Chapter 16 #2
Grayson’s mouth barely moved against that open wound, but as more of that life-giving blood flowed, his mouth clamped down on it and he drank.
His eyes closed as the blood rushed into his body.
His limbs started to tingle. His body jerked and thrashed, but he kept hold of Ryder’s wrist. The Weryn Vampire soothed him, urging him through this moment where his body was trying to reject the life-giving blood it wasn’t quite ready for.
He also thought he felt someone else, holding him, keeping him firmly in this body.
The flames in his chest ignited with a whump. Grayson drank and drank and drank.
“That’s right. Take as much as you need. Take it all,” Ryder offered.
That had Grayson’s eyelids popping open and he ceased his feeding. All he needed to do was to weaken Ryder when they were in enemy territory. That was not the plan. Ryder was looking down at him so lovingly. So fiercely. So proud.
“Ashyr. Grayson. Beloved,” Ryder intoned.
Grayson kissed the closing wound. His voice was still hoarse and weak, but he said, “I knew you’d come. I knew it.”
“Always.”
Grayson felt their connection. The blood between them.
The millennia of millennia they’d known one another.
He heard Ryder’s heart. It beat in turn with his own.
The whoosh and shush of his blood was Ryder’s blood.
Weryn’s blood. He heard the howling of wolves in the distance. A song. Their song. Ryder smiled.
“Yes, my beloved,” Ryder said. “They sing for us.”
The whole of the Ever Dark spread out before him for a moment.
He was seeing through the eyes of all the creatures.
Their heartbeat was his. Their breath was his.
Their claws were his. Their fangs were his.
Because they were all Weryn’s. They lived and died for the Immortal Weryn and now they did for him, too.
For he had joined them. A mate to their alpha. Another brilliant moon in the sky.
“The twin moons,” Ryder whispered.
“Us,” Grayson breathed out. “So much… life.”
Where he had always felt alone, he realized he was now connected to every single being in the Ever Dark. He felt their eyes turn towards the ziggurat. They called out their greetings. This was… this was… amazing.
“This is your gift?” Grayson croaked. “Oh, Ryder, I had no idea. I had no idea.”
Ryder caressed his cheek. “Our gift. They celebrate with us. They welcome you home.”
“Home,” Grayson repeated and started laughing and crying. “Home.”
“Never alone. Never parted. Pack.” Ryder pressed a hand over his heart and then over Grayson’s.
“Pack. Family. Bloodline.”
Tears slid down his cheeks, but he was smiling. Grinning so hard his face hurt. He’d never felt so connected. The General had to be apart, watching his people from a distance, a far star. But no longer. That would no longer be true. It would both make his role harder and better.
“I can feel you,” Grayson said.
“Yes.” Ryder nodded. “I was wounded. Now I am healed. You are here and all that I lost is returned and more.”
Both of them had been powerful alone. Both of them had been singular.
But no longer. They were together. And this was miraculous.
When he’d told Eyros about the connection and love between Balthazar and Caemorn, he had seen it and known it, but this…
this was something more than knowing. He’d expressed only a fraction of the joy that must be between them.
Neither of them would ever splinter apart.
“The War started here,” Grayson said. His hand lifted to Ryder’s face. He pressed it against that handsome cheek. Ryder kissed his palm. “But it ends here, too, as well. It can never happen again. Not between us.”
“I would not survive without you,” Ryder admitted. “We will never be apart.”
Death is yours to control, Ashyr, Kaly’s words whispered through his mind.
“We truly will never be apart,” Grayson said with a meaning he could only half grasp.
Fiona had tears in her eyes, too. She was wiping her face and, like him and Ryder, both laughing and crying. “Beautiful. So beautiful. And you’ve okay. You’re okay. Oh, gods, you’re okay.”
Grayson nodded. “Getting there.”
He tried to sit up, but he almost immediately fell down. Ryder had him though and immediately swept him up in his arms.
“Hold on there, Grayson. You need a minute,” Ryder cautioned. “I know that Julian supposedly got right up and went about his business, but I think most of us need a day or two.”
“I wouldn’t mind a day or two together. Just us. I wanted you, Ryder. I’ve always wanted you. I should have told you that there was never going to be anyone else for me,” Grayson said.
Ryder kissed his forehead. It was like a benediction. “You honor me, the Immortal Ashyr. I feel it. Pack. Family.”
“Blood,” Grayson finished what was now something very special between them.
Something he wanted to share with the other Immortals.
A feeling. An understanding. It wasn’t just because Ryder had brought him back to the night, it was a deeper connection between all of the Immortals that they had simply never known about.
“About that day or so, ah, we may not have a minute,” Charlie said in Artemis’ voice. “We need to go. Now.”
Grayson blinked. He had forgotten where they were.
He looked around him in confusion. That Dire Wolf had not been in his imagination.
It was looking at him happily. Tongue lolling out.
Head tilted. Ears pricked. He reached out a hand for it and the great beast came right to him.
His fingers sifted through the sinfully soft fur.
“Khos,” he said.
“You can hear Khos’ thoughts?” Ryder asked, amazed and thrilled.
Grayson nodded. “I can. Oh, I can!”
Khos licked his fingers and nuzzled his hands for more pets.
“We’re not alone,” Fiona said suddenly.
Her head had turned not to the front door, but to the back. It was clear that there were people out front. Grayson’s vampiric hearing kicked in for a minute and he heard countless heartbeats. For a moment, he thought he saw them. Not as their bodies, but as glowing spirits.
Their souls, Grayson realized.
But the sense fell away and his hearing flickered out again. He needed to feed more. But this was not the time nor place.
Ryder and Fiona rose to their feet. Grayson slid his arms around Ryder’s neck and rested his head against his chest. Ryder’s heartbeat was in his ear and reverberated through his body.
His own heart still kept up that same pace.
Ryder was strong. So strong. He felt the turning winding through his body.
He knew it would take a while before his limbs were fully his own.
To turn an Immortal took time. Time they didn’t have.
“We need to get to Destiny’s gate. Hopefully, Eyros won’t regret agreeing to help us,” Fiona said as they started moving swiftly out of the room, not through the front door but through the back rooms.
“Didn’t you say there were people back here?” Grayson asked.
“Less than out there,” she answered.
Charlie went ahead of them while Khos brought up the rear.
Grayson had a momentary panic attack when he saw Charlie’s face.
He looked like Artemis. Moved like Artemis.
Spoke and intoned like Artemis, but it was Charlie.
It was Mirryr. Charlie swept a hand back and Fiona and Ryder suddenly didn’t look like themselves either.
Fiona was transformed into an older woman with flaxen hair and a pinched smile.
Ryder became a powerful-looking Black man with white hair and steely eyes.
“Here’s the deal, you’re helping me take my new Childe to a safer place where we can… commune. Grayson, look appropriately loving at me,” Charlie told him.
“Ah…”
“Think of Charlie’s face instead of that one,” Ryder told him.
“I can do that,” Grayson laughed softly. He softened his gaze as he thought of Charlie and all his affection for the Mirryr Vampire who had stepped up and done so much for them. “How’s that?”
Charlie lifted an eyebrow. “Quite good! I almost believe you love me.”
“I do love you, Mirryr,” Grayson said. “I mean…”
But Charlie was nodding. “Yes, as I do you, Ashyr. I’m so glad you’re back with us. But now! Remember, I am Artemis. And all obey me.”
The three of them nodded almost in unison. Charlie had transformed so fully into the Kaly Vampire that Grayson could indeed see that note of command in him, different from Charlie’s own command.
Then they were striding through an arched doorway in the back of the room that led them to a long, narrow hallway.
It was lit with more of those orange soul gems that cast an eerie, Halloween-like glow everywhere.
Grayson frowned as they passed each by, he thought he saw something moving within those gems like larvae in a chrysalis.
Death is yours to control, Ashyr.
Almost immediately, they were met by a group of creeping Kaly Vampires and a dozen armed skeletons. But upon seeing Artemis, they stopped in their tracks, confusion written large on their faces. But suspicion was there, too.
“Artemis!” One of them, a middle-aged woman with a long plait, cried out.
Charlie, in a perfect imitation of the mad boy-Vampire sneered at her, “Gloriana, why are you here?”
“You… you were being attacked!” She cried.
How does Charlie know her name? Grayson thought.
Because I read her mind, Eyros’ voice flickered in and out of his own mind. It was like a badly tuned radio.
Eyros?
It… is… me… gods, it’s you, Ashyr.
Charlie let out a shrill laugh and shook his head. “Oh, that.”
“That?” Gloriana boggled.
Charlie held up two softly glowing soul gems. “You were worried about me. How… quaint.”
Gloriana’s expression soured. Charlie had definitely hit Artemis’ personality perfectly.
Abrasive. Arrogant. Alienating. He wouldn’t have used the sickly sweet persona that he had with Grayson with her.
He might have claimed to be changed for Grayson, but Charlie was choosing the right attitude now.
“So you took care of the intruders? One of them might have been a Mirryr. How do I know that you aren’t… ah, that you are you?” Gloriana’s eyes suddenly narrowed.
Charlie’s eyebrows lifted. “You think I’m a Mirryr Vampire? You believe that a party trickster could take me out and wear my form?”
“Well, I–”
She got no farther, because every single one of the skeletons in the party she and the others controlled suddenly had turned and pressed their blades against their throats. She went very still as the blade at her throat drew blood. It seemed to Grayson that the Kaly hardly blinked.
“Forgive me, Artemis,” she breathed, or barely breathed.
Holy shit, Grayson thought.
You should have seen him take out the two guards outside. He became three people. It was incredible, Eyros told him, his voice stronger.
“Now, are we done here? Or do you want to continue to insult me?” Charlie asked her.
“I–I–no, no, of course not! Forgive me!” Gloriana begged.
“A Mirryr? Gods, that’s worse than being taken down by a Siryn!” Charlie’s disdain was written large. “Or, a Helm.” He shook himself with disgust. “I should eliminate you just for thinking such a thing was possible and use your soul to light a room that no one ever goes in.”
“Forgive me,” she pleaded.
“I forgive no one,” Charlie hissed, but he did not kill her.
The skeletons, which appeared to be all under Charlie’s control somehow, yanked the Vampires out of their path so that they could walk past the Kaly Vampires easily.
Grayson’s eyesight suddenly shifted and he could see the blue-white threads that bound soul magic to the skeletons.
Those threads all led to Charlie. But he noticed that the threads were started to grow dimmer.
He can’t keep this up for long! Grayson realized.
Death is yours to control, Ashyr.
Just as they reached the next corridor, Grayson saw the control of the skeletons leave Charlie. But somehow, Grayson caught the threads and his other gift–his Ashyr gift–kept them standing.
Tell Charlie to pretend to release them, Eyros! Grayson cried.
But–
Just do it!
Grayson felt sweat start to pour down his face. Ryder’s “face” showed a growing alarm.
Charlie stopped at the intersection to the next doorway.
He turned around and gave the Kaly a cold smile.
He then sneered and moved a hand through the air dismissively.
Grayson dropped the skeletons and they clattered into piles of bones and weaponry.
Charlie had made it seem that Artemis had simply undone the magic in disdain.
Without a word, Charlie strode forward again, chin lifted, smile on his face, totally unconcerned while they followed quickly after him. Grayson breathed heavily.
How did you do that, Grayson? Eyros asked.
Death is yours to control, Ashyr.
I–I don’t know. But I can’t do it again anytime soon. We need to get out of here, Grayson told him.
No worries. The gate to Lasting is just half a block away from the ziggurat’s back door from what I can tell, Eyros assured him. And don’t worry, it’ll be unlocked and I’ll be waiting for you on the other side.