Damned if I Don't (The Harker Trilogy Book 2) Read Online Free Page B

but I don’t want him going in by himself.
    Jude spears me with his clear, blue-eyed gaze. “Look, I don’t want to go, but you’ll get yourself killed if you’re with me,” he says evenly. “I will take you if you want, Edie, but I wouldn’t ask this of you if I didn’t think this was for the best.”
    For the best.
    In the back seat, Carl snickers, which makes my chest ache.
    “And what if…?” I manage, although my voice trails off.
    Jude puts a hand to my cheek and caresses it. “Everything will be all right,” he whispers. “Do you trust me?”
    I bite my lip, not wanting to let him out of my sight, but knowing that he has a point.
    “Fifteen minutes,” I tell him finally. “You have fifteen minutes before I go in there with my pyrokinesis lit up like a fucking atom bomb.” We all know what happens when I go nuclear like that. I think I’m feeling adrenaline or I’m high off the pain again, because it feels like I’m floating on a cloud. Lightheaded.
    He chuckles. “You’re always ready to blast everything.”
    “If it’s to protect the ones I–” love “–care about, I’m willing to do anything.”
    His lip piercing lifts up in a smile, catching my choice of words.
    “I’ll be back. Just stay here, and…” He looks stricken as he looks back at my cat, whose howls have gotten louder since we stopped. “Can you stop your cat from crying like that?”
    “She’s unhappy.”
    “She’s making me unhappy.”
    Vampires and cats. Never getting along since 5,000 B.C.
    “Carl,” Jude says, as he opens the door. “You watch after her.”
    He gets out of the car and closes the door before my cousin can respond, and we’re left alone in a darkened car. I watch as Jude turns a corner. Then he’s gone. This is the first time that Carl and I have been alone since…
    Since I killed his mother .
    “Carl…”
    “Don’t,” he mutters. “I don’t want to hear it.”
    I let out a breath and look out the window. What do you say to your cousin when you killed his mother less than twenty-four hours ago? I’m actually surprised he hasn’t lunged across the seats at me. I remember the pain of losing my mother. Of losing Meghan.
    And now I’m the source of his pain.
    I mentally go back through my memories of Aunt Tessa, trying to see if there had been any indication that she was working for Anthony. Meghan may have warned me that I was being betrayed by someone I trusted—even if she didn’t know who it was—but I should have seen the signs.
    I should have known when I met Meghan in the Void for the first time and Aunt Tessa followed me. She invaded our privacy.
    I should have known when the wards at her house weren’t working against vampires. There never were any wards, because she was working with the enemy.
    I should have known when she was all too eager to follow the progression of my sickness. She was keeping tabs on me for Anthony.
    I’d been blind to all of these signs. I trusted her. We all did. And she sold us out in return.
    “I have to take care of my son,” she’d told me. She’d had reason enough to believe that we weren’t going to win, that I was going to fail, and she’d needed to protect her son.
    Tessa had been there all of my life. Growing up, she and Carl lived less than twenty minutes away from our house. She had been a fixture in my life, someone who watched me as I grew up, babysat me, and helped to raise me like she raised her own son. She was of Harker blood, far removed of course, but she was family. She was my aunt, and I trusted her.
    Oh fuck.
    Fighting my tears, I dig in my purse, trying to locate a pack of cigarettes, except that’s really hard to do with one hand. Unzipping it, fumbling with the insides while my stump of a left arm moves uselessly. I try to shift stuff away, but my purse is one of those big, shapeless bags that fits anything and everything. I use it to carry my stakes, hiding them from prying glances or questions, but it also means