Page 46 of The Slayer Seduction

“No.” I’m even more firm.

I hate Adam.

“Feeling’s mutual motherfucker,” Adam hisses in my head.

“Fine,” Iris says, pointing her wand at me. I’m not sure how she does it and I don’t think she really knows either, but her magic whirls through me. The boiling sensation hits me again as I’m completely pushed to the back of the vessel.

And here I thought this was going to be the best morning of my life.

Chapter 23

Adam

Taking over the body—wait, no—taking back my body from the Slayer is always a weird sensation. It’s like someone is tugging at my soul and ripping me apart to be front and center.

When I come to, my body is sluggish, but a rumpled-from-sleep Iris stands before me.

“We have little time,” she says. I don’t catch the next thing she says, but before I know it, her fox is right next to her, dropping a book into her hand.

I shift further away from her on the bed. “How?”

“I paid your family a little visit. Horrible people, by the way, I’m so sorry. It can’t be read by a supernatural. I need to see if you can read it, not out loud. We don’t know what the spell might do.”

When I go to reach for the book, the pain is instant, and I look down at the red, bubbling skin on my hand.

“It fucking burned me,” I hiss and Iris curses.

She holds the book open for me so I can see the pages.

“Can you read anything on here?” she asks and I have to squint, but the words shift in front of my eyes, like it’s adapting to my language.

The chant that my family spoke is clear as day, along with something else. Things that look like runes along with what I have to assume is the Slayer’s name. But that’s it.

Iris flips the page, and I have to hold myself together before I break down.

The sacrifice of blood is the cost, your reward, your family name living forever. By summoning a great slayer, good fortune and health will be bestowed on you. No longer will your eldest son belong to you, but to the never-ending void. With this spell, your sacrifice and slayer will become one, something that can never be undone. The spell must be cast at the late high moon, the chant only active by the mouth of true, intending mortals. Your sacrifice will not be in vain as the slayer and vessel become one, only to be parted by the true death. To continue your family’s fortune, the next generation must prepare a new sacrifice for the cycle to start again.

It feels like I can’t breathe as I read the words.

I’m trapped like this forever. Me and this fucking vampire slayer are now one and it’s all because the people who were supposed to love me most betrayed me.

My mother’s words when I was a child ring around my head. You don’t belong to me.

How long were they planning this? Did they know the moment I was born that they were going to sacrifice me? If so, why did they wait so long to do it?

When I look up at Iris, she’s looking back at me with watery eyes, like she can feel my pain, even though she doesn’t know what I just read.

“There’s no removing him from my body. The only way we can ever be separated is through true death.”

“Adam, I’m so sorry,” she says, and she easily wraps her arms around me.

I can’t remember the last time someone hugged me, and why it feels so easy with her, but I wrap my arms around her and hold her tight as I let the reality of it all settle in.

“What am I going to do?”

“I-I don’t know,” she says, and I wonder if I should just give up.

I’ve felt the tug of the Slayer before, that he wants total control. Maybe I should just give it to him.