Chapter Thirty-One
Grant
Idrop to my knees next to Rachel. She’s still breathing, but those breaths are shallow, eyes moving behind closed lids. Blood oozes from a wound on her side, through her T-shirt and thin jumper.
“What happened?”
“Eirian stabbed her,” Vlad says. His voice sounds strained, and I want to heal him too, but he’s standing and still talking, and as much as it pains me, I can be practical. I need to help Rachel first.
Vlad comes and kneels next to me, though he grimaces every time he shifts his weight. I haven’t got a good look at the injury on his ribs yet, but it seems bad. I’ve never seen him hurt like this.
“You can do this,” he says, and his tone is a little more even now. “Ask your magic. It will help you.”
God, I hope so. Eirian is almost dead, not quite, but her magic is still seeping out of her. Some of it is inside me. Not as much as I think there would be if I were a normal vampire—my magic burnt through it pretty quickly—but enough to make my head spin and my hands tremble.
I reach out and brush my fingers over Rachel’s forehead. She lets out a faint moan. She won’t want to be turned, I’m sure, and I’m not about to let it get that far.
Vlad puts a hand on my shoulder. I close my eyes and wait for my magic to come to me.
It feels scattered at first. Disjointed. I’ve been through the ringer, so that’s no surprise, and it’s like it’s trying to inspect every corner of the room, like we’re not truly safe. I’m not sure if the puca died or left, but I do my best to coax my magic back to me all the same.
Its warmth wraps around my hands, twisting up my forearms, and I take a deep breath in, letting it fill my lungs. For the first time, I feel like the magic is truly waiting for my cue, waiting for me to direct and command.
I let the breath out. Fix this. That’s all we have to do. Stop the bleeding. Heal what we can, or at least take some of the pain and make sure we can get Rachel to the hospital.
Voices reach me, distant, frantic. Vlad’s hand never moves from my shoulder. When I think of him, the shimmering gold of our bond fills the space behind my closed lids, but then I focus on the task at hand and the gold retreats, though it is always hovering at the corners.
Magic pushes from my hands and into Rachel, swiftly moving to the site of the injury. I see it even with my eyes closed, a black hole that pulses with each beat of her heart, except my magic fills it, pushing at the edges, until all I see is more light and Rachel’s breaths even out.
I open my eyes when the light dies down, magic sweeping back up my arms and into me. Rachel is still on the floor, but now Margot is with us too, eyes full of unshed tears.
Rachel stares up at me, mouth agape. “You saved me.”
I shrug, regretting the move when it makes my head spin and nearly knocks me on my arse. Vlad is there, of course, though he grunts when he catches me, and I want to heal him too, even though I know we have to be careful.
“She’s dead,” Asher says. He’s standing over Eirian’s body. Quinn looks dishevelled, if not injured, though I guess his injuries probably healed on the way here.
“You’re hurt,” I say to Vlad.
“I will heal.”
My magic won’t hurt him. I won’t let it, and I feel a faint resonance, like it somehow agrees with me on that point. “Please, let me—”
He catches my hand when I raise it. I scowl. I know I won’t hurt him, not now. He shouldn’t have pulled on it himself. And he was going to do it again…
I draw my hand back before I can do something foolish like shove him over. He is hurt. Even if I’m mad at him.
Asher hesitates before he crouches next to us. “I could…”
“No,” Vlad says before I can. Not that I would. No, I’d let Asher heal him even if my magic is suddenly trying to force its way out of me and heal up the wound all on its own. Behave. It was so good a minute ago. “I will be fine.”
“Maurice is almost here,” Asher says with a nod. Margot helps Rachel up and onto the sofa. Rachel doesn’t look away from me the entire time. “I think he will manage to deal with the clean-up. What happened here?”
“Eirian already had Rachel,” Vlad says and looks at her.
She nods, curling into Margot’s side. “Someone grabbed me before I even made it to the beach. Then that”—her gaze lands on Eirian’s body, and she pales—“she told me I’d be queen with her. I just had to behave. If I didn’t behave, she’d kill Margot.”
Her voice cracks on the last word and Margot pulls her even closer, kissing the side of her head. I want to reach for Vlad, but I don’t want to hurt him. I slide my hand across the carpet, pressing it against his.
“She brought you here?” Asher asks.
Rachel nods.
“They arrived some time after you all left,” Vlad says. “Eirian used a puca to hide her approach and bring Rachel in without me noticing. She wanted me to turn Rachel so that she could take Rachel to the Otherworld with her.”
“You think she thought the power lies with you?” Asher says.
“I suppose it is as logical a leap as any,” Vlad replies. “She would never have managed it herself. She gave all her vampires too much power.”
“Yeah, you’re telling us,” Quinn mutters. He smiles, though, when Asher looks at him with concern, and I’m not sure that I like the way Asher’s glare echoes the one I gave Vlad earlier.
“What now?” Margot asks.
“Now?” Asher blows out a breath. “We’ll clean up here. With Eirian and Jakob gone, some of the vampires who used to live here might come back, but that will likely be over the course of weeks or months. If there’s anyone here you think we should talk to, we can do that tonight, too.”
“I can manage that,” Vlad says, but Asher shakes his head before I can open my mouth to protest.
“You will go back and rest. If you’re too stubborn to let your mate heal you, you can at least manage that.”
Vlad flinches. Only a little, but I see it. “Grant’s magic… I am not sure it is compatible.”
“Vampires can’t feed from wolves until they’ve done the rites,” Quinn says mildly. “Don’t see why that would be any different for you. Or us.”
That makes Asher sigh and me grin. Quinn means it, of course—the way he says it makes me think it’s a conversation he and Asher have had before—but he’s being a dick, too. Fun. I lean over and kiss Vlad’s cheek.
“I’m taking him back,” I say, and Asher outright laughs.
“Yeah. Obviously.”
“Maurice needs to check for other vampires Eirian might have blessed,” Vlad says as I help him to his feet. He lists to one side, pain creasing his face again. “We cannot risk any of them roaming around unsupervised.”
“I’ll tell him,” Asher promises. “Get some rest.”
I pause at the doorway to the flat. Rachel has stopped crying, but she’s still watching me.
“Can we… Can I see you again before I leave?”
She doesn’t move for a long moment. Maybe she’ll say no. I’ll have to be all right with that, if she does. It’s not up to me. It’s not been up to me since I left.
“Sure,” she says, so quietly that I almost don’t hear it, and then rests her head on Margot’s shoulder again.
I press up against Vlad’s side. “Come on. Let’s get you back.”
Vlad leans against me all the way back, which tells me better than anything else just how hurt he is. Once we’re safely in our room, he pushes away, making a beeline for the bathroom, but I twist around him and stand in the doorway.
“Go sit on the bed.”
“Grant—”
“Go.”
I’m not mad at him. No, well, I am mad at him, but I also totally get his reasoning in that of course I’d do the same thing if our roles had been reversed.
It’s just that he needs to get it into his skull right now that it’s not acceptable behaviour.
I had everything under control. I mean, I guess we wanted Eirian captured rather than dead, but I think I made the right decision, considering the circumstances.
Vlad lets out a sigh when he sits on the bed. He’s always pale, so it’s hard to judge pain from his pallor, and I’m pretty sure he’s like a cat in that he’ll not reveal he’s injured unless completely necessary.
Maybe all vampires are like cats. Maybe that’s why we’ve, historically, not got along with werewolves so well.
“Grant,” Vlad murmurs, and my attention snaps back to him. Okay, maybe I’m coming down, too. That was… a lot. I killed someone. Again.
“Let me see,” I say, and I don’t know what about my voice or expression convinces him, but after a moment, Vlad bows his head and shrugs off his jacket. His shirt beneath is cornflower blue, the side all torn up and wet with dark blood.
I gasp. Vlad grabs my hands, but pain tightens his eyes at the sharp movement.
“I am fine.”
“That’s not fine. I don’t know what definition of fine you’re using, but that isn’t it!”
“Grant…”
“Are you serious?”
Vlad brings one of my hands to his lips and presses them to my knuckles. “I will heal.”
“Let me heal you.”
He’s reluctant. I get that. But I know I won’t hurt him. I checked Maurice when he was injured and didn’t hurt him. I just healed Rachel. I think if I control the magic, it’ll be just fine.
“Okay.”
“W-what?” Now that he’s said it, I feel faintly sick.
“Heal me. I trust you. I know you would never hurt me.”
I shake all over. Vlad tightens his grip on my hands. Okay. Okay, I can do this.
I can. The slightest of nudges has my magic rolling out of me and into Vlad, and he tenses when he feels the brush of it, but only for a moment, hardly any time at all.
Then he lets out a sigh, one far less pained, and when I close my eyes, I see the same as I did with Rachel, only closer, clearer.
The wound is deep, but the blood stops flowing and the edges come together and within a few minutes, there’s nothing at all, not even a scar.
I draw my hands back with a gasp and work at the buttons on Vlad’s shirt almost frantically. He helps me, huffing when the cuffs get caught on his wrists, but I don’t care about that. Aside from the dried blood on his skin, there really isn’t a mark beneath.
“Fuck,” I mutter. “I—”
Vlad kisses me. His shirt is still around his wrists and I’m pretty sure we’ve smeared blood on the duvet cover, but he grabs my face and plunders my mouth, and I want to laugh, I want to cry, but I don’t want him to stop.
I push closer, instead, close enough I can throw my arms around his neck and plant a knee on the bed between his legs. One of his hands slides down my back and when he grabs my arse I moan into his mouth.
“We should shower,” Vlad rumbles when I kiss his cheekbone. I run my fingers through his beard and tip my head onto his shoulder.
“We should.”
“And then…”
“In the shower.”
He goes still for a moment. I’ve surprised him. “In the shower?”
“I need you,” I breathe, the words lighting a fire inside me. “I mean, we could wait until we go home, but—”
“No,” Vlad says sharply. “No. In the shower. Up. Let’s go.”