Afterlight - Elle Jasper [58]
My heart was beating so hard and fast, it hurt; my breathing burned my lungs. Inside, I shook, and all I could make myself do was stare at him like some fucking mute and move past him. Rejection in any form sucked; rejection tinged with fear sucked even more, and I wanted to escape the living room, escape Eli’s scrutiny. So twisted inside that I could hear my own heartbeat, feel it beneath the thin cotton of my cami, I hurried to my bedroom. I’d escape the mortification of the moment now; in the morning I’d be cool; his transformation could continue. I still needed to do something to his hair, and I didn’t exactly trust myself with a pair of scissors right now.
I felt his eyes on me as I disappeared up the hall, but even though rooms separated us, I could feel him still on me, his voice inside me, his breath brushing my skin, and I wanted to scream until it vanished. I wanted it all to go away—the Arcoses, the Duprés, everything.
The moment I stepped into my bedroom, I knew nothing would ever be the same again. I stumbled to an abrupt halt as I laid eyes on my brother, standing at the now-open double doors of my balcony. Reaction to action took over, and I moved toward him. “Seth!” I said, my voice cracked and jagged with holes, emotion.
The look in my brother’s eyes froze me; they were feral, frigid, vacant, and terrifying at once. He looked like himself, yet didn’t; he looked . . . starved. Before I could move or say another word, a gust of air blew past me, and Seth lunged viciously toward me, out of control and as fast as lightning. I hadn’t even seen Eli move, but he now had Seth by the throat in a tight grasp, hanging him over the balcony’s edge.
My scream reverberated off the centuries-old bricks of my bedroom.
Part 6
UNDERGROUND
Seeing my brother’s body writhing in a frenzy to escape Eli’s grip—in an attempt to get at me—ripped my heart out and terrified me at the same time. It also kicked in my adrenaline, and I reacted. As scared as I was, I hurled myself at Eli and grabbed his arm. “Don’t hurt him!” I yelled, and pulled hard. “Eli, stop it!”
As if in slow motion, Eli turned toward me, and his beautiful face had grossly distorted into the same elongated, unhinged-jaw, fanged creature Gilles had turned into—only more frightening. I physically flinched, my insides turned frigid, and I froze at the shock of seeing Eli transform, but something snapped inside of me, and I didn’t release his arm. All-white eyes with tiny pupils bored into me, almost challenging me, maybe even a little ashamed. And it was in that very instant that everything became crystal clear. If Seth and I survived, our lives would never, ever be the same.
Over Eli’s shoulder, I glimpsed my brother. Seth didn’t seem to care that a vampire had him by the throat; all he wanted was to get at me, and my unique blood, which now tempted him. Seth’s eyes were wild and hungry, and while his face wasn’t contorted, he clawed and kicked the air as he struggled against Eli’s hold. Deep in his throat, Seth made a noise that . . . didn’t even sound human. Definitely not Seth. I can only explain it as desperate. If I hadn’t known better, I would have thought he was on drugs, and trust me—I knew the look all too well; his long, choppy bangs were sweaty, his skin pasty, his eyes rabid. If only it were drugs.
“Are you sure you want me to let him go?” Eli asked, and his voice, too, was somehow different. Darker. Edgier. Seth growled and struggled harder.
“No,” I answered angrily, and I hated saying that word more than anything. I knew it wasn’t Eli’s fault that Seth was in transition, but I blamed him all the same, and he obviously read my mind, because he narrowed his eyes. “Leave us.”
I stared first at Eli, then at Seth, and my heart ached to hold him, smack the hell out of him, and shake his lanky adolescent body until he snapped out of it. But I knew that wouldn’t happen, and no amount of shaking would change anything. It killed