Page 91 of Angel Of Darkness

Give me one.

“We’ve got to get out of here,” she told Keenan. Before the guys on the ground woke up and before those sirens she heard got any closer.

Coming home again—bad mistake. There too many dangers to her in New Orleans. But then, these days, it seemed like someone was always after her.

Because I’m marked for death?

Time was running out.

“Come on.” Keenan snagged her hand with his. She heard the crack of anger in his voice and hesitated. He knows. He knew about the darkness in her now. He’d realized she wasn’t the woman he’d watched so long ago. While he’d been away, her bad side had most definitely come out to play.

“Hurry, Nicole, come on!” Then they were running, streaking down the streets and darting through the alleys. Bourbon Street came and went, the crowd a blur around her. Voices, laughter. Bodies brushing. Faster, faster they went as they pushed into bars, darted outside, and cut through the city.

Then...

Silence.

They’d stopped outside a voodoo shop. The place was closed for the night. The windows and doors were covered with thick bars. The street was empty. Everyone was busy partying a few blocks away. Nicole sagged, her breath heaving. Safe. For now.

“You killed.” The anger was back in Keenan’s voice. More reckoning time.

She brushed her hands against her thighs, sucked in more air, and managed a jerky nod.

“After what that vamp did to you in the alley...” He shook his head and stared at her with confusion clear in his gaze. “You killed someone else?”

More than one “someone else.” She cleared her throat. “You know about the Borns.” She’d fought, for as long and as hard as she could. But he’d broken her. “They take away your will.” She’d been linked to Grim from the moment she took her first breath. She’d heard his whisper in her mind, taunting her, and as the days passed and she became weaker, that whisper had turned into a scream.

She paced away from Keenan. The heat of the night wrapped around her. The scent of the river teased her nose. “I didn’t want to kill.” A stark truth. “Do you really think I could ever want that?”

She’d viciously fought the vamp who attacked her, but that had been self-defense. No choice. And the others?—

How long are you going to keep justifying?

She exhaled on a ragged sigh “He put the compulsion to attack in my head. The men he sent me after—they’d been killing vamps.” Right, like that was such a bad thing. Most of the vamps she’d met had lived to torture and slaughter.

Grim had made sure that his Taken were just like him.

“You’d never killed. Not until that night.” Now Keenan sounded sad, and his voice made her heart ache. “I knew—the first time I saw you in Mexico, I knew you looked different.”

Fangs. Claws. Seduction. Blood. Yes, she’d gotten some new features. Not exactly upgrades. “I had to change in order to survive.” She wouldn’t apologize for all that she’d done. The killings—yes, she regretted them and had vowed not to take another life, but the other things... Seduction, blood drinking—I had to survive.

His gaze raked her.

What did he see?

A monster? Or a woman?

“Wishing you’d touched me and let me die that night?” The question slipped from her lips, and, oh, damn, she hadn’t meant to say that. She’d been thinking it—for days now—but she hadn’t meant to say it.

His eyes narrowed into chips of blue ice.

She spun around and began marching, um, running, down the street. She didn’t want to hear his answer. Didn’t want to know that the man who’d had her back these last few days actually wished that she was dead.

Enough people were already wishing that.

Hard hands caught her and hauled her back against a muscled chest. “Never say that.” He whirled her around. His eyes didn’t look like ice anymore. Black now, not blue, and burning.

“Keenan, I?—”

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