a deep breath and said, “I heard you completed your task as well. Though I can’t offer up any congratulations.”
His lips turned down in an exaggerated frown. “Why not?”
“You. Killed. Tobias.” She stared at him, her eyes burning. This flippant attitude of his was going to get him in trouble someday, and that day might be today. Right now, as a matter of fact. “How could you revert to your old ways like that?”
“Revert to my old…” He folded his arms across his chest and met her glare with one of his own. “I never pretended to be anything but what I am, your feyness. I kill for a living; that’s what I do as Lucifer’s enforcer.”
“But that’s not what you want to do,” she said, also ignoring his sarcasm. “You told me yourself that you want out. Yet what you did only dug you in deeper.” She put one hand on her hip. “What did Lucifer have to say about all this?”
He gave that one shouldered shrug that usually seemed sexy but now just made her want to smack him into tomorrow. “You know how demons feel about vampires,” he said. “The only good vamp is a dead vamp.”
“You’re telling me he was okay with it? And you don’t think vampires will retaliate against demons?” What was wrong with him? He didn’t seem worried at all that he might have started a blood feud. “Tobias wasn’t any vamp. He was a well-liked and well-respected councilor.”
“We don’t concern ourselves overmuch about the council, either.” He shoved his hands into the front pockets of his jeans. “Anyway, since when do you care about what happens between demons and vampires?”
“I care because of you, you great ignorant stump of a man.” Her voice came out more shrilly than she would have liked. In exasperation she walked forward and poked her finger against his chest. His firm, muscular chest covered by the softest shirt she’d ever felt. She curled her fingers into her palm and dropped her hand to her side. “I just don’t understand how you could do this. Tobias isn’t the only victim here, you know. There’s also Nix, and by extension her mother. And your father.”
“Don’t talk to me about victims,” he said, his voice deep and hoarse. His eyes were as hard as she’d ever seen them. “You have victims, too. You may not have killed them physically, but many of them, maybe most of them, were broken financially and emotionally. Their families didn’t feel any less victimized because their loved one was left alive.” As his ire rose, yellow sparks floated in his irises. “I at least put people out of their misery.”
“Oh, so you’re saying Tobias was miserable, then? Is that what you’re telling me?” Keira crossed her arms again and shot him a glare. “That’s some crystal ball you must have, to be able to know when someone’s so miserable they’re pining for death.” He opened his mouth to respond, but she forestalled him with a sharp slash of one hand through the air. “I’m not finished,” she spat. “How dare you compare what I did to what you did? People recover financially; there’s no coming back from the dead, boyo.”
He took a step closer, looming over her. “There’s not, I agree. But the ruin you’ve left in your wake, how can you defend that? Despite what you say, I’m sure there are plenty of people who were never the same after you finished with them. How many people committed suicide after you wiped them out financially?” He didn’t wait for her shocked response before he said, “At the very least, they didn’t trust people quite like they used to.”
“And that’s a good thing,” she snarled. “Because people hurt you if you let them. They let you down, they use you—” She broke off as tears threatened.
She’d thought she had left that old life behind her, but she’d taken to it again like a kid to candy. Maybe she hadn’t been as adept at change as she’d thought.
She took a few breaths to regain some control, and said more quietly, “The first chance someone got, they used my past against me. The past I’d left behind, the one I’d wanted to forget. To escape. Yet here I am. Again.” She raised her gaze to his. “And you. You wanted a different future than what your father has mapped out for you. Yet here you are, trapped in the present, doing what you’ve always done.” Pain tore