Page 96 of A Touch of Crimson
A bullet pierced his shoulder, the tiny bit of silver in it sizzling his flesh like acid. The lycans grew more frenzied and ferocious in reaction to the smell of his blood.
With the choice taken from him, Elijah shifted and leaped into the fray, hoping to save as many lives as he could.
Adrian looked out of Syre’s office windows at the town below. His blood had gone cold with trepidation. With every second that passed, he felt himself spiraling deeper into a primal state of rage.
His phone vibrated on the desktop. He felt Raven’s wary eyes on him as he lifted it to his ear. “Mitchell.”
“Adrian.”
His breath exploded from his chest. “Lindsay! Where are you? Are you hurt?”
“Would you prefer to call me tzel?” she asked softly.
He sank into Syre’s chair. “What did he tell you?”
“A long story, but the gist is that I carry the woman you love inside me. Is that true?”
He hesitated a moment, feeling the underlying pain in her voice. “You carry Shadoe’s soul in you, yes.”
Raven watched him avidly from the chair in the corner, her eyes sparkling with malicious glee.
“That’s why you came up to me in the airport.”
“At first it was for her,” he admitted. “But that changed. What’s grown between us since then is because of you, Lindsay.”
“In a few short weeks, you got over the woman you’ve loved for ages and fell for me?” She made a choked noise, a sound so agonized his heart broke at the sound of it. “Forgive me if I don’t believe you.”
“I can prove it to you. Tell me where you are, how to find you. If I take Syre down, Shadoe’s soul will be freed. It will just be you and me.”
“But you said goodbye to me yesterday, Adrian. Not in so many words, but it was the end all the same. Is this why?”
“No, damn it.” His hand fisted around a pen on the desktop. “It’s because once I kill Syre, your body and soul will be your own. You won’t feel evil around you anymore. You won’t sense beings that aren’t human. You won’t have physical attributes that you’ll have to hide. You can be normal. Lead a normal life. Enjoy all the precious mortal things you haven’t had time for.”
There was a long silence filled only with the sounds of their mutual labored breathing. He heard a door close on her end of the line. “Syre says he can fix this. He can make it right.”
Adrian leaned forward. “Don’t listen to him. He’ll tell you whatever he has to in order to get what he wants.”
“He says if he completes the Change, you can have Shadoe back. Forever this time. Immortally.”
“Fuck no.” The room spun around him. “That’s not what I want.”
“Isn’t it? All those centuries…all those incarnations…. ”
“He’s wrong, Lindsay.” Adrian heard the hoarseness of his voice, the brutal desperation, and wondered why she couldn’t. “He thinks Shadoe’s naphil soul—a soul that’s part angel—is stronger than yours. When she was alive, perhaps that was true. But she’s not. She’s a stowaway in your body. Your soul has a stronger hold on your physical form than hers does.”
She sighed heavily, feeling weary to her bones. “You’ve always found your Shadoe. And you’ve always loved her and then lost her—over and over. Now there’s a chance to stop all that.
“You’re not like the other incarnations of her. You feel her impulses, but you can ignore them. You have always been you since the moment we met. If you let Syre finish the Change, her soul will be freed, yours will die, and what will be left is a bloodsucking vampire. You don’t want that. I don’t want that for you.”
He heard a soft sob.
“Lindsay.” His eyes burned. “Please. Please don’t do this. Let me come to you, talk to you. You’ve been through a lot in the last twenty-four hours. You’re reeling from your father’s death—justifiably so. You need time to think. Time to heal. Let me be there for you, as you’ve been there for me.”
“I don’t need to think about this. No matter which way things go with the Change, you’ll finally be free. Whether you’re free with her or without her, this horrible cycle you’ve suffered through will finally be over.”
The pen snapped in his hand. Black ink burst across the desk. “I can do the same thing by killing Syre. He started the Change; he’s the only one who can finish it. Let me do it my way. Let me take care of this.”
“Adrian—”
