Night Kissed (Chosen Vampire Slayer #1) - Mila Young Page 0,30

it struck my skin. In the dark of the night, my veins glowed faintly, fiery orange and yellow. There was an itch building that demanded to be scratched, one way or another. Some poor son of a bitch was about to have a very bad evening.

Deep down, I kept wishing it was Orion on the other end of my wrath. He annoyed me more after meeting the pink-haired girl than before. Didn’t seem fair that a first-class prick like him coasted along on unlimited time. Someone ought to number his days, I thought, and not for the first time. Once, months before, I’d almost done it myself.

A smile crept across my face as I slowed down to savor the recollection. He always kept the doors to the several rooms he called his, locked, as if there was anything in his gaudy, antique junk that anyone would want. But there was one night he’d forgotten, and I heard the door creaking on my way by. Sunrise was just getting underway, and he had pulled the drapes tight over the window.

Hell of a weakness, that sunlight.

The casket was sitting in the middle of the room, sealed tight and surrounded by a sprinkling of what turned out to be dirt. Back then, the notion of Mr. High-and-Mighty vampire having to recreate his own grave to sleep in made me choke back a bark of laughter. Of course he couldn’t sleep with a blanket and a pillow. What an asshole.

Well, I hadn’t been able to resist the urge to snoop around a little bit. Like I said, most of his things were tasteless, gaudy junk, way too overblown and Gothic for anyone in their right mind. A leather couch sat against the back wall with a small table and lamp. It took about five seconds for all of my attention to focus on the one interesting thing in that room: the casket. Heavy and made out of solid ebony wood, it was polished to a shine, lovingly cared for in a way that gave me, a demon, the creeps.

I remembered reaching out and running my fingers across the lid. How easy would it have been to crack that thing open, dump his stupid living corpse on the floor, and drive the closest stake-like object through his corrupted heart? It was strange to recognize that Orion, and all the rest of his kind, were abominations to me, in a way. Creatures like him were outliers on the fringes of our hierarchy of good and evil. They existed in defiance of death, the strongest and most natural force in the universe.

Maybe that was the real reason he pissed me off. Or maybe I just really wanted to devour the sexy human girl he thought he’d claimed. Either reason worked for me. I did not need to be convinced to despise anything.

The city around me disappeared against the backdrop of my thoughts as I made my way into downtown Anchorage. A cluster of bars remained open, lights weak in the mist. I aimed for them, eyes tracing the sodden pavement. The sound of boots on the sidewalk and my deepening ruminations nearly blocked out all others.

Why hadn’t I killed him then? Pragmatism was the answer I liked to give, but cowardice lurked in the realm of uncomfortable truth after he offered me a way out of my problems. The conflict of how I felt toward him drove me crazy.

Somehow, he had convinced me that he was the sole distributor of the prize he had promised—free rein over the mortal realm. He was the one who could loosen my chains and allow me to run amok as I pleased in the land of men. And he ruled over his kind with an iron fist. The other, lesser vampires waited at his beck and call. I could have fought most of them off, but the shadow of a doubt was enough to stay my hand.

At the time, Orion’s reasonings, whatever they were, had made sense. And even now, Orion’s word was the bond that held me at his side. I was ravenous and restless, but I could also be patient. If he turned out to be a liar, I would simply destroy him. He knew that, too.

But others did not share the same wisdom.

“Hey, freak!”

The taunt snapped me out of my head as quickly as a bone snapped under pressure. I wheeled around in search of its source, reflexive rage rising in my chest. The heat surged from my