Bryna clenched her jaw. Her teeth would shatter if she could get them together any tighter, but she was not going to talk to him, nor look at him. She had to live. Screw that. Good, innocent, deserving people had their lives saved to prevent the end of the world. Not murderers. The questions bubbling in her head didn’t matter. They couldn’t. What Hell did she send him to where he was forced to save the life of the woman who murdered him?
“Bryna.”
“No.” Her jaw ached, but she clenched it again, anyway. This pain was better than the one threatening to swallow her alive. She marched through the dreary, soaked street. The rain refused to let up. There was no hope to see the sun again today, maybe never again.
“Bryna.”
She whipped around. “The motel is right there. I’m cold and I’m wet, and I don’t want to deal with you right now.”
Vincent’s eyes narrowed. “Tell me what happened.”
“You know what happened.” Before he could demand she recount every horrible nanosecond of the moment he died, she slapped her hands over her ears and pretended she couldn’t hear him. He was old, appearing maybe thirty with a god-awful scar slashing across his beautiful face. She didn’t know, and wasn’t exactly sure she wanted to know what could be horrible enough to age a dead man. Hell. She’d sent the man she loved to Hell, and then he had the freaking nerve to demand she live. Not. Going. To. Happen. If there was any kind of justice in the universe, she’d die today and trade places with him. She’d been so terrified that night, she’d pulsed. After the vampires were gone, when the ash settled, she’d realized she’d killed Vincent as well, though she’d never killed a living person when she pulsed previously. Her Uncle Ron was a prime example. When he yelled and screamed at her when she’d been a teenager, the fear inside of her bubbled out. Uncle Ron would end up sailing across the room. But not once had she killed him.
Pain seared through her chest. She dropped to her knees right there at the asphalt entrance to a dingy motel with a bright orange vacancy sign flashing in the window. She gasped for air, and her heart threatened to hammer out of her chest. Vincent’s strong arms looped around her. No. They were the arms of the Wraith. A being so powerful and terrifying every vampire fled from him and rarely uttered his name in fear that somehow the two syllables would cause Wraith to appear and slaughter the whole nest.
He lifted her off the ground as if she’d weighed nothing.
“Let me go,” she croaked out.
“You’re going to get sick if you stay out here.” His tone was gruff, but his hold on her gentle.
He’d been so angry at his grave, and now she knew why. His sudden one-eighty was going to make her mental. He was forgiving her for the one thing she didn’t want to be forgiven for. Her life went to shit because she’d been unable to control herself, and she didn’t want to be absolved of any of the guilt.
“I can walk.” She jerked out of his hold and rubbed a fist over her chest. Her heart hurt so much it was going to explode. She scrambled ahead of him, determined to get to the motel without him having to touch her again. When she reached the small door with a window and a welcome sign, she threw it open and rushed up to the desk. She hit the bell, and dug through her pack to find the pouch with the cash she’d taken from the ATM the night before.
“Can I help you?” a woman’s voice said before an older woman appeared. Her hair was pulled back into a tight bun, and black reading glasses perched on the tip of her nose.
“I need a room for the night.” She put a fifty on the counter. “That should cover it.”
The woman narrowed her eyes, and then she cocked her head to look at the mist of rain outside before returning her gaze to Bryna. “Why are you so wet?”
“My car broke down, and I had to walk from the interstate.” At least it wasn’t a lie. She hated when she had to tell good people wrong things.
The woman’s hard expression softened. She turned, got a key off a line of hooks, and pulled down extra towels and slipped them into a plastic bag, tying a knot at the top. “Room eight is empty. I need to be paid again tomorrow at noon if you’re going to stay another night.” She slid a guest book in front of Bryna. “I need you to sign here.”
Bryna used the name Shawn had given her character’s name in the book. “Thank you.” She accepted the key and the extra towels. “I’ll be checking out before noon.”
“Of course.”
Bryna pulled her poncho tighter around herself as she went back outside. At least Wraith hadn’t come in. He’d have terrified the woman, and they’d never have gotten the room. She didn’t spare a glance at him. “Eight,” was all she said as she walked directly to the room at the end of the row.
“Bryna.”
“No.” She jabbed the key into the lock and turned it. She moved just enough to let Wraith in before she shed the dripping poncho and dropped it on the floor. She dropped her pack between the wall and a queen-size bed, and then rushed off to the bathroom with the towels clutched to her chest. There had to be a way to get through this.
Wraith stepped in front of her before she was able to make it to the safety of the bathroom. She stared at his chest. “Please move.”
“Not until you listen to what I have to say.” His voice was gruff.
“What does it matter?” He thought she was a whore. He blamed her for his death. He hated her. There was no point in talking about it any longer.
“Because I need to know why you did it.” He was quiet for a moment. “Why did you kill me?”
How didn’t he know she’d pulsed and killed him? He was messing with her head again. “Vincent, please. I don’t want to talk about this.”
He tilted her chin up, giving her no choice but to look into his sienna eyes. “Yeah, but it’s literally killing you.”
Yes. His death was killing her, in a slow, painful way, and now he demanded she find a way to live when she was no longer sure it was a possible outcome. Even if she wanted to do it. “I never meant for you to die.”
His head lowered, his mouth hovering right over hers. “I’m figuring that out. But I don’t understand how you think you killed me.”
She shook her head, but her gaze never left his. “Please, Wraith—”
“Vincent. My name is Vincent.” He brushed the back of his knuckles down the side of her face.
She put her hands on his chest. “Okay. Vincent. It doesn’t matter. None of this matters. If we kiss and make up, you’re still dead and I am not.”
“But for how long?” he demanded in a whisper, his breath caressing her cheek. “You’ll go off and get yourself killed the second I leave.”
“I’ll try to live,” she said, realizing she meant it. “I’ll try to change my life into something you’d be proud of.”
His eyes closed, and he rested his forehead on hers. “How often do you do things like you did with Darby for the elderly in your building?”
She trembled and stepped in closer to him, just because she needed to feel his heat. “Wraith—Vincent, I don’t know what you want from me.”
He pulled back just enough so when his eyes opened, it was like his gaze was looking right into her soul. “You’re not as evil as you think—as I thought. Don’t save yourself for me. Save you for you. If my death was an accident, like you say, then there is no need for you to continue trying to end yourself.”
When she would have pulled away from him, he locked his arm around her.
His face was right next to hers. “Talk to me. Let me help you.”
Her lower jaw trembled, and she turned her head. Their mouths were so close, breathing could make them touch. “I just want all the pain to go away.”
Then his mouth closed over hers.
The heat of his lips seared into her, and she stretched up, looping her arms around his neck, drawing him in closer. This was the only right thing she could remember, and it felt so right in the here and now. He could be gentle when she was hurt, and his presence could fight away her fears. If only there was a way they could go back, and she could stop herself from pulsing that night. But she couldn’t. Oh how she wanted to learn this man that he’d become, but there was no time. All she had was this moment, with his mouth on hers. Then he’d be gone, and she’d have to figure out how to live without him.
His hands slid down her sides to mold over her hips when a knock came to the door.
Bryna jerked back.
Wraith narrowed his eyes at the door as if he could see who was on the other side. “They can wait.”
Bryna backed up a step. “I need a shower.” She didn’t give him time to say anything else before she fled. The forgiveness she’d wanted was coming, and she wasn’t sure she could handle it.
* * * *
Vincent stared after her for a long moment before he opened the door after the fourth knock. A wide grin spread over his face when he saw the three men standing there. He’d use one less hot poker when he tortured Felix. The Argent brothers were older than he by about a hundred years, and he didn’t know the circumstances of their deaths. He’d learned to rely on them over the last two hundred years. He didn’t know if he’d need them to save Bryna’s life, but knowing Felix was putting them at his disposal helped as much as it made him queasy.
“Wraith!” Gregori, the oldest of the three brothers, boomed out. He was shorter than Vincent by an inch, but his shoulders were a tad wider. Gregori’s hair was shoulder length, but always pulled back in a low ponytail. Like his brothers, he had the Argent silver-grey eyes. “What the hell are you doing here?”
“New job,” Vincent said. “Did Felix give you the files I asked for?”
“The ones on the Bryna babe?” Gregori asked.
Vincent’s face twitched. “Did you just call her a babe?”
“Yeah,” Gregori said as he and his brothers moved into the room. “She’s one hot little piece of work. Too bad she died when Felix sent me to save her ass last year.”
Vincent knew he was going to be sick. “She died?”
Caleb, the middle brother, nodded. “Yeah, she dropped out on me, too, when I tried two years ago.” He matched Vincent in height, but his frame, while still warriorlike, was slimmer than Vincent’s and Gregori’s. His hair was always above his shoulders, but shaggy around the edges.
This was not good. Vincent swallowed back the bile rising in his throat as he looked at the youngest, Derrick. The man was a good two inches shorter than Gregori, but his body was thick, like a brick wall. His dark hair dusted his shoulders, but the top was tied back with a strap of leather. All three men wore the same garb Vincent had on. Fatigues, combat boots, and a black shirt with enough holsters and sheaths filled with various weapons attached to their bodies that the four of them could be considered an army.
Derrick winced. “Three years ago and I didn’t make it past day two before she, um, didn’t make it.”
Vincent rubbed at the colossal knot forming at the base of his neck. His next question came out in a savage snarl, “Did any of you have sex with her?”
The Argent brothers all moved back from him at once. “Not that stupid,” Gregori said, just as Caleb said, “Are you kidding? I found her at your grave. It would have been a suicidal act of lust.” Derrick put up his hands. “We knew she’d been yours. We might have our dumb moments, but we’re not that stupid.”
He studied all of them for a few minutes before he decided they were telling him the truth. Even if they weren’t, it was better for his limited amount of sanity to believe them. “All right, let me have a look at those files.”
Gregori handed him the clear cellophane-like material. Vincent sat down on the corner of the bed and watched the last three events that led up to Bryna’s death.
With Derrick she’d been caught by a vampire named Draven. He was using the vampire’s power of enthrall to force her into luring Derrick out into the open for the slaughter, but she was able to ignore it because of the vampire mark on her throat. Bryna opened a vein before she’d ever been able to make the call, and a powerful demon had been right there to cart her soul off to Oblivion.
With Caleb it was the same vampire again, only this time Bryna hadn’t been able to end herself before making the call. The vampire anticipated the move and blocked the suicide, but he hadn’t been able to stop her from warning Caleb as he arrived to pull her ass out of hell. The vampire slaughtered her before Caleb had been able to fight off the horde surrounding her, and once again, a powerful demon had been there to take her to Oblivion.
With Gregori, it was the same damn vampire. Draven blocked every attempt Bryna made to keep Gregori alive, to the point the large man was being beaten to a pulp by the horde. Bryna pulsed, taking out enough vampires to give Gregori a chance to have Felix recall him. Gregori was going down fast, and Bryna used the last bit of energy she had to pulse a second time, sending Draven to Oblivion. The powerful demon had been right there to drag her down with Draven.
Two things struck him. One was he recognized Draven as the vampire who had delivered the death blow that killed him. The second was so obvious he knew he’d be sending Felix into Oblivion for not showing him sooner. By like oh, maybe one hundred and ninety years. What he’d believed about Bryna wasn’t only gut-wrenchingly false, but only compounded the suffering she’d endured to the point Vincent wasn’t sure his assumption was forgivable. Ever.
The clear film fell to the floor as he dropped his head into his hands. What was the point of letting him believe she’d betrayed him? He’d talked to Felix about it and the damn bastard only shrugged and told him he needed to figure it out on his own. He’d been young enough and stupid enough to think if she’d really loved him the vampire’s thrall wouldn’t work on her. He’d seen women and men fight past it to save the people they loved. It was one of those things he depended on in his line of work. Only a few times the vampire had been stronger than the victim.
Draven had to be a powerful vampire. There was some way he’d been anticipating her moves and orchestrating his actions to counteract hers.
“The room’s shaking,” Gregori said. His powerful arms were crossed over his chest as he leaned against the wall.
Vincent nearly came up off the bed after him. “Don’t push your luck. I need all of you out of here, but stay close. I might need you to defeat this Draven fucker.”
The three brothers all exchanged looks and then shrugged. “Sure,” Caleb said. “Any idea where we can find a little pleasant entertainment?”
Vincent snorted at him. Of course they’d be thinking about recreational sex if he didn’t need them right away, but…Ah, forget it. Let them have their fun. He didn’t need them sticking their noses into him fucking up the best thing that ever happened to him to the point he’d never be able to fix it. “I’m sure you’ll be able to find what you’re looking for in the yellow pages. Just get the fuck out of here while you do it. She’ll be out of the shower soon.”
Gregori’s brows went up, and it looked like he was going to object to being kicked out, thought better of it, and nodded. “You know how to get a hold of us if you need us. Keep her alive this time. She’s too pretty to die.”
Gregori made it out the door before Vincent was able to catch him. He watched them walk off into the rain for a moment before he closed the door and swallowed hard. He turned to stare at the bathroom door like it would somehow make everything magically better.
He took a few seconds to fix his dilapidated clothing. Being dead had its perks, along with a few tricks he’d learned over the years. One was how to get his clothes dry, mended, and his body cleaned without having to go through the process of showering and changing. He’d already abandoned his cloak and weapons on the chair beside the door. His sword was propped up in a corner. He had nothing left to do besides take up pacing the length of the room as he waited for her.
It felt like an eternity before the bathroom door opened. She appeared with damp hair and dry baggy clothes. He was sure those sweat pants were familiar, and he remembered the shirt being the one she’d stolen from his drawer so she’d be able to wear it at home when her Uncle Ron had a week when he wasn’t allowing them to see each other.
The vibrancy of her emerald eyes had faded. Her shoulders were hunched over, and her arms were wrapped protectively around herself.
“Hi,” she mumbled.
He let out a slow breath and met her gaze. “We need to talk. Will you sit down?”
She studied him for a moment before she nodded once and moved to perch on the end of one of the beds in the room. “What are we talking about?”
He crouched down in front of her and reached up and took both of her hands into his. He forced a calm into his voice he wasn’t feeling. “I need to know how you think you killed me.”
Her mouth opened, and then shut before she turned her head with her eyes closed. “The pulse. I couldn’t control it. It killed everything in that clearing but me,” she whispered.
His jaw started a slow ticking. It looked like there was one vampire who’d developed the ability to block it. It didn’t matter. He’d find a way to send that son of a bitch into Oblivion. Right now, he had more important things to deal with.
“Look at me, sunshine.”
She hesitated for a moment before she looked at him.
“A rod iron bar killed me. It’s what caused the scar. The pulse turns what it kills into ash.”
*
Bryna stopped breathing. “I’m sorry.” Her mind went reeling. “But don’t you hate me for killing Vincent?”
He let her go and rubbed at the back of his neck. He sat down on the floor across from her and worked the muscles of his jaw before he looked at her again. “What I saw when I got there”—he looked down and picked at the lint in the carpet before he growled low and his eyes met hers again—“I thought what I was seeing was real.”
Bryna scrambled off the bed and into the bathroom. She crashed down in front of the toilet, dragged her hair away from her face and emptied the meager contents of her stomach. Even when there was nothing left, she heaved and coughed and then heaved again until she was sure her stomach was going to expel itself from her body.
Vincent’s gentle hand stroked down her back as the other one took up the task of holding her hair back. He murmured soft words until she was able to get herself settled down. Then his strong hands were around her waist, helping her up and to the sink so she could brush her teeth before he directed her back into the main part of the room and didn’t let her go until she was settled back on the edge of the bed.
Her body trembled viciously, and she refused to look at him. “I killed you.”
“No,” he said with much anger. “I was killed by a vampire named Draven. He smashed my skull in while another one tormented you.”
She shook her head. No. It was better to believe she’d killed him than to know he’d believed she’d betrayed him. “Wraith—”
“Do not call me that. I am Vincent. The fucking idiot who—”
“Don’t!” she yelled as she hopped back on the bed. “Don’t you dare let me believe anything different than what I think happened. Don’t you dare!”
“You’re killing yourself for a lie!” he roared at her.
She went up on her knees. “But the alternative is that you think I betrayed you! I love you. I’d never do anything to hurt you. I needed you too much!”
“I know,” he said, his voice raw. He crouched down at the end of the bed. “I know. I should have known that all along. A vampire’s thrall would have been too powerful for a fifteen-year-old to beat. I’m sorry. I—”
“Shut up!” she screamed. She scrambled backward until her back was pressed up against the headboard. Her life was one disgusting mess after another since his death. The men, the booze, the drugs, and everything else she’d used to try to destroy herself. Even if she’d gotten the pulse right, he’d have been dead anyway. “You died on me, and you think it’s because I handed you to a vampire!” Her hand slammed down on the night table next to the bed, and she picked up the only thing not nailed down. The alarm clock. She drew it back. Then he was on the bed next to her, confiscating it before she could throw it at him.
“Give that back, you son of a bitch!”
“No,” he said in an infuriatingly calm tone as he tossed it onto the other bed. “You’d hurt yourself later for hitting me with it.”
“How could you think I’d willingly hand you over to a vampire?”
He sat back on his heels in front of her. His shoulders drooped. “Because I am a bastard. That night was so confusing, and I woke up dead from the ordeal.” He was quiet for a moment. “They were all dead? You killed them?”
“I don’t know.” She was honest. “After I pulsed the only thing I saw was you lying on the ground. I tried to wake you up, but I couldn’t.” She was heading for a major breakdown, and she wasn’t sure she’d be able to stop it. Everything came out between ragged sobs. “There were piles of ash everywhere. You were just—” She couldn’t say the word. “I don’t know how I called my uncle. Then the place was crawling with police and questions. I told them there were vampires. I spent three years in and out of the psychiatric ward until I realized if I just agreed with the police’s assessment of what happened, they’d stop saying I was crazy.”
“I didn’t trust you,” he said in an even tone.
Her heart was going to explode. It was beating so fast, and she couldn’t catch her breath. “You did. I killed you. Please, let that be true.”
His burnt sienna eyes went sad as he shook his head. “No. It wasn’t the pulse. You still had a body to bury.”
She couldn’t decide which was worse. Thinking all this time that she’d killed him or finding out that he’d hated her for all this time because he hadn’t trusted her. Then she flew at him, ready to do as much damage as she could.
*
Vincent let her pound on his chest for a moment before he caught her wrists and pinned her down to the bed. This was killing him. He could take the blame for his part in her torment, but he wouldn’t take it all. He’d find a way to help her out the other side of this, and he’d endure whatever punishment she deemed he deserved for his distrust. It wouldn’t lessen the torture he was going to inflict on the vampire responsible, and he knew it had to be Draven. The attack had purpose. They’d lived in a small town that hadn’t had a vampire problem before that night or after.
Bryna struggled to make him let her go. “You fucking jerk! Let me go! Let me go!” Her voice cracked, and she bucked up before she bit him.
Vincent let her go and moved out of the way as she came up swinging. She kneeled in the middle of the bed shaking with rage. Her face was flushed and scary as she looked at him just before she collapsed in a fit of hysterical sobs.
He hesitated for moment, not sure he’d be welcomed before he climbed up on the bed next to her and pulled her into his arms. Her fist thumped against his chest before she curled in against him and sobbed with angry bitterness.
*
Bryna had never cried so hard in her life. She wasn’t sure when she’d actually stopped sobbing and just lay stretched out across Vincent’s lap on the middle of the motel bed. She hadn’t killed him after all. The pulse had probably saved her wretched life, and she wasn’t sure how she felt about that either.
She wanted to hate Vincent for not trusting her, she really did, but she couldn’t. If she’d come across him hanging all over another girl and giggly with a beer can in his hands she’d have probably come to the same conclusion he had. Not only that, but he’d come. No matter what he thought about what she’d been doing, he’d fought to the death to get her out of there.
Was she angry with him?
Hell yes!
Was she going to torture him for it?
She shifted on his lap and looked up at his horribly scarred face. His hand still stroked down her hair, and she could see the self-loathing misery in him. She knew it well. It had consumed her life for the last ten years.
No.
She wasn’t going to torture him. They had a week together before he was gone again, and this time she didn’t think she’d get another chance to make things right with him. They’d loved each other deeply, and she couldn’t let it go to waste. She had a lifetime to make up for, and Vincent had given his life for her.
She shifted again and moved off him and to the other side of the bed.
His hand paused in mid stroke before it dropped to his side. His usual liquid voice was gravelly. “I’m so sorry.”
“Don’t,” she whispered. “We only have a week. I don’t want to make any more mistakes to regret.”
Vincent studied her face before he slowly nodded. “We have a vampire to slay.”
Her face crumpled, but when he reached for her, she jerked back. “I’m…” She stopped herself from apologizing. “I’ll be okay.”
“Will you?” he demanded.
She scooted closer and then hesitantly reached up and traced her index finger along the line on his scarred face. “I have to be. This really great guy gave up his life for me even though he thought I betrayed him. It would be kind of shitty if I screwed up my life after that, don’t you think?”
“Don’t force yourself to accept this. You were scarred just as deeply.” The muscles under his eye twitched. “And I was bastard enough to add to it.”
She winced. “Um, yeah, about that…don’t let it eat you. I didn’t know you—” She didn’t finish saying he hadn’t trusted her. Very softly she said, “I didn’t kill you. That’s what has to matter, right?”
*
A flood of emotion he realized had never really left him rushed to the surface, but he wasn’t sure he had the right to feel it anymore. She’d loved him and believed in him past the end. He’d given her distrust in return. Then he realized what he felt didn’t matter anyway. They could work everything out until they were back to the point right before she’d left him that afternoon, and it still wouldn’t matter. He was dead. She wasn’t. He’d go back to what he was before he’d been sent here. She’d…move on. His face twisted, and he got up from the bed and stalked across the room.
“It does matter, sunshine, more than you can ever know.” He said the words for her benefit alone. It wouldn’t make his existence better. It made it worse. She’d finally get over him and move on with her life. She’d find someone else to love her, someone better, someone who deserved her faith and dedication. She’d probably have a kid or two. He was no more. He’d take what he’d done with her love into Hell with him.
“Vincent?”
He allowed the sound of her voice to soothe him in ways nothing else could before, or since. He turned to look at her.
Her eyes were wide. “Why are you angry?”
He shook his head and willed the anger back as best he could. He forced the sides of his mouth up. “I’m not. How can I be angry when I know the truth?”
She had a lost expression on her face, almost hopeless. “Because we can’t fix this.”
He was back across the room and next to her in a heartbeat. He sat down next to her and grabbed onto her chin so she had to look at him. “You’re going to survive this. I’ll find a way to kill the vampire, and then you’re going to move on with your life. You will find happiness again.”
Her face twisted and she jerked out of his grip. “You have no right to tell me what to do with my life. You’re dead.”
He clenched his teeth. “Yeah, I got that memo, but there is no reason for you to continue on this destructive path.”
“Isn’t there?” she demanded as she stalked along the side of the bed. “From where I’m standing it’s the exact thing I need to be doing. After everything I’ve done I sure as hell won’t find those pearly gates, but I can kill demons. I don’t think your boss is going to throw that away.”
He stared at her in horror and said the first stupid thing that popped into his mouth. “I believed the worst in you.”
“I wasn’t strong enough to get past being enthralled for you,” she countered.
“Goddamn it, Bryna! The objective here is to keep you alive,” he yelled.
She cringed back. Then her back snapped straight. “What’s the point? Without you my life goes to shit.”
“The point is that you’ll be alive!” He dragged a hand through his dark hair.
She knotted her hands into fists. “To what? Whore myself for some grand cause or another?”
Vincent hated the stark reality moments more than he hated white walls with gold trim. “You’re not a whore.”
Her brow shot up. “You’re the one who called it last night.”
He’d take a sucker punch gladly before he had to deal with the truths of her life. And the really screwed-up part was he was feeling guilty because he knew beyond anything her life would have been so much better if he’d lived. “Bryna, don’t, please. I was being a bastard, and I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said it.”
“But you did,” she said softly. “And apologizing doesn’t change the things I’ve done or the person I’ve become. I’m sorry.”
No! He wasn’t going to accept this. There had to be a way to get his Bryna back. There just had to be. This couldn’t be where it ended for her, not when she’d been the one to hold on. He was beginning to understand what Felix wanted. There was no Earth Ending Game. Whatever was going to happen with Bryna’s death, the apocalypse wouldn’t be for another few years in her timeline. Felix had picked the point in her life where she was either do or die, and apparently, not even three of the very best had been able to keep her from dying.
He laughed, a low manic sound. Felix was expecting a miracle of love. That somehow, he’d be able to see her again, pull his head out of his ass—which he had—and find some way to give Bryna back her will to live. There was one small problem with this theory. Vincent knew if the situation were reversed, he’d have slit his own throat in an attempt to be with Bryna forever.
“Vincent?” Her voice hitched up in panic.
He walked over to her, hooked his arm around her, and crushed her into him. She stiffened and then molded her perfect little body against him. He dropped his head down to rest against hers. There had to be a way to do this without fucking her up more. It was his job to save her life. Goddamn it. If anyone deserved every ounce of his sweat, blood, and tears, it was Bryna. He’d never been in hell. That was a place on Earth and she was entrenched in it. This had to stop. Fuck the apocalypse! Fuck Felix! He was going to find a way to thwart the system and give Bryna the life she should have had all along, even if that meant he had to go back in time and prevent her from ever meeting him.
*
“Vincent?” Bryna whispered. He was shaking. The rage in him came off in waves. If his arm went any tighter around her, she’d suffocate. “Vincent,” she whispered again.
A trembling hand stroked down her hair. “I’ll find a way to fix this.”
“You can’t. Let’s just focus on the vampire and use the time we have left to properly say goodbye.” But she didn’t want to say goodbye to him. He was supposed to be with her. She’d forgive him of anything if she could just be with him. Their relationship had never been perfect. There had always been bumps and hiccups, but everything seemed surmountable as long as she had him to anchor her.
“I’m not killing it,” he gritted out.
Whoa. She pulled back and searched his face. “What do you mean you’re not killing it?”
His jaw flexed as he wiped at his eyes. He gave her one of those penetrating looks that made her feel as if he could see right into her soul.
“The second it’s dead, I’m gone. Felix was clear. You have to live, and that’s not going to happen if I have to go.”
This couldn’t be right. She had no idea what he was talking about. “It?”
“The vampire,” he said between clenched teeth. “Fuck ’em. If the higher-ups cared so damn much about them, they’d have never let you get this far.”
He was doing it again. Whenever something was wrong in her life, he went nuts and did something to get himself in trouble. Only, this time it was more than an afternoon in jail listening to a lecture from Sheriff Riley. She was sure if he didn’t do what they were keeping him for, he’d end up someplace she wouldn’t be able to live with. That was bad and needed to be avoided. “Thank you, Vincent, but you need to think with your brain on this one. This isn’t about us.”
“You’re right,” he bit out. “It’s about you and what those assholes let happen. If they wanted to save your life, they would have sent me back to a point you were still savable.” His tirade faded off as he stared at her. He swallowed hard and looked away from her.
She wrapped her arms around her stomach. Okay. Yeah, she’d already known she wasn’t exactly on a trajectory to live to be eighty-five—or thirty-five at this point. “We can’t let Draven—” Her eyes went huge. Holy hell. She’d been so wrapped up in herself she hadn’t made the correlation earlier. “Draven? He tried to make me go with him last night. He was at the book store.”
*
Vincent scrubbed a hand over his face as he started pacing. That bastard hadn’t killed her the night he died, and he’d let her go last night? True, a vampire didn’t tend to make a public scene, but they had their own ways of finding out who were pivotal players in who controlled the world. He thought about what he’d seen in those files. It wasn’t just Bryna dying, but other defenders. All of the Argent brothers had been pulled out just before they’d went some place not even Felix would be able to harass them. There was that demon who always pulled Bryna into Oblivion right after Draven’s death.
“I can hear you thinking,” she said. Her arms were crossed over her chest, and her brow quirked up in that adorable way she had when she was irritated with him.
A smile touched his mouth. “There is more to this than I can easily see. Draven killed me. Now he’s mixed up in this? What did he say to you?”
She winced and moved a pace back. “He said Wraith was going to kill me.”
He got the disturbed feeling Draven’s warning had been sincere. It didn’t matter what time a vampire came from, they knew him as a bringer of death.