I’d faced death before, and I wasn’t afraid because I knew it was only a transition, going from one place to another. What Victoria said scared the piss out of me. An eternity under her control? I’d prefer to die. She was right; I’d probably beg for death. I’d seen how she was in the future; I had witnessed how evil she was in the present. The bitch didn’t simply feed on blood—she also needed pain and suffering to make her meals complete.
I closed my eyes, picturing Disco. He didn’t deserve what had happened to him. Now it would be even worse. When he woke and our mark was opened, he would know the atrocities I endured, and he wouldn’t be able to do shit about it. Instead he’d have to witness my treatment, stuck beneath the ground.
By the time he was freed—if I was still alive—I probably wouldn’t even be a woman he could love anymore.
“Don’t be so certain about that,” Disco whispered in my mind, and my eyes flew open, revealing the vampires holding me down, their fangs bared.
It was another trick, I thought. My mind fucking with things, trying to warp them into something I could accept. Then I heard a bitter laugh in my mind—Disco’s laugh—and knew his presence was very real.
“No more tricks. No more games. It’s me, love. I’m here.”
Joy, relief, and love cascaded through me as the mark between us opened and flowed. I could tell he was weak, but he wasn’t going to let that stop him.
Not now.
Fury, resentment, and torment consumed him and poured into me, turning the lover I knew into one I’d never truly seen before. He had made a mistake in abiding by vampire law—laws made by half-demons—and it was a mistake he wasn’t willing to repeat. For over a century, he’d existed by their rules, despite the humanity it sucked from him. No more. Never again. From this point forward, he was making the rules.
His life.
His decisions.
His wrath placed upon anyone who dared stand against him.
No mercy.
Holy shit, he was pissed.
“Brace yourself,” he warned, his husky baritone a low growl. “This ends now.”
I knew the precise moment he took over my body, flinging my arms and legs up and out with a strength that I didn’t possess. The vampires were dislodged and sent back several feet, giving Disco plenty of time to manipulate my legs and get me on my feet. It was a strange sensation, unlike what I felt with Marigold. This didn’t feel awkward or unnatural, instead it felt as if I’d finally found my place.
I thought he’d go for the gun resting a few feet away, but he didn’t. Instead I found myself running at full-speed toward Victoria. Knocking Dimitri aside, I wrapped one hand around her throat and fisted her hair in the other.
“This is your doing,” I rasped, the tenor unnatural and odd as Disco used my voice to speak. “My only regret is I’m unable to present you with more than death.”
I learned then that breaking someone’s neck wasn’t difficult when you had vampire strength. The bones popped, snapped, and finally cracked. I wondered if Disco was done when I felt myself reaching for Sucker. While I might need to have a vampire on the ground to perform a beheading, Disco had no such problems. One swift arch of my arm and her head was no longer a part of her body.
Disco pivoted around, so that I was facing the vampires in the room. They were no longer wild and bloodthirsty, their hands limp and harmless at their sides. There was trepidation in their gazes, an awareness that Gabriel Trevellian was back and wasn’t taking any more shit. It was amazing, seeing how much power he wielded, how the vampires in the room cowed at his presence.
Shit. They know.
They could feel Disco just as well as I could. I’d been told the infamous Mr. Trevellian was more powerful than I knew, but I was only starting to glimpse how truly stunning my lover was.