Unbound

“Eve?” He tossed the hammer aside and began picking up the bone shards. Once they were all gathered, he turned to stare directly at her. “What are you doing here?”

“I…” She didn’t have words for what she wanted, not words she wanted to share. She wanted to kill him, wanted to reorder the world, press down the chaos that buzzed in her skin before she crossed a line that would change everything. She wanted to end her hunt of Daniel with something bloody and satisfying. She settled for a socially acceptable statement: “What you’re doing is wrong.”

He was utterly nonplussed. “Praying?”

“That’s not praying.”

“Sure it is. It’s just an older religion.”

An older religion? All faiths had a place, but humans like Daniel were the reason mainstream humanity thought Old Faiths were evil. He was using the veneer of religion to sate his greed.

“What will you do with it?” she heard herself asking, as if his admission to her would change anything. She knew exactly what he did with his poison: drugged people, addicted them, and sold them.

He dropped the bone fragments into the grinder. The whirring noise seemed loud in the empty room. “How about I make you a deal…”

She felt like her skin was crawling with stinging things as she stepped toward him. She wanted to go to him, despite everything. “What are you offering?”

He was a bastard. He preyed on the innocent. He used earth and bone to enslave people, not as punishment, but randomly for avarice and malice.

He lifted the corner of his mouth is a sardonic half smile. “For starters, drop that piece in your hand. Then tell me what you want from me.”

She glanced at the.38; she hadn’t realized she had raised it. She lowered it with effort. Her arm hung at her side, but her finger still rested on the trigger. Did I take off the safety, too? She wasn’t sure, but she suspected she had. The habitual movement would’ve preceded raising her weapon.

“I want you to stop mixing that,” she told him.

The look he gave her was curious. “And if I don’t? Are you going to stop visiting me? Stop stealing my toys?”

She had an intense craving to show him exactly what would happen if he didn’t stop. Why this one was different she didn’t know, but in that instant she wanted to let her Other heritage reign. Sex and death. The room was already filled with death; her body was screaming for sex. If she had both on the same night, she’d become just like the rest of her family—like Nyx wanted, like her mother wanted. She’d have eternity. Steal the lives of mortals, enjoy those dual pleasures, and she’d be stronger, faster, live for centuries…

She swallowed against the dryness in her mouth and said, “Please?”

“Please what?” Daniel gave her that same tempting smile he’d offered in the clubs so often. “I don’t like them mindless, Eve. No medicine for you. Aren’t you tired of provoking me? It’s been fun to have someone try to thwart me. Ballsy. I like it. Let me give you what you want.”

Her hand tightened until the ridges on the grip pressed into her skin. Her tongue was slow in her mouth as she told him, “You can’t.”

“Are you sure?” Daniel stood there with a jar of blood in one hand and the stuff of death all around him. “You see what I am, but you’re not disgusted, are you? Come closer.”

And in that instant, she wanted to swallow his final breath more than anything she’d ever wanted. She reached out her other hand to touch him, but stopped short of actual contact. “You don’t want to give me what I want, Daniel. Trust me. Please. If you have anything good in you, change your path. Stop making these drugs. For everyone.”

And then she ran, away from temptation, away from the room of death and blood and bone. She was a mortal. She could walk away. She’d chosen humanity. She just needed to keep choosing it.

Eavan went to her car and began one of her tried and true reordering plans. Absently, she drove out to Chapel Hill. There was the first stop. Step one. Routine. It was a strange loop she’d adopted when she was a student—like walking her perimeters, demarcating territories. Like an animal.

No, she reminded herself, proving that I am not an animal.

It made her feel more focused.

I am not a monster.

At UNC, she measured her steps, pacing them out just so as she crossed campus to reach the courtyard outside Davis Library. That bricked vista felt reassuring—line after line of red bricks. There was order, structure. She clung briefly to that. Order. Follow the lines.

They’d just opened for the day.

How long was I driving?

She went inside and wandered through the wide open layout. People, regular mortals, were already going back and forth between shelves and tables. Some were curled into cocoons of their own projects—papers and books and furrowed brows. It was normalcy. It was her world—the one she chose.

The one I’m staying in.