“Why?” Bastien had asked. “Everyone who hunts vampires is supposed to be on the network’s payroll. Just consider me the middleman. Reordon pays me to hunt. Then I pay you to do the hunting for me so I can sit back, relax, and think up new things to try with Melanie the next time I get her naked.”
Cliff didn’t so much do the hunting as the killing, but Bastien’s argument had made enough sense for him to accept the funds. Because it enabled him to accomplish what he needed to.
Cliff knew how hard all this was on Emma. Yet she offered not a single complaint. She didn’t grow short-tempered or weary of his sudden angry outbursts, none of which he directed at her. Nor of the creepy way he would mutter to himself, engage in snarled one-person arguments, and pace when agitated. Nor of the way he would sometimes pounce on her as soon as she opened the door, tear her clothes off, and take her rougher than he intended in a desperate bid to shut out the damn voices.
Remorse would always sour his stomach afterward. Some nights he didn’t even say hello first. He had even left faint bruises on her where he had gripped her too tightly and had panicked… until he harkened back to a conversation he’d overheard Melanie and Linda having once in which they had laughed about their immortal lovers leaving the same marks on them.
That alleviated some of the fear. Emma, as usual, dispatched the rest.
“You weren’t too rough,” she’d mutter sleepily. “You gave me three orgasms, honey. You think I’m going to complain about that?”
But he knew she must miss the gentler, playful couplings they’d shared in their early months together.
Cliff tried so hard to balance the bad with some good.
When he was gone, he wanted Emma to only remember that man in the pictures. The one who had saved her life the morning mercenaries had attacked. The one who treasured even the most mundane moments with her.
The man who loved her.
If he didn’t end it soon…
He tugged harder on his hair and shook his head.
What if she saw the monster that grew inside him?
If he didn’t end it soon, how would that monster manifest itself to her?
He never, ever wanted to frighten Emma, let alone harm her. And while he’d never had such impulses around her before…
No. He couldn’t bear to think it. Melanie seemed sure Cliff would never harm Emma. Cliff would like to think the same. The violent impulses he constantly battled had certainly never focused on her. But the words his father had spoken to him shortly before Cliff went away to college came back to him again and again:
“Whenever you’re contemplating an action that comes with even minimal risk, son, ask yourself this question: Is it a gamble you can afford to lose?”
This was not minimal risk.
And this was not a gamble he could afford to lose.
He would not let the madness win. And there was only one way he knew of to ensure it wouldn’t.
Melanie and Bastien would take it hard. Melanie would blame herself for failing to find a cure in time or a way to reverse the brain damage. Bastien would stoically deliver the death blow if Cliff asked him to, no matter how much it ate him up inside. But that wouldn’t stop either of them from offering Emma whatever support she’d need once he was gone. He knew he could count on them for that. Todd and Cynthia would be there for her, too.
Cliff ground his teeth as the voices howled in his head, rejecting his intention to eradicate them.
Emitting a bestial growl, he pulled at his dreads.
Light thuds reached his ears.
A deep voice with a Scottish accent spoke. “It’s Aidan. I’m coming in.”
Aidan had landed himself in hot water a couple of years ago by breaking into network headquarters, bypassing their security protocols, and altering the memories of multiple guards and employees so he could obtain a list of gifted ones he hoped might lead him to a woman who could love him and alleviate the roughly three thousand years of loneliness he’d experienced.
Once he’d gotten back into Seth’s good graces (Reordon still held a gargantuan grudge), Aidan had befriended Cliff and asked him to assist him in his quest to find love. Cliff had been shocked speechless, something that had made the ancient immortal burst out