Lost Angeles (51 page)

“Right, and I’m Lourdes with an O, as in ‘oh, for fuck’s sake,’” I toss back, swatting at him with my clutch as he laughs and dances away. Suddenly, I’m as alone as someone can be with a hundred people screaming my name and freaking out for reasons unknown.

Okay, I can do this
.

Except I only make it one step before a hand catches hold of my elbow.

“You shouldn’t,” Lonan says, his eyes scanning the crowd. “We didn’t have time to vet everyone.”

I consider the bank of people a few feet away, frowning a bit. “They’re just kids, Lonan. It’ll be fine.”

He hesitates, then mutters something into the mouthpiece at his collar and nods. Giving him a reassuring pat, I walk toward the risers. Me, in my belated wedding dress. Me, with all my blushing and stuttering. Me, with butterflies in my stomach, an ache in my chest, and a polite smile plastered across my face. This, I can do. Take a paper, sign a name, shake a hand, give someone a hug. It’s simple. It’s gratifying, because they’re here for me, for Xaine, for the two of us. There are so many well-wishes that I start to believe that this fool’s errand of a wedding might not be so bad. The fans squeal and cry. They tell me their stories and how they came to be here. It’s a veritable tornado, hundreds of names and voices, all belonging to people who don’t know me, underscored by—

The soft jingle of metal on metal, like a wind chime.

“’Allo, Lo.”

Dread lands hard and heavy in my gut, and I shift until I’m staring at that too-familiar face. Same as he was in the warehouse, with pale skin, mirror-eyes, and those odd chains hung with metal teeth strung from ears to nose. He’s wearing that gray hood and smiles like we’ve shared a joke.

Like we’ve shared a
past.

“You left before we could catch up on old times, so I came to finish what I started.” Tiberius looks regretful, but genuinely so. “There’ll be no comin’ back from this one, I’m afraid. It seems you’re destined to be my little raven, sending messages from the land of the dead to the land of the living.”

His hand flashes out faster than I can flee, catching me by the arm and dragging me close to the barrier. A rushing sound starts in my ears, the sound of the sea in a shell. My vision narrows, tunnels, goes black at the edges. From a distance, I hear the high-pitched noise of someone’s scream.

Not mine. I’m going to die without making a single sound to save myself. I’ve stopped breathing, mind telling me to move, body keeping me still. I never understood what it’s like to be frozen with fear, until now. The whole world stops spinning, leaving you and your worst nightmare to stand alone, together.

“You can’t escape them, Lo.” Tiberius grips me right above the elbow, and it feels like he’s pulling at me, at my insides. Slicing me into a million pieces and extracting them one by one via that bruising touch. “Mercifully, you won’t feel a thing. The most important parts of you will be long gone by then.”

Stop.

I want to fight, but I can’t. The blackness gets darker, the tunnel gets smaller, and sounds fade further away. I can’t feel my body anymore, can’t move my arms to swing, can’t move my feet to run, can’t move my tongue to speak the defiance brewing in the heart that I can no longer feel beating. There’s anger there, but it’s dim and distant. I know this feeling; I’ve felt it before. Back at CasDec, during those days when I could look at myself from half a room away. Apart. Detached.
Separated
from my body.

I don’t want to go there again.

I won’t.

And just like that, I slam back into myself with an audible gasp. Everything refocuses, and the first thing I see is the shock on my captor’s face. Beyond him, it’s business as usual. Interviewers continue to shout, fans reach for the next closest celebrity.

Tiberius’s eyes narrow. “What the hell?”

I find the strength to struggle then, but he drags me closer, until his body and mine are touching from chest to ankle with only the hip-height metal barrier between us.

“What
are
you?” He breathes the question right into my mouth. As his eyes scour my face, their color shifts from clear to blue and back again. There’s a moment when he seems to waver with indecision, but then his expression hardens and he shifts his weight. “Doesn’t matter. Was hoping I could do this nice and quiet, but I’m not averse to a little screaming. Sorry, sunshine, but this is your stop.”

Sharp and blinding, pain slides between my ribs on the edge of a blade that I can’t see. My mouth opens on a cry, but nothing comes out. Nothing happens at all but the tears. Big, fat drops run down my face in hot-to-cold rivulets. I can feel them hit my chest, soaking into the fabric of my gown. For an impossibly long moment, Tiberius and I stand like that, caught in the
danse macabre
with people from all walks of life
living
all around us. I stare into his eyes, memorizing every single feature, and I promise myself that in my next life—

I’ll remember your face.

Tiberius jerks his hand, the quickest flick of a wrist. I listen as the blade tears through more tissue and organ, unidentifiable bits of
me
popping as the razor-sharp anelace catches on them and then cuts through. I can’t breathe; there’s no more air. There’s only a raw and unexpected sort of disbelief
.

“I’m sorry, love,” he says by way of apology. “If it’s any consolation, this is going to hurt
them
far more than it hurts you.”

Them.
Xaine.
Them.
Cas.
Them.
Jax
. All of them.

Destined to be my little raven, sending messages from the land of the dead—

“Hey!” Lonan’s voice, I think, or maybe Rebel’s.

Tiberius tilts his head at the shout, then he pulls away, fading into the crowd as the hot seep of blood soaks through pristine white fabric. For the first time, I look down to my hand, pressed against the tiny, destructive wound. Pulling my palm away, I stare at it and muse on the unexpectedly red color of my blood. Redder than I would have guessed. So red, it’s almost black, a perfect sanguine stream spilling out and soaking the gown.

Blood on snow.

My last thought is for Xaine, and suddenly I regret all of it and none of it, because for what it’s worth, he made me forget for a while. I turn my head, seek him out, find the hard line of his back twenty, maybe thirty feet away. A scream rends the air, a real scream this time. That sharp shriek draws his attention, and the first thing he does is look for me.

To make sure I’m near. To make sure I’m safe.

I open my mouth to say the words I should have said when I woke up this morning. His probing stare catches on my face, recognizes my distress. His gaze wanders downward and those spectacularly vampire-blue eyes go wide. He takes one step, two, then he’s plowing through people like that night at O’Reilly’s, hands outstretched to catch me.

A blur passes by me, a shadowed streak that I dimly recognize as Lonan. The crowd ripples as one man takes off after my assailant and another comes to my rescue. Rebel’s there at my side, hands closing over my bare shoulders as I begin to wilt, but I slide from his grasp before his mind even registers that I’m about to fall.

And I will fall.

Already have.

“Lore!” When Xaine catches me and touches the wound, I suck in a hissing breath. Everything snaps into place, going from slow motion to fast forward in a blink.

Not enough time.

“Xaine…”

Then, finally, as if all it was waiting for was his permission, the world slips out from under me.

And I let it go.

Deus meus, ex toto corde paenitet me omnium meorum peccatorum,

eaque detestor, quia peccando…

The steady
thwip-thwip-thwip
of the helicopter’s blades is the only noise I process. I can’t hear the medics yelling at each other as they run blunt-nosed scissors through the red and the white to reveal the worst of the damage. There sure as shit isn’t any noise when a heavy gold coin falls out of Lore’s bra and hits the metal floor. It spins on its edge, and I stare as it skitters across the steel, bouncing off of every upraised rivet.

I do hear the ping when it flattens and goes still, though. Bending down to retrieve it, I don’t bother looking at it again, keeping it clutched it in my palm for the entire ride to LA. I squeeze it once they get the IV set up, pumping my blood into Lore. I know it won’t turn her, but I remember what she said about being able to use vampire blood to heal, and I’m hoping like hell it will keep her alive from here to CasDec.

It’s the only safe place for her right now.

Non solum poenas a te iuste statutas promeritus sum,

sed praesertim quia offendi te…

She’s so full of morphine and so far beyond my reach that she doesn’t even register the burn of the transfusion. The medics work on her without faltering, and I bear witness; the first time they hurt her, I am going to throw them out the door of the helicopter. But so far, they’ve done the smart thing and tried to save her. Stymied the bleeding from the gut wound. Assessed the damage done to her internal organs.

“What kind of knife was used in the attack?” one of them shouts at me.

“I don’t know,” I say, on autopilot. “I didn’t see it happen.”

Summum bonum, ac dignum qui super omnia diligaris.

Ideo firmiter propono…

No, I was halfway down that carpet, sulking like an asshole and wrapped up in a thick layer of wounded pride. Full-blown sanctimonious dipshit-mode, wiped away the second I turned and saw the look on her face. The red blooming across the front of that dress.

I caught Lore as she fell, landing hard on my knees with only a layer of velvet and satin between me and the carpeted concrete. Her eyes were already closed, her body slack, blood pumping out of her with every steady contraction of the heart I’d done my best to break. While I cradled her to my chest and pressed both hands against the wound, the security team went straight to Evacuation Plan 1, which involved landing a helicopter on the Strip.

And even though I know there’s no heaven to be had, I’d prayed, and continue to pray, the same act of contrition spoken at every service I ever attended as a child.

Ideo firmiter propono, adiuvante gratia tua, de cetero me non peccaturum peccandique occasiones proximas fugiturum…

Amen

I’m not all that worried about offending God, but I do detest my sins, and the greatest one was leaving her side for a moment. My need to urge and prod and goad and shove everything one step too far pushed me down that aisle and straight into my own personal hell.

I swear I can do better. Be better. Be what you need.

With Lore’s hands clasped in mine and my forehead pressed against her fingertips, I make every promise there is. To give her the time and space and whatever else she needs to make this right. To find the dead-man-walking that did this to her and end him. The security teams are already scouring the footage of the walkway; there’s no way he evaded every camera in the place. The fans have rallied, lining up to give their statements and download the pictures off their phones.

His image is captured somewhere.

And then he’s fucking mine.

But these thoughts are scattershot. There’s no room for rage or plans or anything beyond Lore’s next shallow inhalation. There’s so much blood, it’s scary. I’ve had orgies that ended with far more arterial spray, but this is different. My blood, her blood, blood seeping from the wound, soaking the bandages, dripping from IVs, pearling in each pore as her body processes
me
out.

Just like Elizabeth.

I’m back in that nightmare. Another fatal wedding, different only in that my last words to Lore were taunting, bitter. The kind of last words you regret for eternity, because you don’t have the chance to take them back. I’m looking down the barrel of killing the second woman I’ve ever loved, even if I didn’t shove that knife into her myself.

“How much longer?” I shout. “Are we close?”

Lore’s lips are blue, her skin is cold, and I have no idea if my blood is doing anything at all. For all I know, she’s already gone. She might only be a few internal bits that haven’t stopped working, a few brain synapses that haven’t stopped firing. To the medics, she’s meat. Literally,
meat
. According to the license they pulled out of her clutch, she’s an organ donor, so right now they’re going through the motions. Keeping the blood flowing, keeping the heart pumping, keeping everything fresh long enough to
take it
.

“We’re coming up on the helipad now,” the pilot yells over his shoulder.

Not ten more seconds later, we touch down and the medics get the door open. Two figures are on the roof, both of them wind-whipped and grim-faced. I was expecting Cas. Prepared to take a UV bullet the second I set foot on his building, in fact.

I wasn’t as prepared to see Jackson Trace standing alongside him like a sentinel.

Guess I’m really in the shit now.

I grit my teeth, because it’s going to get ugly the second they try to separate me from Lore. The medics hop off the transport and lift the rolling gurney down. I follow it, eyes trained on the two men standing at the edge of the chopper’s blades. I brought Lore here because it’s the best place for her, the safest place. The humans can’t protect her from a bunch of immortals.