Page 34 of Cuddling Sucks in Coffins
“Give me Night’s Fall’s powers,” I said, my voice like a whip snapping the air.
“You get me the fuck out of here!” He lunged at the door, and a loud sizzle morphed with his scream on impact. A cloud of smoke burst from his body as he leaped back, thickening the air inside his cell so only two angry pinpoints of red peered out. “Get me out!”
“Give me Night’s Fall’s powers,” I said again.
He roared, rattling his frustration down the walls and quaking the wooden floorboards under my feet. “Fuck you, Slayer! I hope he draws your death out so long that you beg him to kill you!”
Keeping my face blank while my stomach soured, while my insides cringed at what he’d said, I ticked my gaze to my left. Another empty cell waited right next to Ronick’s, only without holy water sliding down its walls. That cell was how I planned to get my power back from Detective Appelt. By imprisoning those who prevented me from surviving Paul, I might be able to live my own damn life for once. I was no different than Roseff, who’d held Jacek captive all those years. I had to become that type of monster, despite the slimy feeling oozing through my veins, despite the poisonous rot eating through my heart. This was exactly what monsters did to survive, and I hated it.
I just hoped my vamps didn’t recoil in terror from me. Especially Jacek, who’d once been held against his will just like Ronick was now.
“Bitch!” he shouted. “Let me out of here!”
I turned and left, securing the bar on the woodshed door behind me and smothering the fury of his threats. Then I focused on the bites all over my body, the slightest pinpricks that were barely visible, and when their tingling piqued, I called them to me.
They appeared by my side within seconds, their amber eyes glinting with questions in the moonlight. Their gazes slid from me to the woodshed, surely hearing the muffled threats on my life seeping from underneath the door.
“Jacek,” I choked out, the backs of my eyes burning. “Please don’t hate me.”
“Never.” He stared hard at the door, listening, surely clicking things into place. He started forward, his customary grin long faded into the night. Stopping with his hand on the door’s bar, he shook his head at me. “I could never hate you, Slayer.”
Then I would hate myself enough for the both of us.
He eased the bar up and then shoved inside. I followed closely, Eddie and Sawyer at my heels.
Ronick quieted as soon as he saw Jacek, and Jacek froze. Tension vibrated the air behind me as Eddie and Sawyer took in the scene.
Ronick bared his fangs at me, violence twisting his expression. “You knew exactly where he was this whole time. You never had any intention of telling me where he was.”
“No,” I agreed. “I didn’t.”
“You’re fucking him, aren’t you?” he shouted. “I should’ve known right when I saw you, when I smelled you, you stupid—”
Jacek slammed into the door with the force of a train, his palm smacking the metal. “If you finish that sentence, that will be the last thing you ever do,” he snarled.
“Wrong.” Ronick seethed. “The last thing I will do is kill you for the death of my brother, but I’ll be sure to wait until after the dark unknown kills your little slayer here. And to think I was going to help her find the Slayer Senate.” His flaming eyes ticked to me. “You’re on your own.”
“That’s where you’re wrong,” I said, stepping forward to look him in the eye. “I’m not on my own. Far from it. You’ll give me Night’s Fall’s magic.”
He laughed, a dark, vicious sound. “Or what?”
“Have you completely forgotten the most important thing in this vengeance scenario you planned? Your brother was the bad guy, not me,” Jacek growled. “Your brother taught me everything I need to know about torture. It would be a pleasure to put that knowledge to use.”
I sliced my gaze over my shoulder at him. I would never ask him to torture anyone, not when he’d risen above his past, accepted it as part of who he was, scars and all.
I turned back to Ronick. “Iwill do what must be done.”
The holy water and containment were already torture. It tortured me, too, and I very seriously doubted I could go beyond that.
“Can you all give Ronick and me a minute?” Jacek asked. A muscle in his jaw bounced, and his fists balled at his sides.
Nodding, I turned toward Sawyer and Eddie in the doorway, their expressions hard as stone and just as difficult to read.
“We’ll be right outside if you need us,” I said.
The three of us strode out but left the woodshed door open a crack. Eddie paced the yard in tight circles and raked his fingers through his hair as if to reconcile what I’d done. Sawyer gazed over the fence at the cemetery. The longer the silence stretched, the faster my knees threatened to buckle under the weight of what I’d become.
A monster. All because of Paul.
