Authors: Cege Smith
Angeline was alarmed. “Connor. I’m going to be fine, right? It’s just a little spider bite.”
“From the most poisonous creature in Altera,” he said. He couldn’t meet her eyes.
“You need to do something!” Angeline said too loudly. She was starting to feel the tingles of pain traveling up her arm now, and there was a dull roar sounding in her ears.
“Even if I could get you to a healer, a single bite from that menace kills in less than ten minutes.” Connor moved closer to her. “Princess, I don’t know how I can help you.”
Angeline felt herself slipping off the rock. She couldn’t feel her lower limbs anymore. Her mind was trying to think of any alternative, but she could only think of one. If the vampire lore was accurate she had an option, a very undesirable one because it was extremely dangerous. But she didn’t have much of a choice.
“You have to suck the venom out,” she croaked.
She saw Connor’s face contort. “I can’t do that. I don’t wish this life upon anyone.”
She tried to shake her head but only managed to move it a few inches in either direction. “That’s not what I’m talking about. Suck out the venom, Connor, but I’m not going to drink your blood. I’m going to be a queen, not a vampire. Don’t stop until it’s gone, and if I live then it was meant to be. But I will not die like this. A Robart does not go down without a fight.”
She saw the panic in his eyes, but he had started to nod slowly. She was relieved. That meant that it was possible to be bitten by a vampire and not become one. So that part of vampire lore was true.
“Please,” she whispered, and she felt her consciousness fading. Maybe she was going to die. Her salvation rested in the hands of this handsome vampire. Then her eyes rolled back into her head and she was gone.
Connor watched Angeline descend into unconsciousness. He didn’t have any time to think or decide if he should really contemplate doing what she had asked him to do and what it meant. Connor had not drunk human blood in more than fifty years. But if he wanted her to live, he had to do it. Unfortunately, there was a chance that the request carried a heavy consequence that they would both have to live with forever. No matter what Angeline thought she knew, what she had asked him to do had far-reaching repercussions if he didn’t manage to remove the venom before she reached death’s doorstep.
There wasn’t time to think about it any longer. Her life was wavering in the balance. Connor made the decision, took her hand, and sank his teeth into the warm bump where it had all started, and immediately he felt heady and nauseous at the same time. While Angeline’s blood tasted fragrant and young, there was an underlying hint of sourness—the spider’s poison. He knew that his vampire healing would keep him safe from the full effects of the venom, but his knees weakened and he sank to the ground. But that wasn’t enough to deter him; the blood lust had him fully in its claws. His eyes rose up Angeline’s slim, still body. Her chest rose and fell in short successive gasps as her lungs tried desperately to get fresh air. Her skin had gone waxy, and he could see two red splotches high on her cheekbones.
Then he was lost again. He closed his eyes and drank deeply. The taint was still there. In the back of his mind he knew that he had run out of time. The moment of truth had arrived, and he thought that letting her die may be a merciful gesture. At that moment, Angeline started to moan and thrash, as if she had read his thoughts and was wholeheartedly disagreeing with his logic. He had to pull her down tight into his arms to keep her still, but his mouth never left her hand, which had begun to quiver. Between the poison and the heady rush of warm blood in his mouth and stomach, he felt drunk and hungover at the same time.
He felt Angeline’s heart starting to slow. It wasn’t going to work. He couldn’t drink much more and still hope that she would live without some kind of blood transfusion. The poison was still there. Just as he felt her body shudder one final time and he started to unlatch his teeth from her delicate flesh, he realized that in that very last moment, the noxious taste was gone. Her body slid from his lap to the trampled grass and he stared at her in shock at what was about to come next.
His shaking fingers felt for her pulse. There was nothing there. He fell back away from her body and grasped his head in his hands, trying to make the pounding inside go away. He heard it before he saw it and he looked over at Angeline’s still form. It had been two quick thuds against her ribcage. He crawled back to her and put his fingers on her throat again. This time, there was a thready, weak response. He had done it. He had saved her, but he had damned her as well.
As his senses finally started to clear, guilt came rushing in. Not only had he broken his vow to never drink human blood again, but he had shattered a law that had existed since before the vampires and humans began their warring ways. If Monroe caught him now—he shuddered to think of the possibilities or what Monroe would do to him. But it wasn’t just Monroe he had to worry about. He looked down at Angeline and smoothed her hair away from her face. Her body was cooling as the night air chilled around them, and he wrapped her close to him inside his cloak. Although he couldn’t see any indication of it yet, he knew that daybreak would come far too soon. He needed to get both of them to safety.
Cautiously he cast his mind out to see if Searon lurked nearby. There was nothing. He got to his feet with Angeline in his arms and wobbled. He would have rested longer, but there was no time to waste. The Amaron Forest was only a few kilometers away, and they would be safe in its dark, leafy embrace, at least until he figured out what to do next.
It took him longer than usual to find his speed, but he managed it without stumbling. As he ran, Angeline started to moan against him.
“Malin,” she murmured.
Connor frowned. When he had asked her about the Chief Advisor, Angeline had seemed indifferent. He would have expected her to say her mother or father’s name, not that one. A small shot of jealousy tightened his chest. Did she love Malin? Were her affections already spoken for? His contact in the convent said that the princess looked on Malin as an older brother and that when she did marry him it would be a marriage of strict convenience. Malin had a reputation at court that he was sure Angeline would not approve of once she was queen. But as Angeline continued to say the other man’s name, Connor had to wonder what his spies had missed.
It seemed to take an eternity before they were approaching the tree line of the Amaron Forest. Connor stepped under the heavy canopy moments later and leaned back heavily against the trunk of one of the ancient trees that was at least several of his arm spans in diameter. The Amaron Forest had been there since time began, but it was a place of dark and shadow. Very few creatures chose to call it home, only those that craved darkness and secrecy. Creatures like Connor.
He quickly made his way deeper into the forest to a small rock outcropping that he had used several times as a camp. He carefully ducked underneath the rough ledge and then laid Angeline down as far back under the overhang as he could. He swept his cloak off his shoulders and balled it up, slipping it under her head.
Her face was flushed now and her skin glistened with sweat. She was deep within the change. But it wasn’t an immortal she was changing into. He felt sick knowing that Angeline was going to wake up as a being forced to straddle two worlds. He should have killed her when he realized that her heart was taking its last beats and removed any possible risk of her coming back to life. But he couldn’t have done it; he knew that.
While Connor had not given her any of his blood, some of his vampire tainted saliva would have entered her wounds. In a body giving up its life, his venom could have the exact opposite effect and bring it back. If he had been able to get the spider’s venom out before her body had died, her immune system would have been able to fight it off, like a cold. Instead, he had created something that wasn’t supposed to exist. He had been stupid to even attempt to save her; in the end she wouldn’t thank him.
As he watched her begin to thrash, he cursed himself. He had known that other predators roamed this barren wasteland, and given that normal humans had not been seen here in centuries, the creatures were bolder and more dangerous. Angeline’s warm scent would have been intoxicating to the spider. While he had been distracted by Searon’s presence, another monster had snuck up under his nose.
Angeline had been starting to trust him. Although once they reached the Master he lost any control over her fate, at least until that time he had told her no harm would befall her. He had broken that promise as well. He sighed heavily as he watched her. Connor had never been especially good at keeping promises.
Angeline cried out into the darkness and he pulled her back into his arms. He sat with his back against the craggy wall and gently rearranged his cloak around her. She was extremely vulnerable, and although the forest was beginning its daytime slumber, he didn’t trust taking his eyes off of her for a second. Not after what had just happened. She was his responsibility, regardless of what she was becoming.
He wiped the sweat from her brow and tried to soothe her by softly stroking her hair. There was nothing to do but wait, and nothing to keep him company but his memories.
He had been almost thirty when he began his afterlife of misery. His childhood was a happy one, but with a few minor flaws. As Connor was the eldest son, his father tried to groom him to one day take over the family merchant business. But Connor had been far more interested in drinking and finding the company of young, friendly ladies. After bailing him out of the town drunk tank for what was likely the thousandth time, Connor’s father declared enough was enough. Connor got an ultimatum: stop drinking or his father would cut off his inheritance.
Looking back now, Connor understood why his father had done what he had done. Given as many times as they had almost come to blows after one of Conner’s escapades, he thought that his father should have known better, though, than to try to broach the subject before Connor was sober. On that fateful day his father did, and after he uttered the threat, Connor had thrown back his head and laughed. He laughed for minutes on end, alternating between mimicking his father’s words in a high-pitched rendition of a woman’s voice, and then laughing some more.
He remembered watching his father’s face grow redder and redder, and then his father had done the unthinkable. He punched Connor in the face. Connor still wasn’t sure what happened in those next few minutes. He knew he had finally stopped laughing, and his mirth was replaced by white hot anger. His memory was hazy, but he knew that at the moment things went horribly wrong, he wasn’t thinking. He was reacting. It was just like at the local pub; no one punched Connor Radwin in the face and got away with it.
The heavy bronze candlestick from atop the mantel seemed to magically appear in his hands and Connor struck his father as hard as he could in the head. The heavy thud as the candlestick connected with the side of his father’s skull, and the shocked expression on his father’s face, Conner would remember forever.
“You dare,” his father had croaked as a torrent of blood spewed down his face. He grabbed his head and his hands instantly turned bright red as they filled with blood. Then his father crumbled in on himself and fell to the floor.
It was that moment that his mother walked into the room. Right behind her were the twins, Maddie and Luke, and his youngest sister, Callie. Conner was instantly sober as the enormity of his actions hit him full force. He stood there gaping at first them and then his father, who had gone completely still. His mother started to wail and ran to his father’s side.
“How could you. How could you. How could you?” she shrieked at him. Her hair came loose from the tight bun at the base of her neck and she was looking at him with wild eyes. “Your father was right about you! I curse the day you were born. You are evil. GET OUT!”
He wanted to explain. But then his brother and sisters started to cry as well and it seemed like everyone was shouting all at once. But one thing he knew for certain: he had to get away. He needed to think. He needed to fix this. His mother looked at him with such hatred that he wondered if she truly did believe he was evil.
“I’m sorry,” he mumbled. The candlestick fell from his limp hand on the floor. His mother continued to wail as she pulled his father’s head into her lap. There was blood all over the floor and he could smell its heavy, rust scent and it made him gag.