Page 75 of Discovery of the Vampire
By the time I slipped through the back door of the house, my skin was burning painfully from the first rays of sunlight. I locked the door behind me and leaned back against it, sliding down to sit on the cool tile floor when my legs wouldn't hold me up anymore.
That was too fucking close.
Absent-mindedly, I held my bare arms out in front of me. The skin was red, but hadn't started to blister yet. My face probably looked much the same. Just in case, I ran a hand over the top of my head to make sure it wasn't smoking.
"Brogan? Jesus Christ!"
Killian dropped to his haunches in front of me, his eyes roving over my face before he checked my arms. "Are ye alright?" he asked, slightly calmer when he didn't find anything that wouldn't heal itself in a few hours.
“I’m okay,” I told him. “Just cut it a little too close this time.”
"What happened?" Killian asked, helping me to my feet. "Where's Esme?"
"Cemetery," I muttered, stumbling toward the kitchen. I felt like I was drunk, but the effects of sunlight were brutal on a vampire. Even one as old as me. "With Alice Moss."
Killian's eyebrows shot up as he helped me onto one of the stools at the counter. "Alice? And Esme? What the hell were they doing together?"
“I’m not sure exactly, but I think they’re planning to take down Marcus.”
“By themselves?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know. I didn’t hear the entire conversation.”
He said nothing for a long time. “Tell me everything," he ordered. “From the beginning.”
And that's exactly what I did. Ending with waking up to find her gone. Following the call of her blood to the cemetery. Every word I'd overheard, and my desperate run home.
But with each sentence I said out loud, an uneasy feeling began to uncurl in my gut. Something didn’t make sense here. I stuttered to a stop as a sneaking suspicion arose. Not so much anything they’d said, but my intuition screamed that something was off with that meeting.
Killian tried to catch my eye. “What is it?”
I shook my head. I didn't want to tell him. Because I didn’t want to believe it. It couldn’t be true.
Could it?
“Brogan." Killian's voice had that edge to it—the one that made it impossible not to answer him.
"I think..." My throat constricted around the words, even as the sense of wrongness intensified. Gritting my teeth, I forced them out. "I think I’ve been wrong about her. About Esme. I think she’s working with Marcus. They both are.”
Killian didn't immediately dismiss my concerns, which only made it worse. He just watched me, his golden eyes calculating. “Why do ye think that?
God. Was I really so fucking stupid? I didn’t want to believe it, but I couldn’t shake this feeling. “Why else would they be sneaking around together? Meeting in secret?” I looked to Killian so he could tell me I was being ridiculous.
But he shook his head. “I don’t have an answer for ye, lad. Truth be told, it does seem rather suspicious.”
It suddenly occurred to me exactly who Alice had been referring to when she told Esme to be careful. She wasn’t talking about just anyone. She was talking aboutme.
ME.
She was telling Esme not to say anything to ME. Alice had probably sensed my blood inside of Esme the moment she saw her tonight. Just as she could sense Kenya's in Alex and Jamal's in Angel as any witch would. And she knew exactly what that meant.
My fangs ached to descend as fury and betrayal battled inside me. Had Esme been working with that bastard this entire time as I first suspected? Was this whole thing—was Esme herself—just an elaborate fucking trap?
I wanted to confront her. To make her feel what I was feeling. Yet I could do nothing but sit here and wait for the sun to go down.
But the physical threat to me paled in comparison to the storm building inside me, ripping me apart. I wanted to run. To fight. To do…something.
Esme had played me for afuckingfool. All this time I thought she was actually into me—the way she'd shown up at the club night after night, watching me, following me outside, asking questions about what I was, distracting me with kisses, with sex, with her blood—it hadn't been attraction or coincidence. It was calculation. A setup from the very beginning.
