CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Istared out the window as we headed for Maria’s nest. Hollow. And pained. I reached down and touched my side, finally deciding to pay enough attention to my own body to realize there was a small hole.
“Ouch,” I muttered.
Alexius looked sharply at me, his nostrils flared and his eyes narrowed.
“I didn’t even notice,” he growled, seeing how I was poking at the hole. “Stop messing with it.”
“I didn’t even notice it myself. It probably got lost in the smell of all the blood,” I said, trying to approach it clinically.
“I didn’t want to treat you like glass too much in front of all of them, or I would have properly checked every inch of you.”
I tried to remember where I might have gotten it.
It was a long drive back to the nest. Still enough time before sunrise to get there, so Alexius wasn’t speeding too much.
Red. I remembered red, Blood. Hearing Henry talk and knowing his answers were the wrong ones.
Knowing that my hunting partner, the vampire beside me, was keeping my prey busy for me.
Henry was mine to kill, and that was respected.
Before that? Was that when it happened?
I tried to piece it together, seeing flashes.
“Ah. I think I know,” I said, leaning against the door in exhaustion. “When I tackled him out of the air. You had thrown him, I think? We landed in vegetation. A particularly hard tree branch was sturdy enough to…”
“Wood is surprisingly tough like that.”
“Like stakes,” I said, knowing he would hate the vampires-in-the-media reference.
But his chuckle was genuine.
“Sure.” He reached out, and I took his hand, putting it on the center console instead of holding it. I didn’t want to touch anything. I didn’t want to be touched by anything.
“Sorry,” I mumbled. “I’m…”
“You don’t need to explain to me.”
“It’s so empty,” I whispered.
“…I know.”
I pulled my legs to my chest and held them for the entire ride to the nest after that. I felt stiff for a second when I tried to get out. Alexius didn’t coddle me or help me because I waved him off. Maria was close behind us, only a few minutes. Callahan and the werewolves didn’t show up.
“How’s Lexi?” I asked again. I knew Alexius answered earlier, but I needed to know again since I couldn’t see her.
“She’s home. She’ll see you tomorrow,” Maria said, touching my shoulder. “Callahan and her parents will escort her here. I called runners to get all of your things from the house to bring them here.”
“Thank you,” Alexius said from behind me. “We’ll leave in a day or two.”
I only nodded at that, then I saw vampires pull out a big plastic bag.
A body bag.
“Declan?” I said, taking a step toward it.
“Hold,” Maria said, lifting a hand up in front of me.
Not in my face, but at my chest, ready to physically stop me.
“He’s being taken to a care room. We don’t have many.
There, the eldest in my nest or myself will stay with him for the day and make sure everything is…
dealt with correctly as he becomes a vampire. ”
“I can do it,” I said, looking at her.
“No, you can’t,” she said, gentle. “Not only do you not know how, but it’s not for someone like you to do.”
“What? An Orphan?” I hissed.
“No, Everly. His sister. He shouldn’t wake up knowing his sister saw everything she would see, like you wouldn’t want your brother to have seen all of it,” Maria said, almost pitying me for thinking she was trying to talk me down.
“Very few people are able to be rational and impartial while caring for someone they know. There’s a necessary dissociation from the event that you don’t have yet, and with your brother, you would never have it. ”
I looked at Alexius.
“She’s right.”
“He’s one of them, one I would trust if he didn't have you to care for,” she said, nodding at us, then turning to Declan’s rolling body, still in its bag.
“Now, I shall go make sure he is settled in and make sure no damage was done to his body. Then I’ll put someone else in charge of him until sunrise and be back. ”
“Trust her,” Alexius said softly, “with Declan. Just for the day, for some of the hardest stuff about this.”
“And then we take him home, right?” I asked, staring up at him, feeling something real for the first time since I was taken away from Henry’s corpse.
“We’ll take him to Savannah,” Alexius said, closing his eyes. He pinched the bridge of his nose. “Going to have to train another Orphan.”
“Yeah…”
“Everly, what if he’s not happy with our living situation? His home is here.”
“He’s my brother. I need to be there for him when he wakes up. I need to…” I felt like collapsing again. I couldn’t say the words yet. I tried to shift my weight and fully lost balance.
“Everly!” Alexius was able to catch me.
Confused, I looked down and remembered.
“Oh, fuck,” I said, looking at my foot. Mangled by a knife through, forcefully healed by quickly drinking blood.
Alexius must have looked down with me.
“How did you do all of that on that foot?” he growled. “Where’s the medical wing?” he said loudly, looking around.
“This way, sir, is there—” A human had come forward, looking at us. He was wearing scrubs and probably worked there.
“She has a hole in her abdomen she’s pretending isn’t bothering her and keeps trying to ignore. And then there’s her foot…”
“I can explain,” I said with a sigh. And I did. The knife, the tile and concrete, the blood.
“We can fix it tonight, but only if she’s restrained. We can also do it during the day if she sleeps heavily through it.”
“Restrained?” I asked.
“I walk during the sunlight hours. Could I bring her to the medical wing while she’s unconscious, then take her back once you’ve finished?”
“That sounds perfect. She’ll fall asleep in her bed and wake up in it, and you’re okay with supervising her in case she wakes from the pain?”
“I am.”
“Alexius, are you going to ask my opinion?” I didn’t have a lot of energy to be angry, but I could find a drop or two if I needed it.
“Everly, would you like your foot fixed?”
“Yes.”
“Then that is the easiest way that you don’t have to be awake for. Do you trust me to keep you safe during the daylight hours?”
“I do. I just want to be asked if that works for me before you come to the natural conclusion.”
His nostrils flared, but he nodded.
“I don’t like seeing you damaged like that,” he admitted. “I got ahead of myself. I’m sorry.”
“Thank you. Yes, that works for me.” I turned to the human who was speaking to us.
I was wobbly again once that conversation was done. I pulled out of Alexius’s grip, though, still feeling too empty to be comfortable with touch.
“I’m sorry,” I said, curling inward as the hollowness in my chest began to echo too loudly.
“Is there anything you would like to do right now aside from having blood, or would you prefer to shower and rest for the rest of the night?”
A random thought came to me.
“Are they here?” I asked. “The vampires he made?”
“Yes.”
“I want to meet them. I’ll drink beforehand if someone can bring me some blood.”
Alexius snapped his fingers, and an attendant ran over.
“We’ve been keeping this warm for the request,” the young man said, holding it out. I took the goblet and started drinking. Each sip gave me back a little energy, but nothing filled the hollow hole at the center of me.
Alexius knew the way to the interview room, where the vampires had been left sweating for almost the entire night.
“They were all seated, but…” Alexius gestured through the double-sided glass. “Leave anyone to their devices, and they try to get comfortable.”
One woman was lying on the table. The other woman was sitting in the corner, staring blankly across the room. The man made an uncomfortable-looking bed out of the five chairs in the room. Three for the vampires. Two for more powerful interviewers.
“Are you sure you want to talk to them?” Alexius asked.
I nodded and went for the door to get in, knowing he would follow right on my heels. They were all startled by our sudden appearance.
“You,” one of them said, pointing at me.
“That one is Kate,” Alexius said to me from behind. “The man is Taylor. The small woman on the floor is Evie.”
Evie.
Something very angry rose up in me suddenly. Henry was already dead. This anger had nowhere to go.
“What’s your real name?” I asked Evie.
“Evie,” she replied as she stood up; however, she kept her eyes down. I walked closer to her.
“What was your human name?” I asked, rephrasing. “Answer truthfully. I’m out of patience tonight.”
“Kimberly.”
“Did my uncle tell you that you were going to be Evie after he made you?”
“Your uncle?” Kimberly looked up at me. “Our uncle. We share him.”
“You and I are not related, and we don’t share anything. I came here to tell you all that he’s dead.”
Kimberly wailed, but I noticed that Kate and Taylor were both fine, looking at each other, almost hopefully.
“So… we’re not going to have to go back to him or anything? We can learn the rules and try to join the nest or… No one has spoken to us since…” Kate gestured at Alexius.
“That’s something Maria will work out with all of you.”
I sighed. I had planned this big thing about telling them all the terrible parts of Henry I had only just learned myself.
Now I hesitated, then changed my mind. Kate and Taylor were ready to move on from the looks of it. Kimberly, or Evie as my sick uncle had convinced her to be called, was the one who probably needed psychiatric help.
“I’ll tell someone to give you all better rooms, sooner rather than later.”
“Who killed him?” Kimberly asked, wiping tinted tears from her face.
“I did,” I answered.
She lunged for me, but I didn’t react, not wanting to hurt her and not sure what to do about the crazy girl who was abused and manipulated by my uncle.
Alexius had her before I paid for that.
Holding her head to the wall, he leaned in.
“Remember what I told you earlier,” he growled.
“Do it,” Maria said from the speakers.