by D. N. Hoxa
There were six other doors in the corridor aside from the one at the very end, but by the smell of it, they were all empty. The soldiers and Finn’s guards watched us, and as soon as Vince took me close enough to them, he stopped walking and handed me a card.
“This is it,” he said with a nod. “Call me if you need me.”
“Thank you,” I whispered and took the card in my hand. There was no name or logo—just a phone number.
Vince disappeared down the corridor and left me alone with seven sets of eyes focused on me.
“I’m Gia,” I said to them with a weak wave, hoping against hope that I wouldn’t run into any more trouble. At least not for the day. “I’m here to see Finn.”
Finn was still in a coma. The doctors, mainly witches, insisted that they couldn’t shock him awake because a spell like that could mess with his brain, and even if he did wake up after, he could have some serious brain damage. The ECU had decided not to risk it, for which I was glad. Now, we were all waiting for him to wake up himself.
Haworth’s spell had been very strong. I’d heard the nurses talk. He’d used a modified paralyzing spell, one that shut down the brain completely for just a few minutes, but when the magic faded, there was no guarantee that the brain would continue to be active. There was no way to know if the person would continue to live. And that’s what Haworth would have done to me, had it not been for Finn. He’d have wiped me out completely because he didn’t need me. All he needed was my wolf.
They let me see Finn, as impossible as that had seemed to me when I first got there. One of the ECU soldiers had brought me a form to fill out, where I stated my fake name and my relationship to Finn.
“Just for record-keeping purposes,” he’d said, and then he’d opened the door and let me into the wide room. Two nurses were there, checking on three other patients—Finn’s guys who’d fought against Haworth but still needed more time to recover completely. They were all awake, at least. Finn wasn’t.
He looked so peaceful like that, like he was just resting, not in a state from which nobody knew if he’d ever wake up. I decided to think that that was exactly what he was doing—just resting. It kept me sane, that thought, and I stuck by his side until before noon, when one of the nurses reminded me that I needed to eat something. I didn’t, but I did need some fresh air. Right before I left the hospital building, Amara texted me. She asked me to meet her.
Twenty minutes later, I was waiting for her in a human cafe two blocks away from the ECU. The spell stone Finn had given me two days ago had probably run out of juice, so I was going to have to ask Amara to spell me with her protection spells as soon as she got there.
Then, I forgot all about it at the sight of her.
I don’t know why I expected her to look different. It hadn’t even been three weeks since we last saw each other and she stormed out of my apartment. Except for her change of clothes, she looked exactly the same, down to the black backpack she always carried around, full of weapons and always with a pack of different-flavored candy. This time it was lemon.
She didn’t look happy to see me, but she looked relieved. Before she sat down at the table I’d picked at the very corner of the crowded cafe, she scanned every single face in there. When she was satisfied with the confused looks she got from everyone, she made her way to me.
“What the hell happened? You look like whit,” she asked, analyzing my face to search for injuries. I was still bruised, mostly on my back and chest, but my face was okay when I checked myself in the mirror that morning. She’d have no need to panic. Yet. My clothes were another story. My black shirt and my jeans had a lot of holes and dried blood on them, but at least I’d shook off all the dust. Not like I’d had time to go home and change, anyway.
“He found me in Finn’s headquarters,” I said in a whisper. I could smell any intruder before they got within hearing distance, but I felt safer that way.
“And?”
I shrugged and looked down at the coffee mug and croissant I’d ordered but had yet to want to eat. “Thirteen people died. He almost got me at the end, but Finn jumped in front of the spell and stopped him.”
“He?” Amara repeated. “He was there himself?”
“In the flesh.” Shivers ran down my back at the memory of Haworth’s face. “And Izzy, too.” Maybe Amara would miss the desperation in my voice. “Anyway, the ECU arrived before he could try to spell me again. Finn’s still hasn’t woken up.” I had no idea what else to tell her.
After a long pause, Amara sighed. “I really am sorry.”
“Thank—” She didn’t let me finish.
“But if you had listened to me, if you’d agreed to work with me in finding him first, this would have never happened.”
“No. If I’d listened to you, we’d have both been dead by now.” Maybe she didn’t want to admit it, but she knew I was right. “He walked inside the ECU like it was his own property. No amount of soldiers and protection spells stopped him, and he did the same with Finn’s headquarters yesterday. You have any idea how well he keeps that place protected?”
Finn was very careful about that stuff. But he’d hired Terra. She’d been a member of his team, one who undoubtedly knew where he’d keep me. She knew Finn’s protection protocol, and as soon as she saw my wolf with her own eyes, she set things in motion with Haworth.
We hadn’t even suspected a thing.
“We would have caught him by surprise,” she said, her voice tired.
“You know we wouldn’t have.” Haworth was not an amateur, and we were just beginning to learn his powers, I suspected.
“I spoke to her,” Amara said next. By her, I assumed she meant Nadia—Haworth’s daughter. “She said he’s already gotten the ninth item, and he’s preparing for the tenth.”
My heart skipped a beat, my whole body aware of what was in the inside pocket of my jacket. The Reaper String. She must have noticed the look of panic in my face.
“She doesn’t think it’s the Reaper—he’s got his eye on something else. Something extremely well protected, and she thinks she can find out where it is before he goes in,” she added.
I almost rolled my eyes. “Didn’t you hear what I just told you?”
Amara raised her arms. “So you’re just going to wait and see how long it takes him to finally come and get you?”
Ouch. She was right. Of course she was right. I’d known this since last night. I just hadn’t wanted to really think about it. With Amara, though, it was hard to escape from anything.
“What do you suggest I do?” I asked in half a voice. She could see that I was desperate, and I already knew what she was going to say. I just had to ask.
“I suggest you help me stop him.”
Bingo. Exactly what I thought. But my will was practically nonexistent. Fear had already gotten the best of me, and worst of all, my wolf was content. She wanted me to stay away. She didn’t push. She didn’t give me a reason to believe like she always had—I just hadn’t realized it. At this point, I saw absolutely no way out of my misery, but I didn’t want to tell Amara that.
“I’ll think about it,” was all I said.
12
I did think about it. For three days.
Amara would text me every single day to ask me if I had any updates. My answer was always the same.
Finn hadn’t woken up. I’d become a resident at the hospital. All the nurses knew me. I’d almost become friends with Vince, who escorted me to the safe house every night and back to the hospital every morning. We’d exchanged a few words now and then. To me, it counted.
The ECU had no idea what the hell to do. They had no lead on Haworth, as strange as that was. He’d been there—right under their noses—and they couldn’t track him. I wondered if I could, if given the chance. I wondered if I could have picked up his scent after he left. Doubtful. He’d left in a car, most probably. Or he’d just disappeared into thin air like last time.
Not that I had any intention of trying.
>
For now, I was okay with the routine. Get up, go to the hospital, eat hospital pudding whenever I could get my hands on it, go back to the safe house, pretend to sleep for a few hours, and then back again. At least Vince had taken me to my apartment to get some of my clothes, and I’d showered every morning. Amara had spelled me the day we met at the cafe, and on the second night, I asked Vince if he had any access to Finn’s spell stones because the one he’d given me was spent. The next morning, he brought me two. There were ECU soldiers all over the hospital and the building next door, and Finn’s people came and went every few hours. He was never alone. I had no idea if he had a family or not—I thought he did—but nobody came to visit him for whatever reason.
So I felt protected. Just an illusion, but it was better than the alternative.
On the third day, I decided to go out for lunch because I just couldn’t stand the scent of the hospital anymore. I couldn’t stand my own thoughts. I figured some distraction would help me, and I didn’t intend to go far. Just around the neighborhood.
I found a nice, small restaurant and ate my food as slowly as I could, and I focused on the people around me, never allowing myself to think about my life.
Then, I walked back to the hospital.
The sun was shining, the smell of dust and people nice to me by then, when I saw a face I’d only ever seen in my dreams for the past month. It was one of those moments in which time slowed to a crawl and you marveled at the simplicity of it all, wondered why you ever thought anything was complicated, and if you could, you’d choose to be stuck right then and there for the rest of eternity.
His face was painted in yellows and oranges in a way I’d never seen before. It was easy to pick him apart from the rest of the crowd. His hair was shorter than I remembered, and it shone hazel under the bright sunlight, but his eyes…oh, his eyes were exactly like they used to be—brown and green and every color in between. At some point I’d stopped walking without realizing it. I knew this was a dream, a hallucination, my mind’s way of giving me something—just one good thing in the middle of the chaos—but I still cherished every second of it. He walked so gracefully, like he was light as a feather, floating on air, looking at me like he couldn’t see the dozens and dozens of people still between us at all. Like I was all that mattered.
My troubles disappeared, and the skies brightened up even more with every step he took toward me until we were right in front of one another.
Red looked so real—like, if I just reached out my hand and touched him, he wouldn’t disappear. He watched me the same way he did before, searching, always searching. He smelled like Red, too—not just a vampire’s empty body operating on borrowed blood—but he smelled like heavy magic as well, which was new.
I knew this wasn’t going to last. Whatever I was going through, it would soon be over, but before that happened, I stood on the tips of my toes and brought my lips to his. One kiss, and maybe…maybe it would be less hurtful to remember him.
To my surprise, when our lips met, he didn’t disappear into thin air like I expected. Instead, his arm wrapped tightly around my waist and his hand closed around the back of my neck, and he kissed me back. It was glorious in a way that I knew only imagination could provide. My arms were around him, and he felt as solid, as real as I was. I no longer tried to make sense of the world, just took what he gave me, until his fingers touched my cheek and he leaned away just a bit so that our foreheads still touched.
“You taste better than the sun,” he whispered against my lips, stirring a world of brand new emotions in my stomach. “But we need to get out of here, right now.”
He still held me against him, and I still had my arms around his neck. To the outside world, we would have looked exactly like lovers. But in my heart I knew that it would soon be over. I hadn’t realized it before, but my face was wet with tears, and they were still falling.
“Victoria,” Red said, and his voice sent a shock through the length of me. I leaned my head back, confused as hell. He was still there. “We have to go, now.”
That’s the first time it occurred to me that Red could actually really be real.
I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t take my eyes off him. It had been at least ten minutes, and Red was still there. He hadn’t disappeared. He hadn’t turned to smoke. His smell hadn’t faded. He was just…there.
I know what you’re thinking. Of course he wasn’t. He’s a vampire and the sun was shining bright outside. But I swear to you, I saw him walking around the street, lightning fast, checking every face, every car, every street around the bar in front of which he’d left me to wait.
And then he came back, looking just as alive as before. His cheeks were a little flushed even. I didn’t get it. I couldn’t bring myself to understand.
Grabbing my hand in his, he opened the door to the bar a few blocks away from the ECU headquarters. The place was dark. It reeked of alcohol and tobacco, but other than the bartender and two people drinking in the corner by themselves, there was nobody else there. No spells. No paranormals. Just humans.
Red didn’t bother to stop by the bar. The seven tables in the narrow room were all bathed in the dark, almost like the lights on this side of the bar had stopped working, so Red took us to the middle of the room and sat me down. I was incapable of operating on my own because I still couldn’t stop staring at him. It was just too much to comprehend.
“We’ll be safe here for a little while,” he said, taking another look around the bar and the bartender whose eyes were stuck on me because he couldn’t figure Red out, either.
“You’re dead,” I said when I found my voice, trying to make sense of all of this. I couldn’t.
Red grinned. “So you keep telling me.”
“No, no, I mean you’re…you’re dead. Ashes.” I’d seen them in Haworth’s house. The ashes all over the floor.
“Nope. I’m still alive,” said Red, and he tried to reach for my hands, but I moved them under the table. I needed to know how damaged I really was first.
“But I saw the ashes. You were gone. And…and…it’s sunlight outside. You’re a vampire.” Even if he hadn’t died at Haworth’s house, he would have today, as soon as he stepped out into the sun.
Pulling up the sleeve of his black shirt, Red showed me his left wrist. As soon as he tightened his fist, I saw something under his skin. It was no longer than three inches. Something was written on it, either carved or embossed, but I couldn’t tell because of Red’s skin stretched over it. I shook my head. I was nowhere near understanding anything.
“My enchanted item,” said Red. “The one Haworth took from me. I got it back and barely escaped before the ECU got there.”
Suddenly, I was back in Haworth’s house that morning. I saw Red towering over me, saying something I couldn’t understand. Then, Haworth had come for me and Red was gone. I’d never seen him again.
“But I saw the ashes,” I whispered. I’d seen piles of them all over the floor.
“Haworth’s men,” Red said the next heartbeat.
“So you’re…you’re real?”
Red smiled and his smile was brighter than the sun shining outside. “I’m real, Victoria.”
You’d think I would have gotten used to this by now—my world crashing down all around me. How many more times was I going to find out that I’d been living in a lie before I knew all truths?
I wanted to stand up and run outside, never look back, but my body decided that now was the perfect time to be paralyzed.
“Victoria?” Red said, my name a question.
“You left me.” I sounded like a stranger. I felt like a stranger, too.
“I had no other choice. Haworth put a spell on me before he got to you. I didn’t fully recover until two days ago,” Red said. “I came looking for you as soon as I was back on my feet.”
He didn’t understand.
“But you left me. You left me to think you were dead. Do you have any idea…”
My voice trailed
off because I couldn’t explain it. If I were my wolf, I’d have howled the same haunting melody she did when she was feeling particularly broken.
“I’m sorry,” Red said, lowering his head, but I couldn’t even look at him.
“A message. A text. Something, just to tell me that you were alive. I thought you were dead because of me.” He had no clue what that had done to me. I was still figuring out how badly it had damaged me to think that I’d cost the life of the only man I’d ever truly cared about.
“I knew you’d be safe,” Red said. “I was spelled. He almost killed me, and if I hadn’t taken the time to heal, I wouldn’t have made it.”
“So why didn’t you stay?!” I shouted. “Why didn’t you just stay? We would have taken care of you. I would have known you were alive!”
If I’d known, I wouldn’t have become…this! I wouldn’t have surrendered all my will to my wolf. I wouldn’t have given up on my sister. I wouldn’t have given up on myself, damn it!
This time, Red laughed. “Victoria, if the ECU caught me, and they caught you with me, trust me, we would have both been in a lot more trouble than we are right now.”
Surprised, I looked up at him for the first time. God, I’d missed him. Even though I was mad as hell, I missed him so much my heart wept.
“But you wouldn’t have left me.” And why did I think that that was so important? “I know it was never your job to stick with me. You got what you went there to get and you left—that’s fine. I just wish you wouldn’t have.” Which was completely my problem. “But that doesn’t mean I’m blaming you.” I was, but I had no right to. It was the deal we had and he held his end. He helped me get there, he got what Haworth took from him, and he left. Exactly like it should have been.
