Shameful by May Dawson
59
Legacy
When he stoppedat a red light, Tobias carefully wiped his hands with a handkerchief. “It’s a little strange it was so easy to find you, Legacy. I had thought you were smarter than most of your weak littlepack.”
“How’d you findme?”
He smiled at me in the rearview mirror, his teeth still stained with blood, and I shuddered.
“Look, I keep telling you, Lucas doesn’t care about me. He threw me away… he sent me to that island. Killing me isn’t going to matter tohim.”
“Oh, he very much cares about you,” he disagreed. “He’s been fucking some girl—or two—every night, but they all enrage him. I hear he slipped and called one of them Legacy. She was a bit too testy about it, and he beat the hell out of her. The pack’s all whispering about it, despite Cyrus’s efforts.”
Cold dread spread through my gut. Did Tobas have someone working for him inside our pack? “How do you knowthat?”
He met my gaze in the rearview mirror. “Aren’t you a nosy little thing?”
“You plan to kill me. Why can’t you satisfy my curiosity?”
“I do plan to kill you. Somehow I think you don’t plan to die, though.” He shrugged. “Not sure how well that’s going to work out foryou.”
“This is crazy,” I said. “This obsession of yours with hurtingme—”
‘With hurting Lucas,” he corrected. “I don’t care aboutyou.”
“Yeah well, you arehurtingme.”
“It’s not personal.”
I slammed my hand against the mesh. “You tried to murder me. You stalked me. You kidnapped me. It feels personal.”
“You matter the most to Lucas Harley, and Lucas Harley destroyed what mattered most to me.” Tobias always sounded so cheerfully psychotic, but now his voice darkened.
“And what wasthat?”
“My mate. My love.” His hands trembled on the steering wheel. He seemed so rational at times, despite his hell-bound plan, but I was not dealing with a sane vampire by any stretch of the imagination.
“What did Lucas do toher?”
“You pretend you care about a vampire?”
“Maybe I do. You’re the one who was just mocking me for caring.”
He shook his head, didn’t answer. I glanced out the window at the streets rolling by. He wasn’t taking me out of the city. Cities and highways were neutral territory, and he was safer here than he was traveling through pack lands.
By now, all the packs would know I’d escaped Reject Island, and they’d hunt me down if they tracked a strange female scent on their territory.
He started to talk. “After I became a vampire, I stayed away from Grace for decades. Wasted years.”
“But when I heard she was dying, I went to her. When she saw me, I thought I could save her life by turning her into a vampire, but I thought she’d find me monstrous. That she would fearme.”
“But she wasn’t. I’d wasted all those years away from the woman who loved me. She did nothing but embrace me when I found her again. She was glad to have me there at theend.”
Tobias smiled faintly, as if he were lost in his memories. “And then, there wasn’t an end. I turned her, and we were happy together. Until Lucas.”
“Tell me what he did,” I urged, even though maybe it was unwise to have him relive the reasons behind why he wanted to hurt Lucas so badly.
Tobias’s eyes had narrowed predatorily. “I made the mistake of working with Lucas and Cyrus. Grace hated them, thought it was a bad idea. She didn’t think we should make Cyrus more powerful, even if it helpedus.”
“Make Cyrus more powerful? How?”
Tobias continued as if he were barely listening to me. “With shifter power, no vampire would mess with me. Grace and I could live our lives in peace.”
“Shifter power?”
“Cyrus took my blood, and I tookhis.”
That was why it had been harder to track Tobias Bentley. Cyrus and Tobias weren’t cousins; they had shared their supernatural powers with each other through some kind of blood magic.
I’d seen a handful of fights when I was a kid. Cyrus was stronger than any other wolf. He’d easily become the alpha. People talked about Cyrus being chosen by the moon, but he was a fraud.
“That’s why Cyrus seems so strong,” I said, still trying to put the pieces together. “He’s not the amazing alpha shifter… he’s a hybrid. What did he do to your Grace?”
“Stop talking to me like you care about what happened toher!”
He felt like I was trying to manipulate him and of course I was. My head spun with all the new information. Cyrus had taken vampire blood, and Tobias must have taken shifter blood. That was why our fight had been impossible for me. He had both vamp and shifter powers.
“How would Grace have felt about you murdering an innocent girl to get back atthem?”
“Grace hated shifters.”
Thanks a lot, Grace.That didn’thelp.
“I’d drawn my blood. Cyrus and I were supposed to do a trade. We’d done it dozens of times. I brought Grace with me.” He trembled again as if he were reliving that day. “Cyrus tried to kill me. Lucas killed Grace while I was trying to get to her. I barely escaped with my life… and I would have wanted to die fighting, if not for my chance to get revenge.”
“Why? Why would he dothat?”
“He took Grace’s body.” His hands shook. “He stole her blood so he could use it without having to work with me. I know that. I think someone in your pack began to figure out what he’s doing, and he had to cover his tracks. He couldn’t meet me anymore.”
I snapped my fingers. “Cyrus and Lucas said I was crazy, that there were no vampires. They were lying the whole time. They knew why you came to findme.”
“They did. They knew I wanted to killyou.”
“Maybe Lucas sent me to Reject Island to try to keep me safe without giving himself away,” I muttered to myself. He was obviously a terrible person, but maybe he did have some protective impulses because we were mates.
I was pretty sure my protective mating impulses burned when he called me a slut and slapped me across the face, though.
The light outside the car grew dimmer. The car was rolling into an abandoned warehouse.
“He didn’t do a very good job keeping you safe,” Tobias said, then muttered, “Not any better than I did with my Grace.”
Tobias pressed a button, and the door behind us rolled backdown.
The sound of the door grinding down came to a pause. The world was eerily silent and dim inside the warehouse.
Tobias came around and opened my door. “Sorry, kid. It’s nothing personal.”
I launched myself athim.