Page 22 of Vampire Sins
When Luke caught my gaze, his laughter faded, but his smile remained. “Wolf shifters,” he explained. He stood and brushed dirt from his pants. “They tell me that it’s time they lived up to their end of some old bargain.” When I gave him a confused look, he said, “I’m going back to Seattle. It’s time I freed my mother.”
My stomach dropped. I’d just reunited two of my four, and now Luke wanted to leave me?
“Then I’m going with you,” I said without dropping a beat. I grabbed Xavier’s hand. “Right? We’re going with him.”
Xavier gave me a raised brow. “How are a couple of mutts going to free a Seer from the confines of Seattle prison? If she wanted to get out, she would have done it by now. Seers are witches from powerful covens. They don’t do anything they don’t want to do.”
Luke gaped at him as if the vampire had said something profound. “And if a witch is excommunicated from her coven? What then?”
Xavier tilted his head. “Then, I suppose, she’d have considerably less power to draw upon.”
Luke clenched his fists. “Then she needs us. She’s been rotting in prison all this time for a crime she didn’t commit. She was training me, not torturing me. She doesn’t deserve to be there anymore.”
I gave Xavier a pleading look. “I must go with him. He’s right. Everything is settled here, isn’t it? The threat has passed?”
Xavier gave a raised brow to the toppled ruins and line of bodies. “Not sure I would call this ’settled,’ but we’re not in imminent danger anymore, if that’s what you mean.”
When Xavier gave me a smile that showed me his resolve was weakening, I grinned and wrapped my arms around his neck. “I’d do anything for any one of you. You know that, right?”
“Yes,” Xavier whispered in my ear before unlatching me and pushing me towards Luke. “That’s why we’re going to help the Seer. Let’s get on with it.”
With a sigh I curled myself into the angel and fitted my nose to his neck. My love for him was no different than my love for Xavier, but everything about him made sure that I knew it was Luke who held me tight. Instead of Xavier’s cool passion and deadly grace, Luke’s brute force and deep mystery shifted under my touch. I moved to kiss him, but when I smelled the sweetness of his blood, my fangs extended.
Luke felt the cool danger of my fangs pressed against his skin and flinched away from me. “So,” he said, running a thumb over my chin, “you’re his now.”
He misunderstood me. Just because his blood made me want to… bite, didn’t mean I was a mindless vampire. My eyes searched his and I hated that my eyes glowed red. All he could see is a vampire, but I’d prove him that I was still the Sonya he remembered. “I still remember us,” I persisted and gripped his forearms. I brought his hands to my stomach, slipping his fingers under my shirt so that he could feel the magic of my blazing runes for himself. “The bond is complete, but I need all of us together.” My gaze flicked to the sky as my stomach churned with renewed dread. I’d cemented my bond just in time for what was coming next. Derek and Apollo hadn’t been the real threat. The shadows of my nightmares were coming, and now I knew they weren’t dreams at all.
They’d been visions of the future.
“I have to reunite all of us,” I whispered, and didn’t speak the rest of my thoughts aloud. Destiny had kept my men apart and spread across the planet for good reason, reuniting them with me one by one. A dragon, an angel, a vampire, and a mortal who was too smart for his own good would be a deadly combination. I couldn’t simply just shove all of them into a room together and expect everything to work out. No, they would awaken a frightening force that rested in my soul, and there was only one person who would know how to handle that.
The Seer who had prepared her son to save me. Luke’s mother was the key to saving us all.
Coming Home
Sonya
Xavier’s ideaof travel was a lot faster than mine… and involved a heavy dose of magic.
“No way am I using that thing,” I said stubbornly as I crossed my arms and glowered at the rusted archway that separated us from Seattle.
The low tunnels beneath Venice ran deep, with smaller branches leading out to portals the witches had activated to each supernatural stronghold. Because of Derek, being the Incubus King and all, meant there was a portal directly to the Seattle Mansion. Looking into the living room which held that alluring painting of Silvia made my skin crawl. It was a lifetime ago since I’d been there last, but that’s not what had me on edge. We hadn’t seen Derek ever since Apollo had been killed. He’d gathered as much of his makeshift army as he could and retreated. Apollo never should have let him go.
“It’s the fastest way,” Xavier insisted, slipping an arm around my waist. He glanced at Luke who glowered at the rippling portal, clearly just as reluctant as I was about stepping into the Incubus King’s living room.
“Let’s just get this over with,” Luke declared before stepping into the portal without warning.
My heart lurched as soon as Luke was gone. The rune to the left of my navel flared to life without warning, punishing me for letting Luke out of my sight. I doubled over, but managed to keep an eye on the angel through the hazy shimmer of the portal.
Two incubi immediately accosted him, one punching him in the face, lashing the angel’s head to the side. His hair slapped over his forehead and he brushed it away with a growl.
“Are you all right?” Xavier asked, seemingly oblivious that Luke was under attack.
I growled at the vampire. “Just get in there and help him, and drag me through with you!” I wasn’t interested in being punished by Xavier’s rune as well.
By the tight-lipped frown Xavier gave me I expected him to argue. Perhaps this had been part of his plan to get me all to himself, but my doubts were relieved when he wrapped his fingers around my wrist and pulled me through the portal.
Electricity and magic filtered through my veins, making sure I was fully aware that I’d just violated a whole bunch of rules of physics by bending time and space to get to Seattle.
