Page 118 of High Stakes and Soulmates
“He’s not a vampire,” I say.
“Clearly,” Louis agrees.
“He’s a human.”
“That he’s not.”
“He’s lying to you. He’s trying to fuck with you,” Cyrus says. “I’m pretty sure I’d remember if I was Arturo.”
“Would he? He can’t even remember what his brother looked like. He took whatever memories he has and wrote me into them because I was a familiar face. Yes, I was there when his family died, but it was because I killed them. This really couldn’t have worked out any better if I’d planned each step myself.” Louis laughs as he shoves me to the ground. “Maybe the reason he doesn’t remember anything is because the tragedy of you leaving him fucked with his mind.”
I stare at Cyrus while he shakes his head. He looks so much like the man I lost but he’s a blood relative, so I never questioned it. He looks older than Arturo. Arturo was only twenty-four and Cyrus looks like he’s in his thirties. But most of all, Cyrus isn’t a vampire.
“He’s not a vampire.”
“He’s not!”
Is he a werewolf? But even werewolves wouldn’t live that long. They have slightly extended lives, but two hundred years? No…
“Fucking hell, this is delightful. I just…” Louis kicks me so hard I feel ribs break. “I just… love it. I really love it. I love it so much.”
I need to kill him. I need to stop this… but how? He’s faster than me. It’s just the three of us, and if I make a move toward him, he’ll go for Cyrus. I know he will.
“Please, stop hurting him,” Cyrus begs.
“Why? He gave himself to me. He said I could have him. I’m thinking I’m going to tear him apart piece by piece. First, I’ll remove his legs so he can never leave me. So he can watch me destroy your life some more. It’ll be easy. Everyone you love will be dead.”
I can’t fathom a life where I’d left him with this monster all these years. He’s in my head and I feel like he’s tearing it apart.
Louis freezes and the smirk on his face falls as he cocks his head. “Fucking hell,” he snaps, jerking back from me a moment before a pipe slams into the floor near me, embedding into the floor.
Louis snarls, turning to look as Casimir and Atticus step into the room. They look exhausted. They look like they’ve lost too much blood, but they’re here.
I rush forward, grabbing Cyrus who I tear back just as Louis moves. He drives a blade right toward Cyrus, like he wants to recreate the very day I lost Arturo all those years ago, but I turn to protect him, leaving the blade to be driven into my back.
“No! No, no,” Cyrus cries.
I push him away from danger and lift my arm up just as the blade goes for my neck. He cuts halfway through my arm, striking bone and shattering it as Casimir lunges for him. He draws back just in time. But Casimir isn’t moving as fast as he normally does. While Louis’s countless vampires weren’t enough to stop him or Atticus, they obviously wore both of them down.
My arm hangs useless at my side while I hold Cyrus tightly. “It’s okay. It’ll be okay,” I say, but I don’t even know if I trust my own words. Louis has done nothing tonight besides taunting us. He’s fresh and ready to slaughter anyone who gets in his way, and when Atticus makes the slightest fumble, Louis is there to drive a stake into his chest. Casimir slams Atticus back before it kills him, but it puts Casimir in line of Louis’s next attack.
Louis throws his arms up like he can’t believe that we’d even try to fight back. “You all are just dragging this out,” Louis snarls as I see movement behind him. I watch while Cyrus’s real brother, the one I’d run into outside the club, rushes him.
Louis is pissed and the man isn’t moving fast enough to avoid his strike. Louis nearly cuts his head off before the man reaches him, but it’s the brief moment of distraction that Casimir needs to grab the pipe he’d thrown and drive it through Louis’s back and into his chest. He gasps as he staggers and looks down at the pipe protruding from his chest. It’s almost like he’s shocked more than anything. Shocked that someone finally hit him.
“You… you fucking…”
“Stay back,” I tell Cyrus as I rush to help them, but before we can continue, those who are left of Louis’s children fill in around us.
“Kill them and bring those two to me,” he snarls, and just like that, he breaks through the window and disappears. Of course he’s gone. Of course he’d flee right when the tables begin to turn.
I try to follow him, but the woman who’d been there the night my brother died slams into me. Anger tears through me as I scoop up the knife Cyrus had given me and slit her throat before finishing her off.
It doesn’t take long to kill the vampires who flooded the warehouse—there weren’t many left—but it’s long enough for Louis to get away.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
CYRUS
