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

  “He’s supposed to be dead,” she whispered, her lips trembling. Tears filled her eyes, threatened to spill. In the corner of my eye, I saw Vaughn smile his broadest, deadliest grin. She couldn’t bring herself to address my brother, so she pinned her gaze on me. “He’s dead, he’s d-dead. I… I watched him die. He lay there for hours.”

  “Surprise!” Vaughn spoke through gritted teeth. “Looks like we’re both hard to kill.” He wiped the corners of his mouth and pointed at his options. “Mommy, Daddy, and Little Brother, so sweet. Can they say the same, witch? When I bleed them dry, will they come back?”

  Something in me stirred, an unease. Hadn’t I fantasized about this moment the whole drive? Hadn’t Vaughn made clear his plans for the family, and for Evie, if I let him have another taste?

  I don’t want him to feed here. Or maybe I just don’t want him to feed on Evie’s family.

  “You have no business with my daughter, not ever again.” Her father’s bellow halted Vaughn’s taunts. The older man’s heart sped and he stared between Vaughn and me. Stark was still poised between us. The gun wavered in her father’s large hands, but he knew how to use the weapon. I wondered what the Pierce patriarch must think, how much he knew about my kind and his daughter’s true nature.

  Either Evie’s family thought her unhinged, or they knew Vaughn really should’ve been dead. Either he knew his daughter to be a witch, and Stark to be a wolf, or he thought we were humans returning to the scene of the crime. Either way, they had to die.

  Leave no one behind to tell the tale.

  “You’re not going to feel any better if you kill her or these people. Not now that you’ve turned her.”

  I snapped my gaze to the wolf.

  “Neat trick huh?” I smiled. The wolf narrowed his eyes. “But, I plan on making her disappear now.”

  I heard the jingle of keys in the father’s hands, felt the steady retreat of four bodies, the momentum that would take Evie out of my sight.

  “Mr. and Mrs. Pierce, we talked about this.” Stark called behind him, retreating a step with his gaze trained between Vaughn and me. “She has to stay behind with me. I need her and I’ll keep her safe—”

  “I changed my mind! We’re not leaving her here with them!” Her mother’s wail twisted my stomach. Her voice sounded so much like Evie’s I almost couldn’t distinguish them. “Those monsters aren’t coming anywhere near my baby. I don’t care what you say!”

  For the first time since my eyes lit on Evie, I noted the open door and broken glass to the left of the dining room table behind them.

  I huffed out a breath and straightened. My chest rose and fell with my quickened breaths, my focus wavering in and out with my hunger.

  “I’d hate to piss off my father and kill a packless.” I snarled and took a step forward. “You all come in handy for special projects, but I’m all out of patience at this point, Stark. I’m starving and the girl’s the only thing I can eat! Step aside or join them.”

  I bared my fangs.

  So, they extend now?

  My laughter dueled with my shock as the long points crossed my lower lip. The mother screamed and covered the sound with a shaking hand. Yes, that’s what I need. That spicy fear. Ignore the spell, ignore the witch’s hold on me. I don’t care about these people. I don’t care about anyone, save Vaughn and my father. Finish it!

  Finish. It. Now!

  “I can’t do that, Oldman.” Stark reacted to the shift in my posture and my resolve with a snarl of his own. “Just listen to me for one minute and I can help you sort this out. We have a common goal—”

  Frayed down to my last nerve ending, I advanced as he retreated. Sluggish and weak, I couldn’t move with my normal speed. I sprinted against the seat and back of the couch, using each step for leverage as I sprang to tear the wolf’s throat out.

  Shots fired, two of them, so perfectly aimed, they nearly entered the same spot in my heart. The momentum propelled me backward and I tumbled to the floor, slammed into the back of the couch. While I coughed up blood, Vaughn made a dash for the Pierces. Stark had stalled me while he took care of the stronger, faster threat. With a predator’s growl that seemed to shake the house, Stark caught Vaughn in the head with a kick that sliced down to the floor like a knife, fired a shot into the back of Vaughn’s head, and turned with the same spinning momentum to point his gun at me.

  I staunched the blood oozing out of my chest with my soaked shirt and a wavering hand. I looked up just in time to hear the door slam against the wall. The family scrambled out the rear of the house with bags in tow, the mother yanking on Evie’s arm.

  The witch frowned as she met my eyes, tears streaming down her face. Her hesitation to leave tugged me from my slump against the couch before she disappeared from sight.

  5

  “Goddammit!” Stark roared and upended the dining room table in frustration. “Do you have any idea how long it took me to gain their trust so I could fix this nightmare you’ve started? Fucking leeches, every last one of your incompetent species!”

  I tried to drag myself into a crouch but collapsed after one step, my chest on fire from the bullets Stark sank into my heart. I coughed up blood and stared apprehensively at the bloody mess of Vaughn’s skull. Stark hadn’t hit the spinal cord. The bullet exited the front of my brother’s head judging by the pool of blood surrounding his down-turned face. Vaughn’s fingers twitched. Still alive and returning to consciousness. If I hadn’t been so fucking weakened by this hunger, I’d have already killed the interloper.

  “You made a big mistake getting involved, pup.”

  “Maybe.” I met the gaze of a wolf. Electric blue overwhelmed the whites of his eyes, and sharp teeth came out to play. His voiced had dropped an octave. The rough timbre resonated through the room. “I think you made a bigger mistake, vampire. You turned a witch. Pretty sticky situation considering the ban on turning humans. You’re supposed to deliver witches to a checkpoint for sale. According to Evie, you were ordered to kill her about a week ago, and failed. Wonder what Daddy would say about this messiness?”

  Fuck.

  “You won’t tell him,” I rasped. I cleared my throat of blood. “You do that, and she’s dead anyway. You wouldn’t dare kill me, no matter how fond you are of my pet. So.” He didn’t drop the gun but he relaxed a touch when I tilted my head in curiosity. “What do you want?”

  A car screeched down the street. The getaway car. I growled.

  “How do you expect me not to kill you now that you just let her get away!”

  “I know where she’s going and I can get her back. What I want is to keep that girl alive. There’s a way to do that, keep your secret, and free you both from this bond. You kill her now, though, and what you’re feeling will only get worse. You’ll both die.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Bullshit. You wanna break a curse, you kill the witch. Everyone knows that. What? You fucking her now? Is that why you give a shit?”

  The very thought of Stark between Evie’s thighs made me want to rip off his dick and shove the bloody meat down the werewolf’s throat.

  “Never ceases to amaze me how little you true born actually know about the world you think you rule. If I didn’t know better, I’d believe you were all stupid.” Wolves have balls, but this went beyond brass. “You ever wonder why you don’t see a wolf pack? Why you only ever have packless on the payroll?”

  “No. I don’t give a single shit about wolves unless they get in my way.”

  Vaughn twitched, straining to regain his motor functions. His fingers flexed and coiled, then dug into the floor. Stark spared a quick glance at the vampire, then rolled his shoulders, getting ready for the next attack.

  “I’m packless, but that doesn’t mean I have no family. I chose to leave my people and the coven we’re sworn to protect.”

  I blinked at Stark, utterly confused. Then, for one long, powerful moment, reason clawed its way out of the dark.

  Why had I never seen a wolf pack?
/>   For the same reason I’ve never seen a coven of witches.

  “Wolves are hiding with covens.” I stared at the detective in shock. “You know where the bodies are buried. We’ve been searching everywhere for witches and you wolves have known their whereabouts the whole time?”

  “We’re not hiding with them. We’re guarding them. I know Romani witches you wouldn’t dream of terrorizing like you have that girl!”

  “My heart bleeds for her.” I hacked up the last of the blood in my throat and spit. “Really. That doesn’t explain how you got involved and why I’m gonna kill you.”

  “I was just doing my day job when Evie turned up in an Austin hospital two weeks after being kidnapped from here. The second I met her, vampire, I knew she wasn’t an ordinary witch. But neither of us were prepared for what she’d become. I made sure she got home safe and gave her my card. After everything you took from her, I wouldn’t blame her if she never trusted anyone again. But she trusted me. She sensed I was different. When she called to say she was craving blood, I hung up the phone and got on the next flight out.”

  Stark bared his teeth and kicked debris from his path, pacing with his weapon still trained on me. “She told me what you did to her, I asked my former priestess how I could help a witch who’d been turned and was at the mercy of bloodlust. The priestess agreed to help Evie, and if you hadn’t shown up and ruined everything, we’d be on our way there now.”

  Witches and wolves working together. If my father knew this, we could get every mercenary wolf working for us to reveal—

  “Don’t bother trying to figure out how you can spin this for your slave trade, vampire. Packless or not, we literally can’t give up the coven we’re bonded to. You can’t gain entry without permission as an outsider, either. No vampire can penetrate the wards they have in place.”

  No vampire, maybe. But a mercenary witch?

  I tucked that question away for later.

  “But you can abandon your pack to help my kind fuck, kill, and bury the witches we do stumble upon. Is that right, Fido?”

  He didn’t flinch at the insult, but the air crackled with rage just the same.

  “I did what I felt I had to, in order to protect witches like Evie who don’t have coven to keep them safe. No matter how much it pisses me off, in order to do that, I have to keep you safe now, too.”

  “Why’s that?” I grunted in pain and hunger. The chipped bones in my chest pinched tender flesh as they knit together. The bullets still traveled to the surface of my skin.

  “Because you’re here! Because whatever happens to you affects her. This curse—and that’s what it is—is just as strong as the bond you created when you turned her. You didn’t just turn a witch, Jesse. You chose a mate. A very strong, very pissed off, and tormented mate.”

  I gaped.

  Vaughn groaned and lifted a hand to swipe the bloody mess of hair near the top of his skull. He shoved up to all fours, his head hanging as he collected himself.

  “He chose a what?” Vaughn huffed.

  Stark growled. He watched Vaughn lift himself into a nonchalant crouch. My brother’s eyes were poised on the rear door with muted fury as he healed.

  Wolves’ hearing surpasses ours by a slight margin. His ears twitched and he canted his head at some distraction outside.

  “Your bullshit story doesn’t make any sense. My kind don’t have mates. We breed and part ways. We wouldn’t choose a turned even if we did take mates, there’s no point. We can’t breed with prey or the turned. This is all part of the curse and if I kill her—”

  “You’ll starve to death. Call it the tax of a witch scorned. The hunger, the inability to feed, that’s just interest tacked on for all the shit you did to her. You turned another predator, not a human. Doesn’t matter if you can breed her, she’s mated to you now. You fucked up, Oldman, and picked the wrong witch. Now, we have to set your mistake to rights.”

  I had. I’d picked the wrong witch to save, the wrong witch to kill. But, she’d felt so right every step of the way. She’d felt so right, that moments before I recognized her presence at the rear of the house, my body lifted into a crouch. I wanted to hunt. I wanted to fuck, and I realized what had pricked up the wolf’s ears moments ago.

  Evie hadn’t run after all. She lurked just outside the house, her heart beating in a cadence mine struggled to mimic, despite the slugs in my chest. Her scent tangled in the air and drew out my fangs by slow, teasing degrees. My hips pumped without permission, my cock seeking the target I thought I’d been denied.

  “According to the high priestess, there’s a way to unfuck yourself, Jesse. It looks like we might be able to do that before you both go crazy….”

  He turned his head slightly. I spotted her a second later. Evie stepped out of the shadows of the door her family had left ajar during their flight. Her fingers dug into the doorjamb, buckling the wood molding before she came inside and shut the door behind her.

  “Evie.” His voice became kind, soothing, despite the beastly tenor. “I’m glad you came back. Your family?”

  “I told them I’d be okay, but I don’t know if I’m telling the truth,” she whispered. Tears streaked down her face. Her body shuddered, vibrating on the same frequency as mine. “They don’t understand why I listened to you. I don’t understand.”

  “Stay by me, Evie. I’ll keep you safe, I promise. I promise.” The wolf backed closer to the door and held out a hand behind him.

  “I couldn’t leave.” Evie’s quiet voice didn’t match the tempest raging on her face.

  I couldn’t take my eyes off her. Inky darkness blotted out the nut brown of her irises, drawing me in as her gaze bloomed black as the night behind her. She shuddered into the hyper focus of intense arousal, of the hunt, and I knew my gaze matched hers. I inhaled deep and scented her musk, the slick arousal between her legs, and the fearful sweat that mingled with the salt of her tears. All my favorite flavors encased in smooth skin. The curls framing her face would feel like silk reins wrapped around my hand—

  Stark’s voice startled me out of my intent study.

  “You did the right thing, Evie.” Stark met her tentative approach. Not once did he take his gaze off me and Vaughn. “He wouldn’t have stopped looking and you would’ve gotten sicker. You would’ve hurt someone. We can fix this now.”

  The witch took his hand and stepped into the protective aura of the wolf. Vaughn stretched to his full height and swiped blood off his forehead. He couldn’t hide the surprise at seeing the witch stare with vampire eyes. The way his eyes rounded suggested he truly believed she’d been turned, instead of just cheating death with witch tricks.

  I stayed put, the bullet in my heart easing out of my chest by slow, violent degrees. Breathing hurt, but hearing Evie’s heartbeat just a few feet from mine hurt even more. I felt her sweaty palm slide against the wolf’s. It wasn’t possible, and yet, I felt the lack of air between Evie and the wolf when she pressed her face against his shoulder.

  Her fangs slid past her lips, those sharp, pearly tips enticing mine to thrust from my gums with so much force, they pierced my lip. The sensation of warm liquid surrounding my fangs nearly blew my head off. I clapped a hand over my cock, riding out the blast of arousal.

  She’s alive. I made that beautiful creature.

  “I’m hungry.” The despair that tinted her whisper summoned an unknown ache in my bones. Just a taste of her and I’d be, if not whole, then at least myself again. Something close to what I’d lost since I shoved her beneath the surface of the water and drowned my deepest, darkest desires.

  Her scent hit me like a battering ram, no longer masked behind the presence of fear, blood, and meddling wolf. I’d become the prey now, and she, the lure. Her sweetness taunted me, so potent, she could’ve held her blood in the palm of her hand, right under my nose. She lifted the point of her nose in the air, inhaled me as deeply as I inhaled her, and shuddered. Did the hand clenching her stomach reveal the same pain in her gut as the o
ne twisting mine?

  “I need. I-I…” She wept, the truth spilling down her cheeks. Her predator’s gleam settled on the blood flowing from my chest, and I knew all at once I’d take a whole clip, a whole belt of bullets to get to her. I raced forward and she rushed past Stark to meet me.

  I grabbed the back of her neck and pulled her to me for a brutal kiss, my tongue sinking into the plushness of her mouth. She dug her fingertips into the bullet holes in my shirt, into my wounds. She unlocked our lips and laved her fingers clean of my blood. At her anguished moan, I turned her head to the side. She cried out from the pain of my fangs thrust deep into her throat. The urge to feed slammed into me with the force of a freight train. My throat tightened in anticipation. I wriggled my tongue against her salty skin, impatient, and yet unprepared when the gush of warmth finally came. Her blood splashed into my mouth and the world went red.

  Not even drinking from her that first time, three weeks ago, compared to this feeling. I’d been able to absorb some of her emotions then, I’d been able to let her inside me through a cracked window. Now, we swung wide the doors to our souls and walked into the unguarded mess within. We became one person, linked by pain, by pleasure. I came up for air, and no sooner had I gasped in a breath, than she’d ripped down the collar of my T-shirt and drove her new fangs into my shoulder.

  The witch exacted sweet revenge, tearing into me and drinking deep as she clawed my body closer to hers. I held the back of her head, but my hand didn’t belong to me. The broad palm and long fingers clenching in her hair belonged to us.

  My blood became our blood. In my head, a vision of my veins and hers flowed into a rushing river of life. A question resounded in my bones like a gong as she suckled from me. Once the scarlet rivers met, could we ever pull ourselves into separate tributaries?

  My cock shut down that thought with a straining leap that nearly buckled my knees. I scented wetness pooling between her thighs. The lust racing to join the flow of our blood matched my relentless erection perfectly. Not even the stunned audience I sensed in the periphery could stop us from sinking to the floor. She wanted to push me away. I wanted to let her go. We held on to each other instead, me wrenching off my shirt, her shoving her jeans down her hips until they dangled off one ankle.