Page 39 of Night Fall
“You wouldn’t understand!”
“Then make me. Since I don’t understand, make me.”
The house shook again as Greg’s power drew in the energy and shadows around her. The weight of it was so heavy she could barely breathe, barely stand.
“He was my everything, my whole heart, and without him here it feels like it’s gone. It feels like my entire heart is vacant, and I can’t get that back, Greg. I can’t.”
Her nails dug into her chest as she tore at where her heart should have been, just as her brother had torn the explanation from her, like each word was cutting through her flesh and bone.
“No, you won’t try to get it back. There’s a difference, Mya. He was your everything and you were his, and the way he was taken from you was a horrific tragedy, but you weren’t the only one that lost him! My grief can never compare to yours, and neither can Luke’s, but we can understand a fraction of it. Yet, you won’t let us. You won’t move past your pain. Once upon a time your family meant everything to you, and now we mean nothing.”
“Greg, please, no. Don’t say that!” Mya cried, but for all her words she still couldn’t move to embrace him, to reach out to him and comfort him.
“But it’s the truth,” he said, and his eyes clouded over with grief. “The moment you lost Erik, we lost you, and we’re not enough to pull you back. You won’t even let us try!”
She shook her head frantically. That wasn’t the truth. How could it be, when watching and listening to his pain hurt her so? And yet, she hadn’t shown him anything different. She didn’t even know how to, and it sickened her to face the fact that he was correct. She didn’t want to try. She wanted the world to forget about her, to let her live in her burdens and misery in peace until she died.
“Greg, just leave me here. Let me live in my pain,” she said with a sad smile. “That’s all I’m good for—”
“No!” He stormed toward her and bared down on her with such ferocity that she felt as though the world stopped moving. “No. You don’t get to say that. I will not listen to you sit here and say that. You have a gift, Mya. There is so much you could do, and yet you sit in your fucking chair and squander your life away out of grief. You are worth the sun and the moon. You are my sister, but the woman you’ve turned into is not the woman I know. Where is the girl who was brave, who would fight, who faced every single adversity? Where did she go?”
Tears rolled down her cheeks as she whispered, “She grew tired. She died.”
“No, she gave up. That’s what you did, Mya, you gave up.”
She snapped. “You act like this is so easy, like I can just flip a switch and become something else. He died, Gregori. He died!” she screeched so loudly that spit landed on his face.
Mya pushed him, punched and kicked at him, but he grabbed her and brought her close. She chanted her last words into his chest as her heart broke even further, as she turned raw, drowning in grief and rage and hatred and sorrow. Greg simply rubbed her back, her hair, and comforted her even as she attacked him.
Eventually she grew quiet.
“Do you want a reason to live, to become that woman again? Do you want to have a purpose?” he said into her hair.
“What could I do? What could I be used for?” she murmured into his chest.
“I’ll show you.”
Over the centuries Greg built his circle—carefully under The Council’s watchful eye—and Mya helped him do it.
She helped him turn and trained the new recruits, people who could be trusted like Elaine, Merida, and Dominick. She fought in their battles, their wars, she chased down rogue vampires and killed them. With each person’s life she took, she saved another potential mate, another innocent, another person who wouldn’t have to face what she had.
Mya learned efficient business practices, coding, how to create official documentation for their companies, how to track, navigate, how to hunt whatever, whoever, was her prey that week. She was ruthless because she could afford to be. She fought without conscious, like she had already died, because she had.
A purpose didn’t save her. It didn’t renew her or bring her back to life, but it gave her something to channel her emotions, her power, and her specific abilities into. But on the days when everything was quiet, when she couldn’t sleep, when she watched someone else fall into the deep love she’d once had, she grew cold and fell into her dark misery all over again.
On those days, she hated her purpose.
On those days, she hated her brother even more.
FOURTEEN
PRESENT DAY
It had been 110,308 days since the last time Mya saw Erik.
She’d mourned him for every single one of those days, until eight months ago when she found out he was still alive. According to Johanna, he had to still be alive because an evil bitch named Constance had used him as her own personal guinea pig.
In those eight months, Mya had wrecked the city. She’d turned over every block, every stone, but she still hadn’t found him. The only things she had to keep her hopes up were her family and Johanna’s word that Constance and her band of minions needed Erik.
