Chapter 5
“Where is he?” I sit on the stairs at the base of the Green Flame landing while David paces back and forth.
“I don’t know.”
“It’s almost dawn.” I’d fallen asleep in my room only to wake in a cold sweat with the memory of a knife in my belly.
The Saints. I can still see the look in the leader’s eyes, the unfeeling way he smiled as he gutted me.
In DC they’d come for my life and almost taken it.
If not for Valen, I’d be dead. Same with Gorsky.
Same with the shooting at the inauguration.
With Whitbine. I rub my eyes. In that brief bit of sleep, I gained a slight ray of clarity about Valen.
Everything he’s done, he’s done to keep me safe.
Even so, it’s not as if I can erase the horrors of it, the cost. After all, the Specter exists, too.
He’s taken countless lives, might be out taking more right this second.
How many? There’s no balancing the scales for what he’s done, for what any of us has done.
“I thought he’d be here by now,” David says for the dozenth time. “He told me he would.”
“I’m hungry.” Juno’s voice filters down from somewhere above.
David stops pacing and grits his teeth.
“Tell Valen to pick up some McDonald’s on his way back.” Juno titters at her own joke.
I jump when she lands beside me, her feet sure despite her limp. Not so much as an exhale or the sound of joints popping. She’s as lithe as a cat.
“Seriously, though. I’m hungry.” She leans on the handrail. “Where’s the blood around here?”
“We have stores.” David doesn’t bother hiding his irritation.
“Take me there.” The command in Juno’s voice makes David’s left wing twitch.
When he doesn’t move, she adds, “now.”
“He’s not your staff, Juno,” I snap.
“That’s right. I’m not.” David steps toward her. “I’m Georgia’s housekeeper.” He gives me a slight nod.
I smile. For the first time in I don’t know how long, I actually smile.
“Come along.” David stomps up the stairs behind me.
Juno stares at me for a moment. Just like with Valen, an ocean separates me from her. A million questions, a million recriminations. I don’t think it’s possible to repair our bond. I realize that while looking into her alien yet familiar face. Did I ever really know her?
“I’m still me, Georgia,” she says gently, as if she’s reading my mind in real time. “When you look at me like that, like I’m …” She glances up, then back at me. “Like I’m a stranger, I …” She shakes her head. “I’m your sister. I will always be your sister.”
“Is that supposed to make me feel better or worse?”
She winces.
“Come on,” David calls. “And remember the way. I’m not showing you again.”
Without another word, she leaves, her steps silent on the stairs.
And I feel … sick, like I was cruel. Like I’m in the wrong somehow.
I lean against the wall, the stone cool on my cheek.
Again, I stuff every bit of my feelings down and force my thoughts back to what little I can control.
When Valen returns, I’m going to make the same plea to him that I made to Fatima.
I need equipment. If I can get—a sound to my left draws my attention.
A shadow moves in the corridor. My hackles rise, and I push myself to a higher stair, then get to my feet.
Valen staggers into view, his chest bare and covered in blood. His head hangs at an odd angle, and he falls in a heap, his breathing ragged and loud.
My stomach drops, my heart kicking up a notch.
Déjà vu intrudes, so many memories of me patching him up in DC.
I hurry to him, the smell of blood heavy in the air.
With a shove, I roll him to his back. I can’t comprehend everything I’m seeing, the wounds that are too many and too deep.
A human wouldn’t have withstood a quarter of this.
His skin has been flayed away over his heart, and I see it beating sluggishly beneath his breastbone.
Swollen and bloody, the sclera is torn away, and the one lung I can see is punctured, not even inflating halfway.
I can’t apply pressure. I can’t do anything.
I hover over him, my hands itching to do something, to fix him. But I can’t.
One of his eyes opens, the other swollen shut.
“Are you dying?” I ask. “You need blood. Like when you almost died in your bathroom? I don’t—I can’t—there’s nothing I can do.”
“I didn’t die.” His voice is barely a croak, and leaning closer, I see why. His neck is gashed open so badly that I can see his spinal cord.
“Fuck.” I’m at a total loss. “Here.” I shove my wrist in his face. “Just do it.”
“Worried for me?” He barely gets the words out.
“Glad to be rid of you,” I say instinctively.
His lips feather across my skin. A soft touch despite his dire situation, a slight kiss before dying.
When he strikes, I grit my teeth against the wave of sensations that roll through me.
The sharp sting of pain, then unexpected pleasure that twists low in my belly mixed with so many memories of him taking from me.
And worse, of Whitbine doing the same. My stomach turns.
After a few pulls, he releases me with a groan.
I keep my wrist at his lips. “You need more.”
“No.” He stares up at me. “You’re afraid. I never want you to be afraid.”
I want to deny it, to say I’m tough and strong, that I’ve seen too much to be weak any longer. But it’s not the truth, and I think he knows it. There’s too much darkness beneath my skin now, too much violent history.
“Fuck!” David lands with a whoosh beside us, an IV bag of blood clutched in one hand. “Gregor flayed you?” He kneels and shoves the bag against Valen’s mouth. He bites it, draining it by half in a matter of moments.
I sit back on my heels and stare at Valen’s heart.
The sclera heals as I watch, the blood seemingly seeping back to where it belongs.
Then his skin begins to knit itself back together, the fibers reaching for each other across his sternum.
If only I could get this under a microscope…
God, there’s a world of knowledge right in front of me, a million medical explanations and remedies.
“If you keep staring at me like that, we’ll have to take this somewhere more private.” Valen sits up, his swollen eye now barely visible.
I glare at him.
“What happened?” David stands, then offers Valen his hand and pulls him to his feet.
He sways then steadies himself. Blood still covers his torso, his pants shredded down one leg, a deep gouge in his thigh healing slowly.
“Gregor was displeased.” He coughs, blood bubbling on his lips.
“Fucking hell.” David takes one of his arms and drapes it across his broad shoulders.
“Let’s go.” He walks him past the green flame room, the library, and all the way to his bedroom with me following behind.
Valen’s back is a similar tapestry of gore, the flesh healing but plenty of deeper wounds still remaining. It will take time.
“Here.” David lowers Valen to his bed.
Valen sits heavily and rests his elbows on his thighs, his head hanging, his neck oozing blood but looking better. At least I can’t see his spinal cord, just the side of his windpipe and his vertebrae.
“He almost killed you.” David drops to his haunches in front of him.
“Almost.”
I move around to Valen’s back and watch him heal, studying the process. It’s more magic than science. More witchcraft than medicine. I don’t understand any of it, but his body is its own surgeon. A deft healer, repairing and regrowing. To see this at the cellular level might fry my brain.
“Taking notes, Doctor?” Valen’s voice is almost back to normal.
“Just observing.” I lean forward and press a small flap of skin back into place. It quickly meshes with the flesh beneath it, becoming whole as I watch.
“Always looking for something to learn. Observant. You’re quite astute for a dead woman.”
A dead woman? I freeze. “Gregor bought it?”
“For now.” Valen grunts. “But he’s far from pacified.”
“He punished you.”
“He laid blame where he felt it was due.” He shrugs, but groans and stills again. “My negligence allowed Carlotta to gain enough support to move against Blood Dragonis. To attack his Specter and kill you.”
Somewhere inside, my ADHD squawks about the injustice of it, of blaming Valen for the actions of others. A useless bird in a cage. There is no fairness in this world, and that was true even before the vampires emerged. “Is nothing ever Gregor’s own fault?”
David scoffs. “Never. I’m surprised he believed her dead. Lately, he’s wanted …” He runs a hand over his curls. “He’s wanted bodies.”
Valen’s breathing is still ragged. “Oh, he wanted more. Threatened to compel me to get it. Changed his mind when I offered him proof.”
My skin crawls. “What proof?”
“He demanded your body. I gave him one.”
“You—”
“There are plenty of victims—humans who were out after dark while knowing full well it’s a death sentence. I found one and took the corpse to him as proof.”
“You killed someone to—”
“She was already dead.” Valen intones.
Do I believe him? Does it matter?
“This is taking longer than usual.” David stares at a larger wound in Valen’s side.
I stare at the injury, too. “Wait, what do you mean ‘usual’?” How often has Gregor done this to him? My stomach clenches at the enormity of it, at how much suffering just one round of this would cause anyone, vampire or not.
“He took my liver.” Valen shrugs weakly. “Ate it like he was a human sitting down to a meal. He’s never done that before. I think it … Slowed me down.”
My clinical curiosity dies. Anger boils up in its place. “Why? Why would he do any of this? Carlotta is the one who killed me, not you! What’s the point of torturing you?”
“You know why.” Valen straightens his back, his neck finally at a normal angle as the skin heals over. “Because he can, because he enjoys it, and because I can take it.”
He reaches out, and David hands him the IV bag again. Valen drains it.
David stands, his eyes still narrowed with concern. “Should I get Coal?”