My heart hurt. My head hurt. My shoulder hurt.
Blackness, blood, pain.
“How did you find us?” Gabriel asked coldly.
“You can thank your beautiful lover. She revealed the location.”
“Emma is dead; I killed her myself. I never brought her here. Not even Thomas or Inola knew of this place.”
Elias laughed. “Hear that, Kara? I’m doing you a favor. Gabriel might just snap your neck the next time you two have a fight.”
I shook at the mental picture of his lie, nearly vomited from hearing him say my name.
Blackness, blood, pain.
“I would never—”
“Don’t worry about it, Gabriel. Kara and I already had a talk about that. Did you know that despite her so-called compassionate character, despite that she’s convinced you to defy your instincts, she actually gets off on your murderous nature? But of course, you probably already knew that, what with blood sharing and all.”
Blackness, blood, pain.
“But back to your original question—Emma’s obsession with you has proven to be more than useful, even beyond her grave of ashes. You may not have brought her here, but do you honestly think she never followed you? Oh, don’t look so surprised, Gabriel. Emma was pathetic when it came to you, and her jealousy and hatred for Kara made her believe everything I said. So when she told me this place was a potential haven for you, I told her to hide cameras. She did. I have seen everything. Timing was essential, and with modern technology, it really made it all too easy.
“I’ve been near the house since Inola and Thomas left. I could see what was happening. As I said, modern technology is amazing. And I saw you, Gabriel. I saw you drink her blood. But she didn’t drink yours; I didn’t give her the chance. I know you drank a little of her blood to wake her, but I needed to be sure there was enough in your system. So I waited for you to drink her blood again. Have you followed along so far, or do I need to spell the last part out for you?”
There was a rush inside my head, and a sound I couldn’t place. Then I realized it was my breathing. I was hyperventilating.
“She will hate you forever, you know. All three of us know what you will choose. So live with her hatred, Gabriel. Force her to live in darkness. For all of eternity, the one you love the most will loathe the very idea of you. That’s better than a revenge of ending her life permanently; you wouldn’t have the balls to stay alive if she was dead. You would have changed her eventually on your own—she even admitted that to me. But it’s so much better that you will turn her because of me.”
The noises that followed were the most terrifying of my life because I could not see what was happening.
It sounded like they were tearing the house apart. I could hear Elias’s grunts of pain, but I had no idea how badly he was wounding Gabriel because Gabriel never allowed himself to make a sound when he was harmed. I knew by the vibrations against the door that Elias was making his way toward me.
The darkness at the edges of the door blazed with light. I jumped up and opened my mouth to scream, but no sound came out.
The doorknob twisted. The door opened. The monster loomed above me.
There was not a part of him that wasn’t covered in blood. His silver eyes were crazed, his fangs bared. Holes were in his clothes, and his wounds were healing miraculously before my eyes.
I shot the stake gun. In my fear, I missed my target. Instead of his heart, the stakes embedded themselves into his left shoulder.
He tore them out of his shoulder and grabbed my raised arm, squeezing hard enough that the bone snapped. The stake Gabriel had given me dropped from my hand.
Now I screamed.
Elias gripped me against him, forcing me out of the closet and making me see the damage he had done.
The room was unrecognizable. Everything was broken and covered in blood.
Gabriel was against the far wall, a bedpost stabbed into his stomach, pinning him there. There were also five stakes in his chest; they were dangerously close to his heart. He was covered in blood, and there were holes in his clothes. Cuts and oozing wounds healed before my eyes.
My dogs were dead. Each one had small stakes jammed into their necks.
I screamed. And screamed. And screamed.
Elias seemed calm as I vented my pain, and only the agony on Gabriel’s face made me stop. Gabriel had gotten the stakes near his heart out, and he was trying to pull the bedpost out of his stomach.
“Let her go,” Gabriel managed to say.
I threw up.
When I finished, Elias pulled me tighter against his stomach, and then cold metal was at my throat.
“Recognize it from my memories, Gabriel? Its edge has already wounded your beloved once.”
Gabriel finally managed to tear the bedpost out, and he dropped to the ground onto his hands and knees. Bright vampire blood pulsed in torrents from his stomach.
“The silver knife that killed Lucy. . . . I kept it with me all these years to remind myself just how deep your failure went,” Elias said.
A red haze swept over me. “It wasn’t his failure, it was yours!” I bit out. “You know the fault lies with you, but you can’t handle the truth, so you use Gabriel as an outlet. You’re the one who went back to her. None of your enemies would have ever found Lucy had you left her alone, and you’re the one who turned her against her will!”
The knife kissed my throat, and liquid warmth dripped from my skin.
Finally, Gabriel made a sound, like a caged, starving animal.
I could see it in Gabriel’s eyes, but I didn’t want to believe it. It reminded me of how he had looked at me the first time I’d woken up inside his room, but even
