Incipient A Dark Paranormal Romance - Bianca Scardoni Page 0,89

fed on when he came back from the brushwood covered in blood was not enough to fully quench his thirst for Slayer blood.

I wasn’t sure there was anything that could do that.

As unnerving as the thought was, I could only feel gratitude that he had showed up when he did, afraid to know what would’ve happened if he hadn’t. His timing was truly kismet.

Or was it?

“How did you know where we were?” I asked him quietly, the thought having just occurred to me. A part of me already knew the answer but the other part needed to know for sure.

“I was close by,” he answered vaguely and without meeting my eyes.

“Were you following Dominic…or me?”

He didn’t bother supplying an answer. That or he couldn’t bring himself to say it out loud.

“Me,” I realized and then lowered my head, unsure how to feel about that. There were so many thoughts and emotions rocketing through me, it was making my head spin a hundred different ways. “Should I be afraid of you now, Gabriel?”

He stopped walking and turned to face me, his eyes filled with so much sadness and regret that it almost hurt to look at them. “I don’t want you to be, Jemma.”

I nodded sadly, because I didn’t want to be afraid of him either, but also because he hadn’t really answered my question.

We continued the rest of the way in silence, neither one of us engaging the each other until we reached the edge of the forest. I could see the faint glimmer of a streetlight in the distance and I knew we were close.

“You know we’re going to have to do something about him soon,” he said as he pulled a tangle of branches back to give me room to pass. Not that it mattered, I was already covered in scrapes and bruises anyway.

“I know,” I said as my wary eyes swept the road to make sure Dominic’s car was nowhere in sight. Breathing in a sigh of relief, I stumbled out of the forest and marched toward my car.

“It doesn’t have to be you,” he continued as he opened my driver’s side door and then helped me climb into the seat. “I can take care of this if you need me to.”

I looked up and met his warm eyes. His nice, normal moss-green eyes. “It has to be me. He’s not going to give up without a fight and I can’t risk anything happening to you.” He’d probably kill his own brother just to spite me.

“And what about you?” he asked, his forearm resting on the frame of my door. “Look at yourself, Jemma. You’re covered in blood and bruises and bite marks,” he said, wincing on the last word probably because he knew one of those marks was his. “How much longer are you supposed to continue living this way?”

I refused to even glance toward the mirror to see what he was talking about. “He can’t kill me.”

“Wake up, Jemma. He already is killing you.”

Tears stung the corners of my eyes, but I refused to cry. I wasn’t some helpless damsel in distress. I was a Slayer. Granted, I’d just had my ass handed to me by Dominic, but I’d been caught off guard. Not to mention, I was playing with an uneven deck on account of the fact that I still had my damn emotions turned on and he didn’t.

Shaking off his words, I ran my palm against my hair, as though that might help the calamity. “The amulet will protect me from dying. That’s all that matters to me at the end of the day.”

Something flickered through his eyes, but it was gone too quickly for me to make out. “But at what cost, Jemma? How do you know you aren’t causing harm every time you touch death and come back from it?”

An icy shiver pressed against my spine. I hadn’t thought about that.

I didn’t want to think about that.

“I don’t know, but what other choice do I have, Gabriel? Should I send my friends and loved ones to certain death because, you know, something bad might happen to me further down the road?” I huffed out a humorless laugh. “I think we both know that’s not ever going to happen.”

I would die a thousand times and lose every single piece of myself in the process before sending someone I loved to their death. That wasn’t me. It would never be me again.

Holding my blouse closed with one hand, I tried to wiggle my