

“I knew I couldn’t leave them outside. The animals…”

The sky had had a dark pink hue by the time he’d gathered the tools he needed, but it hadn’t mattered. Nothing had mattered. Night fell but the moon glowed bright enough to dig a grave for them to share.

“I couldn’t handle the thought of them being alone, so I laid Dria in Elizabeth’s arms and buried them together. I–”

“Myles! Are you all right?”

Wrenched from his memories, he looked blankly at Breena.

She pointed to his eye. “You’re bleeding.”

Touching the wetness on his face, he looked at it. “Tears.” He wiped them away then licked his fingers.

“Go on.” Breena squeezed his hand.

“After I buried them, I walked the property for hours, gathering Dria’s favorite flower to put on their grave. I wanted… I needed to do something for them.”

He had gone back to their grave and spread the flowers over the mound of dirt, but suddenly the gesture had seemed so hollow. So futile. His knees had given way and he’d collapsed to the ground. For the longest time he’d stared at the yellow petals, hands shaking, tears flowing.

“I already missed them. I’d failed to protect them. And I couldn’t bring them back. There was only one thing I could do.”

* * * *

“What?” Breena leaned forward, heart aching for him.

“I realized the only power I had left was the power over my own life. If I couldn’t be with them in this world, I would be with them in the next. So I dug my grave beside theirs.”

“You committed suicide?”

“I tried, Bree. After finishing my grave, I took my straight razor and lay down in the cool dirt. Putting the blade to my throat, I thought about being with them again, and slashed.”

Breena gasped at the thought and instinctively grabbed at her own throat.

“There was little pain, but blood gushed everywhere. I knew it wouldn’t be long until I was with them again. I welcomed death.”

“Who turned you?” Breena asked.

“I found out later my Master worked for the Witches’ Council. He was the leader of the SPC at the time.”

“SPC?”

“Supernatural Population Control.”

“So Elizabeth and Dria were preternaturals?” Breena asked.

“Elizabeth, yes. Dria was a halfling.”

“You didn’t know?”

“No.” Myles touched his neck. “Not until after I’d been turned.”

“How’d you end up working for the WC? You act like you hate them.”

“I do hate them,” he fumed.

“Why?”

“I have the ability to track animals, humans and supernaturals, and they knew of my ‘gift’ because my Master had watched me for years. They felt my skills were an ‘asset’ they couldn’t afford to lose. So they sent a vampire to turn me, enhancing my natural talent in the process. But it backfired on them because I hunted the witches down. One by one, I drained and killed twelve of the thirteen board members. All but your grandmother, the president.”

“Why not her?”

“She was too well protected by her furry servants. But I hoped my actions would at least lead her to stake me. Instead, she put a spell on me and sentenced me to one hundred and fifty years serving her.”

So that’s what the cleaning crew had been talking about
.
Myles
is
a prisoner.
“How does she make you serve her?”

He furrowed his brow and stared at her for a long beat. Maybe she shouldn’t have asked? Was it too personal?

“Dandi.”

“Oh.” Breena swallowed. “The WC will–”

Myles nodded slowly.

Holy hell. If the WC would hold Dandi over Myles’s head, would Lucinda use Jenny to get Breena to cooperate? She couldn’t deal with that right now.

She stared at him, unsure if she should push the topic or move on. She decided to try her luck at a different question. “What spell did she put on you?”

“A spell to keep me from committing suicide.”

“Why not have someone kill you instead?”