Page 94 of Caretaker

I cleared my throat. “Go on.”

“I set in motion the events that would lead to Angus Stark’s freedom. I took his wife because I knew you would be sent to retrieve her. I knew you could trade her for the bull’s freedom.”

“She was on the island.” My stomach hurt, and I pressed my fist against the pain. “She is dying. Supernaturals died—many of them. Your intentions do not make up for all the deaths you’ve caused.”

He frowned. “I had nothing to do with the destruction of Byrd Island. I had nothing to do with those deaths.” Once again, the shame and guilt flashed through his eyes. “I…”

“What?” I prompted. “What did you do, Amias?”

“I lost her,” he admitted, and there was his shame.

He had no remorse for taking the woman, only for losing her.

“How?” I asked.

“I don’t know how she found the strength to run. She escaped me as I slept, though I had bound her wrists and ankles. I slept with my arms a tight band around her. Yet somehow, she escaped me. I was careless. Drunk on her clean blood. I had to feed, Trinity,” he said, when my anger began to rise once again. “I could no more have resisted her than a starving human could have resisted food. I could not get her to the island if I were weak and hungry. So I drank, and like an intoxicated human, I was careless.”

“Why did you want to take her to the island?” I wanted to hear his story, but at the same time, the same thought kept hammering away at my mind.

I would have to feed Amias Sato.

“Lewis Bennett would not have kept his word otherwise. He would have taken back his wife, once I’d let you find her, and he would have had you blamed for taking her. He would have said you were responsible for her abduction. He would have made sure you were sent away, Trinity, and I could not have that. If both Madalyn and Angus were on the island, he would have upheld the agreement. You would have refused to give him his wife until Angus was safely at your side. But things…” He sighed. “Things did not go as planned. Not completely.”

Miriam’s porch light came on and she flung open her door. “Trinity? Why are you still here? Come inside, darling.”

I shuddered at her voice, at her madness, and Amias stiffened, narrowing his eyes when he saw my fear.

“I will kill her,” he promised.

I shook my head. “She can’t be killed.”

Miriam left the doorway and walked out, peering into the darkness where I stood. “Trinity?”

Amias lifted an eyebrow. “I can bury her so deep inside the ground tha—” Then his eyes widened and his fangs elongated. He spun, his hands bent into claws, and crouched, hissing.

“Amias, what—”

He grabbed me, then jerked open the car door so hard he nearly ripped it off its hinges. Even before I could open my mouth, he’d slung me into my seat.

“She smells of the demon,” he said. “I will find him.” One second he was standing in front of me, and the next, he was simply…gone.

I didn’t question it. I started the car, then got the hell out of there. I’d return when I had backup. Clayton was there somewhere.

If Amias, master vampire, was frightened of Miriam and the demon, then I should have been downright terrified.

She’d delayed me having to feed Amias, and that was lucky.

On the other hand, if Amias hadn’t started that chain of events, I wouldn’t have been permitted to see Angus, I wouldn’t have been on the island the night Jamie blew it up, and I wouldn’t have brought Angus home. So yeah, maybe I owed him.

But I didn’t have to be in any hurry to pay up.

I called Shane because I needed to check on him. And I needed to hear his voice.

“You want some dinner?” I asked him.

“Yeah, but not in here. Come pick me up.”

“Did the doctor—”