He took one of her hands and laid it against his shoulder, and she saw it then—dark blood seeping around the border of the vest, near his underarm. He wheezed, “Freak shot. Just my fucking luck. Bastard went in sideways. Lung.”
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw one end of the garbage truck behind the SUV lift into the air. With a gigantic screech of metal, it sailed toward the fighting Vampyres, who scattered. The truck slammed into the edge of the building.
Holy shit, someone just picked up that truck and threw it.
It was a troll, massive and stone-colored. It stomped toward one Vampyre—belatedly she recognized Xavier—who leaped, not away, but toward it.
Dear God, did he have no fear whatsoever? With impossible-looking grace and speed, he landed on the troll’s massive shoulder, put his Glock to its eye and shot it. As it began to topple, he leaped away.
She turned her attention back to Diego, who had watched the encounter too. He looked up at her with a crooked smile and said telepathically, He’s a little like Armageddon, isn’t he? Tell him . . . I’m sorry. I was supposed to get him into the city . . . With Justine in Evenfall, I thought she was going to try something there, a coup against Julian . . .
She stared. “You’re working with Justine? Since when?”
When she came to stay with Melisande. She made me an offer . . . His head sagged. I thought she wanted Xavier out of the way . . . Wouldn’t have done it if I’d known . . .
“For God’s sake, why?”
In the semidark, she couldn’t see his infinitesimal shrug. She would never have known about it, if she hadn’t felt him move underneath her fingertips.
Thousand bucks monthly stipend, chica. No matter how much you save, it isn’t enough to retire on.
The wry voice in her head went silent, and his eyes closed.
Tears spilled out the corners of her eyes. She whispered, “You stupid, greedy son of a bitch.”
A hand came down on her shoulder. An involuntary cry broke out of her. She flinched and twisted to one side, as she brought up her Glock. . . .
Taking hold of her wrist, Xavier jerked her hand away. Even though he pointed the muzzle of the Glock toward the side of the building, she managed not to pull the trigger. Pulling her arm free, she clicked on the safety and tucked the gun in the waist of her jeans, at the small of her back.
Coming down on one knee beside her, Xavier gave Diego a long, grim look. Xavier was covered in blood, his vest pocked with marks. He’d been shot at multiple times. Maybe knifed. She was so desperately glad to see him, she lunged forward to throw her arms around his neck and grip him tight.
Slipping an arm around her waist, he eased back until he connected with the wall of the nearby building and slid to a sitting position.
“What are you doing?” she said between her teeth. “You can’t sit. We’ve got to keep moving, in case they come back and attack us again.”
“They’re not going to. They did what they came to do.”
“What do you mean?” Loosening her hold around his neck, she pulled back to search his face.
He opened his free hand to show her an empty syringe.
She had been scared so much over the last few days, but the sight of what he held in his broad palm outdid all of it, sending a pure bolt of terror through her.
“More than one of them tagged me,” he told her. “I don’t know how many doses I took.”
She heard Raoul’s voice in her head, as if he had just spoken the words to her all over again.
There’s more than one way to kill a Vampyre.
Brodifacoum. A highly lethal anticoagulant poison.
They bleed to death. I’ve seen it, and it’s a grim way to die.
“No, no, no, no, no,” she said.
“I’m sorry, Tess.” He wiped his face with the back of one hand. A trickle of blood oozed from the corner of one of his eyes, and Raoul’s clinical voice continued in her head.
First it attacks a Vampyre’s small blood vessels then it leads to internal bleeding, shock, convulsions, unconsciousness and eventually death.
“You’re not going to die.” She turned very calm. “I won’t let you. Raoul told me about this. We have to drain you and get you a massive infusion of untainted blood as fast as we can. I need a knife.”
While she might have sounded calm, her hands were frantic as she patted his pockets. No knife. She whirled on her knees to search Diego’s body.
Come on. Come on. It couldn’t have been all flying bullets and trolls flinging garbage trucks. After the carnage tonight, there had to be a sharp object, somewhere.
Sirens sounded in the distance. With a dim sense of incredulity, she realized the entire confrontation couldn’t have taken ten minutes, and had probably taken much less time.
“Check the back of the SUV, in the weapons storage compartment.” Xavier sounded calm too, and he looked it, despite the blood leaking out of his eyes. “There will be a couple of knives, or at least a short sword.”
She sprang to the backseat and lunged for the back. Diego had left the compartment open and knives had been Velcroed to the inside of the lid. Snatching one, she scrambled back to Xavier. “How do you want me to do this?”
“We have to work fast. The poison’s been in my system for a few minutes already.” He held out his arms, palms up. “Cut both wrists. Go deep.”
Hesitating, she asked, “What about your tendons?”
He told her, “Don’t worry about it. If I make it, I’ll heal.”
“You’re going to make it,” she snapped. The terror hadn’t eased up, not in the slightest. It drove her on, like a devil riding her back, whipping her to the next thing, and the next.
She used the terror to strike with the knife. As the point drove deep into his flesh, he stiffened and sucked in a breath. Blood flowed out from the cut, in a shockingly plentiful river.
He held out his other wrist to her. “Again.”
She almost couldn’t see what she was doing, which was when she realized she was crying. Once more, she cut him deep, and his blood flowed freely, and there wasn’t going to be enough liquor in the world, or enough therapy, to get over the sight of him hunched in pain and drenched in his own blood.
His face twisted, and he doubled up and fell to his side.
She went down with him to the ground and embraced all of it, every last gory, wonderful inch of him.
“Don’t you dare give up. You’re not done yet.” Lifting him slightly, she took his head and guided him to the crook in her neck. “Come on, bite.”
Tess. His lips moved.
He had kissed her. Even with all the pain she could tell he was feeling, as it strained his strong body, he still kissed her.
She sobbed, “Xavier, if you don’t bite me, I will pummel you. No, I won’t, I’ll take the fucking knife to my own neck. I refuse to let you go. Do you think it matters in the slightest to me anymore? DO IT.”
A brief, sharp pain stabbed her skin, then warmth where his mouth rested on her. She felt the flow of her own blood and how he drank it. Despite the discomfort of sprawling on the ground, and the fear that after everything, she might still lose him, nourishing him felt so good. So good.
Thou fairest among women, he whispered in her head. My beloved is mine, and I am hers.
Ignoring the flashing lights that appeared at either end of the alley, she cradled him as close as she could.
Even though the time they had been together could be counted in hours, not days, they had already been through too much for it to just end.
It was too strong, surprising and beautiful.
Too necessary.
NINETEEN