Chapter Ten

Ashe.

I slammed my fist into the shower tiles, spreading a web of cracks around the indentation and splitting my knuckles. Why was I such a piece of shit sometimes? I was exhausted, beyond sexually frustrated even though I’d just jerked myself off, and confused at the new directions my life was pulling me in lately. Still, I’d hurt Wren just now. No, not just now but before at Edna’s Itchen too. The look she gave me after I’d hurt her felt like a splintered stake twisted into my heart. I didn’t want to hurt her anymore. Ever. I just wanted answers.

I just wanted her. She’d watched me in here, her eyes scorched with hunger and her tongue sliding over her plump lips. Lips I’d tasted. Lips that drove me insane. Had she known I’d been thinking about her while I’d stroked myself? Her mouth, her soft curves pressed against my body, the smell of her skin…

And…I was hard again already. Fuck my life.

After I turned the water off—well, slowed it to a trickle; off in this hotel was relative—I quickly stepped out, toweled off, and dressed in the clothes Zac had bought. Baggy pants, a too-small shirt with Bite Me printed on it, and a baseball cap. Seriously? Chin Dimple sure had a wicked sense of humor.

I needed to go after Wren and apologize. So what if she was a killing machine? I wasn’t exactly faring well in the morals department either. Maybe that was why we were meant to be together—because we would both do whatever it took to sever the crown from the queen and place it on its rightful owner’s head.

This was some pretty heavy shit for an innocent fugitive with a massive hard-on.

Even though the minor cuts on my knuckles had sealed over with my healing power, I grabbed a towel and pressed it to my hand so it would hang strategically over my crotch. Then I opened the door to a wall of pissed-off human named Zac.

He stuck his finger into my face, close enough that if I shifted slightly, he could pick my nose. “What the fuck did you do? She just stormed out of here.”

“She left?”

“She’s taking care of the car. It’s too conspicuous,” he said and lowered his finger. “Now what did you do?”

“Step off, man. It’s been a wild day. I’m struggling to keep up and doing a terrible job of it…” When he didn’t move, I shoved past him out of the bathroom. “Why did you guys break me out?”

He shrugged. “What else were we going to do today?”

“Uh-huh.” I crossed to the window where I peered out through the curtains. Below, parked behind the hotel and blocked from the road by a dumpster was Wren’s car. She leaned over it, her ass in the air and shaking a little as she dried it with a towel. I couldn’t not look away. Not when I was imagining myself right behind her, my fingers digging into her hips and sliding…

“…you’ve figured out who Wren’s mom is?” Zac’s voice drifted into my fantasy.

I ground my teeth together while the symbol on my wrist flared heat and spread it through my body. “Yeah. I know who Wren’s mom is.”

“Did Wren tell you she spent most of her life on the run with her mom until her mom was murdered?”

I glanced over my shoulder at him. “On the run from who?”

He shot me a look as if it should’ve been obvious. “Someone who didn’t want Queen Bronwen to be queen anymore.”

“Her sister, Queen Ravana?”

He nodded. “A group of thugs was hired to kill Wren’s mom and were eventually successful. They caught her with a silver net and ended her life. And they did it in front of Wren.”

My stomach lurched and sat too near my throat. I’d seen pictures of said silver net, shot inside my own apartment. “How old was Wren?”

“She said she was eight.”

“Fuck.” I sagged against the window, letting the curtain fall shut on my entire perception of Wren. She’d suffered through something unimaginable. An eight-year-old witnessing her mother’s murder… How the hell did she find the will to go on after something like that? Or smile, which she had several times over the last twelve hours, each one more gorgeous than the last.

“Since then,” Zac continued, “she raised herself, trained herself, and began to hunt her mother’s killers down.”

My muscles went rigid. Not the “killer” with a silver net found in his apartment with Bronwen’s blood on it. Not the one accused of killing one of her five mates. What would Wren do when she found out about the net? She would kill me. Hell, I wanted to kill me, and I hadn’t even done anything. Unless she did know… Unless Zac knew.

His gaze burned a hole into my spine, a crawling accusation pressing between each of my vertebrae.

Was that why they’d broken me out? Because they wanted to steal me away from the justice system so they could deliver their own vigilante brand?

I tensed. My ears straining to hear any sign of movement behind me, I turned to face him, slowly, attempting to appear normal when nothing would ever be again.

“Why did you break me out?” I asked again.

He half-assed a wave to my arm. “You’ve seen the symbol on your wrist, I take it?”

I fucking hated it when people answered my questions with another question. My fingers curled as I gave a short nod.

“That means you’re important, a mate to the queen. The real queen... ” A pained look briefly crossed his face.

“But…you’re a human. Why do you care about who is or isn’t the queen of the Southern Clan?”

He looked away, his hard expression telling me even less than his silence.

But he didn’t appear like he was going to kill me. Yet. I had some severe trust issues, in case that wasn’t obvious, but anyone would in this type of situation.

I pinched the bridge of my nose while I wished myself out of this situation. “I need to go tell Wren that I’m sorry.”

“So you were a dick to her, then.” He sat on the side of the bed and flashed me a glare.

I ignored him as I crossed to the room door, scooping up a room key card by the TV as I went, though still very much aware of him in case he made a wrong move.

“Think fast.” He tossed something at me, and I plucked it easily out of the air.

A cell phone, one of those disposable prepaid ones, still sealed in that impossible-to-open plastic.

“Call the room phone if there’s trouble.” He lay back on the bed and closed his eyes. “Maybe I’ll even answer.”

Would a man who could be trying to kill me give me a phone? Probably not. I nodded to let that sink in a little farther into my thick skull.

“Thanks, man.” I reached for the doorknob.

“Ashe,” he said, his eyes still closed. “Leave the bloody towel here so you don’t drop it like a jackass and leave DNA evidence of your whereabouts. And don’t let her leave. I need… We need her alive so she can claim her rightful place.”

I tossed the towel into the bathroom since my boner problem had long since gone, and then I left, making sure I had the key card and that the door locked behind me. Didn’t want anyone to come and rough up Zac, now did we? He seemed entirely too vested in this mission, but what choice did I have other than following along? My chances of survival alone were slim to none, and I wasn’t about to leave Wren. Not now.

Down a long, carpeted hallway that smelled like a mix of chlorine and piss, I found an empty laundry room and ducked inside. Using my fangs, I tore open the plastic to get at the phone. Without fangs, I’d be fucked in the opening-sealed-plastic department. How did humans manage it? I accessed the motel’s Wi-Fi, searched for my neighbor’s number, and then dialed her up.

“Not interested, sick villain,” she answered, as expected.

“Marta, it’s Ashe.”

“Still not interested, you pesky roughneck,” she said.

I leaned against a dryer and rubbed my eyes hard enough to see sparks. Marta was my three-hundred-eighty-eight-year-old neighbor with papery frail skin, a collection of rare books that could rival the National Library of Vampires, and instantly hated anyone who dared to call her. The obvious solution would be to never answer the phone, but this was Marta, so it was best not to tell her that.

“Marta…” I forced a teasing note into my voice so she’d play nice.

“The Ashley I know would have never skipped Thursday bridge club,” she said.

I sidestepped past the use of my given name, the sound of which dragged down my back like fingernails on a slate. Mom had named me that after a character in her favorite movie, 'Gone With the Wind.' Not something I was particularly proud of. Instead, I focused on what day it was. Friday. Yesterday was bridge club, about the time I was being booked in jail for murdering my sister’s ex-boyfriend I didn’t kill.

“I’m so sorry,” I said. “Something came up, something unavoidable.”

“Uh-huh. Would it have anything to do with the police swarming your apartment and knocking on my door at all hours of the day?”

Shit. Deny, deny, deny, or admit I knew exactly what was going on?

“You can’t fool me, Ashley Felix Jensen. I know every single thing about you, so before you lie to me, I told them you didn’t do anything wrong. Not my handsome neighbor, no way. But if you even think about lying to me, I will call the police and accuse you myself of killing Mother Vampire Teresa.”

I stifled a groan. “Pretty sure she’s still alive.”

“Don’t you argue with me, boy. Now, did you do something against the law or not?”

“Yes, Marta, I did, but I didn’t”—I looked around the laundry room and at the closed door to make sure no one eavesdropped—“kill anyone.”

“That’s my sweet Ashley. Of course you didn’t. Now, why did I call you?”

“I called you, Marta, because I’d like to ask a favor. Can you tell Cussler that I need security tapes of our hallway for the last week?”

Cussler was our landlord. The police had probably already taken what he had, but I hoped he’d kept copies. If he did, the video might show who had snuck into my apartment to plant the bloody net used to kill Wren’s mom. I lived on the tenth floor, so I suspected they’d come right in the front door.

Marta made a disgusted sound. “It’s a good thing you’re cute.”

“Thank you for this, Marta. I owe you one.”

“Then it’s your turn to bring Bloody Marys to bridge club next week. And for every week after that.”

I shook my head. “I’m not sure I can do that.”

She was quiet for a long time, and I could practically hear her sadness reaching through the phone line and strangling my heart.

“You weren’t very good at bridge anyway.”

“No, I wasn’t.”

“But I liked you.”

“Like, present tense. I’m not dead yet, Marta.”

“Let’s try to keep it that way, then. I’ll talk to Cussler for you. Try not to do anything stupid.” She hung up.

“I’ll try not to,” I said to the dial tone, and hung up too.

Even if I had a tape that proved the evidence was planted, that didn’t really make a difference in terms of Devin’s death. I had gone to the hotel to kill him, after all. Since he was already dead by the time I found him, at least one other person was trying to take him out. Maybe more if he was so paranoid that he’d worked up an immunity to silver.

So, if there was at least one other person who wanted him dead, then why hang his death, and Queen Bronwen’s, on me? Why not that other guy who’d been there? Or girl. I hadn’t actually seen their face, even when they’d staked me. They’d come from behind, and then vanished like a shadow with the flick of a light.

I rubbed my thumb over the symbol on my wrist, warm compared to the rest of my skin, and painful because Wren was too far away. She and Zac had found me because of the symbol I didn’t know I had, but they had known. Other people might too. Other people like her aunt, Queen Ravana. But who else? Did my mother know? My father? They’d always been overprotective of Jessica and me when we were kids but then had started to loosen the strings...around the time that Queen Ravana took the throne. Because they thought both Wren’s mom and Wren were dead? Or was this just a wild conspiracy my fried brain meat had cooked up?

Conspiracy or not, Queen Ravana wanted me, a part of the true queen’s harem, locked up for good because I could help take her crown away. It was a good idea, but it would never work. Obviously, she had underestimated Wren, and me too. I would help Wren take her place on the throne. Not just because it was inked onto my wrist that we were meant to be together, but because it was the right thing to do for Wren after what she’d been through and because Ravana sucked balls as queen, and not in a good way either.

And yes, also because I wanted down Wren’s pants. Hey, no one ever said I was perfect, but I did have a moral compass. It just got confused sometimes with magnetic…whatever. My undead heart was mostly in the right place, especially when it came to protecting those I loved.

Wasn’t that exactly what Wren was doing? Yes. Yes, it was.

My throat constricted as I stared down at the phone. I wanted to call my sister, listen to her voice as she said whether she’d sent the police to her place to catch me or not, and then hear if she was telling the truth. A part of me didn’t want to know if she could betray me like that, not after everything I’d almost done for her, like set out to kill a man. I didn’t expect praise or any shit for that, but I just needed her to know that her safety and well-being meant everything to me. Seeing her broken that night from Devin’s hands had unhinged me, rewired me to look out for my big sister when before, I would hold up both middle fingers high in the air so she’d be sure to see them from across a crowded room. I’d been such a typical little brother. Not anymore. Not ever again.

Finally, I just decided to text her something she’d be passionate enough about to text back an unknown number: Win $5000 by texting your answer and the reason as a reply—are you Team Edward or Team Jacob?