Wicked Bite (Night Rebel #2)(61)

“I saw your face when Ian told us what you were.” Her voice softened. “Don’t worry, the others didn’t catch it. They’d have to have lived it to do that, and they didn’t. But I did.”

If I’d suddenly been stripped naked, I would have felt less exposed. Ian had caused me to feel this way many times, but I trusted him, while I barely knew the woman across from me. Once again, I threw up my Law Guardian front as if it were a shield.

“I don’t know what you’re speaking of.” My voice sounded cool and composed, to my relief.

She snorted. “Bullshit. You’re barely holding it together, and I don’t blame you. I thought I had it rough, hiding what I was for a couple decades. You’ve been hiding for thousands of years while masquerading as a stick-up-your-ass vamp cop. Falling in love and then nearly losing Ian was the last straw, wasn’t it?” Another too-knowing look. “Twice, I thought Bones had died, and I lost my shit to epic degrees both times. No matter how tough we think we are, loss like that cuts too deep to handle, doesn’t it?”

Each word smashed through my defenses faster than I could rebuild them. Worse, she wasn’t done.

“I don’t know how you brought Ian back from the dead, but I bet it took all the power from the part of yourself you’ve been hiding to do it. There’s no putting that genie back in the bottle once it’s out, either. I remember that from when I was fighting against my vamp side. The scariest part was how much I loved giving in to that power when I finally did let go . . . and let everything in me out for all to see.”

“What are you, the half-breed whisperer?” I snapped, too rattled to continue hiding behind my stick-up-the-ass vamp cop persona, as Cat had described it.

Her dark-gray gaze glinted with green. “I’m not, but after all this time, you should be. The fact that you aren’t means someone told you that your other half was bad when you were young enough to believe them. I don’t know who that was—”

“Stop,” I ordered, horrified to feel tears start to well. How had she reduced me to this so quickly? Or had I done it to myself? Was I still as out of control as she’d insinuated?

“But you must have trusted that person, to believe them this long,” she went on, her tone turning flintlike despite the new sympathy in her eyes. “Must have loved them, too. Only someone you love could mess you up this bad, this long. My mom sure did a number on me, but she was wrong, just like whoever worked you over emotionally was wrong, too—”

“You know nothing!”

Now I was shouting, and my vision turned ominously dark. I would tolerate her filleting me, but I would rip her blood out and bathe in it before I allowed her to disrespect my sire.

“Tenoch was not wrong. He never would have changed over the world’s most ruthless warlord right before he died unless he knew that part of me was so dangerous, there had to be someone equally dangerous to stop me if I ever truly let that half of myself free!”

Wetness hit my cheeks. I thought it was my tears until I saw the drops flying from Cat’s eyes before feeling more tiny splashes on my skin. I hadn’t meant to yank her tears from her, but I had, and from the flush filling her skin, her blood was also rising to the surface faster than she could’ve directed it.

I spun around, squeezing my eyes shut while trying to force my other nature down before I did bathe in her blood. Go away, go away, go away! I chanted at it.

It wasn’t enough.

Desperately, I sent my senses out to the fountain in front of Ian’s house. Then I blasted my rage into the water it contained instead of the woman who’d cut through centuries of scabs to effortlessly stab me in my deepest wound. I felt the water boil before it iced over so fast, the extreme temperature change shattered the stones. The sound of the fountain exploding was so loud, it masked the crash the library door made when Bones flung it open.

“What’s wrong?” Bones demanded. “Felt a burst of power coming from this room.”

I turned to see Ian right behind Bones. Cat was still staring at me, but at least she wasn’t covered in blood. Neither was anything else in the room. The only damage was what Bones had done to the wall with the door.

Good. I’d caught myself in time.

“Oh, that was just me, being totally not dangerous,” I said in a scathingly bright tone. “Now, I think I’ll go check on our prisoner by myself, thanks.”

I would’ve left, if one of Ian’s guards hadn’t run into the room in the next moment. He was covered in blood, making me think I hadn’t directed all my rage at the fountain outside. Then his panted words made me think again.

“She escaped!”

“How?” Ian demanded, already shoving past him.

The guard ran to catch up with Ian. I did, too, which meant I caught the guard’s reply.

“We don’t know! One minute, she was chained to the chair. The next, the three of us were bloody and she was gone!”

“Sound the alarm,” Ian ordered. “She needs to be found!”

“Don’t you feel where she is?” I asked him, surprised.

Ian’s mouth tightened. “No, I don’t.”

Yonah’s spell had given Ian a significant range. Even if Ereshki had somehow gotten free the moment after she’d left our sight, she couldn’t have run that far in such a short time.