Jocelynn Drake - Wait for Dusk

“I don’t know where she is. I wouldn’t protect her. She’s on her own now. Besides, Nyx seemed fully capable of protecting her little sister. Maybe you should go looking for them instead of harassing me. Hand them over to your ex-wife.”

“I will find them,” Rowe stated, the tip of his sword wavering in his growing anger.

“Fine. Just keep me out of it. I don’t want to be a part of your war,” I responded, my own grip tightening on my sword.

“You are a part of our war now. Aurora wants you and her sisters dead. I will deliver that to her.”

The sound of footsteps crunching across the snow caused me to draw my last remaining knife from my side and clench it in my fist. However, a part of me relaxed almost as quickly as I recognized the cadence of the footsteps. Danaus was drawing near. The hunter might not be happy with me, but he wouldn’t knife me in the back while I faced off against Rowe. He would at least wait until he was standing in front of me.

“Get out of here, naturi!” Danaus growled. “You’re outnumbered and we could kill you with a thought. Get out of Budapest. We’ll hunt you down another night.”

Rowe cocked his head to the side, his eyes flitting between Danaus and me before his mocking smile returned. In the same second, he threw out his wings and caught the wind that was sweeping over the land. He took to the air, disappearing in the thick black of night. I stared up at the sky for several seconds, waiting to see if the sky grew heavy with clouds, signaling that the naturi was calling up a thunderstorm. But it remained clear, sparkling with starlight.

As I lowered my head, Danaus roughly grabbed my arm and slammed me into a nearby brick wall. Pain exploded in my back as my wound hit the wall a second before the back of my head smacked into the red brick.

“What the hell—” I started, but swallowed the words when I looked at his face, twisted with rage. I stiffened and raised my chin as I prepared for this fight. The hunter had been content to let Rowe go because he was determined to take a pound of flesh out of me.

“What the fuck do you think you were doing?” Danaus demanded, stunning me. Such foul language was definitely out of character for the hunter, but then I had left him more than a little pissed by controlling him earlier.

I shoved the knife I was holding back in its sheath at my side, but kept the short sword in my hand. I didn’t think I would need it but didn’t quite feel comfortable being unarmed around Danaus. “Killing naturi,” I said tartly. “The deal was that we couldn’t use our own powers. Nothing was said about using each other’s powers.”

“You used me!” he shouted, making me press closer against the wall.

A hollow ache radiated from my back, but it was nothing compared to the ache that suddenly began to fill the empty void in my chest. Guilt and horror had finally begun to set in. I had hated Jabari and Danaus every time they controlled me, taking away my right to choose. I hated being little more than a marionette for their enjoyment. And then I’d done the same thing to Danaus. I could make whatever excuses I wanted to make, but it didn’t get around the fact that I’d done the one thing I hated more than anything else in this world. I had used him to save my own skin. And sadly, I knew I would do it again in order to escape Nick’s reach.

“Now you know what it’s like to be treated like a puppet on a string,” I said in a low voice. “Now you know what it’s like to have all your choices taken away.”

“Is that what this is about? Getting even?” Danaus said, some of the anger draining from his tone.

“No, I—” I started, but stopped abruptly, swallowing the words that fluttered through my mind. I wanted to apologize, but had never received words of apology from either Danaus or Jabari. Neither ever had a doubt about what they were doing to me. They had their reasons, and at the time, they always seemed like good reasons.

“You had no choice,” Danaus said, deepening the frown on my lips. I had a choice. I could have used my own powers to destroy the naturi. I could have cried for help, allowing Danaus to make the choice to use his powers to save me. I could have said no to Nick and faced my fate. I could have let the naturi kill me. I had choices. I just made the selfish one.

“I was trapped. I couldn’t beat them. I should have asked you for help. I made the wrong choice and I’m sorry,” I said, letting my eyes fall shut. I took a deep breath and shook my head as if to clear it. “But I have to learn to control your powers. If I don’t, Nick will grab me. He’s going to make me human again.”

Danaus reached up and brushed a loose hair from where it had blown across my cheek. “Being human again wouldn’t be so bad.”

I jerked away from his touch and scowled at him. “I won’t go back to being human. Not to please you or Nick. I’m a nightwalker and that’s how I plan to stay, so don’t get your hopes up.”

“I don’t want you to change,” Danaus said.

“I’d be fool if I didn’t know you’d prefer me to be human.”

“Anything other than nightwalker might be easier to accept,” he admitted. But in the next second he completely stunned me when he leaned in and pressed his lips to mine.

It was a short kiss, a gentle brushing of the lips that warmed me down to my toes. When he pulled back, I was still speechless.

“Of course, I’m learning there are some advantages to seeing a nightwalker,” he continued.

“Such as?”

“You’re more durable that other women I’ve known. You’ve certainly lasted the longest.”

A snort escaped me as I failed to stop the amused smile that formed. “I had no idea you had such a gift for flattery.”

Pushing off the wall, I walked away from the hunter with my head bowed as I headed for the entrance to the park.

“You owe me a favor,” I muttered under my breath.

“What?”

“The bet. I won. I killed three naturi with your powers, not mine. I won. You owe me a favor,” I said, not bothering to look up at him.

“If you think I’m going to deliver on that bet, you’re insane. You used me!” he snapped.

“I’m sorry about that.”

Danaus dropped into silence as he walked beside me back to the main gates that barred the entrance into the park during the nighttime hours. I glanced over my right shoulder to find him watching me with the corners of his mouth pulled down in a frown. His shoulders were slumped and his hands dangled empty at his sides. We both seemed more than a little beaten despite what proved to be a relatively easy fight. It should never have gotten so out of control, but it was for the best. If I didn’t find a way to adequately control Danaus’s powers, Nick was going to make me human again. It was a risk I wasn’t willing to take.

Danaus’s voice was a dark rumble that swept around me. “Promise me that you’re never going to do that again.”

Pulling my cell phone out of my pocket, I looked up at him as we exited through the large wrought-iron gates. “I’ll make that promise the day you can do the same for me.”

A frown marred the hunter’s lips and pulled his eyebrows together over the bridge of his straight Roman nose. His beautiful blues eyes sparkled in the moonlight as anger once again filled his frame. He knew he would not get a promise out of me because he couldn’t make the same promise in return. With the naturi surrounding us and the coven trying to kill us at every turn, he couldn’t relinquish control of his most powerful weapon. He was trapped in my world now, and he wouldn’t give up his control over me until one of us was finally dead.

Sunset came too early the next night. After returning to the hotel from Szorbor Park, Danaus headed out into the city while I returned to the hotel room we were sharing on Gellért Hill. I could have used a bite, but I wasn’t in the mood for hunting. I was in the domain of an unknown keeper and Rowe was lurking about. In the meantime, I had with me two nightwalkers of questionable dependability. Valerio looked out for himself first and foremost, while Stefan would rather see me dead so he could have my seat on the coven. The situation was far from ideal from my perspective. I needed to get home before this situation got even more out of control. Unfortunately, returning to Savannah wouldn’t solve my dilemma with Nick. I couldn’t even begin to guess at how I would deal with such a creature.