AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Xhex shook her head slowly. “You have no idea what you’re dealing with or what you’re suggesting. Even if Blade helps you, it will cost you your life. You do not want to be in debt to asymphathlike him.”
“Please—”
“No, I’m sorry—that’s my final answer. I’m ending this call now.”
As she cut the connection, she put the cell facedown on the carpet. “Fuck.”
Next to her, John Matthew tucked his dagger under his arm. Then he signed,You’re doing the right thing.
“Yeah. I know am. It just feels wrong.”
A vibration of stress rode up the column of her throat and made her clench her teeth. But instead of screaming the energy out, she wrapped her arms around her naked torso. For a split second, she was cold… but then the heat of deep-seated fury started to warm her blood.
Boiled it.
“God, I fuckinghatemy brother,” she heard herself say.
SEVEN
Deer Mountain
Walters, New York
UPON THE FALLof night, after the velvet darkness claimed the whole of the sky and the snow clouds departed to reveal a pinprick pattern of stars, the lone male emerged upon the summit of the mountain called Deer and came to stand at the keyhole view of the valley below. With the keen eyes of his vampire kin, he regarded the undulations of the topography, the acreage so vast, it deserved a poetic appreciation of its breadth and beauty.
Pity he was mostly asymphath. Things of beauty were wasted upon entities such as himself. After all, what leverage could one bring with a vista that merely pleased the eye?
Outside of a real estate transaction.
On that note, his calculating stare focused on the hotel site that had been carved out of the mountain across the valley. Lights twinkled in its many-roomed sprawl, a sign that the establishment was nearing an opening date—or mayhap it was alreadyservicing its intended demographic of wealthy spa-goers looking to be one with nature in a completely climate-controlled environment that included on-demand facials as well as feather beds and Michelin-star-ranked food.
Frankly, he would rather camp with no gear. In frigid January. Out with the wolves.
Or… one wolf in particular.
Wolven, rather.
As melancholy washed over him anew, he erased the human-made eyesore with his ailing mind and imagined what the sunset might have looked like as the storm clouds of the afternoon began their departure unto the east, just as the last rays of daylight illumination funneled into the western juncture of evergreens on the far side of the silver sliver of lake. Thanks to his half-breed pretransition youth, he could paint quite clearly the gathering intensity of peach and pink as the sun died, a flare of vibrant red tickling the undersides of the clouds, a last gasp before darkness claimed the heavens.
Things were always most vivid just before death. And as he considered his turbulent emotions, he put his hand over the ache upon his heart and certainly felt as though he were dying. Yet he couldn’t remember ever being this alive.
“Messy business, this bonding…”
At the sound of a stick breaking behind him, his breath caught and he twisted around, hope burstingthrough the storm clouds of his pessimism, a brilliant color in the midst of his gray numbness—
Though his visitor remained within the shadows, hissymphathside recognized their calling card.
The deflation was immediate. This was not the female who haunted him night and day, stalking his equilibrium through the alleys of his conscious purpose and distractions, hunting his sense of superiority as a male who was not to be toyed with, killing his coldness with a heat that came from sexual need and soul-deep yearning.
“To what do I owe this honor,” he drawled in a slow cadence. “I rather thought our paths would not cross again, given your distaste of me.”
There was a pause. And then Xhexania, his blooded, estranged sister, stepped out into the clearing. She was dressed head to foot in black leather, a gun holster around her hips, an ammo belt running across her torso, a knife strapped on her thigh. With her short hair and her hard gray eyes, one might have mistaken her for a Brother.
“I’m surprised you knew it was me,” she said. “I’m downwind.”
He motioned above his own head. “Your grid.”
Her cold stare narrowed on him, as if she were offended that he could read her emotions in the manner of their kind. But come now. In this, at least, he was not being deliberately offensive. Allsymphathssaw the inner components of all sentientbeings, their anger, sadness, joy, and fear, among other whims of feeling, depicted in a three-dimensional grid that followed them around like a comic strip thought bubble.
