by Tessa Cole
Strength rushed from me into him, and the room started to slowly spin and darken. This was worse than when the archnephilim had hurt him, his injuries were more severe, and I was still weak from earlier that night.
If we didn’t get him to Amiah, he would die. And he just couldn’t die. Please. He couldn’t. My soul would shatter if he did. I wouldn’t be able to keep living. It was because of his brand binding us together, and I didn’t care. All that mattered right now was him.
I sank to my knees beside him into a growing pool of his blood, all my strength going into holding my jacket to his chest and into the brand to keep him alive. I had to stand, had to find the strength from somewhere to get him out of there.
“Jacob, help me,” I said, my throat so tight I could barely get the words out. Gideon wasn’t going to die. I wouldn’t let him die.
A flicker of power snapped beneath my skin. Like my buzz but more powerful, almost like the fire that had unfurled in my back when the archnephilim had tried to make the wings I didn’t have manifest. I strained to stand, but the power turned into my stuttering angry buzz and the room twisted with exhaustion instead.
I couldn’t do it without his help or Jacobs. “Come on, Gideon. Stand.”
A burst of my strength swept into the brand and he shuddered, his head turning just enough to capture me with a single summer-sky eye. He raised a bloody hand to my cheek. His fingers whispered over my skin and my pulse stuttered, every cell in my body yearning for him.
“The team needs you,” I said. “You don’t get to die on them.” Or me.
“I’m trying not to,” he said, each word a struggle, each breath getting harder. The muscles in his jaw clenched. “I just need a minute. I’ll be fine.”
“Not unless you get help, so stand up.” I imagined more of my strength flooding into him.
He groaned, his muscles bunched, and he stood, the movement sending jagged electricity screaming through me. I rose with him, but we were both unsteady and started to tip.
Victoria swore and both she and Jacob rushed to help us, Jacob grabbing Gideon, Victoria grabbing me.
“You should be healing faster than this, angel,” Victoria said, her tone concerned but her gaze filled with hunger and lingering on his bloody shoulder.
Gideon leaned into Jacob. “It’s been a rough night. I’ll be fine in a few minutes.”
“Or you’re going to end up dying in my suite. And I can’t have a JP agent dying in my suite.” She released me, jammed a finger into one of her already healing bullet wounds, and coated it in blood. Then she grabbed Gideon’s jaw with her other hand, forced his mouth open, and wiped her bloody finger over his tongue.
He gagged, jerking away from her, and she let him go — with her strength she could have held him there, probably even crushed his jaw.
“That should be enough to keep you alive long enough to get back to the Joined Parliament Operations Building.”
Light billowed from his eyes, and the jagged energy coming from the bond eased to the same level as my buzz. Thank God. While I still swayed, the room slowly spinning, it was now a little easier to stay upright. It was certainly less painful.
“That wasn’t necessary.” Gideon glared at Victoria, clinging to Jacob to keep standing. Blood still rushed from his wounds, but the brand told me whatever Victoria had done, it had helped.
“Yeah, I know, now your pure angelic essence is tainted by vampire blood.” She turned on her heel, strode to her bar, and poured herself a drink. “You’re welcome. Now get out. You’re not one of mine, so the healing properties of my blood won’t last long.”
“I didn’t even know you could do that for non-offspring,” Jacob said.
“One of the perks of being as old as dirt,” she snarled.
“Thank you.” Jacob wrapped an arm behind Gideon’s back.
“I didn’t do it out of the kindness of my heart.” She took a long drink and leveled her intense gaze on Jacob. “We’re not done with our conversation. If Logan Dunn is back, so is the danger of his demon. I can’t have you distracted because your human has died because her angel has died.” She rolled her eyes. “And I know you’ll be useless if that happens. You were useless the last time. Now clean up this fucking mess.”
Chapter 9
We staggered out of Victoria’s suite, taking the back stairs — as instructed — and climbed back into the SUV. I didn’t know where Raspy Tenor was or Victoria’s lieutenants, but the master vampire had been right, the effects of her blood were already starting to wane, and the jagged spikes of electricity were back to slicing through me.
Jacob drove while Gideon sat in the back, his eyes closed and his hands pressed against his chest wound. I crouched on the bench beside him, keeping pressure on his shoulder.
“It’s going to be okay,” he said, his voice soft, his eyes still closed, his breath shuddering gasps.
“Until you get shot again.” God, here I’d been afraid I wouldn’t be able to survive my job when I should have been afraid I wouldn’t survive his.
“I’d have been good enough to get to Amiah if I hadn’t been shot earlier this evening.”
“That doesn’t make it better.” A stronger zap of electricity sliced up my arm and across my chest. I jerked and swallowed back a moan of agony.
He opened his eyes, captured me with his gaze, and I was falling into a summer sky again. This was where I belonged, wrapped in his pure warmth, wrapped in his arms.
A hint of clouds passed over his summer sky, dimming his angelic light, and he turned his head away from me and closed his eyes again. A chill bled into my heart, filled with the empty ache of losing the momentary connection we’d had. The connection had been so quick, only a few seconds. Losing it shouldn’t have felt like I was suddenly lost in a vast sea of ice.
Jacob pulled into Operations’ garage, and Amiah and another woman in scrubs — I think her name was Cassey — rushed out the door with a gurney to greet us. I scrambled out of the SUV to get out of the way. The garage dimmed and twisted, and I clung to the side of the vehicle to keep standing. Jacob helped Gideon out and onto the gurney.
Amiah shot me a withering glare then hurried Gideon inside, down the hall, and through the frosted sliding glass doors into triage, taking my heart with them.
Jeez. What a complete mess.
“Come on,” Jacob said. “You should get looked at, too.”
Jacob’s command rushed through me, and I stepped away from the SUV. The garage twisted, and I staggered. Jacob caught me before I fell to my knees and lifted me in his arms.
I leaned my head against his shoulder, mindful of the gashes across his chest — although they looked like they were mostly healed — and the bullet wound near his heart — not bleeding as profusely as it could have. I closed my eyes, not wanting to deal with the world whirling around me. In his massive arms, cradled close against his broad chest, I felt small, delicate, and safe. The vampiric intensity that terrified me in the other vampires comforted me, centered my soul, and I knew, without a doubt, I also belonged there, in Jacob’s arms.
Because of his claim.
Except a part of me wasn’t sure the rightness of being held by Jacob was completely because of the claim.
“How badly are you hurt?” he asked, his voice rumbling through me as he headed down the hall with uneven steps, his gait still affected by the gunshot wound in his leg.
“It’s the brand making me dizzy.” And sore and exhausted and heartbroken.
“He’ll be okay.”
A sliding door shushed open, and a jagged spike of electricity sliced through me. My eyes wrenched open and locked on Gideon as he convulsed and screamed. He lay on the gurney, his hands clutching the sides. Someone had cut off his shirt exposing his chiseled chest, the sculpted muscles smeared with blood. The shirt lay on the floor in a wet heap along with my jacket and an unnervingly large pool of blood. Light flared from Amiah’s eyes with a sudden blast of her healing magic, surging through his body
with an excruciating pain I was all too familiar with.
“Push the Midazolam,” Amiah said. She captured Gideon’s face with her gloved, bloody hands and met his gaze. “I’ve slowed the bleeding, but that’s all I can do until my magic recovers. You’ll heal faster if you’re unconscious. Do you understand?”
“Essie,” Gideon said, his voice so soft I wouldn’t have been able to hear it if Jacob’s claim hadn’t enhanced my hearing.
“Gideon, do you understand?”
He gave a tight nod and gasped, his face tightening in pain. “No more than four hours. I can’t be down longer than four.” His eyes rolled back as the sedative took over, and the jagged electricity snapping from the brand eased, blending back in with my buzz.
“Hang a bag of O-neg and finish packing these,” Amiah said to Cassey then turned to us, her expression exhausted and pained. “How bad is your face, Jacob?”
Jacob sat me on the bed beside Gideon and pressed tentative fingers to the gashes in his face. “Mostly healed. The gunshot in my chest and leg are the worst.”
“Can you get by without my magic and just a blood bag or two?”
“Yeah.” He turned to the small fridge where they kept the blood, pulled out a bag, and shifted away from the gurney.
“And you?” Amiah asked me, peeling off her gloves, tossing them in the hazardous waste bin, and pulling on new ones.
My cheek was still bleeding, I could feel my blood oozing down my skin, hanging on my jaw before dripping onto my shoulder, but it wasn’t gushing and I was just too tired to care. “I’m fine.”
She rolled her eyes at me. “You’re not fine, but you’re clearly not going to die, either.”
She doused a piece of gauze in saline, grabbed my chin, turning my head and angling it up to give her easier access to my face, and wiped at the blood.
“So much for your promise not to get my guys killed.”
I didn’t recall making that promise to her, even if I’d made it to myself, and I was just too tired to argue with her.
The other doctor grabbed a blood bag from the fridge, hung it on the pole by Gideon’s head, and attached it to his IV. Then she wheeled his gurney down the hall, deeper into the building where I knew there were patient rooms.
Amiah turned my head even farther. The gauze rasped against the gash in my cheek and into my hairline with biting pain, and I ground my teeth, trying my best not to show it.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Jacob slip the blood bag back into the fridge and leave through the sliding glass door. Guess he needed more than just a bag or two. I’d heard that while a vampire could live just fine on bagged blood, drinking from the vein had better healing properties. He was probably off to find a blood bunny to recover faster, and I wasn’t going to think too hard about that because even just acknowledging that made his claim twist inside me to volunteer my blood.
I squeezed my eyes shut and concentrated on just breathing. Everyone was still alive. It was going to be all right.
“I’m not going to bother with stitches,” Amiah said. “Jacob’s claim on you is helping speed up your healing and they’re just going to get in the way when I have to heal you properly.” She taped a piece of gauze to my face. “If you bleed through this, just replace it.”
She peeled off her gloves, tossed them, and headed down the hall in the direction they’d taken Gideon, leaving me alone in the small triage room. The agony from Gideon’s brand was gone, more or less, my buzz now the strongest biting sting between them, and I was exhausted.
I laid back on the gurney and closed my eyes, but without a pillow, it wasn’t particularly comfortable, and all the bruises and strains from the last few hours throbbed even more. All I really wanted was to sleep— well, have a shower since I was once again covered in someone else’s blood, and then sleep, but I had no idea where Kol had taken my clothes and had no idea who to ask to find out.
The whirr of air through the vents and the hum of equipment plugged in and ready for use wrapped around me, lulling me, but I still just couldn’t get comfortable.
With a sigh, I climbed off the gurney and settled on the overstuffed leather couch in the waiting area. At least there I could get some support for my neck. A small part of me felt guilty for getting blood on the couch, but the rest of me was too tired to care.
The buzz gnawed at me, and even with my eyes closed it felt like the room was spinning. I tried to concentrate on just breathing. My face— hell, my whole head throbbed, radiating from the slice in my cheek, that, now that I thought about it, had been a near-miss with a bullet, thanks to Victoria yanking me out of the way.
Because once again the brand had locked me in place.
How the hell was I going to convince Gideon to be more careful? I was a liability on the team if I was out of commission every time Gideon was.
But the idea of benching myself made me want to scream in frustration. That, and the chief would be furious if I wasn’t seen in the field working with the team, and he’d fire me. And damn it, I liked my job. I was a good cop. Another day, another time, and it would have been a different car answering that domestic and running into that vampire nest. It was just my shitty luck that it had been me.
But was it shitty luck? As much as I wanted to have a fully human life and live exclusively in the human world, I wasn’t just human. My essence, while perceived as human by supers, couldn’t possibly be wholly human and maybe supers were unconsciously drawn to that—
Or I was unconsciously drawn to them.
I’d thought I hadn’t allowed myself to completely live in the human world because of the fear of being discovered, but maybe a part of that was because I didn’t belong in their world.
Of course, I didn’t belong in the supernatural world, either. I was still half human, and I was a nephilim with almost no magic, and certainly not any useful magic.
The sliding door to the hall shushed open.
“You’re still here?” Jacob asked.
I peeled my eyes open. They were gritty and sore from my contacts enspelled to hide the glow in my eyes, but I managed to focus my blurry vision on him as he knelt beside me. He’d changed his clothes, and the gashes in his cheek were gone, not even a hint of a scar, but there was still a strain around his eyes.
“Is the brand keeping you here?”
“No.” I struggled to sit up, and he captured my arm and helped me. “I didn’t know where else to go.”
“I’m sure you’ve been assigned a room.”
“So am I. Kol took my bag somewhere, but we left for Rouge so fast I wasn’t told a room number or given a key.”
He pulled out his phone and sent a quick text. “If they’re in the middle of a hunt, he might not get back to me right away.” He sat on the couch beside me, his weight lowering his side of the cushion and sliding me against his side.
I leaned into him, unable to help myself and too tired to fight it.
“Do he and Marcus know about Gideon?” My pulse tripped, speeding up. “Do they know about that sniper vampire? It looked like he was in charge of those ferals. If he isn’t the one making them, then he’s in league with whoever it is.”
“I’m pretty sure the ferals are Logan’s.” His gaze slid to my gauze-covered cheek, his vampiric intensity crackling in his eyes for a second, then he pulled his attention back to his phone. “They’ve been warned, but Gideon will want as much information about the situation as possible when he’s back on the job.”
“In four hours,” I said.
“Just under three now.”
Jeez. I’d slept for an hour and I still felt like crap. “So what is the situation?”
He glanced back at me, his gaze returning to my gauze-covered cheek before jerking away again. He shoved off of the couch, strode back into the triage area, and grabbed a package of gauze and a roll of tape. “Why don’t you clean up in my room? I’m sure by the time you’re done, Kol will have gotten back to me.”
“Sure.” I stood, my mu
scles aching with the movement, my body still heavy with exhaustion and the room still ever-so-slightly spinning. “You know I’m still going to find out who this Logan guy is.”
“I wasn’t trying to avoid the conversation.” He watched me shuffle toward the sliding door, determined to keep my balance. “Let me carry you.”
The part of me he’d claimed thrilled at the suggestion. “I’m just stiff.”
“And it hurts just looking at you.” He shoved the gauze and tape into his pockets and picked me up.
“At some point I’m going to have to stand on my own two feet.” But I leaned into him, savoring the feel of his bulky muscles pressed against me. A hint of heat radiated from his body, but not as much as I would have expected if he’d just fed.
“Given how you looked when we met you at the ferals’ nest and again after Logan’s attack, I’m surprised you’re conscious.” He strode into the hall and headed toward the elevator. “Almost all of that was the mating brand, wasn’t it?”
“I wish Gideon would stop getting shot.”
He chuckled, the sound a low rumble that sent my cells vibrating in resonance with his essence and making the claim surge warm within me. “I’m pretty sure he’d like to stop getting shot, too.” His expression turned grim. “I haven’t seen him have such a rough night since the war. I also haven’t seen him as brash since then. He’s usually got a tighter control of his emotions.”
“The love of his life is dead and he’s permanently stuck with me. I doubt that’s what he imagined for himself.” Add in that his emotions had already been strained because the archnephilim had been murdering his squad members who’d survived the war with him, and that would be enough to break anyone’s control. Even an angel’s.
“It’s not being stuck with you that makes the situation hard.”
“It’s because I’m not Zella.” I fully understood that. I didn’t want my soul forever bound to someone I didn’t know or love.
“In part.” Jacob reached the elevator and hit the call button with his elbow. “But you and Marcus are also a thing. He respects that.”
