reasonable

”Just close out the tab, thanks.”

The bartender set down the bottle he’d picked up again in offer of another drink – what would have been his fifth. Before he’d killed the arsehole quack in DC it would’ve had the sharper edges softening at least. It had rarely been more than that, he’d seen Malcolm incoherent too many times to want to stumble down that same reeking slope towards alcoholism and insanity. Now it would’ve probably taken half the bottle to get him to the same state. The healing was a double-edged sword – a bummer when you wanted the numbness to set in, useful in not getting yourself pulled over by the cops when you got back in your car.

That had been the quack’s curse. An addiction to the bottle and the pain meds he over prescribed to the frozen faced DC socialites who dreaded aging more than they did death itself. Despite his reputation they’d continued clambering onto his table. If one of two didn’t make it off of their alive, then so be it. The police commissioner with a face so full of botox he looked like a mannequin was willing to have his people look the other way, as long as he didn’t need to find himself a new surgeon. Fortunately, the same rule applied when your surgeon went missing and there was too great a chance of your little secret coming out so you quietly closed the missing person’s case three weeks after the doc vanished on a rare weekend off.

Grey tucked the card the bartender pushed back towards him into his wallet and slipped it back into the inside pocket of his jacket. In the end the doc’s life had been somewhat worthwhile, he’d completed the healer sacrifices and had given the power that had kept him alive long enough to reach Mystic Falls and find Destiny.

Worry pinched at his face as he headed out of the hotel in Charlottesville. Nothing in his life had ever been easy, the poison that had crept through his family for generations had made sure of that. The light that had radiated from Destiny when they’d met had seemed like a promise that the darkness would shred and disappear for him. He’d be the last generation of the Maddox family that had to be scarred the way he had been. The death of the druid should have guaranteed that. Curses were tied to blood, they didn’t last when the heartbeat that pumped that blood around was finally stopped. It should’ve been true for both of them.

He tugged his phone from his pocket as he got in the car, considered calling to tell her he was on his way home, but would she just see that as a promise that they could still go and do what she’d wanted? After a moment he got in and started it up. He wasn’t going to take the risk. With Tanner and the druid both gone they needed to slow it down, to plan what was coming next instead of rushing on, leaving themselves vulnerable when Leah took notice of that lack of focus and finally showed her ugly face again. One last threat to go – the worst of them all – and then they could actually rest.

The drive back did nothing to calm the twitchiness that had been with him for days. Grey shifted restlessly, his grip on the wheel twitchy, his gaze snapping around at the other cars on the road, at every flicker of movement. Paranoia had started to bleed back in and he hated that it was still there. He puffed out a long breath, trying to let it bleed off before he finally crossed into Mystic Falls. If he went home with the scent of clinging to him Destiny would pick up on it and it wasn’t a feedback loop he wanted to get either of them caught in.

Hoarding still surrounded the lot behind the hotel, the construction work on the below ground parking lot grinding on under the weight of the regulations the Founder’s Council was piling on. It was as though they were afraid that the work would disturb a few of their skeletons. The irony of it hadn’t been lost on him. Grey pulled up outside the hotel, scanning the street before he forced the tension to ease from his shoulders and he looked up. Light spilled from their apartment, Destiny was home and not out on the streets tracking down their next kill at least.

As he’d decided with Catia, there was a new night clerk behind the counter. He nodded to his boss, his gaze immediately going back to his computer screen – he’d been well trained at least. Grey headed up in the elevator, the knot in his stomach tightening up and off with the beat of his heart. It eased as the doors slid open and he heard the oncoming rush of Berlioz from the back of the apartment and the water hissing into the sink.

Dropping down on one knee, Grey scritched under the dog’s jaw, behind his ears, half smiling at the way his eyes slitted in pleasure. Flower probably wouldn’t be far behind, these days it seemed as though the two of them were joined at the hip. The way he and Destiny were – usually. He straightened up as she shut the tap off. ”Hey,” he murmured back soft as he approached. It didn’t take the effort he’d almost anticipated to smile for her, it was always there, even when everything inside of him felt as though it was twitching and popping like the power cable that had brought them together in the first place.

”Don’t worry,” he murmured, pressing that smile against her lips. His hands were slipping towards her hips when she pulled away and that worry rushed into the spot Destiny had occupied a moment before. ”Long, and … pointless.” The smile was fading, the sun of his mood sliding back behind the dark clouds that had scudded across it far too often in the last couple of weeks. Bleach had always reminded him of one thing and the scent wrinkled his nose now, turning his stomach. ”Looks like yours was busier. Did Flower have an accident?” Oh, he knew she hadn’t. Her and Berlioz were both house trained and she’d been descented.

He approached slowly, the sick feeling rising again, tinged with the taste of the whiskey he’d spent the evening drinking while he was in his ‘meeting’. ”You didn’t wait,” Grey said hoarsely as he frowned down into the bucket. ”I told you we could do it later. There’s no rush with any of this.” But it was as though Destiny had gotten the taste for it and now in a few days apparently wasn’t fast enough to satisfy her.

Tagged: DESTINY BACCARI * Word Count: 1140

If he’d been paying enough attention he would’ve seen it coming – now and then. Leah had been like an unexpected storm on the horizon, racing towards him with hatred flashing in her eyes and those claws slicing through the air to try and gut him. He’d almost been too slow, the pieces of the mental puzzle not coming together into a recognisable picture until he was already bleeding. Then Grey found himself acting on instinct, throwing the sister he hadn’t known he’d had up until then away from him. Killing her. Of course, Leah hadn’t been done. She’d come back desperate to eviscerate his life again, their life.

He was supposed to be faster with Destiny, the light in her changing him. It had shown him more about himself than he’d seen before. The dark still clung to him like cobwebs, but it wasn’t supposed to be doing the same to Destiny. She was all about bringing the light to them. They’d killed her fucking bastard of an ex to do that, to make sure that darkness couldn’t rear up and swallow her again. They’d killed him for the power that would allow Destiny to protect herself, to protect ... any kids they might have in the future. Regret burned through them both for not being able to do that with Petyr, but they were doing something about it.

Together.

They’d been doing most things that way since the night he’d screwed up and given Leah the opportunity to come for the only people he loved. Apparently not anymore though. Grey watched her grab what she’d used to clean up the sacrifice she’d done right here. The hypocrisy to it bothering him wasn’t exactly lost on him, but it was diluted, the same way the bloody water in the bucket was.

Pale eyes, lent a grey pall by the concern that wove through him. They’d been partners in this from the day he’d started training her, but now Destiny seemed to be chewing through that tether, wanting to stretch it without considering that she might end up hanging herself with it when rushing fucked things up again. ”We could’ve started them in a week or two. After you’ve got used to the last lot of gifts. They don’t all have to be done now.” He’d been terrified that the pack were gonna find him and rip him to pieces, but still he’d taken his time. You planned, you scattered the bodies across time and states so that you didn’t leave a trail behind for anyone to follow. You were smart about it and he’d thought she was going to be just that.

Instead of smart, Destiny was being sharp. Grey could’ve sworn that she’d been the one growing claws, reopening the wounds that they’d worked to close together. Drawing in a measured breath, he dragged a hand over his mouth. His fault. The words she’d never spoken. An echo of those the druid had thrown at him when he’d finally stripped the curse away from them – or thought he had. The itch had been back lately, in the back of his mind. Warning him about Leah, about being complacent about only having one thing left that could taken and he was protecting it, protecting her.

”No rush other than Leah threatening you,” he said hoarsely, his words ripping over hers. ”It was before we started to work together. That’s not us anymore.” Because Leah had made sure that it wasn’t. If Petyr was here none of this would’ve happened. They’d have had no need to bolster their defences this way.

It was amazing how three little words could hit like a slap. Grey flinched as they struck, dealt out by the one person he never expected to hear them from. Killed my son, as though his blood hadn’t been in Petyr’s veins, as though his curse hadn’t been what had damned him in the first place. ”You want to take that risk? Just dropping bodies all around here so someone’ll find out and make you stop? This isn’t just about you paying me back. This is dangerous, you get that don’t you?” There was an edge to his voice that he hated as much as he did what he’d brought to her door. The tarnish on all that was bright, the pain that he’d caused that brought tears to her eyes now.

Reaching out for her, Grey closed his fingers around her wrist, trying to draw Destiny to him. There was no guarantee she’d come. His refusal to go and pick someone up for this like it was a cheap thrill not something life changing hurting her again. "We wait on the next one. We let the air clear. Do you get it Destiny? Why we can’t keep doing this?” The rush had always been Malcolm’s way of doing everything, charging at it all without a second thought of the consequences. Leaping into bed with the Alpha’s wife, chasing something stupid, not caring that his wife was at home, already struggling with how cracked her was. Blind – and he wasn’t gonna be that anymore.

Tagged: DESTINY BACCARI * Word Count: 854

It’s your fault. It’s always your fault.

Malcolm had hissed the words at him a dozen times. The face that must have been handsome at one time to have seduced not only his mum but the Alpha’s wife as well, twisting into that sneer of disgust. Madness glimmering in the flat blue eyes that were now streaked with broken blood vessels. His fault, like he’d asked to – or deserved to have – been born to a madman and the woman he’d broken with that insanity. No kid deserved to hear it, especially when they already suspected that the cursed thing that spoke through his father was already in him.

It had taken Destiny to show him that his dad had been wrong and Destiny to make it clear that he’d just been deluding himself all this time. No matter how he pointed the finger at Leah – who wasn’t blameless in this either – he was the one who’d brought all of this into their home, into their family. If he’d done the job right the first time and he’d made sure his sister had stayed dead, if he’d got that cord around the darach’s neck before Leah had taken their son, if he hadn’t brought that dumb bitch back here. He could choke himself on those regrets now but it wouldn’t change a thing.

As though the garotte had snapped tight around his own neck, Grey felt his voice stick in his throat. His fault. The words followed her correction like punctuation, the stab of a full stop right in his heart. ”She’d never have stopped with me,” he muttered, his voice gravelly. Once she’d realised some part of him remained in Destiny she would’ve done the same over again. He might not have been alive to be tortured by the loss of the only people he’d ever loved if she’d killed him first, but she’d have wanted to stamp out any part of him all the same. They had paid because they were his.

He should’ve been able to hold his son, to make those promises to keep him safe straight to him. He should’ve been able to see Destiny in their little boy’s face and feel that same light radiating from him instead of the dark that he brought to everything. Leah had made sure that wouldn’t happen and now she was costing him Destiny too. Grey shifted uneasily on his feet, dragging his hands through his hair and gripping, stopping dead when those words had struck. Destiny’s sadness, her grief, her hurt had cut at him before, but this was someone he didn’t recognise standing in front of him, looking like he’d blinked instead of flinching at the cruelty of the words he’d never imagined those rosebud lips could shape.

”You’re obviously not,” Grey said, shaking his head at her. She’d been the one to bring it up, you didn’t do that if the thing you were mentioning wasn’t still lodged under your skin like a splinter, slowly festering. All those professions that she understood, that she got him, had they all been lies? ”Would you rather I said yes and then fucked up his life the way Malcolm did mine?” he asked, his voice flat, the tremors that wanted to run through it held back. ”You said it like it was justification for you killing someone in our home now. That puts me in the centre of it Destiny, right here with you.” Tension crackled in his voice for just a moment, his index finger trembling faintly – with stress, with the anger he’d always tried to bite back around her – stabbing down at the newly cleaned floor.

There’d always been a risk, hadn’t there? Doing all of this in places his name was so blatantly attached to, but he’d always been cautious. The only person who’d ever seen a trace of what he’d done here had been Catia and she’d sworn to never whisper a word of it. Leah and maybe others had suspected enough to tell that son of a bitch reporter about it, but even then the story seemed to have sunk without a trace. It meant he couldn’t truly condemn Destiny for it, no matter how sloppy this felt.

Could he still feel her light radiating through her as he grabbed her wrist? Grey frowned at her as she frowned at his touch, then cursed as she pulled free of him with those hissed words. He didn’t let her back away, stepping in instead. ”Then don’t act like one,” he snapped before he could take those words back. As though she wanted to take him apart for it, she sucker punched him again, another swing that went straight for the gut. ”We did what we thought we had to then. There was no way we could’ve known what she’d do.” Oh, but he should’ve done. Hadn’t he always done everything possible to protect himself from the pack? Why the fuck had he let it be different with Leah? He’d got soft. That was why.

The man he’d been before she’d found him on the street wouldn’t have felt the rake of a single one of those words through his heart, but now he did and every failure that stacked up in their wake weighed heavier on that torn flesh. Why hadn’t he moved before? Had he believed that they didn’t have to, or had he just been deluding himself about Malcolm being wrong? He’d tried to teach Destiny the best parts of what he’d learned, including how to stand up for herself. She was doing that now and it left Grey puffing out a breath. ”Do you mean do I wanna be like him? Controlling everything you did, trying to carve my claim into you?” Tanner had broken her down bit by bit, leaving a scarred woman behind but he’d been so proud to see Destiny moving past that, becoming who she was always meant to be.

”No.” A single word bitten out with a bullet like punch.

His muscles flexed beneath his skin as though he was turning on her, swinging, letting out the rage he’d never been able to let loose on her before. Grey didn’t move though, he looked back at those tear filled eyes and felt something inside of him tearing open afresh. Destiny’s hands were in that wound, twisting and clawing at his heart until he could barely breathe. ”Last time wasn’t enough?” he asked, remembering the way Destiny had come to him after she’d killed Leah’s boy toy’s brother – the wrong man. Power had sung through her, but it hadn't stopped them from losing Petyr. Leah had taken him from them, and the sacrifice had done nothing to prevent it. "I wanted him from the moment I knew he existed. I wanted him more than anything I ever had before. I wanted both of you.” But now Petyr was gone and the Destiny he thought there’d been was slipping away.

Tears stung at his eyes as he took a half step back, shaking his head as he tried to settle all of this in his head. The Destiny she had been before wouldn’t have done any of this without his permission, but perhaps both of them had been twisted into shapes the other couldn’t see. He’d ended up blind and now he was questioning everything he’d seen. Had he screwed up with the darach the same way he had with Leah? Was the son of a bitch back, twisting things from a distance? As though he was lurking outside the window, Grey darted a glance aside, his shoulders tightening as he dragged his hands through his hair and gripped the sides of his head. ”Were you even gonna tell me about this or was me coming home when I did just some unlucky accident?” he asked through gritted teeth. Who knew – maybe she’d have left him the sacrifice’s head on his pillow like a cat bringing home the creature it’d caught as some sort of gift.

Tagged: DESTINY BACCARI * Word Count: 1331