25. Cyan
Chapter 25
Cyan
M arrowers, despite their fearsome appearance, were known as the gentlest of vampires. They largely kept to themselves, steered clear of clan conflicts, and contented themselves with raising livestock for their diet rich in bone marrow.
That knowledge did not help me as a huge, roaring, tusked bastard came at me while swinging fists the size of my head.
“Don’t kill them if you don’t have to!” Thorne was dodging his own marrower, a significantly smaller one than mine, which hardly seemed fair. “We need information, not more bodies.”
“Easy for you to say,” I muttered, ducking low to avoid another punch that could have severed my skull from my spine.
My attacker bellowed again, the sound both frustrated and anguished. His pupils were pinpricks, and both eyes had taken on a pale, sickly yellow tinge. Regular, prolonged draitrium use caused the mineral to accumulate in the body, making the user’s eyes a deeper yellow over time. This guy didn’t have that solid egg yolk color going on. He was a new user, if he was one at all.
From afar, he looked like my friend Drace, the bartender in Marrowtown. I was relieved to find out it wasn’t him upon closer inspection, but getting that close got me right up in his punching zone.
I got inside his block and jabbed an elbow into his throat, making him stagger backward and choke. The two silver daggers on me were itching to be used, but if Thorne wanted to keep casualties low, it was best to keep the silver put away.
“They’re too fucking aggro, Thorne!” The declaration came from Rhain, who struggled to keep a scrappy, wriggling marrower in a headlock. “We can’t keep ‘em all subdued until they sober up.”
“Do what you have to.”
A marrower ripped a fence post out of the ground, lifted it over his head, and ran straight for Thorne. The clan leader’s movement was barely perceptible but seconds later, the marrower stopped in his tracks and dropped the post. He crumpled to the ground like a puppet whose strings had been cut, and Thorne’s dagger glinted from where it was buried in the marrower’s throat.
“Try to keep them from damaging more of the humans’ property,” Thorne drawled as he went to retrieve his weapon. “We have an agreement to honor with them.”
I turned back to the guy who had been on me, only to find him on hands and knees, gasping for breath. He held up a palm in a clear stop motion as I approached.
“Please…” he wheezed. “I…I don’t know…where I am…”
I crouched low on my haunches. “Look up. Let me see your eyes.”
He glanced up, teeth chattering like he was freezing. His pupils were more pronounced now, as they should have been. As if on reflex, he wiped under his eyes at the yellow goop leaking from them. He stared at his fingers, brow creasing in a frown.
“What…happened to me? Where am I?”
“You’re going to be okay,” I told him in my most calming tone. “Looks like you’re coming down from the drug.”
“Drug? What?” His frown deepened like he was trying to concentrate. “Did I hurt someone?”
He was covered in blood, the dark redness covering from his tusks and chin to his neck and shirt. In his drugged out haze, he had most definitely hurt someone. Or several someones.
“We’re going to find out what happened to you,” I said. “You will be okay. What’s your name?”
“My name? It’s, uh.” He blinked a few times. “It’s Lore. My name is Lore.”
“Good to meet you, Lore. I’m Cyan.” I offered a hand to help him stand. “You know another marrower named Drace?”
Lore took my hand and the strength I felt as he pulled himself up was unreal. If he really wanted to, he could rip my arm from its socket. “Drace? He’s my cousin. Well,” He tilted his head. “Fourth cousin, or something.”
I nodded, pleased that he sounded lucid. The drug may have had a weaker effect on him due to his size. With a quick glance around, I noted that the rest of the marrowers were now knocked out, dead, or tied up to keep subdued.
Bracing myself with a breath, I asked Lore, “Do you recognize any of the other marrowers here? Are they…family, acquaintances?”
“I…I don’t think so. Fuck, I’m so thirsty.” He rubbed his throat and started to turn around with a bewildered expression. “What is this place? How did I get here?”
“Let me take you to my clan leader,” I said. “He’ll explain, and then we’ll get you hooked up with some marrow and blood. Sound good?”
“Okay.” Lore looked apprehensive, if even scared. I couldn’t say I blamed him.
After making introductions between Lore and Thorne, I ran to the cellar doors and pounded on them like it had been weeks since I’d seen Tavi and not just a few hours. “It’s me, Cyan. It’s safe to come out now.”
It felt like an eternity before those doors parted and I found myself staring at the older human woman, Robin, plus a lot of other fear-stricken faces. None of them were Tavi’s.
“Where is she?” I barely stifled my growl.
“Are you going to feed on us?” one of the humans called.
“No,” I snarled in annoyance. “The agreement between us remains intact. Now where is Octavia?”
Robin moved to the side of the narrow ladder leading down into the cramped storage room. “She’s in the very back. Let him through.” She gestured for others to move aside as well.
I climbed down into the cramped, musty space, angling my head to not bump it against the ceiling. “Thank you,” I remembered to say to Robin. She was important to Tavi, so I’d make sure to show respect.
I didn’t have to walk far to find Tavi, sitting on the dirt floor next to a cot where a pale human girl lay eerily still. Only one human heartbeat registered in my senses, Tavi’s.
The sight of her made my heart break for my blood mate. Her pain, her loss, was my own. It clamped around my chest and squeezed with a terrible ache. I didn’t know if it was seeing her that caused it, or her blood circulating through me, creating an intangible but direct line straight into the core of her.
Tavi didn’t seem to know that I was there. She stroked her dead friend’s hair and wiped blood and dirt from Amy’s face.
“Tavi.” Her name left my throat on a strangled choke. I knew her loss too well, even if I hadn’t had her blood in me. Kalix may not have been dead, but he was ripped away from me all the same.
“Cyan.” Her head lifted, hope brimming in her tear-filled, stormy eyes. “You’re here. You can fix her, can’t you?”
A knot formed in my throat. “I’m not sure what—oh fuck, Tavi. You’re bleeding.”
I knelt on the floor next to her, carefully examining one of the seams of her leg injury that had reopened. Wetting two fingers on my tongue, I rubbed the two digits over the split in her skin. Like magic, the two sides restitched together. I would have loved to lick her directly, get a little more of her blood in me, but this moment was not about what I wanted.
“Yes, that!” Tavi grabbed my hand, an excited, but not fully present smile spreading on her face. “Use your mouth to heal Amy.”
Fuck me, she was breaking my heart. “Tavi.” I caressed her hand, knowing I needed to take the utmost care in what I said next. “I’m so sorry, love. It won’t work.”
“It might! You have to try. Just please try, Cyan.” Her smile went away, bottom lip wobbling as tears filled her eyes. “Please.”
I shook my head slowly. “It doesn’t work if…if she’s already gone.”
Tavi’s eyes widened as if in shock. “She’s not gone, she’s right here!”
The full weight of reality seemed to hit her as soon as the words left her mouth. She drew in a shuddering breath, and then a sob wracked her whole torso as she looked at her friend again, this time knowing Amy was dead. I pulled her into my arms as she cried soul-choking sobs with fat tears spilling down her face. It was too fucking much. She had loved this girl so much and her pain was too great to bear.
The unfairness of it all pissed me off. Tavi asked for nothing. She literally placed herself in the path of danger to protect the friend she was now crying next to. She turned herself over to my clan, to me , fully believing she would die so that Amy had a chance to live.
Tavi sacrificed herself over and over again. And in return for all that selflessness, her best friend was ripped away from her. It felt like a cruel joke.
This brave, beautiful human in my arms deserved the world because she would never think to ask for it. Never for herself, anyway. And that was exactly why I wished I could give it to her. If only I could pluck a planet or a star from the sky and place it in the palm of her hand.
Not because I wanted her to be mine. But simply because she deserved an extraordinary gift, an extraordinary life full of all her wishes granted. All her desires fulfilled.
I would never be worthy of her. But if I could give Tavi a fraction of what she deserved, I’d be content with it.
“Tavi,” I whispered into her hair, barely audible over her sobs. “I…might be able to try something.”
She lifted her head and looked up at me, her eyes red and filled with so much sorrow. “Yes.”
“I need you to listen, love.” It was the second time the endearment had slipped out and I cursed my own weakness for her. Especially now when she needed me for strength.
“Yes, yes. I don’t care what it is.” Tavi swallowed and sniffled. “Try anything. Just bring her back, Cy.”
Her faith in me was the twist of a silver knife in my gut, especially after I’d been so fucking cruel to her just this morning.
I smoothed her hair away from her face and cupped her cheeks in my hands. “It might not work. That is a real possibility you need to be aware of. But I can…” my throat tightened with the realization of how much this affected me too. “I can try to turn her into a brusang. Do you understand?”
Tavi blinked and fresh tears spilled down her face. I caught them with my thumbs. Despite the pain in them, her eyes were bright and aware.
“A brusang. Like Bea?”
“Yes,” I said. “Her eyes will go black and she’ll gain a vampire’s lifespan. She will become far less tolerant of sunlight and she’ll need blood to live. I need you to think really hard, Tavi. Is that the kind of life Amy would want?”
She looked at Amy’s body stretched out on the cot, then smoothed a hand over her friend’s brow and hair. Seconds of silence stretched into minutes, and then came the soft sounds of crying. I ran my hand up and down Tavi’s back, but said nothing. It wasn’t an easy decision, and I would’t rush her or try to influence her.
Truthfully, I had my doubts it would work. Every instance I’d heard of a brusang’s turning, it had been right before their death as a human or very shortly after. Amy’s skin had become deathly pale to the point where she began to look gray.
But for Tavi I would try, if she wanted me to.
Her crying quieted after a few minutes, and then she straightened. She wiped the tears off her cheeks in a rough, almost defiant way.
“Go ahead,” she said with a firm nod. “Try to turn her.” Her voice was rough, but strong. She was in her right mind and sure about this.
“Okay.” I didn’t waste time moving closer toward Amy’s head. “I have to give her my blood.”
Tavi nodded but then quickly held up a hand. “Wait. Does this…bind her to you in any way?”
“No, it doesn’t work like that,” I assured her. “Human and vampire organs are similar enough that my blood may revitalize and sustain her with some physical changes. She won’t be in my thrall or anything like that. Just…changed.”
“Okay.” She took hold of Amy’s hand and rubbed her friend’s small, pale fingers. “Go ahead, then.”
“Will you hold her mouth open for me?”
Tavi obliged and I bit into my own wrist a moment before pressing it to Amy’s lips. She lifted Amy’s head and massaged her throat to simulate swallowing.
Please don’t be too late. I wasn’t much of a praying man, but it seemed like no better time to ask Temkra for a little divine assistance. Please don’t let me fail someone I love again.
Now that was probably too much of an ask. Failing those most important to me was my number one talent, after all.
“How much do you need to give her?” Tavi asked after we’d been at it for about five minutes.
“Not sure,” I admitted. “Better too much than too little, I think.”
We kept going until no more blood could be physically forced down Amy’s throat. I sealed up my wrist while Tavi fluffed up her pillow and pulled the blanket up higher on her.
“When will we know if it worked?” Her eyes were already bright with hope. It would shatter me if that light were to be snuffed out.
“Let’s give it three days,” I said. “Brusang usually awaken a day or two after being turned. By three, we should definitely have our answer.”
Tavi leaned into me again and I let her, eager and glad to be what she needed even if it were just for right now.
“Thank you, Cyan,” she whispered into my chest.
I stroked her hair and her shoulders, the need to be honest weighing heavily on me. “I need you to understand that it might not work, Tavi. The best odds for a successful change is around fifty-fifty. I’ve never changed anyone before, so I don’t think we’re looking at optimal odds.”
She looked up and actually gave me a small, sad smile. “It’s okay. At least you tried.”
I was lost for words, and could only hold her a little tighter. Even now, after everything I’d done to her and what happened with Amy, she kept her own desires in check to reassure me .
I’d never deserve her in a million years. But if this did work, I wanted to believe that maybe I could deserve her just a tiny bit.
All we had to do was wait.