Nick let go abruptly, hands flashing out to box Drake’s ears. The move got him back to the floor but did nothing to break the hold. A smirk twitched at the corner of Drake’s mouth-appreciated, perhaps, of Nick’s effort-but an instant later his head snapped forward, butting into Nick’s nose with a crunching pop of bone and gristle. Blood erupted from the broken nose, draining over Nick’s face, leaving him sagging against the glass wall.
Still, the ghosts came, a great wall of writhing gray appendages. Jackie could not even discern solid bodies anymore. Her vision had begun to blur.
“Come to me, Laurel. Your time is now.”
Her name brought Jackie’s vision back into focus. Drake’s hand beckoned toward her best friend, whose love for her had been beyond what she had ever felt deserving of. Like the flick of a light switch, Laurel’s attack on the bodyguard ceased, and she dropped back to the floor. She did not look at Drake, her face contorted with the effort to resist his will. Her gaze was directed squarely at Jackie.
“Jackie…”
No! Jackie struggled to sit up, putting her hands on the floor to push herself up, but there was nothing. She could no longer feel anything, as if her arms had vanished from the elbow down. She could not let Drake take Laurel a second time. She could not fail again.
Let me in, hon, before it’s too late.
Laurel walked across the room now, approaching Drake in slow, resisting steps. Jackie began to cry. She could not even yell for her to stop. Be stronger, damnit!
Trust me! Just let go. Let it all go.
What had she said? You’ll have to let me in there.
“Laurel Carpenter! You will come to me now.” Drake’s voice was more insistent than it had been previously. One hand pressed tightly up against Nick’s chest while the other beckoned.
Laurel’s face contorted, lips creased into a razor-thin line, but she continued the inexorable march toward Drake’s outstretched hand.
Jackie glanced over at Nick, who struggled to shake the cobwebs out of his head. The ghosts had paused, apparently too afraid to approach the now-angered Cornelius Drake.
Shelby’s voice was an urgent hiss in her ear. She could barely feel the fingers digging into her shoulders as Shelby pushed her forward to get up. “Fucking Drake. I’ve got to help her.”
The pressure on her released, and Jackie slumped over to the floor. This was it. She was going to die alone on the stone-cold floor in this wretched world of the dead, no peace, and no comforting hand holding hers as she faded away into darkness. This was not how it was supposed to be, not at all.
Laur, I love you. Just take me out of this place.
The blessed relief of her friend’s touch welcomed her into the end.
Chapter 58
Laurel vanished. One moment she was there, struggling against Drake’s coercive pull, and the next she was gone.
“What?” Drake appeared to be as perplexed as Nick was angry.
The distraction was all the time Nick needed, however, as the crushing weight of Drake’s powerful hand eased from his chest. Pulling together the raw, spiritual energy that had been surging into his body, Nick was able to bring his left arm across his body with hammerlike force to Drake’s elbow. The reprieve allowed much needed oxygen back into his lungs.
If Drake had not taken Laurel, where in hell had she gone to? She was their way back. If she was gone, they were as good as dead, and all this was moot.
Out of the corner of his eye, Nick saw Shelby come barreling at Drake. She must have realized as well the seriousness of Laurel’s disappearance. Behind her, Jackie lay prone on the floor, curled up in the fetal position, unmoving. It occurred to him then that Shelby was not hell-bent for Drake because of Laurel, but because Jackie had finally died. The one truly living being in this cold and barren Deadworld, and he had let her slip away, unable to overcome the fear of what he was. Too little too late.
Drake turned back; the hand once outstretched to get Laurel balled into a fist to smash Nick in the face. The half second Nick spent staring at Jackie’s unmoving body would have been enough for it to land, but Shelby took Drake out at the knee, buckling him to the floor.
The ghosts, ready for the opportunity, rushed in upon Nick, flowing up his arm in a mad rush of energy. It was almost enough to fry his synapses. The kinds of things possible with such power were limitless, far more than he had imagined back in the days of drinking real blood. The prospect was terrifying. Shrouding it all in a smoldering, dark haze was the image of Jackie’s dead body. Such power meant nothing now. He had wanted only to save her, get her back to the world of the living where she might be saved. She deserved no less. It was his fault for letting her get dragged into this mess. He should have forced her out, broken the law, tied her up, or taken whatever means necessary to ensure her safety. He should have done a lot of things that had been necessary. Now, however, only one necessity remained.
Nick leaped on top of Drake, funneling the raw energy into his clenched fists, burying them again and again into the pale, haughty face. The rage and frustration of the decades suffered at the man’s relentless vengeance poured out of him, finding release but little solace or satisfaction in the rupturing of skin and cracking of bone his fists inflicted.
After the seventh or eighth punch, Drake’s broken mouth twisted into a smile. “You can’t kill me here, Nicholas. Your friends are dead or dying. Good show, though. I did not believe you had it in you.”
Nick clamped his hands around Drake’s head, thumbs digging into those soulless gray eyes. “You’ll die, you fucking bastard, even if I have to twist your withered head right off your body.” He began to bear down, pushing against the force of Drake’s will that worked to pry his fingers free. “Even if I burn myself away, you’re going to burn up with me.”
Drake’s hands locked onto Nick’s wrists, squeezing down against the bones, and Nick could feel the pressure building, beginning to grind bone and ligament together.
Behind him, Shelby’s voice was strained. “Goddamnit, Nick. Hurry up.”
She was clamped around Drake’s legs, but her strength had waned with the time among the dead. Her help would not last much longer. Nick pushed back with everything he had, hoping to crush Drake’s skull. His thumbs ground down, fluid beginning to seep out.
A lightning jolt of pain flew up his arm along with the sound of cracking bone. Cornelius had begun to break his left wrist. The smile on Drake’s face remained unflinching even as blood begin to drip from his sockets. Doubt crept into Nick’s mind. Perhaps the vampire could not be killed in this place. A few more seconds, and it would not matter. His wrist was going to give out, and his viselike grip around Drake’s skull would fail.
Then something was on his back. For an instant Nick thought it one of the goons come over to try to pry him off, but the voice in his ear could not have been any sweeter, any more of a relief to his guilt-ridden conscience.
“Take us out, Nick. Now!”
Jackie. But the words were Laurel’s. Somehow Laurel was in control. Her voice whispered through all the rampant energy supercharging his body, urgent and insistent. “Cynthia,” she said. “Hospital.” Jackie’s arms wrapped around his neck, and Nick understood where they needed to go.
Open the door and push them all through. Nick let her in, using her guidance to open the doorway back to the world of the living. The change of focus diverted his energy away from Drake’s crushing grip, and Nick felt his wrist give way, grinding to pieces beneath his skin.
For the first time, Drake’s victorious smile faltered. Going back through did not appear to be on his list of options. He tried to throw them off, push them aside before that door could be opened.
Pushing three people from one world to the other had been rough, but now there were five, one of whom was doing his best not to go through. They had to overcome not only the tension of the doorway itself being pushed open beyond its rightful bounds, but Drake’s panicked efforts to pull it closed. For the first time in 180 years, Nick realized he had more strength than his nemesis. The unharnessed energy, with which he had been unsure how to focus before, exposed itself with its true power. The power did not give him the ability to wreak havoc upon another, but the power to manipulate that fabric of time, space, and spirit between the living and the dead.