He really wasn’t a morning person.
Ashe wasn’t letting go of the stake, but was yanking on it with rabid persistence. Alessandro started to sit up. She tried to poke her thumb in his eye. That did it. With a snarl, he flipped her over onto the bed, knocking the stake from her hand. It hit the wall and skidded under the bed.
“Agh!” she yelped, clawing at the hand he still had wrapped around her throat.
He snarled, letting her see the fangs. “I’ve had it with you, hunter. I’ve held back for Holly’s sake. You crossed the line.”
She brought her knee up sharply, catching him in the ribs. He grabbed her hair, using the leverage to tip her head back and sniff her throat. Her eyes went perfectly round in a moment of pure abject terror. The stink of it roused the predator in him. In the single tick of the clock, Ashe wiped the look from her face, but she couldn’t hide the slight trembling of her chin.
Fear was spice. Saliva pooled in his mouth. As Holly’s Chosen, blessed by her magic, he didn’t need to feed on blood any more than a human needed a candy bar. That didn’t mean the temptation wasn’t there. Just ask a chocoholic.
“You aren’t supposed to be awake,” she said, her voice shaking just on the last syllable. She cleared her throat.
“Really?” The light was making his head pound.
“You can’t move in daylight.” She squeezed her eyes closed, for a moment looking so much like Holly it made him loosen his grip on her hair.
“Of course I can.”
He was kneeling beside her on the soft mattress, bracing with one hand while he held her down with the other around her throat. Ashe was strong enough to break the grip of a human male. Against him, she didn’t stand a chance. Both her hands clutched his wrist. Any moment she’d start trying to pry herself free because survival instinct demanded it.
She wouldn’t win.
He gave a deadly leer. “Trade secret. Any vampire that is old enough can wake during the day. It just makes us very, very cranky.”
At the moment, he felt like he had the mother of all hangovers.
“What’s Holly going to say when she finds me dead?” A low growl slipped out. “What’s to say she’ll ever find you?”
Ashe made a tiny, rebellious noise. “You’re a monster.”
“Your point?”
The floor shook, a brief rumble. The tension between them was waking the house’s sentient magic.
Ashe hauled on his wrist, her fight coming back. “You won’t win. I’ve never lost yet!”
She bit him.
Alessandro ripped his hand away, swearing as the blood welled up. “Son of a whore!”
Ashe sprang off the other side of the bed and whipped a second stake out of her boot. “Hurts, doesn’t it, asshole? How do you think Holly felt when you bit her?”
Alessandro reached the end of his rope. With vampire speed, he hurled a pillow straight at her face. Reflexively, she stabbed, releasing a snowstorm of feathers. He used the moment to sail over the bed and grab her from behind, twisting her arms behind her back.
The house trembled again, this time rattling the blinds on the window. Soon it would become dangerous, but to which one of them? Both?
Ashe gave a bitter laugh. “You can kill me if you want, but that doesn’t make you a living man. You can’t be part of my sister’s life. You’re death.”
Her words sliced so deep, he didn’t feel the sting until a second had passed. Then it seared him to the marrow, too deep for any real response. He twisted the second stake out of her fingers, not caring if he hurt her. “I’m still better than the family she has. I wouldn’t send my child away to be raised by strangers.”
“I’m keeping my daughter safe from the likes of you.”
Alessandro bit back a profane retort. He had few options. He could kill Ashe, lock her in the basement, or toss her down the front steps. He dropped his voice to his coldest, cruelest tones. “How do you feel about family counseling?”
“Fuck you.”
His conscience was clear enough to introduce a final option.
“Then I have a very special place for you to go where you can kill all the monsters you want.”
“Pissed” didn’t begin to cover Mac’s mood.
He’d bought groceries, stuffed himself to bursting, and, suddenly exhausted, fallen asleep on the couch. He remembered getting up for a midnight snack that had involved another normal day’s supply of food. When he woke up midmorning, he was sure he’d changed even more. He felt like an ox. Maybe somebody out of Alice in Wonderland. It would have been funny if it had been happening to anybody else.
He was not amused.
That was just the physical stuff. The demon had put his aggression on high, something he’d noticed the second time he’d been forced out of the apartment to find clothes and food. He’d nearly attacked a guy who’d cut him off in the beef aisle in the supermarket. Yeah, Mac was pissed, and there was fear underneath the anger. At moments, he was hanging on to his self-control by the fingernails. The demon was taking over.
He tried to call Holly, but she wasn’t home. He’d hung up without leaving a message. He had a sixth sense that this was his problem to solve, anyway. Or maybe he’d listened to Lore too long and all that prophecy crap was curdling his brain.
He was hungry again. Mac piled sliced ham onto a bun, feeling like he spent his life at the fridge door.
There were only two things keeping him focused. One, he’d made a promise to Constance to rescue her son. Two, he needed answers—all kinds of them. He was determined not to let his brain slack off just because his body had gone into overdrive. The slip with Lore had been warning enough.
Mac bit into the sandwich and chewed while he split and buttered a second bun. Ham or beef on this one? Why not both?
His plan was simple: Get Sylvius. Interrogate Atreus. After that he’d find out what Lore was really up to. If the hounds had a clue about what was going on, he needed to know. The Castle had done something to him, and he needed it undone just as soon as he’d rescued Connie’s son. There had to be a way to get back to his life as a human. For one thing, he couldn’t afford his demon’s insane grocery bill.
After eating his third sandwich, Mac slung the charm Holly had sent him around his neck. The shirt he’d just bought already felt tight through the shoulders and chest.
Whatever was happening to him, it wasn’t over. The simple truth was, if he didn’t do something—take charge, act, focus—he would give in to the panic bubbling up inside him. It was hard to hide from the monster when it was the very flesh you lived in.
But turning into a monster didn’t mean he would go back on his word. He’d let the demon infection distract him long enough. It was time to go back to work.
He grabbed the sword he had taken from Bran from the umbrella rack, testing its balance. This body would know how to use it in a way his old one hadn’t, but he still took his semiautomatic—the holster’s seven-way comfort adjustments worked to their XXL limits—and all the ammo he had. No point in giving up the tried and true.
He dusted from his condo to the door of the Castle. The first challenge was finding out where the guardsmen kept their special prisoners. Constance’s advice might cut hours off his search. She’d been following Bran before. She would at least have an idea which corner of this cavernous Goth-o-rama to start with.
No doubt he could find her in the Summer Room, like a tiny, dark pearl in the safety of its oyster shell. He’d made her promise to stay out of trouble, but that didn’t cover the trouble she represented to him. Just the memory of the place—and what had nearly happened there—was intoxicating. That much temptation should have been a warning in itself to stay away, but his body remembered the feel of her pressing against him. It made the decision.