Chapter Seven #3
Wet, and oddly familiar, in a way she couldn’t piece together at first. But then it struck her, in a rush. The thing it reminded
her of:
The deer, on the side of the road. The one her father had glanced with the car. The one trying to breathe, while drowning
in its own blood.
They got him, she thought, in a flash of bright shock and panic.
Sure of it, yet at the same time barely able to believe. It could have been a trick, after all. It could just be him trying
to lure her in. Yet somehow, she crept toward the sound anyway. On her hands and knees over the dusty tiled floor, as low
and quiet as she could be. Half of her scared of finding a lie.
The other half scared of finding the truth.
Silly, she thought.
Until she got to him and had to bite back a scream.
It didn’t just look as if something had stabbed him. There was no sign of some simple neck break that a spell might fix. A
wraith had very clearly run right through him, and shredded almost everything as it went. His clothes were in tatters; his
body was now a row of deep bloody grooves.
And his face . . .
God, his face . . .
She had never seen anything like it. It laid in utter ruins, completely unrecognizable. In fact, she could only tell it was
truly him because his one remaining eye rolled to her the moment she got close. And even surrounded by gore, it was completely
familiar to her.
That deep brown, edging toward black.
The strange light in it, like amusement, only not.
It can’t be amusement now, she thought.
So maybe it had always been something else. Maybe it had always been fear and panic.
Though she didn’t suppose it mattered now. When he tried to speak, blood bubbled up instead. It spilled over what was left
of his lips, a brilliant red when it caught the light from one of the high windows, a deep and glittering black when it slid
down over his cheek and throat and into the darkness.
So she did the only thing she could.
She told him not to. “Don’t say anything. You’re making it worse,” she said and was startled to find there were tears in her
voice. As if she was saddened at the thought of her mortal enemy dying. As if it hurt to see it happening, somehow. I don’t, it doesn’t, it can’t possibly be the case, she tried to tell herself.
But she yanked off her jacket anyway.
She pressed it to the biggest wound she could see, on his side.
And let out a sob when the material disappeared into a hole too deep for him to survive. This was it—he was dead, he was done.
There was no coming back from this. She shouldn’t have wanted him to come back from this. She should have been gloating over his wrecked body.
But somehow, she wasn’t.
Instead, she felt herself gripped by the strangest feeling. A kind of deep loss—as if she had known him for far longer than
this. As if she had liked him for all that imaginary time. She even found herself saying words that felt so familiar but so
strange to say about him. “No, no, no, don’t leave me,” she let out.
And for a moment the world seemed to turn upside down.
She was on the ground; he was above her. Everything fading.
One of those strange memory-like flashes, she thought. Though it made no sense to her at all. It didn’t seem like the kind of thing that would make her feel more
for him. It seemed like the kind of thing that should make her feel less. Like he was the one who had wounded her somehow—but
then it flickered out.
She was left with him trying to say something.
Trying to lift his hand. No, she thought he was telling her.
Then his breathing hitched once, twice, and he was still.
That one eye went dull and fixed. Still resting on her, but with nothing more behind it. She could fully see there was nothing
behind it, and yet for a moment she couldn’t quite believe it. It seemed staggering that someone who loomed that large could
be gone.
And to the point where she simply had to double-check.
She leaned down, just to see if she could hear one hint of him.
Some faint breathing, another word, anything, anything at all.
And she did actually get something.
His hand coming up, whip quick, to get her by the back of her neck. Hard, so hard she couldn’t get away, even though she immediately
and violently jerked back. She put a hand out to shove him and instead buried it in what felt like a mess of blood and guts.
But somehow it didn’t seem to matter. He was still terribly strong—and apparently seemed to feel no pain at all. She squeezed
whatever she had just sunk into, and he barely reacted. He just gripped her harder and yanked her down, and when he did, she
knew.
She knew what was going to happen.
It felt like she had always known somehow.
Like that black gaze had given it away. Like that coldness had told her what she was too afraid to believe. She could barely
believe it now, even as she felt his mouth on her throat. The sting of razor-sharp teeth, hotter and brighter than she would
ever have thought, from seeing guesses at it in films and reading about it in books.
But she let herself embrace the word, as she sank down into oblivion.
She saw it behind her eyes, printed, like on the page she had read only a little while ago. The thing he was, his secret,
his weakness, the thing he most likely suspected she had known, the way she knew it now.
Harker St. James wasn’t human.
He was a vampire.