“We don’t know if you can. Your blood has a negative effect on some beings. Don’t forget I watched you slide a knife into a dragon’s impenetrable hide just by coating the blade with your blood.”
“Siobhán thinks that’s because I was carrying two souls inside me,” she reminded, “and the creatures that were affected by it were demons.”
“That’s a guess. We don’t know, and Elijah has demon blood in him.”
She nodded, knowing that demon blood—werewolf blood—is what had turned some of the Fallen into lycans rather than vampires. “I’ll tell him the risks and let him decide.”
“Think of the reasons he’d be incapacitated in Vashti’s keeping. One, she fucked him up because of the Nikki incident or because she’s looking for Charron’s killers. Two, they’re working together and he got jacked in the process. You’re either reviving him to put up with more torture or reviving him to collude with the vampires against us. Nothing good is going to come out of doing this. In the meantime, you’ll be among the very people who need me weakened to achieve their aims. You’re cutting out my heart and handing it to them.”
“Adrian.” She cupped his cheek in her hand. His jaw was tight beneath her palm, the teeth grinding together. “I would do that and more to save your life.”
He set his hand over hers and squeezed. “My life is nothing without you.”
“Then let me do this for your Sentinels. You’ll be putting their welfare ahead of mine and I think they need to feel like you would, at least under certain circumstances. And what will it say to the lycans that you’ve done this for Elijah? More may come back to you because they won’t be afraid that you’ll kill them on sight. And the vampires…if they ever considered the thought that having me in their possession would weaken your mission, they’ll see that’s not the case. Everyone knows what I mean to you. You’ll make a powerful statement by using me this way.”
He exhaled harshly. “Damn you.”
“You sweet talker, you.” Lindsay reached into the medical supply store shopping bag on the floorboard between her feet and pulled out a blood bag from an open multipack. “Here’s your opportunity to get the Fallen blood Siobhán needs.”
“Can you please stop being so fucking rational about this?”
“Love you,” she retorted. “More than my life. More than anything.”
“You have your cell phone on you?”
She shook her head.
He pulled his out of his pocket and began tweaking the settings on it. “You’ll check in every hour on the hour. I want to hear your voice. Something goes south and you can’t say it aloud, call me Sentinel instead of my name and I’ll know. You miss a call by more than
ten minutes and I’ll raze the desert looking for you. I’ve set the alarm to remind you.”
“I won’t forget.”
Climbing over the seats, he grabbed Vashti’s biceps with enough force to act as a tourniquet and slid the needle attached to the blood bag into her vein.
The vampress jolted awake to find the crimson tip of one of Adrian’s wings curled inward and pressed to her throat—the slightest resistance and she’d lose her head.
“Asshole,” she growled, glaring.
“You have twelve hours,” he said with icy impassivity, watching the bag fill. “You’ll bring her back to me without a scratch or I’ll stake you to a wall and make you watch as I disarticulate every one of the Fallen and shove their severed limbs down their throats. Without Lindsay I’ve got nothing to lose. Do you understand?
Nothing
will stop me.”
“Fine.”
He withdrew the needle, then his wing. “She’s going to call me every hour and you’re going to let her.”
“Jeez, Adrian,” Vash muttered, sitting up. “One would almost think you didn’t trust me.”
“H
ow’s the shoulder?” Vash asked Lindsay as the helicopter lifted gracefully into the scorching desert sky with Raze at the cyclic. The car she’d stolen was whipped with sand scattered by the revolving copter blades, but that probably wouldn’t matter as much to the owner as the dents Adrian had left behind.
“Good as new.” Lindsay’s voice betrayed her irritation. “Are the blindfold and restraints really necessary?”
“I could knock you out,” Vash offered, smiling because the other woman couldn’t see it.
“Gee, you’re so helpful,” Lindsay muttered.
“I try.”
“Doesn’t sound like that worked out too well for Elijah, considering he’s on his deathbed.”
Vash took the hit with clenched fists. She felt guilty and worried, her mind racing ahead of her common sense. She’d risked more than her own hide by going
after Sentinel blood. That she’d done so for a lycan who intended to kill her made no damn sense at all.
Leaning forward, she tapped Raze on the shoulder. “How’s the Alpha doing?”
“How do you think? He’s like a wolf in a bear trap—he’s snarling and snapping at everyone. Not that the lycans seem to mind. They’re tripping over themselves trying to take care of him. I thought they were going to riot when he was unloaded from the chopper, but they calmed down when he told them he was jumped and you saved his ass.” The Fallen captain looked over his shoulder at her. “He won’t stop asking for you. I tried to distract him with a hot little honey named Sarah, but that’s not doing the trick.”
Her lip curled as she remembered the demure lycan who’d been so eager to tend Elijah’s injuries and remain by his side.
Vash fell back into her seat with a heavy exhale, struggling to find her balance. She was an emotional disaster.
The helicopter was landing fifteen minutes later. The moment Raze cut the engine, Vash shoved the door open and hopped out. “Get her. Keep her eyes covered until we’ve got her in a room.”
Her heels clicked across the parking lot and she entered the warehouse to find an industriously working crew. Van Halen blared on the radio as various groups went about unpacking and moving in. Salem stood before the map of contagion, explaining its significance to a mixed group of minions and lycans. Syre stood in the center of the vast space, clearly the orchestrator of activity.
Dressed in sleek black trousers and a gray silk shirt, the Fallen leader was drawing the eye of everyone in the room. Elegant, powerful, compelling. A crazed minion had once called him the antichrist, the dark prince who would mesmerize the world and bring about its destruction. A ridiculous assertion if one knew Syre’s heart at all, but she conceded that his charisma was fierce and seductive enough to bend the wills of even the most contained of individuals. Even Vash, as used to him as she was, was drawn to him inexorably.
“Commander,” she greeted him as she approached. “Your visit to Vegas is an unexpected surprise.”
“An appreciated one?” he queried smoothly, his whiskey-warm gaze searching her features.
“Depends on whether or not you’re here for the fun of it or because you think I need a hand.”
“Would the latter be so terrible?”
She sighed. “I’m not fragile.”
“You don’t like to think so.” He held up a hand when her mouth opened in protest. “Fragility isn’t always a weakness, Vashti. It happens to be one of your greatest strengths.”
“What a crock.” Her mouth twisted ruefully. “Sir.”
He shook his head at her, then froze, his gaze locked on something over her shoulder.
“Lindsay,” she said, knowing without looking. Damn it, she’d been so scrambled over Elijah, she had forgotten Syre would be present to see the mortal shell that once housed his daughter’s reincarnated soul.
“What have you done?”
“No more than Adrian allowed me to do. Lindsay offered to come when she learned Elijah was injured.”
“Why?” he said tightly. “What purpose does her presence serve?”
“She’s a Sentinel blood source, in lieu of Adrian—” She gasped when Syre cut off her breath with a crushing hand wrapped around her throat. Her boots dangled two feet off the floor.
His eyes burned into hers, his fury stunning and frightening. “You went after
Adrian
?”
“H-Helena…actually,” she managed, fighting the urge to claw at the constriction that impeded her ability to speak.
He threw her thirty feet across the room at Salem, who caught her deftly. The warehouse fell into silence as someone hastily shut off the stereo; then the growls of agitated lycans rumbled through the air like war drums.
Vash struggled free of Salem’s hold, embarrassed at being so publicly chastised and worried about Syre’s cracked control. He didn’t use physical force as a rule; he didn’t need to. He could mesmerize like a snake charmer to get his way.
She
was his fist. At least she had been until now.
Brow arched, Raze had stopped his progress across the warehouse floor halfway between the main door and Syre, his hand gripping Lindsay’s elbow. She was still bound at the wrists and blindfolded…by her choice. Her vampire strength could easily break the rope. She could lift her hand and push the blindfold up at any time. Her continuing cooperation was starting to make Vash suspicious.
“Where’s Elijah?” the blonde asked sharply. “I want to see him. That was the deal.”
The lycans responded with low rumbles. The ones who were seated rose to their feet, while those who stood sidled closer.
Unsure of whether their support lay with Lindsay or Elijah, Vash caught Raze’s gaze. “Take her to him.”
Raze glanced at Syre, who stood unmoving for a long moment before giving a curt nod. All heads turned to track Lindsay’s progress. The smell of fear became thick and oppressive.
No one in the room doubted that her well-being was tied to theirs. Adrian’s wrath was something no one wished to incite.
When she disappeared through one of the office doorways lining the rear wall, the room as a whole seemed to exhale in a rush.
Syre pivoted and disappeared behind another door. The latch engaged with a quiet click, but the sound struck everyone like a gunshot report.
“What the fuck were you thinking?” Salem snapped behind her.
She shoved a hand through her hair. “I wasn’t.”
The tension in the room was so brittle it scraped along her skin. Making a beeline for the locker room and a much-needed shower, Vash fled the consequences of her inexplicable actions.
Elijah stirred from a half-conscious state when the door to his makeshift infirmary opened. “Vash?” he croaked through a dry throat.
“No.”
He stilled, his nostrils flaring. Opening gritty eyes, he tried to blink through the fog of pain. “Lindsay?”
“Hi, El,” she said softly, lifting his hand from the bed and gripping it. “You look like shit.”
Fuck. Had the Sentinels rooted them out so quickly? He pushed the concern aside, finding he cared less about that than Lindsay’s welfare. He lifted his other hand to scrub at his eyes. Trying again to see, he looked toward her voice and found worried vampire irises glowing down at him.
“Jesus. You
are
a vamp,” he managed, taking some comfort in the fact that he smelled Adrian all over her. The Sentinel really hadn’t turned his back on her when she was returned to him as something different from what she’d been when she was taken.
“Yeah, imagine that.” Releasing him, she picked up the water cup on the table beside the bed, twisting the straw around to offer it to him.
He drank deeply and gratefully, soothing his parched throat. When he’d emptied the cup, his head fell heavily into the pillow. “What are you doing here?”
“I’m overdue for blood donation and I heard you were in line for a transfusion.”
His chest tightened as the import of her words sank in. “Lindsay…”
She glanced over her shoulder at Raze, then offered a small smile to Sarah. “Would you two give us a minute, please?”
Both Raze and Sarah hesitated.
“It’s okay,” Elijah said, hating that he was so weak the others feared leaving him alone. “She’s a friend.”
Once the door shut, he studied Lindsay’s face. Her hair was still styled in short blond curls that framed a breathtaking face. Delicate brows and dark lashes framed eyes that had once been chocolate brown but were now the honey hue of a vampire. Her generous mouth was curved in an affectionate smile that revealed no fangs at present, but he could imagine them there.
“Kinda weird, right?” she said wryly. “I’m still getting used to it.”
“I was told you wanted the Change. Was I lied to?” Nothing would save Syre if that was the case. Elijah would kill him the moment he was strong enough to do so.
“It was the only way.” She settled into the seat by the bed. “There were two people inside me—two souls—and one of them had to go. That’s why I had that crazy inhuman speed as a mortal. That’s also what I need to talk to you about.”
He listened to Lindsay’s explanation of the possible hazards to accepting her blood before he asked, “How the hell did you get here? Where’s Adrian? How did you find me?”
“It was Vashti who brought me.” All the warmth left her face. “What did she do to you, El? If she’s just going to hurt you again, healing you isn’t going to be enough. You have to tell me what I’m dealing with here.”
“Vash found you?” His eyes closed on a shaky exhalation. Christ. “Why?”
“She came after Sentinel blood. She said she needed it to save you, but she wouldn’t tell me why you were hurt in the first place.” She gestured toward the door. “I smell other lycans out there. Are they using you to control the others?”
Fuck…He’d do just about anything to not disappoint Lindsay. Anything except lie to her. “She didn’t do this to me, Linds. We were working together and I got jumped by a pack of vamps. She tried to get to me, but she couldn’t.”
“Working together,” she repeated. She slumped back into her seat, her gaze stark and sad. “What about Micah’s death? Was that part of some plan between you two?”
“No! For fuck’s sake. You know me better than that. We’re working together in spite of Micah’s murder, not because of it.”
She looked him straight in the eyes, then nodded, as if she saw the truth of what he said on his face. “Tell me honestly. Are we enemies now? Are you gunning for the Sentinels?”
“Never. I’m just trying to save as many lycan and mortal lives as possible.” He thought of the wraith ambush and a chill moved through him. What kind of world would they be living in if such attacks were commonplace? “The vamp infection we saw in Hurricane is spreading. Vash is trying to stop it.”