“The last of the Burilgi are fleeing,” Theroen told her. “Are you all right?”
“Fucking peachy,” Two said, pulling the belt around Sasha’s left bicep. “Worry about the girl who’s missing an arm.”
“Wrap it through twice and … yes … cinch it tight,” Sasha hissed through clenched teeth. “Ah, good Jesus that hurts.”
“Are you going to be all right?” Two asked her. “I mean, are you … you’re not going to …”
“No, I’m not going to die,” Sasha said, her voice hoarse. She struggled to a sitting position. “So long as I don’t bleed out, the wound will scab over eventually. Give me … tear that dead Burilgi’s shirt off and give me the fabric.”
Two did as she was instructed, handing the torn shirt to Sasha, who pressed the fabric firmly into the stump of her left arm and held it there, hissing in pain as she did so.
“Jesus Christ,” said Two, staring wide-eyed.
Naomi’s voice came to them from a few meters away, tightened with fear and grief. “Stephen, don’t! Stay with me!”
Sasha held out her right elbow, indicating that she wanted to stand up. Theroen helped her to her feet, and she leaned against him for support. Along with Two, they made their way over to the rest of the vampires. Jakob glanced up at them, saw the state that his fledgling was in, and moved to help Sasha stand, freeing Theroen to come up next to Two.
“Oh, God,” Naomi was moaning. “Oh, God. Oh, no. Please …”
Two looked down at the sight before her and felt tears immediately well up in her eyes. Stephen was lying in a pool of his own blood, looking pale and haggard, barely breathing. The hilt of the dagger Aros had stabbed him with was protruding from his chest, quivering there in a way that seemed almost obscene. With an obvious effort, Stephen reached up and put his hand against Naomi’s lips, quieting her. He shook his head.
“Don’t,” he said in a wheezing voice. “Be strong.”
“I can’t. I’m not!” Naomi cried. She was kneeling next to him, weeping so hard that the force of it was like physical blows pounding at her body. Her pink tears dripped down onto his blood-spattered shirt.
Stephen laughed, coughed, and a trickle of blood made its way down the side of his face. “Yes, you are,” he said.
“I can’t lose you,” Naomi whispered, pressing her lips to his knuckles.
Stephen stared at her for a moment, his breathing growing more shallow with each intake of air, and Two knew that her friend had only moments left in his life.
“August … eighteenth. Nineteen-seventy,” Stephen said, and Naomi opened her eyes, looked down at him.
“Yes,” she said. “I remember. But you wouldn’t—”
“There was only ever you. Only you.”
Naomi sobbed. Pressed her lips to his hand again. “Oh … Stephen. Please.”
“Let me go,” Stephen said, his voice now barely a whisper. His eyes were far away. “Be strong. Let me go.”
Naomi made a wailing noise of despair, but she did as he had asked, placing his hand gently on his chest, away from the dagger. Stephen stared up at the ceiling and took a final breath, deeper than those that had come just before it.
“It was a good fight,” he said to no one in particular, and he smiled. With those words, he exhaled, and the exhalation became long and rattling. Surrounded by his friends, lying victorious on the field of battle, Stephen Connelly died.
Naomi put her face in her hands and gave in to her grief completely, sobbing. Two wanted to reach out to her, wanted to offer some comfort, but knew that she could give none. Weeping herself, she closed her eyes and bowed her head. She felt Theroen move away from her side and looked up to see him bending down to put a hand on Naomi’s shoulder.
“Naomi—” he began, his voice quiet and comforting, but the vampire girl whirled on him, throwing his hand from her shoulder.
“Get away from me!” she snarled, her face distorted in rage and hatred. She stood, turning fully to face him.
“I don’t—” Theroen began, but Naomi cut him off again.
“What else do you want?” she cried. “What else can you take?! First Lisette, then Two, now Stephen … I have nothing left for you! You’ve taken it all, so leave me alone. Leave me alone!”
This last was a shriek, and Naomi shoved Theroen in the chest, pushing him backward. She whirled away from him again and stormed off to the edge of the room, where she leaned against the wall, covering her face with her hands and sinking to a sitting position, knees drawn up against her chest.
There was a moment of surprised silence among the remaining companions. Two sighed, held up her hand to indicate that the others should wait, and made her way over to her former lover.
“That wasn’t very fair,” she said in a gentle voice, and Naomi glared up at her.
“Oh, here she is to talk about what’s fair,” Naomi said in a caustic tone. “You want me to say I’m sorry, is that it? You’re here to demand that I apologize to your lover because I hurt his feelings? Go away, Two. Go hold poor Theroen and tell him that it’s all right, that everything will be just fine!”
Two was quiet for a moment, watching as Naomi went back to staring at her lap. Finally she said, “Naomi, what do you want from me?”
Naomi looked up again, rage and grief naked on her face, her mouth twisted up into something that looked almost like a grin.
“I want you to love me! I want you to tell me that it meant something to you, the time we spent together, the times when we fell asleep holding each other, the times when I put my face in your cunt and made you come. I want you to tell me that you weren’t just using me this whole time, treating me like a toy, something to be tossed to the curb as soon as your real lover returned.
“I want that, but I can’t have it, can I? You never loved me. You never said those words. You made it perfectly clear that I was a stopgap, a holdover solution, an answer to a problem and nothing more. Once you had what you wanted from me you were going to leave anyway, weren’t you? Wasn’t that the plan all along? Pretend that you wanted to be with me until I gave you the blood? So, fine. You have what you want. Go away. Go back to him and leave me where you already left me. Leave me alone!”
Two stood for a moment longer, trying to think of some response, something she could say that would take away Naomi’s pain and make her understand that Two hadn’t wanted any of this. She could think of nothing and so, at last, she turned and made her way back to the rest of the group.
“There’s nothing more to do here,” she said to them as she walked up, “and there’s nothing any of us can do for her. Let’s just … be done with this. Let’s go home.”
Chapter 30
Healing Up
“Blood or no blood, that arm isn’t going to grow back,” William said, glancing toward the table at the back of the cathedral. Sasha was there, collapsed in a chair, alternating sips from a large glass filled with blood and another filled with vodka. A vampire surgeon that Two didn’t know was stitching the flap of skin that had once covered her elbow over her wound, and Jakob was watching from behind him, peering over his shoulder. If Sasha was feeling any pain, she wasn’t showing it, but Two could see the dark circles under the Ay’Araf woman’s eyes from all the way across the room.
“She’s got a pretty good cut on her stomach, too,” Two said. “I think she’s lucky to be alive.”
“How nice for her,” Naomi commented under her breath. William glanced at her with an expression of pity but chose not to comment.
They were sitting in a rough semi-circle, the five of them: Two, Theroen, Naomi, Ashayt, and William. With the exception of Jakob, Sasha, and the surgeon, the cathedral was otherwise empty of living beings. Stephen’s body lay nearby, carefully placed on one of the church pews, wrapped in a blanket.
William had received a phone call from Peter Markham, confirming that Rhes and Sarah had been reunited with their daughter and that the trio had been delivered safely home. They would remain under guar
d until Jakob decided otherwise, but with Aros dead and the Burilgi army scattered, it seemed unlikely that they would fall under any further threat.
Two looked around at her friends. Ashayt was the only member of the strike force who had managed to avoid looking like something out of a horror show. Two was drenched in the blood of the vampire whose throat Theroen had cut, now dried to a tacky, sticky mess. Naomi’s arm was soaked in her own blood, and most of the rest of her was covered in Stephen’s. Even Theroen, who had managed to avoid getting his clothes dirty in the first battle of the evening, was covered in stains, a testament to the number of Burilgi he had killed.
“Jesus Christ, what a fucking night,” Two said with a sigh. She felt exhausted, too tired even to properly grieve for the loss of her friend. She knew that the reality of Stephen’s death would hit her at some point, swamp her, leave her huddled up and sobbing somewhere. She wasn’t looking forward to it.
“Terrible things have happened,” Ashayt said, her voice quiet and calm and sad. “It grieves me to see violence done between vampires, and more yet to lose so brave a warrior. Stephen will be missed.”
Naomi made a noise that sounded like a sob but seemed to force her tears away. She was staring at the floor, hands in her lap, her mussed and bedraggled hair hiding her face from view. Two wanted to take her hand but didn’t dare. Instead she glanced again at the rear of the cathedral. Sasha had left with the surgeon, presumably to go home and rest, and Jakob was making his way down the aisle toward where the others sat. Part of his shirt had been cut away, and there were bandages where the bullet had hit him.
“At least she’s right-handed,” he said as he sat down with them. His voice carried little humor.
“I should have sent a larger force,” William said to no one in particular.
“Maybe,” Two replied. “I doubt it would’ve changed things. You could’ve sent two hundred people, and none of them would have been able to stop what happened to Stephen. He was too close to Aros, and it happened too fast.”
“But Sasha—” William began, and Naomi cut him off, speaking without looking up.
“Sasha knew the risks. A big rescue party would just have set off the alarms before we saved Jakob, and then he and the humans would be dead. If you hadn’t convened the emergency meeting, Sasha would have gone off to find Jakob on her own and gotten herself killed. This was the best way to do it. She knew what she was getting into, and so did Stephen.”
Naomi looked up at them now and smiled an ugly-looking smile. Her eyes were bloodshot, and her tears had cut clean tracks through the dirt and blood on her face.
“Our indestructible Eresh-Chen survived, though, and so did her friends,” she said. “I hope it was all worth it.”
Two, unable to meet Naomi’s gaze, looked away, shaking her head. “I know that I’m responsible for this.”
“Two—” Theroen began.
“No, Theroen … in the end, it all comes back to me. That’s the truth. I killed Abraham. I came looking for more vampires. I dragged Rhes and Sarah into this. I was the one Aros wanted. I insisted on coming on the rescue mission even though I’m not trained to fight. I was the one who you were trying to save when Aros got the drop on you, which is why Stephen had to save you, which is why he’s dead.”
She looked back at the group now, and she could feel tears at her eyes again. “That’s all of it, right? Did I miss anything? Naomi?”
Naomi didn’t respond. She was staring at her lap again.
“I fucked up everyone’s lives. Rhes, Sarah, Molly, Naomi, Stephen, Sasha, Jakob … thank God Tori’s in Ohio.”
This statement was met neither with agreement nor denial, but rather with an odd silence. Two glanced around in surprise, noting that Jakob and Naomi in particular seemed unwilling to meet her gaze. After a moment, Theroen spoke.
“Naomi … what have you done?”
“Oh, Theroen, no!” Naomi cried in a miserable voice, and covered her face with her hands. She began to sob again.
“Naomi? Nao—Jakob, what the hell is going on?” Two asked. “What haven’t you told me?”
Jakob took a deep breath and looked up at Two. “Around the time that you found Naomi and became involved with the council, Tori’s parents were found murdered in their kitchen.”
“What?” Two asked, unable to believe what she was hearing. “Mona and Jim? That’s crazy. Who would want to kill Mona and Jim?! They’re, like, the two sweetest people I’ve ever met!”
“Someone cut their wrists, slashed their throats, and left their bodies. The daughter – Tori – she reported discovering them the next morning. She had an alibi, but it certainly seems like the work of a vampire.”
“Oh, Jesus,” Two moaned. “Do you … are you saying she did it? Are you trying to tell me that she killed her own parents?”
“No. We don’t believe she did it,” William said.
“Who then? The Burilgi? Did Aros kill them, too?” Two could feel rage and hatred rising within her, feelings so strong they seemed almost to tint her vision red. She tried to force herself to stay calm.
“That’s one possibility,” Jakob said. “But I think that if Aros had known where Tori was, he would likely have had her abducted for her blood.”
“Haven’t you tried to find out?”
“We made inquiries, but nothing came of it. Whoever was responsible, they didn’t leave a shred of physical evidence. We were keeping an eye on Tori, hoping that the guilty party would return for her, but we lost her.”
“What do you mean you ‘lost’ her!?”
Jakob sighed. “She disappeared shortly after you met Naomi. Our scouts lost track of her. She left a motel room one morning and never came back.”
Two found herself speechless, flabbergasted by this news. They had known about this since before she had ever met with the council, before she had agreed to go to Europe, and they had told her nothing.
Theroen, who had remained silent the entire time, seemed to sense Two’s growing fury. He put his hand on her shoulder, but she knocked it away.
“How could you keep it from me?!” she cried. “Naomi … how could you?!”
“You would’ve run!” Naomi shouted back, still crying, her face contorted with grief and pain. “You would have run to Ohio, and we would have had to follow. We didn’t even know where she’d gone at that point!”
“And you know now?” Two asked.
“A person fitting her description has been leading the groups that are abducting Burilgi,” Jakob told her. “That’s the entire reason that Aros was mobilizing his army. We believe the Children of the Sun are responsible, and we believe that he was going to strike at them directly.”
Two ran a shaky hand through her hair, trying to retain some level of composure. “You fucking bastards. She’s my friend. She’s … do you have any idea what she went through with me? For me?!”
“We agreed as a council that it should be kept from you,” Jakob said. “It was not solely Naomi’s decision, nor mine. It was put to a vote, and it passed. Unanimously. We had no idea where she had gone. Two, if you want my apologies, you have them. If I knew then what I know now, we might have done things differently. We were trying to protect you.”
Two covered her face with her hands, forced herself to breathe. Forced herself to think. Be calm, she told herself. Be calm and do the right thing. For once in your stupid life, try not to make things worse than they already are.
“What can I do to help her?” she asked at last.
“You can start by treating us as your friends,” Jakob said. “The council wants nothing more than to find Tori and stop her from continuing down this path. It’s going to be difficult. We’ve been studying the Children of the Sun for decades, and we don’t even know where their center of power is. They’re extremely secretive, and they’ve taken Tori to somewhere unknown.”
“So it would be pointless to go to Ohio,” Two said.
“Pointless and stupid,” Naomi muttered. Willia
m glanced over at her again, shaking his head.
“This is a poor time to discuss this,” he said.
“It’s a poor time for anything,” Jakob agreed. “If we weren’t all drenched in blood, I’d have already insisted that we break up this delightful gathering and go home. We need sleep, so that tomorrow we can do Stephen the courtesy of organizing the funeral he deserves. My men will be here with new clothing very soon.”
“Fine,” Two said. “Yes. Stephen’s funeral comes first. Then we’re going to figure out how to find Tori.”
“You’ll have the help of the council,” Jakob said. “In truth, you both should have seats. Theroen and his apprentice …”
“I offered,” William told him.
Theroen shook his head. “No. Not yet. Forgive me, but I’ve been held back from vampire politics for more than four hundred years. I’ve only been back from the grave for two days. I’m not ready to jump headfirst into this council.”
“I’m not much better than Stephen is … was … at sitting around and debating,” Two said.
“That’s not all we do,” Naomi said. The last of her tears were gone, and she seemed almost relieved, or at least less beaten-down than she had been. Two supposed a weight had been lifted from her, with the truth finally revealed.
“The invitation will remain open,” William said. “You are a new strain of vampire, the two of you, and the council welcomes the participation of all strains.”
“Have you returned to lead the council, then, William?” Jakob asked.
“Only until Malik returns,” William said.
“What if that never happens?” Two asked.
William sighed. “If that is the case, then I will do as we all have done: that which I must. In the end, is there ever any other way?”
Blood Hunt Page 47
