Chapter 28
Leona collapsed in a heap with Charlotte and Sebastian, who was still lifeless. They had arrived in a darkened and — thankfully — abandoned alleyway. The hum of nightlife was evident in their surroundings, and the faint hue of streetlights and billboards was visible in the distance.
“We made it,” Charlotte breathed, looking over Sebastian. She had never actually seen the process take place. Victor and she had been turned at the same time, so she had been preoccupied with her own change to catalogue what her husband had gone through. But… venom was an interesting thing, as Piper had once explained to her, and she just had to trust they hadn’t been too late. It was the best chance they had.
Leona rested back against the grimy wall, unable to look at Sebastian. If he was dead… she couldn’t bear it. Plus, her vision was going in and out and she was on the verge of passing out. Not only had she not fed properly in too long, she had used the rest of her minimal energy to get them here. She was overexerted, and wasn’t even sure if she could walk.
Charlotte got up and quickly went to the edge of the street, glancing around to get her bearings. In a flash, she was back by their sides. “We aren’t far from my place. Come on. Can you stand?”
“No,” Leona said, her eyes closed. “I can’t… do anything,” she added breathily, her chest heaving.
“Alright,” she said. Gathering the woman in her arms, she hoisted her over her shoulder, and did the same with Sebastian. Speed was her friend in that situation, and they made it a few dozen blocks throughout the heart of the city to the apartment she owned in the Upper East Side.
It took some doing to get them through the door without any passersby noticing them, but eventually, she got them both inside. Leona sat on the floor as Sebastian laid on Charlotte’s living room sofa, his eyes closed. She stared at him, Charlotte having disappeared to get the bath going so they could help clean him up.
The redhead’s thoughts were everywhere at once. The venom affected everyone differently. For her, the change had happened in a few minutes. Apparently, for Victor, it had been hours. For Charlotte, days. She traced her fingers gently down his cheek, which was paler than usual. She couldn’t smell life on him anymore, but she couldn’t sense or smell the decaying process either. Perhaps it was wishful thinking, but she wanted to believe Charlotte had gotten to him in time.
Guilt flooded her wholly. She had been too scared, too paralyzed with anxiety, to change him and save his life. Charlotte had swooped in to rescue him. Would he hate her too? Would he turn against his dearest friends completely due to a chaotic, spur of the moment decision to save him? She knew nobody in the world respected him and his standpoint more than the Labasques, but… At what selfish cost did they preserve his life? Now he was doomed to an existence he despised.
“Okay, come on,” Charlotte said as she grabbed Sebastian and carefully lifted him up. “Help me get him undressed and into the bath. He won’t want to be covered in blood when he wakes up.”
“What if he doesn’t wake up?” Leona asked nervously.
Just then, before Leona could even blink, a hard slap came across her cheek. She stared at Charlotte in shock. It hadn’t hurt, just surprised her.
“Get your shit together,” Charlotte hissed. “He is going to wake up. He’s fine. His body is already starting to heal,” she said, gesturing to the wound in his chest that wasn’t so gory anymore. She then pointed to his neck, which was slowly stitching itself back together. Slowly. “We have no choice but to hope everything is fine. We left the love of my life and your two best friends at that psycho’s place. We have to hope that they will make it back here okay and we will have time to get a game plan together. But right now, worrying about it or pitying ourselves isn’t going to help. Do you understand me?”
Leona nodded, her chest tight with indignation. She huffed a breath, squashed her exhaustion, and helped her get Sebastian to the bathroom. Cleaning him broke her heart even more, because the bruises and cuts from the fight hadn’t quite healed all the way, and she could see them fading. She hated he went through all this pain on her behalf. She hated what she had dragged him into, but… maybe they could make it through. Charlotte was right, they had to think positively, because doing anything else wasn’t going to change the outcome of this scenario. If Sebastian hated her, then he hated her. There wasn’t much she’d be able to do to change his mind, not at first anyway. But maybe he wouldn’t. Maybe he would understand what happened and would have done the same had he been in their position.
After he was cleaned up, Charlotte dressed him in some of Victor’s old clothes he kept there for traveling purposes. Laying him down on one of the beds, they merely sat and waited. Leona wished there was blood to drink anywhere in the apartment, but… there wasn’t time for that. She didn’t even know Charlotte had property here, and there certainly hadn’t been a chance for her to stock up on blood bags in the fridge in case of an emergency. They would have to remedy that as soon as possible.
But as hungry as she was, she couldn’t imagine not being there when Sebastian woke up. Not a chance. She wanted to be the first thing he saw. She wanted to welcome him into his new life with open arms.
Later, whether it was an hour or ten, Leona couldn’t be sure, a thud sounded from the front door and they both shot up on the defensive. As they rushed into the other room to investigate, they were met with a bloodied and battered Victor, Whitney, and Piper.
Charlotte let out a cry of relief and was immediately in Victor’s arms, kissing him as if she’d never done so before in her life. Leona had similar reactions to her two friends, so relieved that they were okay.
“How did you escape?” the redhead breathed, looking between them.
“Damien came,” Whitney said. “Held him back while we left. I don’t even want to think about…”
“Gideon won”t hurt him,” Piper said, in a tone like she’d reassured her a hundred times before this. “The priority and the plan was to get back here in one piece.” She glanced toward the room Leona and Charlotte met them from. “Is he awake yet?”
“Not yet,” Leona said with a sad look, shaking her head.
“He’ll wake up,” the blonde said firmly. “In the meantime, you look like a skeleton, which is saying something,” she said, handing her the insulated bag slung over her shoulder. “We swung by the house before we came here. We knew he’d be starving you, and we figured you wouldn’t be able to hunt from here.
Leona took the bag and looked inside, nearly crying in happiness. She snatched a blood bag out and immediately pierced it with her teeth, draining it in an instant. She went through five more before she felt sated enough to not lose her sanity. The others made quick work of the rest of the bags.
“What about when Bas wakes up?” Charlotte asked, throwing the last of the bags into the trash. “Should we go out and get more?”
“Bagged blood won’t do shit for him,” Piper said, cleaning her mouth up with a wet paper towel. “We will need to take him out to hunt. He probably won’t be too pleased about that.”
A few scoffs were heard around the room. Understatement of the century.
Leona sat in the armchair across from the bed Sebastian was laying in, where she’d been ever since she’d fed. Victor and Charlotte were in the room with her while Piper and Whitney kept watch outside near the door and windows. Leona was wringing her hands in wait, feeling like she was being eaten alive with the agony of all the anxiety coursing through her.
She closed her eyes and just focused, willing something, anything to happen.
After a few minutes of sitting there in silence, she flipped her eyes open and stared at her beloved. Charlotte and Victor both quirked their heads to her, then to him. They had heard the same thing she did.
Him.
Leona sat up and leaned forward, bracing her hands on the edge of the mattress. If she could breathe, the air would be hitched in her throat. Her green eyes flicked back and forth over the features on his face, searching for any sign of movement.
Whitney and Piper came into the room next, hovering in the doorway. All eyes were on the dark-haired man who hadn’t moved in nearly a day.
Then, Sebastian’s eyes fluttered open, his once dark eyes having turned a bright crimson red. He didn’t move his body, just his eyes, as he adjusted. He could see the flecks of dust on the ceiling, floating in the air. He could hear cars whirring outside, specific conversations of those in buildings nearby, the breathing of the people within the block, the creaking of the bed beneath him…
“Sebastian.”
He turned his head and met those familiar eyes of the woman he loved. Everything was different though. He saw her now. He saw every pore on her perfect porcelain skin. He saw the details in her irises, how long her eyelashes were, the fabric on the material of her clothing, each individual hair atop her head, her eyebrows, everywhere. Her voice even sounded different. It was as if each sound wave from every syllable was reverberating within his head.
Pushing himself up, he nearly catapulted off the bed with the force and speed. He parted his lips, his throat never having felt drier in his life. Bringing his hand up, he touched his neck, noting how cold it felt now. His hand then trailed down to his chest, where he remembered Gideon shoving his hand into. There was nothing but hardness there now. Not muscle, hardness. Like he was made of stone.
“I’m…” Sebastian started, not quite able to find his voice yet.
“Yes,” Leona said, the others silent as they watched on. “You are. It was the only way.”
“Gideon?” he questioned, looking at all of them, then settling his gaze on Leona. At her pained look, he knew they had not won. How had they gotten out? What happened? What happened? “Where are we?”
“New York,” Charlotte answered. “My house.”
He looked around and recognized everything then. His head was swimming. He felt the sheets beneath him, noting all the new sensations gracing his fingertips, his hands. He swallowed thickly, then looked to Leona. “You did this.”
“I did,” Charlotte chimed, before Leona could respond. “I did this. You were going to die.”
Sebastian pressed his lips together in a thin line and wasn’t sure how to respond. He looked back at Leona and shook his head. “Why are we not at home?”
“We can’t go back there,” Leona said sadly. “Not for a long time.”
“Sebastian,” Piper said, stepping forward. “We need to catch you up to speed on everything.”
“Where is Gideon?” Sebastian asked, ignoring Piper.
“We don’t know. We escaped but he’ll be looking for us. You need to listen to us though. You need to feed. You won’t be in your right mind until?—”
“Why didn’t you let me die?”
Leona frowned painfully. “We… Seb, I?—”
“Don’t call me that,” Sebastian hissed, pushing himself off the bed. He swayed a bit, then braced himself against the wall. He did feel weak. But stronger than he ever had. It was strange. “Take me back to the castle. I’m going to kill that fucker. Once and for all.”
“Sit down,” Piper snapped, her temper gone. She shoved him back on the bed, the wood splintering in protest. “You aren’t doing shit until you get fed. You didn’t die. You’re one of us and the quicker you get used to that and stop blaming everyone else, the quicker we can figure out how the hell to hide from Gideon.”
“I’m not hiding?—”
“Sebastian,” Victor interrupted. “Listen to her.”
“No,” Leona said, looking between them all. “There are things you don’t know about. Things Gideon told me… about you,” she said, her eyes settling on Sebastian. “You’re much more rooted in our world than you think, Sebastian.”
“What?” he asked, shaking his head. “What do you mean?”
“Gideon said he recognized you somehow when he first saw you. Admittedly, I did too. I thought it was just our love laying dormant, but… he did some digging, and your great- great… however many greats something was a vampire hunter. One that nearly took Gideon out.”
“You’re waiting until now to tell me this?!” Sebastian gawked.
“I didn’t know… Or at least, I didn’t remember. He showed me in the cell. It’s part of the reason he’s so obsessed with making a show of killing you, beyond punishing me. And I think he’s worried if you became immortal, you’d…”
“Be able to kill him,” Sebastian finished. “Well, wish fucking granted.”
“Sebastian, he’s much stronger than you, you don’t know what you’re doing,” Leona protested. “You heard him. He wants you for himself. Any other scenario, you wouldn’t survive. I’m begging you, stay away from him… We can run away. There are ways to keep him in the dark.” She stepped toward him, but stopped as Sebastian flinched. It caused a pain so deep within her, it was almost foreign. “Please…”
“Stop,” Charlotte said, shaking her head. “We don’t need to talk about any of this right now. We need to get blood into Sebastian so he doesn’t get pissed off and accidentally kill us all. Then we can talk about a plan of action.”
Sebastian looked around at them, then shook his head. “I’m not doing that.”
“You don’t have a choice,” Piper said, yanking him off the bed again. He struggled, but she was stronger. “Come on. We’re going to show you how to hunt, then you can be pissed off at us for however long you want. You have an eternity to do so.”
Sebastian wrenched his arm from her grip and kept his distance from them. As he thought about everything, knowing this was the hand he’d been dealt, he… wasn’t sure what to do. He never wanted to be a monster. He loved Leona, he thought he had, but… this was different. Had it all been for nothing? Gideon was still alive. They had Leona, yes, but there was still a threat looming over them, suffocating them at every turn.
But then again… if he trained, fed, got strong… and if what Leona said was true… then maybe he could be the one to break the curse.
As the rest of the immortals around him gathered by the door, he huffed out a breath.
Fuck it.
End of Book One.