Chapter Fifteen
Seth beamed as he and Amy explained how they might have found a way to ease the pain of some of the formerly Infected, using herbs to keep them as healthy as they could be for as long as possible.
It wasn’t a cure, but it was a good start.
The first person he was bringing the concoction to was Mercedes.
It wouldn’t stop what was wrong, but it would help.
No one lived forever, especially mortals, but they could live healthier and longer.
He also had a theory that the blood of former vampires might be the solution to helping the ailments of the formerly Infected.
He told Amy to leave The Sand without him, so she smiled and waved, her auburn hair whipping wildly in the wind behind her as she stepped through the doorway and disappeared.
The wind kicked up even more. Porschia’s long dark strands curved toward me, beckoning me to her.
The scent of her was intoxicating, even in this arid place. She was life.
Seth gave Porschia a lingering hug. “I miss you,” he told her.
“I miss you more.” She hugged his neck, and with a smile pulled away from him. Most of the time she wasn’t sad anymore. She spent time with Saul once in a while. She projected to her family.
Porschia Grant wasn’t in Frenzy for the first time in her life. She wasn’t hungry for something she couldn’t have. She was happy.
And so was I.
There were times I’d look and find her staring.
More often than not, she’d catch me looking at her.
Wanting more. Wanting her whole heart. It was something I’d never have.
Because Porschia gave pieces of her heart to everyone she loved.
Deciding to have the second largest chunk—after Seth, of course, I laid it all on the line one day.
“I want you to kiss me,” I told her as we laid in the hammock, rocking in the warm breeze as the sun’s rays kissed her nose. She didn’t gasp in horror, and her muscles didn’t tighten into knots. She simply turned her head, craned her neck so that her lips met mine, and kissed me.
My muscles constricted and I gulped when she pulled away.
I didn’t expect her to actually do it.
Her eyes searched my face as her fingers intertwined with mine.
“I love you,” I told her, the weight of too many emotions clogging my throat, making my voice rough and gritty.
There was no doubt, no confusion in her eyes when she smiled at me and said, “I love you, too.”
I could have melted through the hammock’s woven rope, leaving us both in a heap on the ground.
There were no words.
I’d waited so long to hear those three syllables fall from her mouth again.
Then she rolled her eyes and faked punched me. “Duh, I’m your kitten.”
I smiled.
She was.
She always had been.
And we could finally spend the rest of eternity together, weathering the storms of our family who still lived on, loving each other through it in a new kind of Frenzy; a Frenzy whose only hunger was love.