Lothaire

40

“Something’s different about you,” the vampire said as soon as they’d appeared in his room.

I figured out some things about myself. “I can’t imagine.” And about you.

He’d begun doing that predatory stalking thing around her. “If only I could lie so easily. I will find out your secret.”

Grasping for a change of subject, Ellie asked, “What were you dreaming of when you traced earlier?” then bit her tongue when she saw a glimpse of raw anguish in his eyes.

His expression grew shuttered. “A memory . . . one of my own. Something I do not want to speak of.”

She had a pretty good idea of what. “Fair enough.”

“You’re not going to press?”

“You’ll tell me when you’re ready,” she said.

This really seemed to please him. He snatched her close to nuzzle her hair. “You smell like salt, sun, and tequila. Exotic to one like me.” He inhaled deeply, as if he wanted to take her scent into him—

Suddenly his body jerked with tension, and he set her away. “Why do I still scent a trace of Thaddeus—even when we’re away from him?”

“I’m sure we hugged.” But she could feel her cheeks getting flushed. Was her heart speeding up?

“You’re . . . lying. Why would you lie, unless . . .” His eyes shot flame-red.

“No, Lothaire, it isn’t like that!”

“Tell me what it was like,” he said softly before roaring, “or I’ll do murder!”

“I-I kissed him.”

“Then you’ve killed him.”

“Thad didn’t kiss me back! He was bewildered, just stood there. Afterward, he was mortified.”

“Then I’ll punish you more, slattern! I should string you up naked to a pole at the demon crossroads!” With a crazed bellow, he launched one of his fists into the wall, hitting it like a wrecking ball. The room shook. Another punch before he faced her, yelling, “Did you touch him?”

“No! In any case, why would you care? You keep telling me that I am not your Bride. Saroya is! What is one harmless kiss for a woman you’re gonna kill soon?”

“Tell me why you did it! Why in the fuck would you kiss him?”

“My reasons are my own!”

He laid his bleeding hand over her throat. “Tell me or I’ll wring your pretty little neck.”

Nothing had changed with Lothaire. Nothing. “You can’t.” She flailed from his grasp. “So take the needle off that record, vampire!”

“No, but I can kill your family! Shall I make you pick one relative over another to live?”

Oh, God, not them! “Please don’t, Lothaire—”

He was already tracing her to the mountain.

“Take me back to the apartment, and I’ll tell you . . .” She trailed off when she saw that the place was like a ghost town.

No lights, no voices, no TVs going in any of the trailers on the entire mountain. The Peirce family had gotten themselves lost.

“Where the hell are they?” he snapped, tracing her inside her old trailer.

The first time she’d been back since the night of the murders.

Belongings were strewn about. Mama had gotten them out in a hurry, and they’d clearly been gone a while.

Empty. Ellie checked a look of victory.

Lothaire swung his gaze on her, tracing her back outside to gaze down the lightless mountain. “Tell me where they are!”

“Gone.” She breathed deeply of the country air, squaring her shoulders. “They’re out of your reach forever.”

Back here on her mountain, she soaked up strength. This place had seen hundreds of years of struggle and hardship, of blood lost and pain found.

Right now, Ellie believed she’d been honed by life here, as if she’d just been waiting to go toe-to-toe with a fiend like Lothaire.

“Hmm.” She tapped her lip. “Can’t kill them. Can’t hurt me. Seems you’re holdin’ a shit hand of cards, Leo.”

The last time they’d been at the doorstep of this trailer, Elizabeth had risked her life to kill Saroya, running into a hail of bullets.

Now, after all he’d done to her, she was taunting him.

Did I truly think her cowardly?

“So what’s worse, Lothaire? The fact that I’m an ignorant hillbilly human?” She jabbed his chest with her forefinger. “Or the fact that you were just bested by one?”

This boldness in her . . . delicious.

No, you’re enraged at the slattern!

And enthralled with her. Possessiveness and lust and something else he couldn’t define warred inside him.

Then he remembered her kissing that boy years ago. How easily Lothaire could envision Thaddeus’s look of wonderment!

Jealousy—seethed. “Hag would never let you call them.”

“Nope.”

“It couldn’t be Thaddeus.” Her family had been gone too long. “Tell me how you warned them!”

“Or—what?” She laughed derisively.

“I will find them.”

“They are hidden, as only mountain folk can get. Face it, Lothaire, you’ve lost this match. You play your offense; I play defense. I set this plan into motion half a decade ago.”

Lothaire traced her back to the apartment. “What are you talking about?”

Chin raised, Elizabeth tried to fling herself away from him. After a moment, he let her.

“I reckoned you’d dole out that punishment you’d promised if I succeeded in killin’ your queen. So I made my mother swear to make herself and the entire family scarce for a spell.”

To clear off an entire mountain of Peirces?

Like scraping an anthill completely clean. Yet it’d happened.

“You want your reputation as the Enemy of Old to precede you, to make your enemies fear you?” When she jabbed at his chest again, his gut clenched with want. “My greatest asset is that I’m forever underestimated—by people like you.” She pinned his gaze with her own. “I’m the sucker punch that you never saw coming.”

Unexpected Elizabeth, with her fierce gray eyes. Saroya might be vicious and lethal, but Elizabeth was cunning, beguiling.

Quietly running circles around him at every opportunity.

Because wasn’t unexpected just another way of saying underestimated?

Sucker punch? She’d left him reeling.

“So no, Lothaire, there will not be any harm done to my family by you tonight. Or ever. Are—we—clear?”

Crystal, he thought as his lips parted. I know exactly what you are now. I know what you will be.

It was apparent what he had to do. Even he could recognize that he was experiencing some unknown-before need for this mortal girl, something even more than desire. And it was despite the goddess inside her.

“Lothaire, I asked you a question!”

He narrowed his eyes as a dim thought occurred. “If you suspected your family was safe, why did you go along with my plans? Why did you act afraid for them?”

She shrugged, casting him a queenly look that dared him to do something; a growl of lust burst from his chest.

Her peccadillo forgotten—for now—he leaned in to kiss her.