Chapter 9 #3
Lindsay, feeling ill from the lingering effects of the silver, clung to the door handle and tried to kick her rattled brain into gear.
Adrian landed on the trunk with a violent thud, his feet leaving deep prints in the metal.
“Now!” Vash yelled, deflecting Adrian’s grasping arm and lunging at him between the two front seats.
Throwing herself across the center console, Lindsay snatched at the wheel. Her sudden grab jerked the car right, then left as she tried to steer a straight line while lying on her side. Adrian was thrown free.
Vash tumbled into the backseat with a curse. “Drive straight, damn it! Get to the Strip. He’ll have to back off.”
A massive shadow darkened the sky over the car as Adrian swooped in again.
It didn’t escape Lindsay’s mind that she was fleeing her very reason for living, the one individual she couldn’t live without. But that’s why she was doing it. Adrian’s blood was too precious—and the ramifications too great—to risk what Vash demanded.
“Red light!” Lindsay shouted.
“A little busy!” Vash shot back, straightening to fight off Adrian’s dive bomb. “You’re making a spectacle of yourself, Sentinel!”
Lightning struck the vampress square in the chest, knocking her unconscious. She slumped into the corner of the backseat like a broken doll.
“Move, Lindsay,” Adrian ordered, dropping wingless into the driver’s seat and taking over the wheel. He turned into a strip mall and parked with a squeal of rubber over pavement. Twisting in the seat, he faced her with burning irises. “What the hell are you doing?”
“It’s best this way.”
“Fuck if it is.”
“You know it is,” she argued, looking at Vash to make sure the vampress was still out cold. “We can’t risk you.”
“You’re doing this for Elijah.”
“Partly,” she admitted. “But that benefits you, too. You and I both want to figure out what happened with him.”
“I don’t give a shit what happened with him or to him. I give a shit about you. Maybe you haven’t been paying attention—I can’t live without you. Damned if I’ll risk you for a mutinous lycan.”
“Elijah won’t let anything happen to me. You know that, or you would never have made him my guard.”
Adrian’s knuckles whitened with the force of his grip on the steering wheel. “Elijah’s half dead, apparently.”
“Not if I can help it.”
“We don’t know if you can. Your blood has a negative effect on some beings. Don’t forget I watched you slide a knife into a dragon’s impenetrable hide just by coating the blade with your blood.”
“Siobhán thinks that’s because I was carrying two souls inside me,” she reminded, “and the creatures that were affected by it were demons.”
“That’s a guess. We don’t know, and Elijah has demon blood in him.”
She nodded, knowing that demon blood—werewolf blood—is what had turned some of the Fallen into lycans rather than vampires. “I’ll tell him the risks and let him decide.”
“Think of the possible reasons he’d be incapacitated in Vashti’s keeping.
One, she fucked him up because of the Nikki incident, or because she’s looking for Charron’s killers.
Two, they’re working together, and he got wrecked in the process.
You’re either reviving him to put up with more torture or reviving him to collude with the vampires against us. ”
“Adrian…”
“Nothing good is going to come out of doing this, neshama. In the meantime, you’ll be among the very people who need me weakened to achieve their aims. You’re cutting out my heart and handing it to them.”
She cupped his cheek in her hand.
His jaw was tight beneath her palm, the teeth grinding together. He set his hand over hers and squeezed. “My life is nothing without you.”
“Rather than focus on the why, let’s focus on how this might help us.
You’ll be demonstrating that you’re willing and capable of putting your Sentinels’ welfare ahead of mine, and I think they need to feel like you would, at least under certain circumstances.
And what will it mean to the lycans to know that you’ve done this for Elijah?
More may come back to you because they won’t be afraid that you’ll kill them on sight.
And the vampires…if they ever considered that having me in their possession would weaken your mission, they’ll see that’s not the case.
Everyone knows what I mean to you. You’ll make a powerful statement by using me this way. ”
He exhaled harshly. “Damn you. You’re suggesting we bluff—with your life.”
“That’s one way to put it. And while we’ve got Vashti for a few minutes…” Lindsay reached into the medical supply store shopping bag on the floorboard between her feet and pulled out a blood bag from an open multipack. “Here’s our opportunity to get the Fallen blood Siobhán needs.”
“Can you please stop being so fucking optimistically cheerful?”
“I love you,” she retorted. “More than my life. More than anything. Just give me twelve hours.”
“Twelve hours? I was thinking twelve minutes.”
“You gotta give me time to make them comfortable enough that I can snoop around.”
He muttered something in a language she didn’t know. “You have your phone on you?”
She shook her head.
He pulled his out of his pocket and began tweaking the settings on it.
“You’ll check in every hour on the hour.
I want to hear your voice, don’t just text.
If something goes south but you’re not safe telling me so, call me Sentinel instead of my name.
You miss a call by more than ten minutes, and I’ll raze them all. I’ve set the alarm to remind you.”
“I won’t forget.”
Climbing over the seats, he grabbed Vashti’s biceps with enough force to act as a tourniquet and slid the needle attached to the blood bag into her vein.
The vampress jolted awake to find the crimson tip of one of Adrian’s wings curled inward and pressed to her throat—the slightest resistance, and she’d lose her head.
“Asshole,” she growled, glaring.
“You have twelve hours,” he said with icy impassivity, watching the bag fill.
“You’ll bring her back to me without a scratch, or I’ll stake you to a wall and make you watch as I disarticulate every one of the Fallen and shove their severed limbs down their throats.
Without Lindsay, I’ve got nothing to lose.
Do you understand? Nothing will stop me. ”
“Fine.”
He withdrew the needle, then his wing. “She’s going to call me every hour, and you’re going to let her.”
“Jeez, Adrian,” Vash muttered, sitting up. “One would almost think you didn’t trust me.”