all of it, I thought. She was cause and effect and all the rest.
“I’m sorry. I’m just so confused. She was hurt, and blamed it on vampires. So typical.”
“So typical,” he agreed.
“I don’t know how I should thank you,” I said and looked coyly away. “Especially with the AAM hunting me.”
“You just have to join a House. That’s not hard. Pick one, and I’ll stay here, and we can live in Chicago and be happy. You have to join a House,” he said again, eyes reeling. “You have to. You have to. We need to be part of a House. It’s crucial.” He stopped in front of me. “It’s everything.”
There was something pitiable about him, about the world he’d created in his mind, that made it hard to loathe him. But I persisted.
“You don’t think we’d be okay without joining a House?”
He backhanded me.
Knuckle hit bone, and flesh struck flesh, and the insult of pain was nearly blinding. “I just said you have to join a House. You have to. Don’t you understand?”
I understood plenty, I thought, as my face throbbed, the skin tingling. I understood I’d run out of patience. I’d run out of time to play nice, to wait. To hope we could get out of this without death.
Go, I told the monster. And it wasted no time, pushing forward through me with a speed that had me jerking in the chair.
I lifted my head, let Levi see what I was. That would be his punishment, or part of it. To watch his dream dissolve in fear, in the haze of my red eyes.
Horror smeared across his face like a stain, contorting his brow. “What are you?”
“Not like you,” I said, and the monster had us rocking forward in the chair, slamming my forehead into his.
Levi stumbled back to the kitchen island, swore. He braced his hand against it, then used the other to wipe the blood now pouring from his nose.
“You bitch!” he screamed, spittle flying with rage. The words were loud enough that I hoped someone would think to call the CPD, but I’d have to protect myself before he did.
Still tied to the chair, the fabric around my hands looser from working but not yet undone, I swung to the side, trying to strike him with the tall ladder back.
It grazed him, but he just reversed the momentum, throwing me to the ground. I hit the floor on the shoulder I’d injured at the Grove, pain ripping through it again. Nausea rose, but I refused to acknowledge it.
The fall had buckled the chair. Levi came closer, lifted his leg to kick, and I gathered up all the power I could and slammed it into the floor. The chair’s back shattered. The monster in the lead, we ripped my wrists apart, sending fabric remnants flying.
Levi and I lunged at each other. He grabbed at my hair and I kicked, catching his shin and twisting my leg to shift his ankle and unbalance him. But he grabbed me, brought me down with him. We hit the coffee table, which toppled, sending pottery and detritus flying. We rolled once, twice, until he was on top of me, hands pinning my arms.
“You could have had me,” he said, lips hovering near mine, my bile threatening to rise.
“I want no part of you, asshole.”
I aimed a knee between his legs, but he blocked. The move caused him to shift his weight just enough for me to scissor my legs, bring myself to the top. I crawled away, but he grabbed my ankle. The monster kicked back, smashing fingers under boots, and reveled in his scream.
I climbed to my knees, pain radiating in a dozen places, and then to my feet, my cheek throbbing with pain with each movement.
Levi had done the same, but he’d picked up a piece of the broken chair. I hoped to god Lulu hadn’t bought aspen.
He speared it toward me. I kicked, heard his wrist snap. The stake dropped, and he leaned down to grab it again when a roar filled the air, shaking the windows.
Too late, I thought, and I could feel the magic roaring toward us from the hallway. He was coming.
“The wolf,” I said, in a voice not quite my own.
Levi, face bloodied, leered at me. “Filthy bitch,” he spat, and with speed I’d never seen before, he darted to a window I belatedly realized was open. And then he was gone.
The loft door burst open, and I snapped my gaze to it.