Doing It To Death: Shivers and Sins Volume 2 Read online

  And my promise.

  I, to my relief, began to feel the first stirrings of something beyond numbness. Not hunger exactly, but a desire to kill. Maybe I just need to build up an appetite.

  “How ya feelin’, man?”

  Vaughn swallowed audibly and dropped the corpse he’d been cradling like a cat toying with a long-dead mouse. He’d fucked and sucked his dessert dry several minutes ago, but he knew what waited for him. I peeled off my shirt and tossed the garment atop Vaughn’s jeans.

  “It was a joke, Jesse.” Vaughn’s gaze drifted left and he gulped. I smiled, ticking off all the gestures that revealed his lies. His old wounds were mostly healed. Bruising around the knife wounds and a body covered in blood were the only signs he’d suffered so much damage.

  “Funny.”

  My fears that the witch had fucked me up powered my swing. Vaughn’s jawbone shattered under my knuckles like dead wood beneath a boot. While he bent and cradled his weak bones, I picked up the dead body and tossed the remains of Dessert in the pile with the other two. Nothing in my way now.

  “I wasn’t—”

  I grabbed him by the top of his platinum head and buried my fist in his face, grinning when he gulped down a gush of his own blood, peppered with teeth. The next blow shattered the bones surrounding his eyes. I sighed in satisfaction. I had to stop and savor the feeling with a shudder of relief. Not dead after all. I could still feel this. I could still imagine the cracks in Vaughn’s bones like shattering ice, mending and melting. He’d feel every fissure re-blending just before I cracked the bones again.

  “Jesse, c’mon man!”

  Jesse! The witch screamed inside my mind, her voice threading with Vaughn’s like a twisted chorus.

  I drove my fists into his knitting bones over and over, until all I could hear were muffled groans lodged in a throat full of his own blood. He flopped onto his belly to crawl away when I dropped him and popped my knuckles. Vaughn tried to get on his feet but he swayed and fell. The corner had been his destination. I grabbed his knife, the one Evie had abandoned in that pool of blood, and waited for him to look at me.

  He stared over his shoulder, and then slumped when he saw me tapping the flat of the blade against my bicep.

  “C’mon, man. Not again. I just got my mind right.” He spit out a mouthful of blood and teeth and shook his head like he was trying to clear an etch-a-sketch. The sweet music of grinding bones healing inside him tickled my ears. The healing slowed again. I smiled and nodded.

  “Good. Now we can get started.”

  3

  My shadow fell across Vaughn. He closed his eyes just before I grabbed his ankle. I flipped him on his back as he fought to get free, and started in on his chest, prying open each and every wound with his own knife. Slowly.

  Every time his body limped toward stitching him into one piece, I sliced through a layer of fresh, weak skin and tissue. Without more blood, his body would keep healing until he became starved again. Sweat beaded on his brow and upper lip. When he slapped my arms away, I gripped his throat in my hand.

  “You either stay still, or I cut off your hands next.”

  He gritted his new mouthful of teeth when I twisted the knife in one of the wounds. I’d pissed him off. Good.

  “You tryna turn me on, or what?”

  “Another joke, huh? What do you think, Vaughn?” My steady grimace drew a flinch. I slid the knife down the center of his chest, tucking the blade under his bottom rib. His breathing quickened as he braced himself. Then, he screamed when I slid the knife in deep as a virgin cock, slow and steady, under the rib. Tickling him from the inside out. Every scrape of the blade drew a shudder.

  “Fine, okay! I’m sorry! I! Apologize!” He gasped before I could puncture an organ. “I should’ve listened to you.”

  I wriggled the knife.

  “I wasn’t really gonna kill her! I was just scaring her! A cut here and there, throw a quick fuck in her. Then a little blood and she’d be good as new. Just a joke, like I said.”

  I laughed, pulled the knife out, and licked the sharp edge clean. Nothing. Air or ashes would have more flavor. I knew better, had tasted this blood enough times to know my tongue had stopped working. Vaughn’s blood tasted sharp as his knives. Bittersweet, just like him.

  “You know what’s really funny?”

  My brother scooted as much as he could, but slipped in his own blood and fell flat on his back. He gave up, heaving and staring at the ceiling like a dejected starfish. The shallow test cuts I’d made along his chest and stomach were healing at a glacial pace. Despite his boast, I knew none of what I had planned would feel good, even for Vaughn.

  “What’s funny is, I can smell her blood and your come. You and I both know blood and come mean death when you’re involved. You don’t have enough control to just scare someone. But I do, little brother. I do.”

  I thought of how he must’ve smiled down at Evie as he emptied inside that perfect pussy. My perfect witch. She’d been mine to give and mine to take away, not Vaughn’s. Not my fucking father’s! I slid my knife into his mouth, the razor-sharp edge poised at the hinge of his jaw.

  “It was a joke, right? Why aren’t you laughing, Vaughn?”

  Vaughn’s groans of agony echoed through me and bounced off every wall. I grinned while I opened him from jaw to the edge where his lips joined. He huffed in shallow breaths to stop himself splitting the cut on his right cheek further. His Adam’s apple bobbed against my palm while I held him down and finished slicing a Chelsea grin on the left side. Tears swam in his eyes and the splash of blood against his pale skin made me hungry, wild and hungry and full of rage. I almost felt relieved to be so full of emotion when I’d been afraid of being emptied.

  “I’ve got control and a pretty good sense of humor, Vaughn. Which is why your spine isn’t in my fucking hands right now. Every time I get mad that you disobeyed me, all I can think is how you brought her down here, figuring you had us both beat… and woke up a day later with a second pair of lips under your chin.”

  I chuckled, then leaned close enough to inhale his breathe. My smile died on my lips.

  “I had plans for the witch. Plans to keep her around just a little bit longer, you know? You took that from me. You and Cai and my dad. You all get to take and take, and I’m just supposed to give, right? I’m supposed to bend and break, and if I want a little something just for me, that’s too much. How is it I’m in charge but everyone else thinks they get to make up rules for me?”

  Vaughn swallowed another mouthful of his own blood and blinked. I distracted myself by watching the skin on his cheeks knit together in the lazy patterns of a blood-starved vampire.

  “Jesse?” His voice came out clipped as he struggled not to move his lips too much and re-tear his flesh. “Who’s Cai? Who’s…?”

  Vaughn’s pale eyes widened as realization dawned, then narrowed.

  “True born?”

  The mention of a dad gave up the ghost.

  “You never asked, I never told.”

  He and Liam had assumed I’d been turned. I’d been older, sure. Stronger. But it never occurred to them I could be anything else. What true born would run with turned vampires? No, I had to be older, with money stashed here and there, not a true born slumming.

  Turned vampires don’t have fathers, they have makers. And, as of a decade ago, turning humans had been sanctioned so their population didn’t get out of hand.

  True born vampires, like Vaughn’s twisted maker, might take a special liking to a human and give them venom, but unlike us, the turned can’t breed and they can’t turn a human. They’re mules to our stallions, so generally we don’t mix with our neutered brothers and sisters for long stretches of time. We have prime real estate on the food chain. We’re born to rule, as my father always said.

  I’d had more fun pretending I didn’t have to rule one day. I’d found the brothers I could never have as a true born heir. I could already see the resentment building in Vaughn. Ho
w could he ever understand the kind of freedom that came with being like him?

  “You’re telling me I been running with you since ‘87 and you’re just bringing up you’re true born?”

  “Yeah, that’s what I’m telling you.”

  Truth is I’d never expected to love the little shit, or to love Liam. It’s just more fun to free run with a crew. The hunts are sweeter, the days shorter, and yet fuller. I didn’t want to spend the whole time watching fellow true born or turned jockey for favor with ‘Jesse the Heir’. I didn’t want to worry they were reporting to my father, like Cai did. I wanted something else. I wanted to escape. I’d found a family in the midst of the hunt, a family I could build in my image, when I’d spent so many years molded in my father’s.

  Freedom.

  Even if freedom had been an illusion, the illusion had been sweet as witch blood.

  “Who the fuck are you, Jesse?”

  Vaughn managed a look of betrayal despite being under my hand with a knife poised over his face. I contemplated giving him teardrops to match his slow-healing clown grin.

  When my father called me to his side, Vaughn and Liam were supposed to be a non-issue. Like the witch. Like prey. I hadn’t thought about how much I’d miss them or what I’d tell them. I just figured I’d go back to my life, quit slumming, and claim my birthright.

  Look how well that turned out….

  I smiled and laid the tip of the knife at the very edge of Vaughn’s lower lid, caressing the space between two blond lashes with cold steel. He didn’t move.

  “I’m an Oldman.”

  Just as I knew they would, the blond vampire’s eyes widened at my surname, and enticed me to continue the cut that opened at the corner of his eye. He winced, but continued the momentum until I’d drawn a perfect teardrop and sliced off the pale skin capping my artistry. Salt and blood filled the meaty divot. The truth sank in deeper still. Vaughn realized all this time he’d been rolling with vampire royalty. The vampire royalty to be exact. The first vampire family of North America.

  “I thought you were just… old. Figured you collected some cash over the years, got some decent properties to hole up in from time to time—ah f-fuck!” Vaughn winced as I carved another teardrop, making stinging cuts that would buzz with annoying pain like a fly caught between blinds and a pane of glass. “You’re worse than true born. You’re an Oldman.”

  I rolled my eyes.

  The sadist with no self-control thought me worse than him.

  The fucking nerve, man.

  “Well go on, rail at my betrayal. I’m a liar after all, just like you.” I swallowed the Liam-shaped lump in my throat. “Tell me what a horrible leader I was. Tell me I got Liam killed because of some witch pussy. Or, are you scared?”

  I could hear Vaughn’s heart pound like a kick drum in his chest, but to his credit he gritted his teeth and said, “Fuck true borns and fuck you Oldman cunts. You might as well kill me now, because I don’t bow. Not even to royalty, dude. I’m not gonna give you the satisfaction. You know what you did. You know why Liam’s dead. Meanwhile, the bitch is probably upstairs—”

  I laughed at that, a belly laugh that betrayed how proud the response made me. Vaughn didn’t give a shit about titles or money. Never had, and if he never did, then maybe there would be use for him when freedom came crashing down and responsibility took her place. The turned had their uses.

  “She’s dead.”

  Again, his eyes widened. I stood and stretched, circled my neck, and rolled my shoulders. The weight that had settled there didn’t disappear. The hunger in my gut scratched restlessly, but I ignored the gnawing ache.

  “I know I lied to you, even if it was a lie of omission. I know my kind and your kind come with baggage. But, you need to decide if you’re my brother or not. Things are about to change for me. I could use people by my side I can trust.”

  “You mean you need turned manservants to do your bidding. My maker told me just what my kind are for when it comes to yours.”

  I shook my head. “You pissed me off, but I’m not your maker. And you’re not just turned to me. You’re... family. You and Liam were family.”

  Vaughn stared at me with enough eloquence in his gaze to negate his indignant words. Pain, sadness, anger. Loss. But, beneath all of that, our bond shone in his eyes. We’d both bled over the loss of Liam. We’d both been done in by the witch. I asked much of him, maybe, after everything that’d happened between us. But, I’d meet with the man who invented the art of asking for too much soon enough, so I didn’t have much pity for Vaughn.

  “We’d have to start fresh. No lies. Just loyalty. I’ll give you some time to think about it.”

  Vaughn turned a furtive glance toward the dead bodies in the corner. His food had started to go cold, and soon the bodies would empty. I could almost hear his silent scream not to leave him in there while the corpses saturated the air with piss and shit and the sickening perfume of decay. No longer blood, just meat. Just dead things rotting until they left a taste in the ether.

  He tried to crawl toward me but I stomped toward the stairs, shutting the door behind me.

  When the door closed, I changed the code quickly, and waited just long enough to hear Vaughn’s groan as he tried the old the numbers. I laughed for a minute, then unlocked the door.

  “Leaving a vampire in a room full of empty bowels and decayed human is just cruel, huh? You think you suffered enough?”

  He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Maybe. Guess that depends on if I volunteer to call a true born my brother.”

  I stepped aside and let him climb the stairs, wondering what he’d choose.

  I dreamed. Something I don’t usually do. I knew right away this was a dream, because Evie sat beside me, at the edge of the lake I’d drowned her in. She could only be alive in a dream, but I felt her in a way that made me believe she’d found her way out of death. I had to remind myself of the truth, because the ache of the illusion seemed more real.

  “You’re dead.”

  “No.” She didn’t look at me. Instead, she lay in the green grass and stared up at the broad blue sky. She writhed and stretched, closed her eyes, and moaned. “I cheated death for you. I came back for you.”

  When she opened her rapturous eyes to take in the view above, I laid down and stared up with her. The sky shone with our reflections, like the surface of a pool turned mirror. Far, far above us, and yet close enough to touch, I watched our reflections with wariness, as if any moment the mirror would crash on top of our prone bodies.

  She wore the clothes I’d killed her in days before. Before Cai left with a cryptic reminder to be ready for my new witch-related job. Before Vaughn had healed and tried to hunt with me.

  Before I realized I couldn’t feed.

  My bite and my hands killed her, and I realized too late, she must’ve cast some spell on me. Maybe her ghost rattled inside my bones like they were her cage.

  I turned onto my side and touched her bare stomach.

  So soft. So warm. I felt hunger again.

  “I want to taste you. I haven’t been able to hunt. I can’t fuck. All I do is think about you and starve.”

  Far away and yet, so close, the mirror descended like a guillotine, falling with alarming speed.

  She still wouldn’t look at me. Evie smiled, her grin growing wider as I unbuttoned her jeans. Sharp fangs scraped her plush bottom lip. I had to touch her, I had to feel the wet heat of her opening against my fingertips before the mirror crushed us both.

  “I told you I’d see you in Hell.” She groaned as I slid my hand inside. “I told you.”

  I rolled over, settling on top of her, and in the way of dreams, plunged deep inside her body without removing our clothes, just as the mirror shattered against my back. The reflective sky impaled us with a million shards of agonizing and bloody life.

  Reborn. I knew in an instant that the jagged edges of consciousness were stuck within us, connecting us with the glass that spiked
through both our hearts. I’d felt this invasion once before, on a motel bed when Evie topped me and showed me the predator she truly was.

  We shared one scream, one death, one climax, and one heartbeat. I shuddered against her, naked, with acid surging through my veins like a forest fire. My own venom, our joined spirits.

  “You’re alive.” I whispered, because even in a dream I couldn’t believe. Even buried inside her, even as I surged forward and came again and again, I couldn’t bring myself to believe.

  “Yes.” She smiled but tears streamed into her ears, down into her hair. “I cheated death for you. I came back for you.”

  Endless tears fell, sprang out around her like a blue sky, like a mirror.

  Like a lake.

  “I told you, you’d never be free of me, Jesse.”

  We sank into blue sky, into churning waters. A lake. An ocean, a river. The water changed, but we didn’t. We fell, joined at the hips, bodies surging against each other like flint on steel. Light sparked where I touched her skin, where she scraped my flesh with her fangs, where my tongue licked hers.

  “Come for me, baby.” She hissed in my ear as I bit into her throat. She pulled my head up, our hips starting a fire as we fucked harder. She stared into my eyes. I saw the trap she’d sprung, too late.

  “Come find me, you sonofabitch. I want to watch you die.”

  She shoved her fangs deep into my throat and sucked long, hard, the way I did whenever I felt ravenous, needing to feed my body in one massive gulp of life. I tried to claw her off of me, tried to swim to the surface, but she spiraled until she topped me, her body pressing me into the deep. She wrapped her legs around me, her arms, her cunt. She seared me from the inside out, drawing my venom from my mouth with a kiss that sucked life and breath from me. I knew I was dying, but I didn’t care. She fucked me, I fucked her, and we fell.

  Come for me, baby. Come with me. Cheat death with me.

  We tumbled into the bottomless void, but I didn’t feel the cold or care about the dark. The fire of her kiss singed my tongue. Her heart kicked my chest, not with fear, but with outrage. My gut growled and ravenous, soul-crushing hunger swept through me like wildfire.