I take a slow breath. My hands unclench. The room is thick with silence, the air charged with something electric and raw. Ophelia stands before me, shoulders hunched, face pale, her whole world unraveling into blood-stained chaos.
Good.
She shouldfeelthis. She shouldlivewith it.
“Who helped you?” I ask, my words ice cold.
Ophelia’s face turns white. I smell the sweat prickling her skin. “How do you…”
My expression sours. “Because something like this has happened before in this city, before—right around the same time you were born. And I didn’t connect the dots before, but you told me that not everyone in this city is so enamored with the vampires. Who helped you, Ophelia?”
Something hardens in her expression. I see something different there. Defensiveness. Protection. She shakes her head. “You’ll never get to her. It would literally be impossible.”
“Ophelia!” I bark, feeling my veins flare hot. That hunger in my blood grows a little more insistent. “Don’t you fucking get it?! This mess you’ve made, there isn’t any coming back from it. There is no hiding from it. There is no manipulating it. Do you not understand that the death toll is rising? Do you understand that whoever you’re protecting is responsible for the death of at least five vampires? That now you have five deaths on your hands?”
“Lana,” Ophelia says my name, a terrified, overwhelmed whisper.
My nostrils flare as I smell her again. The copper racing through her veins. The rush of her blood through her body. My mouth salivates.
Fuck.
Thisis what Clementine was so worried about. What Sysco and Harry were so impressed over. I feel it sparking. The hunger. The craving.
I need to get out of here, soon. I need to get something to drink before I do something I can’t come back from.
But I don’t have time to drink.
Now, I need to fucking fix this.
“You’re going to fix Ares,” I say, my voice quaking with rage. “I am going to find him, and you are going to fix what you broke.”
Ophelia’s eyes are swimming now, but the tears don’t break. She shakes her head. “Lana, I don’t… I can’t…”
My blood goes cold. I take one more step toward her, only two feet between us now. “You don’t what?”
She may be three inches taller than me, but I’ve never felt more confident in my stature, my body. I feel ready to tear the world apart, and Ophelia will not get in my way.
“I don’t know how to undo it,” she admits, fear shaking her every word. “I… I’ve never tried.”
“Well, there’s no time like the present,” I say. My hand snatches out, and I grab her arm. “You know what fucking sucks? You were once the person I trusted most. And now I don’t even trust that you won’t run. You can hate me all you want, but you’ve really left me with no choice. You’re coming with me until you fix Ares.”
“Lana, let go of me,” she snaps, trying to yank out of my grasp. But it’s almost laughable. My grip doesn’t loosen even a hair. My fingers tighten around her arm. “Fuck, ow! Lana!”
I pull my phone from my back pocket and dial Billings. Ophelia lets out a string of curses, trying with everything she’s got to yank out of my grasp.
Billings answers after two rings. “Miss Kincade.”
“I need you to pick me up. You still have my location?” I ask, getting right to it.
“I do,” he says, and I hear the phone shift on his end, as if he’s pulling me up right now. “I can be there in two minutes. I’m close.”
“Perfect, I’m in a hurry,” I say, relief coursing through me. “See you soon.”
“I’m not going anywhere with you,” Ophelia snarls as she tries yet again to yank away from me. She’s going to be horribly bruised later.
“Trust me, it feels like shit to go there, but you don’t have a choice anymore,” I say, disgust transforming my expression as I look at her, our faces only a foot apart. “Scream while we head downstairs, and I will put you out. You know I can.”
She does, indeed. It’s how we met. Ophelia came to my self-defense classes. She’s seen me demonstrate knocking an attacker out without causing damage.
