We’d parted on horrendous terms, at the end of his crossbow, and I didn’t know what slayed me more: the things we’d said to each other or the things I’d allowed to go unsaid. And all of that would remain unsaid, since it seemed we were picking up almost exactly where we’d left off, with a gun aimed between my eyes.
“How many more people do you think Greta has stowed away back there?” Dominic muttered.
“Hello, Walker,” I said, ignoring Dominic. My voice sounded as flat and dead as Walker’s gaze. He smelled like mint, as always, but beneath the mint, I could smell the heat and spice and everything Dominic and every vampire I’d ever met had said smelled so damn nice. The smell of his night blood was intoxicating. I swallowed, and the walls of my throat scraped like sandpaper. “Nice to see that, even after all this time, we can pick up right where we left off.”
Greta’s gaze never left mine, but she wasn’t talking to me when she said, “We’re just talking here. Stand down.”
“We don’t talk to vampires,” Walker said. “We kill them.”
“That’s not just any vampire. That’s DiRocco.”
Walker shook his head. “That was DiRocco.”
“I can attest that I’m still me,” I said, warily. “Not that anything I could do or say would convince you otherwise.”
“He turned you against me long before he turned you into a vampire. I should have killed you then.”
“As if leaving me for dead wasn’t the same damn thing,” I snapped.
“And yet, here you are, mission unaccomplished.” Walker’s expression twisted painfully. “We were friends once. More than friends. We were—” His voice broke, and whatever he’d been about to say, he dismissed it with a quick shake of his head. “I was wrong about you. And I was wrong to let you live.”
I heard the strain of his trigger finger contracting, and I realized that dodging a single bullet as a vampire would be as easy as avoiding oncoming traffic while crossing the street as a human—I simply needed to keep my eyes open for danger and side-step accordingly. I felt a sudden sorrow for Walker. He’d been fighting this battle his entire adult life since losing his fiancé and blaming Bex for her death. He’d sacrificed a great deal in his personal war against Bex: a normal life and our friendship. He’d even killed other humans in the effort to kill vampires, all because he thought no sacrifice was too great in the effort to win his personal war against Bex. But what Walker didn’t realize, what his passion and vengeance would never allow him to truly grasp, was that his efforts were futile and self-destructive, tantamount to a fly waging war against the hand swatting at it.
Walker’s finger muscles were still contracting on his trigger and I was still debating my next move in our conversation after I dodged his bullet when someone slammed into me, knocking me back a step into Dominic and shielding the two of us from Walker, as if we needed shielding.
Walker’s finger muscles froze and every other muscle in his body began to tremble.
“Ian,” Ronnie whispered, her voice a soft plea. “Please, don’t shoot.”
Chapter 6
A few strands of what was left of Ronnie’s tinsel-thin hair fell from her emaciated scalp in her haste to shield my body with her own. I winced at both the sick straggles of her hair and at her misguided attempt to protect me. I could dodge Walker’s bullet, and if I was wrong about the power and capabilities of my new body or overconfident against Walker’s weaponry, I could probably survive being shot. Dominic most definitely could survive a bullet. I’d witnessed dozens of bullets turn his body to Swiss cheese, and the injuries, which would have killed a man on impact, had only pissed him off. But somehow, we’d ended up in the opposite order—me in front of Dominic and Ronnie in front of me—so the weakest person was the front-row target of Walker’s shot.
But he didn’t shoot.
Walker’s jaw clenched, his hands physically shook, and I’d never smelled a more aromatic scent than the cinnamon-mint effervescence wafting from his pores—unadulterated horror, I realized. A little part of me hated that I salivated at the scent of his suffering.
Considering he was still aiming a gun at me, a very little part.
A rattling growl swelled the room. I opened my mouth to admonish Dominic; the growl became louder, and I realized the noise was coming from me. I cleared my throat and tried again. “Ronnie, stand down.”
Ronnie didn’t move. Walker’s trembling worsened as he studied her, from the dead strands of her tinsel hair to the bony knobs of her ankles and every emaciated feature in-between. Walker shook his head in denial.
Ronnie nodded back and took a step toward him.
Dominic and I simultaneously lunged forward to drag her back.
Our movement snapped Walker out of his shock, and he re-aimed his drooping gun wildly, targeting me and Dominic and even Ronnie before settling back on me.
Ronnie sidestepped into his crosshairs.
“Stop it, Ronnie,” I said. “You can’t—”
Ronnie held up her hand, but when she spoke, it wasn’t to me. “I know this is hard.”
Walker wasn’t looking at her. He was still aiming at me, but he was also still shaking his head.
“I never wanted this. I never could have imagined in my wildest nightmares that we would come to this, that you could ever point a gun at me, and that I—” Ronnie’s voice broke. She cleared her throat and started again. “I’ve loved you my entire life, and I always thought that despite the vampires, despite everything, we would marry and live happily ever after.”
Walker shook his head, more insistent now than in denial, and I tried to stave off the inevitable.
“Ronnie,” I pleaded, “maybe we should—”
“Even when you were engaged to Julia-Marie,” Ronnie forged ahead, ignoring me, “I was thrilled for you, but a part of me still dreamed. Even after everything with Bex, and you turned so cold and distant, even after you brought home Cassidy, I still remained hopeful that maybe one day it would all work out for us. We were good people, and good people deserve to be happy. And the years just flew by, and I just kept hoping, maybe one day.”
Walker’s head stopped moving. In fact, even with my enhanced senses, the only movement coming from him was the involuntary contraction of his heart. He’d even stopped breathing.
Ronnie took a step toward him, and this time, Dominic and I let her go.
“It wasn’t until I woke after Bex’s attack and realized that I wasn’t dead, that I was a vampire, that I knew one day would never come. Maybe we never would have been happy even if I’d grown old and died human, but suddenly, even the hope of happiness was gone. Completely, utterly gone. I looked at my claws that were once hands, cut my tongue on the fangs that were once my eyeteeth, and felt bloodlust burn the back of my throat, and greater than the fear of the creature I’d become was the dawning horror over the fact that there was no hope for you and me. Your love for me was just a foolish girl’s dream, but there was nothing questionable about your love of killing vampires.”
Ronnie took another step forward, an arm’s-length away from Walker now, close enough that, depending on the size of the bullet he had loaded, the exit wound might blow apart the back of her skull.
Walker didn’t move a muscle, not even to blink, but tears filled his eyes and spilled over his cheeks.
“Nothing about this is easy, Ian. Realizing that we were over was the hardest moment of my life. I still can’t come to