The Sharpest Kiss by Elizabeth Myles (the false prince .txt) 📕

way through her body and burying itself in the floorboards. Celia’s head rolled slightly to the left—and started to collapse, fragmenting like a broken pumpkin. A stench like moldy death—like centuries’ worth of rancid air escaping a crypt—saturated the air around Nathan and made him wince. Celia’s skin smoked and crumbled like tissue paper, turning a sickly gray before it fizzled off. And then came the acrid smell of flesh burning, as her body flaked apart into a pile of blackened ashes. Even the stake caught fire and combusted, disintegrating right along with her remains.

Nathan stepped back and took a moment to appreciate the gruesome sight. “Immortal my vampiric ass,” he spat, and slung aside the flag.

◆◆◆

Aaron felt it when Nathan severed Celia’s head from her body. It was like a string had been cut inside him, and a jolt of awareness shot through his skull. She was dead. He knew it. Which meant he was human again. He stared at his hands, expecting to see some change, but really, there hadn’t been much to distinguish him physically from his former self in the first place. Even so, he could feel it. A sort of wrongness that had clung to his psyche ever since that fateful night at the Red Palm had lifted. A rightness had descended in its place. His humanity was back. His virtue.

He swung around to look at Lucy and found she was staring at him. It was as if she somehow knew what’d happened, too, and tears of joy flooded her eyes. He dropped the holy water and felt it splash against his pant legs. He started toward her, but only managed a few steps before an appalling sound rent the air and seized up every muscle in his body. It was high and unnerving, almost more bestial than human. A scream, he finally realized, blinking. A terrified, pain-drenched keening.

And it was coming from Dara.

Aaron’s gaze found Jason’s wife, where she was still standing on the sidewalk, although she looked about ready to collapse. Kiefer’s spell book lay discarded at her feet. Her beautiful face was a mask of agony, and she was pointing frantically at something in the distance. Oh, no, Aaron thought, Jason. And then, with a knot forming in the pit of his stomach, he forced himself to turn around and look...

◆◆◆

Jason had spotted the knife a few times tonight. Figured Kiefer must’ve missed it somehow, but he wasn’t worried. One of the minions had it, and kept trying to use it, but Jason hadn’t ever let him. He’d even wrestled the knife away from the dude at one point, and tossed it away, but the goon must have picked it up again because now there it was, right in the palm of his meaty hand. And something else must have happened, too, because this time, as he jerked aside to avoid the blade, Jason couldn’t move quite fast enough. The knife plunged into him like he was made of butter. He was no longer like iron, he realized with a long, slow-motion blink. He was soft again. Soft and hurting.

What the-? Jason looked down in amazement at the knife handle protruding from his abdomen, and at all the crimson seeping out around it. Nathan, he thought, and smiled in spite of the situation. Nathan had killed Celia! He had done it! Jason had known he would.

I’m human again! he thought next.We won!

As he folded to his knees in the courtyard, all he could see in his mind’s eye was Dara, smiling as she brought his plate to the breakfast table, sitting in his lap and laughing at his corny jokes, writhing underneath him in ecstasy. And all he could think was…Wow. This really sucks.

◆◆◆

Nathan stumbled back a few steps, and Jessica raced across the carpet to him. “You did it! You got her!!” She giggled, and it sounded kind of hysterical, which was fitting because after everything that had happened tonight, she felt slightly out of her mind.

The vampire didn’t look at all pleased with himself, though. He turned to her with a look of such torment in his eyes, it stopped her in her tracks.

“Hey,” she brought her hand to her throat, “wh-what’s the matter?”

“Jessica. For future reference—and I hope this proves to be unnecessary advice—you should never, ever tell a vampire to eat you. They just may do it.”

She giggled again.

“I am serious. When Celia had you in her grasp, I thought it was all over. I was…” Fear washed over his face. “Well, I was very worried.”

“About me? Why? You knew vampire mind tricks don’t work on me!”

“I knew that mine don’t. Celia is a master…was a master. She was much more powerful.”

“Yeah, well, I won’t lie.” Jessica held up her hands and wiggled her fingers. “I did feel her gross little psychic digits clawing at my brainpan. But she wasn’t powerful enough to get by me.” She couldn’t stop the grin from resurfacing on her face. “Or you. You totally pulverized her, Nathan! Look!”

“Yes.” He followed her pointing finger to the floor. His expression was rigid, difficult to read, but there was a thread of remorse running through his words as he said, “I…killed her.”

Jessica paused, staring at him. Did he feel guilty, she wondered? Seriously?

“She tore up perfectly good books, Nathan,” she reminded him. “She deserved to die!”

“It is not that…” he said, and swallowed hard.

Jessica followed his gaze to the pile of sooty ashes leaving a stain on her brand-new carpeting, and the realization struck her like a spear to the gut. “Oh. Do you think she really knew where Marta is?”

“Who knows. It does not matter.” He put his hands on his hips and kicked at the cinders, watching them fan out across the floor.

Jessica saw the distress gathering in his eyes and knew it did matter. How could it not? He’d just lost a possible chance to find his maker and be human again. That was all he had wanted for