Bloodlines (Demons of Oblivion) (36 page)

Nate. He was on his stomach like me, sprawled there among a broken coffee table and near Heaven’s corpse. Blood snaked down from the corner of his mouth, from his nose. He spat more across the floor, pressed his palms down, and fought his way up again.

Another word from Sean flattened Nate once more; his chin hit the hardwood, head slumped to the side.

No, no,
no
—this wasn’t right. He couldn’t give up—he was better than that. I thrashed under Jamie. “Nate!”

Defeated blue eyes met mine. A lifetime of fear, of lack of self worth waited there, and my heart squeezed.

No, he couldn’t do this. He came back for me. He fucking saved me—no one did that. He said I was worth saving, worth literally risking his neck for. I couldn’t watch him die.

Get up. Get up—we’re not dead yet
.

“I’m so glad we get to share this moment, dear.” Jamie tightened his grip on my hair; I bit back a yelp.

Nothing I could do. Nothing at all. Sean bent and selected one of the stakes Peter and I had prepared. Did it slow and careful, the bastard, testing the weight, eyeing the end. Then he spun it and aimed at Nate’s back.

Jamie’s hold on me tensed; I screamed, hair ripping from my scalp. He was probably just being a prick—

Then bone snapped.

He was changing, just like I had. Spasming. And it gave me the moment I needed.

I gathered my strength and bucked, pitching him forward. He sailed through the air and crashed into Sean. That must’ve broken the warlock’s concentration and whatever hold he held over Nate, for his brother scrambled up and dispelled the barrier around Peter.

I got my feet under me, gathered some traction, and bolted. Nate dropped to one knee, weakened, nose still bleeding. My fingers folded over his arm and helped him to rise again. “You’re okay?”

“Zara!” Peter called. Hands touched my shoulders and shoved me aside; I tumbled onto Nate. We looked up.

Peter stood over us, the stake Sean had been holding planted right through his heart. He slumped to the floor.

Oh god. Please, no.

Nate knelt over his friend, anguish twisting his face, lips parting in a wordless cry. Peter stared up, eyes glazed. Dead. Just like that, he was gone...and only to save me. And why? Why
me
? When had I been worth people shoving me aside to take a stake to the heart, offering me their throats, spending months searching for me? Tears burned in my eyes, but now wasn’t the time for mourning.

Sean and Jamie watched from the other side of the room. I stood slowly, head tilted down, long black hair hanging on either side of my face. My heart hammered, hands clenched into fists. I was bleeding, aching, and
fucking pissed off
—something snapped, some little guard in my brain that kept me from going totally batshit crazy on everyone breaking in two.

I’d had
enough
. I leapt in attack.

Magic struck me, threw me back—I hit the fireplace. Brick cracked, dust puffed up. I crumbled against the hearth as I fell. Grime itched my eyes; I brushed it back to see the brothers once again facing off.

Nate stood in the center of the room, cold blue eyes on his older brother. He stood frozen, tense. Ready.

Sean circled Nate. “Really Nathan, I’m surprised you lasted this long on your own. You put up more of a fight in high school. Have the vampire and her friends actually carried you this far?”

This wasn’t gonna be good. I scanned the area around me, spotted the fire poker three feet away. If I could just reach it without anyone noticing...

“I’m assuming you ran out of resources, or you wouldn’t be here yourself.” Nate’s deep voice stopped Sean’s pacing.

Sean sized his brother up, critical blue eyes moving over him. “You know the saying: if you want something done, do it—”

I grasped the poker, took careful aim, and hurled it across the room.

It whizzed past Sean’s upper arm. The warlock looked at me, brow cocked with skepticism. “That was a little disappointing.”

I gave him a cool smile and nodded to a spot behind him. “I’m not so sure about that.”

Sean glanced behind him to see the poker had hit Jamie directly in the heart, pinning him to the far wall.

I rose on creaky bones and sore muscles. A twist of my neck gave a loud crack. “Two to one. As a betting girl, I like those odds.”

Magic thickened in the air, that telltale feeling of electricity, and it centered around Nate. If he was going to throw a spell, I could just keep snarking and distract—

Sean must’ve anticipated it; a gesture from him sent Nate flying into the far wall.

Shit.

“I think you’ve effectively killed or helped to escape just about all of my vampires,” Sean said his attention returned to me.

I yawned. “Told you it was a lame idea. Shittiest army
ever
. Guess things won’t look pretty for you during your apocalypse.”

“If you think they were the only resource at my disposal, you’re sadly mistaken. And I have a few years to build my ranks up again.”

“Honey,
if
you were gonna walk out of this cabin alive—which you won’t—you’d live to be a shriveled old man
still waiting
, with your pathetic vampire army in cages, ready for a party that’s never gonna start. There’s no Armageddon.”

Sean smiled coolly. “‘And the sisters will rise, jaws will open, and hell will come to Earth.’”

“Is that from
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
?”

Magic gripped me, twisted around my body in oily tendrils; I shot upward. My head scraped the ceiling then I thudded hard against the fireplace, suspended midair. He looked to the floor and one of the stakes floated off the ground until it was level with my chest.

“Goodbye, Miss Lain.”

The stake flew toward my heart.

An instant later, Nate appeared behind his brother—flat out fucking
appeared
out of nowhere—and aimed a handgun at Sean’s head.

Nate fired.

Blood and brain matter flew. Sean crumpled. The magical grip on my body faded and I dropped to the hardwood just as the stake drove into the brick.

Mother
fucker
. I climbed to my feet again, brushed the dust off my jeans. Nate stared down at his brother’s corpse and fired a few more bullets into him for good measure.

Late afternoon sun returned to the sky outside the cabin, and though it significantly cut down on the number of places I could stand in the room without being burned, I was grateful to see it.

Nate faltered, weakening fast from his little time dimension trick on top of the magical beating he’d taken. I rushed over as quickly as I could with everything in me aching top to bottom, and caught his arm.

“Have I ever told you how much I love that time-freezing thing?”

“I’m just glad I never told him I could do that.” He tossed the gun to the floor. Stared at Sean for another twenty seconds, this his gaze drifted to Peter.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered as I wrapped my arms around him and buried my face in his shoulder.

He returned the embrace and ran a hand back through my hair, sagging against me heavily as I did him. “Are you all right?”

“I’ve been through worse. At least I didn’t get shot this time.”

“Yeah, I could get used to not having bullets hit my body all the time too.”

Except all over the supernatural underworld, people know Nate’s worth forty million dead
. It wasn’t over—it would never be over. Plenty more wanted the final O’Connor heir dead.

Forty
million
...

I squeezed him tighter, forcing away my guilty thoughts.

“You should probably take care of Jamie,” Nate reminded me.

Right. And that was something I’d enjoy. I turned to the devil himself. Jamie was exactly where I left him: impaled to the wall. Releasing Nate, I walked over to Jamie. The ax waited on the floor; I scooped it up on my way by. When I wrenched the poker free from his chest, Jamie collapsed on his knees.

Still severely weakened, he looked up at me. A smile started...

’Til he saw the ax.

“Baby, c’mon,” he pleaded.

“I told you I don’t like pet names.” I raised the ax and slammed it down on his arm, just below the shoulder. The limb fell to the ground and Jamie screamed—the sound was
glorious
, almost musical. I sighed, contented, the raging fire in me quelled for a moment at the sight of his pain. He tumbled forward.

Nate came to stand beside me, peering down at Jamie as well. “And next comes the disemboweling?”

“No, I just felt like hacking off something. I’m too tired to get creative in a vengeful way today—he’s not worth the time and effort. I’ll settle for a bit of pain, then certain death.”

Jamie rolled onto his back and, despite the circumstances, he started to laugh. “I can’t believe you picked Junior over me, you stupid cunt.”

I swung the ax down on the wrist still attached to his body.

“Just ‘a bit’ of pain?” Nate asked.

I shrugged. “Okay, a bit more than that. More like ‘some’ pain.”

Jamie continued to laugh. “You’re both dead.”

“
Tsk tsk.
” I shook my head. “Says the vampire who’s losing limbs by the second.”

“You really plan to spend the next fifty years taking care of him? You’ll slip up and you’ll both be dead.” Jamie laughed harder and harder, tears spilling down his cheeks.

His mirth ceased as I brought the ax down on his neck, however.

I dropped the weapon and it thumped at my feet. Stared down at his head as it rolled to the side. His words still played in my head.

“The cars aren’t damaged, so we should be able to drive out of here at sunset.” Nate’s hand wrapped around my arm.

My eyes burned, itched with building tears. Fuck—I
couldn’t
do it. Just couldn’t. I loved him, right? Couldn’t do this to someone I loved, who actually loved me back. Someone who spent months searching for me, who didn’t leave me alone in the dark place. Someone who risked his life—gave his blood—to save me.

But Jamie was right. Ambitious assassins and bounty hunters everywhere would be looking for Nate. Forty million dollars was at stake and no matter if it took one year or ten, they wouldn’t stop looking. Forty million...

Nate was closer now. His arm closed over my shoulder, hand smoothed my hair from my face. “What’s wrong?”

I remained silent.

“It’s Jamie? You did feel—”

I shook my head vehemently, hot tears burning my cheeks as they fell.

Once again, when forced to choose between a hot guy and a hell of a lot of money, and you’ve got three centuries of perspective—not to mention bad relationship experience—the choice is surprisingly simple.

My fangs grew.

“I love you,” I whispered.

Epilogue

And the Moral of the Story Is...

I was a very wealthy woman after that.
Very
. Not only did an anonymous contractor give me forty million for Nate’s death, but I also decided to collect the modest bounty on Heaven. No one asked whether or not I actually killed her—they just wanted a digital photo of her corpse, which I provided. Add to that the reward from the surviving North American covens for taking out the person behind all their troubles, and at the end of the day—well, okay, it was more like the week—I had over fifty-five million dollars in the bank.

Like I said:
very
wealthy
.

Sure, I didn’t need all that money. My payment for killing Sean was enough to keep me living comfortably for a while. So I gave generously to my favourite charities.
VETA
, or “Vampires for the Ethical Treatment of Animals” is a big one. There are more members out there then you’d think, and I’ve probably been the group’s greatest contributor in recent years. We vamps also have our own branch of
Greenpeace
. In thanks for my considerable donation, they have promised to send me a pretty calendar every year. And of course I attended the firefighter’s annual charity ball.

My other positive contribution to society? Well, a lot of vampires died in the fight at Sean’s complex. Of the ones that didn’t, still more were killed by Hunters later on. Many of them had new vampires they’d changed and left in their graves, intending to retrieve them when it was time. Now that their sires were gone, someone had to help before they went crazy and ate children like I did when I was changed, so I’ve done what I can to hunt down the orphans and help them. If I believed in karma, I think that would net me some major points.

Perhaps enough to offset the deficit from killing my lover.

Rescuing vampires isn’t much of a career, though, so I’m also one of the world’s top assassins. It’s not like I need the cash, but the prestige is nice and I need something to pass the time. Politicians, religious leaders, supernatural beings—you name them, pay a decent fee, and I’ll kill ’em.

Perhaps I didn’t need to kill Nate simply for some extra money. No, scratch that: I
know
I didn’t have to...

But Jamie, bless his little black heart, was right. I couldn’t spend the next fifty years running from people trying to kill my boyfriend. We were doomed—star-crossed lovers, like Romeo and Juliet. If Juliet had to murder Romeo at the end.

Anyway. It was a hopeless situation. And though I had assured Peter I wouldn’t betray his friend, I realized I didn’t exactly have a choice. He was going to die either way, so I don’t think anyone can really blame me.

I did spend the hours until dusk at the cabin sobbing over Nate’s body, though. That’s something I’ve never admitted to anyone and I even deny it to myself sometimes. I missed him already, and the moment he breathed his last breath, something of both Ana and Zara died with him—a void opened up, one I knew I would never fill, no matter how much money I had or how many lovers I took over the years. A void that was infinitely worse than the dark place or anything I’d ever experienced in my unlife. Everyone he’d ever trusted fucked him over and I leapt in line to do the same. That kind of guilt is hard to get over.