She frowned, though her plush lips made it look like she was pouting. He chuckled and ran his tongue along her bottom lip slowly. “Say you’ll do it. Say you’ll help me out, mon chéri.” He could tell she was buying his lies and succumbing to his insatiable charm. Who wouldn’t?
“As soon as you do this for me, we’ll leave here together and you can kill whoever you want while you eat. None of this ‘leaving them alive’ bullshit you’ve been taught. You can kill indiscriminately with me. We’ll be together, forever, mon chéri.”
Her gorgeous brown eyes lit up with an inner fire. She liked the kill as much as he did. She was the perfect pawn. Fucking stupid woman.
“Promise?”
“Oh yes, my gracious flower.”
As he resumed fucking and bleeding the young Chinese vampire, Lucien’s thoughts wandered. He thought about how he wanted to kill that fucking old vampire. Yukihime was full of lies. She treated him like he was some child, not the strong vampire he was.
It’s her fucking fault I’m here. It’s her fucking fault Master is dead!
And that fucking Uruwashi took away his chance to kill Malik. Lucien was going to use that half-breed monster, the slayer, to kill every last vampire and start a new generation of killers, all under his rule. And at his side, Asta. She would be his queen and together they will raise a clan of vampire the way they were meant to be.
Asta...
Tristan jerked back, cried out as if in pain. The whole vision was only a few seconds but it was enough to overwhelm him. Lucien’s hate and anger, he felt it all keenly as if it were his own. It hurt to let go of it, though it was never his to begin with. His belly was heavy with the thick vampire blood and he felt a twinge of nausea.
Oh god, what am I doing? I’m not this…
And it was all for nothing. In all of the memories Tristan saw, short and long, there wasn’t a single one in there about knowing what Tristan was. The vampire lied.
Shaking, he stood slowly and stopped when he had turned enough to see behind him. “Oh god,” he breathed out and darted over to the other body in the cell. “Ash...” He went to her on his knees and gently pulled her into his lap. “Oh god, no.” She hadn’t moved an inch from where he had left her before he went after Lucien. And her wrist hadn’t healed where he cut it open. It should have healed already. If she were alive.
“No, no, no...” He kept whispering over and over as the tears welled. He felt the pull of a vampire in his blood, but the feeling was nearly gone, a candle snuffed out and the last of the smoke trailing the in the air, nothing more. And the worse part, he couldn’t tell if it was Ash or Lucien that he was feeling. Did he risk her ability to heal herself when he stole her blood? Was her life worth it to take Lucien’s?
No!
Fuck, he had to do something.
“Ash, please... you have to open your eyes, darling. I know you can.” He shook her gently. She didn’t move. He whispered her name again, afraid that if he spoke any louder he might scream instead.
“Please, you opened them for me once before. You remember? That bitch Yuki,” he laughed, unable not to. “She nearly drained you and then you fell from your motorcycle. I came to you, I thought you were hurt. And then you opened your eyes. God, I never felt so relieved in my life over something so simple as a person opening their eyes.”
He carefully pushed the hair from her face. Some much of it was burnt into sticky clumps. The whole left side of her face was black over her nose. From there down, it covered her entire left side. That was the point of impact.
“You opened your eyes for me then. You can do it again. Please, oh god, Ash... wake up.”
He couldn’t feel a vampire anymore and a sob burst from him. “Ash!” he started to tap her cheek, trying to rouse her.
“Open your fucking eyes!” The words burst from him. He pushed to his knees, laying her out on the floor and started to administer CPR. He wasn’t certified and didn’t really know what he was doing. But he had to try. He couldn’t do nothing. Not now. He couldn’t lose her now. The tears made it hard to see, his clipped breath made it hard to breathe.
He was losing her. Just like his parents.
He couldn’t save anyone. Tristan doubled over, pressing his face to Ash’s stomach, crying. Someone moaned and his stomach sank. He jerked up, blinking down to Ash. He hadn’t felt her move. Then he realized the sound was too far away. The goddamn fae was still alive. He jumped to his feet and ran into the other cell.
“Come with me,” Tristan growled and jerked the man up.
Sebastian moaned but didn’t say anything as Tristan dragged him back to the other cell and pushed him to the floor next to Ash.
“Feed her.”
“My Lord,” Sebastian said softly sounding tried. “She’s—”
“Feed her!” he screamed loud enough to hurt his throat. “Give her every last drop you have if that’s what it takes for her to open her eyes.”
The fae sighed as he pushed a sleeve back. The man was too tired, too beaten to fight anymore. He was smart enough to know when he’d been bested. Lucien was dead and he would be soon. There was no reason to make his death painful. “As you wish.”
Tristan helped him open up a wound by cutting into Sebastian’s wrist with the long knife. The fae hissed, shooting him a dirty look when Tristan cut too deep but kept his rude comments silent. Sebastian opened Ash’s mouth and pressed his wrist to her lips.
“Is it working?”
“She’s not swallowing.” He already knew she wouldn’t. Dead people didn’t swallow.
Tristan made a dangerous noise and went to Sebastian, shoving him away from her. “If you fucking move, I’ll bury this knife into your skull.”
The fae sighed, putting his hands up in defeat as the blood ran down his elbow.
Tristan’s hands were shaking when he put the knife to his own wrist. What if he cut too deep? What if it didn’t work? He still had to try. Managing to steady his hand, he slid the blade up his forearm, hissing when he realized he cut deeper than he meant to. Her mouth was closed again and he pushed his fingers in around her fangs, forcing her jaw open wide.
“Please, Ash... you have to drink this, honey. Drink the blood.”
Without touching his flesh to her lips, he let his blood fill her mouth. It came out in a fast stream. He felt the stress of it on his heart. He’d definitely cut too deep. When her mouth filled, the blood overflowed down her chin just like it had with Sebastian’s blood. Her lips didn’t shut. Her throat didn’t work and swallow.
“Fuck!” he screamed and he wrapped his arms around her head, hugging her to him. He rocked gently, whispering, “Ash, please, you can’t leave. I need you. Ash, can you hear me? I’m so sorry I didn’t tell you before. I tried. I tried so damn hard to... and now, now I’m too late.” He buried his face into her hair. He knew what it was supposed to smell like, but all he could smell was burnt hair and flesh.
“Ash, I love you. Oh god, I love you so much. Please, don’t go...”
Resting against the wall, too weak to move, Sebastian watched wearily as a man cried over a woman. No, as an Uruwashi cried over the death of a vampire. He never thought it was true, all those things Lucien had told him about the pythia’s visions. But they were. They were all true. No on meddled with that kind of fate.
Tristan sobbed, rocking Ash in his arms slowly back and forth in a trance. He felt dizzy, delirious. He was bleeding out and didn’t even know it. Soon it would all be over.
This can’t be happening…
A WARM hand touched his face; his stomach was a mess of butterflies high on speed. His eyes shot open. When did he shut them? He was laid out flat, the cold of the stone seeping into his back. But more than that, he was just cold all over. So cold. He shivered, blinking into the eyes that’d been staring at him the whole time.
It was her again… the angel from before. Only, her eyes were different this time. And her face…
She reached for him, smiling gently.
Oh… She was here to take him away. Finally bit the big one, huh?
“No,” she said softly and leaned down to put her face mere inches from his. “Just the opposite. You are more alive now than you have ever been in your whole life, my love.”
“Oh my god,” Tristan whispered as he suddenly realized what was happening. His angel was right. He wasn’t dead. And neither was she. “I thought I’d lost you.”
She smiled again, pain masked in her expression, darkened with flesh as black as coal. “You nearly had.”
26: Fine Again
TRISTAN shut his eyes for a moment. Was he really seeing this? Sure enough, when he opened his eyes again, there was Ash. But she didn’t look like the Ash he’d known. Her entire left side was burnt and leathery, some of it was flaking off as she healed to give way to new, darker skin.
The pain was enough to wish she’d actually died. But she’d lived through worse in the past and would live through this. Her face looked a little better than her arm and body, but most of it was blackened up over her nose to her brow. Both of her eyebrows were gone, they would take a few weeks to come back in, but it was her eyes that she wasn’t sure would ever be the same. One was pale purple still, the color of lilacs, but the other was dark, almost black it was so purple. She actually was having some difficultly seeing out of it. Maybe with time it would heal.
She was just happy to be alive at all.
“Ash,” he whispered, reaching but stopped, not sure where to touch her where it wouldn’t hurt. “Are you okay?”
Understanding completely how she looked in that moment, she was so startled by the question that she burst into laughter. Tristan smiled, thinking it was the best sound he’d ever heard in his whole life. Ash was alive.
Alive…
…as a vampire could be anyway.
“I thought you were dead.”
“You saved me.” She lifted his wrist and showed him where he had cut himself. He remembered cutting too deep and how fast he bled. Now it was nothing more than a long pink scar. His hands tingled and he remembered distinctly having burned them except that they looked fine now.
His eyes widened. “How’d that happen?”
The smile cleared from her face. “Sebastian. He healed us both.” Not to mention the blood Tristan gave her.
“He’s not dead, huh?”
“Not at the moment,” she answered darkly.
From the corner came a soft French mumble. Clutching his head, Tristan sat up enough to look around Ash. Sebastian was wearing a pair of handcuffs that looked a lot like the leather thing he’d been bound with, just shorter.
“We need to go,” Ash said softly in deference to his headache.
“In a hurry?” He certainly wasn’t. Just the thought of standing made him nauseated.
“It is late, we will be lucky to get back before the sun.”
“And snow,” Sebastian added, garnering a dirty look from Ash. “There is a storm coming.”
Boy, was there ever.
“Fine, okay,” Tristan grunted as he tried to get up on his own. Ash offered to help him to his feet, but then he stopped, looking into her eyes. “I’m really happy you’re okay.”
She smiled, head tilting to the side. “Me too.”
“Ash, wait…” He touched his forehead to hers. He wanted to kiss her so bad. “I wanted to tell you before. I’ve been trying to tell you for days, weeks even, that I lo—”
She put a finger to his lips, silencing him. Her smile filed her face, sparkling in her mismatched eyes. “I know. I heard.”
He sighed, relaxing into her arms. “You were still alive?”
“I never died.” She pressed her lips to his. She tasted chary and of burnt hair, but that didn’t matter. All that mattered was the woman kissing him and that she was alive.
“Pardon,” the Frenchman interrupted. “But if we are to arrive back to the hotel before sunrise, we must leave now or be trapped here for many more days and I do not think monsieur hunter will survive that long without food and medical attention.”
Tristan harrumphed and let Ash help him to his feet. When he turned to look at the fae he couldn’t exactly focus on the man but he was still able to sneer. “We? What makes you think I won’t just kill you now?”
As if to encourage his threat, Ash handed him a gun. His gun.
Tristan motioned to the listless lump of cold meat at his back, the one he couldn’t bring himself to look at again as he remembered what he did. “I’ll just leave you here with that piece of shit to rot. “
The fae looked tired but confident when he said, “You are too ill to drive and she is too burnt. Both of you may pass out before the sun even rises.”
She sighed and looked up to Tristan. “He has a point.”
“Well, can’t you just drain him? Use the rest of his blood to heal yourself?”
She shook her head. “I’m not strong enough to feed like that. It is actually very difficult to empty a full-grown man of blood.” She turned her head to glare at Sebastian. “Even men as small as the fae.”
“Christ,” Tristan sighed and motioned with the gun towards the other man. “Get up.”
Sebastian stood, making a big show of trying to look like he wasn’t hurt. But even Tristan could tell that the man was stiff and achy, maybe even a little anemic too. And he was in the best shape of the three. Neither Tristan nor Ash wanted to stay another night in this castle, even if it was out of their cells.
“Good elf,” Tristan snapped and the other man had to fight not to jeer. “You’re driving.”
The fae’s shoulders stiffened as he stood over the body of his dead Master, taking it all in. “As you wish, my Lord.”
“Yeah, and can it with that Lord bullshit. You’re not going to earn anything good with it from us.”
Sebastian sighed, shaking his head as he walked past Tristan at his behest. In passing, the fae muttered something in French that made Ash bare her teeth and elbow him in the back of neck. Both of them winced. Just breathing made Ash’s flesh ache, so she didn’t. It wasn’t like the vampire had to keep their lungs moving to stay alive. As long as they had their head and their heart, they were okay.
Sebastian kept pace and led the way out of the castle with Tristan’s gun pressed to the back of his head. By the time the group reached the garden courtyard Tristan was exhausted and sick. The snow was just as deep as when they arrived and Tristan wondered if the car would be able to make it out. He could just sleep for the next three days or however long it took to get out, right?
On the steps to the entrance Tristan let out a huff as he threw himself to his knees and vomited. There wasn’t much to come up, just murky fluid.
Oh god, he was going to be sick all over again. Did he really drink blood? Jesus.
Ash knelt next to him, a comforting hand on his back. “So you really did it then?”
He wiped at his mouth with the back of his hand and looked up. Sebastian was standing at the end of the top landing, as far from them as possible without actually leaving the step but was watching, curious.
“Yeah.”
“On purpose?”
“Christ, Ash. I—” His attention snapped to Sebastian who looked away rather theatrically, and then back to Ash, lowering his voice. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me…”
She frowned and offered him a hand to get to his feet. “We should hurry.”
After digging the car out of the foot drift that’d blocked it in, Sebastian drove the pair back to the hotel. If it weren’t for the fact that the man betrayed them, beat them, nearly killed them, he’d of been a perfectly pleasant man. No, that wasn’t true. He was still the immoral bastard who did all those things. Sebastian’s problem was he couldn’t do them on his own. He needed a master to tell him what to do. The fae was nothing more than a sad pawn.
Ash sat in Tristan’s lap in the passenger seat wearing his too-big trench. If the sun did break dawn before they returned to the hotel the idea wa
s they could sprint inside with her wrapped up in the coat. Not that any of them was in any position to “sprint” right then, but it was a plan. Luckily the expensive sports car handled the snow well enough and they arrived back at the hotel with a whole ten minutes of sunless morning to spare.
Half naked, dirty, and looking like they stepped straight out of a horror movie, the group nearly ran through the hotel lobby to avoid being seen—really seen. Thankfully, Moreau wasn’t on duty to see the dirty trio. Whatever the other front desk attendants thought, well, they thought the apartment on seven was occupied by weirdoes anyway after the whole “candle” incident.
The moment their suite door was shut and Sebastian had placed Ash to her feet, she tackled the fae. She drove a knee into his gut, downing him and rode him to the floor. Exhausted, Tristan fell back against the door and slipped to the floor, watching as she stabbed her teeth into Sebastian’s neck and drank. The fae groaned and hugged her to him, but didn’t bother fighting. He knew his fate.
Instead of being bothered by the sight of what was happening mere feet from him, Tristan’s mind wandered. He couldn’t decide what he wanted to do more at the moment, take a long hot bath, eat till he was fat and sick or sleep for a week. Then there were all the little fun, lewd things he had in mind for Ash once she’d fed her fill of fae blood and maybe could control her urge to bite him...
Ash chuckled and lifted her head. Sebastian’s chest heaved as he fought for air. She whispered an unnecessary threat to the fae about what she’d do to him if he hurt Tristan while she was sleeping the day off and then stood, going to the downed American.
A hand came into view and Tristan waved her off, shutting his eyes. “Nah, I’m cool right here.”
“You did well, Tristan.” Her voice was close and he opened his eyes again. He couldn’t focus, but he could see her smiling at him from inches away. “I am very proud of you.”
He sighed, eyelids lowering.
She kissed him on his cheek. “Come, you deserve to sleep in a real bed.”
A real bed? He almost couldn’t remember what that was like. Of course, that was the snarky side of him being overdramatic.
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