Sunday, August 24th – 4:32 pm
Luys hadn’t locked the door to his condo. He hadn’t thought there would be a need. He had been gone less than five minutes and fifty yards away to retrieve his phone from his car.
After he closed the front door behind him, he realized he wasn’t alone. A woman moved toward him from the dining area. A woman he both loved and hated. There had never been any half-measures between them. She fisted a hand over the top of a cloth-backed chair beside the table.
“Mayor.” His words were barely above a whisper. “I don’t want to see you. I don’t want anything to do with you.”
His sister’s fingered dug deeper into the maroon padding of the chair. She was just as coldly beautiful. The silken and deep brown dress flowed over her sleek body, caressed her curves and sharp angles, and floated several inches from the ground, where her black painted toes in flat sandals peeked from the hem. The garment emphasized the pale, smooth texture of her skin and silver-gold hair that flowed almost to her waist. He searched her face, the strong angles of her cheeks, jaw, and nose, the unlined brow, the lips, normally full and wide like his own, now drawn into a thin line of anger. It was then he realized the hardness to her face, the coldness to her eyes had intensified. Emotionally and spiritually, he understood the young girl he once knew had died long ago in Spain. Darkness, self-gratification, apathy, and the need to crush anyone in her path had turned her into a dangerous adversary.
“I think differently. I think it is about time we face each other.” A flash of rage flared in her eyes, darkening the silver into swirls of smoke and a strange incandescent purple, as she drew to a stop.
With the distance of the living room between them, he waited, expecting the worse. When Mayor’s temper flared, there was no controlling it. They’d tried once to stop her, but he and Gabriel had failed. He knew she was in Scottsdale to seek vengeance against him. His brother had been her previous target. Somehow, with the grace of God, she had left Spirit Lake without killing Gabriel and his wife. Because of a child—the love of an eleven-year-old girl. He once thought Mayor incapable of love until he had learned of her fascination with Gabriel’s stepdaughter.
Even though she did not immediately attack, he did not relax. Given time, she would. She always did. “You have always been good at hiding in plain sight. One of your many talents.” His lip curled. “But I knew you’d eventually show yourself. You have never been the most patient of the three of us.”
“Don’t give me that tone. You sound too much like Gabriel. I expected the worse from him, but not you. Luys, we were once close. How could you do what you did to me? It was Gabriel, yes? He turned you against me.”
His hands balled into fists as he forced back the guilt. He would not feel remorseful, not with the horrors she had wrecked against the people around them. “He did no such thing. You gave neither one of us a choice. You were about to expose all of us because of your disgusting acts, but that was not the reason. Your rage, it is explosive, has darkened your soul into something unrecognizable. No one can reach you any longer. We had to stop you before you killed and mutilated another.”
Her nostrils flared. “Again, you sound like Gabriel! But I do not believe you about his influence on you. I am sure he wanted me dead, yes?” Her eyes darkened further until they were rimmed with blood red. Her lip curled to one side into a semblance of a smile. “But he did not stop me. I am back now, more powerful than either of you.” Mayor brushed platinum strands over her shoulder. She lifted her chin, her stance regal. “You and Gabriel always think I am the estúpida one of the three. I am far from estúpida. I am so much smarter than the two of you. How else can you explain that I am standing in front of you, yes? I can easily crush you.”
Luys stepped toward Mayor. “Are you threatening me? Is that how bad it has become between us?”
“Bad?” Mayor snorted. “It was bad the moment Gabriel buried me in that cave and you went along with it!” She moved closer until two yards separated them.
He braced his legs, expecting her to launch herself at him. When she didn’t, he asked, “Did you touch the neighbor?”
“What neighbor?”
“Did you kill him? What in God’s teeth did he do to you?”
“You’re not making sense.”
He should know not to believe her innocent act. “The man in the same building where I live. Doors away. His chest cut open. He was treated less than dirt, worse than any animal, and he lived in the same building as I. You must be the one who murdered him. For what purpose did you have to kill an innocent, other than proving a point? And what of the other man several miles from here? What did either of them have against you? Why do you have this sick motivation of creating another like us?” His gaze narrowed. “But it’s not just that. You love sick games. You kill indiscriminately and for the pleasure of it.”
“Gabriel has always thought the worst of me. But you… You, I thought was different.” Her gaze narrowed. “So what if I killed these two humans? What of it?”
He shook his head, stupidly thinking she might change one day. “I don’t want to know you. To me, you died back in Spain. Too long we’ve watched you sink into your depravity, treating a person’s life as excrement.”
“Then why didn’t you kill me?”
His breath left his body in one loud whoosh. “Because I loved you! Gabriel loved you. You were family, made of the same flesh and blood. We had a history, a shared and horrifying past. By God’s teeth, you were our sister! We couldn’t.”
“You disgust me.” Her lip curled at the corner. “You didn’t have the strength, the will to kill me. Both of you are weak little boys. You would have been kinder, more humane if you had killed me when you had the opportunity. Instead, you let your guilt leave me inside that cave, binding me to the ground with the family cross and poisonous silver for decades. I was alone with only my thoughts. I had no one! Do you know how hard that is? Do you? You think you’re holier than me, but you are no better after making me suffer like an animal, frozen in time and on a dirt floor, unable to move, to escape my prison, unable to do anything when all I wanted to do was end my life.
“If it were not for two humans exploring deep within the mountain where you hid me, I would be still in that cave. It was their fatal mistake, but my second chance. If they had not taken off the cross chained from around my neck and the mercury within it, I would still be there. Their lifeblood nourished me and gave me back my life.”
“Two more people you murdered. You think nothing of ending a person’s life. You’ve crushed others in your thirst for turning them into one of us. That is why you gave us no choice.”
“Choice?” She lifted her chin. “Everyone has choices. Why is it so wrong to want someone to love me? I have been alone for as long as I can remember. I deserve to be happy. And with Gabriel hiding Maria—”
“Maria is dead.”
“No, she is not! She’s alive again. I know it. They call her Nicole, but I know she is Maria. My daughter lives on inside of Nicole’s body.”
“Don’t go down this route. You terrorized the poor girl and almost killed her mother.” Luys hated Mayor’s fascination with Gabriel’s stepdaughter. Mayor believed Nicole was the reincarnation of her daughter Maria, but Mayor’s thinking was fractured and deadly when it came to wanting Nicole to be her daughter and by her side. “And I can’t understand how you think you deserve a daughter after all you’ve done. Not when you ruin other people, Mayor.”
Her nostrils flared. “I have been too foolish. I thought you would apologize, beg for my forgiveness, and we could go back to what we once had.” She closed her eyes as if in pain. “I was giving you a gift…Now, I think I will take it back. I was wrong to think you would appreciate it, that we might move forward. I had thought to forgive you.” Her lip lifted at one corner. “Another stupid mistake on my part. You’re like Gabriel. Someone who will betray me every time.”
Luys tensed. “What do you mean by a gift?”
She ran her fingers through a thick chunk of hair draped over one shoulder. Luys wasn’t fooled by the serene, even distracted way she twined the strands between her fingers. All her senses were sharp, tuned to his breath and the beat of his heart. She might have extraordinary hearing, but she couldn’t read his thoughts. At least, he hoped she had not amassed more powers.
“I have been watching you for months now. Until recently, you never approached her. That did not mean you were not interested. I saw how you looked at her when the two of you were nearby. You want her for yourself, yes? But how can you when she will rot and die, and you will live on? Gabriel is estúpida to think his relationship with that woman will last. He will live on while that bitch,” she said the last word with disgust, “will become the dirt she walks on.”
“I have no clue who you’re talking about,” Luys replied, hoping in God’s teeth that she was rambling about something meaningless, but he suspected this had everything to do with Avery. “I don’t understand.”
“By the blood of Christ. Of course you don’t!” She looked to the ceiling for a moment before turning her icy blue eyes on him. “I wanted to offer you a gift in hopes we could maybe start afresh.”
Dread burrowed into his gut. He didn’t like where this conversation was going. “A gift? I find that hard to believe.”
“Why is that? I did it as a peace offering. I do not want peace with Gabriel, but I wanted to salvage some type of relationship with you if you make amends.”
“Amends? You can’t be serious. You still expect me to apologize?!”
“Why is that too much to ask?” She rested a hand on her hip. “You and Gabriel have always been quick to judge and label me because I have changed, unlike the two of you. I do not see humans as worthy—"
“The only difference between them and us is that death does not come for us.”
“You’re wrong! Few, if any, humans are worthy. They’re cruel, prejudiced, and self-centered. But that doesn’t mean that a few can’t become like us. There are exceptions. Avery is somewhat different than the others.”
Luys glanced over at the medallion encased in glass. He should have given Avery it the moment he suspected Mayor was around.
“The cross cannot save her. It is too late.”
“What’s too late?” He focused on his breathing, his heart rate. He needed to keep both normal. She could not know how much her words terrified him. She would use them against him.
“Nothing will protect her from me, other than her power.”
“What did you do to her?” He dreaded the answer but already knew. The scars on Avery’s chest, her attack, his interest in her he’d tried to fight off.
“What I’ve been trying to do for years, but both of you have stopped me at every turn.” A look of triumph lit her eyes. “I have finally turned a human into one of us.”
“That’s impossible. The doctors would have said something to her when she was at the hospital.”
“It doesn’t work that way.” Mayor gave him a condescending look. “It’s genetic, not something that will show up in a simple blood test or scan.”
Gut-wrenching sorrow roiled through him. He did not want that of Avery. Fighting back the urge to hit Mayor, he stepped back, lengthening the distance between them.
“Why did you do that to her? Why her and not someone else? She’s innocent.”
“Because of how you feel about her.” Mayor snorted, but not in a humorous way. “I have been in your neighborhood for months, and you were so blind to anything but your thoughts and emotions. Such a typical man.”
His control snapped. “You can’t be serious! You have ruined Avery’s life. Because of you, she’ll always have this burden. You don’t get it.”
“But she wanted to live.”
“She was living!” Luys wanted to wrap both around his sister’s neck. Instead, he fisted both until he thought his knuckles would crack from the pressure.
“You changed her to one of us as a gift to me? How can you think that? Being what I am is a curse!” His voice rose higher as rage flooded him. He advanced toward her and stopped less than a foot away, still keeping his hands from striking her. He glared into the icy depths of her eyes. “You destroyed a woman. How can she live with others of her kind if she has to watch them die again and again!”
She shoved him away. The force sent him back several steps before he regained his balance. She lifted a hand and sliced the air. “You’re melodramatic. And an idiot! You have no clue!”
“And why is that?”
Her lip curled at one corner, and she paused for dramatic effect. “She was dying.”