Hunted: A Vampire Romance (Marked by Night Book 3)

by Sara Thorn

  Chapter Eight

  "Bree!" I shouted as I ran up behind them.

  Both Bree and Quinn turned their heads to see me. Thank God he was still alive.

  I dropped down onto my knees beside Quinn, and when I saw how labored his breathing was and how his veins seemed to bulge from the pressure of the magic moving beneath his skin, I reached out to touch his arm. But just as I had barely brushed his skin, he let out a noise that sounded like a muffled and exhausted scream.

  "Don't touch him," Bree said. "His entire body hurts.

  "Okay," Cassius said as he tried to commandeer the situation under control. "This has to stop. We need to end his suffering one way or the other."

  Both Bree and I glared up at him in offense at the fact that he would even propose the idea of Quinn's death being an option.

  "You know what I mean," Cassius said once he saw our collective faces. "We need to get the shadow magic out of him."

  "He can't," Bree said. "He's tried, and nothing works."

  "But you haven't tried," Cassius said.

  I waited for him to launch into an explanation for Bree, the same way that he had for me so she understood what to do. But she seemed to already know what he meant as soon as the words came out of his mouth.

  "It might work," she said.

  Bree slid her shoulder carefully away from Quinn as he struggled to stay upright.

  She stood and looked around as if she were trying to find something but didn't know what it was that she was looking for. "Okay," she said as she took a deep breath in. "I'm not really sure how to do this, but I'm going to give it my best shot."

  "What are you going to do?" Quinn asked weakly as he leaned gingerly against me.

  I made sure to sit perfectly still so as not to rub his skin or cause him pain.

  "I'm going to try to pull the shadow magic out of you before we are out of time and options."

  "It won't work," he said.

  "You don't know that," Bree replied with confidence. "I am strong enough to handle it, and currently, you are not. I'm going to use my own shadow magic to try to remove the corruption from you. Just stay still."

  Quinn looked at her with raised eyebrows, as if he could move around or get away from her in his current state right now anyway. He was pretty much helpless to sit there and do as he was told. Cassius backed up from Bree a bit as she raised her palms face-up in front of her and moved her fingers as if they were grabbing at pieces of the air. Cassius watched as she seemed to pull magic out of nothing and walked closer toward where I was sitting with Quinn as we waited to see what she would be able to do. A dark-purple vein appeared on her neck that ran all the way up to the base of her chin. It was unnerving how quickly the shadow magic tried to infiltrate its caster. I thought for a moment about the cost that she would need to pay for this magical transaction that she was about to attempt. Nothing could be a higher cost than Quinn's life.

  Without touching him, Bree reached both of her hands down toward Quinn's bare shoulders, and it seemed like there were threads of visible energy forming between them. Thin, numerous, little threads that wove together through the space between the two as if they were knitting a spiderweb. They were dark teal, which then seemed to soak up a blackish indigo on one side, the side that touched Quinn. It looked like it was working. It appeared Bree was pulling the strands of shadow magic right out of him and catching it in a web of magic of her own. Quinn looked down at his shoulder and watched as the veins running down into his chest seemed to lessen, and for a moment, there was hope.

  But then, as quickly as it had seemed to work, it began to fail. The strands of magic started to fray and crumble, and Quinn suddenly doubled over as if his entire body had cramped and seized-up. The more Bree struggled to pull the shadow magic from him, the louder Quinn began to scream, until finally, she stopped entirely. I held onto Quinn, and he didn't even seem to notice my touch this time since the rest of his body was on fire with the ravaging pain of the magic. He looked up at me with a look of terror as things seemed to worsen at a drastic rate.

  "What happened?" Cassius asked Bree.

  "It won't work," she said, shaking her head. "It merely hastens the rate at which it is killing him. The shadow magic itself, as well as trying to remove it from him, will kill him."

  "What do we do?" I cried as I started to face the fact that Quinn would likely not survive this.

  "Why don't you just use your power to heal him?"

  I looked up quickly to see Sylva standing right at the line of decaying trees that stood along the edge of this part of the woods.

  "What do you mean?" I called to her. If there is any hope at all, anything that I can do to save Quinn, I needed to know it now.

  "What are you doing out here?" Cassius asked.

  I didn’t think he meant to sound gruff and accusatory. I thought he was just curious and possibly suspicious about why Sylva would be here, in the dying part of the woods, alone. But as soon as he spoke to her, she took off running in the other direction. I got ready to get to my feet to chase after her, but Quinn groaned as I moved, and Bree told me to remain still or chance hurting him further.

  "I'll chase after her," Cassius said. "You two stay here with him."

  Cassius ran off in the direction that Sylva had headed, and I looked at Bree with desperate confusion.

  "I don't know what she meant," I wept. "I don't know how to use my power to save Quinn."

  "I know," Bree said empathetically. "I don't know either, I just—"

  She stopped talking and looked up when she heard a rustling in the woods and saw Norr there. I figured he was probably looking for Sylva, which still was questionable why they were both here.

  "Norr," I said. "We need to find Sylva so she can help us. Do you know where she—"

  And then, he took off running before there were any answers given.

  "What is going on?" Bree asked in frustrated confusion. "Stay here."

  I didn't get a chance to protest before Bree went running off in the other direction to chase after Norr, leaving me alone with Quinn. I sat by the side of the contaminated water, not knowing what to do to fix him.

  "Well," he said feebly through gritted teeth that tried to bite back the pain. "At least we're finally alone now."

  He tried to grin and tease to lighten the severity of the situation, which I knew he was doing solely for my benefit. But there was nothing that could make this any less dire. The only thing that could help was knowing how to make Quinn better.

  As if on cue, Sylva showed up as she darted out between two trees and ran over to where we were sitting. She must have outrun Cassius taking him around in circles and then come back here alone.

  "Sylva! Please, tell me how to help Quinn." I assumed that she had come back here to us for a reason, and I was hoping the reason was that she knew what to do to save him.

  She looked frantic and flustered as she crouched down next to us. "You have to promise me that Norr and I won't be pulled apart," she said quickly.

  "What?" I had absolutely no idea what she was talking about or what it had to do with the situation we were in.

  "Our families are trying to separate us, and there are others among the fae and vampires who don't want us intermixing. I don't know if we can trust Cassius," she said as she looked around us to make sure that he hadn't tracked her back here to this spot yet. "I don't know if he will side with making sure we can stay together."

  "Sylva," I said as soon as I saw that she wasn't going to help me if I didn't make this promise to her first. "Cassius is on the same side of things as I am. No one will tear the two of you apart; I assure you. Norr is here in the forest, too. I think he's searching for you."

  "He's helping me," she said.

  "Helping you with what?"

  "Providing a distraction so I can tell you what I came here to say. The fae have ears all throughout the forest, and they don't want me here to tell you this. Norr will keep them occupied for a short time. He's excel
lent at being stealthy and diverting attention. I want to help you and Cassius and Quinn. I want to help all three of you so that you can help Norr and me in return."

  "Okay," I pleaded. "Then, please tell me what to do. Tell me how to save him."

  "I heard some of the fae saying that your power could heal Quinn," she said. "More than just that one woman you spoke with."

  That information couldn't have been more valuable if it had been jewels instead of words falling from her lips, but I still needed to know how.

  "They didn't want to tell you. They didn't want you to find out about it at all."

  "Who didn't?" I asked.

  "The fae. They are hoping Quinn will just die since his shadow magic has already caused so much trouble."

  "Lovely," Quinn said. The word carried itself on top of a barely audible and strained voice. "Always knew they cherished me."

  "Even at the brink of death, your sarcasm shines through," I said as I tried to make him smile with a tease. At the same time, tears started to fall down my cheeks.

  I looked back to Sylva. None of this was helping unless I knew what to do.

  "Tell me how to help him," I begged.

  "Well, that's the thing," she said as her mouth scrunched up in discouragement. "I don't know."

  "Then what was the point of all of this?" I screamed at her.

  "Because they said that you would know. The fae I overheard said that you already knew how to help him and that it has something to do with how all three of you are connected to Mystreuce. They just didn't want you to figure out that you already knew that answer. That's what I came to tell you."

  "But I don't know," I cried.

  "Think," she said.

  I held Quinn against me and pressed my eyes closed to think. We were all connected to the land—Quinn, Cassius, and me. But I didn't know how that helped. If my magic protected me, then how could I use it to heal him?

  I put my hand down against the ground and felt the wet soil between my fingers. I wished that I could make the land rise up and do something to help him. I wish I could call it forth on command instead of having spontaneous vines push up from the ground and try to attack my lover. I pushed against the dirt and willed for something to happen, but nothing did.

  "Yeah, I'm not real fond of that ground, either," Quinn said when he saw me clenching my fist in the dirt. "It nearly killed me; at the very least, it definitely weakened my resolve."

  "What do you mean?" I asked him as I opened my eyes.

  Sylva was gone once I had opened my eyes. I guessed she figured that once her message had been delivered, it was time for her to escape and find Norr so the two of them could get out of here before they had to deal with Cassius, who would undoubtedly want to know what they were up to. I didn’t think she really trusted him or Bree yet.

  "I mean that the land devastated me more than the shadow magic ever could. I felt the two of you," he said as a look of intense pain crossed his darkened face.

  "What?" I had a sudden sickening feeling when I remembered how the ground beneath us had moved while Cassius made love to me. That couldn't have been what Quinn meant. There was no possible way that Quinn could have felt that, too.

  "I felt you and Cassius…Mystreuce felt it, and I felt it, as well. And Mara, it made me want to die."

  How could that be? I hadn't imagined it. The ground had actually shaken; the world had quaked, and Quinn had felt it.

  For a moment, I was too upset by the thought of how much that must have hurt Quinn in his already horrid and struggling condition. But then, it made me think of something.

  Maybe we weren't just all connected to the land. Maybe we were connected to each other as well.

  If that were the case, then maybe all that I needed to do in order to share my power with Quinn was to find a way to make him feel it, too. Just like he had felt the ground shake, he could feel my power inside of him and let it go to work against the shadow magic. I sat and stared at his black eyes as they widened in pain, and he struggled to breathe. He opened his mouth as if he were trying to gasp for air while the shadow magic made its way into the parts of him that he needed in order to survive. He tried to talk and say something, but he couldn't push enough air into his lungs to manage it.

  "Quinn!" I said as I held him against my lap and watched the panic of near-death come over him. "Quinn!"

  It wasn't death he feared; it was the same thing that I feared; never being able to see each other again. His body started to tremble as it struggled to stay alive without air, and he clung to the last piece of breath that he had.

  Chapter Nine

  I did the only thing that I could think of to do.

  I put my lips over Quinn's open mouth and breathed the air of my own life into him. When I did, it was as if the power within me knew what to do. I could feel the surge of restorative magic as it rode on my breath rushed into him, filling his lungs with not only air but the magic of Mystreuce. It started to abolish the shadow magic and send it spiraling from him as if it were being banished bit by bit into the surrounding forest.

  While it was starting to work, and I could see Quinn's natural coloring return to the surface of his skin, Quinn's strength returned as well. He grabbed onto me, and suddenly, the lifesaving act and transfer of healing magic turned into an unsolicited kiss as Quinn slid his tongue into my mouth and grabbed my body against him. I was too shocked to react and too uncertain whether released my mouth from his would stop his healing before he was done being cured of the shadow magic.

  So even though it was not my intention, I kept my mouth on his and felt his tongue swirling with mine. My eyes stayed wide open as I looked at him and watched to see when the act had been enough to save him from his cursed fate so that I could pull away, but it didn't happen fast enough.

  "Mara!" Cassius shouted in shock as he returned to our place by the stream and saw what he thought was my kissing Quinn.

  I immediately pulled away, and I could see that even though there were small traces of the residual magic, Quinn was mostly cured of it and would be fine now. So, I threw my attention onto Cassius to explain away what he thought he had just walked in on.

  "I was only trying to save his life," I said with an edge of hysteria in my voice because I knew that Cassius was bound to have a hard time believing me. I knew that he trusted me, but there was just something about his jealousy over Quinn that seemed to throw all trust out the window.

  "By kissing him?" Cassius asked dramatically.

  It didn't help that Quinn had a huge and satisfied smile on his face. Not only was he feeling physically better and removed from the precipice of death, but he had enjoyed the kiss and couldn't help but hide it. I also thought he just really liked getting under Cassius’s skin, although I wished they would both just stop going on about it all the damn time.

  "No," I said as I walked toward him and tried to get Cassius to calm down and listen to reason. "I figured out how to heal him with the magic that Mystreuce gave me. Just look at him."

  I motioned toward Quinn, and Cassius looked. There was no way that he couldn't see I had saved Quinn.

  "He was holding onto his last breath, and so I breathed the power into him, and it started to dispel the shadow magic. I wasn't kissing him; I was breathing into him, that's all."

  "I was kissing her, though," Quinn smirked.

  "Quinn, stop," I snapped at him.

  Geez, the least he could do after I had saved his life was to not get me in trouble with Cassius.

  "And did you like it?" Cassius asked me.

  "What a ridiculous question to ask," I said, offended. I couldn't believe that this was the conversation that we were having now. I had just saved Quinn's life and figured out how to use my power to heal someone. And yet, Cassius wanted to know if I enjoyed an uninvited kiss?

  "I liked that I just saved his life," I retorted with no attempt to hide the snark in my tone. "So yes, if that is what you're asking, then yes, I liked it very much."

&
nbsp; I could hear Quinn chuckle from behind me, and I wanted to turn around and smack him.

  Cassius stood there glowering for a few minutes until Bree arrived and immediately saw that Quinn was better.

  "You did it!" she said to me with a big smile. "You saved him! How did you do it?"

  "With a kiss," Cassius said sarcastically. "You know, just like in the fairytales, true love’s kiss breaks the curse."

  "You are acting like a child," I said to him. I was getting angry that what should have been a moment of relief and gratitude was turning into a pissing match about a kiss that I didn't even start.

  "Am I?" he said.

  I could see in his eyes that he was just hurt. Not unlike a kid, he was acting out because he had been wounded and didn't know how else to behave in the current moment. He turned to start walking on the path back to the castle.

  "Cassius, wait," I called to him, but he didn't stop.

  "I'll stay with him," Bree said. "But he's going to be fine now, thanks to you and what you did. Look, even the forest is already starting to heal."

  I looked around us and saw she was right. The sludge that had covered the sickened moss was already drying and peeling off like a scab as the new growth poked up freshly from beneath it. Quinn looked better by the minute. Instead of his entire body being discolored, the black had faded to purple and was now continued to his forearms and the bottoms of his feet. His eyes had visible pupils again, and it was clear to see that he was no longer in pain. I was so relieved that he hadn't died.

  "Okay," I said. "I'll catch up to you both later after I have had a chance to talk Cassius down off a ledge."

  "Just let him jump off the cliff on his own," Quinn said as I stepped onto the path. "It would be much faster and easier that way for everyone."

  I rolled my eyes at him. "You know, Cassius did try to help you, too," I reminded him.

  "Yeah, but I'm glad he wasn't the one I had to kiss."

  Bree laughed, and I was comforted in the fact that things seemed to be back to normal, at least with the two of them. Cassius, on the other hand, was an entirely different matter to deal with. Cassius had stormed ahead, and I had to run to catch up to him after making sure one last time that Quinn would be all right.