“Where are we going?” asked David, following me as I quietly scampered to the double doors at the back of the vehicle.
“The trees,” guessed Salem, knowing exactly how my mind worked. Rainforest trees were good for hiding in.
“Yes.” Carefully and quietly I swung the door open…and was knocked flat on my back as a skeletal, grotesque-looking Keja dived on me and clamped his teeth around my throat. Well, fuck. I didn’t even have time to defend myself before it burst into ashes, thanks to either David or Salem – I wasn’t sure. They were both at my side at the exact same time that Jared teleported in front of me, clearly having felt my pain through the bond.
He blanched. “Oh, fuck no.”
It was my own bloody fault. I’d had everyone concentrating so hard on the humans, trusting Quentin and the others to deal with all the tainted vampires. I should have known better than to take it for granted that we were completely safe from them. Jared immediately dragged me against him and took me to The Hollow. It was lucky that David and Salem were holding onto me or Jared might have absentmindedly left them behind in his haste to get me home.
Arriving in the infirmary, Jared laid me down on one of the beds. “No, baby, no – this can’t be fucking happening.” He clasped his hands behind his head, staring down at me in pure disbelief.
A good-natured Keja who liked to act as a nurse – apparently letting go of her human profession had been hard – rushed over with a towel. Salem snatched it from her and pressed it firmly against the bite wound on my throat. Following that, he immediately called Antonio using the infirmary phone. The rest of the squad – who had clearly arrived there with Rodney’s injured squad members and were supportively remaining at their side – surrounded my bed. They cursed, growled, gawked, and hit me with questions that I was too distracted to answer. Fuck, the bite was itching like crazy and it was taking everything I had not to scratch it. Was it supposed to itch? I didn’t recall Evan, Max, or Stuart reporting that.
The nurse, Mary Jane, repeatedly tried to squeeze through the boys to reach me, but they weren’t budging. I internally shrugged. It wasn’t like there was anything she could do to help me anyway.
David swallowed hard. “Coach…Shit, I feel like I tempted fate.”
“This is no one’s fault but my own for concentrating too much on the humans.”
He knotted his hands in his tousled hair. “We should have sensed that vampire out there.”
“If we hadn’t already been surrounded by the scent of rotten fish, we would have done.”
“You just wouldn’t let me teleport you home, would you?” Jared took to pacing beside my bed, which was why people were giving him a wide berth. This was what Jared did whenever I got hurt. Took it out on me. Yes, it was unfair. But logic never prevailed over his panic and fear. I was used to it at this point. “You just had to wait until the others were safe.”
“Yes, I did. And I’d make the same decision again.” That was clearly the wrong thing to say, despite that it was the truth, because everyone looked ready to explode at me. “You can lecture me about it later.” I went to sit up, but Jared pushed me back down.
“No, don’t move.”
“Why? Lying here isn’t going to make any difference. And it’s not like there’s anything anyone can do. The only thing to do now is”
Jared’s eyes flared with rage, his irises glowing like lasers. “Don’t ask me to lock you up in a fucking cell!”
“You want me to attack people and let the taint spread, is that it?”
“And you’d be perfectly fine with confining me in a glass cage, would you?”
“Well of course not,” I snapped. “But what else do you expect me to” I double-blinked as there was a whizz of movement through the doors and suddenly Antonio was beside me. Clearly he’d used vampire momentum to get here.
He looked distraught. “Sam, how did this happen?”
“How do you think it happened?” Jared snorted. “She did what she always does. She put herself in the line of fire. If she had just let me teleport her out of there when I suggested it, she”
“I’ve told you, you can lecture me later.” I returned my attention to Antonio. “I need to know something. Will Jared become tainted too because of our bond?”
“No.” Antonio sighed, his voice low and filled with regret. “But he will gradually deteriorate and weaken as you do. Then when you die, he will die also.”
Fuck, fuck, fuckety, fuck.
“Let me take a look at the bite.” Antonio gently eased back the towel. The combination of horror, repugnance, and confusion in his expression made my stomach plummet. “David, I need a wet pad to clean the wound.”
In vampire speed, David was back with the pad. “Here.”
“Thank you.” Each gentle dab only made the wound itchier. It was driving me bloody mental and I had to ball my fists to keep from clawing at it. When Antonio was done, he gasped. David’s mouth fell open. The others had similar reactions.
Oh God, now what?
“What’s wrong?” Jared cupped my chin, turned my head, and leaned over to get a good look. “It’s almost fully healed,” he said incredulously.
“But not in a good way,” warned Antonio.
I frowned. “How can it be bad if I’m healed?”
Antonio’s gaze darted from me to Jared. “This is something we need to discuss in private.”
So this was related to my hybrid status, then. Well there was no way he could clear the room, since the injured were being tended to here.
“Then we talk alone,” Jared stated. Understanding, Antonio held onto my hand while Jared lifted me into his arms. Then suddenly we were in our apartment and Jared was positioning me on the sofa.
I tried to sit up, but he urged me to lie back down. Huffing, I humoured him.
“Now what did you mean?” Jared asked Antonio, keeping his hand on my shoulder.
“Do you remember how swiftly Sam healed during her duel with Magda? She had gaping holes in her shoulders”
“Thanks for the reminder,” I grumbled.
“You shut up,” Jared said, but his tone was surprisingly gentle despite the anger surging through him.
“My point is that she healed unnaturally fast, which we all attribute to her being a hybrid. Vampires have accelerated healing, but if our injuries are quite severe, we can take hours to fully heal. In the case of The Call, the bite marks worsen. They do not heal at all. As you can see, Sam’s wound has closed. But the teeth marks remain, and they look ugly and angry.”
“Ugly?” I echoed. “Someone get me a mirror. I want to know what all the fuss is about.” Truthfully, I wasn’t as calm as I sounded. But if I was to express my panic, it would feed Jared’s fear and make him ten times worse. When no one moved, I pressed, “A mirror!”
Cursing, Jared disappeared into the bedroom. He was back at my side in a blink with my handheld mirror. At the same time, there was a knock at the door.
“That will be my guards. I lost them in my haste to get to Sam.” It turned out that Antonio was right. The guards entered with Luther and the pit-bulls in tow.
Jared arched a brow at Luther. “You didn’t foresee this happening?” The Advisor had been known to keep things to himself for fear of altering a person’s path too much.
Grim, Luther shook his head. “Believe me, this is not something that I would have kept from you. In fact, I would have locked her away myself to keep her safe.”
Any other time, I might have scowled at him for that comment. But I was too busy panicking about the bite mark on my throat. Dear God, it looked disgusting. Just as Antonio had said, the mark was in fact seriously ugly. Although the skin had healed, it was in a weird zigzag fashion, like someone had done a really bad stitching job. Furthermore, the patch of skin around it was blotchy and a blazing red. “All right,” I said shakily, placing the mirror on the coffee table. “What does this mean?”