“Would his death be so horrible?” Mason just had to say.
“I’m right here. Like an inch away from you.”
Mason growled.
I smirked in his general direction. “You’re just pissed because I’ve seen all of your little wolf fantasies.” And, because I was delirious, I added, “Tell me, is this whole Little Red Riding Hood thing new? Or have you always been obsessed with girls who carry baskets through the woods?”
“Let me kill him,” Mason begged the room.
And nobody answered!
“Thanks, guys!” A piercing pain shook my right shoulder. Great, it was spreading.
Hope was suddenly at my side.
Touching me.
I inhaled her scent, leaned toward her.
I knew she was probably touching Mason, and I didn’t want to see it. I couldn’t see it; it made me too angry, and any sort of intense emotional response would just drain me more.
I’d joked about sex, but that wouldn’t save me either.
I needed the bite to be gone.
It was parasitic by nature. And lucky me, sirens were the only race of immortals who didn’t just magically heal after a few days.
We had too much emotional essence, meaning the demon bite, once given, was in freaking heaven.
When demons bit vampires, it was like biting into acid, and I’d seen scars to prove it.
When they bit angels, they simply turned to dust.
And when they bit a Dark One, well, nothing really happened to either party other than severe pain since dark can’t really harm dark in that way.
I let out a yell of frustration as the stinging spread down my arm.
“I’ll return.” In a loud, annoying flutter of wings, Cassius was gone.
A soft hand pushed back my hair. “What can I do?” Why did she have to smell so good? The temptation to devour her was so strong I had to clench my teeth. See? Even at death’s door, all I really wanted was sex.
“That,” I whispered hoarsely. “As much as possible.”
Her scent wrapped around my body. “All I’m doing is caressing your face.”
Dare I admit that nobody had ever done that?
That my entire existence had revolved around sex? That the simple gesture of caressing my face or holding my hand held me captive in a way that brought me to my knees?
Dare I tell her, in my weakness, that love was something that eluded me, that my own parents didn’t love me?
That my life had started as one big pawn.
That I never truly knew who sired me.
Only that I was the most powerful siren in existence.
Being brought down by a lame-ass bite.
Why?
And how?
I groaned again when her hand moved to my right cheek, her fingers dancing across my skin. “You’re burning up.”
“Always hot.” I tried to smile. It hurt. “Tell me something I don’t know.”
Mason grunted.
“Ah, Wolf, you know it’s true.”
“I know that you’re a self-absorbed pain in my ass who thinks I have a Little Red Riding Hood fantasy.”
“And cookies.” I added just to piss him off. “She brings you cookies in bed.”
Hope snorted.
“It’s not funny,” Mason grumbled.
“Oh, right. There,” I teased. “Shove that cookie in right—”
“One day I shall kill you,” Mason said in a cheerful voice.
“This bite may beat you to it.” I tried to get more comfortable, tried and failed. Already I was burning up with a fever.
“Alex?” Hope said my name, or at least I think she did. “Alex?”
I opened my mouth.
Nothing came out.
A painful black mist overtook me, and all I saw was darkness.
Hope
“HE DOESN’T LOOK good.” I gripped his hand like a lifeline. His gorgeous face was pale, even his lips lacked color; and the thing about Alex? His lips were always plump, colorful, juicy, just tempting anyone who had two working eyes to take a bite.
I shivered.
Mason shifted his weight on the other side of Alex then reached for his shirt and tore it off.
The smell of ash filled the room.
“It’s festering.” Mason sighed just as Ethan walked back in with Genesis. It had been hours since Cassius had left us. “It shouldn’t fester, demon bites never linger like this unless the host has untapped power.” He frowned harder. “This is not good.”
Hours and still no Timber.
Just seeing that man or demon again gave me the chills.
And not the good kind.
His eyes had been empty.
And his touch had felt… wrong. Foreign. Being around the rest of the immortals was uncomfortable enough but being around the demon had been… I couldn’t explain it, but it had felt, different.
And try as much as I wanted, I couldn’t get that stupid vision out of my head, the one where the demons bowed.
Queen.
It was impossible.
I watered plants for a living.
And was orphaned.
Cassius had tried to enter the past again, this time with all of us linked, and all we saw was the same vision again.
It always stopped when Timber commanded the rest of the demons to save the ones still on the brink of death.
Only, just before the dream ended, his eyes locked on mine, and I could have sworn he saw me.
Not in the past.
But as if, in the past, I had existed and he had seen me or seen what was to come.
It was the freakiest thing I’d ever experienced.