Dylan (Bowen Boys, #3)(54)
“You are trying my patience.” He felt spittle drip from his mouth. He wasn’t sure what to do with her, or the cat. Moving the knife deeper into her flesh, he watched as a small drop of blood beaded up on the fresh wound. Fear of her suddenly tripled.
“You really think I would come in here without a plan? You think that because I’m a girl that I would come in here so ill prepared that I’d let you take me so easily?” She smiled at him and he felt shivers, cold and frightening, run down his spine. “Cut me again and I’ll kill you.”
Her voice had been so low, so full of promise, that he knew she would do just as she said she would. Lucius looked at the cat and saw that he was no longer sleeping but looking at him as well. In that second, he knew he wasn’t leaving this room.
“If I tell you where they are, will you let me go?” She laughed, hardy and with a great deal of humor. “I will tell you if you let me go.”
Her hand snaked out and grabbed his, the one with the knife, and she jerked him around so quickly that he had no choice but to follow the flow. As soon as his back was to the floor, she was over him, his knife at his own throat, and she was holding it.
“I know where they are. You had your manservant take them away when there was nothing much left of them but a shell. You tore out the daughter’s throat without feeding from her, because you were sick of her whining. The mother you enjoyed. Her blood was spiked with fear and anger. You killed them not an hour after you snatched them from their hotel the first day of their vacation.”
“There is no way that you would know that.” But there was, and she did know it, knew it all. “I demand that you give me my due. I wish to be brought before the council of my kind. I will stand before them in trial and not hunted and killed by you.”
She leaned down to him, the knife deep into his skin, yet not breaking it. She looked calm, and for whatever reason, that frightened him more. The woman was mad, he realized. Mad as a hatter. When she kissed his forehead, he jerked from her, and the knife cut him. He didn’t move when she pulled away.
“I’m your judge and your jury, you f*cking *. And we’ve gotten all I want from you, thanks to my mate.” The knife slid along his throat to his chest, where she paused. “I’m your executioner, too.”
The knife plunged deep. He knew the exact moment it touched his heart. Pain tore through him, and he worked quickly to repair the damage. It wasn’t silver, so he may survive, he thought. When she stood up off him, he grabbed at his chest, using his energy to stop the flow of blood and work at closing off the wound. Closing his eyes, he tried to make it look as if he was dying. Then there was sharpness at this throat.
She stood over him, a sword in her hands. He watched her pull it from his neck to a full arch above her body. He couldn’t move, couldn’t do anything as his energy level was too low from loss of blood. The silver blade came around, a work of beauty in the way that she and the sword seemed to be one. When it sliced though his neck, he had seconds to appreciate her strength and her aim. Few could have taken a head from a full-grown man as smoothly as she’d done.
Chapter Seventeen
Jack sat on the deck of her home and watched the river flow past. She’d been out there since the first rays of the sun had touched the mountain. The unopened box that the wizard had given them was under the chair where she sat. She looked up when the door opened behind her and Dylan stepped out.
“You couldn’t sleep?” She shook her head. “I’m worried about you. I thought that coming here would be good for you. You’ve not slept a whole night in over a week.”
She’d been sleeping but not restfully. She kept playing over and over in her head the way that the vampire had died. She shivered when she remembered him falling apart, his skin becoming hard and brittle as he—
“Stop that.” She looked at Dylan when he sat near her. “You can’t keep thinking about it. You saved us and my brother. Reed said he tried to talk to you about it again yesterday.”
“I’m not ready yet.” She kicked the box and leaned over to pick it up. “This came today. Khan sent it, I think. That man has the worst handwriting I’ve ever seen. And how on earth did he know the address here? I don’t even know it.”
“I called the post office and asked them. They said they have some of your mail there and asked if we were going to put up a mail box. I told them I didn’t know but we’d come in and get the mail today.” She nodded.
“I don’t want to open it. The box…I don’t want to open it. What if it’s stuff that would be from the vampire? I don’t want to….” She looked at the fast moving river again. “I have killed before, but when I took his life, I took it without him being able to fight back. I murdered him.”
She knew that he was aware of the dreams. It would be hard for him not to know since they slept together every night. She also knew that he was trying to help her, and she loved him for it. But she had killed a man, killed him when he’d had no way to defend himself. She looked over when Dylan picked up the box.
He tore at the packaging and then sat there for several seconds with the smallish chest on his lap. She knew it was heavy; when the postman handed it to her she knew that something more had been added, a great deal more. Jack wondered if Khan had sent something else with it, but all that was there were the chest and the wrapping. Dylan stood up.