Chapter 27
Chapter Twenty-Seven
“I’ve got you,” Skarde whispered as he protected Gemma against falling snow and the horse’s jerky motions on the slippery road.”
His body, still weak from venom, had jolted into action the moment she’d been stabbed.
When the scent of her blood hit him, adrenaline surged with purpose and the need for vengeance.
Cade managed to wound Petra, which distracted everyone in her compound enough that they could escape.
Perhaps, it hadn’t gone that way. He’d been hellbent on killing everything there, but Cade stopped him.
With Gemma over a shoulder, Cade convinced him if they didn’t get her out, they’d all die.
She still bled. Which was bad on several levels. Foremost was the blood hunger, which consumed his mind to the point he wanted to dip a finger and taste. He wouldn’t. The smallest taste might trigger the mind-numbing need for more.
The stab wound was killing her. No reason to sugarcoat it in his mind.
He followed the slowing of her heart. She surged toward death.
No point in stopping to do wound care right now.
And no time. They’d traveled a few miles from the witch’s palace on stolen horses, ones he didn’t trust had been cared for well enough to get them all the way back to his place at the speed necessary to avoid pursuers.
He directed his horse alongside Cade’s. “How did they lure you in?”
“I was invited with a letter embossed in gold. It said they had the prophesied problem and, as the punisher assigned to the task, I’d better come get her. Then that teenage witch cast a spell on me.”
“Did you wear the wristband I gave you a few years ago?”
“If I got caught wearing a magic talisman—”
“It would’ve saved your ass. Never go anywhere near a witch without it. Even Gemma is wearing one.” He held up her wrist.
“That’s why the witch’s spell didn’t work on her.”
“They baited me in too. I thought they had Gemma. Did they tell you what they wanted from you?”
“The crystal. Somehow they figured out the girl in the prophecy is tied to the crystal.” Cade chinned toward Gemma. “Does she still have it?”
With one hand, he touched around her neck and nodded. “How did Petra find out about the prophecy and your assignment? Do you think VanFliet told her?”
“Probably. It makes no sense. We are blood brothers. Mingling with witches like Petra and that weird business with bugs… I don’t understand him at all anymore.
He may have been extreme before, but it’s as if he’s lost his mind.
I’m sure he’ll be my next assignment.” Cade blew out a breath.
“My best guess is they have an oracle. How else would they know about our father’s crystal? ”
“Petra showed up at my place two months ago. She’d communicated with our father’s dead spirit.”
Cade chuckled. “Would’ve loved to see that.”
“Based on her attitude, it didn’t go well. I took a commission south to deal with a problem and forgot about Petra’s visit.”
Gemma tensed against him and gasped. Awake.
Her whole body trembled. Her teeth chattered so hard it made speaking difficult. “So cold. Got to get off the horse. Hurts.”
He reined the horse to a stop; the animal was too happy to comply. As he dismounted, Skarde kept her tight to his chest. Cade stopped but didn’t dismount.
“We need to keep moving.” A line etched between Cade’s brows before he twisted in his saddle to study the gravel road they’d already traveled. Their pursuers might be twenty or thirty minutes behind them. Time off the horses ate up their lead.
“Hold onto me for a second,” Skarde ordered Gemma.
Her shaky hands managed a weak grip while he pulled off his coat to put it on the damp ground and laid her down on top of it.
“She stabbed me,” she wheezed out. “Why? I helped her.”
Staring into Gemma’s wide, shell-shocked eyes, he pushed hair off her face. “Witches are a dishonorable lot.”
“Said something about a blood vow and the future happening now. I’m losing too much blood.” Tears shimmered in her gaze. “I don’t want to die here.”
He hadn’t protected her. He’d known the moment she entered his realm today. If he’d tried harder, he could’ve freed himself and gotten to her in time. His hesitation had killed her.
Or forced him to consider turning her into an undead vampire like him. Damn it.
“I’m not going to make it, not here, without a blood transfusion and surgery.” She strained to sit up and probed her wound. Breathing hard, she fell back. “Even if I got into surgery in the next hour, there’s a low chance I’d survive.”
“Serish can help.”
“I’m not going to live that long.” Her lower lip quivered as she touched his face, the effort to lift her hand so great that once her soft fingers briefly caressed his skin they dropped hard to the ground. “I thought I’d handle dying better. This is embarrassing.”
“You have to hang on longer.”
Her lips managed a weak smile. “You know what I’ll regret?”
He shook his head.
“All the things I didn’t do with you. I had such dreams…”
Skarde lost his voice—or he would have spoken back to her, echoed her thought of regrets. Lacking words, he touched her hair. She turned her face into his palm and kissed it.
“It’s okay to say goodbye,” she whispered. “That way you don’t… no prophecy baloney to mess up your mind and your life.”
Her heart struggled to pump with her diminished blood supply. Its rate slowed.
“For fuck’s sake, Skarde, bite her before we lose her,” Cade snapped. “If you don’t, I’ll do it myself.”
“We don’t know if you could.” He closed his eyes in surrender. “Gemma, can you hear me? I’m not going to let you die.”
Her lashes fluttered open. “You have to. Time to raise your middle finger to the destiny gods.”
The damned prophecy replayed in his brain. But he wouldn’t watch her die. Cade turning her? He would never let that happen even if there was certainty Cade could pull off a full turn.
Her breathing became irregular. The feeble grip she had on his hand disappeared as she whispered, “I’m scared.”
Cade warned, “Five more seconds. One…two…”
With shaky hands, Skarde angled her neck and stared at the weak throbbing of her jugular vein. His canines ached to taste her. But he hesitated. He resented the magical shits who had forced both of them into this. Was biting her worth burning in hell?
“Move your pansy ass out of my way.” Cade advanced. “I’ll do it. Not to become powerful, although it’s a bonus, but she saved my life. I owe her. It’s my bed she can occupy since you obviously don’t want her in yours.”
Skarde jerked Gemma closer to him, his body forming a cage around her. As he let out a vicious warning growl, his fangs fully extended.
Cade jumped back.
Biting her was worth whatever hell waited on the other side.
“It’s not a gift. It’s a curse,” Skarde muttered, “I’ll be the one to give it to her.”
Don’t take too much. As gently as possible, so unlike any previous time he’d bitten, he pierced her skin.
The flow of her blood into his mouth made his head buzz.
Delicious blood flowed across his tongue.
He took and took hard, drinking deep, and wanting so much more than her vein. He wanted inside her.
Stop.
He’d taken enough to infuse the toxin that would start the change. He licked to ensure the tooth wounds started healing. Biting into his wrist, he made sure the punctures were deep. He pressed the oozing holes to her lips.
“Drink,” he ordered. “Then you can be strong.”
Her lips formed an instinctual seal around his wrist and started to drink from him in earnest. A deep moan escaped her, although he wasn’t sure if she was fully conscious.
Her trembling from earlier seemed to worsen until her seal over his wrist broke.
He shook her, tried to get her to take more, but she didn’t wake up.
Her heart still beat, but it didn’t sound any stronger.
Would his blood work? Nerves shot, Skarde held her close to keep her warm and feel her heartbeat against his chest. His mood shifted to near panic at the thought that he’d taken the leap, deciding to turn his first human ever, had gone this far and given her what he’d never given another… and now he might lose her anyway.
“How do I know if it worked?” He wiped snow off his face and glanced up at the foreboding clouds.
“Takes time.” Cade rubbed a hand down his cheek. “I only turned one successfully in all the years.”
“What? I thought you created a harem.”
Cade shook his head. “The scourge on our species is real. Any time there’s a successful turn, it gets reported. The Directorate tries to make sense of why no one has been able to make it happen in one hundred and sixteen years.”
“When is the last time you remember hearing it worked? I mean a full turn, not the initial blood poisoning minion stage?”
On a soft exhale Cade said, “I don’t remember. I was the last one who turned anyone. The Directorate is panicked. We’re on the brink of extinction.”
What had he done? Tortured by thoughts of Gemma as a mindless slave, he whispered, “Will you kill her if she only makes it halfway?”
“Yes.” Cade nodded. “I’ll do it. For what it’s worth, I think she’ll make it. She’s unusual. This whole situation is strange. Did you know she’s a medicinal? I figured it out when she freed the witch from her slave band back at the castle.”
“No.” He glanced down at her. That made sense.
“There’s never been a medicinal made into one of us.
She might be able to figure out the scourge preventing us from creating more of our kind.
” Cade worked his jaw like he was trying to wear down his back molars.
“I don’t know what the hell any of this means.
The prophecy, her being a medicinal… She fell into our world and onto my lap. Literally fell out of thin air.”
“I’ve seen it happen three times before. I crossed to her side once. This entire business has magical manipulation written all over it.”
“No shit,” Cade gritted out. “I hate magic. I despise everything about it. It always feels like cheating at life to use it.”
“Yet, you keep a witch captive.”
“That’s different. I control her situation. A witch knifed Gemma with the clear intent to force you into this. To force you, not me. If they simply wanted her changed, then the witch would’ve knifed her in the dungeon with me there and left us.”
“I despise being manipulated. But magic…eh.” Skarde shrugged. “I’ve dealt with enough that it doesn’t scare me. Magical shits bending destiny to suit their own objectives, though? That pisses me off.”
“There was long-term planning in place. The moment she arrived, the teenage witch knew who she was and what she had to do. I don’t know what that means.
That loony mage you keep probably knows what’s going on.
The good side of all of this is it probably means she’s going to become a full vampire.
Right now, you need to screw down a tight lid on any panic about the prophecy and keep it closed for about three hours.
We have to ride. Fast.” Cade glimpsed behind him as he mounted his horse.
“I think if we push these mangy beasts to the extreme we can make the mountains. Then we go west.”
“I’m east.”
“They’ll expect you to go to your place. We’re going to mine.”
“You have a place west of here?” Skarde tugged on his coat, lifting Gemma onto the horse in front of him.
“Yes. The heat works at my place, unlike yours. Given the impending blizzard, we’re going west. I refuse to freeze my ass off in your stone mausoleum should Petra decide to lay siege to us there.
You have a newly transitioning vampire to care for.
The wild part comes next. She’s going to want a hell of a lot more than blood. ”