Anger leaked into Gabriel’s chest. They were all the bloody same. Witches, vampires, humans—the dumb and the desperate never read the fine print on a demon deal.
Stupid girl.
“I’m not,” she replied defensively, and Gabriel wondered if she’d read his thoughts.
“Not desperate? Or not in bed with demons?”
“Every last demon canburn,” she ground out, and now her blood sang with something more powerful than fear—a pure, honest emotion that echoed in the darkest places of his own tarnished soul.
Vengeance.
Gabriel raised an eyebrow. Perhaps she wasn’t such a stupid girl after all.
“Let me go,” she demanded. “This is bullshit—I’ve got nothing to do with vampire politics. Especially royal ones.”
“Says the witch who poisoned the king at the behest of his political rivals? Forgive me if I don’t leap at the chance to cut you loose.”
Gabriel paced the room, glanced back out the window. Down below, a handful of Rogozin’s underlings attempted to mop the glass and blood from the floor. Slow, sticky work.
He wondered how long it would take to renovate the place. To leach the stink of death from the walls and turn it into a nightclub to rival his properties in Las Vegas. He’d have to sell his clubs and casino now that he was relocating back to New York, but it was just as well. The desert was no place for a dying vampire with cursed blood and a target on his back.
“What do you want from me, bloodsucker?” she asked. “Why am I still here?”
When he turned to face her again, genuine confusion had tempered the fury in her eyes.
Why haven’t you killed me?That’s what shereallywanted to know. If one were inclined to believe the legends, the youngest Redthorne prince had parted thousands of demons from their heads just for breathing on him, staked his own kind for beating him at cards, and ate the hearts of human babies for breakfast—an entirely unfair accusation given that he hardly ever ate breakfast.
“You stand accused of conspiring against the royal family,” he said. “Myfamily. There are consequences.”
“You got proof? Working as a bonded witch isn’t a crime.”
Gabriel nodded toward the window. “You were found at the scene ofthiscrime, aiding and abetting.”
“And youcausedthe scene of this crime.”
“A defensive maneuver, I assure you.”
The witch shook her head, clearly disgusted with him. Beneath the matted blood and ash, her hair was a silvery shade of blonde. He remembered it from that night at Ravenswood. It reminded him of moonlight, giving her an ethereal softness he was trying desperately not to notice.
To crave.
Fuck.
Since he’d been turned, Gabriel had lived his immortal life in hard edges and angles, clean lines, sharp knives, sharper fangs. Blood and death, ice and thorns. His world left no room for softness.
Least of all for a witch.
“Dorian found one of your grimoires,” he said. “In the home of yetanotherdemon working against the crown.”
“Anotherdemon? Wow, you guys have a lot of enemies. Maybe if your family had been less...” She curled her hands into claws and grimaced like a made-for-television monster. “…you’d have fewer people trying to murder you? Just a thought.”
“We know all about your dark magic, witch. Your work resurrecting the gray vampires was particularly damning, not to mention utterly repugnant.” Bile rose in his throat. He hated those fucking grays—the decay, the primitiveness, the constant reminder of what he and his kind would become without the magic of their own bonded witches. No conscience, no soul, no humanity. Just blood and bones and instinct, an endless hunger driving them to consume anything in their paths.
Thanks to Jacinda’s clever spellcraft, Duchanes turned the foul beasts into a weapon. One Gabriel and his brothers needed to defuse before the human authorities figured out the real story behind a rash of so-called animal attacks plaguing the tri-state area.
“I did what I had to do to survive,” she said. “Same as the rest of the freaks in this city.”
“Inthiscity, witch, death is a kindness. That you’d seek to defy it is nothing less than madness.”
