Chapter 46

-Chase-

I didn’t know what to expect when I walked up the stairs. My heart was beating faster as I climbed. I tried to think of a way to explain to him what I’d done as smoothly as possible. Maybe he didn’t mind? That bitch was the reason he was now dying, after all. Why would it bother him? I’d be happy to hear she was dead if I were him.

But… I knew this wasn’t going to go like that. Dante was human. A good human.

I couldn’t hear a thing when I stopped by our closed bedroom door. I just stood there for a moment, but then, I took a deep breath and opened the door. I wasn’t surprised to see Dante standing next to the window instead of sleeping like he was supposed to. He was leaning against the sill with his head bowed down.

“I think you heard us talking about…” I trailed off when I realized how tense he was. He didn’t move, he didn’t look at me. Hell, he didn’t acknowledge I existed. “Dante?”

Finally, he gave me something. He gritted his teeth, but still didn’t look at me. For some reason, I was surprised to see him angry.

“So, she’s dead,” he finally spoke with a low voice.

“I had to do something,” I said, and crossed arms over my chest. “I had to stop her then and there.”

“You killed my wife.”

I felt something ugly inside my stomach when he called her that.

“I killed a torturer who used our kind in her sick experiments. I did us a favor,” I said, trying not to sound too cold. “I kind of regret killing her because now we don’t have any leads, but she is better off dead.”

“When did you do it?”

I flinched at the harshness of his voice. I suddenly had the feeling I’d need to run for my life any minute now. Surprisingly, I didn’t care. What I did care about was that he was still calling that bitch his wife.

“Before we came here. She’s been dead for weeks,” I told him coldly.

“For weeks…? You’ve been keeping this secret from me for weeks?” he repeated, lifting his head up.

“You weren’t supposed to know,” I said truthfully, since it was obvious that I’d never planned on telling him.

He sprung around, his angry eyes landing on me. “You murdered her, and you weren’t going to tell me about it?”

“Why would I have told you? You were just fine without knowing. Besides, she’s the reason you’re now dying, Dante, so why does it matter? She’s better off dead!”

“You killed her! That fucking matters!”

“She deserved it,” I retorted, getting angry because he was angry. “That bitch had to go! She ruined you! She tortured you and had the audacity to cry all over the news about wanting you back! I couldn’t let her get away with it!”

“You should’ve called the cops!” he yelled at me, taking a few steps towards me.

“And tell them what?! That she’s running secret experiments on creatures they don’t know exist? We can’t let normal people know about us!” I yelled back, but then figured yelling wasn’t getting me anywhere. “You didn’t go to the hospital either when you escaped because they would’ve found out you weren’t normal.”

“That’s not the same thing! She’s a human! They could’ve stopped her!” he shouted, taking another few steps towards me. “But instead, you just killed her!”

“I was only doing what I thought was best for you. For all of us,” I said, trying to remain calm. “It’s not such a big deal, all right? Or are you saying you are willing to forgive her? After what she did to you? To the others in that lab?”

“You don’t get it, do you?” he snapped at me. “How can you kill a person and say it’s not a big deal?!”

I had to take a deep breath to not start yelling at him. “Look. I acted out of instinct, all right? I was trying to find clues in her house, and I saw all that bullshit she’d been spewing about your disappearance, and I got so mad that she was acting like she cared… I had to do something. I promised you–”

“You don’t fucking go kill people out of instinct!” he hissed. “That’s what murderers do!”

“Don’t you dare to call me that! I’m not a murderer,” I said, feeling offended now. “I’ve never killed anyone who didn’t absolutely deserve it, so don’t you dare to call me that!”

I snapped my mouth shut way too late. I knew I had made things only worse, and I didn’t even need to see him staring at me with disbelief in his eyes to know that.

“You’ve killed more people?” he breathed out, stepping back. “People, not just her…”

He turned around again, and I quickly tried to think of a way to calm things down.

“I’ve only killed three people, and they all deserved it,” I said, hoping I could reason with him. “If you could just calm down so I could explain–”

“I’m dating a fucking murderer…” he muttered.

“Thanks,” I spat at him. “Could you stop being so fucking dramatic and just listen to me?”

“I’m being dramatic?” he asked, looking at me again. “Do you even understand what you’re saying? Chase! You’ve killed three people!”

“I killed a torturer, a murderer and a rapist!” I shouted to get his attention, to make him understand. “She tortured you and who knows how many others! I killed the person who murdered Zane’s sister because the cops didn’t have a clue how to find him! And I probably wouldn’t even be here if I didn’t burn the guy who attacked me!”

He shook his head, and when I tried to step towards him, he retreated away from me.

“I would never kill an innocent person. They all did bad things!” I said in frustration.

“It doesn’t matter what they did! Don’t you get it? You should’ve talked to the cops and not take justice in your own hands! You’re not the jury! It’s not up to you to decide who gets to live and who dies!”

“I did what I had to,” I said sternly. “I can’t believe you’re mad at me for it.”

“Chase. You’ve killed three people. That’s not what a sane person does. A normal person wouldn’t be able to live with themselves after something like that,” he spoke, looking at me like I was some kind of monster. “You’ve been acting like nothing is wrong this entire time!”

“Well, I’m not a normal person,” I spat at him.

“No, you’re not. You’re a warlock,” he said quietly.

“And what does that have to do with anything?” I asked quietly, but I already knew where this was going.

“You need souls to become a real one,” he said. “Don’t act like I’m stupid. I know you need thirteen souls to become a warlock. You told me about it.”

“That has nothing to do with the people I killed,” I said sternly. “I got rid of them because it was the right thing to do.”

“Really?” he asked, clearly not believing anything I said. “The right thing to do?”

“Yes.”

He shook his head and rubbed his temples. “How can you be so…” he practically whispered.

“What?”

He stared at me for a moment. “You’re so calm. Do you even regret killing them? Did you feel any kind of remorse when you killed them?”

“They deserved it,” I repeated. “And that doesn’t make me a murderer.”

“No… Just a cold-blooded killer.”

I opened my mouth, but his words were hurting me too much. And I was angry. I was angry at him. Why couldn’t he just understand?

“You said being a warlock has nothing to do with their deaths, but isn’t killing people exactly what you’re expected to do?”

Now I was hurt. “So… you think I wouldn’t have killed them if I weren’t a warlock? Is that what you’re trying to say”

“Do you have their souls?” he asked without answering me.

I stared at him for a moment. He didn’t need to know the truth because I was never going to collect all thirteen souls. “No. I didn’t take them. I told you that me being a warlock has nothing to do with what I’ve done!”

He shook his head and started walking to the door. “I don’t believe you,” he said as he passed me on his way out.

“I promised you she would never lay a finger on you,” I said without turning to look at him. “I kept that promise.”

“Even if I wanted her dead, I didn’t want it to be you who killed her,” he told me quietly. “I knew you were a hothead, but I never thought you could take a life. Three lives. I thought you were better than that.”

“I did what I had to,” I said, trying to hold back the emotions his words were stirring inside me. “All I wanted was to keep you safe from her.”

“And all I wanted was to have someone I could trust.”

I stayed still without saying a word. I stared at the wall in front of me, trying to contain the rage and sorrow in my soul. I knew I had done the right thing. That bitch was better off dead. Now she couldn’t hurt anyone else ever again. None of them could. The world was a better place without them.

I had done everyone a favor by getting rid of them!

The stone was suddenly in my hand. I turned to stare at it. I hadn’t killed any of them for their souls, so Dante was wrong. The fact that I was a warlock had nothing to do with it. Nothing!

I wanted to force him to understand me, but I stayed still. His words had caused me pain… Especially the last ones.

“I’ve done everything to protect you,” I said, knowing he was still close enough to hear me. “And I will do everything I can to keep protecting you, no matter what. I’m still the same person. I still love you more than anything in the world,” I paused for a moment, and peered over my shoulder. “You can still trust me.”

“How?” he asked quietly. “You lied to me. You kept secrets from me. You say you’re still the same person, but you’re not the person I thought you were. I don’t even know you anymore.”

“All I did was kill three people who deserved it,” I said, turning around with something burning in my eyes. “That is all you didn’t know about me.”

“You don’t even understand why the things you did were wrong. It’s not about what they did, it’s about what you did. You chose to kill even though you had other options. You could’ve easily helped the cops,” he spoke, looking so disappointed in me that I had to look away…

At that moment, I chose not to reply to him. There was a small pause of silence in the room, but then he continued.

“And I know you’re still lying to me. You do have the souls,” he said.

“No, I don’t!” I turned to look at him. He was already watching me with disbelief in his eyes.

“Right…” he mumbled.

Without saying another word, he left the room, closing the door behind him. I looked down at my stone again. It was warm against my fingers. I could almost hear those three people whispering in my ear, mocking me. Laughing at me… telling me I was going to lose the love of my life all over again…

“I hate to say I told you so,” Roe muttered apologetically inside my head. “I knew he wouldn’t understand.”

“Shut up!” I hissed quietly, squeezing the stone in my hand in anger as I went to find a sharpie.

“Now, now, let’s not be hasty,” Roe continued, but I ignored him.

I found a black pen, and I summoned my journal of coordinates. I hurriedly flipped through the pages to find the right coordinates, making my way to the doorway while I was at it. After I found the right page, I started drawing the runes on the posts. I could feel Roe’s worry and disappointment as I drew the lines.

He thought I was out of my mind. He, too, thought I was going crazy.

But I wasn’t. I knew exactly what to do.

Once the portal was ready, I activated it and stepped through without hesitation. The first thing I saw was the ocean in front of me as I crawled out of a collapsed building at the edge of an abandoned town half across the world from where Dante now was.

It was one of my favorite spots. Only a few knew this place existed anymore, so it was guaranteed I’d be left alone whenever I needed it.

That wasn’t what I needed, though I was glad no one was there to see my tear-soaked face. Roe was still watching me as I marched to the shore, crossing the quiet, sandy beach as fast as I could. I didn’t care. He could go fuck himself and his warnings for all I cared.

This was why Dante was never supposed to find out what I’d done. He didn’t understand. Of course, he didn’t! He was too… too naive to understand. He blindly believed in human justice system. They wouldn’t have done anything about Lena! Just like they never did anything about the murderer or the serial rapist I had to fight off to save my own life!

And Dante hadn’t even listened to me… He hadn’t listened to me when I said I wouldn’t even be here if I didn’t kill that man…

I stopped, suddenly realizing I was already knee-deep in the water.

I took a deep breath, staring into the distance. It was so quiet. I wasn’t sure what time it was in this part of the world. Maybe sunrise or sunset since the sky was light blue, but I couldn’t see the sun. The fuck I cared…

After I felt calm enough, I lifted my hand and looked at the stone. I’d been squeezing it so hard my fingers were in pain, but I ignored it. I sniffed and wiped my face dry.

Without giving it a second thought, I gathered as much strength I could muster and threw the stone. I watched it fly across the air. I felt nothing when it hit the surface far away from me and vanished under the small waves.

“I don’t have the souls,” I whispered.

It wasn’t a lie anymore.

-Killian-

“Are you sure this is the place?” I asked, after we’d been sitting in my truck for an hour already.

My new companion, a man my grandfather had sent to help me track down Lena’s murderer, nodded. His eyes reflected eerily in the darkness as he glanced at me, then at the building we were parked next to.

“The van was right here,” he said, his voice sounding more of a hiss than a normal human voice.

I knew he wasn’t a human, and no matter how much I hated to share the car with him, I was able to tolerate him. For Lena.

“I’d be curious to hear how exactly you were able to track down a van no one else could,” I said tentatively. A skill like that would be very handy. I had my contacts in a lot of places, including the police force, but none of them had managed to find the van. And this man here did it in a few days.

Sadly, he didn’t reply to me.

The silence continued as we waited. I was a patient man, but the recent fuckups of my men had drawn my patience thin. Lena’s killer was still out there.

But not for long.

“There,” the man next to me muttered as a big van appeared behind the corner and drove past us.

It did look like the van in the pictures, but there were hundreds of thousands of vans like those.

“How can you be sure?” I asked, but he shushed me.

I rolled my eyes in annoyance and turned to look back to see the van again. Its driver parked it at the side of the road not far from us, and exited it. A tall African American man walked into the view, walking towards the building we were watching. He knocked on the door, and a woman came to open it.

“Her name is Aaliyah. An alchemist,” my companion muttered. “The man goes by the name of Roscoe. Vampires, both of them.”

I looked at the picture taken from our surveillance tapes, and I felt a twist in my stomach. The faces in the pictures were unclear, but the body types looked very similar.

“You can’t take a picture of a vampire,” the man said, tapping the female in my photo. “That’s her.”

I looked outside to see the door being closed. “And you know all this how exactly?”

“It’s my job to find things,” he only said. “My task here is complete. You may proceed however you wish.”

“What do you mean, complete? What about Lena’s killer? We still haven’t found him!” I hissed at him, but he chuckled at my words.

“If you are competent enough to run a secret testing facility right under everyone’s noses, I’m sure you’re competent enough to find the warlock with the clues I’ve provided,” he said.

I wanted to say all kinds of nasty things to him, but I held my tongue. I didn’t like his attitude, but he was right. All I needed was the vampire, and I happened to be good at hunting vampires.

I had learned from the best, after all.