Chapter 37
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Adrienne was dying.
The scent of death clung to the wounds littering her body.
She trembled in my arms, face pressed to my throat as she took stuttering, rasping breaths.
I held her as gently as I could while Seth stalked toward the male who’d turned in an attempt to flee, only to find his way blocked by my maker’s unfathomable magic.
“Your immortality is a gift.” Seth’s words were mild, but the vampire reacted as if each were a series of punches to his gut. “One you have squandered with greed.”
“Merciful fucking goddess,” the male rasped, banging against the door.
I scooped Adrienne into my arms as her legs gave out, cradling her against my chest. “There’s no one here, Samuel. No one but us.”
“And I am afraid to say Amayah is not inclined to find mercy for you,” Seth finished for me as he reached the vampire.
Though her stillness scared me, it was a relief Adrienne was unconscious now and therefore would not have to endure the pitiful wails of the condemned.
I watched each movement of my maker as he reached out, turning Samuel as if he were a lover, and then placing his palm over his forehead.
Agony, that was what he’d said it was once.
His touch of death could be agony or relief, whatever he wished it to be, and it could last moments or centuries for the victim.
I knew without asking that though the male before us crumpled into ash and was shepherded on to meet their fate, for him it would have felt like millennia. It was the only reason why my thirst for vengeance was quenched, but I would not have put down Adrienne for anything in the world.
Seth waved his hand and the ash scattered, swirling in an unearthly wind before disappearing completely.
His angular face was set into hard lines, mouth tensed with what I knew was grief.
Unlike before he’d gone to his rest, Seth no longer shared his innermost thoughts.
Something about this world haunted him and truly, I could understand, even having lived through the change.
Despite the refinement of our clothes, our elegant speech, our luxurious coffins, never had we been more monstrous than in this time.
Seth’s shoulders rose and fell with his labored breaths and I wondered if even now Amayah was speaking to him in that strange connection I’d never quite understood. He stiffened and wrenched open the door.
“Eamon…” Adrienne croaked, her cracked lips splitting as she licked them.
I shushed her, pressing my lips to her feverish brow. “I am here, my heart.”
“There’s…another—in b-basement.”
Seth darted away, doors splintering as he tore them open.
I followed in his wake, only vaguely alarmed at the wreckage he left behind.
There was a small staircase ahead he’d disappeared down where the scent of death and sickness was so thick I almost retched.
The room at the bottom of the stairs through another now-shattered door was large, but settled into the farthest corner was what looked like a prison cell.
Acid crept up my throat…this was where she had been kept?
The female in there now was huddled in on herself, no doubt from the cold seeping in through the stones. Beside her sat a small silver cage and the implication had my stomach twisting with nausea. Seth hesitated at the locked door, one hand wrapped around the bar, his face stricken.
“Can you op—?”
The rest of my question died as a small wave of magic rolled out of him and the door to the cell creaked open.
Immediately the female on the ground woke, sliding herself deeper into the corner and brushing her hair from her face.
Seth hesitated again, something I’d never seen him do in all our millennia together, before he slowly crossed to her.
“I’m sorry,” she rasped and the woman’s heartbeat thundered so loud I wondered if even Adrienne could hear it in her half-conscious state. “I shouldn’t have been asleep. Please…I’m sorry.”
Seth’s hand trembled as he reached toward her, stopping for a brief moment as she flinched, before he touched her cheek. “Rest, sahkana, and all will be well when you wake.”
Another flare of his magic and the woman’s eyelids drooped.
He carefully bundled her into his arms, gold eyes fixed on her face as he met me on the bottom stair.
There were a million questions I wanted to ask, but we had already lingered too long.
Adrienne’s fever raged and I would rather leave this place cinders at our feet than stay another moment.
Without a word we slipped through the empty house, only smudges of ash remaining of the vampires who Samuel Raynott had employed. The only one we’d kept alive was the Lycan male who now waited on the cobblestone steps, already reaching for Elaina.
“Thank you, thank you,” he rasped.
Wesley Darcay was not a particularly high-ranking member of his pack, but in my opinion, he was the bravest. The reason we’d found Samuel Raynott was thanks to him.
We’d been in contact with the Lycan packs since the Covenant’s defeat and Mateo had learned that multiple females had been taken from prominent packs over the years as a way to control the leaders.
Samuel’s history of kidnapping for the Covenant spanned back centuries.
The Lycan male before us had infiltrated Samuel’s ranks in hopes of finding these women and returning them home. He’d only been promoted to driver in the last week or so and had been working to find a way to get her out.
Seth, however, seemed reluctant to hand this female over to him. But I had no time to stand and watch the silent struggle within my maker. Adrienne’s heartbeat stuttered, restarted, and labored with each passing moment.
“I will see you at home,” I said, not waiting for him to acknowledge my words before I shot into the sky.
Nothing was working.
The healing salves I’d applied to Adrienne’s bites healed them, but the infection raged within her system. Any tonic I administered took the edge off the worst of it, but it was only a matter of time before she succumbed.
Noah paced in one corner of the room, his hands fisting in his hair every so often while Lilith stood frozen against the window in the circle of Callum’s embrace.
“Where the fuck is he?” Noah growled, turning toward the door.
“Give him a moment,” Lilith cautioned, reaching out to catch Noah as he took a step toward the door.
As a human she would have never been able to stop him, but she held her own fairly well thanks to Seth’s blood.
The door swung open a moment later and Henry slipped through.
I hadn’t seen him since Adrienne first went missing, but I knew that Gabrielle had not improved at all in the weeks that had passed.
From the hollows of his cheeks, it was clear he had not fed much, if at all, in that time, spending almost every night in a vigil beside her coffin.
“What took you so long?” Noah’s voice lost none of the edge it’d taken on since I’d arrived with Adrienne.
Henry, however, did not answer, merely moved to my side and reached out to place one hand on Adrienne’s brow and the other over her chest. He sucked in a breath.
“What? What is it?” Noah demanded.
Lilith shushed him, murmuring words of patience under her breath while Henry’s magic worked over my mate.
“Her blood is weak,” Henry murmured. “I can clear enough of the infection for you, but not enough to heal her completely. She has lost too much blood from their feedings and no amount of serangunah will bring it back in time.”
My throat bobbed with a swallow and I nodded as his eyes flicked up to mine—Henry’s eyes were the only pair in my household that did not swirl with the mark of Seth’s blood. “I understand.”
“What do you mean you can’t heal her completely?” Noah’s question came out as a rough whisper. “Will she not live?”
“Noah…” Lilith said softly.
But the Vyenur was shaking his head. “No…no. She would not have wanted this.”
“What choice do we have?” Lilith countered, the words cracking with her tears.
“To not force her into this life without her consent!” he roared, turning to me with unrestrained fury. “She has been a plaything for immortals her entire life and now you wish to turn her into the creature she fears above all else?”
Callum moved Lilith behind him, but I couldn’t help but stare at Noah. He was right, Adrienne would not have wanted this. A numbness crept over my body as I watched him, indecision warring with each breath I took.
“Adrienne is Eamon’s mate—” Callum began.
“Fuck you and fuck blood mates,” Noah rasped, turning to glare at me with untamed fury, the demon sigil on his forehead burning white with his rage. “If you turn her, she will never forgive you.”
He pushed Callum back as my nephew reached for him and stalked toward the door, shutting it with a slam. After a moment Henry shook himself from the trance his magic sent him into.
“I’ve done the best I can, Uncle,” he breathed, lids heavy with exhaustion.
My heart squeezed in my chest and the edges of my vision tinted red with my tears. I nodded, patting his hand once. “Thank you.”
Henry slowly made his way out of the room.
There was a little more color in Adrienne’s cheeks than before, but it was nothing compared to her usual rosy complexion.
The scent of infection still wept from her and I could practically feel Keryes standing at my back, waiting to gather her to the underworld.
“Callum,” I said.
His presence was warm at my side, compassion and love radiating from his mind to mine as if he were sending it to me.
Another time I would have wondered at the change Lilith had brought in him, at how she’d softened those jagged edges of his soul.
But now I only brushed a stray lock of hair from Adrienne’s face, unable to look away from her for even a second. “Ensure Henry feeds.”
From the corner of my eye, Callum nodded, bowing once before backing out of the room. I expected Lilith to jump in where Noah left off, but she only sighed and appeared in the spot Callum had left.
“I wish I could say Noah was wrong,” she began, hugging herself around the middle. My eyes squeezed shut. It was a wonder each and every time my broken heart shattered again, now into such tiny pieces I wasn’t even sure if I had a heart at all.
Lilith’s hand closed over my shoulder with a squeeze. “You know as well as I that Adrienne’s life has never been her own. In this she must have a choice. The mating bond is strong and I know what it will mean for you if she dies, but…”
Her voice trailed off and she did not need to finish her thought—but how could I live with myself if I changed her only for her to grow mad from the transformation? Would I not be merely prolonging the ending?
“I understand,” I murmured.
She leaned down and brushed her lips across my mate’s brow. “Speak to her, Eamon. Ask her, and accept her wishes.”
With one more squeeze to my shoulder she disappeared. I cradled Adrienne’s face in my hands, running my thumbs across her cheeks before pressing my lips to both eyelids, both cheeks, and then her lips.
“Wake up, my heart. Wake up and come back to me.”