Chapter 22
Chapter Twenty-Two
Charlotte
The Aerie
The Dungeon
The door opened. Charlotte swallowed her words, unsure what Stringer would do if he found her being chatty with a fellow prisoner. She stashed the dagger back in its hiding place and smoothed her skirts.
Two guards not wearing the standard Aerie uniform carried in an unconscious body. Draven.
“What have you done to him?” she demanded.
The guards ignored her, dropping Draven into the cell next to hers. His body slumped to the ground, dumped like rubbish into a pile.
She hurried to the edge of the cell, gripping the bars. “What did you do to him?” she demanded.
“I wouldn’t stand so close. He’ll be hungry when he wakes,” a soldier said, laughing as they slammed the outer door.
The room plunged into darkness. Charlotte moved to be as close to Draven as possible, tripping the sensor. Light flooded the room.
“Draven. Draven!” she called. No response. “You have to wake up. Please.”
Draven appeared so small, sprawled on the floor like a broken toy discarded by a petulant child. An alarming amount of blood covered him. His head, his face, particularly around the mouth. Charlotte didn’t want to think too deeply about how that transpired, but she could only assume throats were bitten. The once-white shirt was now scarlet and torn across the abdomen. Through the mess of fabric, she saw the tears in the flesh that exposed glossy, wet viscera. How anyone could survive being gutted like a fish, she had no idea.
Charlotte gripped the bars, watching his chest, and only relaxed when it eventually rose and fell. Alive then. Barely.
“Hurt,” Hal said.
“Yes. I don’t know how to help him,” she replied. He was so badly hurt and she had no medical knowledge. This was worse than a single embedded arrow. It was too much. Even if she had a fully stocked medical kit, she wouldn’t know where to start.
“Drink.” He pressed his wrist to his mouth and mimed biting.
That was a thought. She had the dagger. She could easily nick her wrist and feed him.
“I can’t reach him, and he’s unconscious. He can’t come to me,” she said. “Yes, the solution was obvious once I said it. If he can’t come to me, I will go to him.”
Hal grunted.
She moved to the cell door and inspected the hinges. “In The Seventh Evil , the heroine finds herself in a similar predicament, but the cell was poorly designed with the hinges on the inside,” Charlotte explained. “With determination, she removes the hinges, and the door falls open. I’m not sure how to remove the hinges, but it can’t be too difficult. Maybe fortune favors us. Wouldn’t that be a pleasant change?”
No such luck. The cell door was flush with the frame.
“Quality craftsmanship. How vexing.” If she stuck her arm through the bar and twisted, she could reach the keypad. “You don’t happen to know the code to unlock this, do you?”
Another grunt.
“Our options are rather limited. I’d hate to destroy a functioning relic.” She felt around the edge of the keypad and found a groove where the front of the pad joined the body. She worked her dagger into the groove, wedging it in until the faceplate popped off. It clattered to the ground.
She jammed the dagger into the exposed keypad. Sparks erupted, flying up to burn her hand, and cascading down in a luminous shower.
She jumped back, cradling her hand. Hal made a concerned noise.
“I’m fine,” she said. The locks disengaged and the door swung open. She thanked the heavens for the one reliable fact about electronics on her planet and how easy they were to break. Bunching up the fabric of her skirt in one hand to grab the dagger, the metal warm in her hand, she hurried out. Hal bellowed and pounded on the bars of his cage.
Charlotte kneeled at Draven’s side, ignoring the orc. His breaths were slow and shallow. “Oh, love. What did they do to you?”
She didn’t know where to start. It was too much.
Drink .
Yes. Replenish him and hopefully, he’d have the strength to heal.
Charlotte held her arm over his mouth and pressed the dagger to her wrist. Her hand trembled, absolutely not wanting to cut herself. She hated pain, but she hated the thought of losing him. She couldn’t.
“You’re not allowed to die,” she said.
The door to the dungeon opened again. Charlotte tensed, but no one entered. Voices filtered in.
“Open,” Hal said, his voice pitched lower but still loud. “Can’t stay here. Go.”
That much was obvious. Charlotte looked from the orc to the vampire and back again. Fleeing seemed like a very good idea, but she couldn’t carry an unconscious Draven. “I won’t leave him.”
“I will carry,” Hal said. “Open. I will carry.”
She had no reason to trust him. He tore the chains from the wall. She had no doubt that he could smash her skull as easily as she could a pea. Letting him loose was incredibly risky.
Then the kinder part of her soul added that she had no reason not to trust him. He was as much of a prisoner as her.
“If I let you out, you’ll carry Draven out of here?” she asked.
“Yes. Open. I’ll carry.” He gripped the bars of the cage with his massive hands and nodded eagerly.
She pressed a kiss to Draven’s cold lips before leaving. The fanciful part of her imagined he sighed in response. Pure fancy.
“I’ll be very cross if this is a trick,” she warned, standing before the orc’s cage with her dagger.
“No trick. Leave this place. Smash heads.” He grinned, exposing a row of very sharp teeth.
That was hardly comforting at all. Still, she managed not to recoil in horror. Offending Hal at this stage seemed to go against her best interests. Elder vampire or not, Draven was in rough shape, and she did not want to know what Stringer had planned when he returned. Nothing good. His kind never resurfaced with a pleasant surprise like tea and cakes.
Charlotte repeated her trick, prying off the keypad and jamming in the dagger until sparks flew.
The lock disengaged with a thunk and the door swung open. She really hoped this wasn’t a mistake.
Draven
The Aerie
Laboratory
That aroma, the tantalizing sweetness of it. Close. A drop on his lips. He swiped his tongue across his bottom lip.
Yes. This. It was what he had been missing. What he needed.
More.
He lurched forward, fangs fully descended. Charlotte was bleeding. She had been injured. He had to protect her.
“Charlotte—” Her name was nearly incoherent through his mouthful of teeth.
“I’m here.”
A relieved, choking noise tore its way from his throat and he slumped against the wall. She was there, and she did not sound distressed. They were safe for the time being.
“You’re awake,” she said.
His eyes stung as he opened them. Charlotte’s figure swam into view. She kneeled beside him, holding a silver dagger.
Ah. So that was how it was to be. He turned his head, resigned to his fate. Everything hurt. He had no strength left to fight.
“If you do it now, sweetness, you’ll actually kill me,” he said.
“Quite the opposite. Now, you need to drink.” She raised the dagger to her wrist.
If she cut herself, offered her life’s essence to him, he would drink. He wouldn’t be able to stop. He’d drain every drop of her and leave a husk. And then he would be alone again. There was no point to his long and near-immortal existence without her.
It took all his strength to place his hand on hers. “I feared I’d never see you again,” he said.
Her bottom lip quivered with emotion. “I hate that my last words to you were unkind.”
“You were honest. I was a bastard.” Two centuries of existence summed up in four words.
“I do care for you, Draven. I need you to know that before you send me away,” she said.
Care. Not love. He noticed the word choice. Regardless, it was more than he deserved.
“If you think I’m letting you leave, you’re wrong in so many ways. I would never send you away,” he said.
Charlotte made a strangled noise, half-sob, half-laughter. “You said we had something to discuss.”
“Are we in my laboratory?” he asked, dodging her obvious question.
Focus on the problem at hand. He was badly hurt, worse than he had been in a long time. He needed to assess the situation, patch himself up, and end that traitor.
“I’m not sure. The door wasn’t locked. It looks like this room is used for storage. There’s electronic equipment and there seem to be plenty of supplies.”
Good. He knew the room. It was an overflow space where he stashed broken equipment and extra supplies.
“Bring me a bowl of water, a clean cloth, and a medical kit. It’s white with a red cross,” he said. Charlotte followed his instructions, returning with a white box. Hopefully, the kit would have what he needed to stitch himself back together. There’d be clean bandages at least.
“Drink,” a rough voice said.
Draven sat up straight, his abdomen on fire and his back screaming in protest.
Yes, it was Hal. Fury etched on his big green face, standing behind Charlotte.
“Charlotte, be careful,” Draven warned. “Has he hurt you?”
“Hurt me? Don’t be ridiculous.”
“Drink,” Hal repeated, his voice taking on a short and snippy tone that indicated he was moments away from raging destruction.
“Hal’s correct. You need to drink,” Charlotte said as if she didn’t hear the threat in Hal’s voice. Perhaps she didn’t. Perhaps that rage was only directed toward Draven.
“Hal? You’re friendly with it?” On a first-name basis, even.
“Hal is a person, not an it. And considering that Hal carried you out of that dungeon, you should be more grateful,” she said, her voice reproachful. Little mystery why Hal barely tolerated Draven. He was a bastard. Again, his existence in four words.
“I’m not going to argue. You need to drink to heal, and I’m a willing donor,” Charlotte said.
She pressed the dagger to her wrist, ready to slice across.
“You don’t understand. I don’t drink from the people I love,” he said.
She paused, a red drop forming where the tip of the blade pressed in.
“I love you,” he said, feeling lighter for having said the words. Or that could be the blood loss. “It’s unconscionable how much you made me love you.”
“I made you?”
She didn’t return his sentiments. It was foolish to expect her to but a part of him hoped. He couldn’t explain just how much he’d come to anticipate their evenings together and her questions, all her questions. He dreaded the day when her questions would cease.
“Please don’t do this. I’ll sew myself up. I’ll find another donor,” he said. The new donor would taste foul. They had all tasted foul recently. It didn’t matter.
“Well, as it happens, there are no other donors. I don’t think orc blood will suffice. I believe you said something about beast blood being poisonous, so logically Hal is out.”
“I’m too injured. I won’t be able to stop myself. I’ll drain you dry. Then no one will ask me all those questions,” he said.
That gave her pause. “I trust you not to take too much.”
“You really shouldn’t.”
“Ethan is always stubborn,” Hal said.
Draven flinched at the name.
“Ethan?” Charlotte asked.
“I was not always Lord Draven. I chose this name after my transformation. Ethan is the name my parents gave me.” It wasn’t what she wanted to know but Draven found himself reluctant to answer. She would turn from him in horror. There was a reason he changed his name and assumed a new identity.
“Ethan what?”
“You see, I was born human, but I’ve always been a monster. I’m Ethan Radcliffe.” Then, since she was determined to have all his secrets, he added, “Hal is my brother.”