Angie
Once again, I kept my head turned away from the others, staring blindly out the window, eyes unfocused. This time my thoughts were chaotic, my mind and emotions roiling.
In that tumultuous and romantic first year, Karson had smothered me with gifts, with tenderness, with poetry, and with dances. He professed often that I was his soul mate, and he would always and forever put me first, me alone, before any others. Because we shared blood so often, I had fallen under his control. And my stupid twenty-two-year-old self had believed him. I hadbelieved.
He had been everything I had ever wanted.
I should have left a full year before I did, but I loved Karson madly. I believed that deep down he loved me as well. When things began to shift, to sour, I wanted to save my marriage.
Except he hadn’t loved me. Ever. Not at all.
Though politically stupid, Karson was a master manipulator. The last year of our marriage, living in the Marrazzo Clan Home, had been…messywas a good word. Messy, bloody, complicated. I hadn’t known why. Hadn’t seen the signs. Hadn’t realized…anything.
In that last year, Karson had begun to request that I wear the queen’s colors or the colors of Clan Yellowrock often, to parties, to events, at soirées hosted at his clan home. I had been vaguely aware that my presence and the official colors helped Karson in negotiations with visiting masters of cities, with other blood clan masters, and with financial dealings. Karson had considered himself a wheeler-dealer, and claimed I was his partner in everything we did. Everythinghedid. All of my evening dresses and business clothing had been shoved to the back of the massive closet, and only royal or clan colors were chosen for me, laid out for me in the evenings, by my lady-in-waiting. I hadn’t really noticed. He had controlled me, controlled my environment, completely.
But one night, I had dressed for dinner with visiting dignitaries, in a lovely teal gown. It had been a gorgeous dress, elegant, iridescent, designed to show off every curve. When I walked out of my dressing room, Karson had flown into a rage. He had literarily torn the dress off me and locked me in our rooms. With no dinner. With no cell phone.
That was the night I began to wake from the blood-haze I’d allowed myself to fall into. That was the night I began to practice my magic again.
Karson had returned just before dawn, full of shame and excuses, and with an armful of black roses. We had shared blood. Had amazing sex. With his blood in me, I had forgiven him. Why not? He hadn’t harmed me. Not really. There were no bruises, no broken bones. He was just as loving as before.
But when I woke next, his blood no longer in my mouth, I knew things were wrong.
Only then did I begin to understand what abuse was. I never again wore anything he hadn’t chosen for me. But I began to create charms that kept my heart and mind clear and free ofcompulsion. One was an amulet that could decrease the effects of vampire blood and saliva on me, and I wore it attached to the charm bracelet given to me by the queen.
Wearing it, I noticed small cracks in his façade, where truth illuminated the reality I hadn’t seen. Darkness tarnished our relationship.
Karson worked at convincing me that everything wrong between us was my fault, my failure, my lack of foresight, my lack of social skills, mylack. But the amulet continued to exert its power and the man I had married revealed himself to be the asshat he truly was.
The night I came home unexpectedly and had killed a woman, and then had to fight my way to safety…That was the end.
Now, heading back to the clan home for the first time since that night, I smiled, the expression reflected to me in the car window, cold and hard and full of nasty satisfaction. I had killed two more of Asshat’s scions to get away, and later on, three more fangheads who challenged me for the bounty on my head, and to gain favor in Karson’s eyes. Two witches had attacked for the bounty, and they were dead too. For a non-vamp, I had a nice string of kills notched onto my bedpost. So to speak. Six vamps was a good number. If I killed Asshat, that would make seven vamps. Even better. For a total of nine kills.Not bad.
Something of my feelings was leaking out of my pores, because I felt Walter’s eyes on me, heavy and penetrating. He was breathing, taking in my scent. EJ’s scent.
The massive wrought iron gates at Asshat’s were open. Our vehicle turned in on auto-drive and moved up the heavily landscaped driveway to the front of the Marrazzo Clan Home. The house was lit like Mardi Gras in New Orleans. ChickamaugaLake was a placid blackness beyond the 8,000-square-foot house. A dozen or so cars were parked in the circular brick-paved area in front of the four-car garages, one to either side of the entrance.
The Italianate façade had a small second-story balcony over the arched, hand-carved front doors, which were behind wrought iron carriage gates Karson and I had imported from an estate in Milan.
Two goons stood at the entrance. Hands on their weapons.
I snugged the null cloak around me, gripped my staff.
The vehicle stopped thirty feet from the entrance, blocked by other vehicles. Lots of other vehicles. Limos, town cars, a Bugatti, several Porsches, a Maserati, several Bentleys. The usual. Karson was having a party.Goody goody gumdrops. Bloody goody gumdrops. Yeah. Better.
I threw open my car door. Walter was talking, his words a buzz in my ear-patch, ignored.
I strode across the drive, winding between cars, sleet crunching beneath my boots. It had begun to snow, a fluffy layer atop the sleet-ice. Flakes fell onto my wrapped braid and the neon velvet. Onto my uncovered head, my face, and my left glove. Icy, a welcome coolness against the flushed heat burning through me. With a push of my will, the stone on top of the staff began to glow, a cheap parlor trick, but the light it threw out looked like sunlight underwater, rippling and wavering. I pulled power to me, and for once it came freely, burning hot, even beneath the null energies.
Ahead was danger. Lots of it. I bared my teeth.
Goon One said something into his mic. Goon Two drew his weapon.
I laughed. It sounded a bit—just a very little bit?—crazy. I sprinted at them. Spun my staff. The metal tip hit Goon Two atthe juncture of the jaw and skull with a resounding crack. He started to drop. Continuing the arc of the staff, I stabbed Goon One in the gut with the tip, whirled the staff again, and smacked the thick end against his head. He fell.
“Get their weapons and coms,” I ordered, and slammed through the front doors.
EJ
