Chapter 34
Agunshot tore through his dark ocean and sent the waves trembling.
Will opened his eyes.
The room was empty except for the elder vampire, who paced back and forth. His teeth clicked together, and his fingers twitched. Will could not remember when the creature had last drunk from him. Was the effect already fading?
“Hunters,” the elder spat. “So someone has come to rescue you after all. As though they could! You belong to us now. We will feed you and bleed you. We will keep you like the animal you are.”
Suddenly, a black streak shot up the stairs and leaped at the vampire’s chest. Savage growling and barking followed as a second beast appeared. The dog sank its teeth into the vampire’s arm, and when he flung it away, it tore free a large strip of grey flesh.
The vampire recoiled and hissed at the dogs, but they refused to be intimidated. They bared their teeth and planted themselves between Will and the vampire.
Will nearly laughed with joy. Only one man had dogs like these. Their silken coats were unmistakable, even matted with blood and filth.
“You lost,” Will managed.
A battle raged below. Help was almost within reach.
The vampire crouched and abandoned the final remnants of human behavior.
But he never launched another attack, because the dogs’ master appeared in the doorway.
Brown blood dripped from his coat and ran along his drawn rapier.
Steel plates reinforced his leather armor, weapons covered every available inch of him, and everything about him looked deadly, down to his murderous expression.
Mr. Arcos reached the vampire with a speed no human should have possessed.
The elder sprang at him, fingers crooked into claws, jaws stretched wide.
The two predators crashed together, and Will saw only Arcos seize the back of the vampire’s skull.
His fingers drove into bone, and the vampire screamed.
Bloodlust turned to desperation. The creature tore at Arcos’s coat and even reached the skin beneath, but Arcos remained unmoved.
He forced the vampire’s head farther and farther back, bone cracking beneath his grip, until the neck broke and the throat split open.
Growling, Arcos ripped the elder’s head from his body and hurled it into a corner.
The lifeless body fell to the floor, where Arcos drove his rapier into its chest. When he twisted the blade, the corpse convulsed, and Mr. Arcos repeated the motion.
The corner of his mouth twitched into a grimace.
His dogs waited patiently beside him, perfectly tame once more.
“That is for touching what belongs to me,” he growled under his breath.
Will almost failed to hear him. Perhaps Mr. Arcos had not realized he was conscious. Perhaps Will was still trapped in a dream, because for one heartbeat, he thought he saw red in the ambassador’s eyes.
The room darkened, and Will felt the cold water returning to lap at his consciousness.
He didn’t want to go. He didn’t want to disappear into nothingness again.
He didn’t want to take his eyes from the black knight for even a second, but his eyelids were so heavy, his neck so weak.
His head rolled to one side, and needles drove into his throat.
With his last strength, he pulled against the chains until the cuffs bit into his wounds and the pain cleared his vision.
When he came back to himself, Mr. Arcos was beside him, assessing the extent of his injuries with a sharp gaze.
He reached toward the bite on Will’s cheek but did not touch the skin.
His expression merely darkened, a sharp line forming between his brows, a new and quieter version of the furious predator.
Suddenly, Will became aware of how he looked—naked and covered in blood, his face disfigured by deep wounds. He turned his head away, sticky strands falling across his eyes. But where could he hide? With his arms spread, there was nothing he could use to shield himself from the man’s gaze.
“Will…” Arcos’s voice broke as he circled him. His fingertips brushed fleetingly over Will’s back, and fire immediately shot through wounds Will had not known were there. But he listened to the footsteps. Arcos hesitated again and again, pausing to examine the damage more closely.
Once he stood before him again, Arcos drew a dagger from the sheath on his breastplate and dragged the blade across his wrist.
“Drink.” He held his arm before Will’s lips, and Will stared at him in disbelief.
“The vampires…” Will’s warning was broken, barely a whisper beneath the sounds of fighting one floor below.
“Drink. You are too weak.” He did not wait for Will’s consent but pressed the cut against his dry lips. With his other hand, he gripped Will’s chin and forced his mouth open.
Will didn’t understand what was happening, but the blood was like sunlight entering his black sea, its long rays reaching into his dark solitude.
His tongue passed over the wound before he could stop himself.
His lips closed around the cut and sucked.
His teeth pressed into the skin, blunt and harmless, but he wanted to take in every drop of life.
Dimly, he realized how different his reaction was from the one he had shown that afternoon. Was this how the descent into bloodlust began? Or had the vampires’ venom eaten into his mind and started changing him?
Mr. Arcos murmured words Will could not understand, but he felt their magic.
The hand remained beneath his chin, the thumb drawing circles and encouraging him to take more.
The touch was almost loving, and it caught Will’s breath.
He felt Mr. Arcos’s pulse quicken each time his tongue stroked across the cut.
He dared to lift his gaze and met the force of nature within Mr. Arcos’s eyes. His pupils were wide, devouring the silver of his irises, through which a red gleam now ran. His lips were slightly parted, his breathing quick, his gaze bound to Will.
“Gods, you are beautiful,” Mr. Arcos whispered. His free hand moved to the back of Will’s head, buried itself in his hair, and urged him to keep drinking.
And Will took.
The hot blood made him forget the horrors for several minutes.
Submissive in his restraints, Will accepted everything Mr. Arcos gave him, while the man looked down upon him as though honoring a god with his sacrifice.
How was that possible when Will was the one kneeling before him, powerless, his arms spread?
“Eric,” he breathed against the skin.
Eric’s fingers tightened in his hair until it hurt.
“Eric!” The doors to the stairwell flew open, and Elodie stormed into the room, her voice cutting sharply through the air. “What the hell?”
Reluctantly, Will removed his lips from Eric, and Eric retreated just as slowly.
“Help Will out of those restraints!” Elodie commanded, and Eric tore himself away with a jerk, taking one then two steps back. Half turned from Will, he pulled a bandage from his pocket and quickly wrapped it around his cut wrist.
The moment his touch disappeared, the cold returned, though it was no longer as all-consuming as before. Will’s muscles trembled, and gooseflesh crept up his arms.
“What did they do to you?” Elodie stroked his hair before hurrying toward the mechanism holding him captive.
His two rescuers released the restraints and caught him before he struck the floor.
He did not have nearly enough strength to stand.
His fingers were numb and began to prickle painfully as blood flowed back into them.
Even so, he felt uncomfortable being naked before Elodie, though that only proved his senses were slowly returning.
“Night is almost here. We need to leave. More vampires will come,” Elodie said as Eric shrugged out of his filthy coat and draped it around Will.
“Can you walk?” he asked.
With one arm around Will’s shoulders, he helped him to his feet, but Will’s legs immediately buckled beneath him. Only when Elodie also wrapped an arm around his waist, and together they took his weight, could he manage several trembling steps toward the stairs.
“We will never reach the gate like this.”
“It is already closed anyway,” Eric said, glancing toward the window, where the daylight was giving way to azure twilight. “I have a small apartment not far from here. It is not much, but we can spend the night there.”
Elodie raised a questioning eyebrow but did not object.
Every meter felt endless. They stopped at the top of the stairs, and all three looked skeptically into the depths below.
“Hold on,” Eric murmured, and before Will knew what was happening, Eric slipped an arm beneath his knees and lifted him. Elodie laughed softly at Will’s startled gasp while drawing her weapons.
Eric set him down again in the hall of the fishmarket, and Will was grateful to lean against his shoulder, if only so he would not have to look at the place where the vampires had torn Saint apart.
Supported by both of them, he stumbled past the corpses and out toward the harbor.
The howling of the pack already sounded in the distance.
The moment they stepped into the cutting wind and needle-sharp drizzle, the cold crashed over Will. His head sank against Eric’s shoulder, and Eric pulled him closer.
“Faster,” Eric growled. “My blood was not enough. He is fading.”
Will’s eyelids fluttered, his legs stumbling. The cries of the vampires drew ever closer.
“Take him,” he heard Elodie say, and then she was gone. A whimper escaped Will at the loss of her warmth. Moments later, gunshots rang out as Elodie attacked the first creatures with her pistol and rapier.
The world swayed around him as though they were walking over waves. Although Eric supported him with a strong arm, their progress remained slow. With his other hand, he drew a revolver and fired into the darkness.
“Will, stay with me.” Eric’s words disappeared as the dark, freezing sea rolled over him once more. “You cannot give up. Not now!”