Bring Me to Life by Emma Weylin Page B

her chin so she had to look at him. “You’re going to survive this. I’ll find a way to kill the vampire, and then you’re going to move on with your life. You will find happiness again.”
    Her face twisted and she jerked out of his grip. “You have no right to tell me what to do with my life. You’re dead.”
    He clenched his teeth. “Yeah, I got that memo, but there is no reason for you to continue on this destructive path.”
    “Isn’t there?” she demanded as she stalked along the side of the bed. “From where I’m standing it’s the exact thing I need to be doing. After everything I’ve done I sure as hell won’t find those pearly gates, but I can kill demons. I don’t think your boss is going to throw that away.”
    He stared at her in horror and said the first stupid thing that popped into his mouth. “I believed the worst in you.”
    “I wasn’t strong enough to get past being enthralled for you,” she countered.
    “Goddamn it, Bryna! The objective here is to keep you alive,” he yelled.
    She cringed back. Then her back snapped straight. “What’s the point? Without you my life goes to shit.”
    “The point is that you’ll be alive!” He dragged a hand through his dark hair.
    She knotted her hands into fists. “To what? Whore myself for some grand cause or another?”
    Vincent hated the stark reality moments more than he hated white walls with gold trim. “You’re not a whore.”
    Her brow shot up. “You’re the one who called it last night.”
    He’d take a sucker punch gladly before he had to deal with the truths of her life. And the really screwed-up part was he was feeling guilty because he knew beyond anything her life would have been so much better if he’d lived. “Bryna, don’t, please. I was being a bastard, and I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said it.”
    “But you did,” she said softly. “And apologizing doesn’t change the things I’ve done or the person I’ve become. I’m sorry.”
    No! He wasn’t going to accept this. There had to be a way to get his Bryna back. There just had to be. This couldn’t be where it ended for her, not when she’d been the one to hold on. He was beginning to understand what Felix wanted. There was no Earth Ending Game. Whatever was going to happen with Bryna’s death, the apocalypse wouldn’t be for another few years in her timeline. Felix had picked the point in her life where she was either do or die, and apparently, not even three of the very best had been able to keep her from dying.
    He laughed, a low manic sound. Felix was expecting a miracle of love. That somehow, he’d be able to see her again, pull his head out of his ass—which he had—and find some way to give Bryna back her will to live. There was one small problem with this theory. Vincent knew if the situation were reversed, he’d have slit his own throat in an attempt to be with Bryna forever.
    “Vincent?” Her voice hitched up in panic.
    He walked over to her, hooked his arm around her, and crushed her into him. She stiffened and then molded her perfect little body against him. He dropped his head down to rest against hers. There had to be a way to do this without fucking her up more. It was his job to save her life. Goddamn it. If anyone deserved every ounce of his sweat, blood, and tears, it was Bryna. He’d never been in hell. That was a place on Earth and she was entrenched in it. This had to stop. Fuck the apocalypse! Fuck Felix! He was going to find a way to thwart the system and give Bryna the life she should have had all along, even if that meant he had to go back in time and prevent her from ever meeting him.
    *
    “Vincent?” Bryna whispered. He was shaking. The rage in him came off in waves. If his arm went any tighter around her, she’d suffocate. “Vincent,” she whispered again.
    A trembling hand stroked down her hair. “I’ll find a way to fix this.”
    “You can’t. Let’s just focus on the vampire and use the time we have left to