The Tragedy of Knowledge (2 page)

“Gavin. I got it. We’ve been over this.” I pulled my hair tighter in a ponytail and wrapped it with an elastic tie, positioning myself in front of him again, knees bent, arms up, stance ready.

“Then get it together. I need you focused.”

“Did I mention I really don’t like your bossy side?”

“Did I mention I really hate that you don’t do as you’re told?”

He met my stance with an amused grin, rubbing his hands over his shoulders to push up his sleeves. My gaze caught the movement, zoning in on his defined arms. I swallowed, and managed, “Do as I’m
told
?”

“Uh huh.” He shuffled closer with slow, easy steps. “Out here, I’m not your husband. I’m not your lover. I’m your trainer. It’s my responsibility to show you how to defend yourself. And it’s your job to listen.”

“I am listening. You just make it difficult … to stay focused.”

“Oh, yeah?” He reached out and brushed a strand of hair from my forehead, letting his fingers trail slowly over my skin while he peered down at me, licking his lips. “Why do I make it difficult for you to stay focused, love? Are you having a hard time keeping up?” Pushing the hair back behind my ear, he leaned in farther, grazing his nose against my cheek, smirking when he heard me exhale a low, shaky breath.

Damn him.
“You know why.”

“Do I?” His grin widened.

“You do. And I won’t give you the satisfaction of hearing it come out of my mouth.”

“Cam,” he dragged his lips across my cheekbone to the base of my ear, “I can feel it, too. You don’t have to say it, because I’m in tune with your body like never before. We’re on the same level now. All that pent-up energy, trying to claw its way out of you …” Nipping my earlobe, he let out a low chuckle and skimmed his hand underneath the hem of my shirt, tracing the waistband of my jeans with rough, teasing fingers. My entire body came alive at his touch, blood singing, knees quaking, mouth watering. His scent was divine and his lips called to me like some wicked, elemental magic.

He knew exactly what he was doing. The bastard.

More than willing to play along, I inhaled a sharp breath and reciprocated, dragging my fingers down his torso, then back up, stopping just above his navel. His mouth still near the base of my ear, his breath hitched against my skin at the contact. Encouraged, I headed south again, rubbing and teasing, feeling him grow beneath my fingers, tilting my head to the side to expose my neck. He moaned and grazed his teeth over my shoulder and down to my collarbone, dropping his blade to the ground with a loud thud.

“You make me crazy. Do you know that?” He gripped my hips and pressed me against him. “Do you feel what you do to me?”

“It’s too intense,” I whispered, my voice breathy. I was already panting when he moved to the other side of my neck, nudging my head to tilt it in the opposite direction.

“I warned you. You had a taste back in Amaranth, right after you changed.” He started on the buttons of my shirt.

“But the pull is even harder to fight now. When you touch me … I have no self-restraint. Sometimes I feel like … like I can’t handle all the extra energy. Like I’ll detonate if I don’t act.”

“That’s part of the fun.”

“Gav … we’re in an open field.”

“Hasn’t stopped you yet.” He popped two more buttons. “I know you want me. Just relax and let me make you feel good, baby. That panic lessens when you give it an outlet.”

Shutting my eyes tight, I leaned up on tiptoe and wrapped my arms around his neck to kiss him hard, then released him and slowly sashayed in the other direction, challenging him from underneath coy lashes, the need to run singing in my veins. “Fine. And I know
you
want
me
, but you’ll have to catch me first.”

His mouth fell open and his brows raised, a surprised smile pulling at the corner of his lips; he was ready to take the bait. I surged forward into a turbo-charged sprint, clear across the field toward the woods ahead, feeling him feet behind me, fast on my trail. I blew through the edge of the brush and into the thick marsh, lifting off my feet into flight, deeper and deeper into the bayou. This was what I loved: running full–speed, then transitioning into liftoff. The wind rushing over my sensitive skin, the way my body sailed over the ground below, with the speed of a bullet emerging from a rifle and a gazelle’s grace.

The new ability exhilarated, even as it brought a pang of regret, remembering how I came to have it. After striking an alliance with our sworn enemy, Samira, our group caught the portal between her world, Amaranth, and ours, while it was still open, and left with the resistance to return to Louisiana to make new preparations. The resistance, comprised of rebel frozen souls on earth, and vampires-turned-human in Amaranth, formed a secretive movement to resist the vampire lifestyle that accompanied their curse; they didn’t hunt or harm humans.

Our reluctant agreement with Samaria involved Gérard, Samira’s absent husband, after we learned Gérard had a hold on her, using his magic to protect Amaranth and uphold his power. The only way to destroy that hold was to destroy its source. Simply bringing down Samira’s reign wouldn’t be enough to accomplish our goal.

Samira claimed she didn’t believe it possible to destroy Gérard, and if she
was
privy to such information, she didn’t seem interested in offering it up to us just yet. So Gavin and I decided to return to earth to visit Vivienne again, hoping her knowledge of hoodoo could help us, maybe even help find out if there was indeed a way to kill him. And to destroy Samira—our original plan—we’d need to find a way, because Gérard’s magic didn’t just control her, it protected her.

But when Gavin and I found Vivienne dead in her conjure shop, and discovered the warning Gérard left us there, the odds of us breaking the curse and becoming human again suddenly seemed worse, much worse. I hated what I’d become, and Gavin hated he was the one to turn me, but I was determined to focus on the positives … like enjoying my superhuman abilities.

With a soft crunching, my feet hit the dirt between two majestic oaks nestled together on the side of the bayou bank. Before I had time to turn and scan my surroundings, Gavin landed behind me and forced me forward, flush with one tree’s trunk, his front to my back.

“Oh, Mrs. Devereaux, you know how I feel about your teasing.” His hot breath skimmed the back of my neck as he restrained me. Pulling my wrists together behind my back, he spun me around, bringing us face to face. He pinned my wrists above my head against the bark with one hand and unhooked my jeans button with the other.

“You gipped me out of a training session and went straight for seduction,” I said between heavy breaths. “You deserved it.”

He let out a low, husky laugh and yanked down my zipper. “Hate to break it to you love, but you making me work for it isn’t punishment at all.”

I squirmed against him, a moan escaping when he deftly dipped his fingers into my panties and inside of me. “Gav …”

His fingers plunged deeper.

“Gavin!”

“That’s right, baby. Give it up for me. Come on.” His palm tortured me as he flexed his fingers back and forth, squeezing my wrists tighter above my head with his free hand, keeping me restrained and helpless. I briefly resented that my strength still paled compared to his, even now, but when his fingers increased their rhythm deep inside me, I happily surrendered to his control. A garbled scream broke free from my lips as I rode out my orgasm, rocking my hips into him to capture as much of the friction as possible. His breathing was ragged now, his arousal digging between my thighs. As I rolled through the aftershocks, he freed himself and drove into me, fast, hard, and desperate. “You’re a goddess. I adore you, baby. All of you. Always.”

Matching him thrust for thrust, I gripped his upper arms and reveled in the feel of him, in the sensations that ripped through me as he dipped his head to bury his face in my breasts. My back arched against the tree, aligning my core with his, tighter and tighter, as we moved. I loved this man, this soul, my partner in life and eternity. It didn’t matter what our future held now, or what would become of the frozen souls’ fate because of our decision to join forces with Samira. Because whatever we faced, I’d have this man at my side, and I’d take a million silver daggers to the heart and an infinite amount of vampire transformations before I’d ever lose him or bring him harm.

Finding his release, he emptied into me, his jaw slack against my chest, his grip loosening around my wrists, letting them drop over my head and onto his shoulders. We leaned against the cool, damp bark, our bodies rising and falling against one another as our breathing calmed, the sounds of the bayou’s eerie chorus surrounding us.

“How’s that?” he breathed, his voice velvet on my neck. “Better?” Still panting, he propped his hands on the tree behind my head.

“Much … better.”

“
Mmmm
, agreed.” With one last nip to my neck, he straightened and zipped up, offering me his hand. “Shall we, love?”

“What? I don’t want to train now, can’t we call it a day?”

“Nope. You were right. I gipped you. Back to work we go.”

A whine of protest escaped my lips, but I complied, taking his hand. Before our bodies were air-bound, I glanced around, a thick, threatening aura engulfing my senses, the hairs on my neck spiking up. Suddenly it seemed the trees were watching, listening to our intrusion with acute focus, Gavin and me observers lurking in their midst. I shook the strange feeling off and let Gavin lift me into flight, sailing back toward the direction we came.

***

Gavin’s house, a mansion that would have swallowed my little yellow house twenty times over, was quiet that evening. He only lived in a small portion of the house, the downstairs living area. I sprawled out on his sofa, trying to focus, to clear my head, itching to work on my novel, the one Gavin encouraged me to continue despite our outlandish circumstances. There was no going back to my house, no showing my face around town. Missing person’s posters were plastered everywhere, courtesy of Carol, my former boss. The last time we’d checked on my place, the poor woman had even left flowers on my doorstep with a note. Seeing those made me feel even guiltier for leaving the way I did: with no warning, no sign that I was still alive. It must’ve scared her half to death to learn I really had gone missing after I disappeared from work the evening I supposedly went to take my break. But how could I explain to her, to any typical human really, that rather than returning to the bookstore that night, I in fact went to the bayou to enter the underworld of Amaranth?

But what was done, was done. I was back in Louisiana, at least, although I never really returned. It seemed as though one moment I’d been a human trying to conjure up spells while working at a normal bookstore, going to a normal college, and then was sucked into the paranormal realm and spat out as a vampire the next moment, before I had a chance to fully process the absurdity of it all. Then again, even at this moment, I could only process so much. If I let my mind linger on all the aspects of my transformation for too long, I’d start to lose it.

My fingers gliding across the pages of the journal, Gavin’s gift, I recalled the terror that seized my body the day I’d seen it on the floor of Samira’s throne room, the day we’d been summoned in Amaranth.
The day he changed me.
I shivered at the thought, thankful my friends and I had made it out alive.

Sort of.

Now everything was up in the air, with the resistance back in London, Paris, and scattered across the globe, waiting for a call from Gavin or Arianna, Gavin’s sister, to find out their next actions. Waiting for some direction. Because now Gérard, the father of all the frozen souls—Samira’s ex-lover and our worst nightmare—had sent us a gruesome message when we returned to Louisiana. One that made it clear he knew of our intentions to bring down Samira’s reign, thereby destroying the Amaranth exiles, his main source of power. He’d ripped out poor Vivienne’s throat and left us to find her in a puddle of blood, a revenge hex chanting on the ancient record player in the background.
Yeah, real subtle.

Where he was lurking, we didn’t know, but the fact that he was here, in Southern Louisiana, was enough to keep us all on edge. Putting it mildly. Since then, Audrey, my best friend, paced the house like a madwoman, cleaning and dusting everything in sight, while Gabe did laps around the outdoor grounds with his iPod on full blast, and Gavin in the kitchen, cooking gourmet feasts for them both. And me? When not training with Gavin, I attempted to write. Everyone was moving, but no one talked about the inevitable—what we would do when it was time to face Gérard.

Pulling myself off the sofa, journal in hand, I wandered over to the main hall, peering out the window to watch Gabe jog past the porch, screaming lyrics from “Bohemian Rhapsody” at the top of his lungs, most likely scaring off any birds and squirrels within a five-mile radius. Audrey flitted around me with the duster, appearing as a fairy sprinkling pixie dust, humming to herself as she did, and Gavin darted from the kitchen to shove a wooden spoon to my lips.

“Taste this sauce, babe. Too lumpy?”

I winced and jutted my head backward, licking my lips to taste the red goo. Human food wasn’t quite my flavor anymore, but from what I could tell, it was fine. For a second, I wished I could crave his signature chicken parmesan again. But the craving for something warm and red quickly cancelled out the thought.