The Present
He laid the witch on the end of a king-size bed that mastered
the whitewashed floorboards in the bedroom. A thick white
comforter cradled her as if she were an angel resting on a
cloud. A bloody angel that he’d…not killed.
Nikolaus straightened abruptly. He smoothed a palm over
his face and drew it down his chin. You almost killed her.
But he hadn’t.
Why didn’t you kill her?
Ravin Crosse, this…witch? Vampires and witches were
enemies.
What the hell?
Fists formed. Nikolaus hissed through his teeth. Rage
emerged and flooded his system. Stalking the floor from door
towall, he resisted the urge to growl, to howl out his frustration.
She lay there, inert, her hair splayed, black curls across
white. Silent. Unable to lash out, to fight, to challenge him.
This was the witch who had once injured him so badly he
had touched death. His heart had stopped. He’d had to feed
on a friend to survive.
Heat flushed Nikolaus’s neck and shoulders, and filled
him from skull to fingertips to heels. A storm of vengeance
raged for release, but—
This felt different. Unusual.
For where the rage should have felt substantial and insistent
and uncontrollable, it merely settled, and became an emotional
reaction Nikolaus had not touched for what seemed like ages.
Heartbeats quieted. Fisted fingers snapped open. Anxiety
fled, softening the thick tension holding his neck stiff.
He bent over the body sprawled across the bed, his palms
sinking deep into the plush down quilt.
This witch, this gorgeous woman, deserved—
He swept his head lower, over her face, but stopped short
of touching her mouth with his. Blood coated her neck. It
smelled different. Not like mortal blood. There lingered an
odd herbal aroma to it. Before, the scent of rosemary had come
to him, but it had changed. This scent was organic. Cherry?
Or musk and then…cloves? Nikolaus couldn’t place it.
Curiosity held him over the bed, the tips of his dark hair
sweeping across her bloodied neck and chest. Swiping a forefinger
through the blood, he observed the crimson glisten
near a lamp that glowed at the head of the bed.
So deadly this small drop of life should be. It had once
eaten through him, literally, to his heart. It had rendered dead
six of the tribe Kila in less than five minutes.
