Chapter 23

Logan

Anastasia is winning. Yet as I fight, dodging razor-sharp fangs, ducking to avoid her taloned fingers, I see Silver in my mind’s eye—her heart-shaped face and creamy skin, the mark of scorn jutting into her brow. For the first time in almost two hundred years, I have a future worth fighting for, a chance to take control of my life. I will not let this demon, this thing, rob me a second time. I will find a way to destroy her, to walk in the light again, as Mary Beth said all those years ago, or I will die trying.

I’m so absorbed in the battle I do not notice the stealthy advance of another vampire.

There is a swish, like a whip cutting through the air, and I feel something wet spray into my face, the fetid odor of poisoned blood filling my nostrils. The blows raining into my body stop, and I blink in shock, staring at the gory scene before me. Anastasia’s head is severed from her neck, her vile face contorted to pure demon—bulging red eyes, her teeth like yellowed stalactites hanging from the roof of a cave. Behind her, wielding a silvery sickle, is a familiar face. Ronin’s club flashes into my mind. A face as haunted by guilt as mine.

Vincent.

Our eyes lock in understanding. Whatever role he played in Ronin’s plans is as over as mine is.

“Silver,” I gasp, spinning around on the spot, frantically looking around the garden.

“She’s fine,” Vincent says, using his free hand to push blood-spattered blond hair from his eyes. “I left her by the trees.”

We both stare as Anastasia’s lolling head begins to slowly right itself. “Strike her again!” I yell at Vincent. “Take it off completely!”

He lifts the machete and cuts the head from her body, where it drops into the grass with a sickening thud. The body follows a second later, a deafening silence filling the air.

Vincent and I stare down at the inert body for a few seconds, and then I fly toward the trees where Silver is slumped in an unconscious heap. Gingerly, I lift her limp body into my arms, brushing soft, auburn hair from her face. I bend over, pressing my lips to hers.

“I love you,” I whisper, tears dripping off my nose and splashing onto her face like raindrops. “Remember, I love you. No matter what happens, I always will.”

“Logan!” Vincent shouts. “Get back over here now!”

I lay Silver back down, taking one final lingering look at her beautiful face before flying back to Vincent’s side.

Anastasia’s head has reattached itself, pink, puckered skin knitting back together. Her features are unrecognizable, skin gray and cracked, red, glowing eyes bulging from their sockets. Her once-immaculate blue coat is soaked with blood.

“Strike her again,” I command, but Vincent shakes his head, shoulders slumped in defeat.

“There’s no way of killing an ancient,” he murmurs, more to himself than to me.

I take one last look over my shoulder at Silver before crossing to Vincent and grabbing him violently. “Get Silver out of here,” I hiss. “By vampire law, she can only take one life to avenge Gerhard. If she kills me, it’s over.” My voice is steady, though inside I’m as a broken as a smashed plate.

“You love the girl,” he says, eyes flickering to the place where Silver is collapsed.

“Yes. Which is why you must hurry! Keep her safe, Vincent.”

He gives me a curt nod and hands me his weapon. “I’ll do all I can.”

I watch as he speeds across the garden like a shadow, hauling Silver into his arms and leaping over the iron railings before disappearing into the night like a phantom.

The sky is dark but for a smudge of moon glowing behind gray clouds. In the distance, I hear sirens wailing. I wonder if it’s the police coming to back up Vincent. I turn to face Anastasia—my nemesis. Her ravaged features are slowly beginning to heal, fangs extending over her lips, ready to kill.

I watch the reversal in disgust—the creature who forced me into this unnatural state, never able to move on or age or live a life with the woman I love, who wanted nothing more than to turn me into a killer. When the last of the wound on her neck seals, her eyes close briefly, and when she reopens them, they are back to their usual odd shade of red brown, the same eyes from the prison hulk all those years ago. She is back on her feet in the blink of an eye.

“Where’s your friend?” she asks, her bony hands clenching into fists.

“What friend?”

Her eyes flit to the machete in my hands. “Are you going to try again with that, Logan? Since the first attempt was such a huge success.”

I toss the silver arc across the garden, where it buries itself in the bark of a tree. I suddenly want this over as soon as possible. Silver will be safe by now.

“It’s over, Anastasia. I surrender. Destroy me and let’s settle the score once and for all.”

Her eerie laugh rattles through the night air. “Wow,” she says, shaking her head. “How unswervingly noble.” She takes a step closer. “A bit like the second movie in the Twilight franchise. But I’m afraid I’m still rather taken by the idea of you watching your girlfriend die.”

A growl erupts from deep in my throat, and I lunge at her, my hands closing around her thin neck, nails sinking into bloodied flesh as I twist with every ounce of strength, trying to snap her in two. We tumble to the muddy, wet grass, rolling over and over in our struggle. Ordinarily, a vampire is no match for an ancient, but with hot sparks of rage coursing through my veins, I somehow manage to pin her beneath me, my hands clamped around her throat so tightly I feel the bones beneath her skin.

I squeeze harder, until my fingers knit together at the nape of her neck, my thumbs pressing down on her windpipe, but she only laughs—a bloodcurdling rumble that reminds me killing her is impossible. Her eyes pierce right through me, as if she can see into the depths of my soul, and when I loosen my grip a fraction, she reverses our positions, rolling over on top of me until I’m pinned to the ground like a butterfly in a case.

I struggle beneath her, clawing at her like a wild animal, but the super-strength has deserted me and it’s suddenly as it was that night many years ago, when I was lying powerless in my bed, the sickness in my veins smothered by her poison.

She tilts her head to one side, her scraggly black hair falling into my face. I feel as if I might suffocate in the foul stench of lilies and death. Finally, she says, “Here we are again, eh?”

My eyes bulge as I brace myself for the inevitable. I say a prayer for Silver, that she will live a long and happy life.

With one hand clamped around my neck, Anastasia uses her fangs to tear into the ivory flesh of her wrist. Droplets of black blood fall onto my face, but it’s only when she reaches down and tears my T-shirt open that I realize what she’s about to do. Taking a sharp, red fingernail, she slits open my chest. I gasp, red-hot pain searing through my body, as she holds her wrist to the wound, my blood mingling with hers.

She grins, a glittering, evil smile. “I have a penchant for taking things full circle, Logan,” she hisses, “and now you’ll die mine, just as you were born again mine.”

I writhe in agony as a greenish mist rises from the wound, her blood overpowering Ronin’s. Somehow this is worse than any ending I could have imagined—that in death I should become hers once more.

Her bony fingers tighten around my throat. “Any last words?”

I lie very still, looking past her into the sky. There are a few stars out, twinkling behind silvery wisps of cloud. The sirens I heard earlier are growing louder, and there is a blue light beginning to pulse beyond the darkness of the trees.

Anastasia frowns. “Oh dear. Looks like your friend with the machete arranged for some reinforcements.” She sighs. “Killing police officers is always rather difficult to cover up.”

The sound of car doors being flung open echoes off the houses, followed by the soft click of guns being cocked. She leaps to her feet, hauling me up by my neck and dangling me in front of her like a puppet. I struggle in vain to break free, my arms and legs thrashing beneath me. My teeth are gritted so tightly my fangs have cut my bottom lip, warm blood trickling down my chin. From this angle, I notice shadowy figures crouched by the wrought-iron fencing, surrounding the whole garden. If only guns could kill her.

A voice cuts through the night, spoken through some kind of megaphone. I scan the bushes and see a middle-aged gentleman in a long, beige trench coat crouching on our side of the fence. Brave man.

“Maria Bryant,” he says with a clipped British accent. “You are under arrest for crimes against humanity. Please release the hostage and put your hands in the air.”

If I wasn’t about to die, it might be funny.

Anastasia snorts in disgust, backing away from the police officers, dragging me toward the other side of the garden. To my amazement, the man in the beige overcoat rises and strides fearlessly toward us. In one hand is a giant megaphone, in the other, his Metropolitan Police badge.

When we reach the trees, we stop. Anastasia grunts and from the corner of my eye I catch a spark of light glinting on metal. She is holding Vincent’s machete. The one I flung earlier.

“I would rip your head off with my bare hands,” she whispers in my ear, “but I had a shellac manicure today, and it would be such a waste.”

“Do it,” I spit. “What the hell are you waiting for?”

“As you wish.”

She thrusts me forward and I fall to my knees in the mud. Gunshots whistle past my ears, but I can tell from Anastasia’s delighted cackle they missed. The brave police officer shouts something I don’t catch.

“Enjoy hell,” she hisses.

I see a flash of light as she lifts the weapon, hear its whisper as she swings it home. I close my eyes as it hits—cold metal slamming into the flesh at the nape of my neck—but as quickly as it strikes, it stops, going no farther. I fall forward into the damp earth.

My neck is burning, and when I open my eyes, a white-hot light is glowing around my neck.

My necklace—the one my mother left me, the one I’ve worn since the night my family deserted me—is glowing brightly. The chain erupts into shards of white light, the medallion as orange as the brightest sunset. What is happening?

I roll onto my back to face Anastasia, stunned to see that she’s burning with the same orange fire of my pendant. Shards of light rip out of her body, incinerating her from the inside out. As her glowing red eyes meet mine, she lifts a ragged hand to point to the pendant at my throat.

“Witches,” she says. Her voice is brittle and coarse. “Gypsy curse.”

As her words drift across to me, I hear voices on the wind, a familiar chanting I haven’t heard since I was young. The voice of my grandmother whispering a spell, and overlapping it, louder and desperately sad, my mother weeping, promising that although she must leave, she will always protect me, that I will always be her green-eyed boy.

I slide backward across the grass, tears pricking my eyes until I hit against something hard. I look up into the shocked face of the officer, and together we turn to stare at the burning inferno that is Anastasia.

Her face is now black and charred, an eerie banshee-like wail pouring from her throat. Then she explodes, her body obliterated as if someone lit a bomb beneath her. For one fleeting second, an image of my grandmother and mother appears in the flames, their kind faces gazing down at me with love. Then the blaze turns to smoke, and when that too fades, all that is left of the demon is a small, black crater in the ground.

The burning at my neck cools. I look down in time to see my necklace and its medallion crumble into black dust, a sudden gust of wind carrying it off on the salty air. Did my mother know this moment would come? All these years, I kept the pendant as a reminder, a good luck charm. Was it always intended to save my life?

Before I can procrastinate further, I’m struck by a spasm of pain.

The policeman bends over me. “Are you all right?”

I stare into his lined face as tiny bolts of electricity spark through me, my chest constricting, a burn flooding my body. I haven’t felt real human pain for so many years, it feels foreign, as if an alien has invaded me and is hacking my internal organs with knives.

“I think I’m having a heart attack,” I say, clutching my chest where my heart is pulsing hammer-like beneath my rib cage. Beating. I grab the collar of the man leaning over me. “I’m dying,” I whisper. “There’s something inside me.”

Then it hits me. I’m not dying at all. I’m living. I clap a hand to my chest, feeling the thud of my heart, loud and pounding under my shirt for the first time in nearly two centuries.

“I think I’m alive,” I say to the man who, from the baffled expression on his weathered face, clearly thinks I’m a lunatic. “But it’s impossible.” Ronin’s words to Silver replay in my mind: Ancients are next to impossible to destroy. I’ve never known one to die.

Is this what happens?

I begin to shiver violently. From across the garden, a medical team is rushing toward me. “I might have cholera,” I say to the tall, weary-looking man. “That’s what I almost died of. Tell them to treat me for that.”

My last thought before I drift into feverish unconsciousness is one of hope. Hope and Silver—a future together, hazy but as bright as a star in a pitch-black sky.