Chapter 26 – Lilith
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
LILITH
I sit in the armchair by his bedside, a blanket wrapped around my shoulders, staring at the same spot on the wall.
Four days; four days of Silas just lying there, completely motionless.
A corpse. No pulse, obviously. Cold to the touch.
Not breathing. Viktor assures me that he’s alive; well, alive in the vampire sense.
I’ve never heard of a vampire going into a coma, and yet here we are.
“You really should feed, or at least sleep,” Evelynn says softly as she enters Silas’s room.
I give her a tight smile. “I can’t. Every time I close my eyes, I’m either haunted by Silas choking on black blood or Morbius’s lifeless, dead eyes staring back at me.
” I sigh. I hate that my mind went to Morbius—for all that he caused, for all that he did—and yet a part of me still aches at his loss.
God, I want to hit something. Destroy anything.
“You could take one of Hex’s elixirs,” Evelynn suggests yet again.
I shake my head. “No. I’m not going to be out of it. What if something happens, or he wakes up? Have Lucian and the others found anything?” I ask.
Evelynn shakes her head, sighing. “No. I think they’ve read every book there is on bond breaking and its effects. So far, nothing.” She glances away. “Lucian isn’t sleeping either,” Evelynn mumbles, her voice broken and sullen.
That’s the atmosphere in the club: sullen. The mood is dire, desperate; a darkness blanketing us all.
“I’ve put the bar up for sale,” I say, not looking at Evelynn.
“No,” she whispers in shock.
I look at her, my eyes red, sore, and dry. I swallow. “I can’t. I can’t keep living in a place that destroyed my life,” I choke. “I can’t take much more.”
Evelynn nods, blinking back her own tears. “I understand.” She pauses. “When will you go?” she asks.
“As soon as I know he’s okay.” I swallow.
“I know I shouldn’t say this.” She pauses.
I interrupt her before she can finish. “I know, I know it will hurt him.” I pause. “I’m not saying I’ll go forever. But I…” I sigh, leaning my head against the back of the chair. “Fuck, I can’t keep doing this,” I breathe. “The pain that place brings me. I just can’t.”
“I get it. I do,” she assures, though I can’t tell if she’s holding back on wanting to say something else.
I changed the subject. “Any word on Cain?” I ask.
She shakes her head. “Lucian said he doesn’t think we’ll hear from him for a while now.”
I nod. “Yeah, it’s a lot to find the wife you thought you killed, to witness her dying all over again.
” I rub my face, running my fingers through my filthy hair.
I haven’t even bothered to shower. Black blood still stains my hands, my body.
I hold my hands out in front of me, trembling.
I clear my throat. “Can you stay with him? I think I’ll have that shower now,” I swallow.
“Of course. I left you clean clothes and a towel in there for you, for when you decided you’d want to,” Evelynn says with a nod.
I give her a tight smile, giving Silas one last look, just in case he decided to open his eyes at that very moment. He doesn’t.
I turn the shower on as hot as it will go.
I remove my clothes and step in, the room filling with steam.
The water beats down on me, black-stained water pooling at my feet.
A wracked sob tears from me, and I cover my mouth, trying to muffle the sound.
I sink, sitting in the base of the shower, my back against the tiled wall.
My body shakes, raw, pained sobs ripping from my chest that I can no longer contain.
I didn’t think it was possible to shed any more tears, and yet here I am.
Painful, gut-wrenching sobs. The shower gets turned off, and a towel is draped over me.
I feel strong arms pick me up off the floor, and I cocoon myself against them, unable to control my anguish any longer.
“Shh, it will be okay.” A deep voice soothes. Cain.
I lift my head from his chest and look up at him. His normal, vibrant red eyes are dim, with dark circles around them; he looks gaunt. “You came back.” I sniffle.
He gives me a smile that doesn’t reach his eyes. “Yeah, I did.”
“Why?” I croak.
He lightly brushes my damp hair from my face. “Because Silas would do it for me. It’s the least I owe him,” he rasps.
“Thank you,” I say softly.
He places a kiss on top of my head, continuing to hold me. We sit like that in silence, just watching over Silas. I relax into him, my eyes becoming heavy, drifting off into a deep slumber.
“Well, that’s one way to wake the bastard up, with his woman curled up on your lap half naked,” I hear Clutch mutter. I blink my eyes slowly open.
“Shh, she’s fucking exhausted, let her sleep,” Cain chastises.
I lift my head, my sleep-fogged brain clearing. “I’m awake.” I yawn. I sit up, rubbing my eyes.
“Fuck,” Cain mutters. I blink and look at him as he grabs the towel that had fallen around my waist, wrapping it around my shoulders, covering me.
“Maybe you should just rest those on Silas’s face. I know I’d wake up from any coma if I thought I was waking up to those.” Clutch winks, twirling his cocktail stick in his mouth.
I roll my eyes at him, clasping the towel around me. “Sorry,” I mumble, feeling slightly embarrassed.
He shakes his head. “No bother,” he assures.
I turn my attention to Silas, still the same. Disappointment hits me, and I hope that I will turn around and see him looking at me. Or at least glaring at Cain.
“I’m going to get dressed,” I state, climbing off Cain’s lap and walking into the bathroom. I pull on a pair of grey jersey shorts and the black tank top Evelynn lent me, then walk back out into the bedroom, surprised to see the entire club standing around Silas’s bed.
“What’s going on?” I ask hesitantly.
“Hex found something we can try that might wake him,” Lucian states.
“You might want to step outside for this, sweetheart,” Marko warns.
I shake my head. “What are you going to do?” I press, fear creeping up my spine.
Lucian glances at Hex. Hex nods. “This ritual is extreme; it will break every bone in his body, tear through every muscle, burn every nerve.”
I shake my head. “No. You can’t do that. There has to be another way,” I plead.
Hex shakes his head. “It’s been five days; he hasn’t so much as twitched a finger.
The ritual will heal his bones, muscles, and nerves, piece by piece.
Healing him, ridding him of anything that shouldn’t be there.
If there is anything of the bond, of the blood oath, left in him, it will expel it,” Hex assures.
“Then he will wake up?” I ask.
Hex shrugs. “That’s the hope.”
Hope. A small word that holds so much. I give a brief nod, leaning everything I have into that tiny word. It’s all I have.
Evelynn is sitting on the floor outside, holding a bottle in her hand. She holds it out for me. I take it, sliding down the wall to sit beside her. I take a long swig, the strong alcohol burning my throat, relaxing some of my very tense muscles.
I hand her back the bottle. “I’ve been thinking,” she states.
“Yeah?” I ask.
She drinks. “Yeah. You can’t leave.”
I take the bottle from her and drink. “And why is that?” I wheeze.
“Because you said the bar was the place where your life was destroyed, right?”
“Yeah,” I answer her, my frown deepening.
“Well, I thought about it, and while I agree with you, your life was destroyed that night in that bar. It also holds many, many other memories. Good ones with your family before that night. Your life didn’t end that night. It was tragic. Horrific, what happened. No one will deny that.”
A violent, haunting, roaring scream comes from Silas’s room. Evelynn pauses, her hand grasping mine in a tight, supportive hold. “Shit,” I breathe.
Evelynn continues talking over the screams—the animalistic noise coming from Silas will haunt me for eternity—in an attempt to cover it.
“Well, your life also started that night.” She pauses.
“I lost my best friend the night Lucian took me,” she says.
I knew this. I had thought it was a dick move on the club’s part, but then they weren’t exactly law-abiding citizens.
“It was unfair, it was devastating, and I’m not for one second comparing that to what you went through.
But I’m just saying I understand, at least a little bit. ”
“You going somewhere with this?” I ask, arching my brow.
Her lips twitch, fighting a smile. “Trying to have a heart-to-heart and you still bite.”
“Sorry. It’s like a defence mechanism,” I sigh.
Evelynn squeezes our clasped hands. “All I’m going to say is don’t leave. You have a chance at happiness with Silas. Fine, don’t live in the bar, get your own place, make new memories. But don’t leave the people who love and care for you. Take a break, but don’t leave,” Evelynn pleads.
I look at her. “Are you asking me to stay for you or Silas?”
“Me. And a little bit for Silas,” she grins.
As if hearing his name, Silas lets out an almighty scream.
Both of our attention turns back to Silas’s door.
It opens, and the brothers file out one by one, a haunted look on their faces.
Evelynn and I scramble to our feet, my palm splayed on the wall behind me, keeping me upright.
“Talon, how bad wa—” My words die when he looks at me.
His usual hard exterior is broken. He shakes his head. “Fuck, Lilith,” he breathes.
His tone, the way he looks at me, causes me to bolt, pushing past Shade and Deisel to get into the room. Lucian’s eyes land on mine, my fists balled tight at my sides. The room is silent. My eyes flick from Lucian to Silas; he looks paler. He looks worse.
“It didn’t work,” I state, my heart or what’s left of it breaking. Viktor comes out of the bathroom, drying his hands on a cloth, his clothes covered in black ichor. My lips part in shock.
“It worked,” Viktor states. “He’s weak and needs feeding when he wakes.”
I move to Silas, climbing onto the bed beside him, curling my body into his, my head on his chest. Silence; no heartbeat, no breaths. At any other time, it would be a serious concern. But with our kind, no sound was good news.
“Call us when he wakes; he will need to be fed by one of us,” Viktor instructs.
“He can feed off me,” I sigh, my hand moving in a lazy pattern on his stomach.
“Call us. He is likely to be ravenous, and he won’t be able to control the blood thirst,” Viktor warns.
“Okay,” I sigh, my eyelids becoming heavy, my muscles relaxing against Silas. He’s going to be okay. Closing my eyes, I feel a blanket being laid over me before the silence.