Chapter 8 #3
His eyes closed on a shuddering breath. He was still for so long she feared she’d lost him.
“Elijah!” The urgency in her voice made it harsh. Disregarding the danger, she gingerly touched his head, stroking it. His eyelids lifted slowly, revealing unfocused irises. “Shift. Now. Do it, you arrogant son of a bitch. You’re too fucking stubborn to let a couple of sick vamps best you.”
His rumbling growl was stronger than before, giving her wild hope.
“Vash—” Salem set his hand on her shoulder. Elijah lifted his head and bared his teeth, snarling. Salem yanked his hand back. “Crazy assed dog.”
“Salem will have to watch my back if you can’t do it,” Vash goaded, fighting off another spurt of panic. “Raze, too. I might even need a meal from that pretty pincushion I almost sucked on last night—”
Fire lit Elijah’s eyes. He began to shimmer, like heat waves rising from sunscorched asphalt. For a breathless moment, he hovered in that in-between state, flickering between human and lupine form. Then, with a rattling exhale, he settled before her as a nude, severely wounded man.
“Get the car,” she ordered over her shoulder, pulling Elijah close to cradle his head in her lap.
Salem left so fast that he caused a draft. Around her, the wraith bodies began to gurgle and shake. She watched, horrified, as they disintegrated into puddles of a thick tarlike substance. “Eww.”
“Hey. I’m not…as bad off as I look,” Elijah whispered, his eyes still closed.
“Of course not.” But the blood that wasn’t his was now clearly demarked by its obsidian coloring, leaving far too much crimson on his ravaged skin. It ran in thin rivulets over her lap and eroded canyons in the black ooze. “You damned heroic idiot. Stop protecting me. I can take care of myself.”
“And let you have all the fun?”
Pain twisted in her chest. Lifting her wrist to her mouth, Vash pierced the vein with her fangs and pressed the gushing wound to his mouth. He gagged, then struggled weakly, but she held fast, pinching his nose so that he was forced to swallow. One gulp. Two. Three.
When his protests gained strength, she ceased, licking her wound closed.
“Turn me into a vampire,” he said hoarsely, “and you’ll be the first I suck dry.”
“You’d have to take me down first.” She brushed his sweat and blood-soaked hair away from his forehead. His heart beat too strongly to slip into the Change, but if she’d waited another few minutes…? She pushed the thought away.
“This babying you’re doing…as good as a verbal admission that you like me.”
“Ha!” Her eyes stung, but she told herself that it was from the blood spatter on her face. She couldn’t stop touching him, running her fingertips over his face and stroking through his hair to his scalp. “You pulled this little stunt just to play on my sympathy.”
“Not my fault that you’d look hot in one of those naughty nurse’s costumes.” His chest lifted and fell with a sharp breath.
Their banter was breaking her heart, knowing how much the effort was costing him.
But she didn’t relent. As bad as it sucked, his pain was keeping his heartbeat elevated, which was helping to pump her healing blood through his veins.
It was nowhere near as powerful as a seraph’s pure blood, but it would nevertheless speed his healing.
“Who knew I was so damn popular?” he groused. “Must be you, sweetheart. You want a piece of me…now they all do.”
The one wraith with some active brain cells had baited Elijah. She’d bet her ass on it. He’d goaded the chase that led to this ambush and then provoked Elijah by attacking the woman covered in his scent.
Higher brain function is subverted by pure instinct, Grace had said.
“I wasn’t imagining it, was I?” she asked, noting that the brainy wraith’s puddle had some shape to it, unlike the others. As if he were deteriorating more slowly. “He did talk, didn’t he?”
“Yeah. Fucker.”
“I was told their brains are mush. Lights not on and no one home.”
“Your friend…Nikki…she talked.”
Vash stiffened. “What did she say?”
“Nothing worth remembering, but it was English.”
“Oh.” She jerked in surprise when her phone rang.
“Your tit’s ringing.”
Pulling her phone out, she saw Syre’s name on the caller ID. She answered the video call. “Syre.”
His handsome visage appeared, scowling. Then he paled. “My god…what’s happened to you? Where are you? That lycan is dead, Vashti. I’ll shred him.”
“Take a number,” Elijah muttered.
Realizing how she must look with blood all over her, she spoke quickly. “We ran into some wraith action in Vegas, and it got messy, but I’m fine.”
“Tell me where you are, and I’ll be there in thirty. I have a helicopter standing by now.”
“Where are you?”
“The airport. I just landed.”
“Thank god.” She exhaled in relief. “Wait there. I’ll send Salem, and he can take you and Elijah to the warehouse. He needs medical treatment, and we’re set up for it there.”
Syre’s gaze narrowed. “The Alpha?”
“Yes.”
“Where will you be?”
Vash didn’t say her intentions aloud, unwilling to jinx her plans. “I’ve got something to take care of.”
“Me,” Elijah said, his eyes open and staring into hers.
Yes, she thought. You.