Chapter Eleven
No, no, no.
Zavier tried again. His sweaty fingers slid off her too-cool wrist, feeling nothing. Then he ripped open her red tank top and laid his head on her chest, ear flush to her skin.
There it was.
Faint.
Irregular. But there. Zavier gulped in a breath, feeling like his heart had gone on pause until hers beat against him.
Dimly, he registered Eva calling the others for help.
There wasn’t time to wait. Especially with the loogaroo corpse burbling its acidic blood into the stone next to them.
“Keep the pressure on as I pick her up,” he ordered Eva. “And I’m flying so she doesn’t get jostled. If you can’t keep up, tell me now.”
“I’ll do whatever she needs.”
Zavier carefully scooped Liss into his arms. He’d flown her before. But there’d always been a coiled energy in her body. And her mouth had always been running a mile a minute. This unconscious, boneless Liss wasn’t right.
“What was that? I’ve never seen anything like it.”
“A demon from the West Indies. It removes its skin to fly as a blob of light and feed like a vampire. Except it drains both blood and energy.” It made Liss’s condition twice as dangerous. With grave wounds, energy was often the only thing that kept a body going, fighting. With both depleted? Her chances weren’t good.
“I’ve learned something, in all my research here.” Evangeline spoke softly, as if not wanting to wake Liss. “I can use my thwarting power to keep her grounded. To hold her on this plane. Just not…indefinitely.”
It was more than Zavier could do. “It’s a start.” They flew through the door of the holding room.
Hariel startled, then immediately tipped the table, sending all the plates and cups to the floor. “Put her here.”
Maisy came through the door at a dead run. “What happened?”
Zavier was too busy thinking through options to answer. He brushed the backs of his knuckles along her soft-but-icy jaw.
“A vampire demon. Blood and energy. It’s not good.” Evangeline half choked back a sob. “It’s, well, very not good.”
Maisy enveloped Liss’s hand in both of hers. Eva still had pressure on the neck wound and a hand on her belly for however she was holding her earthbound. Zavier knew he should step aside.
Stop touching her.
He couldn’t.
He brushed wisps of hair from her cheeks. Dimly registered Rhys and Gideon barreling into the room as he kept running through possibilities in his head—and not coming up with anything.
Eva lifted her head. “One of you needs to go clean up the loogaroo . On the turn right before the kitchen.”
“I’ll go,” Hariel volunteered. “Unless there’s anything else I can do?”
“No,” Zavier muttered.
“A loogaroo ? There’s not much any of us can do. She’s human. No extraordinary healing skills.” Gideon pressed his hand to her forehead. “She’s cold. Probably almost completely drained before you got there.”
Maisy’s knuckles whitened around Liss’s fingers. “You can fly her to a hospital, a human one, and get them to transfuse her.”
“By the time we get her there and convince them of what Liss needs, she’ll be gone.” Rhys felt for a pulse on the opposite side from the wound. Shook his head. “She only has a few minutes left.”
“It isn’t just the blood, Maisy,” Evangeline explained. “So much of her energy is gone. There’s no transfusion for that.”
Hellfire.
There was .
Okay, it was a long shot. Dangerous. Definitely illegal. If Zavier bothered to think about it, the ramifications could be terrifying.
Liss dying was worse.
“I can save her.” Probably. Maybe. But Zavier wouldn’t say more to the others. They’d veto his plan, if they knew it, before he finished the explanation. But it was definitely better than doing nothing.
No matter how desperate.
Zavier lunged for the counter with the buffet spread. At the end of it, Hariel had thoughtfully laid out a first aid kit. Because Nephilim never did anything halfway, it was a field mission kit. You could do a decent job of surgery with its contents.
What Zavier had planned was simpler. Although a million times more dangerous. Like comparing the chance of death by paper cut to death by…being sucked into a jet engine.
Rhys came up next to him. “What’s your plan?”
He rummaged through the briefcase-sized box. He pulled out an empty blood bag, several syringes, and tubing. “Rhys and Gideon, you two go get blood. Plasma, specifically, which’ll help her faster. At least six bags.”
They could’ve argued. But their years together had woven an unbreakable trust between them. Without asking for specifics, if Zavier said he had a plan, the other two jumped into action. So all Gideon said was “We don’t know her blood type.”
“It’s A positive. We swapped that info our first night as roommates. It was a whole, complicated thing. A story Liss will help me tell once she wakes up.” Maisy’s voice cracked.
“It won’t be enough, Z,” Gideon cautioned while he and Rhys shed all his weapons.
“Not alone, no. But I can’t waste time explaining my plan. Get out of here.”
Rhys brushed a kiss over the top of Maisy’s head. “Back in a flash.”
Zavier pushed a bench right next to the table. “Maisy, what type are you?”
“O positive.”
“Good enough. Sit down. You’re going to give up a pint to tide her over until the guys come back.” He used a Velcro strap as a tourniquet to plump her veins. Her blood was flowing into the bag before she could object.
Zavier set the bag on her lap. “If you get woozy, suck it up.” He shoved Eva’s bowl of fruit toward her. “And eat some of this.”
“I’ll be fine. Fine enough. If it helps Liss, I’ll be fine.”
“Don’t look at it,” Eva suggested. “I imagine everyone would be weirded out holding their blood on their lap.”
Maisy’s gaze shot to the ceiling. “Let’s not talk about it, either.”
Zavier ripped the Velcro tourniquet off of Maisy and wrapped it around his own biceps. He attached pressure clips to the tubing. Carefully plunged the needle into the crook of Liss’s arm, but he didn’t advance the plunger on the empty vial.
Evangeline gasped. “You…you can’t do that.”
“What?” Maisy asked, shooting her focus back to Liss.
Zavier wasted the seconds to challenge Eva. “Got a better idea?”
“No.” Her gray eyes widened in…fear? Yeah, that’d be the smart reaction.
“Got any idea?” he pushed. “Even a worse one?”
“No.”
Zavier swallowed hard. Fear never slowed him down on a mission. He did what needed to be done. No stalling.
Right now, though? Fear had him answering Evangeline rather than plowing forward. Because at least, in this moment, Liss was still alive. He swallowed again, trying to work past the lump in his throat.
He covered the hand she had on Liss’s belly. “You feel her heart slowing?”
“Yes. Fine. But…do you know what will happen?”
“Not a goddamned clue. Maisy’s blood can help mitigate her blood loss. But the energy drain—no human medicine can fix that. I’m half-angel. My half-human blood should keep her from rejecting it. And the energy and essence of the angelic part should reboot her system.”
A full-body tremble ran through Eva. The strain of grounding Liss must be getting to her. With a shaky voice, she asked, “That was two ‘should’s. Has anyone done this before?”
“Probably. I read in a text how it’s expressly forbidden. That’s what made it stick in my brain. They usually don’t make rules like that unless someone pissed them off.”
“Or unless something went really wrong.”
“Or maybe nothing happened and it doesn’t work. Which is where we’re at right now. We do nothing but wait and she’ll die. My guess is within the next two minutes. So shouldn’t we try?”
Maisy waved her arm as if waiting to be called on. “Uh, how bad and forbidden is this thing?”
Very forbidden. Bad…hopefully not at all.
Probably very.
It didn’t matter. “It’s the only option we have to save Liss.”
“Then do it.”
Zavier patted Liss’s cheek. No response. Hating it, he lightly slapped her. Then rubbed hard right over her sternum. Her eyes opened to slits.
“That’s it. Liss—you’re a fighter. Tell me that you want to fight to live, no matter what.”
A moan slipped out of barely open lips.
It wasn’t enough. Not for a play that had as much chance of hastening her death as saving her. Zavier pressed his lips right to her ear. “Liss. Do you trust me?”
Her eyes drifted shut again. But the faintest whisper drifted past his cheek. “Yes. Hundred percent.”
Those three simple words rocked Zavier to his core. How could she be so sure? Now wasn’t the time to think about it, though.
He plunged the needle into his own vein. Opened the tubing and clamps wide. And watched as his silver blood flowed into Liss.
…
Pain.
Fiery pain.
Was she on fire?
No, the pain was on the inside.
Liss surfaced a little more toward full consciousness. Her body…burned. Like the one time she’d tried a wing coated in ghost pepper sauce. That feeling, but everywhere.
Why?
It’d be so much nicer to slide back into the blackness. So she tried. Tried to ignore the pain and the voices.
But she was too awake to fade out again. Verging on wide awake, although she couldn’t open her eyes or speak to let anyone know. It was more the feeling of dogged, manic verve that came after three apple cider macchiatos.
Deep voices were arguing. Men. Men were…in her bedroom? It didn’t make sense. Nothing made sense, because nothing really pushed past the wall of pain holding her hostage.
Wait.
They were people she knew. Maybe if she paid attention harder, they’d notice she was waking up and make her pain go away?
“What you did is forbidden.” Ooh, stern. This guy sounded like he’d be a great Dom. Which brought her right back to why was he in her bedroom ?!?
Then a snort. “Right. Since we’re such fucking straight-A rule followers.”
“Z, this isn’t a joke.” A third man. Interesting.
“No shit. This was life and death. Liss has her life, escaped death, because of my actions. Forbidden or not, they saved her.”
Near-death? Welp, that explained the pain.
“Did you save her?” A careful hand brushed over the top of her head. “She’s not exactly up and dancing.”
“Give it time.” That was the rule breaker. Liss liked his throw-caution-to-the-wind mentality. Especially since he seemed to be the only one willing to do whatever he’d done to save her.
“That’s what we’re worried about. As more time elapses, what’s going to happen to her next? She’s twitching and wincing. I’d say she’s in pain.”
“Again, at least she’s alive to feel the pain.”
Hang on. If they could tell she was in pain—and embarrassing! —why weren’t they making it go away? It certainly didn’t feel like she was in an ambulance on the way to a drug-filled hospital. What the heck?
Someone fiddled at the crook of her arm. Warmth pushed into her vein, centimeter by centimeter.
Where the warmth hit, the pain disappeared.
Ohhhh, this was good. Slow going—barely up to her shoulder—but good. Her brain fog was clearing, too.
Enough that Liss became aware of the massive dose of fear buzzing through her brain and belly.
Near-death?
What the hell had happened? And the point she really wanted clarification on, was she out of danger of dying now ?
“You messed with things way above our pay grade.” Anger sharpened every deep, gravelly word. “ Nephilim are reviled for being the products of sex between angels and humans. The angels say we’re tainted from it. How the hell do you think they’ll react to your blood being put inside something as pedestrian as a human?”
“Who’s gonna know? This isn’t the sort of thing we’d put on an Instagram Reel.”
The same moment that the warmth hit her heart, everything else cleared. Her brain all the way. The pain all the way. She knew Rhys was leading the verbal smackdown of Zavier, but Gideon was helping.
Liss remembered everything .
Her eyes flew open. The warmth at her elbow was coming from a pint of blood dripping into an IV. An empty bag lay between her legs. Three more full ones were stacked next to it.
Maisy sat with her back against the wall, sipping a drink. Evangeline held Liss’s hand.
But it was Zavier that captured her attention. He sat on the bench at her side, both hands wrapped around her forearm just below the IV.
“Hey there,” she croaked. Yeah, her throat was as dry as the mountain air outside.
Zavier moved his hold down to her wrist, counting her heartbeats. “How do you feel?”
“A million times better than I did thirty seconds ago.”
“It was the second bag of blood. The pure human one from that hospital in Los Angeles. Maisy’s blood kept you going, but the power of the Keeper irritated you internally. Pure human A positive smoothed everything out.”
With the speed of a sloth on Valium, Liss turned her head. “Maisy. You gave me blood after all these years we spent joking about donating kidneys to each other? Bet you think you got off easy!”
Maisy’s always pale redheaded complexion was downright corpse-like. “My queasiness says otherwise. My body far prefers to hang on to every drop of blood in order to function. I passed out before the bag even filled. Guessing a kidney’s off the table.”
Liss tsked. Because teasing her bestie helped distract her from the weird combo of mental jumpstart and total physical lethargy dragging down every cell in her body. “Embarrassing. Are you sure you weren’t just trying to horn in on all this attention I’m getting?”
“Geez, you saw right through me.”
Gideon elbowed in next to Evangeline. He felt for the pulse at her neck. “Steadier. Slower.”
“Hey, stop feeling me up. Your girlfriend’s right there,” she joked weakly. “I thought you were a reformed man whore.”
Gideon didn’t even smirk. Yikes. This was serious. “Liss, how do you feel? We need you to be specific.”
“Well, when I woke up, I felt like all my insides were on fire. And on the biggest caffeine buzz of my life. Now I’m still buzzing, like I could win Jeopardy! in fifteen minutes flat, but the pain is gone. When I think about moving my toes, though, it’s too much effort.”
Her brain was flitting about twenty thoughts ahead of whatever she said. She’d noted that Rhys and Gideon had pulled on shirts—indicating more time had passed than she realized.
Zavier, however, had not. Which didn’t have to mean anything. It just was a fact to appreciate. Like the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in all its colorful perfection.
“Hmmm.” Gideon felt her forehead. Leaned in close to look in her eyes. She triple blinked to scooch him away.
Clearly, their overly protective impulses had kicked in. Liss didn’t know why , though. Nothing felt broken, no bleeding—so why the blood transfusion?—and her mind and senses were intact. Talk about overkill. “This is weird and awkward, lying down like a sacrificial virgin on this table. Can you help me sit up?”
The men did that triangulated glances thing that almost always resulted in Liss or Maisy not getting their way. “Not yet,” Zavier insisted. “Humor us.”
“If you tell me what happened,” she bargained. It was clear that Liss was the only person in the room who didn’t know. She hated being left out. “There was this floating ball of light up at the ceiling. That’s the last thing I remember.”
“That was a loogaroo demon. It sucked you almost dry of blood and energy,” Zavier said matter-of-factly.
Whoa.
Holy crap.
She’d survived an actual demon attack? “Eww. Please tell me you killed it.”
“Damn straight.”
Yeah, it had been a stupid question.
Rhys put a hand on her ankle. Was that to keep her from getting up? Or to be reassuring? Or was he worried that she was slowly turning into the demon that attacked her, like every vampire book and movie ever ?
He patted her twice. “Then Zavier made the reckless and potentially asinine decision to infuse you with his own blood.”
Whaaaaaaaat?!?!?!
That couldn’t be good. She remembered—vaguely—sixth-grade science class and learning about how you could die if you got blood that wasn’t the correct type. Liss was 200 percent positive that Nephilim wasn’t the same as her A positive. Starting with how hers was red, and Nephilim blood was the color of the mercury at the bottom of the thermometer.
She clenched Evangeline’s hand hard. “I’m part angel now, like you?”
Rhys shook his head swiftly. “No.”
“Maybe?” Gideon said, still staring at her waaaay too intently and from waaaay too close.
“Hell if we know.” Then Zavier raised one dark eyebrow and a shoulder in a whaddya gonna do fashion.
It made her smile.
For a second.
Evangeline sighed. “Gentlemen, you really need to work on your bedside manner. That was pathetic. Not at all reassuring.”
Agreed.
Her super-active brain was awash in questions. Concerns. Panic. What ifs.
Would she die in the next ten minutes? Would wings suddenly sprout out of her back with an excruciating tear? Would she became a loogaroo half-angel?
Oh, and then Liss remembered what the men had been arguing about when she first woke up. Would angelkind see her as an abomination and hunt her down and destroy her?
Rhys stalked over to Maisy. Did the whole pulse check thing and then cuddled her against his chest. “We’re not trying to comfort her. We’re trying to assess what, if anything, is going on in her body.”
Liss didn’t like that clinical analysis one bit. Not by men who used potions and mystical spells to heal themselves. Things that might or might not work on her human body. She so did not want to be an experiment for them.
“That sounds much too private for me to share with you guys. How about you take me to Buffalo General and they can work me up? Preferably with a super-hot team of residents being filmed for a reality TV show.”
“How would you explain your need for five transfusions?” Rhys shut her down, pointing at the stack of pint bags. “And the holes in your neck?”
“Or the fact that your blood might turn silver any second?” Gideon added.
Maisy waved her straw, flicking apricot juice in the air. “Or red and silver striped. Maybe polka dotted?”
Liss had never adored her best friend more. It was exactly the tension break she needed. Guess the mutual cold shoulder-ing Maisy and Liss had been doing since their fight had been put on hold due to almost dying?
But it was Hariel who strode into view and gestured toward the door. “You must leave this room before anyone finds out what’s happened. The three of you must keep fighting.”
Zavier’s hand clenched tighter at her wrist.
Liss couldn’t imagine Zavier leaving her side. She hadn’t really processed being almost killed by a demon. Having one of the best fighters in Heaven, Hell, and everywhere in between gave Liss an extremely necessary feeling of safety.
Evangeline stood, pulling on Gideon’s shoulders to back him away from Liss. “Hariel’s right. You can’t let people think they can stop you by attacking one of us. Or this will be for nothing.”
“ Fuck.” The word ground out of Zavier. “Once again, Eva’s the smartest of us. The best way to keep Liss safe is to walk back into that arena.”
“I agree. If I’m going to dance with death and ghost him at the last second, I absolutely want it to not screw up your master plan. You go out there and keep kicking ass.” Before they could stop her, Liss muscled herself up onto her elbows. “Greater good, prevent the end of the world, yada yada yada.”
Maisy pushed out of Rhys’s embrace. “We’re all fine here. Stop hovering. Go show them you’re the best. Then the smart, strong ones will join our side.”
Rhys clasped Hariel’s shoulder on the side with no wing. “You’ll stay with them?”
“Of course. She will be safe.”
“Don’t scare us like that again. By almost dying,” Gideon ordered with a ferocious scowl.
“Challenge accepted,” Liss said solemnly.
Rhys and Gideon pulled off their shirts, kissed their women, and strode out of the room.
Liss wasn’t sure if she’d picked up Nephilim super observation, or if Rhys was too rattled to be subtle. “I saw him whisper in your ear, Maisy. What’d he say?”
Maisy wobbled to her feet, one hand on the wall. Eva quickly let go of Liss and grabbed for Maisy, who shook her off. “I’m okay. Rhys said that your life is more important than anything else, and we should get them if anything changes.” She fisted a hand over her heart. “He’s an absolute honey bear on the inside.”
Deep laughter rumbled out of Zavier. “That’s a good one.”
“Hey, shoo,” Liss said. “You have to go fight, too.”
“Not until I apologize.” And to her utter astonishment, Zavier dropped to one knee, then touched his forehead to her hand. “I am so sorry. I was desperate. I was reckless. The pain I put you through—I can’t make up for that.”
“Omigosh, get up. This isn’t necessary. I’m confused. Why are you apologizing? You saved my life!”
“Maybe.” He slowly pushed to his feet. “Or maybe I made it a whole lot worse.”
Well, she couldn’t let the man go into battle with that mentality. Liss heaved herself fully upright and pulled on his neck until his face met hers. She kissed him with all the energy she could muster—which turned out to be quite a bit. His lips fired her up, for sure.
“Alive trumps everything else.”
Zavier nodded once, then hurried out of the room.
Maisy closed her mouth long enough to throw her arms around Liss. “I’m so glad you’re alive. And a little glad that my blood wasn’t exactly the right match for you, because I really don’t want to do that again. And um, clearly you have something to tell us?”
Evangeline handed her a crescent-shaped cookie coated in powdered sugar. “It gives you free rein to eat your body weight in cookies for a day, guilt-free. Go wild. Like you have been, I would say. When did that happen? You getting all smoochy with Zavier?”
“Ladies, you can’t stay here, either.” Hariel gathered the blood packs in his arms. “We can’t risk you being discovered. You should continue your recovery in my chambers.”
It would be interesting to see what a full angel kept in his bedroom. Tchotchkes? A harp? Hmm, maybe her brain was still woozy.
“I can fly her there,” Eva offered.
She didn’t want to survive a demon vampire just to die of a head injury from being dropped on the stone floor. “Um, are you sure about that? I’m no lightweight.”
“You forget that the first time I flew, I carried Gideon. That man’s muscles are no joke. And I do have Nephilim strength. I won’t drop you. As long as you don’t tickle me.”
Maisy grabbed for the bowls at her feet. “I’ll bring the fruit and cookies.”
“My chambers are two levels below, at the end of the corridor before the first turn. My name is on the door in angel script.” He handed over a bronze key.
“Underground?”
He wavered his wing. “I don’t need a window to fly out of. It was a strategic apportionment of space.”
It was a small and subtle cruelty, but cruel nonetheless.
Maisy zinged a look at Eva, then said, “I’ll walk with you. I need to go slow and know that a big, burly angel is available to catch me if I pass out again.”
“It would be my honor, Keeper.”
Evangeline scooped Liss up and flew out the door. In a very curvy, awkward line. “I’m just messing with you. Punishment for thinking I wasn’t strong enough to take you.”
Liss knew she deserved it. “Message received. You are woman, and you are mighty.”
She straightened out their path down the circular stone steps. “That sums it up.”
“You know, I could probably walk. Not maligning your strength or anything.” She patted the half-empty blood pack in her lap. “I’m feeling much better. I’ll bet I’ll be a hundred percent by the time this is all in me.”
“No.”
“Don’t be a downer like your boyfriend.”
“I’m giving it to you straight. The human body holds eight pints of blood. I’m guessing you were down to maybe two when Zavier found you. You weren’t just knocking on death’s door. You were over the threshold and taking off your coat.”
The facts were…disconcerting. But Liss really didn’t feel that bad. Her last bout with the flu and that 103.5 fever had been a zillion times worse. “Okay. I’ll let you top me off all the way.”
Eva opened her mouth. Closed it after two seconds. Then bit her lip and opened it again. “I don’t want to scare you. Or maybe I do. The thing is, what Zavier did with his transfusion could be bad. Very bad. Not because of breaking sacred rules.”
Such a worrywart. Probably because she analyzed risk for her day job. “He saved my life. Clearly it worked. The pain has stopped.”
“For now.”
Why was Eva so determined to ignore that Liss was improving with every ounce of red blood cells? She was holding herself up, arms around Eva’s neck. She could move everything again. Sheesh. “Ominous much?”
“Liss, we have no idea what his angelic blood will transform you into in another hour. Or week. Or if it’s a slow-acting poison to a human.”
Okay, yikes . That all sounded plausible. And dire. “I’m really the first?”
“That we know of, yes. All we can do is wait and see…” Eva’s voice faded away.
Yet they had living proof that a human could get celestial power and be fine. Albeit unnecessarily bitchy to her best friend for just openly communicating. “Maisy’s all juiced up after going through her Keeper transition. She’s fine.”
“But her DNA was already encoded to become a Keeper. That’s different. You’re just a getting-heavier-by-the-minute unknown for now.”
The possibilities could be endless. Endlessly bad, the way her brain was steering.
Liss closed her eyes. She never thought she’d feel this way…but…she’d far rather be working her crappy bartending job with her feet sticking to the beer foam on the floor.
It was a really low bar.
So far? Near-death sucked .