“You’re afraid of me, beautiful,” he said matter-of-factly. I can sense it in your heartbeat.
I nodded, but not because it was true, or part of the longstanding joke we’d shared about how much he used to scare me before we’d finally come together.
“You’re a very powerful vampire,” I said, as if that explained the rapid-fire beat behind my ribcage. Playing the game was easier than admitting that my heart was shattering, sputtering out its last hurrah.
“I suppose I am,” he said. His smile was composed, but the glint in his glassy eyes was feral. “I wish I could recall, but in the absence of memory, I’ll have to rely on…” He sucked a breath of air through his lips, his tongue darting out to wet them. “…instinct.”
I stepped closer, and those golden honey eyes darkened, his nostrils flaring as he scented the air around me.
“What do your instincts tell you about me?” I asked.
“Hmm. Something has changed. The last time we were together,” he said, “you were quite a bit less lively. In fact, the demon said something about a missing soul?”
“My soul was trapped in hell, but that’s old news. I’m back now.” I forced a smile. “Better than ever.”
He took another breath, then sighed. “More determined, perhaps. But I sense you’ve lost something along the way.”
More than you could possibly imagine…
“Perhaps you could use a friend?” he asked.
I looked into those eyes, the dark lashes, the beautifully full lips, the face of the man I loved, and I wanted to open up to him, to confess everything that had happened, everything I’d learned. To tell him how scared I truly was.
But I’d be a fool to trust him now.
He was Darius, but… not. The man before me reminded me of an actor, changing his expressions and voice for a role. There was no warmth in his eyes. No recognition. And absolutely no love.
Darius’s eyes suddenly darted to the side, and he scented the air again, his lip curling in disgust. Seconds later, I heard the scrape of the iron bar lifting from the door, followed by the click of the hounds’ claws against the floor.
“Demon,” Darius practically spat. “If I never see or smell or taste another for a thousand years, it will be too soon.”
I turned back toward the door as Ronan entered the room.
Anger smoldered in my gut like hot coals as I remembered his most recent devil’s bargain, but I couldn’t deny I was relieved to see him. Logically I knew he couldn’t fix this any more than he could fix the mess he’d made between us, but his presence still comforted me. Ronan had been my best friend long before he’d become my lover. My life.
Nothing was going to change that.
“Why is he like this?” I asked as Ronan approached, hating myself for talking about Darius as if he wasn’t in the room with us—wasn’t glaring at me with raw, naked lust. But the change that had come over him went deeper than his memory loss. It was hunger, pure and simple. Bloodlust.
As far as I knew, Darius hadn’t fed on living beings in decades, and he certainly hadn’t overdosed. Yet Deirdre had mentioned something about him attacking and draining a demon?
“Is it just his instincts taking over?” I asked.
“Partly,” Ronan said. “For a vampire, feeding on the living is primal. Feeding on donor blood or animals is the conscious choice in the equation.”
“One he doesn’t remember making.” I sighed as the pieces clicked into place. Darius was centuries old. He hadn’t come to his choices overnight. They’d been woven into the fabric of his life, shaped by his experiences, reinforced by decades of choices, every decisionnotto kill,notto drain the lifeblood of another being inexorably linked to his memory.
Memory that he no longer possessed.
“Well, this is rather enlightening,” Darius said. “I don’t recall ever being so thoroughly dissected before. Perhaps next time you might buy me dinner first.”
“Gray,” Ronan said, and the odd hesitation his voice set a new flare of panic ablaze in my chest.
“Tell me,” I breathed, my voice as fragile as an eggshell. “Just tell me.”
“Before we came to the Shadowrealm, he was ambushed by hunters in a motel. They’d intended to kill him, but he… he destroyed them.”
“Destroyed?”
