“Listen, Dorian, we both know you’re not going to shoot me, so why don—“
She didn’t see him fire the gun. She wasn’t even sure if she heard it or felt it. She barely registered her head slamming against the edge of the desk before crashing onto the floor. Her last thought before everything went black was she hoped Kinsey would remember to mark “Die from something other than CF” off of her list.
Chapter 26
As a surprise for his new wife, Liam had arranged a fireworks show that would make Lake County’s annual Independence Day display look like some kids blew their allowance at Boomland. The first of the explosions rent the night air as he climbed the hill toward the main lodge. Some people might have mistaken the three rapid pops he heard minutes later as part of the show, but Joshua wasn’t just anyone, and he knew the sound of a Beretta when he heard it.
He’d spent a lifetime learning to always assess a situation, taking in all the information possible before acting, but the moment he heard those shots, he was running toward the source, giving no thought to anything other than getting to Ada as quickly as possible. He was vaguely aware of someone running out the back as he slammed through the front door. He didn’t slow as he vaulted over the window separating him from where Ada should have been standing. He landed on the desk with cat-like grace, the toe of his Chuck Taylors less than an inch from a drop of blood. It was like an artistic statement. One lone drop of blood, barely noticeable on the wide expanse of the desk, served as a prologue to the crumbled body below.
“No.” Joshua slid to the floor. “Not her. Please, God. Not her.”
There was one bullet hole in her shoulder, nearly identical to the place where he’d been shot the week before, and another in her stomach. There was barely any contrast between her normally pink lips and her cheek. Even her hair seemed paler, as if all the color was leeching out of her.
“Ada,” he pleaded, taking hold of her shoulder. “Come on, baby. Be okay.”
He’d known from the moment she’d quipped about video games and party-hating superheroes while trying to hide her candy bar that she was dangerous. He knew if he let himself get to know her, she would become one of the people whose death took a piece of his soul, a part of what made living worth the effort, with her. But he’d been wrong. Ada wasn’t taking a mere piece of his soul with her to the other side. She was gutting him of the whole thing, leaving nothing but a hollow shell in its place.
Joshua bent over, placing his cheek above her mouth to watch her chest as his fingers burrowed into the side of her neck, the actions coming from instinct instilled through years and years of battles and death. At first he couldn’t process what the tickle against his cheek or slow strumming beneath his fingers meant, but then he was moving once again without conscious thought.
He didn’t have his sword on him - it didn’t really match the whole wedding attire thing he had going on - but no Er’el was ever far from a holy blade. He withdrew a small dagger from the inside pocket of his jacket and released it from its sheath. The blade was inscribed with “Sanctus.” Like his sword, it had been christened with holy water and blessed by a long-forgotten man of God. Benjamin had carried it for three hundred years before passing it on to Joshua, and it had been carried by the Er’el before him for God only knew how many centuries. In terms of historical significance, it was priceless. When it came to the power it carried, Joshua had killed to protect it more than once.
No one should have to spend eternity alone.
He hesitated, but only for a second. “I’m so sorry,” he told her, and then he was slicing through the soft skin on the underside of his wrist, muttering the Latin words he’d memorized long ago. Once the blade was coated with his blood, he raised it above his head. “Ut servirent in perpetuum,” he finished, slamming the dagger through Ada’s chest and into her heart.
Chapter 27
Ada came to with a start. Something was wrong. For one, she was laying on the floor of the Serenity Shores main lodge instead of her bed. For another, she felt like someone had torn open her body and scooped out the insides with a spork.
You ruined my life, you stupid bitch.
Dorian.
The gun.
She had been shot, and then… what? Was she dead? Surely death didn’t hurt this much.
“Ada?”
She opened the eyes she hadn’t realized were once again shut. An angel was standing above her. A beautiful angel with porcelain white skin, icy-blue eyes and an ethereal dress made from gossamer fabric colored the palest of blue. In her hand, she held a bloody knife.
“Holy shit,” the angel cursed, which made Ada giggle. Angels weren’t supposed to curse. Angels weren’t even supposed to exist, although Joshua had already blown that personal theory out of the water. “Look at her chest.”
Speaking of chests, Ada’s was burning. It felt like someone had built a fire between her boobs.
She tried to explain how she was in pain and could use some help, but talking was much harder than she expected.
“It shouldn’t be much longer.” The angel leaned over and brushed the hair off Ada’s forehead, causing tears to sting her eyes.
She knew what the expression on the angel’s face meant. She’d seen it on the faces of doctors and nurses when they looked at her friends too many times. Panic gripped her chest. She didn’t want to die. She thought she was ready. She really did. How many times had she laid in a hospital, knowing death lingered at the foot of her bed, just waiting for the right moment to pounce? She knew life was finite and short, yet now it was at its end, she couldn’t comprehend how it was possible to be alive one moment, looking forward to finding your own place in this world, and be dead the next.
“How is he?” the angel asked, and another voice replied, “Still unconscious and bleeding. This damn wound should have healed by now. And why the hell is he unconscious? I didn’t think he could do that.”
She knew that voice. Jase Donovan was somewhere in the room. Slowly, she realized the angel wasn’t so much an ethereal being as Scout Donovan. What were they doing here? And who was the other person who was injured? Had Dorian shot someone else?
“What—?” Okay, so talking still wasn’t an option, but Scout must have heard her anyway because she looked down, concern softening her face.
“Shhh…”
Ada hadn’t noticed before, but when she wasn’t glaring at everyone and everything as if she would like to crush them beneath her heel, Scout was quite pretty.
“It’s going to be okay. Both bullets had a clean exit, and the holes are already starting to close. If it wasn’t for the stab wound, you would probably be good to go already.”
Stab wound? What stab wound?
I’m sorry.
She had heard him as consciousness slipped away from her, or maybe his voice had cut through even after the rest of her had checked out. Either way, she was certain Joshua had been here. She could remember his apology, and after that, a sharp pain in her chest.
“Liam, Charlie, and a few of the others have gone after the shooter,” Scout continued. “They’ll catch him, and he will pay for what he’s done, so there isn’t anything for you to worry about, okay? Just keep on doing whatever it is you’re doing.” She shot a glance at Ada’s chest and visibly swallowed. “Although, if there is a way to do what you’re doing faster, I wouldn’t object.”
Ada wasn’t doing anything other than laying there in pain, and she was fairly certain there wasn’t any way to slow down or speed up that process, so she didn’t do anything.
Scout didn’t say anything else. She merely sat on the floor in her fancy dress. Ada noticed blood stained the hem as well as several spots along the bodice. Eventually she became aware of Scout holding her hand and the mechanical whooshing of the air conditioner.
“He’s dying,” Jase’s voice said from wherever he was. “What are we supposed to do? We can’t take him to the hospital, and Imogen isn’t going to be any help.”
S
cout’s fingers tightened on Ada’s. “Call mom. Tell her to bring her kit.”
“Do you think it will actually help?” he asked. “What if he gave everything he had to her? What if this how this works? She lives, and he dies?”
Scout’s face hardened back into the mask she normally wore. “Then we’ll protect her like he would have wanted us to do,” she said, blinking her eyes rapidly.
Ada’s brain wasn’t firing on all cylinders, and they weren’t being incredibly specific, but she understood.
She wasn’t dying. She had been, maybe she’d even been dead, but then Joshua saved her by giving her the one gift she never would have asked of him.
When he’d offered her eternity the night before, she’d wanted it so desperately it caused a physical ache in her chest. She’d told him no because she thought it was the answer he wanted to hear, but she’d still wanted it, had fantasized about it as she’d gone through her day. She had wished for a way to make it possible, but now that it was happening, she would do anything to take it back. Yes, she wanted to live forever, but not without Joshua. She never considered what it would take to make her an Immortal.
If it was possible to stop the healing process and give him back the life that was rightfully his, Ada would have done it in a heartbeat.
“I’m not quite dead yet.”
The voice was hoarse and weak, but it unfurled all the fear gripping Ada’s heart.
“Holy shit, man,” Jase exclaimed. “Are you trying to give me a heart attack?”
“Sorry,” Joshua said. “I thought my fluttering eyelids and deep breaths would have been warning enough. I’ll be sure to be more obvious the next time I come out of a coma.”
Scout turned toward the male voices. “No more comas. I forbid them as Alpha Female.”
“I’ll make sure Aunt Rachel records that one into the Archive,” Jase said dryly. “I’ll have her put it right by your ‘no dying’ edict.”
“Hey, that one has worked so far,” Scout said as she turned back to Ada. “Good thing, too, since everyone I know seems hell bent on getting themselves killed.” Ada felt the bottom of her shirt lift. A cool, wet rag wiped across her stomach. “Even Ada Jessup somehow managed to get herself shot.”
“Ada.” There was a chorus of grunts and moans, accentuated by a metal chair scraping against the linoleum floor and Jase cursing. “Did it work? Is she—?”
“Recovering from getting both shot and stabbed?” Scout raised an eyebrow. “Surprisingly quickly.” The rag went away and Scout tugged the edge of Ada’s shirt back down. “You know, this happened a lot sooner than I was expecting. I thought it would be a couple of years before you turned her. I should have known it wasn’t going to be something as simple as you deciding to drink each other’s blood or whatever it is you guys do after months of discussion and thoughtful decision making.”
While Scout was talking, Joshua’s face appeared above Ada’s. A shot of pure joy coursed through her. Had she really thought she could go the rest of her life without seeing him again? Why had she even considered it? She knew love existed because he filled her with so much of it she thought she might burst. She didn’t care if they hadn’t known each other very long or if it was an impossible relationship, she loved him.
“Hi,” she said, the word coming out a little easier than her previous attempts.
“You’re alive.” The air left his lungs in a cross between a laugh and a sob. “Thank you, God.” He gently lifted her head into his lap and brought his forehead down to hers. Teardrops fell from his eyes into her hair. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I know you didn’t want this. I know you wanted to live a normal life, but I couldn’t do it, Ada. I couldn’t let you die.”
She wanted to comfort him, to tell him he had nothing to be sorry for as long as he was alive too, but even though the healing process was going incredibly fast by normal human standards, she still had a rather substantial hole in her chest. Even if she could form the words, she wasn’t sure she had the energy to actually get them out. Still, she was about to make the effort when the door to the office slammed open. The air in the room changed, as if it suddenly carried an electrical charge. From the way Scout’s entire being relaxed even as her eyes narrowed, Ada knew who had come into their sanctuary before she turned her head.
“You’re supposed to be looking for the shooter.”
Liam Cole glowered at his wife. “You haven’t been answering my texts. I thought something was wrong.”
Scout made a show of looking around the room. “Something is wrong. Or it was,” she said. “Turns out, Ada is an Immortal now.”
Liam took in Joshua and Ada, his mouth tugging into a frown. “That happened a lot sooner than I was expecting.”
Ada felt Joshua’s thigh tense beneath her. “You knew,” he said. “You knew this was going to happen.” She hadn’t realized Joshua was capable of anger until that moment. “You knew, and you didn’t tell me.”
Scout shot Liam a look that made Ada think they were as surprised as she was by the ill-contained fury in his voice. “For the record, we didn’t know she was going to be shot. We honestly thought she was going to become an Immortal is some very reasonable, non-violent way.”
“I would like to take this opportunity to let everyone know I was in favor of telling Joshua what the Seers were saying the whole time,” Jase said, walking over to stand by Liam. “Also, I’ve spent the last fifteen minutes applying pressure to the self-inflicted gash on my friend’s arm while thinking he was dying, so any and all attempts at vengeance for keeping secrets should be pointed elsewhere.”
Ada turned her head with a fair amount of effort. Joshua’s wrist was indeed bandaged, a line of blood soaking through the gauze.
She also noticed he was wearing the same expensive-looking black suit as Jase and Liam. She felt decidedly underdressed in her khakis and polo shirt.
“Would anyone care to tell me what you did know?” Joshua asked, the softness of his voice not fooling anyone. He was seconds away from going nuclear. If she were one of the others, Ada would have told him everything as quickly as she could.
“Not much,” Scout answered, proving she was as smart as Angel said she was. “Just that Ada was going to become Immortal, and that you and her would…” She cleared her throat and pasted on a smile. “Just the Immortal thing. That’s all. And we didn’t have a timeline or even know if our assumptions were right. We just knew one of the Seers kept talking about the Immortal who worked the check-in desk and Talley had a vision of her standing in front of my wolf form, slicing off some guy’s head with your sword.”
“She and I would what?”
Oh good. Ada was still stuck on that unfinished sentence too.
Scout clamped her lips together. With a sigh, Liam walked further into the room. “There is no reason to not tell them,” he said, laying his hand on Scout’s shoulder.
“What if it screws everything up?” she asked. “Knowing the future is a burden, not a privilege.”
The thigh beneath Ada’s head was so tense tiny tremors raced through it. “It’s my burden,” Joshua bit out, “so tell me.”
“You’re going to be together. Forever,” Jase cut in when it was obvious his sister wasn’t going to say anything. “Crazy I-call-things-what-they-truly-are-instead-of-their-name Seer refers to the two of you as The Eternal Couple. You can literally hear the capital letters when she says it.”
There was a moment of complete silence and then Joshua burst out laughing so hard he jarred Ada’s head.
“That was your big secret? That we’re going to be in a committed relationship?” He smiled down at her, emotion warming his dark brown eyes as he planted a kiss between her eyebrows. “I gave her my immortality. How much more committed do you want me to be?”
Ada smiled up at him. “I love you, too,” she said.
“Don’t say that. Not after what I’ve done. Not when you will have to live with the consequences of it for the rest of eternity.”
Eternity.
A jolt of fear ripped through her, but she pushed it aside. There would be more than enough time to think about the consequences later.
She wanted to be able to see Joshua, and not just an upside down glimpse of his face. She pushed herself up on her elbows, and even though it felt as if she was ripping something loose in her chest, she was able to sit halfway up. With Scout’s assistance, and despite Joshua’s insistence she needed to lay still, she made it the rest of the way. The effort drained her of the little energy she had, and the wall was doing a better job of holding her up than her own muscles, but she was sitting.
She knew she shouldn’t look down, but she did it anyway. For the first time ever, she was grateful for the polo’s ugly burgundy color. Despite the smell and the way it sat heavily on her skin, she could almost make herself believe it was merely drenched in water instead of blood. Of course, the skin peeking out through various tears in the fabric didn’t have the luxury of being a dark, blood-like color. Her pale flesh was hardly visible beneath the mostly dried blood covering it. Her stomach did an unpleasant series of twists and flips.
“I need a bath,” she said, wanting to rip the soiled clothing from her body. She didn’t realize she was trying to do just that until Joshua’s hands covered her own as he made calming shushing noises. “It’s okay,” he said, but she knew it wasn’t. She was covered in blood. Her blood and his. So much of it covered her body. So much blood. So much pain. So much had gone wrong. “Get it off,” she sobbed, hardly recognizing her own voice. “Get it off!”
“Ada, sweetheart, stop. You’re hurting yourself.”
But she couldn’t stop. The shock had finally worn off and the reality of everything that had happened was weighing down on her like a blood-drenched shirt. She clawed and tugged and pulled. The fabric clung to her skin, causing tiny shocks of pain to race across her skin every time she jerked a new section free. Finally it was gone and she was left with an unencumbered view of her chest. Two pink scars marred her left side. One sat to the right of her belly button, and the other was near her shoulder. The stab wound wasn’t completely healed yet, but even as she watched, the trickle of blood slowed until it completely disappeared.
Infinite Harmony Page 21
