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Chapter 17
“What did youdo?” I spat.
Leif pushed his elbow hard against my collarbone. “I’m giving you one last chance to walk away from this as a victim. I saw you murder an innocent woman up there. You’re clearly acting on your own. Give in, Aisling. Turn yourself in and let us help you rid yourself of this demon.”
“From where I’m standing, you and your kind look like the demons.” I nodded to where, behind us, the fight between vampires and demon hunters raged on. Magic from both sides lashed out at the room, occasionally finding those innocent feeders and injuring them. One man lay still on the floor, his eyes open and magic smoke rising from a wound on his chest.
“Your kind could have saved us,” I spat. “The cops could have, too. Instead, the vampires were left to ruin all of us feeders. All of us victims. So no, I’m not accepting your fucking help.”
“Aisling—”
“She’smine.”
Someone tore Leif away from me, for which I was grateful until I saw who that someone was.
Tall. Broad-shouldered. Crimson-red eyes.
Cassius.
As soon as Leif’s presence was torn from me, I felt my magic come back to me. And it really must have beenmymagic if it kept thwarting all of these wards. Flames licked across my limbs once more, although this time, they were all black and shadows.
I drew back my hands and sent magic flying toward Cassius. Flames wreathed around him, burning and scorching his skin, but he emerged, grinning and holding an amulet around his neck. An amulet that seemed to draw my flames into it. Swallowing them in a swirling spiral until every last shadowy ember was gone.
Cassius grinned, a disgusting, sly look crawling across his face as he lifted his gaze to mine. “I’ve been waiting for this day for a year. For you to be drawn back here. To claim you and your entity as my own.”
Fear—real fear for the first time since coming here with this new dose of magic—careened through me. This was too familiar. Too raw a memory. Me and Cassius, him all but catching me against an impossible exit. His pointy fangs gleamed in the shine from his amulet.
“Break… it…” Leif groaned from where he was pressed against the stone floor on his hands and knees. He pushed himself up, but Cassius flung out a fist and punched him in the face. The hit sent Leif into the nearby brick wall.
After all of this, Leif was still trying to help me.
Why?
Cassius stepped toward me. I needed to act. But without Mrak’s magic—mymagic—I was just another terrified woman cornered by a predatory beast.
The thought of it sent bile slicking my throat. A new determination settled within me.
No more. I would not be a fucking victim anymore.
My gaze settled on the amulet around Cassius’s neck. “You better be right, Leif.”
I lunged, not bothering with trying to attack or confuse Cassius. My hands closed around the amulet in Cassius’s surprise. But he jerked back, leaping just out of my range and instead of me grabbing his amulet,heclosed his arms around my middle. He lifted me up and pinned me to the wall, grinning as he used his leverage and superhuman strength to free one hand and yank my head to the side.
The muscles in my neck screamed. Alarm bells went off in my head. But even with all my past experiences, nothing prepared me to once again feel Cassius’s sharp, long fangs pierce my neck.
Immeasurable, screaming pain tore through me. I squirmed and jerked beneath his hold, but I wasn’t strong enough to move him. I summoned fire magic around me, but the amulet kept swallowing it. Every movement was a fresh new agony blazing through me, encouraging me to stop moving. To stop the pain. To accept my fate.
I fought until I couldn’t. Until the first wave of indescribable ecstasy poured through me as Cassius’s venom filled my veins. Warm like the sun, as toe-curling as an ongoing orgasm. I moaned loudly as an old addiction was fed once more, as the venom made me feel more alive than pretty much anything I’d ever felt before. Alive and free—both lies. Vampire venom became an addiction if it didn’t become your death.
I felt my blood as it was drawn from my neck pass through Cassius’s lips. My pulse pounded loudly in my ear as it slowed. When the first of the high began to fall away, guilt and shame slammed into my gut. I’d failed. I’d become a feeder again. My blood was Cassius’s as well as my fate.
Mrak was warded away from me. His magic consumed by an amulet I didn’t understand. And now I’d be forced into Cassius’s coven as a vampire.
Cassius drew back from me, my blood dripping from his lips, his eyes hooded. He grinned lazily. “And now, as promised, you will be mine, little demon-lover. Your demon will beours.”
My nostrils flared as Cassius reached for his dagger. My arms were still pinned behind me. I couldn’t move. He drew the blade across my cheek and leaned in to lap up the blood with his tongue. I nearly vomited as his mouth touched my cheek.
My demon would never be his. Mrak was mine. My body was mine. And I’d burn my blood from his fucking lips.
