Midnight Moonrising (Moonrising #2)(89)

He grinned. "Good, because I'm dying to know what it takes to upset you enough to kill someone. And you must have badass skills. I've been killing them for years. It's not that easy, and I'm immortal. You're just a human."

Her eyes became serious. "A vampire's assistant isn't as weak as humans are. We drink their blood to prolong our lifespan. It makes us stronger, too. Not nearly as strong as a vampire, but we certainly have more strength than humans do."

"I wasn't trying to offend you, Lea."

She nodded. "I know. You really didn't. I just gave up that life a long time ago. I don't consider myself human anymore. I'm a VA."

Roel laughed. "A VA? C'mon, we need to think up a cooler name for you if you're not human. A VA sounds too weak for someone who can take down a vampire."

She laughed again. She laughed again!

"What do you suggest I call myself?"

"I'll think about it and we'll throw superhero names back and forth after we finish Q for Q. That okay?"

Lea beamed at him. "Yeah, I'd like that."

He sniggered. "Okay, VA, why did you kill a vampire?"

She lost her smile. "My brother saw me when I was getting into my car at the supermarket—"

"You have a brother?"

She inhaled deeply as her hand came up, but before she could start shaking that finger, Roel told her to go on.

"I ignored him when he shouted my name, and then I hurriedly fled the parking lot, hoping I could lose him before I got to Phoenix's compound. I thought I had lost him, but I guess he slipped into the gate before it closed fully. I was so shaken that I honestly wasn't paying that close attention. Phoenix has killed others for less, but he didn't even chastise me. I guess he thought me losing my brother was punishment enough.

"I never thought I would see him again. You see, I, uh… something happened to me when I was seventeen and my brother went to prison for taking revenge on the guys who hurt me. He was the only one who believed me and he went to prison for making them pay. I blamed myself. Even my parents blamed me; they said I had probably asked for it or provoked them, if it even happened at all. So I ran away from Indiana. Phoenix found me, homeless, when I was twenty and took me in. I honestly never expected to see him again," she pleaded, like Roel wouldn't understand or believe her, either. He just watched her intently and waited for her to finish, but inside—inside, his blood was boiling at the thought of anyone hurting her. "And when I heard him calling my name at the market, I knew I had to get away. There was no way I could explain the years I haven't aged. I should look like I am in my early thirties instead of my early twenties.

"I was in my room trying to calm down and think about what to tell Phoenix, since I had lied to him and told him that I had no family, when I heard the shouting from the living room. Santino had already ripped his throat out by the time I got to them. He was close to killing me, too, but Jaxon came in just before he had the chance." She stared at her trembling hands as she finished. "I've thought about nothing except different ways I could kill him since that night."

Roel opened his mouth to ask how she'd done it, and then remembered it was her turn to ask him a question and he would only have to wait anyway. Instead, he made a statement. "After hearing that story, I only have one thing to say."

"What's that?"

"That if those f*ckers who hurt you are still alive, they won't be after I find them."

"They're dead," she whispered. "My brother killed both of them."


"None of that was your fault—what they did, what your brother did, or that he found you and followed you into a vampire's lair. You believe that, don't you?"

"I guess so," she said.

Roel was on his feet and pulling her up to hers before she barely got those words out. Her expression was one of terror, but he couldn't stop himself. "Lea, are you crazy? You were the victim, not them. You can't control what people do. You can only control what you do after the damage is done."

She was trembling under his palms, and he hated that he was scaring her. He couldn't help it. His emotions were all over the damn place. What he really wanted to do was protect her, to let her know that nothing or nobody would ever hurt her again, but what he did next surprised even him.

He kissed her.





Chapter 46



Jaxon





Feeling a little too full from his feeding, Jaxon fumbled with the hotel room key, putting it in upside down first then backward.

"Piece of shit!" he complained, then smiled when the green light on the door lock mechanism gave him the go ahead. "Third time's a charm."

As he pushed his way into the room, two things became bluntly evident to him at the exact same time. One, Lea was out of bed, and two, he was about to murder one of Mena's mutts.

He flew across the room so fast that Roel barely had time to register that he and Lea weren't the only two people in the room, before Jaxon punched him so hard in the face that the act knocked the guy over the sofa and into the wall eight feet behind it.

He shook his head when the blow rattled his own headspace, but he didn't stop. Ignoring Lea's screams, Jaxon bounded over the sofa and landed on top of him, his knee nailing Roel right in the gut and holding him down so he could pound on his braincase.