The High School Reunion From Hell - Saranna DeWylde Page 0,57

brave. I was going to figure out how to tear him apart with my bare hands.

“Maybe I’ll do it anyway after you’re my blood slave. What do you think about that?”

“I think that if there’s any of my blood in your body and you hurt my child, I’ll figure out how to kill you from the inside.”

He laughed, as if he were genuinely amused. “Oh, Margie, Margie.” Then he turned to my family. “Well, go on then.” Gabe clacked his teeth together. “Run.”

Marc hauled a wailing Ryder over his shoulder and did just that, he ran, and it was exactly what I wanted him to do. Ryder would have stayed to fight, and I needed her clear and safe.

“Let me in, Margie. Just like you promised.”

And I did, because they weren’t far enough away to be safe. None of the people I loved would be safe until I figured out how to kill these shadow vamps. Maybe containing them would be better. Then they could be studied and scientists could try undoing their existence one molecule at a time.

His fangs were cold and sharp as they slipped into my skin and he drank deep. He pulled and pulled at my vein like I was a Capri Sun. As the blood left my body, I didn’t give in to fear. I refused to feel defeat.

I’d won. No matter what happened here, I’d won. My daughter was safe. The people I loved were safe. He’d given me exactly what I wanted. I wasn’t afraid of what came next. His darkness was nothing in the face of all the love and hope that blossomed inside of me.

Even as the dark, wormy tendrils of his essence squirmed inside me, filling me up with shadow.

“Let me in,” he hissed again.

“I’m not fighting you,” I answered. “There’s just no room.”

“I’m killing you,” he said, matter-of-factly. “Draining you dry. Where is your fear? Give it to me.”

“I’m not afraid of you.”

“Then I guess I should have drained your little girl dry first.”

It came to me then, how to defeat him. How to kill him. He was desperate because he couldn’t fill me up with his darkness and that’s ultimately what he needed. To make me lose all hope, just like him.

Maybe it was my slayer’s senses, or maybe it was being connected to him this way, but I knew everything about him now. He fed on pain and fear, but it was the complete absence of hope that made his victims become like him.

That’s what had happened to him in that vampire den in Iraq. He’d lost hope and this was what it had made him.

I couldn’t change him.

I couldn’t find enough love in my heart to lead him to the light. I didn’t want to, and it sure as fuck wasn’t my job to fix a broken man. He had to do it himself.

And until he did, he couldn’t be allowed to go spilling his darkness on everyone else.

No, what I had to do was shore myself up on the inside. Make my light so bright, he couldn’t stand it. Make it so hot it burned him.

That’s what I thought about then, about how much I still had to do. Doubts about who I was, what I wanted and my worth crept in because I remembered Marc’s words about how he needed to be needed.

I was too strong.

I was too hard.

I was too much.

And that made me not enough at the same time.

But then I remembered all the things I had done, all the things I still could do, and all the things I still wanted to do. My strengths were not weaknesses.

Being too much for Marc didn’t mean I’d lost my value.

He’d lost his.

The warmth inside of me grew, and now, instead of trying to writhe his way into my veins, Gabe strained to get away from me, to get away from the stark, nuclear burn of my inner power.

“What’s wrong? Don’t you want this?” I said, sharply. “Keep trying. Dig deeper. Dig as far into me as you can. You’ll never see yourself. No matter how deep you go.”

“How?” he cried.

“I know who I am and I don’t need your validation.”

“It can’t be that simple,” he cried.

“In this case, I think it might just be.” I pushed with my mind and shoved his darkness away. “This is why men like you don’t like women my age. You can’t infect us with your bullshit.”

I noticed that shadows around me had started growing ever smaller. The