Unseen (The Heights, Vol. 1) (40 page)

“They used to be witches,” Davyn said in awe.
Rhyse tried to sense their power and knew. Nothing—their magic
completely gone, the bodies probably the result of the violence
Addison’s blood had spurred in them.

He shouted her name.

“Up here, Vampire,” came a voice from the
second floor. Not hers. Her angel’s.

“If they move,” he said to Davyn, “burn
them.” He climbed the ladder, still reeling from his visit to hell,
every movement a new source of pain. But he didn’t stop. “Addison!”
There were more bodies along the wall. A werewolf, a demon. Then a
male seer, and M. “Where is she?”

From his knees, the angel nodded farther down
the line.

Rhyse was already moving. He passed a witch,
a mage, and then another seer before he saw her. “Addison. Thank
the powers.”

She opened her eyes halfway. “Rhyse?”
Sunlight momentarily muted by the eclipse came through the broken
ceiling, bathing her in soft light. She was on the ground, leaning
against a small pile of straw. The blood of the witches she’d
killed
covered
her clothing and arms. She was obviously
exhausted, but at least she was all right.

“You will be the death of me, Addison, and I
am immortal. I was…very worried about you.” He let out a sigh of
relief and stepped to the edge of the sunlight, knew it would get
brighter any moment as the moon continued its journey across the
sky. “Come here.”

“I can’t.”

Of course, she must be chained like the other
beings. While the sunlight would burn him, as long as he didn’t
stay
in it, he would recover, and he was far too impatient
to wait for long.

Before he’d taken the first step into the
light, she yelled at him to stop. “You can’t get close to me! Not
yet. My blood…”

The blood…“It cannot be yours.” All of that?
It was impossible and made no sense. The
witches
had bled,
not Addison, certainly not
this
much. Not when only a drop
would change them. “It cannot—tell me it is not yours.” He took a
step towards the light. Towards her.

“Rhyse, no.”

“Tell me it is not yours.” His words were
nothing more civil and controlled than a growl. “Tell me right
now.” He took another step, the sunlight burning his hand where it
touched, his mind refusing to accept what he was seeing.

“Stop. If you lose who you are trying to help
me, then you lose yourself for nothing. Because
that
will
hurt me more.” She dragged her hand to her chest, over her heart,
and he saw the metal cuff and chain that bound her to the wall. “I
do
not
want to take away who you are, Rhyse. I do
not
want to change you.” Her voice lowered. “Except for the way you
speak because it is rubbing off on me, and I hate it.”

He stood still, part of him understanding
what she wanted, but none of him caring. Nothing would stop him.
Not even her.

“Just wait, okay? Wait for it to dry a
little.” She looked up slowly. “And the sun…I forgot about the
sun…shit…you can’t be in the sun.” Her head fell to the side and
her eyes began to close. “This really sucks.”

“Addison.” He moved because he had to, his
mind and body in total agreement that, if he went into the beyond,
it would be with her in his arms.

And she wouldn’t follow him.

“You bastard, go away.” Her voice was severe
even in its weakness. He didn’t know how he’d missed it. Too
relieved to find her? Too arrogant to believe he could lose
her?

His skin sizzled, blistered. But hell had
been worse and she was the reason he’d made it through. When he
broke the cuff off her wrist, he understood what he had to do. If
he carried her into the shadows and their blood were to mix, there
would be nothing to stop his reaction. He would take her life.

So he knelt down at her side and wrapped the
chain around his neck. “If our blood mixes, you must run. This
chain will slow me down for only a moment, so you must run to the
angel. He is weak, but he is our best chance.” Her
only
chance. His fangs tore through his burnt wrist and held it above
her mouth. “Open, Addison. Take me into you again.”

Her tongue darted out to where a drop of his
blood landed. Her whole body shuddered, and she opened wide,
wanting and needing more of him. So he gave. As the sun burned
through his shirt, scorching every part of him it could reach,
Rhyse gave.

He’d never wanted to touch her more, knowing
this might be his last chance to ever do so. But he couldn’t risk
it. For
her
sake, not his. Her blood was everywhere, and her
heartbeat was still weak. They needed more time—he couldn’t die
before she healed.

When someone came up behind him, he turned
and hissed before he knew who it was.

“You think you can take me now, Vamp?” Davyn
threw a horse blanket over him, covering Rhyse’s entire body and
most of Addison’s. “Between hell and this? Not gonna happen. But we
can revisit it later if you’re still around.”

“Take me down if I try to hurt her, Demon.”
Rhyse burned as if he was still in the sun, but he knew Davyn had
just saved Addison’s life. If their blood mixed, Rhyse would lose
his power to heal and would die as a human. How apropos.

It might already be too late. The UV rays had
burrowed into his cells, and their effects would continue like
coals in a fireplace—harmless-looking but with the potential to do
far more damage than flames ever could. Already his weakness was
apparent—the gash he fed Addison from remained open and unhealed.
She gripped his forearm and pulled unconsciously, needing more from
him, more
of
him.

He would let her drain him if she needed him
to.

Dat vitae. The most dangerous creature their
world had ever known.

Addison. The most perfect creature
he’d
ever known.

He heard her call his name as if from another
plane, his mind unable to reconcile it with the fact that she was
right beside him. As she sat up, her voice held more urgency, her
expression more concern.

She would live. He wouldn’t. That was fair.
He’d lived for hundreds of years, thought he’d experienced
everything. But Addison had proven him wrong. And because he loved
her for it,
now
he had experienced everything. It was
enough.

After chucking all her bloody clothes over
the edge of the hayloft, Addison cursed at Rhyse for a while,
holding him, waiting for him to start arguing with her. Maybe she’d
taken too much of his blood.

The demon who showed up with Rhyse would
know, but he and Micah were busy with the children. The kids still
had a chance for normal lives, something that should be protected
at all costs.

The demon kept his distance but had,
shockingly and grudgingly, offered to make Micah look pristinely
angelic until the children’s minds were wiped of everything that
had happened to them. Hopefully, it would be the one and only time
they were part of this world.

“Wanna hear something funny, Rhyse? The
witches found out about this prophecy. It’s called ‘The Rising.’
Makes me think of bread, but whatever. The prophecy is about this
seer who’s only pretending to be a seer, and is actually this weird
creation that can wipe out all the supers. Anyway, this stupid
chick creates a massive rebellion and complete power shift, so the
humans are on the top and everybody else is on the bottom. Crazy,
right?”

She rocked him back and forth because it
seemed like the natural thing to do. But it wasn’t—there was
nothing natural about any of this. “So, because no one really knows
anything about prophecies and they’re all total bullshit to begin
with, the witches decide to
make
the prophecy happen. They
create this other being by blending the races and doing some
hocus-pocus, and shove this soul into some poor warlock’s kid. And
then the pissed-off warlock kills them before dying himself, of
course. Because if he
didn’t
, the idiot daughter of his
would actually know what she was before things got too wacky. So
now there’s this girl who can un-super every super in the Heights,
and she doesn’t know what the fuck she is, and her mom is mentally
unstable and can’t tell her. It’s totally hysterical, right?” Not
that there was anything to laugh about.

“A fairytale.” Even in a whisper, her voice
cracked. “So I was right—my life
is
a fairytale. Which means
it should have a happy ending for somebody, right? And since most
of the key players in the story are dead or don’t remember
anything, that means that
we
should have the happy ending,
don’t you think?” She paused to take a breath deeper than the
shallow, sobby ones she’d
been
taking but not by much.

“Rhyse?” She sighed, not knowing what was
going to happen. He hadn’t dusted, but death-by-sunlight was slow.
Maybe he was already dead and she was rocking and talking to a dead
body—dead
er
body—and any second he would dust in her arms.
It wasn’t as if there was a simple fucking answer, like him having
a goddamn pulse she could check. She couldn’t focus enough to sense
his power, plus there were a lot of supers around whose power was
fluctuating and confusing.

Oh yeah, she was also weeping like a lunatic.
She felt so alone and useless and stupid and scared. “What am I
supposed to do now? I don’t know what to do.”

“Continue talking,” Rhyse mumbled. “But no
more crying—it makes it harder to understand what you are
saying.”

When she laughed it sounded half-laugh,
half-sob, entirely non-attractive. “I’m running out of things to
talk about. How long until you get better? ’Cause you’re still
kinda crispy looking, and that’s not a good look for you. As a
vampire, you should totally be ashamed of your appearance right
now. So do something about it stat. Can you do it?”

“Not without blood.
Human
blood.”

“We’re kind of out of that.” Without giving
her a say at all, Micah, the demon, and the were had all agreed not
to tell anyone what had happened. The witches’ minds would be wiped
and they would go lead human lives.
That
bit was Micah’s
solution—everyone else thought they should all be killed. But not
telling anyone meant that none of Rhyse’s people could bring him a
snack.

She looked around as if a human with good
veins might have appeared in the last few minutes. Even though
Graham was human now, and would probably agree just because Rhyse
was his king, he would die doing it. Logan was still unconscious.
If Micah hadn’t assured Addison he would live, she’d never have
thought he would. The witch didn’t make it, and the mage
disappeared right after she was freed.

Someone shook the ladder and then started
climbing up. With the condition Rhyse was in, they couldn’t run for
it.

“I have a vamp, and I’m not afraid to use
him!” she called out.

“Addison? Is that you?” Dawn’s head appeared
and then she came the rest of the way up. “Oh, powers! Are you…?”
She walked forward hesitantly, glancing down to the scene below,
turning away from the bodies the moment she laid eyes on them. “I’m
so sorry. I didn’t know this would happen.”

“I think we just won the jackpot, babe,”
Addison whispered as she eased herself out from under Rhyse’s head.
“Dawn, if you wanna make things right, get your ass over here and
donate to the cause.” Thankfully, being surrounded by dead witches,
pissed off supers, and an absolutely
livid
Addison reminded
Dawn how much she wanted to help.

As Rhyse pulled from Dawn’s wrist, Addison
turned away and tried to close her ears. At least
he
wasn’t
moaning. Because that would’ve made it an even more excruciating
experience. He needed human blood to live, and the process had
biological side effects that couldn’t be controlled, but Addison
didn’t have to watch it happen. And she wished she didn’t have to
hear
it happen.

No more than a minute later, she heard Dawn
whimper a complaint, like she’d been so close to the big O but
hadn’t quite gotten there.
Good
. The woman had set Addison
up for death. Was it
that
strange to be holding a bit of a
grudge?

“Go to Graham,” Rhyse said. Dawn walked
dazedly towards Rhyse’s marshal. “Do not drain her, Graham.”

“My lord…” came the weak reply.

“He doesn’t need it. Not anymore.”

Rhyse looked at her and then turned towards
Graham who still knelt nearby, ready to attend his king even though
he was no longer of the same race. “Later you will provide me a
detailed account of exactly what happened, Graham. Understood?”

“He’s not a vamp anymore, Rhyse.”

“He does not need fangs to speak, does he?
You
do quite a lot of speaking without them.”

“You seem better, but the attitude might need
some work yet.” Addison knelt down next to him. “Did you get enough
blood? I don’t think you got enough. She should come back.”

“I will be fine.” He pulled her towards him.
“And you are naked.”

“I wasn’t sure how dry the blood needed to
be, so I thought it would be safer to just take everything
off.”

“Appreciated on many levels. You look
lovely.” Other than grimacing as he stood, he showed no other sign
of being in pain. His skin already looked better. When she tried to
help him, he shook his head. “You will have to be a bit more
patient, my pet. But I expect quite a bit of touching once I am
fully healed.”

“Me, too.”

The demon who’d appeared with Rhyse had
re
appeared, watching her out of the corner of predatory
eyes. But he didn’t approach. He talked to the demon still stuck in
the pentagram, shaking his head every once in a while and
grumbling.

“Will he let the other one out?” she asked
Rhyse.

“Davyn? No. Demons have no loyalty to each
other, and level-ones work so hard to get here, they would never
release one from a lower level.”