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Valtu looks at me with violence in his eyes, breathing hard, nostrils wide, his teeth set in a sneer. “You need to go,” he ekes out in a low, threatening rumble. “You need to leave right now. And pray that fucking demon lets you go. Because if he doesn’t, I’m not going to save you.”
Valtu points to the door, his message more than clear.
I know protesting or pleading will make no difference.
I can’t stay.
I fucking blew it all.
I look at him for the last time and he has the audacity to look away, as if he’s so ashamed and embarrassed of me he can’t even look at me. Maybe I feel I deserve some of it. Maybe I deserve all of it.
I stride past him and quickly go down the stairs. It’s going to be a long hike down that mountain, and though it’s probably the middle of the night, I’m going to have to hurry if I want to escape this place unscathed. I still don’t know what the bad thing thinks of me or wants from me, but I have a feeling if it sees me leaving, things will be different.
I go to my room and slip on jeans and boots and the coat, then cram everything in my bag and go. I don’t have a phone but as soon as I get down to the village, I’ll call the number Abe left for me on my hand. If anything, he can help me figure out what to do next. He certainly expected that this would happen.
That’s right, keep telling yourself that, I think while I hurry through the halls and to the front door.Think of the next steps. You need to get Leif back, you can’t give up on that, even if you have to do it without Valtu’s help.
I keep that going in my head, over and over, because the moment I stop thinking is the moment I start feeling and I know I’m going to start crying and never ever stop.
My love. My Valtu.
He really is gone.
And I will never be his again.
I open the heavy front doors, the metal creaking, and step out into the night. I have no idea how to get to Mittenwald, but I figure if I head straight down the mountains toward the lights below, I can’t go wrong.
I hurry down the steps, careful in places where it’s icy, then start down the worn path that snakes along the crags of the mountainside. I’m a single thought away from breaking down in tears, a single thought away from dissolving completely.
But then there’s a raspy wet snarl behind me, reverberating through the chilled air.
A snarl that can only belong to one thing.
Itfound me.
Chapter19
Valtu
Istare at the charred pentacle on the floor, my mind reeling so much that I have to press my fingertips into my temples, as if that will stop the contents from shifting.
I knew there was something off about Rose. I thought tonight I had her figured out. I thought that she was just repressed, suppressing herself from her darkest desires of being a vampire. I thought that real human blood would awaken what she clearly tried so hard to hide and I wanted to be the one to open up that world for her.
What a fool I was. It was just an act, a role. She knew how to work me, how to play the part. Nothing she said was real. I don’t care that her name is Rose this time around, nothing was real. She played me like a fucking puppet.
She didn’t get any of you, a voice says.You haven’t lost a thing. Just a week of your time.
I try to hold onto that but I can’t.
I feel betrayed. It’s such a new feeling to me that I’m not sure how to handle it, what to do with it. But I feel it deep in the marrow of my bones.
Betrayal.
And all because I had let myself get too close to her. Despite my best efforts, I got close. She got under my skin and into my blood. The way she looked at me. The way she said my name. The way she knew exactly what to do with her body. She knew how to do that because it worked on me before, over and over again.
But then there was the way she made me play music, the first time I had felt in tune with anything in years. And then there was the darkness inside her that so clearly wants to play with mine. And then there was the closest feeling to salvation I’d ever had when I was buried deep inside of her, losing my mind to her body and heart and soul.
Fuck.
