“I learned long ago not to presume what Arion is thinking. He keeps that to himself. Be careful, Violet. He was once a man who would tell no lies, but he was a man who could use honesty as a weapon, even when he held onto his faith. He found a way to manipulate the truth to save his life when needed. It made him clever, but it also made him unpredictable. He can smile to your face, and then stab you in the back, without even glancing back to see you die.”
“He’s done that to you?”
He shakes his head, huffing out a sound of amusement. “Metaphorically? More times than I can count. Literally? No. The times I died was from my own betas rising up against me and attacking me en masse. Hundreds usually. I cull the second-timers and ring-leaders. The others usually learn their lesson and their place.”
“Unless another monster panics and—”
“You were defending yourself, Violet. Even one who can’t die is still young enough to fear death. I’ve done far worse for far less,” he says quietly. “In the end, no one innocent died that night. If I wasn’t numb to it all, I’d have done the same thing.”
This conversation is way too heavy for my chest right now, when I’m already worried about Vance being out there all by himself, while he’s clearly hurting and tired.
“I’m trying to picture Arion as the good boy,” I say by way of deflection.
“Don’t,” Emit states with a bit of intensity I wasn’t expecting. “Don’t picture him as the person he used to be, because he’s very much different, Violet. We let it happen, taking for granted absolutely everything we had in our lives before Idun. He’s based his eternal life around her.”
“I get it,” I tell him, watching as his shoulders relax with that admission. “So how long can Vance go without falling asleep? Didn’t he say that’s when it’ll trigger?”
“Days? Weeks? Who knows when the last time he slept was. He doesn’t do much of that.” He clears his throat. “So…you don’t gain or lose weight?”
Sometimes whiplash is a byproduct from talking to one of them. It’s one of the things they all have in common.
“Random, but no. I’m stuck. They call it a plateau in the magazines,” I answer idly, as I eat my chips.
“Anything significant happen in the past two years? With one of your fake deaths, I mean.”
I crunch more chips as I slink down in my seat. “I was beheaded,” I say with a shudder. “The cult got me. It was right before Mom and I split up, because it seemed like they were everywhere there for a while.”
“She knew about…your secret?”
“Of course she knew. Dad knows too. He saw the damage left over from my party. Mom got him out of there just in time, and she and he hid from me. There were so many of them,” I say quietly, the chips souring on my stomach. “I’ve never been so scared in all my life as I was that day—both before and after. Two simultaneous and equally terrifying events—having a knife slammed into my heart, and waking up on the floor in the middle of a bloody massacre, as images slowly flitted through my head, showing me what I’d done.”
He exhales long and hard, and I clear my throat, smiling tightly.
“Dad sort of stopped being around after that. Mom swears it had nothing to do with the fact I turned my teenager party into Carrie White’s prom. Thankfully, I had no friends and neither did my parents, since we never stuck around anywhere long enough to make any.”
A mental image flashes through my mind, accompanied with the remembered whispers from voices I can never distinguish. I never understand the whispers, and quite frankly, they creep me out.
“Now we sound like Vance and his Debbie Downer attitude,” I point out.
He laughs under his breath. “Your horror stories are weak by comparison to ours, Violet. Stop worrying what’s going on in my head right now.”
“You’re the first living person, outside of my parents, to know this. It’s as liberating as it is terrifying,” I confess.
He reaches over, and I let him thread our fingers together. It’s a sweet, comforting gesture, and it sort of makes me miss Damien. Damn that sexual deviant for stalking his way into my life and then…
“Shit!” I hiss, and he jerks his hand away like he’s done something wrong. “The toothpaste totally distracted me, and I forgot to tell you something important. You said noon?”
“N-noon?” he asks, clearing his throat and flushing with some color for whatever reason. “W-what about noon?”
“That’s when you said a Portocale can die and put you all under at once?”
“Here and now, yes,” he answers all cryptically and quickly.
He’s tense and wide-eyed, like I’ve startled the hell out of him.
“It was around noon when those vampires slit my throat, because the pushy B-and-B chick was trying to get me to eat lunch just before that.”
His brow furrows.
“What are you saying?” he asks, seeming much more interested now.
“Because those vampires slit my throat and stabbed me in the heart, like they wanted to ensure I died at that exact moment. I chalked it up to overkill.”
He gives me a surprised look, and then darts a glance to my throat and chest, as if remembering I really can’t die and am cool with how often people try to kill me, before meeting my eyes again. “They did all that and you staked them instead of panicking?”
“I wasn’t buried in a box,” I point out. “But I was close to panicking when I realized they were vampires and I couldn’t break a damn table like they do in the movies.”
His grin is quick. “Martin had an entire chest full of—”
“Perfectly sharpened and easier to use stakes?” I supply with a small glare.
He wipes away his grin.
“Yeah. I figured that out after the first two,” I mutter. “Anna already mocked me for that, just before she told me Buffy could kick my ass.”
Emit’s almost too easy to read sometimes. He doesn’t carry much of a poker face, and his expressions are so clear and honest. Like the one he’s got right now that says he’s just realized something.
“Your triplets disagree,” he says all vaguely.
Okay…so maybe I can’t read his expressions as well as I thought.
“The triplets are slightly scary and possibly insane,” I tell him, just in case he hasn’t figured that out for himself. “The point is, those vampires, or whoever sent them after me, must have known the magic number to put all four alphas down was noon.”
“But it didn’t work, because you can’t die, so obviously they have to reevaluate, because they’re all dead, and it’s doubtful anyone knows you’re still alive,” he surmises.
“So long as you trust Arion did a thorough job, because I didn’t realize how this affected all of you until just now, and neither does he. I’m not sure how much time and effort has gone into eradicating that threat,” I say like this conversation isn’t totally freaking me out a little.
His lips struggle with more effort not to smile. Seriously, though, the worst things amuse these guys.
“Regardless of his intentions for you, you’re under his protection,” he tells me as his humor fades and a little seriousness settles back in. “Any prior and current threats will be handled effectively, Violet. His gravest fault is never letting anything go. In this particular instance, it works out in our favor.”
“I have no choice but to trust you on this,” I say with as much nonchalance as I can muster. “I can’t out myself to Arion. Does he always play head games?”
“With people in general? Yes,” he answers flatly. “With Idun, no. Never did. They were always on the same team. For a while, we hated them together. It was the only thing the other three of us had in common. Idun would pull some sadistic, fucked up shit, like slaughtering packs of innocent wolves to get us back under her thumb, or curse Damien to kill any other woman he touches. Then she’d still cry real tears and manage to break us because of how sincerely she could twist our words to make us in the wrong and blame us for her actions. Toxic is an understatement,” he continues.
I don’t even pretend to understand. My once proud relationship with Jerome seems so shallow by comparison to the layers of complexity theirs seems to continue to weave.
“Damien stayed with her longer because she was all he had left by the end.” His gaze slants toward me. “Arion has baffled us all, since he still loved her when he went underground. None of us can figure out what’s changed.”
The second I try to tell him, the memory wavers in my mind, as if warning me to keep my mouth shut.
We pull up to a bar that he finds way too easily, making it seem as though this is familiar. I’m sure everything, by this point, is familiar to him, though.
It’s weird, since he doesn’t even look thirty. And it’s gotten harder not to notice the sexy barbarian appeal Anna always talked about.
I really miss her.
I’m definitely focusing on my friend and not the barbarian.
He gets out, not glancing over to see me still studying him, soaking in the moment where I can just talk about me with someone who makes it normal.
Definitely vulnerable. I’m just going to keep blaming it all on that.
As I get out and shut the door, I look around, wondering where Vance is and if he’s really going to find us as easily as Emit makes it sound, since the Van Helsing left his phone behind.
We draw a lot of attention when we walk in, since it’s half restaurant- half bar, and there’s a lot more people than I expected. Emit’s a beast of a man, damn good looking, and commands every single gaze in the room.
All the times they’ve stepped in front of ‘normal’ people…it’s been just like this.
It’s an eye-opener.
I’m slouched in his jacket, still not pretty at all, and I don’t even get spared a glance. It’s like no one can look away from him, as we move through the restaurant portion and take a seat. I really wish I felt pretty right now.
Emit smirks at me as I look around at everyone looking at him; though, now the shock has worn off and they’re trying to be more discreet about it.
“That doesn’t happen to you?” he asks.
“Do I stop entire rooms when I walk in? No. Apparently I’m not that sort of monster,” I mutter under my breath, feeling totally gipped.
He battles his own grin as he looks down at the menu. He orders for both of us, as if that’s a common thing, when the waiter returns. I try not to smile at the fact he knew what I was going to order.
He looks too smug to let him know I’m easily impressed.
I glance around, wondering if it’s too early to sample that bar. I decide to hell with it and go put in an order for the strongest thing on the menu that has the word explosion in it.