He was the Big Bad. That went against all universal and species’ laws.
He gave me another scornful look, and I thought I saw him flick his eyes upwards. Actually, I was sure I did.
I had no idea.
I felt like he did.
I would’ve if I were him.
But his face was back to the same stoic mask from when he’d been analyzing me only moments ago.
“Do you have any other option right now?”
“You could be lying.” I raised my chin up. “I could call your bluff, walk out there, and there’s no dissension happening.”
“Your friend would still be sleeping inside of her body.”
Right.
Because that happened before he showed up on the scene.
Damn.
“What’s the plan, Jeeves?”
He frowned. “Don’t call me Jeeves.”
“What’s your name? I could call you that.”
His eyes narrowed at me. They were pretty much staying that way.
He gave me one more long and measured look before there was a beep behind him. He walked to a panel in the wall and pressed it. A back door swung open (that was where it was! It was covered in blue velvet so it was camouflaged. Also, there was no doorknob.) and a female walked in who could’ve been a supermodel. Long legs. Thin body. High cheekbones. Disdainful eyes.
Vampire.
(The ones who look that beautiful and that disdainful were always vampires.)
They were staring at each other, and I knew she was telepathically reporting on something.
He gave a small nod, and she turned right back around. I got the coldest glance ever before she was through the velvet door. It swung shut right behind her, and before my eyes, the blue velvet smoothed over. The door completely blended in again.
“You had a witch do that.”
After he pulled out his phone and was looking at the screen, he glanced up at me as I moved closer to inspect where the wall had been.
That was when I realized the room we’d been in was large. I’d been so focused on him that I hadn’t even noticed my surroundings save for all the blue velvet.
He’d been clear across it for most of our little interrogation, until now.
I closed the space and was within five feet of him to look for the door the vampire had just exited.
Trying to focus on the door, I couldn’t. I was assaulted by waves of his power. It was exuding from him, over and over again. Like it was pulsating from him, but wait. I turned and trained my eyes and my mind to look at him in a different way.
His power was pulsating from him.
Over and over again.
That’s how he was shifting so his energy was never on him, but I could see the waves now, and it was as if I could suddenly see what was normally invisible even to me. There was a small layer of energy sparking right next to his skin.
If he had that there, then I had power.
“Don’t.”
My eyes snapped to his.
We were staring at each other in another challenge.
He didn’t get it.
I didn’t have any other choice.I went for his energy.
I was in before he could stop me, and whoa.
Whoa!
I was sucked in, but I was all the way in now, not just partially.
I—it was like I was in another dimension.
There was darkness everywhere.
An echo.
Like I was in a cave.
I smelled water.
I could hear the rush of a waterfall next.
I was at an opening, and I was airborne.
I was flying.
The wind was startling, whipping into me.
I tried screaming, but no sound came out.
I was up and around. I was dipping.
I was soaring.
I was free, but I was terrified at the same time.
A shadow was underneath me, not my own. I was going over the ocean.
We rotated, the shadow and I…and I started struggling.
There were large wings.
They spread out as far as I could see.
I felt a rumbling behind me. Inside me.
Then heat. So much heat.
It was unbearable.
It felt like I was in a volcano.
More rumbling.
It was growing. Building.
Something was happening.
I didn’t want what was going to happen, to happen.
No, no, no.
A voracious roar and there was fire everywhere.
The earth was being scorched beneath us. The air around us.
Embers were falling everywhere.
I was in a vacuum.
—I came back to the room.
I looked up.
He had his hand wrapped around my wrist, his eyes blazing. I saw the same embers there and knew that’d been him.
A wave of his fury hit me, actually physically slamming into me, and—I heard a muffled curse—then nothing.8Ohmygod!I woke and I was moving.
We were moving, and I was lying down as he was sitting across from me.
We were in the back of a vehicle.
I sat up, slowly. My head was still groggy, but I looked around. The windows were tinted and we were moving out of the city.
"Where are we going?"
"To a place."
Nik!
"No. We have to go back." Also, "What happened to you being my only shot to get out of there alive?" I said it with such disdain, I could've been a vamp.