Enemy Within (Vampire Born Trilogy, #2) (20 page)

This is as good as it’s going to get.

I stick my foot out and roll the corpse until he clears the train and lands on the ground with a crunch.

Brooke gasps, which has to be more over the sound he makes when he lands than the cruelty of the act. He wasn’t a good guy; he doesn’t deserve proper care in his disposal.

I doubt he was any less apathetic when David was in his care.

I reach the ladder and jerk my head at Brooke, telling her to follow me down. I jump from the train and roll when I hit the ground.

When I stand, Brooke lands hard but runs with the momentum. She doesn’t stop until she reaches the body.

He’s the last of my concerns right now. I grab Brooke and pull her close to my chest. “Don’t ever do that again. You don’t go after the bad guys by yourself.”

“What if he’d gotten away?”

She can’t be serious.

I pull her away to look at her. “I caught up with him, didn’t I?”

“Yeah, but what if you hadn’t?”

I glare at her. “All you’re thinking about is if he got away. What if you were the one on your back? At least if he got away, you’d live another day and we could work on figuring it out.”

A chill racks my spine. “Just … don’t ever do that again. Never on your own.”

I can’t bear the thought of her being the one we’d find on the side of the tracks with her face beaten in, her body lifeless.

It shakes me so hard, I bend down and lock my lips with hers, inhaling her sweet scent.

The kiss isn’t gentle. I’m forceful, trying to convince my fear-ridden mind that she’s all right, that she’s alive, but at the same time my lips are ruthless against hers, reprimanding her for being so dangerously single-minded.

She pushes back just as wild. Her Pijawikan side is alive and livid, her adrenaline pumping full force.

I can go on and on, pushing and pulling in this kiss with her, but we have a body to dispose of.

I step away, ready to proceed with the business at hand, but fire lights her eyes.

Desire shoots though me.

I hesitate for a second before I’m able to focus again.

I turn away from her before I think the better of it and go over to the body. I yank down the collar of his sweater.

No znak or chain around his neck.

“Well, someone sent him.” I check his front pockets. Paper crinkles against my fingers. “3420 Pine Street,” I read the black ink aloud.

“David’s address,” Brooke says from behind me.

I bend down again and roll the body, checking his back pockets.

No wallet, no ID. Empty.

I hand Brooke the paper with the address on it. “What brought you to David’s?”

“I got a phone call saying I had to run away and hide. That I had to stay away from the Commission, and that David was the first one to show how serious he was. I flexed over—”

“Wait.” I hold up my hand. “You flexed?”

“Yeah, that’s what I call my teleporting thing. It’s like I flex my Nestati differently and it allows me to jump space. Anyway, after I got to David’s, I couldn’t flex far enough. I didn’t have enough power to catch him.”

Everything she says interests me, but the only thing that stands out is that she tried to jump space to catch the guy—before I arrived.

Thank God she didn’t have the power. Sure, she was able to get the upper hand, but what if she hadn’t?

And what if she hadn’t called me?

I exhale slowly to calm down.

“We’re going to have to start training again, and you’re going to have to start drinking blood.” The training is so she’ll be better prepared for the next fight and hopefully smarten up to her limitations. The blood is so she will always have enough power. If someone gets the upper hand, she needs to have the strength to jump space, or flex as she calls it, out of there.

The struggle will be teaching her the difference between that and not using it to go after bad guys on her own.

“And David’s back at his house?”

She nods. Pain registers in her eyes and anger sets her lips in a tight line. “This guy slit his throat. The knife is lying next to David. In his blood.” Horror at the memory echoes in her eyes.

I pull her tight against me again. She should never have seen that.

No wonder she was in such a rage. “I’m sorry.” I lean back to kiss her again, this time gently. I wish I could take her from it all. Hide her away and give her a life full of wonder and beautiful things.

But we don’t get the luxury to be wistful. We have a body at our feet, another one a couple miles away, and her best friend’s clock is ticking.

I take out my phone and dial. “Ace, I need you to bring Hawk and a truck, and meet us off State Route 608, just off Highway 60. Head off-road when Route 608 starts to bend. We have a body to take care of.”

“Uh-oh,” Ace says. “Whose is it?”

“We’re not sure yet. But I also need you to send Holly Anne and Bruce over to David’s house. The body you’re coming to get, he killed David.”

“Ah, shit!” A bang echoes though the line. He kicked something. “Do we know why?”

“Not yet, but make sure Garwin and Brooke’s mom have someone on them at all times.”

“Mirko,” Brooke tugs on my arm, “we have to let David’s parents give him a funeral.”

“Hold on,” I tell Ace. That’s going to be more difficult than simply hiding a body.

But she’s right. They’re all going to need closure, especially his family.

I nod at Brooke. “All right,” I say to Ace. “Make David’s death look like a robbery gone badly. Brooke wants him to have a funeral.”

“I’ll tell them. See you in a few.”

I tuck the phone back into my pocket, catching the guy’s lifeless legs in my peripheral. He knew about Brooke and the Commission, and he knew about David. I can’t figure out how the Commission would’ve known about David.

My trust in Zladislov falters. When we met with Orell, Orell argued that Brooke couldn’t run because it would be linked to Zladislov. Well, Zladislov couldn’t have found a better alibi than his meeting with the Commission at the same time someone prompted Brooke to run.

And if it is him, I bet he counted on her being gone by the time his meeting concluded.

The Commission could accuse Zladislov of still having a hand in Brooke’s disappearance, but it would be hard to prove. And the man who came for David was smart enough to remove whatever znak he’d worn before he made his move.

I can’t trust any of these people.

I stare down at the body. Brooke did a number on him. His eye socket is crushed, his jaw broken and hanging to the side, his cheekbone flat. He’ll be unrecognizable to anyone who knew him.

When I peer over my shoulder at Brooke, I notice her hands shaking. She stares at the body, terrified. The anger must’ve died down. Panic has settled in.

“Hey. Slatki?” I tug her shoulder to look at me.

She does, but the panic remains. “I’m a monster. An honest-to-God monster. I did that to his face. Not to get information, but because I was mad and couldn’t control myself and wanted nothing more than to take everything out on him. And I did, and it still wasn’t enough.”

I step closer and wrap my arms around her waist, kissing her neck. “It happens, Slatki. I have done worse.”

She shakes her head, as if unable to speak.

I pull her back. “You did not kill him. He did that to himself.”

“But I would have. I wanted to.” Anger fades from her face, leaving only sorrow. “He killed David … He was only a kid, Mirko.” She works her throat. “Why do people have to keep dying because of me?”

“It is not your fault. You did not kill anyone.”

“I might as well have killed him.” She gestures toward the guy on the ground.

“It’s not the same—”

“It doesn’t matter; the intention’s the same.”

I’ve lived long enough to know it is not the same.

“Killing for justice is different than murdering in cold blood. This world is different than the one you’re used to, Slatki, and the sooner you realize that and see the little nuances in our world for what they are, the easier time you’ll have in it.”

“Nuances? There’s only terrible and horrible.”

I raise my eyebrows in disbelief. “There
are
nuances.”

I’ve killed people out of hate and revenge, in search of justice, or simply to spare them from a fate much worse. “Everything is not black and white.” My memories wander dangerously close to a darkness I’ve long avoided. “I killed someone I loved.”

She stares at me with shock. Tiny knives prick my heart.

But could I really expect her to respond differently to the confession?

“Are you going to view me the same way you do this guy?” My hand shoots out to the corpse. “The gray in between matters.” I regret telling her, but I can’t take it back now.

Brooke has a way of opening dark windows within me I thought I’d locked up for good. I don’t want her judging me, and there’s a real possibility she will. She may even fear me, but I need her to understand.

I inhale a shaky breath. There’s no turning back now.

“Dikan set out to make my life as Jelena’s slave as difficult as possible. He had Nadya. My girlfriend. He gave me an ultimatum to kill her myself and spare her whatever he planned to do with her, or he would have his way with her until he grew bored.”

The image—as fresh as a photograph—of blood across Nadya’s face, her split lip, the fear in her eyes flash back into my mind. She didn’t want to die, but I knew what Dikan planned for her would be much worse. “I know what it’s like to be powerless, Slatki. To be forced into a corner, forced to make a decision you think is best, but also one you know you’ll regret for the rest of your life.

“I looked in her eyes and saw the terror she felt at Dikan’s touch.”

It plays out in my memory, fresh and raw. “I couldn’t let her feel that any longer. I grabbed her as fast and as hard as I could, and I sliced my fang against the part of her neck that would bleed the most. I had to. I had to make it quick. Any other spot and it would be seconds more of pain, fear, and horror.

“The moment the light went out in her eyes, a part of me died. I did not care any longer how Dikan tormented me. Nothing could be worse. And I would endure it all for the chance to kill him.”

Regret and anger work to overtake me. Same as they used to.

“I never did, though. He was always too close to Jelena or another guard, or I was chained to the wall and couldn’t reach him. My will to survive was replaced by a mixture of guilt and my will for vengeance.”

Brooke’s eyes fill with tears. Her jaw opens and closes. “Mirko …”

I ache to keep the terrible things of our world hidden from her, but there is still too much she needs to know before she takes things as seriously as I need her to. “This world is dark, and it’s cruel, but you can’t hold that kind of hate and guilt within you forever. I held it for a long time, Slatki.”

I cup her face. “I still hold it, but to be that close to it, to not even have to reach out to touch it, it poisons you. Your soul blackens. When Zladislov freed us, I found a reason to live. There were other Zao Duhs released with me. Many in worse shape than I was, and my situation was not good. They needed me. And it turns out I needed them. No way am I going to let you go down the same morbid path of self-loathing I did.”

I stroke my hand across her rosy cheek and rub a spot of drying blood off with my thumb.

I can’t help but feel a loss over her innocence. When I met her, I berated her for not toughening up. And now that she has, I’m proud of her but also upset at her for taking this into her own hands. I regret that she’s lost that side of herself.

“He was a bad man,” I remind her. “Yes, you need to learn to control yourself better, but you are not bad and you are not a monster.”

I stroke the outside of my hand along her jaw and inhale the spice of the surrounding pine trees and her underlying sweet balm. “I can’t make you see that. You have to see it for yourself.”