Weaken the Knees (The Immortal World Book 6)

by Shannon A. Hiner

  Tears leaked down her face. She had no control over them.

  Weight shifted on those feet, as if he looked under or behind something. She stopped breathing, but his face didn’t come into view. The steps receded, moved farther down the hall.

  She let out the breath she had held. Her tears had formed a tiny puddle on the wood floor beneath her face. She started to crawl toward the other side of the bed, the far side. Something hooked about her ankle, pulled.

  She screamed. Screamed and screamed. Fury blinded her, she scratched and clawed, bit and screamed more. Her face was bathed in mint. She screamed until her throat was raw. Voice broken.

  Sarah.” That voice whispered against her skin. Bruises, terror, sickness. She screamed on without ceasing.

  ∞∞∞

  The building moaned and shuddered around Will. “Rene!” he shouted. Dust and plaster fell through the air, creating clouds and obscuring his vision. He jumped over another wolf body. “Rene!” She was gone. And then he saw it, just a flash of her dark ponytail as she whipped through the front doors.

  Into the pink and gray of dawn.

  “RENE!” The blood ceased moving in his veins for two long, hellish seconds. All at once it began again. His brain and body once more functioned as one. He sprinted for the door, knowing full well what waited for him on the other side.

  Sunlight. Death. Rene. He burst through the doors and immediately staggered. He couldn’t see. Everything was coated in the morning light. Coated, blinding, burning. His skin felt like it was on fire and, God knew, it probably was.

  Gritting his teeth against the pain, he shielded his eyes with one hand and searched for her. No sign. Where had she gone? He could still smell werewolf heavy on the dewy morning air. So many werewolves. Will and Rene had killed at least five inside. For so many more to be present outside, it had to mean an entire pack at least.

  His skin was peeling back layer by layer. He could hear it pop and sizzle, then turn dark and wither back, revealing the next layer. It wasn’t so bad yet, if he got inside he’d survive no problem. The sun was just caressing the treetops, casually rising up over the mountains and forest and reaching its slithering fingers toward the ground. Toward Will.

  Maybe he hadn’t actually seen her. It was just the wisp of a ponytail. One couldn’t know a person by the ends of their hair, could one?

  Except he did. He knew every inch of her frame from the ends of her hair to the tip of her nose.

  “Will,” a voice called out from the door of the headquarters building. “Get inside. Come on!”

  It was Wade Elliot, peeking his nose out the door and nothing further. Will took one more desperate look about. She wasn’t here. Perhaps she was inside. He knew one thing: If she was outside, she was gone. Gone and out of his reach. He clenched his fists and then winced as the skin of his hands cracked and flaked off.

  “William, dammit all, get in here now!”

  He turned away from the sun and sprinted inside the headquarters building. Wade slammed the door shut behind him, bolting it and sliding a heavy bar across it. The younger vampire rounded on him immediately.

  “What the hell is wrong with you? Do you want to die?”

  Will didn’t respond. His whole body ached and burned, but he ignored it too. Flexing his shoulders, he made his way through the halls, checking inside each room he passed. They were all empty.

  “What were you doing just standing out in the daylight like an idiot?”

  He headed toward the lounge at the back of the building, hearing voices within. The door was open and he walked right through it, searching the room in a second, scouring every face, feeling his stomach churn and drop as he didn’t find the one he most needed to see.

  Serena, standing with another Acrien survivor, turned to see him. Her face immediately covered in relief, she smiled and then looked behind him. Only Wade stood there. No one else followed him in. Her face darkened, fell. Splitting away from her companion, she crossed the room to him.

  She could see it on his face, probably the mirror image of his own. Rene wasn’t here.

  “Where—?” she broke off.

  He shook his head quickly, throat too tight to speak.

  “But she was . . . okay. The last time you saw her?”

  A sardonic laugh shook his shoulders, but didn’t touch his soul. “She was Rene. She was charging after a werewolf full tilt, straight into the daylight.”

  Her jaw clenched for a moment. And then she shrugged. “Well, she’s reckless, that’s for sure. But she’s not stupid. She probably shimmered west at the last second.”

  Will wished he had the confidence Serena did. Wished he could believe that Rene had been paying that close attention. But Serena hadn’t seen the look in Rene’s eyes. The mania that had been taking over her was now fully fledged, and he very much doubted she spared even a second’s thought for her own safety.

  That was his job. And now he was trapped inside for the next ten hours. Another day of no rest stretched ahead of him, but this time without the only companion he’d want to spend it with.

  ∞∞∞

  “I’ve never heard a being scream like that in all my life.”

  “Yeah, they have an unearthly sound to them, that’s for sure. And not the heavenly kind, either.”

  “No,” the first voice answered. “Definitely not.”

  Rene came back to herself to find she was surrounded by the dark still, and seemed to be moving on something bumpy. Her side ached abominably and she was weak. Not as weak as a human, but not strong enough to overpower her captors at the moment. She felt colder than she remembered being since she was a human. Probably the blood loss. Her throat was burning too. She needed to bite someone soon, and she dearly hoped it wouldn’t have to be a werewolf. A shudder worked through her shoulders at the thought.

  Gross.

  “I think she’s waking up,” the first voice again. He sounded young, but voices were deceiving in the immortal world. So were faces, come to think of it. Not that she knew what either of them looked like. “Should we stab her again?”

  “Only if we have to. There ain’t a lotta blood there, and we sure as hell ain’t gonna be bringing fresh in. Best not kill the leech ‘til Si and Lio have had done with’er.”

  “But what if she, you know, attacks?”

  A laugh. “You afraid?”

  The younger voice didn’t respond, which seemed affirmation in itself.

  “She won’t budge, if she knows what’s good for her. One good rip in that sack and she’ll be fried chicken. Extra crispy.”

  Rene’s hands clenched into fists. He couldn’t mean what she thought he meant. A shudder rolled down her neck. Despite the cold spinning through her veins, she could feel something warm coming through the dark canvas-like material that surrounded her. Sunlight.

  Whatever—or whoever—held her, jostled her weight a moment and her stomach lurched. One wrong move, if one of her weapons hit the canvas . . . all over. Her weapons. Her fingers reached up to her wrists to check for her knives. Gone. She couldn’t reach for her legs without alerting her captors to being awake. It’d be just her luck they were stab-happy kind of people who would like to see a vampire turn to extra crispy fried chicken in the daylight.

  She chewed absently on her lip as she thought. They had to be wolves. She couldn’t quite remember what happened when she rushed out of the apartment building in Abandon, but her lack of memory and the blood loss she suffered from made it abundantly clear she’d been caught unaware.

  She would never live this down. First the damned vampire hunters, now werewolves. The indignities of the last month were too much. Serena would be laughing at her for the next fifty years. If she survived.

  Serena.

  Rene tried to suppress the urge to flinch in excitement. Her phone. The weight and outline of it pressed against her hip. She still had it. Cautiously, she reached for it. Her arms and legs hadn’t been tied. The wolves were either very confident, or very s
tupid. Was it too much to hope for both?

  Sliding her fingers into her tight pocket, she wiggled the phone out inch by inch until it slid free suddenly and she nearly dropped it. Her fingers closed tight around the sleek device though, and she breathed a sigh of relief.

  “Do these things breathe?” It was the younger sounding voice again. He must actually be young, to know so little about vampires.

  “Eh. No, not usually. Just to sniff at us in disdain.”

  “Oh.”

  “Why?”

  “I thought . . . I thought I heard her breathing.”

  The older wolf chuckled. “She got you a little on edge, huh?”

  Again the younger neglected to answer.

  Rene let a long, low hiss through her teeth. It slithered through the bag they had her in and down his neck. Like a deadly caress. Her assumption that she was being carried must have been correct, because the thing she laid on stiffened at the sound.

  Childish. She shouldn’t have given in to the urge. Some opportunities were just too good to pass up. He either assumed he imagined it, or was too young and afraid to acknowledge her. Thankfully. She brought the phone close to her face and unlocked it. No alerts or messages.

  Really? No one had tried to locate her? Well, that hurt.

  She made a face at the device, as if it had rejected her, not her supposed friends. Selecting Serena’s phone number, she dialed and held the phone to her ear.

  Straight to voicemail. Growling under her breath, Rene tried again. Same thing. Serena never turned off her phone. Never. If she hadn’t known the other vampire for the last hundred years, she might have suspected the woman was actually born with the thing attached to her head.

  Rene gave up and tried Wade Elliot’s number. She wouldn’t normally be making personal calls to the new leader of her clan, but since Tanner . . . Rene closed her eyes and swallowed tightly.

  Anyway, Serena was all she had left in the world.

  She would not call Will.

  She would never be that desperate.

  The werewolves could dismember and burn her limbs one by one in the sunlight and she wouldn’t call William Rynquist for help.

  The phone rang twice and the voicemail picked up. It was all she could do not to shout in frustration and throw the phone.

  One more try. She dialed the last number she could think might help her.

  “Hello, you have reached the cell phone of Hadrian Catane. I am currently unavailable—”

  Rene didn’t hear the rest. Her hand clenched around the phone and she could feel the edges of it crack and cave inward. The screen crumpled and she let the device drop from her hands. Useless. Everyone she knew was useless.

  The phone slid through the canvas and after a moment she heard something hit soft ground behind them.

  She hoped they worried. She hoped they all regretted not taking what would probably be her last phone call ever.

  Chapter 17

  Livid tendrils of heat curled around her skin, her pant leg, licked her muscle. Burning flesh. Ash in the air. Pain.

  Rene woke with a start. Agony ripped up her leg and she instinctively pulled it close to herself. Her eyes burned in the light. Light. She hissed in sudden awareness and flung herself into the receding shadow, hitting a hard stone wall in the process.

  She groaned as her leg protested against the movement. She looked down through the streaming dust motes and saw her leggings were decimated on one leg from her calf to her ankle. The skin there was peeling back, crispy black edges with angry red beneath. She could see the bone of her ankle and it was charred too.

  Nausea turned her gut.

  The wound continued to sizzle and burn, even out of the sunlight, though it seemed to be slowing. Her throat burned and swallowing was painful. Her limbs felt so heavy and cold.

  Where was she? It was so bright she had to have her eyes half shut to even try to bear it. All she could make out was the grungy floor she laid on, and the wet, mossy stone wall she was jammed against. Everything else was coated in airy light.

  Sunlight.

  Rene shuddered again.

  Birds chirping filtered through her ears. She could almost swear she heard the sun itself beating down upon the earth. The heat was stifling. Her limbs trembled with the need to escape. Nowhere to go. Fingers digging at the floor beneath her, she found under the layer of dirt it was stone as well. The pain in her leg was almost unbearable. Speckles of cheery sun separated her from the other side of the airy cell, from the barred door that she probably could have ripped to pieces with one angry tug. She was trapped in the corner.

  Too terrified to sleep and be burned again, Rene watched the shadows shift upon the floor of her cell as the sun’s rays moved closer and closer to her position. Her leg wasn’t healing fast enough. Did it matter, though? She was going to be burnt to a crisp before she ever got the chance to walk again. Pressed against the wall as tight as she could be, Rene hissed when her leg slipped and the already ashy toe of her boot caught a ray of sun. She half-stood, half-crouched, wondering if there was a way she could crawl up the wall.

  Finally, the blasted yellow star began to dip below the bars of her cell. As shadow slowly took over again, Rene let herself slide to the ground. Eyeing the bars at the front of the cell briefly, she let her eyes drift closed.

  Later. After she rested.

  So weak. If she’d been human, she would have cried over the pain in her leg. The burn festered and fought against her body’s command to heal. She needed blood desperately.

  Throat burning, Rene passed into hazy oblivion.

  ∞∞∞

  “Will!” Distant.

  Kneeling in the dirt of the small Abandon street—more like a deer path than a city road—his fingers traced the splattered blood. It smelled like her. Whiskey and freesia. His chest was too tight. His shoulders were frozen, like they were strapped into place.

  “Will.” Closer now.

  He didn’t look up. He couldn’t tear his eyes away from the now dry blood, congealed in the dirt of the street. Just a small spatter really. A few tablespoons.

  Something shook his shoulder. A hand appeared in front of his face. It didn’t shake his concentration. Then he was being lifted, turned. He couldn’t find the mental presence to fight the intervention and his gaze was torn away.

  Wade stood in front of him, a few inches shorter, serious brown eyes stark. He was speaking. What was he saying? Why didn’t Will care to hear? Why should he?

  Serena was behind him. Will looked up at her slowly. She knew. He could see it in her face. She knew what he was feeling. The world tilted, swayed around him. Wade grabbed him by the shoulders, shook. Or maybe he didn’t, maybe that was Serena’s head shaking. Slowly. In denial. But she knew.

  Will had failed. Failed her. Failed himself. Failed Rene. He couldn’t breathe. Forgot he didn’t need to.

  Wade was still speaking. His friend wouldn’t understand. Couldn’t.

  The sky was still light, fading purple and magenta dwindling faster and faster as the stars turned on. Twelve hours of daylight had passed. Twelve hours between him and the only thing that mattered. Twelve hours she was gone and he didn’t even know if she was alive.

  Sound, life rushed back around him. Like his ears popped at the top of the mountain peak and he could hear. Everything was alive with noise, rushing in around him.

  “—we need to check for survivors. Send someone to Genocide. Can someone call Hadrian? My phone’s broken, damned wolf stepped on it—” Wade kept talking too fast. No one was listening.

  Will met Serena’s eyes again. Her arms were around herself, fingers clenching against opposite arms as she waited for him to tell her something good. Deny what they both knew. His brows drew together and he couldn’t help but shake his head. She took one gasping breath.

  “I’m sorry,” he whispered.

  What was it about breathing? A few hundred years and he couldn’t get the desire to do it out of his system. And just n
ow there was no air, he was halfway to gasping as Serena’s shoulders shook. “I’m so sorry.”

  She closed the distance between them and threw her arms around his neck. Will closed his eyes and hugged her tight. Something was cracking inside of him, breaking open, pouring heat and hurt throughout his body. He had the surreal notion that the only thing keeping him together was Serena and their shared pain.

  Wade finally shut up. Staring at the two of them as if they’d lost their minds.

  “It’s not your fault, Will.” Serena held his head to hers, pressing her cheek against his. “No one could have known.”

  “I was with her. I should have stayed closer. I should have grabbed her. I should have—”

  “Shh,” she said. “It’s Rene. She’s a fighter. She’ll be okay. She’ll get away.”

  “Serena, they took her. They didn’t kill her, they took her.”

  She pulled away, meeting his eyes.

  “They want her for something.”

  “That’s good,” she said. “It means they have a reason to keep her alive. It will give us time to find her.”

  He nodded.

  A scoffing noise came from Wade as he listened to them. “A hundred dollars says they kill her anyway, just for being a bitch.”

  Serena let go of Will and rounded on the Acrien leader. “Are you helping, Wade Elliot? Why don’t you shut up if you don’t have anything useful to say?”

  Will was relieved Serena beat him to it. His own reaction was not nearly as . . . wordy. He unclenched his fists and told his bunching muscles to stand down. Now wasn’t the time to be attacking Wade.

  And sadly, Wade might be right. If anyone could get themselves killed by people who wanted to keep them alive, it would be Rene. But the fact that they wanted her alive was in their favor. However unrealistic. However little time it gave them. It was hope, and they needed it.

  Wade rolled his eyes. “Fine. Will, you’d better report in to Discord. Estrada will be wanting to hear about this.”