“Yes, and you might have told me you two were in town,” Alec said, strolling over to the two men. He squatted next to them and eyed them carefully. “It would have saved me a great deal of trouble. Where is he?”
“Kristoff?” Andreas nodded his head toward me. “He’s over there.”
I spun around and almost choked with horror. Kristoff lay on a small honey-colored couch that sat under a huge mural of the ocean, one arm hanging lifelessly off the edge.
“You bastards!” I shrieked, running across the room to where he lay. “What have you done to him?”
“I like that,” Rowan said, nudging one of the guys on the floor as he raised his head. “Did you hear her? She called us bastards.”
My horror turned to sheer terror as I realized the pattern on the floor was due to blood, not the design of the carpet. “Oh, my God, you’ve killed him! I swear by all that is holy that you will all pay for this. I will not rest one single second until you’ve suffered the way you’ve made my poor Kristoff suffer.”
I collapsed on Kristoff, sobbing into his chest as I clutched his lifeless body, my mind swimming with endless agony that threatened to burst from me in a blinding, searing light.
“Ah, nothing is sweeter than the sight of a Beloved reunited with her love,” Andreas said, his voice mocking the depth of despair that filled me.
Rage unlike anything I’d felt before washed over me. I lifted my face from the empty shell that was Kristoff and focused my gaze on his brother. “You think it’s sweet, do you? Let’s see how sweet you think this Beloved is when she’s through roasting you alive, you bastard brother killer!”
“Pia, stop,” a voice murmured in my ear.
“Ooh, someone’s in trouble,” Rowan said archly, pushing over the reaper on the floor.
“You’re second,” I told him, focusing my attention on him until light rained down from above. He yelped and leaped to the side, bouncing on the couch as he patted wildly at the sparkles of light remaining on his clothing.
“Beloved, you’re pulling out my hair.”
Alec crossed the room, giving the two men an irritated glance. “Mind the sofa. That’s Italian leather, and it didn’t come cheap.”
“You’re third,” I growled, slamming down a wall of light between Alec and the doorway through which he was obviously about to go. “Don’t give me that look, Alec. I’m sure you think I’m the worst sort of idiot for falling for your innocence act, but I assure you-”
“If you’re through with my ear, I wouldn’t mind if you released it. I’ve lost all feeling in it now.”
“I assure you that I . . . I . . .” I looked down. I had been clutching Kristoff’s head to my bosom as I swore eternal vengeance for his death, but somehow he’d shifted so that the fingers of one hand were gripping his hair, my other hand grasping his ear.
Eyes brighter than any gem regarded me.
“Boo?” I asked, my heart doing a backflip or two.
His face twisted into a momentary grimace as a muffled laugh, followed by, “Did she just call him ‘Boo’?” made its way from the vampires. “Would you mind releasing my ear?”
I stared in stupefaction at my fingers closed around his ear. It was turning white. “But . . . you’re dead.”
“Not quite. Nearly, but not quite,” Rowan said, vaulting the recumbent reapers as he strolled over to us. He hesitated a moment. “If I touch you, will you rain light on me again?”
“Eh?” I said, my brain finally catching up with my heart.
He gently took me by the arms and pulled me off of Kristoff. “When we found him, the reapers were in the act of hacking off his head. But he’s always been a fast healer.”
Kristoff sat up, rubbing first his ear, then his throat. I was aghast to see a nasty, jagged-looking welt that wrapped around the front, disappearing into his collar. “It no doubt looked worse than it really was. You could have arrived a bit earlier, however.”
“Traffic,” Andreas said with a shrug.
“You’re not . . .” I looked from Kristoff to Rowan, who had released me, and beyond him to where Alec leaned against the wall, an odd expression on his face. Andreas got to his feet and picked his way across the bodies, stopping to peer at his brother’s neck.
“You’ll do,” he said finally with a nod.
“You guys didn’t . . .” I looked back at Kristoff. “What the hell?”
He sighed and opened his arms, grunting when I threw myself into them, clutching him and kissing every part of him my mouth could reach, babbling the whole time about all my confusion and horror and love.
It took a good ten minutes to work all of that out of my system. Kristoff just held me the whole time, stroking my back and suffering me to examine him to make sure he wasn’t still in some way harmed.
“They almost cut your head off,” I said, pulling down the back of his collar to look at the vile scar that remained. It was still thick, red, and ugly, but was fading with each passing moment.
“‘Almost’ being the key word,” he said.
I spun around, glaring at the people who lay on the floor. The vampires had pulled the two women up onto the couch. “Those . . . scum! Those evil, detestable, repulsive scum!”
The men twitched violently as I stalked toward them slowly, my hands fisted, pulling down light from the moon, which even now glowed gently above the treetops.
“I had no idea your Beloved was so bloodthirsty,” Rowan said. “Are her eyes glowing?”
“Beloved, this is not-” Kristoff started to say.
“Which one did it?” I interrupted. “Which one held the knife?”
“It was a sword, actually,” Rowan said, gesturing toward the man nearest me.
I slammed down a ball of light smack-dab on the man’s groin. He screamed through the duct tape, his body curling into a fetal ball.
“Ooh.” Rowan winced, neatly sidestepping the twitching body. “He won’t be having children now.”
“There’s a lot more he’s not going to be having by the time I get through with him,” I said, stepping forward with dire intent.
Kristoff caught me around the waist and pulled me back. “No, Beloved.”
“Just let me smite them, Kristoff. They all deserve it! You can’t deny they deserve it,” I said, squirming in his grip.
“I don’t, but not this way. You are too sensitive. You will hate yourself once you’ve recovered from your scare, and hate me for letting you do this.”
“One little smiting, that’s all I ask,” I said, struggling. “Just that one, just Sword Boy there.”
“I think ‘boy’ is going to be a moot term,” Andreas said, watching the reaper as he rolled around the floor.
“No,” Kristoff said firmly, his frown deepening into a scowl as he suddenly pushed me to arm’s length, his gaze raking me up and down. “What the hell are you wearing, woman?”
“Pia had a little contretemps with the tree while climbing into the attic,” Alec explained as I hastily tried to cover all my exposed parts.
“Why did you enter that way?” Rowan asked.
Alec gave a little shrug. “I had no idea you two had arrived. My first thought was to protect Pia.”
“Are you going to just stand there letting them ogle you?” Kristoff demanded of me, his eyes dark as the sea in a storm.
“Nobody’s ogling me,” I said, giving him a look.
Kristoff glared over my shoulder. I turned to see his brother and cousin both considering me with their heads tipped identically to the side.
“Nice legs,” Rowan said.
“And ass,” Andreas added. “Is that something sticking out of the top of her panties?”
Kristoff growled. I eep ed, clutched at both the tattered remains of my skirt and Alec’s reaper journal, and looked wildly around the room for a blanket.
Alec sighed and detached himself from the wall. “Upstairs, second room on the right. There should be some women’s things-”
I was off before he finished.
The clothing I found in a guest room closet wasn’t in my size, and the only skirt I could fit into was too tight to be comfortable. I raided the room Kristoff had said was Alec’s, finally making my way downstairs in a pair of silk lounging pants that were a bit snug around the hips, and a worn T-shirt that was also a bit tight. Retrieving my purse from where it had fallen before I fell down the stairs, I put the journal in it and took a moment to comb the twigs out of my hair.