Page 80 of Of Flame and Fury
I sit up, treating the bed of mud I fell on like a grassy knoll and ignoring the way my breath is visible in the cold. “Don’t call me T. Only my friends get to call me that.”
A boulder punches its way through the ground. Johnny tosses the apple over his shoulder and falls into a sitting position, allowing the rock to form around him like a throne. He stretches out, giving me a good look at his ripped body.
Muscles line his arms and abs tense as if ready to part and reveal more muscle. It gives me pause. Johnny the rockstar followed a strict regimen of diet and exercise. He had to look good for his fans, his manager and handlers insisted on it. But he was different then. This… I don’t know, seems overkill somehow.
He licks his lips, grinning. “Like what you see?” He laughs. “I thought we were just friends.”
I frown. I really don’t like how he looks. Something is off. “We were until you turned all evil and everything.”
He laughs again and wipes his hands on his jeans. “You think I’m evil?”
I purse my lips, pretending to give it some thought. “Well, you did join up with the shapeshifters to save your whiney and pathetic ass.” I rise, ignoring the scowl he pegs me with. “You also killed and sacrificed your fans—humans with no real way to protect themselves. People who loved you.”
“And who promised to die for me,” Johnny reminds me, hanging tight to his grin.
I rise, wiping off my hands instead of wiping the floor with him. My voice remains calm, bordering only slightly on condescending. “They only told you that because you duped them with your Tinkerbell voice, lyrics, and magic.” I shake my head. “That’s not real love, Johnny. That’s a spell. No one’s ever really loved you.”
And don’t I strike a nerve with that comment?
“Shut up,” he fires back.
Now I’m the one laughing. “Is that the best you can do?”
My laughter abruptly cuts off when my anger pokes through. “All you had to do was be real and honest and true. But you couldn’t man up. You were a little bitch from the moment I met you, scared stupid that someone would hurt poor you.”
Johnny comes to his feet. “I told you to shut up.”
“Poor widdle kid. Poor Johnny,” I continue. “He never had friends or family who loved him.”
Johnny twitches. Not like someone does when they’re nervous. But like in the movies when the frame skips too fast ahead. “You don’t know what you’re talking about,” he says. His speech is garbled, and his movements are erratic. “Fate can’t have friends. Fate simply is.”
He quivers again, just his head at first, then his hands, and once more his entire body. He points to a tree that wasn’t there before…and where Misha’s limp and naked body is bound to the trunk.
“You bash me,” Johnny says, suddenly beside him. He lifts what remains of Misha’s face with a merciless yank of his hair. “He did too. See what it cost him?”
Johnny vanishes.Poof, disappears. I scramble to my feet and run to Misha. I’m moving fast, but he’s edging farther away. When I finally reach him, I press my hand against the trunk, trying to steady myself and catch my breath. “What did he do to you, Misha?”
Misha wasn’t merely tortured; his face was skinned. I see Johnny’s reasoning, his intent to punish a too beautiful man the way he thought would most hurt. And punish he did. All that remains of Misha’s face are chunks of meat and bone.
“Oh, shit. Shit. Shit.Shit.”
It’s all I can say. Misha is still alive. If he wasn’t, all I’d find is a pile of ash. At least, I think I would. What does happen to a master vampire with a soul? Does he wither away, aging as he should have done all those years ago before disintegrating, his remains spreading into the wind? Or does he just die, as Johnny will when I get my hands on him.
“Shit,” I say, my tears forming fast. I wipe my cheeks, smearing mud on my face and not giving a damn. Misha is bound to the old tree with thick vines. His scalp, covered with blond hair and saturated with blood, is left intact, sticking to his mutilated flesh.
“You put up a fight. Didn’t you?”
He doesn’t reply. I guess it was too much to hope for.
I walk slowly around the tree, trying to figure out how to free him. I try striking a thinner section with lightning. Nothing happens. I try to burn it but only manage a spark.
Misha is dead. I walk around slowly. With all this madness, even a being as omniscient as Misha could meet his fate. Still, I hoped that he, and my family, would make it. His death is a bitter reminder that even the powerful eventually fall.
My bare feet sink into the mud as I return to him. My vision blurs. We were never close. At first, he fell into my “hell yes” category, as in, “hell yes, hot or not, let’s stay clear of this vampire.”
Once we started to know him, post-supernatural battle royale, it was almost cool to belong to his inner circle. His wealth, prestige, and vow of protection gave us standing in a world we were thrust into. It was leverage against the supernasties and gave them pause before messing with us.
When we fell for ourweresand fell hard, Misha became our frenemy, a master vampire we could never fully trust…except for one Wird sister.