“Your power’s nearly out,” Latham said, repeating what Brian had told him. The witch would be regretting those words. “You can’t see the future, and that’s a pity. If you’d seen it, maybe you could have avoided—”
Latham sliced his claws right across Brian’s throat. “This.”
Then he shoved open the door and tossed the witch’s body into the road.
Chapter Three
The cars had changed. Some were smaller. Some were far bigger. They had computers inside of them. Small screens with maps that showed any area with a touch of a button.
Iona touched lots of buttons.
The radio had what seemed like a thousand channels. The music was crazy. Wonderful. Faster, harder than she remembered.
And the seat beneath her ass? It…warmed.
She liked that.
“Yeah, yeah, they attacked outside of the Shore Tavern,” Jamie said, speaking into his little phone.
Iona frowned at the phone. The last time she’d seen a phone in a car, the thing had been huge—and in some black bag that plugged into the cigarette lighter. The phone in Jamie’s hand was just a few inches long and so incredibly thin.
There weren’t any buttons on it. Jamie just touched its screen and things happened.
She liked that, too. She’d have to get one of those phones, soon. Gadgets had always intrigued her.
“We’re on the way. Stay on guard, Sean,” Jamie ordered and ended the call.
Ah…yes. Her turn. Iona snatched the phone from him. She swiped her fingers over the screen. Music blared. The phone…flashed, as if she’d taken a picture, and then some kind of game with little birds popped up and—
Jamie pulled the phone away from her. “What are you doing?”
She wanted that phone back. But her fingers clenched in her lap. She’d always been taught…don’t let others know what you need. “I’m playing catch-up. A lot can happen in fifteen years, you know.”
And it had been fifteen years. Before she’d headed to the bar for a bite, she’d broken into a store and found herself new clothes. After picking up the clothing, it had been time to grab a newspaper in town. As soon as she’d held the paper in her hand, she’d realized all that she’d lost. The date had been big and bold and painful to see. She’d clutched that paper and wanted to rip and tear into Latham.
He’d taken fifteen years of her life away. Fifteen years.
In return, she’d take forever from him.
Jamie was quiet for a moment, as if processing her words, then he said, “So you just…slept, that whole—”
Iona turned away from him and gazed out at the blur of darkness beyond her window. “I told you already, I wasn’t asleep.” If only.
“Baby, I was there. Your body wasn’t moving. Hell, when I first saw you, I thought you were dead.”
She’d wanted to die. For so long.
Iona pulled in a steadying breath and said, “My body was paralyzed.” That was how it had felt. She hadn’t been able to move a muscle. Not one single muscle.
Her hands shook at the memory.
Kill him. A whisper that came from inside of her..
During that long, long time…Iona had begun to hear voices. She’d lost her sanity, she knew it. After so many years of being frozen, hell, just talking with Jamie still felt strange to her.
“Your body…” He repeated in that faint brogue that Iona wouldn’t admit she rather enjoyed hearing. “But…your mind?”
Smart wolf. Maybe he was picking up on the things that she said and the things that she didn’t say. “I could hear everything for years. Could smell. Could feel the bed beneath me.” For at least the first five years. Was it stupid that she’d been counting the days then? “I heard the bugs and the rats. I heard the crash of the waves and the whisper of footsteps.” Latham had kept a guard on her. Always.
A guard that…Iona’s head whipped toward him. “Did you kill the guard? The one who smelled of whiskey and cigars?” The odor of his cheap cigars had burned into her over the years.
A grim nod.
She couldn’t control her smile. “Good.” One less person to hunt and torture. And she was going to kill. The thought of killing had sustained her until her mind had finally broken.
Broken…and slid into the dark.
“Did he hurt you?”
The guard? He’d liked to touch her. Touching a corpse. What a sick freak. He’d also liked to burn her with his cigars. Good thing her kind didn’t scar. “Did he suffer before he died?” Iona asked instead of answering him.
“No. The death was fast.”
“Pity.” Her little claws drummed on the leather inside the vehicle. “I would’ve liked taking my time with him.”
“He did hurt you.” Anger roughened his voice.
And caused her to glance at him with surprise. “Wolf, you sound as if you actually care.” A lie, of course, but Iona could admit—to herself—that it would be nice, to have one person who cared.
The vampire coven she’d so carefully created over the years hadn’t cared. The ones she’d fought desperately to protect. They. Hadn’t. Cared.
They’d left her to wither away.
She’d been so hungry at first. Starving for just a few drops of blood. She wanted to gorge herself on blood now because that hunger was still eating away at her.
But…
But the only blood she seemed to want was Jamie’s. Can’t eat him. Not until I find out what he’s done to me.
She would find out, soon enough.
“If it makes you feel better,” he told her, the words halting, “I killed the five other guards who tried to keep me from you. No one who left you in that house is alive.”
But there were others still alive. Her coven. They might not have been at that house, but they’d left her there just the same.
Before she could speak, the vehicle screeched to a sudden stop. Iona jerked forward even as the seatbelt tightened around her and cut into her shoulder. “What the hell—”
“Blood,” Jamie snapped out as he jumped from the car.
She caught the scent, too. Heavy. Fresh.
Iona hurried out after him. They were on an old, twisting highway. Jamie had kept the driver’s side window down as he drove, the better to follow the “scent” of their attackers, and it sure looked like his nose had led him to their prey.
He stood over a broken body, and the scent of blood called to her.