Thirty #2
“You’re one of them,” said Cedric. Like this, it was undeniable, the strength I had given up—the strength of the moon, the gravity that pulled the tides.
My feet dangled off the floor. Against him, I was weightless.
I wished I had drunk more than a kiddie cup of blood; I wished for monstrous power.
“You can both die and end this whole awful experiment.”
He suddenly snarled in pain, his hold weakening as his back leg buckled. On the ground, Mason sagged at Cedric’s feet, his hand dropping away from Cedric’s calf. His palm was red and blistered, and the arrowhead was gone from the grass.
I drove my knee into Cedric’s gut even as my eyes welled with tears.
Cedric grunted, letting me go, and I knocked him to the ground, then rolled off him just before he could strike upward with the stake.
Grabbing his wrist in the air, I twisted, hard.
I heard a snap, but Cedric didn’t release the stake. He climbed over me, hissing.
“Let go!” I said. My tongue was still healing; the command was weak. But Cedric’s grip loosened slightly.
He punched me into the ground, once, twice, until I saw spots. I didn’t stop twisting. I didn’t stop as the stake inched toward my chest, and I didn’t stop when I felt something in his wrist snap.
“Nobody stole me!” I said. “You threw me away a long time ago. Let go.”
When the stake fell to the ground, that was when I stopped.
I grabbed it and tried to get away from him, but he held me down. He stole his knife from my hoodie and reared back, aiming at my neck. He looked uncertain as he bore down. But he bore down anyway. My hands instinctively thrust upward to shove him away.
Cedric went rigid above me. With delayed horror, I became aware of my own body—of the stake still in my hand, only half visible now. The other half was buried in Cedric’s chest.
The last expression I saw on my brother’s face wasn’t fear, or pain, but a defiant, sorrowful rage. It was still there, etched into the lines of his face, after his eyes glazed over.
The knife fell to the grass. His body was limp for only a few agonizing moments.
Before my eyes, his skin, hair, clothes, everything turned to stone.
I feared that he would crash down on me, squeezing the life out of me, getting the last laugh.
But from the stake, cracks spread and spiderwebbed outward until they covered him completely.
They glowed orange and hot, lighting up the cemetery and scorching my skin.
And then, in one scalding, horrible display, he burst into ash.
Black feathers fluttered onto my hoodie.
I sat up, stunned.
A stake to the chest. Cedric had died. Cedric was dead. My brother was dead. He was dead. Dead. I had killed him.
I was every bit the traitor he’d thought I was.
Finally, the thought didn’t crush me with guilt, or anything at all.
I lay there, numb inside and out.
“I think I’m seeing things.”
I sat upright so quickly I almost blacked out. Mason lay on his side against the tomb, eyes muddy and barely open.
Feeling returned too fast. I thought I, too, might explode in embers. I scrambled to him on my hands and knees as his eyes slid shut, his weak pulse the only thing I could hear.
The tears finally came.
My brother was dead, and I had killed him.
Mason was still here. If it made me a monster to feel relieved, then I was a monster.
If it made me a weak-willed human, then I was a human.
None of it had ever mattered. I thanked my strength for letting me save him, and I thanked my weakness for letting me love him.
I lifted Mason again and left the scene to my nightmares.
Cella was already in the driver’s seat when we reached the car. She looked horrified at the sight of us, but when I pushed Mason into the back seat and said, “Drive like hell,” she didn’t hesitate.
***
Mason was barely breathing by the time we reached my house. His wounds weren’t healing fast enough; his shirt was soaked through. I carried him on my back, shouting for help before I even threw the door open.
I set Mason against one of the staircases and pleaded at the top of my lungs despite the burn in my throat. The first to appear was one of the DeLucas, running up from the basement. She came to a screeching halt, hissing and covering her nose at the smell.
“Kieran, what the hell did you bring into our house?”
“He needs help!” I said. “Where’s Marino? He needs a doctor.”
People flooded in from every direction. In seconds, the entrance hall was swarming with vampires, everyone with their hackles raised, giving us a wide berth, demanding to know what I had done. I ignored them all, searching the faces for—
“Tim!” I was hopelessly relieved to see the doctor. “Please—he’s hurt—he’s dying,” I choked.
But Tim Marino reared back like the rest of them, looking ready to pounce, as if Mason could be any threat to him in this condition.
He said, “Kieran, what were you thinking?”
“He’s dying! He’s dying, and it’s my fault. You know he can’t go to a hospital—Aunty Francesca, tell him . . .”
I turned begging eyes on my aunt. She stepped back into Dante, looking at Mason with a hand over her mouth like she’d seen a ghost.
“Please!” I shouted to anyone, one hand remaining at Mason’s neck, where I could hardly feel his pulse.
“What’s going on?” boomed my dad’s voice.
My head snapped up toward the top of the stairs. He rushed down, visibly panicked at the sight of me, but he paused when he realized who I was with.
He only hesitated for a second.
“Kieran,” he said, stopping a few steps away with shock all over his face. “Are you hurt?” But he seemed to realize quickly that little of the blood was mine. “What’s the meaning of this?”
“Does it matter?” I snapped. “Can you help him?”
“I—” He looked at my face and seemed to shake himself. “I’m a vet, not a doctor.”
“Well the doctor won’t fucking get close! He’s half wolf anyway; can’t you do something?”
He didn’t even scold me for my language.
“Bring him to the infirmary,” my dad said. There was an outcry, but it silenced when he held up one hand. I scooped Mason up in my arms and rushed downstairs, my dad hot on my heels.
The infirmary was a small, scarcely used space with two narrow beds and fluorescent white lights.
It was stocked with medical equipment and was supposed to be Dr. Marino’s domain.
I laid Mason down carefully, touching his sweating cheek, checking under his nose to feel his breath.
My dad was already at the sink, thoroughly washing his hands.
In a low voice, as if afraid of the answer, he asked, “Where is Cedric?”
I closed my eyes tightly. “Mason didn’t do anything to him,” I said. “I did.”
“Where is he?” he pressed.
“Please,” I croaked. Then I whispered, “He would have killed us.”