by Chloe Adler
"He may not live to see tomorrow," I screeched. I sounded desperate even to my own ears.
My phone rang. Alistair.
"Alistair, is something wrong?" I said instead of hello.
"No, no, Chrys. Everything is fine. I wanted to thank you for trying to help him. He's still in a coma but the spell you tried did something because he's stabilized a bit. The nurses were surprised, and they even removed his breathing tube."
I walked away from the group, whispering into the phone. "Do you think he'll be okay until tomorrow? My sisters think we should wait until our powers are stronger before we try again."
"That sounds like a good plan. And who knows, maybe by tomorrow he'll have come out of the coma."
"All right. You get some sleep. Let's check back in the morning."
I relayed the information to my sisters and we decided to go back to Sadie's and spend the night together. We were stronger together and there was less of a chance for one of us to get picked off from the herd by our diabolical mother. Getting Iphi out of the house had been way too easy.
As Iphi and I were folding down our futons, something scurried into the kitchen. A small cockroach. Eww. Sadie's house was fastidiously clean. I couldn't imagine her having cockroaches, but she was in bed with Ryder and I didn't want to barge in on them to ask.
Chapter Twenty-One
Sleep descended quickly, like flying off a ceramicist's wheel.
"Chrys." Carter's voice rang loud and clear from behind my eyelids, almost making me jolt upright.
"Carter?"
His face wavered for a moment, like a Salvador Dali painting, and then he came into focus. "Am I dreaming?"
"No, but it's easier for me to slip into your consciousness when you're asleep or close to it. Or when," his broad face broke into a charismatic smile, "you're turned on."
I wanted to admonish him but seeing him, even in a non-corporeal form, made me happy.
"Do you know you're in a coma?"
"Yes." His features drooped. "The spell you cast today helped but I'm not in the clear yet."
"I want to be angry with you but . . ."
"If you want me to leave you alone, just say the word and I will."
"I don't know what I want. I know I don't want you to die."
"That makes two of us." He offered me a toothy grin, fangs and all. "How about this: for now, we leave the past alone. If I don't make it out of this coma, you'll have a good memory, and if I do, well, then you can beat the crap out of me for hurting you."
He made me smile, even when I didn't want to. "Deal."
He fell on me, in the spiritual realm. His hard body pressing against mine, he threaded his fingers through my hair, stealing a kiss.
As we floated on a cloud of mist, tangled up with each other, our bodies rolled and coiled together. He stroked me and though his hands touched my skin, the feeling was as if he were reaching deep inside me, through my skin and bones to the very essence of my soul. His mouth ravaged mine, pulling me out of the deep etheric wonderland, and I opened to him, inviting him in. Hungrily sucking on him as he replaced his tongue with fingers--one long digit and then another for me to suck on.
Tracing the side of my face with his lips he kissed my temples and earlobes, nibbling lightly.
I arched against him, pressing myself into his form, feeling his hardness beneath me, and then quite suddenly we were both naked, spinning in space.
"How?" I asked.
He shrugged. "Matters not. We're here together and it may be our last time. Let's just enjoy it."
Even though I knew he was right and I wanted to be with him terribly I wasn't ready to have my first time be with a ghost in an alternate dimension. "I'm not ready to . . . go there," I whispered.
The smile lighting up his face warmed me through and through, to the very space that held my deepest fears. "I know." He kissed my cheeks, working his way down slowly. Licking my neck and then the hollow below it. Placing tender kisses and darting his wet, satiny tongue into the small crevices of my collarbone.
His hands dipped downward, one lightly caressing a breast and the other seeking refuge between my legs. Solace. The yearning that had been building there was momentarily quenched as he covered my sex with his entire palm, bearing down with the heel of it.
I ground myself into him, but he smirked and pulled away, bringing his head down to my breasts. My breath caught as he sucked one firm nipple into his mouth and bit down on it ever so gently, teasing the nub.
I let myself run with the desire surging through me. I opened myself to him as one hand cupped my buttocks and the other pushed me open. Long, elegant fingers dipped in and out, exploring my center.
Unabashedly I let him, telling myself it was all a dream and I had nothing to be embarrassed about. It was easier to let myself go when I could convince myself it wasn't real. Besides, I might never see the real Carter alive again.
Let him have this, let him have me, I reasoned, and I spread wider for him. His head moved downward to join his hands and I didn't want him to die without bringing him pleasure as well. And why not? Again, I reminded myself, this wasn't even real.
Flipping my body around his in our floating space, I reached up, wrapping my hands around his thick member. Stroking it and squeezing it tenderly, I placed a light kiss on the tip.
"Yes, yes," he whispered into my thighs, eliciting small flutters of pleasure with his words and his hot breath against my skin.
Tentatively, I placed him in my mouth, licking around the swollen head of his penis. He pressed himself in and I pulled my head back, looking at it. At his . . . cock. It was impressive. Not that I had much to compare it to. There had been naked male models in my figure drawing classes, but they had not been aroused. I'd always imagined a man's aroused penis would look angry and cruel. I could not have been more mistaken. Carter's was magnificent. Wide in circumference and large in length but not intimidating. It was thinly veined and softly textured, and the darkness of the soft curls framing it matched the color of his hair. No artist's representation of the male body had done Carter justice, or maybe Carter was a step above.
The moment he pulled me open and buried his face and hands between my legs, I plunged his cock into my mouth and sucked it, hard.
His moans encouraged me, both with my own pleasure and with seeking his. My arousal stripped away my inhibitions in a way I hadn't expected.
I was in a state of rapture I had never known. Disembodied Carter had pushed me further than I would have been comfortable with had we been corporeal. Yet it enabled me to let myself go, completely.
As my orgasm fluttered to life, I sucked on him even harder, letting his entire cock fill my mouth, swallowing it breathlessly down my throat. After all, disembodied Chrys didn't need to breathe. I let him fill me, opening my legs even wider for him to take me. My ass writhing and pushing against his face, not holding back, I screamed and thrashed, emitting feral animal sounds and not caring at all.
"Yes. Oh, yes, come with me," he moaned between my legs as his hot seed pulsed down my throat and my own juices poured from my pussy.
After our orgasms, we lay intertwined and exhausted, head to toe, as he kissed my legs and massaged my feet, which tickled.
"I'm so sensitive," I cried out.
"Yes, you are," he said softly, spinning around in midair to clutch my face between his hands. "No matter what happens . . . thank you for giving this to me."
"Don't go yet. Can't we . . . ?"
"The nurses are at my bedside, I have to go. My sweet, sweet Chrysothemis." He kissed my lips, long, deep, yet soft, darting his tongue out to taste me, looking longingly into my eyes. That deep, intense gaze darkened and then--he was gone.
I fell back on my pillow with a deep sigh, wearing nothing but a smile. Almost immediately there was a snort, a kind of huff, and I opened my eyes.
Aurelia stood over me, hands on her hips, nostrils flared. Tsking.
I should have been humiliated, shamed. Had she witnessed my or
gasm or any of it? She couldn't have. It had all happened in the ether, but now, seeing her standing at the head of Sadie's couch, I was angry.
"What are you doing here?"
"I'm taking back what's mine," she said, eyes narrowed. "Give me the herbs Iphi stole. And you two are coming home with me."
"I'm not going anywhere with you."
"Mom?" Iphi sat up on the couch, rubbing her eyes. "What are you doing here?"
"Iphigenia. Now." Aurelia snapped her fingers but Iphi just sat there blinking.
"Get. Out. Of. My. House." It was Sadie standing in the doorway, and she did not look like she was playing.
"I'll do no such thing," Aurelia challenged.
"How did you get in here?" Sadie asked, hands on her hips.
"I caught a ride with my daughter."
"That cockroach was you?" I asked, incredulous that she would stoop so low.
"Cockroach?" Iphi asked, still sleepy.
"I don't care how you got in here," said Sadie, "you're leaving now."
"Not without my possessions."
Sadie sauntered slowly over to the kitchen, grabbed the bag of herbs Iphi had nicked and handed them calmly back to our mother. "Here you go."
Aurelia looked surprised, like she'd been planning on a fight. "And my girl," she said through a clenched jaw.
"I'm not going with you, Mama," said Iphi. "They need my help here."
Iphi barely got the last word out when the woman who called herself our mother threw up a hand. Just like that, Iphi's words were gone. She had been rendered mute. No doubt her next spell would make Iphi compliant, but Sadie didn't wait to find out.
"Ut nunc!" she screamed in Latin, throwing both hands upward. Aurelia started sliding toward the front door, scrabbling for purchase but unable to grab anything. The door opened, Aurelia disappeared through it, and the door slammed behind her.
I rushed to Iphi's side. "Are you okay?"
Iphi nodded at us but she couldn't speak.
"How are we going to help Carter if she's mute?" I asked Sadie.
"We have Aurelia's grimoire, and once we've gotten some sleep we can reverse the spell," Sadie said and kissed each of us on the forehead before retiring back to her bedroom.
"What if Aurelia tries to get back in?" I called after her.
"Let her try," she snorted.
Poor Iph was shaking and we crawled onto her bed together, where I spooned my sister and pet her hair until she fell asleep.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Back at the hospital, Jared flew us up to Carter's window. I appreciated his efforts. Screw the old-fashioned way. If only he were a fire-breathing dragon, like his sister, apparently. Instead, he used his talons to pull off the steel mesh screen covering the hospital window and then his beak to smash the glass.
We took off our jackets and laid them over the broken shards. "I'll whistle when we're ready," Sadie said to him before she climbed through.
Jared couldn't fit and flew up to wait for us on the roof.
Carter's room was quiet and dark except for the pings and lights of the monitors. Sadie grabbed the new bags of herbs and our family's grimoire and placed them on top of my sleeping beauty's body. Iphi pulled candles out of her bag and we placed them in a circle. The three sisters, together again, performing magic. I shivered from the excitement.
Iphi moved her thumb up and down, pantomiming a lighter. We'd already removed Aurelia's muting spell earlier, but Iphi had been quiet all morning anyway, her usual light subdued.
"Lux," Sadie called out, waving her hand in a circle around us, the wicks igniting all at once.
Iphi smashed up the herbs we had and laid them on Carter's chest. We were missing bloodroot, but Sadie thought we wouldn't need it.
"Chrys, you draw the circle." Sadie handed me her athame.
I used it to draw the pentacles in all four directions. Reaching out, I clasped my sister's hands, keeping Carter in the center.
"Uigiliarum somnus ab alta," Sadie called out three times.
As the last syllables petered out, Carter's eyes flew open but he didn't make eye contact with anyone. The look in his eyes was feral, frenzied, feverish.
"Who? Where?" He sat up. His eyes were tinged red and--were they actually filling with blood?
"Something's wrong!" Sadie cried out.
The missing bloodroot, I wanted to scream. Too late.
Carter lunged for her, the tubes attached to his arms pulling out, blood spraying the sheets and walls. He pinned Sadie to the floor and bit into her neck like Nosferatu. The vampire portrayed as pure animal.
"Get him off me." Sadie was kicking and screaming.
Iphi and I ran over, trying to pull Carter off, but his strength was unmatched. He backhanded each of us and we flew across the room, hitting the wall and sliding down it.
"Carter, stop!" I screamed at him and he did. For a moment, he looked up at me. Those dark eyebrows were knitted so closely together they were nearly touching, his head cocked like a wild animal's. Iphi and I rushed at him again and pushed him off balance as Sadie scrambled away and whistled loudly.
"We have to get out of here," she screamed at us. "He's gone mad."
"Mad?" I cried out as she pulled Iphi toward the window.
Jared was already hovering outside. Wow, he got there quickly. Sadie pushed Iphi up toward the window.
"I can't grab on." Iphi looked back frantically at us. Sure enough, jagged glass framed the edge.
I grabbed the sheet off Carter's bed and then threw it over the open window frame. Sadie hoisted Iphi up just as the vampire regained his balance and lunged for Iphigenia, chomping down on her leg, pinning her in place, hands on the torn window frame. Iphi's screams were almost deafening. I grabbed the only thing I could find, a metal tray, and started whacking Carter with it. I didn't want to permanently hurt him, so I avoided his head. There was a loud crash as Jared's talons pushed so hard into the window that it tore part of the wall off with it. The force knocked Iphi back and she slammed on top of Sadie, throwing them both to the ground. His long lion's tail whipped around the room, breaking the monitors and sending chairs and instruments flying.
"Jared, stop!" I ducked and covered my head with my arms, peeking up to see him wrap his tail around Iphi and Sadie at the same time and sweep them out of the hole in the wall. He turned around and looked in, holding eye contact with me. I crawled toward the gaping hole as Jared reached his beak toward me.
The hospital door flew open and the two nurses from earlier, Jody and broom-nurse, stormed through with a string of guards.
"Go," I mouthed to Jared and turned to face the onslaught.
Carter flew forward, throwing himself on one of the guards, trying to sink his fangs into the man's neck. Carter's head bobbed down, teeth gnashing, and then flew up again without making purchase. He tried over and over to tear into the man's flesh but his chomping teeth couldn't latch on.
"What's wrong with him?" I shouted at Jody, who was holding a syringe full of metallic-looking fluid.
"Later," she admonished me. "But if there is anything you can do to subdue him, now would be a good time."
I stepped closer and crooned his name. The other guards had him surrounded now, gathered into a defensive fighting stance, pointing guns at him. I hoped they were filled with tranquilizer darts but I knew almost nothing about subduing a vampire. Damn me for not grilling Burgundy as much as I could prior to this crucial moment.
Carter was trying a different tactic, biting the same guard in other places on his body and pulling back each time without piercing his skin. The guard wasn't wearing any sort of body armor that I could see but obviously they had some kind of vampire repellant I knew nothing about.
The nurse advanced slowly, holding her syringe in the air, and broom-nurse was holding . . . a straightjacket? Really? Wasn't that overkill?
Jody eyed me again, her eyes forming large orbs in her otherwise thin face.
"Carter," I called out more forcefully.
He stopped his assault on the guard's body and looked up. Could he see me? He cocked his head and blinked, like a cornered predator. His neck movements were jerky, raptor-esque, his slowly blinking eyes like a lizard looking into the sun. During the few moments it took for us to stare at each other, Jody advanced with almost inhuman speed and pricked his leg, injecting him with the shiny fluid. Carter howled in pain, and with one flick of his wrist the girl flew across the room, hard. She landed with a wet thud against the wall.
Three officers rushed through the open door, not carrying guns or wearing any protective gear. All dressed in black. I knew who they were. The vampire squad didn't wait for a signal or for Carter to look up. They rushed him all at once and within seconds he was lying flat on his back, pinned. It was plain to see that three healthy, sane vampires with extraordinary strength trumped one sickly, raving vampire.
"Girl, close your mouth and come help me," the burly nurse commanded.
A freaking straightjacket on my man was preferable to a bullet in his head. I complied.
Two of the task force vampires held him up while the third placed an actual muzzle over his face. I would have argued that was excessive except that he was gnashing his teeth and swiveling his head, trying to find purchase. I'd never seen any vampire act this way, let alone the man I had wanted as my lover. My mouth went dry. Swallowing paint chips would have been easier.
When they had the muzzle securely fastened, the nurse stepped forward with the straightjacket and motioned for me to help her put it on. The squad held his arms out so we could get them in the sleeves but it was a little like putting a jacket on a ferret. Carter was thrashing left and right, making the task difficult. When the jacket was finally over his arms, the man I took to be the leader of the squad crisscrossed the straps over his body. The other vampires pulled them tightly toward the back, forcing his arms to circle himself in a forever-hug.
Surprisingly, once his arms were pinned, Carter didn't thrash about, kicking his legs or wrenching his body. Instead, he slumped forward. Then his body jerked.
Broom-nurse bent down and picked up the syringe of liquid that Jody had held. It was almost full. She had missed her mark.
