Chapter 35
Chapter Thirty-Five
FLORENCE
As Quinn’s heart slows to a stutter and then stops, mine starts to beat again. It’s the strangest thing.
It doesn’t last long, maybe fifty beats at the most, and the most curious part is that it takes on the exact rhythm of Quinn’s heartbeat. It’s like there’s a small piece of him in my chest, a token that I’ll carry with me. It’s a small comfort as the man I love slips away in my arms.
I know it’s happened before I press two fingers to his pulse point, but the medic in me checks anyway. He’s silent. Still.
Dead.
‘Ok,’ Elias says, suddenly beside me like he could sense it happening. ‘I’m up.’
I watch him as he kneels beside us and bites into the flesh of his own palm, sending a rivulet of blood down into Quinn’s open mouth.
I haven’t seen anyone be turned since I was, and after my experience, I expected it to be violent, maybe gory.
But this is neither thing. It’s actually kind of beautiful.
Elias is gentle with Quinn’s body, almost reverent. He runs a finger lightly down the front of Quinn’s throat before he presses his cut palm firmly to the wound my fangs have made on the side of his neck.
‘Insurance,’ he says gruffly, though when I look at him there’s a soft smile on his face. ‘The ingestion is usually enough, and it’s fast, too. But as a backup’—he nods to his hand on Quinn’s neck—‘it doesn’t hurt to use another blood-to-blood transfer site.’
Panic lances through me, a sharp pain clean through my chest. ‘You need a backup?’
I see Elias pause. It’s momentary, but just for a split second, he’s entirely motionless.
‘Sometimes,’ he admits.
My soul almost leaves my body. ‘Sometimes?’
I see a new expression on Elias’s face, something awkward and sheepish. ‘I didn’t want to tell you that in advance. In case you worried.’
Something in my chest lurches. ‘And you thought now was a good time?’
He visibly shrinks away from me, but he doesn’t reply.
‘Does the backup ever fail?’
It’s not something I really considered – that the transition wouldn’t work and that I’d be the one responsible for Quinn’s actual, final death.
Elias doesn’t look at me. He keeps his eyes on Quinn’s body instead, his hand still pressed firmly to the wound. ‘It can.’
My heart feels like it’s in free-fall. ‘So, yes.’
There’s an almost unbearable pause before he says, quietly, ‘It has. A couple of times.’
There’s a moment of silence in which neither of us moves, or breathes. We just watch Quinn, or what’s left of him, anyway. There isn’t the faintest trace of life – or afterlife – in his body.
And then, in the next moment, I lose it.
I make a sound I can’t identify, something harsh and guttural. The image of Elias in front of me glimmers and blurs as tears well in my eyes, a forced-down sob held at the base of my throat that feels like a tightening fist.
‘I did it,’ I say, my voice shrill. ‘I killed him.’
Elias shakes his head furiously. ‘No.’
‘I did!’ I take a huge, gasping breath. ‘I did it and now he’s gone.’
I feel hands on my shoulder, gripping me more tightly than is probably necessary, like Elias is trying to calm himself as well as me. ‘Give him time.’
I want to, God I want to, but I feel like I’m standing on the clifftop, and the slightest breeze might send me plunging to the rocks below. It’s been minutes now – more than that – and still nothing.
‘How long does it usually take?’ I manage, and he tries not to say it, I can tell by the tension in his jaw. I really believe he makes an effort not to. But it slips out anyway, a lit flame held to my touchpaper.
‘It’s usually pretty immediate.’
That’s the point at which I go feral. The sobs wrack my whole body – violent, heaving waves that thrash at me and sharp wails that claw their way up my throat. I can’t see, can’t breathe, can’t think in a world without Quinn.
‘Florence.’
More accurately, I can’t exist in a world that is without Quinn because of me.
‘Florence!’
Did I kill him because of my own selfishness? God, I suddenly understand why some vampires hibernate. I’m just wondering if it’s possible to stake yourself in the heart when Elias grabs my face between his hands and blows a sharp breath straight into my face.
My panic spiral splutters to an abrupt stop and I look at him in horror. ‘What the hell are you doing?’
‘I don’t know, I panicked!’ He visibly winces. ‘You were freaking out. I needed to break the cycle.’ His face relaxes, a corner of his mouth twitching into a tentative smile. ‘Hey, it worked.’
I grimace back at him. ‘Your breath smells like pork scratchings.’
This time he laughs. Actually laughs, at a time like this. I want to slap him.
‘That’s because I ate a packet before I came in here.’
‘Gross.’
‘Yeah.’ He huffs a breath of a laugh before his expression becomes serious again. ‘Florence,’ he repeats earnestly, his hands holding my face like it’s a basketball he’s about to shoot. ‘Give him time.’
He says it more slowly this time, his words infused with a confidence I don’t share.
But I nod back at him anyway. Tears fill my eyes again, but more quietly, the edges of his face blurring.
I’d give Quinn anything, I think, but I don’t say it.
I just stare at Elias and try to calm the frantic buzz behind my ribs while his hands hold steady on my cheeks.
Neither of us notices when Quinn cracks one eye open.
‘Elias,’ he says calmly, making both me and Elias jump out of our skins. ‘I hope you’re not making a move on my girl?’
My gaze must break the sound barrier with the speed it snaps back to Quinn. He’s lying still on the sofa, one eye still closed and the biggest, most beautiful smile on his face.
‘You…’
I don’t even know what I’m trying to say.
You came back?
You scared the shit out of me?
You are the love of my life?
All three, maybe. All three and more, a riot of relief and joy that bubbles up through me and brings fresh tears to my eyes as I fling myself onto him.
‘I love you,’ I whisper, my face pressed into his chest. It’s more still than I’m used to, more silent, but he still feels like him, and he still smells like him and it’s enough.
What am I saying? It’s more than enough.
It’s everything.
His arms come around me slowly, but within seconds he’s rediscovered his strength and he’s pulling me in tight, hands grasping, mouth seeking. He kisses my neck, my cheekbone, my mouth. He whispers words of love into my skin over and over again as we burrow into each other.
Then there’s a small sigh. Someone clears their throat behind us.
‘I’m just gonna…’
‘Fuck, Elias!’ Quinn exclaims, and as we break apart, we tackle Elias from opposing sides, pulling him into a tight, three-way hug. His chest vibrates against my cheek as he laughs.
‘Thank you,’ I murmur. ‘Thankyouthankyouthankyou.’
‘Really,’ Quinn adds. ‘There’s no way I’ll ever be able to repay you for this.’
But Elias just shakes his head. ‘Think of it as redemption,’ he says, ruffling our hair like we’re his kids.
‘I’ve turned so many people – too many people – and for a long time it was against their will.
I’ve realised now that I took something from them – something that wasn’t mine to take.
But with you two, I…’ He pauses, weighing his words.
‘I feel like I’m giving something back.’
‘You gave me my life back,’ Quinn says, a drag to his voice that I’ve rarely heard. He sounds like he could cry. ‘I was like a ticking clock, and now…’
‘Now we have all the time in the world,’ I finish for him, and my words escape like my breath – in a long, lyrical sigh that feels as if it releases more than air.
All the worry and fear of the last few days, longer than that, really, flows out of me with my breath, until all that’s left is warmth, and gratitude, and love.
Quinn’s back. He’s well, and now I don’t need to worry about him leaving me. Not unless he chooses to, anyway. And I’ll do anything in my power to make sure that doesn’t happen.
Elias returns our hug, squeezing us together as one, and then he flashes us a more awkward half-smile than I might expect of an ancient being, and slopes off back to the bar, trying to hide the mist of tears in his eyes.
When the door closes behind him, Quinn turns to me, and for the first time, I fully appreciate his new appearance.
There’s still the faintest hint of a bruise at the back of his neck that will probably fade at near a normal human rate, but other than that, he looks great.
Those dark shadows that cut underneath his eyes are totally gone, and the bite wound on his neck has fully healed too.
His eyes are still almost the same shade, that perfect balance of blue and green, but there’s a new light in them, his old sparkle, and something new too – the first flushes of immortality.
They’re a little paler than they were, the colours just a touch less saturated, but I can barely look away.
I can just about see the first faint flickers of aura around him, like the dawning of a new star.
When his hand comes to my jaw, it’s a little cooler than I’m used to, a little smoother too, but the fires that ignite as he traces a finger along my jawbone burn every bit as brightly.
And when he kisses me again, I hear the same familiar tune humming an echo deep in my chest. He mutters my name as my fingers slip under his shirt, and the timbre of it sends shivers skating across my skin the way that it always did.
I’m glad I was able to know Quinn as a human, and I’ll carry the memories of it with me forever, but the core parts of him, the parts that I’ve come to love, well, they haven’t changed a bit.
I thought that sleeping with vampires was forgettable because they were vampires, but the longer and deeper that Quinn kisses me, the more desperate the noises that escape him become, the more I realise that isn’t the case at all.
Because there isn’t a single part of this that’s worse than it was when Quinn was human.
I can’t smell his emotions anymore, but I can still sense his relief, and I can feel the thrum of his desire racing just under his skin. It feels almost like his heartbeat. But, unlike his heartbeat, it feels like it’s for only me.
‘Florence,’ he says again, more roughly this time, and when I pull away from him there’s a look of such wonder in his eyes that it almost brings me to my knees. ‘I need to ask you something.’
My chest swells, warmth rushing to fill all the spaces left by the breath I was holding for him, but in that moment I know.
I know what’s he’s going to ask, and I know that one day I’m going to say yes, and I’m going to mean it.
But I also know what he doesn’t – that right now, in this moment, it’s his adrenaline talking.
And so I don’t let him ask. Instead, I put a finger to his lips, gently shushing him.
‘Don’t rush this,’ I say, pressing featherlight kisses to his cheeks. ‘We have all the time in the world.’
And maybe he hears what I’m not saying, because he nods once, and then he smiles his brightest smile, the one that makes his eyes sparkle and his dimples pop.
And when he takes me by the hand and leads me to his bed, I don’t feel a bit of resentment in the way he kisses me.
There’s only love, and relief, and joy, and the very slightest of scratches from his newly erupted fangs as he runs them down my neck for the very first time.
We tumble into bed as one, a tangle of limbs and teeth and promises to last for eternity. Because that’s something we have a chance at now.
Forever is a possibility for us, and I’m so ready to spend my forever with him.