Chapter 46
Chapter Forty-Six
SEBASTIAN
Reigning in my emotions, I hide behind my glass while Andrei keeps coming in and out. I made him spread a rumor around the hotel that I’m so weakened, he and Marcus are worried I might not pull through after my last encounter with April. Seeing me in my tattered clothing helps solidify the lie.
And now we wait.
My right fist keeps clenching and unclenching, anxiety eating a hole in my gut since I found April gone. The woman will succeed where thousands of years have not.
She will drive me insane.
“Minchia!” Fuck!
“I totally agree with that.” Andrei saunters in, a grim look on his face.
“No one has tried to leave the place, yet.” Dropping unceremoniously opposite me, he rubs a hand over his face.
“I guess it would’ve been too easy if they just sprinted out as soon as the news of your imminent death started spreading. ”
“That is the least of my concerns right now.” Dismissing him with a wave of my hand, I sigh, leaning back in my chair and closing my eyes. “Marcus is not back yet?”
“No, but I would’ve thought that would be the last thing to bother you right now.
” I see him frowning when I pry my lids open to peer at him.
“You keep forgetting April is not a sheltered girl who doesn’t know what she is doing.
She survived all those years on her own.
If there is anything that girl knows, it is how to survive.
She’ll be back even if he doesn’t find her. ”
“After Eshe’s warning, I’m not willing to take chances.
” My mind is swirling with all the pressure, tightening the noose around us.
“Guilt makes me be too lenient when it comes to her. Like a lovesick fool, I tiptoe around her, and that may very well cost her, her life. She is immortal now but not fully transformed. I overlooked something…” Murmuring more to myself than him, I feel the pressure building in my chest.
“We knew she would be different,” Andrei supplies helpfully.
Snorting, I lift my head to look at him. “Different, yes. Not still human. Something went wrong, and it cannot be my blood. I’m the only one that ingested her first blood. She should’ve awoken as her real self.”
The pounding on the door jolts us both to our feet. My glass slips from my hand, the crystal shattering on the wooden parquet as amber fluid sloshes over my shoes. Andrei is yanking the door open with a sharp jerk of his hand, glaring at the Guardian anxiously shifting his feet at the door.
“Marcus is coming fast, he is carrying…” his words trail off when a blur pushes him to the side, slamming his shoulder in the wall.
My body freezes in disbelief when Marcus stops in front of me.
He looks like he has walked through a grinder, his clothing shredded and blood coating him from head to toe.
Snarling, he trembles, his entire body coiled up like a spring.
Just his eyes are feverish, burning with rage and fear. But that’s not what freezes my world.
In his arms he is holding April’s unconscious body, her hair swaying and limbs loose. Her skin is graying as I stare dumbfounded and she is convulsing in Marcus’s hold, almost dropping on the floor. I have never in all my existence been shocked to the point of standing, not knowing what to do.
“What the fuck is wrong with her?” Andrei’s panicked shout propels me into action.
“What happened?” I try to snatch her from Marcus, but he snarls like a feral animal ready to bite my hand off. “Let go of her if you value your life. If she dies, you’ll wish you could join her.”
“Marcus, give her to Sebastian. He can help her.” Andrei grips Marcus by the shoulder, his fingers digging at the bunched-up muscles there.
Reluctantly, he unclenches his grasp on her, uncontrolled sounds like whimpers and growls coming from him.
To avoid wasting precious time if he changes his mind, and so I don’t have to rip him apart, I snatch her to my chest. Lowering her on one of the sofas against the wall, I glance over my shoulder.
“What happened and speak fast.”
“I found her in the sewer…” Marcus speaks fast, his words a jumble of sounds until he is finished telling me the story to the part where they drained the two vampires working for Kali.
“…she was laughing one moment, and the next she coughed, her eyes rolled to the back of her head, and she started convulsing. I ran here as fast as I could.”
“Could they have done something before they died?” Andrei mumbles but I’m already shaking my head.
“Go. Bring humans. It’s something in the blood she took that did this. We need to drain her, and she’ll need to feed. I’m not going to be enough.”
Having a little taste of April’s blood is one thing.
I’m still not sure I can survive to drink from her.
I know for sure the rest of them won’t live if they tried.
With that in mind, I let my claws extend, and holding her arm, I rip her brachial artery open.
Precious thick blood starts spurting over both of us, soaking the sofa.
My fangs throb with the need to sink them in her skin and gulp it all up until she is as tied to me as my own soul.
Pulling on all the control I have mastered, I clench my jaw and watch her bleed out in front of me.
Andrei disappears, barking orders before he is even out of the door.
Marcus looms over my head, his hunger for the potent blood pounding into me, driving me insane.
With a great effort, I block him out, the thought that I hadn’t felt his urgency before he showed up at the door is not lost on me.
With April rapidly going as white as a marble statue, I will have to look into it later.
If she lives. She will live! Snapping myself out of the frantic thoughts, I continue to keep an eye on the blood flow.
I must get her to feed, or she will die within minutes.
I watch the blood pump out of her arm with each heartbeat, like a finger pressed over a running hose, mesmerized.
Jabbing an elbow in my back, Marcus jars me out of hunger’s call, and I blink twice, coming out of my daze.
The shuffling of feet sounds at the entrance of the penthouse but I ignore it all.
The gash on April’s arm is closing, and I tear into my own wrist with my fangs, bringing it to her blue lips.
“Bevi, mia redenzione, prendi ciò che ti offro liberamente!” After saying it for her ears only, I keep repeating it in my mind.
Drink, my redemption. Take what I freely offer.
I keep saying it over and over like a prayer.
The blood fills her mouth and runs out of her lips, coating her jaw, neck, and her spread out hair.
She doesn’t drink.
Panic squeezes my chest like a metal vise, insanity creeping up slowly from the darkest corners of my mind.
If I lose her, I will lose myself. I know it as I know my own name.
The Council will seem like cute puppies compared to what I will become.
That power that kept growing since I took the blood from our matron curls up in my chest and purrs like a hungry beast. No!
I will not lose April, nor will I lose myself.
“Drink.” Gripping her neck in my hand, I start massaging her throat, hoping it’ll prompt her to swallow.
Something crashes behind me, Marcus cursing in any language he can think of, throwing things around. I can feel Andrei, his fear and pain at the thought of April not surviving this almost bringing him to his knees. I block him as well, unwilling to lose hope.
“Drink, damn you!” Snarling at her, my fingers tighten around her neck.
Her body arches off the sofa, her eyes snapping open.
Glowing yellow orbs lock on me, and her arms shoot out, grabbing my wrist. Not losing contact with me she sinks her fangs at my wrist and starts sucking.
Gulp after gulp, her eyes glow brighter.
Each pull of her mouth feels connected to my groin.
My own hunger slams me, not just for blood but for her as well.
Bright spots start dancing at the corners of my eyes, wariness making my body sag next to the sofa where I’m kneeling next to April.
Someone, I think Andrei, grabs my shoulders, holding me up when I would’ve toppled over.
April doesn’t stop. I watch Marcus jerking my wrist from her mouth, April snarling and lunging at him as she sinks her fangs in his neck, and everything fades.
Darkness covers everything around me, and I sleep.