Read Online Dalton, Tymber - Brimstone Blues [Brimstone Vampires 2] (Siren Publishing Classic) by Tymber Dalton - Free Book Online

token of my love and faith and devotion to you. We always knew this day would come, although I never realized it would seem as if the years flew so quickly. I wish I could have more time with you, but please find someone else, love again. It is what I wish. One day, in spirit, we will be together again. All my love—Your Catydid.
    “She died of cancer.” Matthias startled Taz. She hadn’t heard him in the doorway.
    Taz closed the journal, nodding. Rafe had shown her at dinner.
    “She was a beautiful woman, outside and within. Losing her nearly killed him. With—” He stopped. “It was quick when my wife died. Rafe watched Cassandra slowly waste away. At the end…”
    Rafe had shown her that, too. She was wracked with pain, and Rafe released her from life the way only he could—painlessly, and with love.
    Matthias’ voice sounded so low she strained to listen. “I don’t know if I could have done what he did. Everyone saw the prankster, the clown, the irrepressible flirt. He was the strongest man I’ve ever known. She didn’t want to kill herself, but he’d found the poisons she collected. He wouldn’t let her take her own life for fear of what it would to do her soul.”
    “I thought you said what we are isn’t supernatural?”
    “Rafael was raised Catholic,” Matthias said. “Back then, he hadn’t yet learned enough of life to realize there is more to the hereafter than the church’s opinion. At the end she begged him to let her take her life. She wasn’t religious, obviously, so she didn’t have the same reservations. She just wanted to be out of pain. He was torn because he couldn’t stand to see her suffering, and asked her if she wanted him to take her pain away. She knew what he meant and finally she agreed to let him do it. She didn’t want to at first, afraid for what it would do to him. It got to the point where she hurt so bad she couldn’t take it anymore.”
    Taz thought back to the night she saved Matthias, after he nearly died from his fight with the Other. Even then, before they had an emotional connection, the feel of his lips on her wrist as she let him feed, how immediately the pain of slicing her flesh open was replaced by mind-blowing pleasure—
    She shivered just thinking about it. All Rafael would have had to do was keep going, keep feeding, not stop until she was gone. She would have died painlessly. On the contrary, it would have probably felt like the best thing in the world, the best feeling in months, no doubt. To die like that, feeling pleasure in the arms of the man she loved—well, there were worse deaths.
    Much worse.
    “And that’s what nearly drove him crazy?” she asked.
    Matthias nodded. “He took her life. She wanted it that way, and he understood it was the kindest thing. It’s not like today. We still lived in Britain then. There were no doctors or medicine. There was rum and whiskey and for those lucky ones who escaped arrest and torture as witches, herbal remedies. I got there just before she died. I had to stop him from killing himself. I knew from my own experience if I could get him through the first few months that he had a chance of making it.”
    “There’s nothing else he could have done? Turned her or something?”
    “We’ve talked about this. We’re born this way, it’s genetics. It’s not a bacteria or a virus that can be passed to others. She was human, with none of the line in her. You must have the correct genetic markers to heal from feeding.”
    She wasn’t ready to ask Matthias more about his wife yet. That was one area she didn’t want to probe. It was his private pain and memories, and the woman was well over five hundred years dead, so it wasn’t like she felt jealous about it.
    She caught Matthias’ smile. Dammit, she’d been broadcasting her thoughts again. She needed to get a handle on that.
    “Thank you, darling.” He kissed her hand, squeezing it. “I’m finished. Whenever you’re ready.”
    “Can I have a few