Fangs And Fame (34 page)

Trey

“CHASE?” I SAID INTO my phone.

“
We’ve got them,” Chase said before I could even ask. “They’re both alive.”

I had no words as relief washed over me, somewhat quelling the burning in my chest.
“They found them,” I assured Aurora quickly. The combination of surprise and relief in her expression mirrored my own, and I wrapped my arms around her. “Tell me you got out of here,” I said to Chase.

“
Not exactly,” Chase stammered. “We’re on your bus. Doc Fang is here with us.”

“
I’m on my way,” I hung up and took Aurora’s hand. We made our way through the backstage maze together, moving as quick as our abilities allowed whenever we reached an empty corridor. Tytus stood guard at the bus’s door, and he opened it as soon as he saw us coming. Aurora went in ahead of me and I followed her onboard. Chase and Jonas were sitting on the leather sofas, looking more worried than I would have liked to see. Their heads shot up when we walked in.

“
Where are they?” I asked, glancing toward the back of the bus in anticipation.

Chase got to his feet and moved toward me.
“The doctor’s with him right now,” he said slowly, squeezing my shoulder.

I narrowed my eyes at him.
“He’s okay, though. Right?” I asked, desperately wishing I could read his mind and get some answers.

“
Kacie’s fine,” I heard Jonas telling Aurora. “She’s more than a little freaked, but otherwise she’s fine.”

“
Tell me he’s okay,” I demanded of Chase, but he just lowered his gaze, unable to meet my eyes.

I felt Aurora touch my arm. The uncertainty in her eyes as I spun to look at her was more than enough to send me over the edge. I moved past her like lightning, not stopping until I was standing beside the large bed she and I shared. Kacie sat on the edge of the bed, silent tears staining her cheeks as she held my best friend
’s hand. O’Shea lie on the bed, lifeless and pale. He looked like death. Yesterday’s cuts and bruises were nothing compared to the damage that had been inflicted by way of the two jagged holes on the side of his throat. His chest moved ever so slightly, evidence that he was at least breathing, even if the attempt was shallow and labored. Stanislav’s guys had drained him and left him to die. My knees buckled, and I sank to the floor next to the bed. My hand went to my eyes, which were quickly filling to the brim. I was mildly aware of Mark deflating a blood pressure cuff attached to O’Shea’s bicep. He took his stethoscope off and hung it around his neck.

“
Trey?” It was Aurora’s voice I was hearing.

I tore my eyes away from O
’Shea’s unmoving form and looked at them her and Mark. “What do we do?”

“
He needs blood,” Mark said. “He won’t make it without a transfusion. He’ll go into shock, and his heart will stop.”

That was when it dawned on me. The insanely fast sputtering sound my vampire hearing was picking up on was O
’Shea’s heartbeat. The realization made me sick.

“
How are we going to do that?” Aurora asked. “We can’t just take him to the hospital.”

Mark chewed his bottom lip for a second, as if he was reconsidering the idea.
“No,” he said, thinking out loud. “We can’t. Even if I had privileges to practice at a nearby hospital, I could never cover something this big up. There’s no way to explain how O’Shea sustained this kind of blood loss.”

“
The press would find out anyway, and everyone would be at risk. The Synod would never stand for that.” Aurora said. “But we have to do something.”

“
We need to make some calls, see if we can get some blood for a transfusion,” Mark continued.

“
I have some contacts,” Aurora added. “I’ll get started.” Aurora bent and kissed my forehead tenderly, knowing there was nothing else she could say just then. She hugged Kacie and headed to the other side of the bus.

I stared at O
’Shea, feeling a cool, detaching numbness settle over me. Kacie’s fingers wrapped around mine, squeezing my hand gently. I was surprised she didn’t hate me just then. All of this was my fault, but maybe she hadn’t realized that yet. Or maybe she was just taking all the vampire stuff in stride. More likely, she was in shock and none of it had actually sunk in yet.

The sickly sound of O
’Shea’s heart struggling haunted me, echoing in my ears. I closed my eyes briefly, a failed attempt to will away the foreboding cold that was determined to take up residence in my core. I felt a surge of power and instantly recognized it as Mark’s signature healing. When I opened my eyes again Mark was moving his hand away from O’Shea’s face. The cuts and bruises were gone, leaving O’Shea’s face spotless, but even that sight did little to calm the fear radiating through me. The puncture holes in his throat had also been healed, and I was grateful that Kacie no longer had to see that constant reminder of what she and O’Shea had been through. Mark slid a needle into a vein in O’Shea’s elbow just as easily as I plug a cable into my guitar’s instrument socket. Then he adjusted a clear bag of solution and sent the fluid running down a clear plastic tube into the needle. I glanced around the bus’s small bedroom and saw other medical supplies lying around.

“
Where did you find all this?” I asked.

“
I took it from the ambulance parked outside the venue,” Mark admitted. “It’s not much, but it’s all we have.”

I nodded.
“I’m glad you’re here. I don’t know what we’d do if-”

“
Don’t mention it,” Mark said, cutting me off. “I’ll do whatever I can to help him.”

Mark was an accomplished healer, but even he had limits. His gift alone hadn
’t been enough to save Aurora when she’d been impaled by a wooden stake, and it wouldn’t be enough to save O’Shea from this extreme blood loss now. I just hoped he could keep O’Shea alive until we had the solution.

“
This transfusion you’re talking about ... will it work?” I asked. Kacie looked up at him as well, waiting for an answer.

“
If we get blood in him before he goes into cardiac arrest....” Mark paused, like he wished he could build more hope into O’Shea’s situation for us. “It’s the only chance he has.” Mark turned and left, presumably to see if Aurora was making progress.

I
’m not stranger to grief, but this was almost more than I could handle. Losing Wes had been absolutely devastating. The pain of it still overwhelmed me at times. In fact, some nights on stage it was all I could do not to break down during “Nostalgia,” the song we dedicated to him in the show. Then there was Aurora. Fate had been determined to rip her away from me, too, but so far we’d managed to thwart it. I shuddered at the thought of her slipping away from me then, at the deafening silence that had answered every time I’d reached out to her. I shook my head, forcing the paralyzing images out of my mind.

O
’Shea’s heart fumbled, skipping a beat. The change in rhythm snapped me out of my thoughts. He was so pale. Any traces of his natural tan had gone from the blood loss.

“
It’s all because of me,” Kacie said numbly as a tear ran down her cheek.

“
This isn’t your fault,” I told her. “If anything it’s my-”

“
You don’t understand,” she said, her eyes glued to O’Shea’s face. “He ... he was protecting me,” she said with a hiccup, trying to pull herself together. “The tall vampire was going to drink from me. He got a phone call from the leader, and he said it was our lucky day, but that he was going to take a little parting gift before he left. I knew what he was going to do, but the second he flashed his fangs and bent down to my neck O’Shea screamed at him, demanding that he leave me alone and drink his fill from him instead.” She ran her hand over O’Shea’s black hair. “O’Shea was furious,” she added, shaking her head as she looked at him. “That vampire was only too happy to take him up on his offer. I begged O’Shea not to do it, but he just told me I was going to be okay.” Kacie looked me in the eye, then, and the faintest trace of a smile reached her lips. “He said you and Aurora would figure something out, that you’d find us, and then he told me he loved me right before-” Her sentence was cut off as another sob wracked her body. I slid closer to her on the bed, wrapping my arms around her and holding her while she cried. “Selfless idiot,” she said, directing the comment at O’Shea. “They might have just taken a little from us both, and then I wouldn’t be watching you ... you....”

“
Look at me,” I said to her, lifting her chin with my finger. She gazed up at me through watery blue eyes, her chin quivering. “We are not losing him,” I said adamantly, feeling my confidence grow as the words left my mouth. “Do you hear me? We’re not giving up.” Kacie managed a nod, and I turned to look at O’Shea then, speaking directly to him. “As for you,” I said. “You’d better fight like hell to stay with us. If you think you’re getting out of the band that easy, you’ve got another thing coming.” I heard a sniffle behind me, and I turned to see Chase and Jonas watching from the doorway, Jonas wiping his eyes on the sleeve of his hoodie. I gave Kacie’s hand a squeeze and then rose to my feet. The bus’s engine roared to life, and Chase, Jonas and I moved to the front of it. At first I didn’t understand the relief I saw in Mark’s eyes when I walked in, but then I realized just how close I’d come to losing it a moment ago.

Aurora was having a heated conversation on the phone, and I sat down next to her, listening to both sides of the conversation.

“Without the blood I’m asking for the human will die,” Aurora said to the vampire on the other line. “This isn’t just my dinner we’re talking about.”

“
I understand your predicament,” came the reply. “But I can’t help you. I’m sorry.”

The line went silent, and Aurora tossed her phone onto the bench across from us, sighing. She looked over at me, almost apologetically.

“No luck, huh?” I said, stating the obvious.

A humorless laugh escaped her lips and she shook her head.
“Word of our showdown with Stanislav Vidic is already spreading like wildfire,” she began. Then she realized everyone else’s eyes were on her, too, wanting an explanation. “To put it mildly, Trey and I look nothing short of certifiable for picking a fight with a Synod Elder,” she added to clarify. “I’ve exhausted almost every contact I have in the area, but I wasn’t anticipating being treated like a leper. So far no one is willing to risk getting on a Synod Elder’s bad side to help us. Even Antonio’s influence isn’t enough to get anyone on board.”

Honestly, I couldn
’t blame any of the vampires for not wanting to get caught up in our mess. Not really. Being on Stanislav’s radar hadn’t worked out too well for us so far. I just didn’t know what to do next. O’Shea was in bad shape, to put it mildly, and here we were, trucking along the freeway while he fought for his life. No one was talking about the giant elephant in the room, but the truth was the guys and I had a show to play tomorrow in the next city. We were all just hoping against hope that O’Shea wouldn’t go into cardiac arrest before we could get some blood in him, and we had no idea how or when we might even be able to do that. He was so far from being able to go on stage for a show that it wasn’t even funny. We’d have to cancel that show, and who knew how many others until O’Shea recovered. Cancelling and rescheduling a show is complicated and difficult in a normal situation, but add to it the fact that not even Neon could know what was really going on, and it was a completely impossible situation.

The only real solution was for O
’Shea to get better, and fast. If all of the vampires who might be able to help us get blood refused to get involved, the odds of that happening were slim to none.

“
O’Shea needs blood,” Chase said. “Could Jonas or I be a match?” Mark raised an eyebrow, considering him. I could almost see what he was thinking. Why hadn’t any of us thought of that?

“
I don’t know my blood type. How do we find out?” Jonas asked.

We all looked at Mark expectantly.
“I can distinguish blood type by scent,” he stated.

Aurora gave him an impressed
I didn’t know you could do that
look.