Chapter 35
Only half conscious, Will stumbled beside Eric through streets and over stairways, always pursued by the sounds of battle.
“We are almost there.”
Will nodded weakly. The streets were narrow, and figures moved across the rooftops above them. Suddenly, Eric stopped. Gunshots tore through the night until the empty chamber clicked. The dogs raced ahead and threw themselves upon the enemy, but Will was too weak to look up.
“Damnation!” Eric eased Will away from his shoulder and let him slide down along his legs. “Stay.”
As though he could run away.
Like a drowning man, Will clung to Eric’s strong legs, panicked at the thought of losing the last source of warmth, and Eric allowed it. Vampires closed off the alley from both sides, their chittering sounding like laughter.
Eric was far more skilled at reloading. He was already firing again while wielding his rapier with the other hand.
But more and more monsters appeared. Claws seized Will’s leg and dragged him away.
Eric caught him just in time and drove his blade into the vampire’s face, but the rescue cost him.
From the other side, the vampires pressed closer without resistance.
In a whirl of dark-red skirts, Elodie leaped from a low rooftop into the middle of the creatures. She wielded a curved blade of blood magic, cutting down everyone who placed themselves between her and Will and Eric.
In Will’s half-dead state, his rescuers became demons performing a dreadful ballet.
And he lay helpless upon the frozen ground, staring into the empty eyes of a slain vampire.
Brown blood seeped from the hole in its forehead.
Were vampires afraid to die in those final moments before they threw themselves at a hunter?
A wet tongue and hot breath tore him from his thoughts. One of Eric’s dogs was licking his arm, but then Will was hauled upright once more. Only now did he realize the dance had ended. Yet the silence was deceptive. A few streets away, he could already hear more vampires.
Eric heaved Will back against his shoulder, and they fled onward through streets that grew ever more tangled. Will struggled to keep his eyes open. Breathing became a burden.
A front door swung open. Beyond it lay a narrow, filthy passage. Steep stairs followed, too cramped for the two men to walk side by side. A bolt slid aside, and darkness received him. He stumbled over a rug. Behind Elodie, the door fell shut, and she drove the bolt home.
Eric’s large, cool hand guided him to the center of the small room and helped him to the floor. The carpet was worn and old.
Elodie opened the curtains, and weak moonlight illuminated the silhouette of a narrow bed in one corner, a stool and washbasin in the other.
There was nothing else apart from the large rug before the fireplace.
Eric set about lighting a fire, and soon the first flames licked at the wood.
It had not dried properly, so thick smoke climbed into the chimney.
Its comforting scent filled the room and soothed Will more than the warmth radiating from the hearth. The two dogs curled up before it.
Will moved closer as well and pulled the coat more tightly around himself while his rescuers worked behind him.
“Bandages are under the bed,” Eric said.
“Do you keep spare clothing here?”
“Only whatever you find in the chest.”
Judging by Elodie’s contemptuous snort, it was not much. “I will return to the fish market tomorrow morning. Surely they did not eat his boots.”
Will drew up his knees and placed his frozen toes upon the stone border of the hearth.
He rested his chin upon his crossed arms and ignored the scratching of the spiked collar.
He also ignored the scabs splitting open across several of the bites.
His entire consciousness focused on the fire.
He would have gladly sat inside it if that were what it took to drive the cold from his limbs.
A short while later, Elodie and Eric settled on either side of him. Eric finally managed to remove the collar from Will’s throat with the aid of a little magic and threw it clattering into a corner beyond their sight.
“We need to treat your wounds,” Elodie said apologetically. “And we will try to draw the last traces of vampire venom from your blood. But the night will be long. You have lost a life-threatening amount of blood.”
Guided by Elodie’s hands, he lay down upon the carpet and stretched out his limbs.
Together, they healed him, sometimes with traditional methods—cleaning, salving, and bandaging the deeper wounds—and sometimes with magic, whose crackling touch upon his skin drew a blissful whimper from him.
But the pain remained constant. His face twisted as he reached new extremes, when iodine burned inside the bites and even their gentlest touches were not gentle enough.
When they ran out of bandages, Eric removed his shirt and tore it into strips.
When they worked together like this, they needed no words.
Will forced himself to open his eyes again and again, only to see their faces for a few seconds.
They read what the other needed from a glance, their movements fitting together as though they had not been bitter enemies for years.
It made Will forget the pain, and warmth crept into his heart.
Memories of his parents returned, so old he could barely place them—of the two of them setting the table together, from a time when everything had still been peaceful.
Will’s eyes closed, and the cold returned. Just as peace in his parents’ home had not lasted, this bliss was only a distraction from the abyss still yawning inside him.
At last, Elodie cut her finger and drew circles of protection across Will’s chest. Magic pulled at his veins. He whimpered in pain. The room flickered before his eyes, and his hands clenched in the carpet.
“No,” he heard Elodie say. “You have already given enough blood.”
Even so, moments later, he felt Eric’s wrist against his lips, lava dripping onto his tongue of ice. Elodie was right, but Will could not restrain himself. Greedily, he licked up the copper taste and savored the salt of that red sea.
“Enough,” Elodie hissed the moment she finished the spell.
“Cold,” Will protested weakly when Eric withdrew his hand.
“I know.” Compassion colored Elodie’s voice. She rose and returned a moment later with blankets. Together with Eric, she lifted the thin mattress from the bed and placed it before the fireplace, then built Will a small nest of blankets and pillows.
But it was not enough.
His entire body trembled the moment he curled up inside it.
The fire felt like nothing more than an oversized oil lamp—giving light but hardly any warmth. He wanted to set the blankets ablaze simply to escape the ice inside his bones.
“Elodie!” Eric cried in shock.
Suddenly, Will felt movement beside him.
Elodie had slipped out of her hunting clothes and crawled beneath the blanket beside him, wearing only a thin undergarment.
Her body glowed with heat, and Will pressed himself against her without restraint.
It was improper. She did not want him. He was a mistake.
But she dismissed Eric’s protest. “Do not pretend you have suddenly become a saint. Undress and lie down with us. Or would you prefer to spend the night over there?”
Will did not look when he heard buckles opening. Instead, he drew Elodie closer, shamelessly wrapping an arm around her, and to his surprise, she nestled against him.
“I am sorry,” he whispered into her hair.
“Shh.”
“Saint.” Will faltered.
“I found what remained of him. There is nothing we can do for him. I am glad you left the letter.”
Suddenly, Eric seized Will’s feet, and before he could ask what he was doing, he pulled warm socks over them.
Elodie lifted her head and could not suppress a quiet giggle. “Mr. Arcos… who would have thought shuffling documents and doing paperwork could build muscles like those?”
“This is a matter of life and death, and that is the best you can think of?” Eric grumbled before sliding down on Will’s other side.
His bare, hard chest pressed against him, and Will shuddered with pleasure.
He truly could never have dreamed this would be the first time he lay beside that man.
And he was glad there was not enough blood in his body, because otherwise Elodie would very quickly have noticed how deeply the contact affected him.
“After New Year’s, I can admire my husband instead,” Elodie continued to provoke.
“Then take a good look. Your husband will never give you a sight like this.”
“Jealous?”
“Are you jealous that the only time you see me naked is for Will?”
Will was certain Elodie was glaring at Eric over his body.
He did not care. Real warmth was finally creeping beneath his skin.
He did not dare press himself against Eric, although there was still too much space between them.
Instead, he slid one leg between Elodie’s, allowing her to fit herself entirely against his side.
She giggled softly, her breast resting upon his chest, her warm breath tickling the bandage around his throat.
“You two seem rather familiar,” Eric muttered.
“We are saving a life. Relax.”
At last, Will turned his head toward Eric and forced his eyes open.
Eric was propped upon one forearm, his sharp face painted in light and shadow.
It emphasized his elegant cheekbones, hollow cheeks, and pointed chin.
His hair was disheveled, but Will’s gaze continued lower, over the sinewy throat to the broad shoulders and hard line of his collarbone.
Across the expanse of lean muscle to the undergarment hanging low around his hips. A blanket hid his legs.
He was beautiful, and Will understood why Elodie drank in the sight.
“Will,” Eric murmured, suddenly uncertain. His given name upon the man’s lips made him shiver. It felt as intimate as a touch, like a hand placed upon his chest where his heart beat.
“Eric, I want you here too,” Will said. “I am cold,” he added quickly, because otherwise he felt too vulnerable. Elodie was familiar and forbidden. He had tasted her on his tongue; she had come against his face. It should have been only another natural step to finally hold her in his arms.
If he ignored the pain in his body and closed his eyes to reality for a moment, he could imagine that the circumstances were different.
Perhaps they had returned from a ball that had lasted too long, or from some adventurous journey.
And Elodie was his. She allowed him to love her and to make mistakes with him.
Eric was the opposite. The man seemed to prefer touching him only with the tip of his walking stick. And yet their dance had repeated itself far too often in Will’s dreams, and sometimes he had continued it after imagining that they withdrew into one of the many private rooms…
But that was not how things were. Elodie and Eric had come to rescue him from his own stupidity. How could he still speak of making mistakes when his mistake had cost Saint his life?
Eric seemed to read the darkening thoughts upon his face and finally lowered himself fully against Will’s side.
Gods, it felt good to have his muscles, his masculinity, beside him.
And one or two moments later, Eric pulled both of them closer.
His arm reached across Will to Elodie’s waist, and his lips brushed Will’s cheek.
He spread the blanket and then the coat over them. The farther they drifted into sleep, the more tightly he held them. The more shamelessly he permitted himself to protect what he called his own.
He did not need to say it.
Will felt it in his touch, and the first faint smile lifted the corners of his mouth.