Old Soul

Chapter Twenty-Seven: Knight in Shining Tux

            My body, limp and beaten, has no chance at fighting Tanya. I try to resign myself to the knowledge that this is the end, even though my mind is screaming at me to fight back until my very last breath. I try to shove her off of me, but the attempt is pitiful at best. Tanya throws her head back and laughs.

"That's really cute, Raquel. I'll make sure to tell Emmett you fought so valiantly." Her voice is sarcastic. She bends down again, and I can feel her cool breath on my neck. I shut my eyes, bracing myself for the pain. Right when her teeth graze the skin of my throat, there's a keening screech coming from the front room. Both Tanya's and my eyes shoot up, and Tanya turns into a defensive crouch, her lips curled back, baring her teeth.

"Nathan?" She calls out, not righting herself from her stance.

A rustling in the forest outside the cabin captures the vampire's attention. She becomes completely still, like a statue, her stance reminds me of a leopard, poised and ready to strike, taking in all of the sensory information she can.

Nathan bursts into the room, fury on his pale visage.

"You said I was gonna turn her!" His voice is low and deadly.

"About that, Nathan. We've seen how your self-control is, to put it lightly, lacking. You saw what happened in Seattle."

"We had a deal, Tanya." The look on Nathan's face is terrifying. His eyebrows furrowed, his lip curled up in a sneer.

"And I'm breaking it. The point of this whole excursion was for me to get rid of Raquel. Permanently. You were only a means to an end." Tanya's voice is laced with venom. Nathan stumbles back a step, as though he'd been punched.

"You-you what?"

"She lied to you, Nathan. I told you that." I croak out. Tanya lands a backhanded slap across my cheeks without turning to look at me. I gasp, the movement jostling my ribs.

"Renegotiation. I turn her, you get to live." Nathan glares down at Tanya.

"Or what? You'll kill me? You may have newborn strength, but you are still a child. I have been alive for centuries, you really think that you have a fighting chance?"

At that moment, there's a huge crash from the front room. Nathan whirls around partway, not willing to turn his back on his partner-turned-enemy.

"Go out there and check what it is. We'll renegotiate fully, but right now, we need to work together." Tanya orders. Nathan, looking torn, sways back and forth, weighing his options before turning on his heel to investigate the source of the sound.

"You didn't strike me as a compassionate businesswoman, Tanya." I inform her.

"I'm not." Her eyes turn flat, dead. She grabs me, tilting my head back and coming in for the kill—well, the transformation into a vampire, I guess. A long-forgotten instinct from the primitive human days awakens, screaming at me to fight back or run away. Too bad those ancestors knew nothing about vampires, or they'd realize how hopeless the situation is.

Tanya freezes an inch from my throat. A second later, my human ears pick up on the keeling sound, a scream of agony.

"Where is she?" The voice is angry, angrier than I've ever heard before in my life. I'd think my brain was playing tricks on me, except for Tanya's reaction. I've never felt so much relief in my life, my body releasing the tension that's been coiled within it.
"Don't you dare say a word. Don't even think." I barely hear her. She scoops me up, none too gently. She rushes into the front room where I find Nathan being pinned down by Jackson and Edward, with Emmett in front of him holding a long, white object. It takes me a moment to connect the dots—rather the disconnected one. Emmett is waving one of Nathan's detached arms in front of him. Edward's face is grim, holding onto the left shoulder that the arm used to belong to.