Page 77 of Protecting His Vampire Mate

“What did you do to me?” I demanded, fury welling through me.

Without waiting for him to respond, I reached for my power, prepared to lay the hurt on them. The moment I touched my magic, however, it slipped away from me. Like my mental fingers were coated in butter.

It was followed by a wave of red-black pain, as though my entire body had been dipped in the River Styx. Pure suffering flowed through my veins. My vision hazed again and I let out a gasp of pain, every muscle in my body cramping up at the same time.

“Sorry about that,” Michael said, losing his smirk as he studied me. “We don’t actually want you in pain, so I’m sorry about all this. But don’t try to cast any spells or use any magic, otherwise you’ll be hating life for a while. You’re in a circle of witches’ bane—iron mixed with salt and sulfur. It suppresses your powers by causing severe pain any time you try to channel magic.” He paused, growing more serious, before he added, “It won’t kill you, but it’ll make you wish it had.”

“What is this?” I panted out, trying to make sense of what was happening. I was sitting in a wooden chair in a dimly lit cavernous room. The dark shapes of pallets and industrial-looking equipment loomed all around us. “Where am I?”

“We’re in a factory at the edge of town,” Danny told me.

“You asshole,” I swore. I wanted to punch him in his smug fucking face. I wasn’t tied down or anything, so that shouldn’t have been a problem. But when I attempted to make my body stand, nothing happened. “Why can’t I move?”

“It’s a binding sigil,” Danny replied. His expression was troubled as he watched me. “We drew one on the bottom of the chair and activated it. It’s not going to hurt you, but it will prevent you from moving. It’s easier and more comfortable than ropes.”

Where the fuck had these two learned how to do sigil magic? But I didn’t ask that. I strongly suspected I wouldn’t like the answer.

“How thoughtful of you,” I spat out instead, some of the pain subsiding at last, leaving me shuddering with relief. “Let me go.”

“We can’t do that,” Danny replied. “Not until your partner joins us.”

“Leave Bryan out of this!”

Michael scoffed, dropping down to a squat next to me so that we were at eye level. “Bryan is the whole reason we’re in this mess, warlock. See, Danny here thinks that Bryan might be different from other vampires we’ve met.” He didn’t sound like he believed that for a second. Then he leaned in conspiratorially and added, “But we know better, don’t we?”

I locked eyes with him, abruptly so enraged at the hunters that I almost felt calm. A sense of crystal clarity descended over me.

“Bryan’s not a vampire. He’s a warlock. Like me.”

“Nice try.” Danny snorted. “I saw him giving you his blood on the lawn of the house. I saw his fucking fangs.”

My stomach plummeted. “If you hurt him, I’ll kill you. I swear it.”

Michael smiled at that.

“When the vampire—Bryan—proves that he’s not a soulless monster, we’ll let both of you go,” Danny told me, sounding sincere, like he believed every word. “No more questions asked. It’s our compromise.”

“I see it a lot more black and white than Danny does,” Michael put in, tearing his gaze from me long enough to shoot Danny a rueful look. Then he turned his attention back to me. “I figure that if I run across a vampire, they’re either going to kill me or I’m going to kill them. It’s as simple as that.”

“With a charming personality like yours, who could blame them?” I ground out. I met Michael’s gaze again, dead on. “I know a spell that will dissolve every bone in your body.”

“Sounds painful,” he replied, arching an eyebrow, totally unfazed. “Have you used it before?”

“Not yet.”

Michael’s lips twitched, like he was fighting back a smile. “You know, I think I might like you. It’s Tobias, right?”

My stony expression was all the answer he was getting from me.

“Anyway,” Michael continued, when it became clear that I wasn’t going to reply, “I’ve got to say, I think that in different circumstances, we might have become friends.”

“Sorry, I don’t become friends with murderers.”

“We’re not, though,” Danny put in. “I get what you must be thinking, but I come from a long line of hunters. And our first rule has always been that we vet our targets, every single time. We make sure that whatever we hunt has killed people before.”

“And that they will kill again if given the chance,” Michael added, and it sounded so automatic that it must have been ingrained into him. “But luckily for me, that includes pretty much every vampire we’ve ever run across. They’re soulless killers, completely devoid of humanity. All of them.”

“Bryan helped save an entire city. He helped stop an evil warlock that was planning on turning the supernatural factions against each other and starting a war that would have hurt everyone. Mundane people included.”

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