Broken Heart 08 Must Love Lycans (24 page)

“No,” I said. “I would beg for my own. In fact, I have. It’s not as difficult as you might believe.” Then I hiccupped a sob, and let loose with a full torrent of tears.

Damian slid onto the couch, drew me into his lap, and held me tightly while I wept.

Chapter 10

T
he nightmare began as it always did.

Robert knew how much I liked candles because it was part of my therapeutic approach. Curtains shut, lights dimmed, candles lit. The scents of lavender and vanilla and, sometimes, sandalwood filtered into the air, mixing with the words—words filled with pain, with suffering, and when there were breakthroughs, victory.

He liked sandalwood best of all, and he’d brought a dozen thick brown candles. While the drugged girl lay in languid surrender on my couch, he put a knife against her throat and directed me about where to place his scented offerings.

It was nearly August, and the Oklahoma nights were hot and moist. Venturing outside often felt like falling into a vat of simmering water. It was a misery, but beauty was out there, too, once you learned how to breathe. Then you could see the lightning bugs mimicking stars, and the trees reaching toward the velvet sky, and mixed in with this palette was fragrant sweetness of honeysuckle blooms and the music of crickets and windswept grass. Brushes of color and scent and sound. Green Country, as they called this part of the state. It had been my home, my sanctuary.

And he took it away. The meaning of it. The security. Worst of all, the hope.

It was a difficult thing to watch evil bloom, to see it triumph over the meagerness of prayers, of begging deities for a single, pure miracle. Mercy was a gift, and neither God nor Robert had been in the mood to bestow it.

It was true that Robert had not broken me. But that night, something inside me was lost, locked away into the dark, still corners that even psychotherapists dared not tread.

He’d wanted to unleash the beast he felt lurked within me, but instead, he had imprisoned it. It wasn’t the creature of his fevered imagination—it was instead a monster of discontent and fury and fear. I had known my whole life that I was not the daughter my mother wanted. In fact, no matter where I turned or what I tried, I did not seem to be a girl that anyone wanted. I was different, and people seemed to know that, even though I looked the same as they did. I was human … and yet I was not.

Blood will tell.

He’d said that, but he’d said a lot of other things, too. Given that my definition of crazy had been turned upside down and shaken vigorously, I couldn’t say now if Robert was truly insane, or had been touched by the paranormal. He’d seen in me what others reacted to on a primitive level—but he hadn’t shied away from it. He had embraced it. He’d wanted to draw it out. Make it his friend. His partner.

The inner me. The outer me.

One must die, so the other can live.

After I watched Robert murder the girl, after I fought for my own life and took his, I had a revelation: I did not belong in this world.

It’s funny how the serial killer and I now agreed on that singular point, though for entirely different reasons. I fought a sense of doom from the day I woke up in the hospital. I plodded forward—through the physical and mental recovery, the police and FBI interviews, the lawsuits, the public condemnation, my mother’s abandonment and betrayal, the bad job and crappy apartment. Every day that I got to wake up and take a breath felt undeserved. And I wanted so badly to deserve my second chance.

And now, while I stood in my own living room with its leather furniture and glass tables and chrome accents, lighting candles so Robert could begin his sick ritual, I felt the beast stir.

I was awakening.

“You feel it now, don’t you?” asked Robert. The knife dug into the girl’s throat; blood beaded at the tiny wound, then fell like a teardrop.

“Yes,” I said. “You were right.”

“It’s too late for me to help you. I tried, you know. But you’re stubborn.”

“I didn’t want your help. And I’m not sorry you’re dead, either.”

“That’s the beast,” he said, his voice thick with satisfaction. “Have some gratitude, Kelsey. If it wasn’t for me, you wouldn’t know about your father’s little indiscretion. You wouldn’t have discovered your true path.”

I jolted. “Indiscretion?”

He gave me a long look that I interpreted as “yeah, right, like you didn’t know.” “Duh. You’re only half human. Your mother is a bitch on wheels. You ever think she has a reason to resent you?”

Cold sweat slicked my spine. “This isn’t about my mother.”

“Oh, but it is.”

I lit the last candle, then carefully put down the lighter. I stood on the other side of the coffee table, watching him huddle against his victim, the knife sharp and wicked against her quivering flesh. “Why didn’t you let her live?” I asked.

He flashed me a sunny smile. “Why didn’t you?”

Then he slashed her throat in one big, vicious jerk

The blood sprayed over us both.

It hadn’t been like this in the reality. He’d tied me to the chair, placing me at an angle so I could see her face. He used the coffee table like an altar. He’d stripped her bare and made little Xs on her body—the points, he said, where the essence flowed from. Then he waited for the drugs to leave her system, just enough to realize she was being murdered.

But now, in the dream, Robert sat on the couch, his hands wrapped in her long blond hair, his gaze on mine as we endured the gruesome baptism. Its foul warmth covered us both until all I could see and taste and feel was the blood of an innocent.

Sacrifice is necessary.

In the blink of an eye, my living room disappeared. I stood in a circular clearing caged by tall trees. Above me, the full moon gleamed like a pearl tucked into black silk.

Aufanie and Tark’s glen now held a stone altar—but not them. They were gone, and with them, the hushed sense that this place was sacred.

Robert had defiled it.

On the altar lay a naked, unconscious woman. Robert, dressed in a gray robe, stood on the dais, his features harsh as he used a dagger to carve on her stomach.

“Come here,” he demanded harshly. “This is the path to understanding.”

I was drawn to Robert, and to the altar. I didn’t want to go, but my feet moved anyway. In moments, I stood next to him, yet again his unwilling, chosen victim. Anger pulsed hotly through my veins.
You shouldn’t be here,
I wanted to yell.
You’ve ruined it! You’ve ruined me!

But I couldn’t get my lips to move, or my throat to work. My protests remained locked inside, and so, too, my unfurling rage.

“Do you see?” he asked.

Reluctantly, I looked at the symbols he’d etched into her flesh. One looked like an upside down cross with circles on three ends. At the top was a bigger circle. Flaring out from the intersection were two curved lines. The other mark was a three-pronged arrow with a small triangle base.

“Nature. Wolf. Silver. Moon.” He pointed up toward the woman’s chest. “Mate.”

My gaze locked on to the symbol above the woman’s left breast, and the air left my body in a whoosh. Damian’s symbol.

Oh, God.

The face of the sacrificial victim was mine.

“One must die, so the other can live,” said Robert.

I heard chanting, but the words had no meaning. The thrum of the voices, though, wound through me like serpents, hissing and coiling. I watched as he slit the victim’s wrist and held a silver chalice underneath to catch the stream of black blood.

When it was full, Robert cawed and held up the silver cup. An image of a raven was engraved on it, along with the symbols I’d seen carved into the woman’s—into
my
—stomach.

“To the beast within,” he shouted, and then he drank.

Inside me, beyond the shadows of my soul, something awful stirred.

I felt my bones crack and my muscles peel away. The beast nestled inside me, the one that felt like shame, like regret, clawed its way to the surface. A voluminous blackness burst around me, and there was pain, so much of it. I fell onto my side, screaming in agony. My skin flaked off, my hair shed, and then … I felt everything shift back together, but in a completely wrong way.

I was reborn.

I lifted my snout to the sky, and howled.

“Take what’s yours,” shouted Robert. “Wolf of Silver!”

Stupid human.
I felt the power, the strength in my muscles, the fury that beat within me with the same ferocity of my pounding heart. I leapt and knocked him down. The chalice flew out of his grip and bounced on the ground, the blood splashing onto the soil.

He looked at me, and laughed and laughed.

My jaws snapped down.

I easily ripped out his throat.

 

I woke up, heart thudding as I bolted upright. Damian came instantly awake, sitting up and putting his arms around me. He nestled his chin on my shoulder.

“What is it?” he asked, his voice thick with sleep.

“Dream,” I said in a hushed voice. “A really weird one. And considering my track record with nightmares, that’s saying a lot.”

“I’m here,” he said. “You’re safe.”

“I know.” I leaned against him, taking comfort in the solidness of his embrace. “Does silver kill werewolves?”

“Not usually,” he said. “Unless there’s a lot of it. Even a little burns like a son of a bitch, though. Silver has magical properties. Most metallic substances do. And any of them can be used to hurt or imprison paranormal creatures.” He kissed my neck. Then he yawned. “Except vampires. Nothing kills them except extreme exposure to light and beheading.”

“I’m sure anything dies if it’s beheaded.”

“Not necessarily.”

“Really? Do I want to know?”

“Nein.”
He fell back and dragged me with him. I snuggled against his side, my head resting on his chest. “You dreamed about silver? Is that a hint for jewelry?”

I smacked him on the pectoral. “No.” Then I peeked up at him. “Maybe.”

He chuckled. He hugged me closer, which caused a flurry of warm fuzzies. “Tell me about the dream, Kelsey.”

I told him everything, and when I was finished, he was silent. While he was getting his thoughts together, I let my hand wander over his chest. I trailed my fingertips over his stomach, heading right for the goods, but he stilled my fingers and folded them within his hand.

“I wasn’t going to hurt you,” I said petulantly. What can I say? This being in heat thing made me grumpy.

“There are different kinds of pain,
Schätzchen
,” he responded softly. “Do you believe dreams are portents?”

“I believe dreams can be important.”

“Will you remember these symbols tomorrow?”

“Yes,” I said.

“And you are sure you saw a raven on the chalice?”

“Well, I’m not familiar with every bird species on the planet, but I’m pretty sure it was a raven.”

“I feel certain this dream was a message—one meant to help us.”

“You think Aufanie sent it?”

He tensed. “Perhaps.”

“Why do you hate her so much, Damian?”

He let my hand go, and I flattened it against his spectacular abs. I was trying to resist the buzzing need in my body, which insisted I stop talking and start grooving. Damian rolled on top of me and nuzzled my neck.

“We’re not gonna talk about it, are we?”

“Nien
.
”

He started doing some very interesting things with his hands, all designed to distract me, of course, and I let him.

I was an official werewolf slut.

 

When I awoke, I was alone. Panic seized me for all of a minute, until I realized that Damian had left on the bedside lamp and the door to the bedroom was wide open, allowing the hallway light to spill inside.

After I killed Robert, I hadn’t had a single full night’s rest—at least not until I had gotten the job at the Dante Clinic. I’d been so reassured by the security that I’d been able to relax enough to take a sleeping pill. When I lived alone in my tiny, crappy apartment, I hadn’t dared to take even a Tylenol PM. I couldn’t dampen my alertness. Between the nightmares and panic attacks, I never slept more than a couple hours at a time.

And now, with Damian, I felt secure, too. But I was still dealing badly with being alone for any length of time. I felt like a wimp, and even though I knew, not only from a human perspective, but also from a therapist perspective, that my feelings and actions were normal responses to the trauma I’d suffered—I couldn’t quiet the voice that whispered incessantly about my cowardice. I had killed Robert. I had survived. And I was still hostage to the terror he’d invoked.

I sat up, and before I had shoved off the bedcovers, Damian appeared in the doorway. He was dressed in a T-shirt that molded to his sculpted chest and a pair of faded, tight jeans. He wore black boots, too. His hair had been tied back, making his gorgeous face look even gorgeous-er. Damn, the man was sexy.