Gaslight (Crossbreed #4)(53)
I flattened my hands on the glass, my eyes trained on his neck. “Give me back my memory.”
He pushed his finger through a hole and tilted my chin up. His eyes met mine, and I willingly fell into their hazel depths. When he spoke, it was a raspy lyric I’d heard many times. “I put a spell on you… because you’re mine.”
Pieces moved around inside my head like blocks shifting in a puzzle. When I fell out of his gaze, everything flooded back from past to present day.
Everything.
He was Chaos, the man I’d met at Nine Circles of Hell on our last case. We’d had engaging conversations, and I actually liked him. He was the friendly guy sitting beside me at Claude’s salon, the messenger who showed up at our door and handed me a letter he wrote himself—letters he’d been sending to Viktor. He was the Phantom at Patrick Bane’s masquerade ball. At another party, I’d followed him outside, only to have him charm me for information about items we confiscated from Pawn of the Dead. His looks hadn’t changed much, his hair always styled the same. Sometimes the color was bleached blond with dark roots and other times closer to white. He always wore those black ear studs.
My jaw slackened. It didn’t just start with Pawn of the Dead and a key. He was there when Viktor sent Christian to pick me up at the bakery. I remembered him eating a chocolate éclair and then speaking to me before dashing out into the rain. All those years living on the streets, he was there. Sometimes he’d wander into Ruby’s and ask me what was good on the menu. Other times he’d pass me on the street and smile. I always felt easy with him, as if we shared an indescribable connection. I also remembered each time he scrubbed my memory of him, and not always immediately after an encounter. He’d save them up and find just the right opportunity to catch me alone and wipe it all away.
Going back even further, I remembered a dark time in my life when I stood at a crossroads. We met at a bar, and Houdini made me forget the emptiness of my life. Then we went to his car, talked some more, and he offered me immortality. I was drunk with hope.
He drank my blood and then shared his own.
A person never forgets the day they were made, but oddly, I’d never been able to remember my maker’s face. His pale skin with the tiniest moles I found attractive, his wild locks of hair, the lines etched in his face when he smiled, the way he’d sometimes bite his thumbnail, and even the details of our conversation—gone. It wasn’t trauma that made me forget his face and our chats; Houdini had scrubbed me. And he didn’t do it years later when we met again on the streets; he’d blurred himself from my memories just as soon as my Vampire heart took its first beat.
Houdini was my maker.
Chapter 14
The instant my memories returned, I hurled the small chair against the glass and then tried to pull the table apart. It was bolted down, so it only fueled my anger.
That monster.
When I heaved the mattress across the room, Houdini turned his back on me. I stalked into the bathroom and gripped the sink, staring up at my reflection. The old Raven appeared, and she looked back at me and said, “What are you gonna do about it?”
I reached down and took off my boots. After gripping one firmly in my hand, I smashed the mirror with the heel. A crack formed, and after I hit it hard a few more times, shards dropped into the sink and onto the floor. I grabbed a sharp piece and held it to my wrist.
“Raven, don’t hurt yourself!” Houdini pounded against the glass wall to get my attention, but it only made me more determined to do the opposite of what he wanted.
Could I regenerate an entire hand? Was that possible? I’d come to find that anything was possible in the Breed world. Maybe the blood would be enough to help the bracelet slide off. I needed to try anything to regain my powers and have a fighting chance to escape. Eventually he’d have to come inside the room. My daddy taught me that sitting ducks end up on the dinner plate.
Blood trickled down my hand, and I grimaced as my flesh sliced in two.
The main door swung open, and Houdini moved in like a flash.
Before he could tackle me, I lashed out and sliced the glass across his chest. Bright-red blood spread through the fibers of his white tank top. He gripped my hand and forcibly removed the shard, the glass tearing through my palm. I recoiled from the pain, and as I turned away to grab my boot off the floor, he yanked me back and held me from behind.
“Stop this before it goes too far,” he snarled.
I anchored my feet on the edge of the toilet and pushed, but he didn’t budge. Though Houdini wasn’t a man of brawn, his Vampire magic gave him irrefutable strength. I wanted to bite his arm but resisted the urge. It would be futile in breaking his hold, and I also didn’t want to ingest his blood.
“Let me go! Get your hands off me!” I kept pulling on the bracelet, the blood helping it slide just a little bit lower than before.
“Only if you stop this childishness.”
When I snapped my head back, I struck him in the face. “If you think fighting for my life is childish, wait’ll you see my temper tantrum.”
In a motion too fast to track, he spun me around and cradled my head, his thumbs pushing up my eyelids and forcing me to look at him.
“Stay still,” he said tersely, his voice drenched with so much power that it willed me into submission. He walked backward until we were out of the bathroom. After pushing me up to the glass wall, our eyes locked on each other like magnets. “Your body is stone. You won’t be able to move until I give you permission.”