Down the alley, opposite the fight, two figures crept around the edge of the garbage truck. She took careful aim and pulled off a shot, and one of them blew into a cloud of dust. As the other darted back to cover, she leaped up and scooted around the edge of the rear door to Diego.
He sat on the ground, his back propped against the running board of the car. As she knelt beside him, he lifted his head to look at her. Propping the SCAR beside him, she ran her fingers over his chest. He’d had time to put on a vest, just like she and Xavier had. Where had he been hit?
He took one of her hands and laid it against his shoulder, and she saw it then—dark blood seeping around the border of the vest, near his underarm. He wheezed, “Freak shot. Just my fucking luck. Bastard went in sideways. Lung.”
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw one end of the garbage truck behind the SUV lift into the air. With a gigantic screech of metal, it sailed toward the fighting Vampyres, who scattered. The truck slammed into the edge of the building.
Holy shit, someone just picked up that truck and threw it.
It was a troll, massive and stone-colored. It stomped toward one Vampyre—belatedly she recognized Xavier—who leaped, not away, but toward it.
Dear God, did he have no fear whatsoever? With impossible-looking grace and speed, he landed on the troll’s massive shoulder, put his Glock to its eye and shot it. As it began to topple, he leaped away.
She turned her attention back to Diego, who had watched the encounter too. He looked up at her with a crooked smile and said telepathically, He’s a little like Armageddon, isn’t he? Tell him . . . I’m sorry. I was supposed to get him into the city . . . With Justine in Evenfall, I thought she was going to try something there, a coup against Julian . . .
She stared. “You’re working with Justine? Since when?”
When she came to stay with Melisande. She made me an offer . . . His head sagged. I thought she wanted Xavier out of the way . . . Wouldn’t have done it if I’d known . . .
“For God’s sake, why?”
In the semidark, she couldn’t see his infinitesimal shrug. She would never have known about it, if she hadn’t felt him move underneath her fingertips.
Thousand bucks monthly stipend, chica. No matter how much you save, it isn’t enough to retire on.
The wry voice in her head went silent, and his eyes closed.
Tears spilled out the corners of her eyes. She whispered, “You stupid, greedy son of a bitch.”
A hand came down on her shoulder. An involuntary cry broke out of her. She flinched and twisted to one side, as she brought up her Glock. . . .
Taking hold of her wrist, Xavier jerked her hand away. Even though he pointed the muzzle of the Glock toward the side of the building, she managed not to pull the trigger. Pulling her arm free, she clicked on the safety and tucked the gun in the waist of her jeans, at the small of her back.
Coming down on one knee beside her, Xavier gave Diego a long, grim look. Xavier was covered in blood, his vest pocked with marks. He’d been shot at multiple times. Maybe knifed. She was so desperately glad to see him, she lunged forward to throw her arms around his neck and grip him tight.
Slipping an arm around her waist, he eased back until he connected with the wall of the nearby building and slid to a sitting position.
“What are you doing?” she said between her teeth. “You can’t sit. We’ve got to keep moving, in case they come back and attack us again.”
“They’re not going to. They did what they came to do.”
“What do you mean?” Loosening her hold around his neck, she pulled back to search his face.
He opened his free hand to show her an empty syringe.
She had been scared so much over the last few days, but the sight of what he held in his broad palm outdid all of it, sending a pure bolt of terror through her.
“More than one of them tagged me,” he told her. “I don’t know how many doses I took.”
She heard Raoul’s voice in her head, as if he had just spoken the words to her all over again.
There’s more than one way to kill a Vampyre.
Brodifacoum. A highly lethal anticoagulant poison.
They bleed to death. I’ve seen it, and it’s a grim way to die.
“No, no, no, no, no,” she said.
“I’m sorry, Tess.” He wiped his face with the back of one hand. A trickle of blood oozed from the corner of one of his eyes, and Raoul’s clinical voice continued in her head.
First it attacks a Vampyre’s small blood vessels then it leads to internal bleeding, shock, convulsions, unconsciousness and eventually death.
“You’re not going to die.” She turned very calm. “I won’t let you. Raoul told me about this. We have to drain you and get you a massive infusion of untainted blood as fast as we can. I need a knife.”
While she might have sounded calm, her hands were frantic as she patted his pockets. No knife. She whirled on her knees to search Diego’s body.
Come on. Come on. It couldn’t have been all flying bullets and trolls flinging garbage trucks. After the carnage tonight, there had to be a sharp object, somewhere.
Sirens sounded in the distance. With a dim sense of incredulity, she realized the entire confrontation couldn’t have taken ten minutes, and had probably taken much less time.
“Check the back of the SUV, in the weapons storage compartment.” Xavier sounded calm too, and he looked it, despite the blood leaking out of his eyes. “There will be a couple of knives, or at least a short sword.”
She sprang to the backseat and lunged for the back. Diego had left the compartment open and knives had been Velcroed to the inside of the lid. Snatching one, she scrambled back to Xavier. “How do you want me to do this?”
“We have to work fast. The poison’s been in my system for a few minutes already.” He held out his arms, palms up. “Cut both wrists. Go deep.”
Hesitating, she asked, “What about your tendons?”
He told her, “Don’t worry about it. If I make it, I’ll heal.”
“You’re going to make it,” she snapped. The terror hadn’t eased up, not in the slightest. It drove her on, like a devil riding her back, whipping her to the next thing, and the next.
She used the terror to strike with the knife. As the point drove deep into his flesh, he stiffened and sucked in a breath. Blood flowed out from the cut, in a shockingly plentiful river.
He held out his other wrist to her. “Again.”
She almost couldn’t see what she was doing, which was when she realized she was crying. Once more, she cut him deep, and his blood flowed freely, and there wasn’t going to be enough liquor in the world, or enough therapy, to get over the sight of him hunched in pain and drenched in his own blood.
His face twisted, and he doubled up and fell to his side.
She went down with him to the ground and embraced all of it, every last gory, wonderful inch of him.
“Don’t you dare give up. You’re not done yet.” Lifting him slightly, she took his head and guided him to the crook in her neck. “Come on, bite.”
Tess. His lips moved.
He had kissed her. Even with all the pain she could tell he was feeling, as it strained his strong body, he still kissed her.
She sobbed, “Xavier, if you don’t bite me, I will pummel you. No, I won’t, I’ll take the fucking knife to my own neck. I refuse to let you go. Do you think it matters in the slightest to me anymore? DO IT.”
A brief, sharp pain stabbed her skin, then warmth where his mouth rested on her. She felt the flow of her own blood and how he drank it. Despite the discomfort of sprawling on the ground, and the fear that after everything, she might still lose him, nourishing him felt so good. So good.
Thou fairest among women, he whispered in her head. My beloved is mine, and I am hers.
 
; Ignoring the flashing lights that appeared at either end of the alley, she cradled him as close as she could.
Even though the time they had been together could be counted in hours, not days, they had already been through too much for it to just end.
It was too strong, surprising and beautiful.
Too necessary.
NINETEEN
The flashing lights grew closer, and people ran toward them. Reaching to her waist and sliding her hand around the butt of her Glock, she watched them sharply, looking for any sign they weren’t who they appeared to be.
Xavier had stopped feeding. Afraid he hadn’t taken in enough nourishment, she gripped him tighter. His body grew taut and he shuddered. The convulsions had started.
“Ma’am?” A uniformed policewoman approached them cautiously. “Ma’am, can you hear me? I’m here to help you.” She raised her voice. “These two are alive! Get paramedics over here!”
More people ran over, two of them wielding a stretcher, and a paramedic went to his knees beside them.
Taking her hand away from her gun, Tess said, “This is Xavier del Torro. Do you know who that is?”
The paramedic’s quick, intelligent gaze flashed up to hers. “Yes.”
“He’s been poisoned, and he’s dying.” The force of what she felt made the words snap out like a whip. “He has to have fresh blood now. A lot of it.”
The man shouted, “I need more help here. Stat.”
Others came running, and several people converged on them as the two paramedics pulled Xavier out of her arms and turned him on his back.
She stroked back his hair as she watched his face for any sign of consciousness. He had started bleeding from the nose now, as well as his eyes.
Don’t die. Please don’t die.
One of paramedics rolled up his sleeve and tried to offer blood to Xavier, but he was unresponsive. “He’s not taking it,” he said. “We need to do a direct transfusion.”
His partner pulled out phlebotomist equipment, tore open packages and started a direct transfusion from the paramedic to Xavier, linking them by needles inserted into their forearms. The procedure would have been impossible if Xavier had still been human.
Other people were talking. The words rolled over her.
“. . . His wrists are healing. We have to reopen the cuts.”
“We don’t have time to get him to a hospital—let’s get him off the ground. Put him on the stretcher. . . . Who else will donate blood?”
She moved with them as they lifted Xavier onto the stretcher and positioned him on his side so that one limp arm hung to the ground. One paramedic crouched to reopen the wound in that arm, using gravity to help drain the poisoned blood, while the other set up a new donor, the policewoman who had found them originally.
One of them asked, “How much poison did he take?”
She shook her head, her voice clogged from the tears that kept leaking out of her eyes. “I don’t know. A lot.”
Time blurred, and one donor replaced another. Movement happened around the periphery of her awareness, as police officials investigated the scene. One approached her to say, “We need to take your statement about what happened.”
“Later,” she said. She knelt at Xavier’s head, still stroking his hair, in case some part of him was aware of her presence. He could disappear at any moment, just collapse into dust. The possibility was unimaginable—that he could be there in one moment, and completely gone in the next.
“Ma’am, there’s nothing you can do for him right now. He’s getting the best care available. If you would just come with me to answer some questions.”
While the clueless policeman didn’t necessarily sound unkind, she barely managed to keep from drawing the Glock and shooting him.
Oh, life had certainly changed, now that she had a gun and knew how to use it.
Lifting her head to meet his gaze, she said in a soft voice, “Get out of my face.”
Something in her expression made him pull back sharply. “You’re understandably upset. I’ll check with you again in a bit.”
Forgetting about him as soon as he stepped out of her radar, she asked one of the paramedics, “How do we know how he’s doing?”
“I’ve never personally handled a brodifacoum poisoning before, but there’s a survivability factor that’s called magic hour.” The paramedic sounded both brisk and sympathetic. “If he makes it through a full hour, he’ll survive.” He gave her a reassuring smile. “He wouldn’t have made it this far without your quick action.”
Wiping her face on her shoulder, she nodded. “How much time has gone by?”
“Twenty-one minutes.”
It felt like a lifetime already.
Only thirty-nine more minutes of hell to go.
Raoul and Julian arrived, bringing with them an influx of new, sharp-eyed armed Vampyres that washed through the alley like a wave. Raoul ran to the stretcher, and the look on his face brought fresh tears to her eyes.
After taking in Xavier’s curled up form, Raoul gripped her shoulder as he took in her appearance. “You look like you bathed in blood. Are you hurt?”
Blinking hard, she said, “No.”
Have you said anything to anyone about what happened? he asked telepathically.
She shook her head.
Good job.
I didn’t do it on purpose. I’ve been busy. She touched Xavier’s temple.
Raoul’s gaze fell to the movement and widened. Before he could say anything, Julian joined them. The rough angles of the Nightkind King’s face were cut with fury.
Tell me what happened, Julian commanded.
She couldn’t put Julian off like she had the policeman. Reluctantly, she focused on him. It was Justine. Diego died before he could tell me much, but from what he said, Justine bribed him to get Xavier to come into the city. He thought. . . . She swallowed. Even though she’d had nothing to do with the conspiracy, she found it surprisingly hard to say the next words while looking directly at Julian. Diego said he had thought Justine was going to try a coup in Evenfall. Instead, she went after Xavier. He was her target.
The Nightkind King’s gaze bored into hers. How did you survive?
She shook her head. Sheer dumb luck? I shot a few of them, but Xavier killed almost everyone who attacked us. If any of them lived, they only did so because they ran away. They clearly meant to kill all of us—they almost hit the SUV with a rocket launcher.
That wasn’t sheer dumb luck, Julian told her. He saved your life. He could have left you and Diego behind at any moment. Instead, he stayed to fight. They knew he would, and that’s how they got him. If it had worked, none of you would have been around to tell what had happened.
She hadn’t had time to absorb everything, but as soon as he said it, she knew it was true. Overcome, she glanced down at Xavier’s still face.
She murmured, I had no idea I could come to care for him so much.
She hadn’t meant to say it. She certainly hadn’t meant to confess that to the Nightkind King, of all people.
He’s the best man I know, Julian said. I wouldn’t have anybody else in his position, or trust them to make the kinds of decisions he makes every day. In all the years I’ve known him, he’s never once lost his moral compass. A shadow crossed his rough face. Not like so many of the rest of us have, from time to time.
Surprised by Julian’s candor, Tess stared up at him. He genuinely, deeply cared for Xavier, and it showed on his tense, worried face. From across the alley, someone called out to him, and he strode away.
“Just a few more minutes to go,” said the paramedic. “I need a new donor. Don’t tell me we’ve already used everybody.”
“I’m new.” Raoul held out his arm. “Use me.”
Xavier stirred underneath her hands and whispered, “Querida.”
She had never felt gladness as such an extreme emotion. It brought her to her knees. Laying her head on the stretcher beside his, facing him, she whispered, “I’m here.”
He appeared dazed, and his normally sharp, clear gaze looked clouded. “You’re upside down.”
“I know.” Glancing up, she caught Raoul’s astonished expression “Look, Raoul’s here.”
Xavier tried to turn his head to look up at Raoul, who bent over him and put a hand at the back of his head. His voice as gentle as his expression, Raoul asked, “Did you just call her querida?”
“We were going to tell you when we got back,” Xavier said. He groped for Tess’s hand, and she took it. “Tess isn’t one of my attendants any longer.” After a pause, he added with a thoughtful kind of surprise, “I think we might be dating.”
“Time.” The paramedic’s voice filled with triumph. “We made it.”
They’d hit magic hour.
• • •
Julian came back over to the stretcher to check on Xavier. When he saw that Xavier’s eyes were open, his savage expression lightened considerably. Squatting by the stretcher, he brought his face down to the same level as Xavier’s.
“You scared me there for a while,” Julian said.
Xavier stiffened as another spasm of pain hit. “It wasn’t my intention.”
“I’m not ready to live in a world without you in it,” Julian told him in a quiet voice. He held out his hand, and Xavier clasped it.
“You won’t have to. I’m not going anywhere.”
Julian said in his head, I have news that is somewhat ironic. Are you up to hearing it?
Xavier couldn’t keep his eyes open, and he closed them. Tell me.
Gavin got the edited recording to me. A few hours earlier, I took it to Justine and backed her off, just as we’d planned. She left Evenfall around when you did, right after sunset. If I’d held off confronting her until tomorrow, she might still be in residence.
Xavier didn’t buy it. As soon as Justine received word of the botched assassination attempt, she would have slipped out of Evenfall on some pretext or other. He gritted his teeth as the remnants of the poison knotted his muscles.