A Shade of Doubt (A Shade of Vampire #12)(21)

Even as he started running, I couldn’t stop kissing every part of his skin that I could reach. I’d been scheming how to get back at Annora. But now I realized I really didn’t need to. Caleb had already chosen me. And that was enough to cut her deeper than anything I could possibly do to her. What Caleb had admitted to me was enough to wipe her out completely. I’d already won the battle. In fact, based on the way Caleb had just looked into my eyes, I suspected I’d won the battle before it had even begun.

Chapter 12: Rose

Caleb ran so fast my surroundings blurred. But he evidently was taking in every detail as we zigzagged across the remaining part of the island that he hadn’t yet explored. It looked much the same as the rest of the island: dense jungles and sandy white beaches. There was no sign of any human habitation here whatsoever.

As we arrived back at the spot on the beach where we’d first arrived in the submarine, Caleb stopped running.

“Well,” he said, wiping sweat from his brow, “there’s nothing here.”

“Where to now?”

I feared he was going to say back to our camp, but instead he said, “I want to go back to the area where we heard those screams last night. Clearly, there’s something about this island that we’re missing.”

I felt nervous as we raced back into the jungle and drew nearer and nearer to the spot.

He stopped, looking around a clearing covered by trees. “This is where the blood smells strongest still. It was around here that there were a group of humans.”

“What’s that?” I pointed to what appeared to be a piece of clothing a few feet away. He bent down and picked it up. It was a gray woolen shawl.

“You might as well keep it¸” he said, handing it to me.

I held it against my chest. This would be useful as a blanket, since it did get quite chilly up in the trees in the early morning and I couldn’t afford to get sick.

Caleb stood and searched the area for more clues that could help us to piece together what we’d found, but he discovered nothing more. So I climbed back onto Caleb and we returned to camp.

I groaned internally as Caleb finally stopped again at the foot of our tree, bracing myself to hear Annora’s voice grating against my ears, asking Caleb where we’d been.

But as we climbed up the tree, Annora wasn’t there. Caleb went to check near the lake, thinking she might have gone there for another bath, but he returned with a blank look on his face.

“She’s not there either,” he muttered.

Caleb did a broader search of the area, calling out her name, but with no reply.

As he climbed back up to me in our tree, he looked at me and shrugged. “I can’t imagine where she’s ventured off to alone…” He looked concerned. “I’ll wait a few hours. I’m sure she’ll be back. Wherever she’s gone, she obviously doesn’t want to be found.”

I hoped to God that she’d just done us all a favor and drowned in the lake or gotten swallowed whole by a giant anaconda. Or perhaps the spider venom has finally claimed her.

But I couldn’t shake the feeling that this was just an attention-seeking stunt. It wouldn’t have surprised me if she was hiding somewhere, hoping to draw a reaction from Caleb.

Well, even if that is the case, I don’t care anymore. Because Caleb is mine.

Chapter 13: Annora

As I’d floated in the lake, trying to wash out the green filth that was still plaguing the roots of my hair even after its sixth scrub, I’d sworn that I was done with this game. I wasn’t going to mess around with this girl any longer.

It was time that I cut to the chase.

Then the next morning, when I woke up alone to find my nose swollen from the spider bite, and then climbed out of bed to spot them standing in each other’s arms across the lake, I knew I couldn’t wait another day to do it.

My first attempt at finishing her off had failed. It was just as well, I supposed. Caleb had seemed to suspect that it was me. This time I needed to be more careful. Because, once I was successful at getting rid of her, if Caleb blamed me for it, it would take longer to make him fully mine again. For him to forgive me. I’d hoped that Rose was just a distraction, to take his mind off me. Now I feared that she had come to mean more to him than that. The situation had to be handled delicately.

I was sure that, with time, Caleb would forget her and lose himself to me again. I just needed the chance to remind him who I was and why he’d fallen in love with me to start with.

But to do that, I had to eliminate Rose.

It might be true that I had lost Caleb’s heart, but I would stop at nothing to reclaim it now.

The screams from the night before still playing in my ears, I left our tree and headed deeper into the jungle, toward where I thought the noise had emanated from. My progress through the trees was slow enough without shoes. I didn’t want to waste time stopping to treat my nose.

The moment I’d heard those screams, I’d had a sneaking suspicion what this island might be. And if my suspicions were correct, I was very, very lucky that we ended up on this island. Of all the places we could have washed ashore, this couldn’t have been a more perfect arrangement.

It was afternoon by the time I finally got confirmation of my suspicion. Although my throat was parched, my feet bleeding, I felt a sense of euphoria I hadn’t felt since first finding Caleb again in my heart that day I’d woken up as myself on Lilith’s island.