Page 40 of Claimed

Luna

Lucien’s conservatory smells of damp soil. The air is cool. Through the glass windows and ceiling, the stars and the moon are visible.

I allow my fingers to brush against a large fern as I walk slowly into the room. My feet are bare. I feel the cracks between the stone slabs vibrating beneath my soles as I move.

Almost like they’re buoying me up. Keeping me just above ground level.

He thinks the glass here will be weaker. That’s why he’s trying to get in this way.

I follow the shape of him around the curve of the conservatory. Behind me, Kim skids to a halt as he crosses the threshold. “Luna, think about what you’re doing.”

“Nix sent Steven to kill me.” I look back at him, and fix my gaze on his. “He’s not going to succeed.”

Kim hesitates for a fraction of a second, then takes a stake from his belt. “All right.” He plants both feet square on the ground. “You want to do this, I’m not going to be able to stop you. So, consider me backup.”

I nod, then turn around and call quietly into the dark, “Steven? Are you out there? Do you remember me? Is that why you’re here?”

I walk slowly toward the door at the far end of the conservatory. The one that opens onto Lucien’s beautiful gardens.

I don’t need to touch the handle. I just think about the key turning in the lock, the bolts sliding across, and the door opening. And it does.

It swings open, and there is a long moment where nothing happens. Then there he is.

My heart stops.

It’s impossible. It can’t be.

But it is.

Steven.

Or what’s left of him. His face is ruined; skin mottled grey and stretched too tight across cheekbones. Even his fangs don’t look rigt. Not shiny and perfect like Lucien’s; too big for his mouth. More like a dog’s teeth than a vampire’s.

I move backward as he towers over me. A thousand images flash in front of my eyes. The day we met. The times I went to bed crying. The way he looked at me in the moments when he made me feel like he hated me. The way he cried when Lucien kidnapped him and tortured him for what he did to me.

“You should be dead.” My voice is small. The power that surged through me a moment ago is sloshing around in my gut, diluted by fear.

A sound emerges from Steven’s ruined mouth. Is he laughing at me?

He reaches for me. His fist closes around my throat. His grip tightens, and black spots expand across my vision.

“Luna—” Kim charges forward but, as he lunges, Steven throws out an oversized arm and simply bats him away like he’s a fly or a wasp.

A nuisance.

Kim smacks his head on a nearby table that’s littered with gardening equipment, and goes down hard.

I try to help him. Shield him. But I can’t.

My vision is blurring. I’m back in the car, Christmas music playing, my parents’ dead bodies so close I can almost smell them.

Steven gurgles something that could be my name or could be a million other words like bitch, lazy, useless, worthless.

I should fight. I should summon the shadows back to me, tear him apart, destroy this mockery of the man who nearly destroyed me.

But I can’t move. Can’t think. Can’t breathe.

All I can see is Steven. Not this monster, but the man I once loved. The man who convinced me I was nothing without him. Who broke me down piece by piece until I couldn’t remember who I was anymore.