Chapter Thirty-Five

After Hunter’s revelation, everything Alice had planned to say floated out of her mind. She was still trying to come up with a response, or a question, or anything, when he turned off the water and reached out for one of the clean towels she’d put on the bathroom counter for him and handed it to her, then took another for himself.

“I can’t put those clothes back on,” he said, looking lost. “I don’t know what to do.”

“That’s okay. I do.” She quickly dried off, dressed, and then went looking for something for him to wear. The crewmen she’d seen hadn’t been as tall as Hunter, so she bypassed their rooms and found the master suite.

“Fancy,” she murmured, looking around in disgust. The amount of dog food she could buy for the cost of just the furnishings in this room… She put it out of her mind. She had things to do.

She pulled the closet door open and found things that looked like they might fit Hunter. They’d be a little big, because apparently the governor was a portly guy, but that was fine. They’d be good enough to wear to get to her house. She suddenly felt the most inappropriate giggle burbling up inside her. Were they going to have to fly? They didn’t have a car here. Although she guessed if Hunter could suddenly compel people to do things like he had with the crew, he could manage to compel someone to loan them a car.

It struck her that she was thinking, bizarrely enough, in completely supernatural terms. A week ago, her solution would have been much simpler: just call an Uber. She almost couldn’t believe how the world had changed. Her world, at least.

She put it all aside and hurried back to the bathroom with the clean clothes.

Hunter dressed in the jeans and sweatshirt with no complaint and not even any comment, which worried her. He picked up his own socks and his boots, which were only slightly spattered, and then followed her to the deck.

“I really should clean that bathroom,” she said, suddenly worried that one of the crewmembers might get in trouble for the mess. It definitely was not their fault that a vampire who needed a shower had dropped by.

“You really should not. You should come sit with me and drink champagne.” He grabbed a champagne bottle out of the bucket filled with melting ice that was sitting on a table with what was apparently the remains of the crew’s dinner. “Why not celebrate? All the warlocks are dead.”

She had never seen a person who looked less like he wanted to celebrate than Hunter did right at that moment. And the flat, dead sound of his voice frightened her. She had to find a way to reach him soon, or she was very much afraid that she’d never be able to reach him again.

“I guess the crew members celebrate when the governor’s not here,” she said, looking around. “I need to ask you, though, about what you did to them. Compelling them all to obey you like that. Is that normal? That’s not something you would ever try to do to me, is it?”

“No, never,” he said, his voice filled with self-loathing. “I’ve tried compulsion before, and it hadn’t worked for me yet. Luke told me it takes a while to grow into my powers. But then again, nobody knew the effect that drinking a warlock’s blood might have on a vampire.”

He popped the top of the champagne and took a long drink straight from the bottle, then held it out to her.

She shook her head, grimacing. “No, thanks. I may never drink again. Meara made lemon drop martinis, and I had way too many of them. Let’s just leave it at that.”

“Well, apparently I got drunk, too,” he said bitterly, sinking down in a deck chair. “Want to hear an ugly story?”

She didn’t, but she knew she must, so she nodded and sat next to him, taking his hand.

He told her everything—at least, everything he remembered—about what had happened since he’d left her earlier that evening. He didn’t try to pretty it up or spare himself in the telling, but she wondered how he could possibly believe he was the bad guy in the story.

After he told her about coming to the mansion with some idea of protecting her, she held up a hand for him to stop.

“So, let me see if I understand this. The warlocks were the ones sent to capture me?”

“Yes.” He took another long drink.

“And they killed two of your vampires and two wolves?”

“Yes, as far as we know. But—”

“And then,” she said, speaking over him. “Then they tried to kill the alpha wolf and almost succeeded?”

“Yes, but—”

“After that, one of them tried to kill you, and the other one threatened me with, at a bare minimum, sexual assault. Do I have that right?”

“Well—”

“Do I have that right?”

“But—”

“No. No buts. I don’t want to hear it. It sounds like you did exactly what you needed to do and you saved Carter’s life. It was self-defense and defense of others and protecting me all rolled up in one. Not to mention justice for all the others they’ve killed.”

He laughed, and the sound was harsh in the quiet. “Yeah, but none of that explains the part where I drank his blood. Drank so much I got blood drunk.”

She winced. “Okay, I’ll give you that it’s a little extreme. On the other hand, he threatened me. If it had been me, and he threatened you, I would have done everything in my power to end him.”

She squeezed his hand to make sure he was paying attention and tried for a slightly lighter tone. “Anyway, the one guy was throwing blood-magic fireballs at you. This was not some ordinary bar fight where the worst that happens is that somebody throws a barstool through a window.”

A hint of a smile crossed his face—the first sign he’d shown that maybe, just maybe, he was going to be okay. But then his amusement faded, and he shook his head. “I don’t know what to think. I don’t know who I am. All my life, I’ve tried to be the nice guy, ever since what happened to Hope. And now, suddenly, I’m not just a bad guy but a murderer. A double murderer. What will I do with that? How do I live with it?”

Alice saw a folded blanket on one of the benches that lined the sides of the boat, and she grabbed it and wrapped it around herself because she was getting cold out on the deck. Hunter took her hand and pulled her toward a hammock that was set up at the front of the boat and pulled her down into it with him. He said nothing, just wrapped his strong arms around her and held tight, his breathing eventually slowing as he relaxed.

“I don’t deserve to hold you like this,” he murmured, but thankfully he made no move to push her away.

She thought it might be time to make her own confession. “I had to hurt someone in order to escape the Institute. I’m pretty sure…I’m pretty sure I killed him.” She didn’t look at him, because she didn’t want to see his expression turn to condemnation. She had never confessed this before, and the sick feeling of guilt tried to rise up in her throat again, but she forced it back the way she’d been forcing it back for years.

“He was one of the worst of them. The orderlies. He was always hitting people. Never me, because there were strict orders about not hurting me, but everybody else he could get away with hurting, he did. That night I escaped, I’d thought I had everything planned out perfectly. But he stayed late that night or changed his shifts or something. Anyway, he was in my way when I was heading through that last hallway on my way to the fire escape. I tried to be so quiet, but he heard me and caught me, and I don’t know what he would’ve done. I just knew I couldn’t survive any longer in that place. I screamed, and then I just snapped. I don’t even know how—I think I kneed him in the crotch—but I got him down on the floor somehow.”

She took a deep, shaky breath, remembering. Back in that hallway once again.

“And once he was down there, I grabbed his head and smashed it against the floor. At least once. Maybe twice or more. I don’t know, and I can’t exactly remember. I just know I was in the grip of some kind of mania—terror combined with red-hot rage—and one minute I was smashing his head on the floor, and the next minute I was running out the door. I turned to look back—I never should have, but I did—and he was lying on the floor with blood seeping out of his head onto the cold white tiles of the floor. I still see that image in my nightmares sometimes.”

She finally dared to look up at him and almost didn’t believe she was truly seeing such compassion on his face. And the terrifying red color was gone; his eyes had returned to their normal, beautiful, glowing ocean blue again. Maybe he had empathy for her because of what he’d just been through. Or maybe whatever damage or magic the warlock blood had wreaked on him was going away. Either way, she was so glad to see his eyes back to normal she almost cried. Instead, she hid her face against his chest.

“I’m not sorry,” she told his shirt, hoping that he could hear her. Superior vampire hearing, hopefully. “That’s the point of me telling you this. I guess, if asked, I would have said that only a horrible person would smash someone else’s head against the tile floor until he almost certainly died. But the truth is that I’m not a horrible person. I was someone driven to an extreme measure, just as it sounds like you were.”

He put a hand on the side of her face and coaxed her to look up at him. “Alice. Of course you’re not a horrible person. You had no choice.”

She shook her head. “No. You were protecting Carter. And me. I was only protecting myself.”

“But—”

“If you’re a monster, then so am I.”

He said nothing, but the jaw he’d been clenching so tightly relaxed somewhat, and his eyes lost some of the bleak hardness they’d carried since he’d flown into that window to get her.

She wanted to pound the point in harder, because Veronica had told her that men’s skulls could be hard as rocks, but she thought perhaps it would be better to let it go.

For now.

So she lay there in silence, content just to be next to him, wrapped in a blanket, with the cool night air washing over them but still warm.

“You mentioned your sister,” she said after a long while. “Tell me about her.”

He tightened his arms around her and kissed the top of her head. “Her name is Hope, and she’s wonderful. It was the worst thing that ever happened to me, but I realized when I grew up—especially working as a firefighter—just how much worse it could have been. And of course tonight…” He took a deep breath and blew it out slowly. “First I have to tell you that I was kind of an asshole when I was a teenager.”

She laughed and reached up and touched his cheek. “I can’t believe that. You’re so nice.”

He groaned and made a face. “Please, for the love of God, never call me nice again. Every time a woman tells me how nice I am, I find out she’s engaged to one of my friends the very next month.”

“You are nice. Not to mention, I like your friends—at least the ones that I’ve met—perfectly well. But can you actually imagine me with any of them?” She started laughing but stopped when she realized his eyes were starting to shade toward red again.

She poked him in the chest, hoping that talking and calm and even a hint of playfulness would pull him away from the edge of despair. “Don’t be ridiculous. You know I want nothing to do with any of your friends. You’re stuck with me. Now tell me about Hope and how awful you were as a kid.”

He shifted position, pulling her more fully on top of him. She couldn’t not kiss him, then, so she did. Again and again. Long, delicious kisses, and their bodies fit together so well…she sighed with pleasure.

But there were things that needed to be spoken tonight; demons exorcised—with no offense to Charlie. “Tell me.”

“Okay, but it’s not a great story. I actually was fine as a kid. We had a good life. It was just me and my sister, our mom and dad. We did the typical American-family thing. Summer vacations to the beach, Sunday dinners were mandatory, that sort of thing.”

She sighed wistfully. “It sounds like a movie or a scene from a book. You’re very lucky, you know.”

“I know. And I’m sorry. I wasn’t trying to—”

“It’s not your fault my childhood was what it was. But, please, I’ll stop interrupting. Just tell me more.”

“Well, my little sister, Hope. She was adorable when she was little. She followed me around like I was her hero. Big brother and all that. And it was fine—great, even—until I got to high school and turned into a jackass.”

She found it hard to imagine. “Really?”

“Really.”

“Why did you turn into a jackass?”

“Because I was arrogant and proud. I’d almost reached my full height, and I was filling out with muscle, since I worked on a landscaping crew in the summers, and suddenly girls noticed me. And I started doing really well in sports. The last thing I wanted was a little sister following me around everywhere.”

She was starting to understand, and her heart ached for the man who’d forced himself to live with the guilt of whatever tragedy he clearly still blamed himself for.

“One night, just after she turned thirteen, Hope decided that, since she was a teenager now, she could go to parties with me. But I was way too proud of my badass self to show up to a party with my baby sister, so I told her she couldn’t come.”

“But she came to the party anyway?”

“She tried,” he said grimly. “But she never got there. She got a ride from a friend of mine—someone I thought was a friend—who was already drinking before heading to the party. He stopped by the house to see if I wanted a ride, and there was my cute little sister, all dolled up, looking older than thirteen and ready to go to the party. So he decided to invite her along. God knows what would’ve happened if he’d shown up at the party with her. I probably would’ve beaten the shit out of him, which still would have been a better outcome. But that’s moot anyway, because they never got to the party. They were in an accident a mile away from my house. He drove the damn car right off the road and hit a tree. And he came out of it with nothing but scratches, while my sister ended up in the ICU.”

Hunter’s face was filled with so much pain that she wished she had a vampire’s gift to be able to compel someone to forget a memory.

“I’m so sorry. If it’s too painful to talk about, then don’t. The last thing I want to do is bring up bad memories on a night that has already been so difficult.”

He shook his head. “It’s okay. I’ve never talked about this since that night. Instead, it’s been festering inside me all these years. Maybe the magic in the warlock blood I drank stirred up every terrible memory I have. Anyway, it actually feels okay to tell you this story. Maybe once it’s out in the open, I can finally get past it. Hope forgave me years ago, of course. Even before she was out of the ICU. That’s just the kind of person she is.”

“She sounds wonderful. I’m so glad she’s okay. But what exactly happened? How bad was it?”

“Bad. Hope could have died,” he said flatly. “And it would’ve been my fault.”

“That’s not true,” she protested. “Your friend who was driving drunk—it’s his fault. I also can’t believe that the way you were raised, in such a good family, your sister didn’t know better than to get in a car with someone who’d been drinking. Even at such a young age.”

“She was too excited to go to the party. I doubt she even realized he’d been drinking. Anyway, I’m not putting the blame for what I did on a thirteen-year-old girl.”

“No, of course not. Neither was I. I’m just saying that a lot of factors went into the circumstances that led up to the accident. You can’t—”

“I love you for wanting to protect me from my own memories. From the pride and arrogance that nearly got my sister killed. But it’s over, and she survived. She was in the hospital for almost a week, but she was so strong and healthy and had such a fierce will to live. They were worried about the swelling in her brain, and I’m pretty sure she even went into a coma for a few hours, but then she woke up and started asking about spaghetti and meatballs.”

He laughed. “That girl could always eat. Spaghetti and meatballs was her favorite dinner. When she woke up and asked my mom for meatballs, Mom burst into tears, and we all sat around laughing and crying until the nurses came running into the room and kicked us out so they could do tests. I think when Mom started laughing, that’s when I knew it was going to be okay.”

“And after that? Did you take her to parties with you?”

“Absolutely not. I stopped going to any parties instead. Even if I hadn’t been grounded for a month, I was punishing myself. I had nearly gotten my sister killed, and I damn sure wasn’t going to have any fun, because I didn’t deserve it.”

She squirmed around until she was sitting up in the hammock. “Aha! Now I understand. It’s a pattern with you. Everything that goes wrong in life is automatically your fault. Your sister wanted to go to a party, and your friend was a drunken fool, so that was your fault. A warlock killed club members—your people—and almost killed Carter Reynolds, then was trying to kill you, too, before you killed him first in self-defense. Another warlock helped kill people and threatened to capture and assault and probably kill me, too, so you protected me. Yes, in a horribly violent way, but you’re too new at being a vampire to have been able to control that. Even Bane said so. But, to you, that’s your fault, too. Do you see the problem here?”

He pulled her back down into his arms, frowning. “Don’t use logic on me, woman.”

She started laughing. “How about I use my feminine wiles on you instead?”

Then she bent down and kissed him for a long, long time. When she raised her head a while later, gasping for air and shaking from head to toe from pure, delicious arousal, she was very pleased to see the dazed look on his face.

“Alice?”

“Yes?”

“What are feminine wiles?”

“I have no idea,” she admitted. “Maybe we could figure it out together?”

He groaned when she lightly bit his earlobe.

“Alice. I don’t deserve—”

“Nobody could possibly deserve me,” she interrupted, twining a hand in his hair. “I’m just that wonderful.”

“You really, really are,” he said fervently, turning his head so her lips could more easily reach his neck. “Please, do that again.”

“Like this?” She nibbled her way down from his neck to his shoulder and then tried something he’d done to her that had driven her wild—she bit down on the curve, just there, and his body jerked beneath her.

“Yes,” he groaned. “Exactly like that.”

She kissed him, then, kissed him like she would never stop kissing him, and when she finally raised her head, panting, he caught her face in his hands.

“Alice. Oh, Alice. I wanted to be so much more for you—a man, not a monster.”

“You’re not a monster,” she said simply. “You’re mine.”