Night Kissed (Chosen Vampire Slayer #1) - Mila Young Page 0,55

I trailed off. “Actually, I have no idea what I was trying to do.”

Just then, Logan held a finger to his lips. “Shh.” I shut my mouth and we both listened together—to brand new, total quiet. The cacophony in the background had faded to a dull roar the longer it had gone on. It was a mild shock to recognize that I heard nothing.

“They’re done,” Logan said. “You have to go. Unless you want Orion to find you in here.”

“No thanks,” I retorted wryly. “Sounds like he’s already trashed the place. I don’t need him to snap me in half for good measure.”

Logan studied me closely. “You shouldn’t have come here,” he said. The sentiment was both sudden and unprompted.

“I didn’t. Seth brought me because Orion told him to.”

“No,” he said. “To Anchorage.”

“Oh.” I laughed. “Well, it’s too late for that. I only had a one-way ticket.” I thought I was being funny, but Logan’s face remained unmoved. He was so stoic, so carefully measured in all ways. The unnatural perfection of his features made him seem like a living statue, framed by the arch of the window.

Shit, maybe he was an angel after all. The shock rattled through me. I was used to bumping into different supernatural creatures, but an angel was a first. Fallen angel for that, still as startling. So, what was he doing down on Earth?

A sudden sharp bang yanked me back into the real world, and I glanced into the hall, toward the stairwell. One last thin current of smoke drifted in through the open door.

“Seth is leaving,” Logan remarked. He pointed down from our vantage point in the window, to where Seth was just being swallowed up by the thick trees. Watery footprints marked his trail from the house to the edge of the wood. “Fight’s over.”

“I guess that’s my cue to get moving.” I stood up, moved away from the window seat, paused, and glanced back at him. “Can’t say I blame you staying away from Seth, though. I don’t really want to fight him either.”

“The fighting isn’t the problem.” Logan’s face masked over into stony resolve. “I don’t want to kill him. Yet.”

I was out of the living room pretty quickly after that. The more I learned about this house, the more it seemed like a constant power struggle between three personalities that were each dominant in their own way. Orion, the ironclad leader, Seth, the wild enforcer, and Logan, the patient strategist. It was a house of cards, built precariously on the foundation of impermanent loyalties.

And I had arrived just in time to watch it all start to give way.

Chapter 18

Orion

Every fight with Seth forced me to remember two things. One, he was not like the vampires I had bullied into loyalty to me, and to mentally categorize him as such was a mistake. Two, the surrender of mortal life did not necessarily mean the absence of pain. I stood under the showerhead, wincing as the burns on my arms and chest shed off and began the process of healing over. A process I was simultaneously thankful for and disgusted by.

In the end, I stepped out from under the water without permanent wounds. By the next nightfall, there would be no sign of an altercation. This was hardly the first time our tempers had risen to their flashpoint. I knew it wouldn’t be the last. The encounters had taken on their own ritualistic vibe, a way for us to release the constantly mounting pressure day by day. If Seth respected anything, I liked to think it was my willingness to engage with him in his arena.

He wanted to fight, so we fought. And I let him think he could get the better of me, that he was calling the shots. These battles always ended on one side of a very thin line, and I didn’t expect to see hide nor hair of the demon for a while. But Seth was greedy above all else, and I had promised too rich a reward. The siren song of wealth and freedom always drew him back.

But after each battle we engaged, something changed with us… only minuscule, but the wall between us always thinned. By meeting him on his grounds of how he dealt with problems, I believed he started to come around to working closer with me.

So, I embraced our encounters, knowing it aided us both to deal with the shit between us. I didn’t want to constantly argue with him or to