Deathless (The Vein Chronicles Book 2) Read online

  He’d moved then, from the chair to the bed, where he’d pinned me with his body and piercing stare. “Creepy is looking at the woman you love do her best corpse impression for four fucking days, three hours and eight minutes and having to remind yourself that she’ll be coming back to you with some sarcastic bullshit in no time,” he growled. “Knowin’ that still didn’t make shit better. So I’m going to have to fuck you into my skin so I can feel you in every inch of me.”

  Then he did just that. During which he’d given me a great breakfast of his blood.

  I was supplementing with vodka, since he’d just left to go back to his place to make sure the truce was still holding steady and exert some authority.

  He’d been loath to leave me and I’d been dreading it, which was why I’d insisted he go.

  I had some work to do as well, which didn’t include the war and the witches and the curse. I had a company to run too.

  But then Rick had ruined that plan. I placed my bottle back in its place, turning to see him standing unnaturally close to me.

  Like right up in my grill.

  I frowned at him. “Ever heard of personal space?”

  His eyes flickered over every inch of me. “You’ve found yourself in the middle of things you don’t understand. In the middle of a war that has no place for you at the same time as it’s the only place you belong.” His voice was rough, not flat and emotionless as was his default.

  I screwed up my nose in unease. “The only place I truly belong is the shoe department at Barneys,” I countered.

  His eye twitched. And his hand came up to push a red strand of hair from my face.

  The gesture gave me pause.

  It was tender.

  Kings didn’t do tender.

  Neither did vampires.

  And yet he was doing both.

  “You need to leave this behind, Isla,” he growled. “This death wish you have, throwing yourself into situations where the underworld beckons you.”

  I scowled at him. “You’re the one who put me there in the first place,” I hissed. “Remember? You stood in this very apartment and all but ordered me to be a part of this war.”

  His eyes went to stone. “And now I’m ordering you to take yourself from it.”

  I blinked at him in surprise. I couldn’t even mask it. Of all the things Rick could order me to do, this was the most confusing.

  And fucking irritating.

  “Sorry, not your call,” I told him.

  “As your king, it’s precisely my call.”

  Well, that was the wrong thing to say.

  “You think you can control me?” I asked, my voice tight. “Because of a crown or a title or blood? No. Those things can’t control me. I can’t even control me. It’s them.” I tapped my head. “The demons, the remnants, the darkness—they’re in charge. I just drive the bus while they tell me which way to go. Sometimes I’ll go off-road when I’m feeling brave or bored, but most of the time the demons are doing the driving and I’m doing the steering. You’d do well to remember that since they’re currently deciding whether to run you down.”

  “You won’t run me down,” he declared. “Won’t destroy me. Because part of you knows that what I can offer you is more than Thorne can. A crown. Power. And something more than the death that awaits you, that’s written in this fucking prophecy,” he seethed, his eyes alight with fury.

  Again he caught me by surprise, his sudden unfurling of emotion and exposure of sentiments towards me that I thought were long lost.

  I was wrong, apparently.

  There’s a first time for everything.

  Luckily I recovered quickly.

  “Sorry, but I can’t date you, or even be your queen. I’m kind of fated to be with this other guy. Written in the stars. Or in blood. Fate of the world and all that. But if the entire human race didn’t depend on that? Maybe. Or maybe not. Considering the whole love thing.”

  Something moved in his face, the furrowing of his brows and the intensity in his eyes slightly jarring, even for me.

  “Didn’t you say yourself, Isla, that you didn’t like rules? A prophecy is a rule, the biggest of our kind. Most important. You’d think it’d be your biggest victory yet,” he invited.

  I raised my brow at him. “Is the leader of our race insinuating that I should break a rule that may or may not end the world in order for him to get laid? Dude, that’s a lot for a man to get his end away.”

  He clutched my hips. “It’s more than that and you know it. And you also know that prophecy is not a reason for what you are going to die for. Because that’s what will happen. I can taste it.”

  I gave him an even look. “You know what I can taste? Apart from the sweet aftertaste of Thorne’s blood that satisfied my hunger after he’d satisfied another kind of hunger.” I ignored the sharp pain that came with the flexing of Rick’s hands at my hips at this. “I taste hidden motives.” I stepped from his hands, the struggle only slight but enough to give me pause. Not that I showed him. I made it look effortless and graceful because that was just how I rolled.

  “No, I don’t believe your feelings for me go to the deep part of you that breaks through all that honor and duty and kingmanship that you cling to like a baby clings to a security blanket. Yeah. You’ve got the hots for me—you’re only inhuman, after all. But it’s something that stems from whatever Thorne and you enjoy that is starting to get on my nerves.” I folded my arms, the ultimate female battle stance that was even more dangerous than showing fang. “So I’m going to have to demand that you tell me.”

  A muscle in his jaw ticked. “I’m your fucking king. You don’t demand shit of me. Not if you want to live.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Another death threat? The ink is barely dry on my pardon. A personal best for me, for sure. But victory doesn’t taste as sweet with empty threats. Sure, I’ll take it, but I know you’re not going to kill me.”

  His eyes darkened. “I might not kill you, but that doesn’t mean I won’t do the same to someone else. I know you don’t need to kill a vampire who loves a human in order to end their immortality. Merely prey on the mortal who is so much more susceptible to things like death and you’ve killed an immortal in a way that they’re dead for eternity.”

  He’d barely spoken the words before I had him by the throat and slammed against the wall so hard the plaster cracked and my favorite painting went tumbling to the ground. “You see, that was just stupid,” I whispered. “Threatening Thorne like that. Because you speak as if you have some knowledge on ending immortal’s lives. Then you must know those immortals in question would likely do something to preserve their eternity. You know, basic survival and all that. So it baffles me, when you know how narcissistic I am and concerned with my remained survival—and, by proxy, Thorne’s—that you’d so blatantly threaten me. Love makes people unhinged. I’m already unhinged, so I would have likely hurt you, king or not, if you threatened a favorite pair of shoes of mine. Now that you’ve threatened Thorne?”

  I shook my head.

  “I’ll toast marshmallows on your corpse without fucking hesitation,” I hissed, squeezing his throat so the pleasing crack of bones resounded in my ears. I also reveled in the explosion of blood vessels in those calm eyes, filling them with crimson.

  Then I was staring at the roof, pressure on my own throat and a niggling pain in my back from shards of glass belonging to the coffee table Rick had just ruined by slamming me onto it. He towered above me, the crimson in his eyes already retreating with the speed of his healing, but there was still blood in them.

  I lay there, mostly because his hand was at my throat and I couldn’t exactly move, but I could’ve attempted it. I was just too interested in where he was going to take it, considering the king hadn’t ever lost control like that in the short time I’d known him.

  It was pretty fun seeing that side of him. You didn’t really know someone well until you’d seen them homicidal.

  “You break all my rules so co
nsistently, Isla, and without reproach. You think you’re untouchable,” he whispered. “That because of my feelings for you, you’ll survive this war.”

  “No,” I choked. “I’ll survive this war because I’m awesome.”

  Then I moved, pushing myself up so I could reach under the sofa where I’d idly taped an enchanted blade Sophie had made for me a week back, before she’d disappeared on some prophecy mission, and lifted it to Rick’s throat.

  His hand was still at mine, but it paused at the proximity of the fatal blade. His eyes didn’t radiate much fear, if any.

  Not because he didn’t think I’d do it; he couldn’t know that, considering I wasn’t even sure. No, it was that same look he’d had when Sophie had turned on him in the woods. A resignation with death in a way that he wouldn’t passively welcome it—a warrior would never do that—but in the way that a warrior knew death was inevitable for them. In a way that meant the warrior might spend their life fighting battles against death but recognized that death would always be the truest victor.

  “I’ll survive this war not because of feelings a man has for me, mortal or vampire,” I informed him. “I’ll survive because you two might be warriors intent on survival, but so am I. And I’m also a woman. We’re great at double standards. So I’ll make sure I’m taller, better, faster, stronger, to quote Kayne. Why not throw some Gloria Gaynor in there too? I will survive. I must survive. And that means Thorne will too. And that will be the last time you threaten him.”

  I lowered the blade.

  “And now you’ll tell me what the fuck is going on with you I’ve had more than enough of being in the dark. I know monsters are meant to reside there, but then no one would be able to marvel at the mastery of the winged liner I’ve perfected over the years. So in the light it must be. It’s easier to see the blood there, anyway.”

  Rick towered over me, as I was still on my back on the coffee table. Technically he had the upper hand. If you were stupid enough to believe technicalities, that was. And for a moment, I thought he actually might be.

  Stupid.

  But of course you didn’t live for a millennium and lord yourself over a race of immortals if you were stupid.

  Many mortal kings were stupid merely because those they ruled over were as stupid as their rulers. Not the case with vampires.

  So this one extended a hand that wasn’t exactly an olive branch but wasn’t exactly a dagger either.

  I took it.

  Because I wasn’t stupid either.

  Brushing the glass from my skirt, I regarded him. “You going to spill it?”

  “I can’t say this without Thorne here,” he said.

  I frowned at him. “I thought you were the king of an immortal race. You spend a good amount of time telling me there’s pretty much nothing you can’t do, although I would like to see you fold a fitted sheet, just as a side note. But I thought you’d be more than willing to expose the secret, if that’s what it is. Such a lovely way to undermine Thorne and give you a shot at whatever you’ve fantasized would be us.”

  His level gaze unnerved me. It would have turned me on too, if it weren’t for the whole love thing. “I’m a man and a vampire. I don’t need underhanded tactics to win me what I want. That’s not how a man does things.”

  I rolled my eyes. “It’s how a vampire does things,” I stated. “And this particular one”—I pointed at my chest—“is rather an expert at underhanded tactics.”

  He stared at me. “You’ll find out. He will tell you and I will. And I crave that moment because I know exactly what kind of vampire, and once you understand the depth of what this is and what’s been hidden for you, prophecy won’t stop your wrath. But I also know what kind of woman you are. I see it in your eyes. The love. It isn’t prophecy.

  So that’s how I know that the wrath of the vampire will never measure up to the love of a woman, no matter how much I wish it to the contrary.”

  The pause was loaded with that foreboding I’d been ignoring like I did the fact that velvet was trying to make a comeback.

  Rick stepped back. “I am interested in watching the battle between the woman and the vampire nonetheless.”

  And on that parting note, he was gone.

  “I’m not happy about this,” Thorne grumbled as we walked through the halls of the king’s mansion.

  The king who had been at my home, not a handful of hours before, doing things like trying to seduce me, kill me, and then finally freak me the fuck out about secrets. Secrets I couldn’t even demand to know since Sophie had come back from her little witchcation and requested this meeting, here of all places.

  “I honestly feel like so many of our conversations are beginning with you either not being happy enough or you being very happy.” I paused. “The very happy on account of they begin at some point in the night or early hours of the morning when I get bored of the fact that you have to sleep and wake you up in the most inventive of ways.”

  I enjoyed the way that, despite his insistence to stay dark and broody and all around pissed-off alpha badass mode, his eyes flickered with that depraved darkness I loved so much.

  I wondered if that was with the memory of the certain wonderfully depraved act I’d committed that very night in order to up his spirits for the fact that we had to be in this very mansion where, not a few weeks ago, we’d been scheduled for execution in front of my family and peers.

  It had lasted until we got inside, past the grim-faced guards posted at the door, at least.

  He had to get with the program that that was the way vampires rolled. If everyone stopped going to places where they were almost executed, then they wouldn’t be able to go anywhere, especially not the hottest parties.

  Or maybe that was just me.

  Not that this was exactly a hot party. But it was necessary.

  “I’m not happy they canceled Twin Peaks,” I retorted when his broody silence served as response to my words. “Or that we’re in this war at all. But here we are, and we need a war council now that we’re finally planning on fighting in a war. Because I was under the impression that’s what you actually do. It was a good thing I stayed out of the last ones because I likely would have made them a lot worse, out of pure boredom. The movies make it look so much more bloody and cruel and devastating. Why is it that I never get to have that?”

  Thorne stopped our walk to yank me to his body. “Because, Isla, you’ve had bloody, cruel, and devastating. That’s what you’re gonna have for eternity. Because that’s what we are. The war outside is nothing to what’s going on to between us. How about you enjoy fighting that war for a while?”

  “A while?” I asked his eyes.

  “Eternity,” he promised.

  I grinned at him. “If you can survive me that long.”

  Something moved in those eyes. “Babe, I can’t survive you. Don’t ever want to. You’re the most exquisite end. And the war? Promise you’ll fight that war for as long as our eternity.”

  It jarred me, his last statement. Never had we really questioned what we had. Never had Thorne even opened up the possibility that he considered less than eternity an issue.

  He was so sure, the stubbornness of an alpha male who’d gotten what he wanted for as long as he had.

  Sure, at the beginning we’d both fought it, being that we were natural enemies and all that jazz, and fighting before sex was pretty much the best kind of foreplay. And afterplay.

  But after we ‘went steady’ and I wore his football jersey and class ring, there were no doubts that either of us would go anywhere—apart from the grave, obviously. Some wondered whether their significant other would go out for a pack of cigarettes and never come back because of the boredom humans inevitably got with the monotony of life. For immortals, it was more. It was wondering whether their significant other would be coming back from the werewolf hunting expedition.

  Monotony of life may have been terminal for humans, but it might be the only thing that would save immortals.


  Problem was, when you had eternity, monotony might just kill the soul.

  You know, for those of us who had them. It just bored the utter shit out of me.

  But there Thorne was, asking me to love him forever, like something in front of the double doors opening for us might push me to go out for that proverbial pack of cigarettes.

  The doors opened but Thorne stopped me so my answer wouldn’t be heard by the inhabitants of the room.

  It amused me slightly because it was a total human gesture. The only way they couldn’t hear my answer was if the conversation was going on in the car we’d come in. While still on the highway.

  But I played along, meeting his eyes.

  “I don’t make a lot of promises,” I told him. “Wait, I guess I do. Because a broken promise is the most fun a girl can have with her clothes on.” I winked at him. He didn’t wink back, so I continued, not wanting to get overly sappy when the vampires of the room could hear me exchange the hearts and flowers. It would totally damage my street cred and ruin all the badassery I’d accumulated.

  “I can tell you that I’m a fighter before I’m a lover.” I paused. “Or I’m a lover and a fighter. Because that’s the only combination that ensures the most fun a girl can have with her clothes off.” I gave him another look. “So since you offer both of those things, a great battle for an eternity that supports my skills, I’ll make that promise.”

  My words may have been flippant and a little sarcastic, but in that wretched and somehow beautiful language that lovers seemed to have in which they saw the words under the words, he saw.

  That I was promising more than I ever had.

  Because that was what you did when you were tangled up in that bloody and terminal illness people called love. You made stupid eternity promises, despite the sense of foreboding at the look in your lover’s eyes.

  Because the words under Thorne’s wordless stare at my words and the intense kiss he pulled me in for were troubling. They made me think of a story that was much simpler than some wordy prophecy that wasn’t going to win any Pulitzers.