“So why have you chosen me?” I coughed. He loosened his hold on my throat. My lungs welcomed the surge of stinging cold air.
“Why you?” He repeated my question. “You have something more. You have what I want...no, what I need; to finally reign the supernatural world with power beyond the imaginable. Every unnatural force will bow before me from the blood I take from you tonight. Demons, angels, witches, werewolves and, last but not least, your precious vampires.” He ran his tongue along his lips, making my skin crawl.
He wasn’t your familiar storybook werewolf that was a vampire’s nemesis, easily controlled with silver bullets; this creature was a demon himself. This demon thrived on blood, power, and torture. He was a hellhound.
“A hellhound, huh?” He laughed. He was inside my head hearing my every thought. “I couldn’t have chosen a more magnificent way to explain it, sweetheart. I’ve been more than just a werewolf for decades. I bet your vampire didn’t expect that. If he had he wouldn’t have left you alone for me to play with. I was once nothing more than a Loup Garou, living by human standards during daylight then turning into a werewolf once the sun went down during every full moon. Whoever it was that said you could only sell your soul once was nothing more than a fool. I suppose I sort of re-financed my soul if you will, rising as a demon lord but also continuing to present myself as a man or a wolf; whatever I choose. As long as I continue giving the master downstairs souls to claim, he replenishes me with more power, making me the paragon that I am. With much sacrifice I have gained forces on my side that would make your precious vampire regret ever going against me.”
His abnormal pulse palpated hard through the veins on the side of his head, making them rise and fall with each beat. Darker shades of yellow swirled around in his eyes, as if they had picked up a life of their own.
“I do know that the curse inside me is not all that you want.”
“You’re right. I struck the double prize when I found you tied to Davin Ashford. I have been in constant pursuit to seek revenge on those that tried to take my life three hundred years ago. Samuel should have made sure I was dead before he left me that night, and Eli should have never stuck his nose where it didn’t belong by taking in those boys that should have been left for dead.”
“That’s exactly why Eli took them in, because you did leave them for dead. Why have such hatred for something that was made out of your own infidelity? Whether you like it or not, they have your blood inside them.” I was speaking of Davin and Sully’s real father, who turned out to be an illegitimate child of Dalton’s. Of course, the blood that was inside of them was the human part of him before he had turned into whatever he was now.
“Ah, so I see they have filled you in on some family history, huh? After I kill you, I will bring the entire Ashford family to a slow and grueling death that should’ve been done a long time ago.”
“You’re not a god, you’re an overgrown dog! You won’t defeat them. No matter how many people you kill, or how much power you have, you will always answer to a higher power as long as you’re on this earth.”
His jaw clenched, showing I had touched another sore spot. “Tisk, tisk, Adelay.” He shook his head at me, deepening his thumb into the side of my neck.
The scarlet ring circling his yellow corneas darkened.
“I am more. I have spent centuries tracking down bloodlines that possess powers that can only be taken through bloodshed. You’d be amazed at what eons of curses and spells were put on the innocent. This has brought me to your infection. The angel of the night never knew that the sin of mating with a human would claim so many lives through the aftermath. Their wrongful one night of ecstasy produced the curse that has claimed your body now, to host its legacy. Every hundred years this curse passes itself onto the next person. Mutation has willed this thing to choose whomever it wants to move itself into, no longer sticking to one specific bloodline; thus, making it a pain in the ass to locate. It, my love, has found you.”
Calling me “his love” made me want to vomit.
“It thought it could fool me by hiding inside a mere mortal that doesn’t even possess one single supernatural ability! You’re not even a sensitive for Christ’s sake. I was supposed to kill that old crone, but she knew I was coming, and she rid herself of it before I could claim it as my own. It has been running from me long before you were ever a thought.”
Just my luck that gypsy hag left me to deal with a bloodthirsty werewolf demon that was going to use me for his satanic sacrifice.
But if she knew he would be coming to slaughter me, then why did she inscribe words into my flesh: Angels above as well as below protect my soul; almost as if the incantation gave me a chance of survival? There had to have been some kind of motive behind putting a tattoo on me I didn’t want. So, maybe she wasn’t as big of a bitch as I thought she was. Maybe there had been a little bit of couth in her rotten scheme.
Xander let out
