Chapter 23

Iraced away from Bree. Though I was loathe to leave her alone, I knew my chance at redemption had come. My chance to make right what had gone so wrong all those years ago.

I couldn't deny there was still a part of me that hoped I could get through to Eva. That I could reach through whatever had her so tied up in the darkness.

Please, I prayed to any god that would listen, let me be able to reach her.

And if Eva would not listen, if I could not free her from whatever hold was on her, then I would do…what I must. What I'd tried to do the last night I'd seen her.

The stake felt heavy in my hand. A weapon intended for killing vampires. For even the oldest of vampires, even the strongest, could be killed by a stake through the heart.

A ghost floated across the hall in front of me. "If you try to kill her now, all will fail."

I paused. "You wish her to live?"

"No. No, I don't. I wish for the spell to be broken. And this is not the way, though your heart is in the right place." He stroked his long beard. "May I make a suggestion?"

The castle rocked around us, a boom that could only be Remy's magic cutting through the air. I turned to go to Bree.

"Neither the Sentinel nor the river maid need you. You have done your part in their stories. Now, you must face your own path."

There was the sound of rushing water, followed by silence.

"What…who are you?"

"Vesuvius. I have been here a very long time. Very long. And I think I can help. While I can't interfere directly…"

I looked back at him, seeing the slight shimmer around him, the magic that clung to him still, and how it flickered in and around his hands, in particular. "You're a mage."

He smiled, skin crinkling around his eyes. "Ah you have good eyes. Better than that other ghost, he fairly stumbles around, oblivious to others."

Other ghost…

"You mean Alan? He is rather new to the shadow world…argh! You are distracting me!"

Vesuvius sighed. "Not purposefully, no. You need to consider something. I believe you could get close enough to Evangeline to stop her, but not if she believes you are violent toward her."

My jaw dropped, and I fairly went to my knees. "You want me to…" to fake it, with my wife who my heart still wished was the woman I'd married.

Bree's magic was keeping me in this form, but I didn't know how long it would last. Even as I considered it, I could sense Bree getting further and further from me. "I will be a skeleton in a matter of minutes," I said. "I don't have time for this."

I turned from Vesuvius, and he was in front of me again. I didn't slow down, just walked through him, a deep cold sensation flowing over me.

"She has a mage with her," Vesuvius said. "He could keep you in this form longer…"

"She's bedding him," I said, and those words steeled my resolve further. The Evangeline that I knew would never have gone to bed with a man like Remy.

A man who would kill others for power. A man who had no care for anyone but himself.

"But in her heart, does she love him?"

"She hates me. I tried to kill her," I said as I reached an intersection. Which way?

"She's in the room on the right," Vesuvius said and faded away.

Leaving me on my own.

Which was for the best. I didn't need him questioning what I was doing, or why I was doing it. I reached for the door handle, expecting it to be locked. But she was either incredibly confident or she was expecting someone else to join her.

"Remy," she called out from the shadows of her room. "I hope that wasn't you shaking my castle."

Her back was to me, and I'll admit I took a moment to drink her in, to believe that the past…was the past. That I wasn't here to finish what I'd started all those years ago.

She was wearing a thin white shift that gave glimpses of her body through it. Her strawberry blonde hair was unbound in long waves and ran down her back, nearly to her waist. She looked over her shoulder, her eyes widening as she stared at me.

"It can't be."

"Why is that?" I took a step forward, still gripping the stake in my hand. "Why can't it be? I know you've been watching me. Watching Bree. So surely you know it's possible for me to be whole."

Her breathing hitched as the color in her cheeks climbed. "You tried to kill me."

"To be fair, you tried to kill me first. And if we are being honest, we are still married. Are you waiting for another man?"

Her cheeks flared pinker yet, the sensibilities that had been driven into us in our early years still very much alive. "I was killed. You were killed. Our marriage bonds were until death do us part. We died, Robert, and we came back."

"You came back a monster," I said. I was losing my moment, my chance to drive the stake through her. But I couldn't help asking the questions that had haunted me. "How? How could you stand with everything we fought against?"

Her laugh caught me off guard. "You…you really believed me, didn't you?"

She was on me in a flash, and I caught her by the throat, holding her—barely—away from me. Her fangs glistened in the semi darkness. "You could be with me, forever, Robert. Just say the word."

Vesuvius was wrong. I couldn't fake it with Evangeline. Because she was not…and maybe had never been, the woman whom I'd loved. I'd loved what I'd believed her to be, all of which was a lie.

And she would kill Bree if she was given the chance.

I jerked her hard to the side. She screamed and tried to scratch at me but, twisting her arm, I forced her to the floor, so her back was to me.

"You forget, I was trained to kill your kind," I said. "Goodbye, Evangeline."

I raised the stake. She sobbed something and I steeled myself. Because I had no doubt that when she died…I died too.

An unseen force slammed into me, throwing me across the room and into the far wall. I slid down and then rolled when I hit the ground.

"Don't kill him!" Evangeline screamed.

Don't kill me? Why not?

Bonds wrapped around me, stripping me of not only my movement but of being whole. I slumped and growled, snapping my teeth. I would not even say "friend," not to these two.

Evangeline stood, her hair in disarray. "Remy, where in the hell were you?"

"They escaped," he snapped, touching a gash across his forehead. "And I had to deal with my father. He's dead finally, but the bastard slowed me down! Mon Dieu, what a mess this is!"

"Bah!" She waved a hand at him. "She cannot get off the island. We will find her."

Evangeline approached me slowly. "Robert, you don't look so good now. I'll admit, for a moment there I remembered why I fell for you. Handsome, charming, though perhaps not as perceptive as you should have been."

She laughed as she reached out and touched my skeletal jaw with one finger. I snapped at her, trying to take at least that much satisfaction.

"Let me kill him."

"No." She spun on Remy. "No. He stays here, safe and sound. But make sure she can't call him away, Remy."

Remy muttered a few curses under his breath. "You want to…keep him?"

She shrugged. "Call it nostalgia. Pin him to the wall and leave us."

Remy's eyes bugged out. "You…want me to leave him here?"

"And…while you're at it, make him whole again. You are capable of that much, aren't you? I wish to speak with him."

I was with Remy on this. I didn't understand why she would want to talk to me. Much less why she'd care that I was kept safe.

Unless…gods. Could that be the answer? My mind raced through all that I knew of the occult, of the paranormal, of bonds between lovers and…yes…that might be why she wanted to keep me alive.

With another round of accented muttering, Remy flipped his hands, and I gasped as my body was pushed back into existence. It didn't feel like Bree's magic, not one bit. This was slimy and dark, whereas Bree's felt like going home.

"I will leave you then," Remy snapped and was gone, the door slamming behind him. Leaving me alone with my wife. Ex-wife? I didn't know what to call her.

"There, now we can talk like civilized people." Evangeline smiled up at me, her fangs carefully hidden behind full lips. "I have missed you, Robert."

Vesuvius's words tugged at me. Did I dare try to bend her to my will?

"I…do not want to say I missed you, Eva."

She touched my face with both hands and went on her tiptoes to kiss me.

I held absolutely still, unable to breathe. "You don't want to kiss me?" She murmured against my mouth. "You do not wish to be in my arms again, my love? I know you, Robert. I know you tried to kill me because you think it is the right thing to do, not because you wanted to. I saw your tears then, I feel your pain now."

Her words sounded right but felt wrong.

What would I be willing to do to stop her?

Anything.

I tipped my head toward her, and she lifted up on her toes, pressing herself to me. I leaned into the kiss, trying to think of her in the past, of the woman I'd thought she'd been, deepening it, trying to make her believe I felt something other than disdain…

But it was Bree's eyes I saw behind my closed lids, it was Bree's smile that made me take the kiss to another level.

Evangeline pulled back, her hands fluttering to her mouth. "You…you never kissed me like that before."

I closed my eyes. "I have been alone a very long time, Eva. I have thought about what I missed, all those years. How I could have saved you, and what I would do if you were ever in my arms again."

She took another step back, her eyes wide. "I didn't think you would agree with me, Robert."

I frowned. "Agree with what?"

Eva reached for me again, and I realized Vesuvius was right. She still had feelings for me, as incomprehensible as that was. "I was willingly going into hell when you ‘saved' me, Robert, the first time. I had been seeking a path to immortality after my family died. I saw in you a man who would take me to all the places I needed. One who would help me gain the knowledge that I wanted in order to find that immortality."

"You used me."

She nodded. "At first, that is true. But then I realized that you were everything I wanted."

I didn't believe her, but I nodded as if I did. "Why didn't you tell me about Joseph? You knew ahead of time, didn't you?"

Evangeline clutched at her shift, as if she were uncertain, but the movement felt…forced. She thought she was going to fool me into trusting her again. Into seeing her as someone I wanted to protect. "He wanted a sentinel who had tasted death. We…sent letters back and forth for many months before I agreed to come to him. He said he could help me live forever, and that you could be with me too."

A lie without a doubt. It lay between us, heavy and thick. I remembered the moment she'd come at me after being turned into a vampire. But I nodded. "And you were afraid I wouldn't agree?"

"Can you blame me?" she whispered and lowered her lashes. "I knew how you hated the darker side of the shadow world, how committed you were to stopping it at any cost."

"For you," I lied right back at her, "I would have changed. For you I would have…been what you needed me to be."

Her eyes slowly lifted. "And now?"

I shrugged as best as I could against the wall. "I am your prisoner now. You hate me for trying to kill you not once, but twice. I am no fool, a single kiss does not erase the damage between us."

Her hand touched a spot on her chest. "It still aches at times. But I don't hate you."

For Bree…gods…for Bree I would do this. "There is no way I can prove my love, Eva. There is no way for you to trust me now. Just kill me and be done with it."

Her smile was slow and never truly reached her eyes. "There is, Robert. There is a way for you to help. For us to be together. I don't want you to die. Please know that is the last thing I want."

Of course it was, and as she released the bonds holding me to the wall and I fell to the ground, I knew it with every fiber of my being. She wanted me alive because we were so tightly bound that our lives—even the undead versions—were holding us both here. If one of us died, we both died.

Evangeline took my hand and pulled me toward a set of chairs. "Let us…reacquaint ourselves. Let me tell you of my dreams. And you can tell me of yours."

I nodded and smiled at her, thinking of Bree. That was the only way I was going to get through this. By pretending she was someone else.

I laced my fingers with hers. "It would be my deepest honor to know you again, my angel."