Falcon vanished from my side and appeared next to David. “He’s alive!”
Relief swam through me, allowing my legs to move. I ran over at human pace and landed in the sand, scooping David’s head off the ground to lay it in my lap. His throat was cut, so deep it was still gushing, which explained why he didn't save me. The rest of his body was cut up pretty bad too—slashes over his black coat, revealing white flesh and red blood beneath. His forearms were hacked so deeply I could see the bone, and a wide and very deep V had been taken out of his shoulder.
“I can’t give him blood,” I said, looking at Falcon’s horrified face. “His throat’s cut too deeply.”
“Look away,” he said, pointing out to sea as he grabbed David’s knife from his belt.
I obeyed, cradling David’s face in my arms and knees, tucking my ear against his lips. He stiffened then, holding his last breath, then went floppy and heavy in my arms.
“It’s okay,” Falcon said. “You can look now.”
“What did you do?”
“Administered blood directly into his stomach.”
I looked at his red hands. “How?”
He reached down and pulled David’s shirt over a thick red pool. “He’ll be fine in about ten minutes. That’s what counts.”
***
Ashes and smoke detained the dawn, blackening the sky and imprisoning the night as vampires burned in pyres on the beach below. No one prepared me for the scent of burning flesh. No one told me how deep it would sicken me as it dragged me back in time to a fireplace in a castle, where I watched my husband die. Maybe, if David was conscious right now and standing beside me, it wouldn’t bother me so much. But a part of me wished I’d just stayed inside after my shower and told everyone I was going to bed. Piling everything that happened tonight on top of painful memories from my past was not helping me maintain my calm façade.
I trudged through the field of blood and dead grass, scooping up lost limbs and broken swords and tossing them onto the pickup truck as Quaid drove slowly past.
“How you doing?” he asked, one elbow hanging out the window.
“I’m okay,” I called. “You?”
He grinned, his bright white teeth dominating the darkness. “I’m great! That was hella good fun.”
I tried not to laugh—tried to just roll my eyes and take the moral high ground. But something about his grin always made me smile along with him.
“You don’t have to clean up, you know?” he added, circling the truck around me, bumping and bouncing over churned grass and dead bodies. “You can go to bed.”
“And how would I sleep?” I asked, motioning to the mess. “I need to be down here. Helping. God—” I kicked a shoe that was missing a foot. “It looks like a frat party gone
really
wrong.”
Quaid laughed. “Go to bed, Ara. If David were conscious, he—”
“He’d back off if he knew what was good for him.” I propped my hands on my hips, parted my feet and stood sternly, my gaze locking to Quaid’s with a warning beneath.
He looked down into the cab, then eased the car to a stop. “You’re not okay, are you?”
My hands slowly went to my sides and my fists loosened. “I will be. When David is.”
He nodded, tapping his fingertips on the steering wheel. “I uh … the guys told me about Zane.”
I bent over with a little grunt and grabbed a bloody sword by the very tip, trying not to get my fresh jeans and sweater dirty. There was little hope now for my hands. “What did you hear?”
“That you melted him,” he said, half-asking if that was true.
“That would be correct.” I flashed him a grin. “Nobody messes with my husband, but me.”
“I’ll keep that in mind,” he joked. “So, do you know what the story is between those two?”
“Which two?”
“David and Zane.”
I shrugged, shaking my head. Right now, I didn't really care about their history.
“So, Zane is about four centuries older than David, right?” he reported, whether I wanted to hear it or not. “But when David became a vampire, he moved up the ranks pretty fast. It was Zane’s position on the council that he took.”
I stopped scooping up broken weapons for a second and looked at Quaid. “And that’s it? That’s the only beef he has …
had
with David?”
Quaid lifted one shoulder. “Far as I know.”
“Doesn’t seem like enough of a reason to want to kill him—and rape his wife.”
“Then you clearly don’t know vampires very well.” He laughed lightly. “They were opponents in the ring, too.”
“The ring?”
“Boxing,” he said, as if I should already know this. “It’s a huge sport for vampires. David never told you?”
I shook my head. “There’s a lot about his life that he never told me.”
“Well, it’s a pretty long life, when you think about it. It’d take an awful long time to hear all his stories.”
“I guess.” I tossed the weapons into a pile and dusted my hands off my jeans before I realised they were covered in blood, then just groaned.
“Go to bed, Ara,”
Quaid said, looking up from my now-soiled jeans. “It’s been a long night.”
After a sigh and another round of consideration, I shook my head. “Nah. I’ll stay.”
“Suit yourself.” He put the truck in gear and went to drive off again. But I stopped him.
“Any word from Blade yet? On Em?”
The red brake lights glowed suddenly in the darkness. “She’s fine. Got up about an hour ago. They’ve been down in the cells for the last half hour interrogating our prisoner.”
“Has he cracked?”
“We’ve got a few things out of him.”
“Like why Ryder betrayed us?”
“You didn’t hear yet?”
I motioned around the open field—to the scattered clean-up crew, all busy with their own tasks. “I haven’t spoken to anyone since I came down here.”
“Well, turns out he wasn’t betraying
us
. He was betraying
you
.”
“Me? Why?”
“You know that whole freaky blood curse thing?” He waved his hands around, outlining my body. “The one you inherited with your blood that makes anything with a heartbeat love you?”
“Yes,” I said impatiently. The tone he used just really rubbed me the wrong way.
“None of us woulda known, but he was apparently caught up in it.”
I screwed my nose up. “What?”
“Serious,” he said, his brows moving up on his head.
“No way.”
“Yes way.”
“I…” I couldn’t find anything to say to that except, “No. Surely not.”
“You heard it here first,” he sang, like a TV presenter.
“Well … damn.”
“Yes. ‘Damn’ is right.” Quaid looked at the back of his truck as a few of the clean-up crew dropped some body parts in. When they left, he returned his attention to me. “He kept a journal, did you know?”
“Of course I didn’t know. I hardly spent any time with the guy.”
“Well, he did. We read it.”
“Isn’t that a little invasive?”
“Invasive?” His voice peaked like a pubescent teen’s. “He was a traitor, Ara.”
I scratched my head. “True. I guess.”
“We only skimmed through it, anyway. It was good for a laugh.”
All I could do was frown at him. I’d hate to think people would read my journal if I was no longer around. And then laugh at it. “What was funny about it?”
“Turns out he’s had this thing for you since you first got here. But, unlike Blade, he kept it to himself—out of respect or professionalism, who knows?” He shrugged. “But, I dunno, guess maybe he got jealous or something of all the guys you hang out with, and it festered into this insane belief that he had a right to punish you.”
“
Punish
me?” I balked. “What the hell was he planning to do to me?”
“From what our prisoner told us, Ryder sold info to the Warriors—you know, guard change-over times and stuff. He didn’t know there was gonna be an attack. Not now, anyway. But when they asked him why he was betraying his queen, he told them you used men and he was tired of suffering at your hand—”
“What!”
Quaid
shrugged again. “This is just what I’m told. So, anyway, he said that if they ever attacked, he’d use it as an opportunity to get you where he wants you. And that’s all the guy would say.”
My skin crawled. “Creepy.”
“Yep. Oh, and speaking of creepy.” He leaned out the window a little more and lowered his voice. “That girl you sent me to turn—the one in the forest?”
“What about her?”
“I found out who her boyfriend is.”
“And?”
“He’s not one of our vampires. The only reason he hooked up with that girl, and took her virginity, was so he could get in here tonight. When we were attacked, he wasn’t with your dad—being kept safe. He was attacking our people.”
“Jerk!”
“You got that right.” He leaned back into the car. “Anyways. I better go collect the rest of these body parts. I’ll come back around in a few minutes to get your pile, okay?”
“I’ll be here,” I said wistfully. “This mess is going to take all day.”
He shrugged absently as he took off again. “You coulda driven the truck.”
I groaned, watching him peel away.
From the other side of the field, I caught my dad’s scent and took a second, with my eyes closed, to breathe it in. I’d asked around after the battle on the beach, and everyone told me Dad was fine—it seemed they’d all seen him at some point, but no one knew where he was. Now that I’d picked up his scent, the only person I needed to locate was Mike, and then everything could go back to normal.
“Ara!” Mike’s voice ricocheted off the emptiness.
Speak of the Devil. “Over here!” I called back.
He broke through the smoky fog a second later and wrapped me up tightly in his arms. I cringed at the mess of him—his Core jacket gone, leaving nothing but a blood-stained white shirt to cover barely healed wounds. His chest was so cold through the fabric I thought maybe he’d died for a while. “Are you okay?” he asked. “They told me you were on the beach, I—”
“I’m fine.” I pushed out from his arms. “Are you okay? You look…” My eyes darted over his brutalised body while I searched for the right words.
“I know. But most of it’s vampire blood.” He opened his shirt. “Look.”
“Holy crap!” I reached out to touch the giant slice taken out of his chest—nipple and all. “Mike! That looks awful.”
“Yeah, but that’s the worst of it.” He folded his shirt over the wound, cringing a little. “I’ll be healed in roughly another twenty minutes. But the guy that did it—” He bounced his brows suggestively.
“Well, I’m glad you enjoyed yourself.” I patted his arm and walked away.
“Ara?” he called after me. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” I lied.
“Liar.”
I stopped cleaning and faced him again. “I’m just waiting for David to wake up, that’s all. I hate it when he’s hurt.”
“He’s up.” He stuffed his hands in the pockets, stepping back. “He’s out helping Falcon burn Zane’s remains.”
“How long’s he been up?”
Mike shrugged. “‘Bout ten minutes or so.”
“How’s his throat?” I motioned to my own. “Is it—?”
“It’s still cut deeply, but it’s healed inside. We’ve put a few stitches in it for now.”
“So…” My shoulders dropped. “Is he … looking for me?”
“Not as far as I know.”
“Oh.” I frowned then as the sinking feeling washed away and a breath of dread froze my lungs. “Did you hear that?”
Mike shook his head, his lips arched downward. “Nope.”
My ears pricked, listening through the wind, the roar of Quaid’s truck, the crashing waves down on the shore, and found the tiny sound somewhere among the trees in the forest. “That’s a cry.” My heart stopped. I grabbed Mike’s wrist, waiting to hear it again. “Mike. That’s a child’s cry!”
Mike’s eyes set around the fear that swam suddenly through us both. We circled on the spot, trying to pinpoint the sound.
“Near the Training Hall,” I said, and took off running across the endless field, leaping over body parts and shattered bits of wood, dizzy and breathless from gravity pushing back on me. I passed the hall and went straight to the forest behind it, and as I broke through the lines of trees I saw a small, toddling boy on the dirt path up ahead.
I paused a moment and sniffed the air to make sure he was human, catching a coppery mix of blood and salty tears. His little heart hammered in his chest as he wandered alone into the darkness, screaming out for David.
My arms wrapped him up and cradled him to my chest before my feet even stopped running. He pushed out from me, his mouth agape, tiny tears streaming his face. When he realised who had him, his chubby arms circled my neck and he climbed me, kicking his feet like he was trying to run further into my arms.