Page 61 of Blood Lust
My grief of everything, anger, and remorse was taking control of my words, and my energy fell with the power that washed away from me at that moment. I slumped over Logan’s body, only to fall to my face when it turned into white smoke and breeze out of existence right before my eyes.
The agony and defeat I felt at that moment were more powerful than what it felt like being juiced up and fighting dark evil. I couldn’t do this. I didn’t want to do this. My Logan was gone. My daughter was gone. How did no one see that a fallen angel was behind all of this from the very beginning?
Chapter Thirty
Amonth had passed, and all of us felt an emptiness that none of us could explain. The victory of getting what we once thought was a psychopath witch off our ass was massively overshadowed by the loss of Logan and our sweet baby girl. Most days I felt like lying in bed and crying for the rest of my life, but the guys forced me to get up and moving.
I sat outside, watching vampires and shifters come and go at Roman and Lucas’s mansion, feeling detached and unable to shake my feelings of loss. Zac must have apologized a billion times for letting his mental guard down and allowing the demon to possess him, but he had to understand that none of us could have prepared us for a battle of demonic proportions. Spiritual entities who worked for the devil himself. In my opinion, those battles belonged in that realm—the spiritual realm where the other stronger—good—angels took on the dark forces from the pits of hell.
I rubbed my hand over my stomach—something I never did in front of Zac—wishing that the vampire and I would have conceived a child together in a better way than how we did when the demon possessed him. Zac would never say it, but I think it disgusted him to know that this is how he would become a father for the first time, and I really couldn't blame him for feeling that way. It wasn’t an ideal situation.
“I never told you how all of that went down.”
Fuck. Where’d he come from?
I turned back to find Zac leaning against the door frame just off from where I sat on the porch swing.
“Nothing could have stopped it, Zac. That demon got one hell of a jump on us.”
“If I knew that fucker was suffering right now, I’d probably sleep better at night. After everything we’ve come up against, for this to be the thing that got him…”
“You need to stop beating yourself for this. We’re all trying to wrap our heads around this.”
I held back tears still seeing the grief in Zac’s eyes. There were no words for how much we missed Logan. The disbelief that he was gone in an instant was mindboggling. We couldn’t even have a proper burning ceremony of his and our daughter’s bodies because after I sent the demon back to hell, their bodies turned to dust particles and vanished before our eyes—like some dark magic entity came and took them from us before we could blink.
“One minute I was in shock, watching Logan get taken out, then next thing I knew…” he closed his eyes and exhaled. He reopened them, eyes more distant than I’d ever seen them. “Something worse than losing Logan was happening to me. A fucken demon moves in, takes the driver seat in my mind, and I couldn’t control any of it. I’m just watching the most horrific event unfold. Totally helpless.” He looked at me with an expression that was sad enough to make me cry right then. “Baby, that demon forced me to rape you, and now,” he curled his lips in disgust, “you’re carrying two of my children. What a fucking awesome reminder for all of us to know what I did to you and everything that went down with that demon in full control of my mind.”
I stood up, wanting to yell at him, but I couldn’t. I brought my hands to the scruff highlighting his chiseled face. His stunning bronze eyes floated down to meet mine.
“I’m so sorry, Ellie.”
“I love you, Zac. I’m not losing you over this. I need you to really try and get past it all. We need to find some resolve in all of this, or we’re all going to go out of our damn minds. I knowyouwould have never forced yourself on me like that. You have to start moving forward. We have lost too much for you to add this to the list.”
He covered my hand on his cheek, turned his lips, and pressed them into my palm. The next thing I knew, my powerful vampire was pulling me into his strong embrace. He placed his chin on my shoulder and sighed, “Goddamnit, I miss him. The bastard wasn’t only my cousin, but he was also my best fucking friend.”
I rubbed the tense muscles of Zac’s back, hearing his voice crack as he held back tears. Shit, maybe that’s what we all needed. None of us cried or really showed emotions beyond being pissed off and numb. We were stuck in some smothering, grief-stricken state, and not even the powers of the warlock could help us. Hell, Edgar and I both tried to get all of our brains right, and nothing worked. Nothing touched this pain we all felt—even the shifters. Edgar had a theory it was our merge that was blocking it. Logan was connected to all of us, so with his death, it was most likely a piece of all of us died too.
“I know. I miss him and my little girl so much that it hurts to breathe,” I softly said.
Zac pulled back and quickly brushed tears from his eyes. Damn, this was horrible.
“We can’t fight that kind of evil.” His eyes grew stern as he looked past me and took the view of the countless shifters and vampires out on the lawn. “Not even with the fact that we achieved the impossible in uniting vampires and wolf shifters. We can’t do fucking fallen angels and shit on that level. That is so far above our pay grade that it isn’t even funny.”
“I won’t accept that.” I folded my arms and stared at Zac’s defeated face. “I sent that whore from hell back where it belonged, we can find a way. Right now, we have to stop kicking our own asses by dwelling on what we could’ve or should’ve done. The past is written, and there’s no rewriting it.” My eyebrows shot up at Zac’s angered expression, “Unless there are time travelers in the supernatural realm? And even if there were, could we really take on what took us down?”
“No,” he absently answered. “Maybe mine and Logan’s brains would’ve been locked down tighter, but who knows, even at best we were fucked.”
“So let’s try to move forward. All the vampires and shifters in the fucking world are here. Maybe if we get busy, we can get distracted and just move on as best we can.”
Zac shook his head. “They’ve been here for three weeks, how’s that working out for any of us? It’s not working at all. Goddamnit!” he roared pulling his hands tightly through his hair. “This is so fucked up on so many levels I can’t even explain.”
“Maybe if we worked to end our merge,” Bren said coming up the back steps to us, taking three steps at a time. “Before you say anything,” he eyed Zac’s lethal expression, “trust me, I thought of everything under the moon, and it’s all I can think would help us.”
“The moon?” Zac growled. “Fuck the wolves and fuck your moon. If we could reverse the merge with you dogs, don’t you think Edgar would have offered that up when he and Elle were trying to push some mental healing powers on us? Severing the bond will do absolutely nothing.”
“Take it easy,” Cole was approaching behind Bren, as were the rest of my guys. “We all get through this together. It would be easier if we didn’t have everyone in the wolf pack here and both Roman and Lucas’s covens roaming around, but we need them in case Enzo is picking up on our latest weakness, and we don’t see him coming through our setback.”
“You call this a fucking setback?” Braden challenged Cole who was forever calming all our asses down. “We lost Logan, mother fucker. And a baby we were blessed to have was taken within hours after she was born. So take yoursetbackbullshit and go fuck yourself with it.”
