Page 30 of Violence and Vice

Fuck.

He’s so beautiful. Yet right now, he looks so damn broken. And the person responsible for breaking him is in the vault right next to this.

I hear the scuffle of footsteps and glance over my shoulder to see Sysco walking in, Harry on his heels.

“Thanks for saving my ass,” Sysco says, eying Ares as he lies in that bed. “I’m honestly not sure I could have taken him if he’d gotten to me.”

I don’t say it aloud, but there’s no way Sysco could hold out against Ares. While Sysco is very tall, about two inches taller than Ares, Ares has to have about twenty or thirty pounds of muscle on Sysco. Sysco wouldn’t have lasted long.

“It was just damn lucky timing that Ares finally charged his phone,” I note as I sit on the bedside and look down at Ares’ face. “I’ve tried calling and texting a million times, but it’s been dead. When I tracked him…” I shake my head. When Ares finally comes back to himself, it’s going to be horrific. But if he came to and also realized he’d ripped apart his best friend… I couldn’t let that be on his conscience.

“Looks like he’s already been in a fight today,” Sysco notes, his eyes scraping over the state of my fiancé.

“With himself,” I say, my words coming out hoarse. “There were two parts to what Ophelia told him to do.”

“Kill every vampire he knows in New York City,” Harry continues for me when my throat feels too tight to keep going. “Then to kill himself when he was done.”

Sysco curses, the look in his eyes darkening. His hands curl into fists. “Ares? What the fuck could she have against him? I mean… he saved her. And Ares is the fucking best. Why…”

“Hurt people hurt people,” I say quietly, brushing my fingers along Ares’ cheek. And I can’t help it. I lean in and press my lips to it next, then press my forehead against his, praying for everything to just go back to the way it was.

Sysco curses again, glaring daggers in the direction of the other vault.

“How long until he wakes up?” Harry asks.

“Hours,” I say. Elle wasn’t very specific when she gave me the dart with her vampire toxin. “But I see no harm in getting Ophelia to undo what she did while he’s still out.”

Harry nods and walks out of the vault. I hear him open the one next door, and a few moments later, he reappears, Ophelia at his side.

She’s stiff as can be, her shoulders shrugged up to her ears. She looks terrified. Her eyes whip around the room, going fromAres’ unconscious form, to me, to Sysco. She eyes him warily, taking a step away from him.

“Look, I’m not going to lay a hand on you, but this is some serious bullshit you’ve pulled,” Sysco says. He doesn’t look away once, his eyes intense and a little crazy. I’ve always thought of Sysco as a wild card, and he just reaffirms it to me every day. “You’re gonna fix what you did. Because Ares didn’t fucking deserve this.”

Ophelia steps sideways, away from Sysco, and doesn’t say a word.

“Do you see him?” I ask, my blood turning boiling hot. “He looks like he’s fuckingdecaying, Ophelia! This is the person I love with every damn fiber of my being. And you’ve turned him into something that he isn’t. And I’m about to lose him. Ophelia. Fix. Him. Now.”

She’s shaking from head to toe. Her eyes are bloodshot, and fear is consuming every bit of her. Harry places a hand on the small of her back and pushes her forward. He doesn’t push hard, not at all, but she stumbles forward.

I shift on the bed, scooting to the side so that she can see more of him. She takes another step forward, her eyes locking on him. I watch her face as she approaches. There’s wariness. She can see the injuries on him. I can practically see her thoughts spinning on it all. But I also see something like disgust in her eyes.

“Fix. Him,” I say darkly as I stare at her.

Her eyes dart to me, and it’s me she steps sideways away from this time.

I don’t even fucking care anymore that she’s afraid of me.

“I… I don’t know how to undo it,” she says, her words rough.

“How did you tell him to do it before?” I prompt.

“I just told him,” she says. “And touch. It seems more likely to work if I’m touching the person.”

Ares will still be out for hours. But I grab his hand and hold it out to Ophelia. It dangles, limp, just like he was dead. And I hate it.

The look on Ophelia’s face tells me that with everything in her, she does not want to touch Ares. But my eyes narrow at her, and she steps forward. She takes his hand in her trembling ones.

“Stop killing vampires,” she says, looking down at his unconscious form. “And don’t hurt yourself. Go back to the way things were before we last spoke.”

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