Poison Fruit

“No, nothing happened.” On impulse, I dropped my shield. “I want you to take it away.”

He blinked at me. “I beg your pardon?”

“These feelings.” I gestured at myself. “These fucking feelings! I don’t want them! It’s too much.”

Stefan’s expression changed. “Ah. Your feelings for Officer Fairfax.”

“It’s what you wanted, isn’t it?” I asked him. “You said you could help me. Well, I’m coming to you for help, Stefan.”

“No.” He shook his head. “Not this way.”

“Why not?” It fueled the anger I was barely keeping in check. “Hell, you don’t have any problems doing it on your terms! There’s too much at stake. I can’t afford to be knotted up with jealousy over some stupid school-girl crush right now, so I’m asking you to take it away!”

The overhead lights in Stefan’s office flickered. “No,” he said in a steely tone. “Even if it could be done in a lasting manner, if you and I are going to be together, it will be because you chose me over the wolf, Daisy. Not because I tampered with your emotions.”

Daughter—my father’s voice rumbled in my mind—there is another way. All that you desire could be yours. You have but to ask.

Oh, God, not this, not now. A rill of fury ran through me. I pressed my knuckles against my temples. “Shut up! Go away! This isn’t fair!”

“Daisy, you’re being unreasonable,” Stefan said in a calmer tone. “You can’t ask me—”

The padlocked trunk I’d envisioned was straining at the seams, ready to burst. I hurled it at Stefan like a soldier lobbing a live grenade, shouting at him. “In that case, I’m not asking!”

His pupils snapped open. Fully open.

It happened so fast, there should have been a sound—an explosion, a thunderclap. Instead there was only silence as Stefan went from controlled to ravening in the space of a single heartbeat. For a split second, I wasn’t afraid. Purged of the roiling emotions I’d locked away, for a split second I felt peaceful and empty.

It didn’t last.

Stefan’s eyes were like black holes, all trace of iris swallowed by his immense pupils. I thought I’d looked into the abyss before, but I was wrong. Dead wrong. This was the abyss. This was Stefan with all his humanity stripped away, until nothing was left but the endless hunger.

“Oh, you stupid, stupid girl,” he said in a soft, terrifying voice, slamming me bodily against the door to his office. “Look at what you’ve done.”

And then the fear came: great, crashing waves of fear rushing in to fill the emptiness. Holding me in place, Stefan drank it in with parted lips, wave upon wave. The earth tilted on its axis and I was falling into him, falling into the blackness of that bottomless void. Deeper and deeper, with every pulse of fear, every surge of helpless rage, feeling myself emptied into him, an awful hollowness blossoming inside of me. The vacant faces of the father and daughter that Cooper had drained on Halloween flashed before my eyes, creating a fresh wave of terror.

It didn’t matter. Whatever I felt, it only fed Stefan. The more I struggled, the blood pounding in my ears, the stronger he grew. Belatedly, I tried to raise a shield, but I’d waited too long. I was weak and couldn’t focus. My fingers scrabbled ineffectually at my messenger bag, trying in vain to unbuckle it and reach for dauda-dagr, but I might as well have been reaching for the moon.

Stefan was right. I was a stupid, stupid girl.

And he was going to drain me. The thought made me feel sick with fear . . . and then that passed, too.

“Stop it,” I whispered. “Stefan, please!”

He pressed closer against me, his face looming above mine, and smiled a terrible smile. “I can’t.”

I closed my eyes. I couldn’t bear to watch him do it. And then that emotion vanished like the others, the hollowness inside me growing.

If Cooper hadn’t yanked open Stefan’s office door, uttering a steady stream of Irish-accented invective, I don’t know what would have happened. A pair of wiry arms grabbed me from behind as I fell, hauling me backward. Opening my eyes, I saw Stefan’s gaze shift off me. It felt like I’d been released from the gravitational pull of a black hole seconds before crossing the point of no return.

“Cooper.” Stefan’s eyes glittered ominously. “Get out.”

“You’ll thank me for this in the morning, big man,” Cooper retorted. “At least I sure as feckin’ hell hope so. Rafe!”

I didn’t actually see what happened when Stefan’s second lieutenant pushed past Cooper and me, but I heard the distinctive crackling sound of a Taser, accompanied by a furious bellow of pain, more crackling, a thud, and then the sound of a door being slammed shut and a chair wedged under the doorknob.

“Get her the fuck out of here!” Rafe shouted.

“Go.” Cooper spun me around and shoved me in the direction of the exit. “Move it, Daisy! Before you set the whole lot of us off!”

If any of the Outcast in the Wheelhouse had attacked me, I would have been easy prey. It took all my concentration to move my feet, putting one in front of the other, stumbling toward the far door. I might as well have been a hamstrung deer, leaving a trail of blood spoor behind me. Beside me, Cooper exhorted me with curses, his voice filled with fear.

The other ghouls watched with avid eyes, but no one attacked. Maybe due to fear of Stefan’s wrath, or maybe I’d gone past the point of being easy prey. Maybe I was little more than a picked-over carcass by now.