Silence: Part Two of Echoes & Silence (63 page)

He nodded worriedly, kissing the baby’s hair to make a point. And I made a mental note to thoroughly wash her head—right after I ripped Hans’ off.

“Stay right there.” I pointed at him, then quickly ran across the bloody floor to Jason. I shoved the spitting headless corpse off his chest and it fell in a heap on the other side of the table, like a sickening end to a tragic tale.

“Jase,” I said, my voice coming out horridly panicked. I lifted his bloodied shirt and lay my hands to his cold, fleshy chest, picturing David right here under them. We’d let it go, David and I. We’d let the past go and we were happy. We were ready to move on, live. How could it all go so wrong in just a few hours?

“Live,” I pleaded. “Please live.”

I closed my eyes, blocking out the fear and the shaking in my elbows, and sent the first, very subtle pulse of light into Jason’s heart.

I waited, forbidding all thoughts about where David might be right now—if he was okay, even still alive; if Safia’s interference had cost him his life out there on the battlefield, among undying arachnids from a darker realm.

Seconds passed, feeling like minutes, but Jason didn’t take a breath, so I laid my hands firmly to his chest again and sent another pulse of light into it. It moved through his arteries and electrified his limbs—I could feel it—feel the warmth in his body. But his heart didn’t start.

I waited again, my chest quivering with jagged breath, tears stinging my eyes.

“Please, Jase. Please.” I leaned over and kissed his head, my tears wetting his skin. “Please fight. I know you don’t think you have a reason to—not after everything that’s happened, but please just fight. If not for yourself, then for David. Don’t make me live without him.”

Laying against his chest, my ear catching the emptiness inside him, I rested my hands on both sides of his ribs, sending in one last slow and long pulse of light. I willed it to connect with his heart, awaken the tissue there that hadn’t beat for a hundred years. I imagined it moving, feeling human blood within its walls again, pushing it out around his already human flesh.

And as the hope died with time passing, a sudden sinking of his chest renewed it.

I laughed aloud, grasping his ribs again with both hands, and held onto him tighter than I ever had before. I could hear it—his heart. Jason’s heart, beating as I’d never heard it before. I could feel the warmth of his blood filling his limbs, bringing life to them as he’d not felt since he was just nineteen. And the air, the soft whir of it under my ear as it moved through his lungs was about the best sound in the world. I wished I could be there with David right now—to see his eyes open for the first time as a human.

But that wish died as the screams of my baby became soft whimpers.

I jumped up from Jase’s chest and ran at the speed of a vampire to Hans, scooping her out of his arms and cradling her more lovingly than I ever had before in her short little life. I thought the crying would stop then, but almost as if she were mad at me for letting her scream, it grew louder, more insistent.

“Shhh, little one.” I held her upright, gently rubbing her back. “It’s okay. All the bad guys are gone.” I hoped.

But something hit me with a sinking feeling then.

With a layer of hesitation slowing my movements, I turned my head and looked out the window, only opening my eyes at the last second. I didn’t want to see the Army of Black Widows battling on out there. I didn’t want to see the many piles of fleshless bones. So when I finally looked and saw men reaching down to grasp the hands of their brothers, drawing them up from within the sea of dead spiders, I jolted forward, crying with joy. It was over. It was all finally over.

All but one problem I needed to deal with.

My head practically spun on my shoulders as the demon within me rose to the surface. I felt weak and shaky and hungry, and that vampire had picked the wrong person to mess with. He pawed over Jason, lifting him up and cradling him in like a dying child in his arms, and it just made me feel sick—knowing what he’d done to him. Knowing how Jase would have begged him to stop. Knowing Jase would have cried and I wasn’t here to save him.

But Hans was powerful, I knew that much from what I’d heard. However, his power may have been subject to Safia’s command, or even her life, who knew? One fact remained: he would die for what he did to Jason, and it would have to be quick in case he fought me.

To the mortal eye, it might have looked as if I bent to scratch my leg. To a distracted sicko, it would seem as though I was moving to the fire to warm my baby after, but to Hans’ surprise, I appeared behind him with a firm grip around Drake’s dagger and wedged it clean into his neck, cutting through his spinal cord.

His legs faltered completely and he slumped onto the ground atop Safia’s headless body, squashing out the remaining blood with a very sickening moist sound.

A clock ticked somewhere in the room, drowning out the new and sudden silence.

A soft wind swept the field below, bringing the smell of blood mixed with the dryness of snow.

I breathed deeply for a moment, centring myself, and then knelt beside the bodies. Hans had fallen face first, his nose pushed sideways into the stone floor, his arms bent awkwardly up like chicken wings.

I leaned just a little bit closer and opened my mouth around his elbow. A part of me wanted so badly to suck the blood out of him as my fangs popped his flesh, but I couldn’t live with myself if I’d been nourished by the blood of the man that molested Jason. It would make me sick to my core. So I drew my fangs out of his flesh quickly and listened carefully to the sound of the venom changing it, pleased to hear he wasn’t immune.

“I hope I find your lost soul on the other side,” I said, standing up, feeling the golden warmth of the fire on the backs of my legs. “I’ll be sure to guide you straight to Hell.”

“Ara!” David’s desperate voice echoed up the stairs before I heard his footsteps.

“In here!” I screamed, my voice a little hoarse and perhaps more distressed than I intended.

He stopped himself in the doorway, his eyes darting around quickly to take it all in before he swept over and gathered me up in his strong, loving arms.

“Oh, my love.” He kissed my head, wrapping his hand around the baby’s, arching out a little to look down at her. “She’s bleeding!”

“It’s not her blood. It’s from my hands.” I rolled the soiled blanket back to show him her perfect little body, still warm and safe in the blue jump-suit. I could feel the firm ball of the crux still fastened to the chain around her ankle, too, and sighed with relief.

David sighed, too. “I was so scared she had hurt you.”

“We’re okay,” I promised. “But—” I nodded to Jason, still unconscious. And it occurred to me then that I couldn’t hear David’s heart beating.

“What happened?” He lowered his ear to Jason’s chest. “Why does he have a heartbeat? What did she do to him!”

“She linked you,” I said, eyes wide as the shock set in. “She injected him with venom, and I… I had to re-humanise him.”

“Linked us?” He rubbed his chest with one hand, looking down as a memory filled his head.

“Yes. And when the venom entered his system, you should have—”

“I fell,” he assured me, laughing. “And my first thought was that the burn felt like venom. But then it… just went away.”

We both moved our eyes across the table to Safia’s separated head, turning a slightly off-blue colour on the floor.

His whole face beamed into a bright grin. “Damn, Ara! You did that?”

“I know, right? I’m awesome.”

He grabbed my head with both hands and dropped a big kiss between them. “Good girl!”

“You can thank me later,” I said. “We need to get those bodies hidden—somewhere no one will
ever
find them.”

“Why?”

“Because she used magic to link herself to Drake and his immortality. Who knows if she can be resurrected if he is.”

David’s eyes followed mine, taking on a circular shape when he saw my father, decapitated on the floor. “Aw, Ara.” He vanished from my side, showing up in a squat beside Drake’s head.

“Don’t!” I marched over and pushed his hand away as he went to move it. “His life was connected to Safia’s—we can’t put him back together, David. Ever!”

His hands froze near Drake’s black hair. “You’re serious?”

I nodded, biting my lip again so I wouldn’t cry. He clearly hadn’t understood what I just said about Safia linking herself to Drake. “If he lives, there’s a chance she will, too.”

David stood up, rubbing his chest again, considering the head. “Isn’t it possible her magic died when she did? It would explain why the spiders just dropped to the ground out there.”

“Yes. But like I said, we can’t take any chances,” I said, the tightness of grief shaking my throat and filling it with a boulder. “Drake can never be resurrected.”

He turned quickly and sheltered my face in his chest. “I’m so sorry.”

“Me too, but I don’t have time to be sorry.” I moved out from his arms. “We need to get Jason to a hospital—”

“Why?” He looked back at his brother, obviously realising that re-humanising did not often render a person unconscious. “Wait, why hasn’t he woken up?”

“She did something,” I said, “to his brain.”

David walked closer, inspecting his brother, his eyes scanning the body, the table, and then stopped on the iron poker.

“Will he recover, do you think?” I asked.

“I don’t th—” His words ended in an almost whimper as his gaze moved down to the pile of bodies on the floor. His head rolled slowly up then, his hands balled into fists, and he took a very long breath, letting it out with, “Hans.”

“Yes.”

“Why did she need to damage his brain if she had Hans here to subdue him?” he asked, keeping his back to me, his tone suggesting he already knew.

“She said he was hysterical after Hans—”

David collapsed forward onto his knees, his elbows landing on the table to support his head. He sobbed so violently I was shocked into paralysis. I didn’t know what to say—or do. I wasn’t sure if he knew what Hans was capable of or if maybe he collapsed that way because he was exhausted. “David?” I said cautiously.

“He’s human now.” His voice was muffled in his crossed arms. “He won’t recover.”

“You can’t be sure of that—”

“I can, Ara.” He looked up at me, his eyes crystallised with tears. “If he ever even talks or walks again, he won’t recover from what I
know
Hans did to him.”

“You don’t
know
what Hans did, David,” I said, making like he was being silly, moving over to put my hand on his shoulder. “He—”

“No! I
know
, Ara.” He jerked away, standing up, as if he was the one molested. “Hans had his eye on my brother for seventy years! He was powerful, twisted, and just dumb enough to take advantage if he got the chance. I warned him.” He bent his head and covered it with his arms, his voice breaking. “I warned Jason to stay away from Hans. How could Safia have just… handed him over like this?”

“She said she wanted his…” I raided my mind for a more appropriate word, but there wasn’t one. “Semen—to use on our daughter in thirteen years.”

David’s whole upper body moved as he tried to catch his breath, but he just couldn’t compose himself. He covered his mouth and turned away, moving to the window as if he might find oxygen there.

“Maybe it’s good that he won’t recover—his brain. Maybe he won’t remember what happened here—”

“He
won’t
remember.” He cut the air with one hand, not looking at me. “I’m going to make
sure
of it.”

I walked over and gently touched his arm, snuggling against him when he didn’t shrink away. “It’ll be okay, David. It’s over now—all of it.”

He let out a shaky breath and wiped his wrist under his nose.

“I know you don’t feel that way right now, but it
is
over,” I confirmed, finally letting it all sink in. “Safia is dead. We have nothing to fear from her—ever again.”

He glanced back at Jason. “I know that, but I just feel numb.”

“Give it time,” I offered.

He moved back from me, sighing out the remainder of his anguish. “I need to call Falcon and tell him I found you.”

“Okay.” I looked at his phone as he drew it from his pocket. “I need to go find the car Safia stole and get the diaper bag so I can feed the baby.”

“I’ll send Emily.” He looked down my body then. “And you can go to my old chambers and get cleaned up while we clear up all this mess.”

By mess, I knew he meant my father’s body—and Safia’s.

“Okay,” I said, “But only if you promise to hand Hans’ corpse over to some necrophiliac freak.”

David’s eyes turned dark. “I’ll do a lot worse to his corpse than that, you can stake your life on it.”

I smiled, knowing that was true, then looked up at him, trying to imagine this moment if he
had
actually turned human.

“What?” he asked defensively.