“Now do you believe me that something happened?” I asked, slowly climbing out of the vehicle. Staring toward the house, Rhys grabbed my arm and pulled me back as Cole and Acyn stepped in front of us.
“Check the house,” Rhys ordered.
“Send a knight in first,” Cole snorted, crossing his heavily tattooed arms over his chest. “I don’t intend to die by entering a Silversmiths home without an invitation. Their wards are nasty, and I don’t intend to writhe in pain because we fell for some bullshit excuse of a missing mother.”
“If you would be so kind as to stop this primitive caveman act and release my elbow, I could drop the wards so you wouldn’t need to sacrifice a knight. I assure you, the wards are very active.” Rhys snorted, but he listened, releasing my elbow with a warning look.
My hands lifted, and the glowing symbols that surrounded the house became visible. The men stepped back, eyeing the cabin as if it were alive and utterly terrifying. I memorized the wards, closing my eyes, and whispered the spell to disarm them, then smiled coldly. The wards shot outward, and I exhaled.
The Van Helsing men, along with the knights, dropped to their knees, howling in pain. Watching them for a moment, I let the small victory slither over me. I peered down at the brothers, smirking as I grabbed Nyx, and started toward the house.
“Hurry,” I urged, turning the moment we were inside, and sealing the door closed with another ward. Exhaling, I opened my eyes to find Nyx glaring at me.
“Excellent plan, Remington. Minus the part where we are stuck inside this house with no electricity, no water, and, oh yeah, no food,” she grunted, peering around at the disheveled house. “Did I mention that I’m team Van Helsing right now? Rhys is totally into you, and you just dropped them all like hot potatoes, which doesn’t bode well for us.”
“He’s my enemy! They’re all my enemies. My mother is missing, vampires are day-walking, and the entire plan I had is now worthless. I sucked him off! Do you have any idea how damaging it is to a woman’s sensibility to suck someone off in a dream, only to conclude that I did it, willingly? Not to mention, my family is probably never going to forgive me for doing something as stupid as that, ever.”
Something slammed against the door, and I yelped in surprise. I sent magic rushing through the wards and then groaned. I’d yet to perfect magical wards or learn to hold them, and considering I felt the lack of wards, I had probably accidentally disarmed them. The door shook again, and I stepped back, staring at it, looking around the room for the silver, finding the wall empty of the bullets that had peppered it last night.
The door opened abruptly, squealing I backed up until my butt hit the wall. Rhys prowled into the house, entered it with duel blades in his hands while angry eyes locked with mine. The tick in his jaw hammered, and his mouth was an angry, white line.
“Go outside, Nyx,” he hissed, barely loud enough for me to hear him.
Nyx hesitated, but Rhys’s attention slid to her as his blades hummed with power, as if he was considering removing her head. His rage was so thick that I could taste it in the air. She started to argue, but I cut her off.
“Go, Nyx. I’ll be fine,” I whispered, chewing my lip as my attention moved back to the angry Van Helsing. “Do not hurt her.”
“She didn’t try to murder us,” he sneered coldly. “You did.”
“No, I didn’t. The wards would have only hurt for a few moments. Just long enough for us to get into the house to escape you.”
He snorted, stalking toward me slowly. “They just tried to eviscerate us. Luckily for us, you’re not skilled enough to accomplish that feat yet, Remington. Had you been more skilled, we’d have to regrow and heal organs because of that shit you pulled.”
Maybe I should have been paying more attention to my mother’s tireless teachings instead of watching reality TV dating shows. I winced as he sheathed his swords before placing one large hand around my throat as he grunted in pain. Azure eyes searched mine, and his hand tightened before he tore them away from mine, looking around the small cabin with an upturned lip.
“This shit-hole isn’t Eliza’s house. She’d never lower herself to live in such squalor,” he snapped. I started to speak, but his hand tightened as a cold smile lifted his lips. “What game are you playing at, Silversmith?”
“This is where my mother raised me, Rhys. Behind this wall is my bedroom, and the one next to it is my mother’s room. Below us is an armory, and out in the woods is a shooting range where she taught me to shoot and ensure my guns were precisely tuned to murder anyone stupid enough to think to harm me. I am not playing a game. I may be in over my head, I will openly admit to that, but I also didn’t ask you to come here. You brought me. Your mistake was thinking that I wouldn’t run the first chance I got.”
“No. No games, right? You stepped right into my path by chance. I brought you home with me, where you proceeded to act shy and all modest, right up until you sucked my cock. Was that to make me lower my guard against you, or to make me think you actually liked me? The first moment you got your chance, you tried to murder me, just like the rest of your murderous family, Remington Silversmith. My mistake was assuming you were different.” His hand tightened, forcing me to suck in air before he could cut off my airway. The moment he cut the air to my lungs off, he lowered his mouth to brush his against mine, smiling against my lips as a soft moan escaped. “If you try to harm my brothers or me again, I’ll slit your pretty neck, and fuck your throat while you bleed out. That is the only warning you are going to get from me, and that’s because your lips look good wrapped around my cock.”
His hand released my throat, and my hands rubbed where he’d held me. Rhys’s dark stare held mine before he snorted, moving toward the kitchen. Cole, Acyn, and Nyx entered the house. Cole’s eyes held mine briefly, lowering to the red handprint, surely marring my porcelain skin. Nyx moved toward me silently, grabbing my hand, and her worried eyes noted the tears swimming in mine.
I didn’t need to put into words what we were both thinking. We shouldn’t have come here, not even if it was my mother missing. We should have assembled a team and come in carefully, but I hadn’t thought my mother was missing.
I’d figured she’d just been ignoring my calls or had harmed herself by working a spell that took more than one witch to cast. I’d never assumed there would be a Van Helsing close to where we lived, let alone several of them.
I exhaled, slowly opening my bedroom door as screeching started. My hands lifted, covering my ears to stop the pain that struck so hard my vision swam. I dropped to my knees, along with the others inside the cabin. My head felt as if it was splitting in two. Nyx howled, and I turned, staring at her as blood dripped from her nose. The Van Helsings weren’t faring any better, either. I moaned the spell to undo the wards, groaning as the pain intensified.
Bringing my hand up to my teeth, I bit into the palm to draw blood, slamming my hand down on the floor, which stopped the deafening, piercing scream of the safeguard spell. No one moved, not until Nyx screamed and grabbed me, staring down in horror at me.
“What the hell is happening to your face, Remi?” she stammered.
Gazing up at her, I saw the runic symbols written in golden writing over my flesh. My mouth opened, closed, and then repeated the attempt to speak several more times. I watched as she wiped away warm liquid from my eyes, staring as I started to sit up, only to be gently pushed back to the floor by Rhys and Cole, who studied my face.