Page 2 of Blood Loss (The Obscura Saga #2)

LATH A N

1:48pm

DEADLINE THIS WEEKEND

Lathan sighs out his nose, looking down at the text message as he holds the building’s door open for the students flooding out, his foot propped up the weight of it. A follow-up from his father, after he screened the barrage of separate weblinks explaining Obscura’s intern partnership program last month. It had slipped Lathan’s mind through the events of last term, but with next year being his last, his parents want him to follow in their footsteps. They both did the program, and insist it alone is what landed their first jobs directly after graduating. They plan to make him work for them, so Lathan doesn’t really need it in the same way—but if he does it, maybe he can avoid being stuck with his family’s firm, stuck ignoring the needs of Ethers and painting them as the villains in every case.

“Thanks, Lathan.”

He clicks his phone off and slides it into the pocket of his trench coat; it’s what he wears during the cooler months. The cold doesn’t affect him like it does other species, so something fairly lightweight is all he needs year-round.

A woman from his class is smiling at him as he looks up; she’s the last to exit the building. “Don’t forget about those notes from last week, yeah?”

He nods. “I’ll send them when I get back to my room.”

She rolls in her lips and neatly bows before hopping down the concrete steps into the courtyard. He follows her out, and across the walking path, close to an overhanging tree, sits Kylo on an iron bench. One of the few old ones from the Academy’s inception, each decorated in filigreed metalwork and rewarded with a plaque, detailing some scholar or donor that made Obscura possible.

“Oh. Hey,” he says, swivelling to head toward him instead of following the path down to their dorm. “You don’t usually pick me up from class.”

Kylo lifts and saunters over to him. “Yeah, I thought I’d come meet you since we have plans tonight.”

Lathan looks around them for signs of an early visitation. “Who am I meeting this time?”

“No one,” chuckles the werewolf. “Eunice texted. Asked if we could go to the game later to support Ellie. She’s cheering at halftime, but Eunice has to work late tonight.”

Lathan cocks a brow, amused. “You even like football?”

“As long as I’m not playing.” He shrugs. “A bunch of buff dudes gettin’ all sweaty with each other? What’s not to like? ”

His boyfriend’s answer catches Lathan off guard. He coughs, rolls his eyes, and starts walking away from him. “Good to know that one buff dude getting all sweaty with you isn’t enough,” he mumbles into the wind.

Kylo laughs after him as he hops into a jog to catch up.

◆◆◆

The greenway leading up to the stadium gates are lined with booths of student representatives, tables full of pamphlets and splotchy, low-ink printouts from clubs, volunteer opportunities, and other upcoming campus events. Beyond the booths stand food vendors with long, snaking lineups of those eager for pregame munchies.

“Gods,” Kylo breathes into the cowl of his scarf. “And I thought we were early . It doesn’t start for almost another hour.”

Lathan pulls Kylo’s body closer to him; the amount of people is annoyingly large, and he’d rather they not get separated. He had planned to get a bite to eat inside, but the immense crowds around the stands and barbecues have him shifting his feet away.

“Maybe we should wait,” he says into Kylo’s pointed ear, speaking over the buzz of people. “Get something to eat later.”

Kylo’s nodding before he’s finished talking. “Good call.” He squeezes Lathan’s hand tighter. “Let’s go find some seats before those are all taken, too.”

They weave uncomfortably through bustling groups with loud mouths. More than graze by immovable bodies, unwilling to chance forfeiting their spots in their chosen food line. The proximity, the noise, the warmth of so many bodies—so much blood—makes Lathan antsy. He doesn’t like big groups. Doesn’t find them fun. Doesn’t like being forced to abandon his personal space for others’ pleasure.

But Eunice and Ellie are friends, and it’s been a shamefully long time since he’s had people who wanted to reach out to him for anything, who wasn’t a romantic partner. So he breathes through his rocketing anxiety, gripping Kylo’s hand back with too much desperation, and plows into the stadium.

Hundreds of participants occupy seats already, with more scouting, alongside Lathan and Kylo, for their own. Longing to find a seat and shrink into it, Lathan tugs his boyfriend along the railing of the stairwell and across to a decent view of the field below them, where they’ll be able to see Ellie perform. Kylo accidentally shoulders those lingering in the middle of the aisle, and Lathan feels his agitated pulse against his fingertips. Lathan uses his heavy black boots to kick at the toes of seated students ignoring their approach, urging them to tuck them in or stand to allow them by. Kylo smiles sympathetically—but exhaustedly—at them. Lathan does not.

Finally dropping into collapsible chairs, Lathan melts into the plastic, head lolling back while it still can with no one behind them yet, and sighs off the trek. He looks up to the open, roofless sky as birds float overhead; he’s made sure to apply a hefty amount of sunscreen this time, which Kylo brought along, and plans to keep his layers on, risking only his hands, neck, and face.

A gentle and warm finger scoops the strands of his hair that have fallen from his low bun and tuck them behind his ear. Lathan rolls his head to peer at Kylo, who says nothing, but looks at him as if he wants to know if he’s okay. He lets out a heavy breath and nods once at him. Kylo relaxes, and so Lathan does as well.

He kicks his boots out as far as they’ll stretch in the squished foot space. A few rows below their section, the cheer team is already practicing some moves to get the crowd excited. Ellie is easy to pick out from the blue and gold outfitted athletes. Her short pixie hair and her ivory prosthetic stand out against the others, who mostly wear their hair pulled tightly on the top of their skulls, if they aren’t men with cropped haircuts.

“Does she know we’re coming?” Lathan asks as he keeps an eye on the elf. Seeing her so focused, so excited, so full of energy as she warms up with the others is heartwarming. Lathan sees a lot of himself in her, the quiet parts that are afraid of being seen too deeply. Looked at too closely. Afraid of what others may find.

“I think so?” Kylo’s nostrils flare the way they do when he’s thinking hard. “Either way, I’m screaming and waving the second halftime hits.”

“Let her know now,” Lathan says, nodding toward the girls warming up, the men fractured from them, readying to lift and twirl their teammates. Then he smirks at Kylo. “Use that bark I know you’ve got.”

Kylo blushes and gives him a cheeky side-eye. Looking back down at the cheerleaders, he chews on his lower lip with those flaring nostrils. But not for long before springing up, leaning over the seat in front of him as he hollers, “LET’S GO, ELLIE! WOO! GET IT, GIRL!”

People seated anywhere near them turn to gawk and glare at Kylo’s shouting. Lathan sinks in his seat slightly, though snickering to himself; Kylo’s loudness is the only high volume he really enjoys, aside from the music he likes, and right now it feels like a small victory.

From down below, the little elf pauses mid-stretch and searches the crowd for the voice calling her name. Lathan lifts a hand to acknowledge her, and she waves to the guys shyly before turning back to her team.

After some time, and a lot of pouting from Lathan as he waits, the Apex Saints jog out onto the field. A team from an Ether institute—ApexU—stampeding through the bottom of the arena, roaring like animals. There’s some cheering from those visiting from their campus, some respectful claps from Obscura students, and some bad-mannered boos—though, Lathan thinks maybe it’s fitting the more vulgar the players’ display below becomes. One of the schools people don’t talk about, Apex University is home to those with nowhere else to go, who plan to stay in Ether, whether by choice or not. Their school ground is more of a graveyard with the shit he’s heard goes down there, and it’s almost…celebrated.

When their edgy, bass-heavy intro song fades out, an upbeat track begins to build from the speakers. The whole stadium stands and cheers as the song ramps up, hyping the Obscura Oracles as they jog out onto the green. Even Kylo cheers and claps along with everyone else, which encourages Lathan to regrettably stand as well out of respect, though his hands stay in his deep pockets as he looks out onto the field and the teams getting ready to play. While very few, Lathan spots a couple women in football uniforms, and though his hands remain stuffed away, he nods at the notion.

Everyone in the stands sits once again, and he’s quiet as he watches the game begin, not bellowing when the audience does. While this clearly isn’t his first choice of activity to attend, and it’s written on his face, he doesn’t hate it either. He’s happy to be with Kylo, always, wherever that may be. And no one’s paying attention to us for once , he thinks, noting the lack of stares, because everyone’s watching the football game.

It isn’t very long before Kylo slumps with crossed arms, resting his head against Lathan’s arm. Lathan’s gaze drifts from the game to the chestnut curls fluffed against his coat. He bends down to press a kiss into Kylo’s hair, breathing him in at the same time—that natural scent of sandalwood and patchouli his Alpha naturally wears. The wolf snuggles into his kiss, letting his eyes drift shut.

“Thank the gods the second quarter is almost done,” he mumbles.

“Hungry? Bored?” Lathan guesses without moving, and as the silent hunter that vampires are, his words are inaudible to most as a whisper. Kylo’s canine hearing picks him up though—his ears twitching against the quiet sound—and only because they’re so bodily close.

“Both,” he breathes, keeping his eyes closed.

“What’s there to be bored of when you’re watching sweaty buff dudes?”

“About that…” Kylo chuckles under his breath. “I’ve never actually watched football before, and this isn’t exactly what I imagined.”

Lathan exhales a lone laugh. He points a finger up toward one of the flatscreens that circle the stadium. “Then watch the screens. They show closeups of their asses.”

Kylo eyes open and follow down the length of Lathan’s arm to the screen atop the far end of the stadium. As the ball is thrust toward the Apex’s side of the field, caught by jersey number thirty-two—whoever that is—from the Oracles, who attempts to run it down the green, the nephilim is tackled by Saint number four, a bull of a mer, his gills flexing as the camera flies across the players tackled to the ground, indeed showing their rears on full display.

“Hah! You weren’t kidding.”

“What do you think I’ve been watching this whole time? The score?” Which currently has Obscura in the lead as the seconds run down quickly to the end of the quarter .

With ten seconds on the clock, the ball is tossed back into the game. Kylo’s back straightens away from Lathan, his eyes flicking between the field and the screen. Obscura number ten chucks the spinning ball to number thirty-two once more, who stands square in the end-zone. He jumps to make the catch a mere second before the timer runs out, which blares loudly with triumphant sirens as the whole crowd erupts wildly with screams and applause.

Kylo claps along with everyone, his grin giving away how impressed he is with the final play, even if he doesn’t watch sports. As the team celebrates on their way back to the bench, music pumps through the stadium again as the cheer team replaces them on the field. That’s when Kylo amps it up, whistling and yelling, trying to force his voice to break past the excitement of the score, to be her cheerleader.

Lathan stands and finally claps in tune with Kylo, watching Ellie down below. She gives a sheepish glance in their direction before searching for her composure for the routine she’s about to participate in. The current song dissolves into another, prompting each cheerleader to start their routine. Lathan watches on in adoration as they dance, as the lights twinkle patterns off Ellie’s prosthetic arm with her movements.

At what must be halfway through their first song, the squad splits off into three groups of five, each an orchestrated triangle. Four members set themselves up to toss and catch their fifth member in the air, and Ellie is one of the three going airborne. The first toss is magical. She flips in the air like a professional diver, like an air nymph, pointing her toes and extending her arms gracefully.

As they prep for a secondary toss, the music’s interrupted, culled completely by a frequency not everyone can hear—some of the cheerleaders looking at each other confusedly, while others scream.

The effects ripple through the audience similarly, affecting some and leaving others in a panic. Beside Lathan, Kylo reacts instantaneously; he curls in on himself, hands slamming against his ears so hard the muscles in his arms quake. His eyelids prune with the clench of his eyes, and the guttural shriek that claws out of his throat Lathan can only assume rips his esophagus raw.

Waves of people in the stadium—waves of werewolves—are snarling and snapping at the air, covering their ears and roaring. But it isn’t only the wolves; vampires, with their sensitive ears, are also picking up the vibrational frequency. Lathan has his palms pressed hard against his ears to dampen the squeal. His pupils have pinned—as he’s aware from his vision adjusting, sharpening—and his fangs have popped, long and thin. He hisses with the pain, a sharp brain-rattling sting that not everyone is reacting to.

Majority of the stadium isn’t.

Bloodcurdling cries ricochet around the stadium as werewolves begin to shift. During the day. One by one, yet all at once, their bones are cracked into place, phasing into lethal beasts that attack unprovoked. Wolves already on the field begin to take form, howling into the air, causing the cheer team—predominantly made up of various fae—to scramble. Ellie stumbles to the turf as she’s dropped by her fearful team, abandoning her. She looks up to see what’s happened, only to face her teammate, a turned werewolf, staring back at her. As she shifts her weight to escape, the beast strikes.

With wild eyes, Lathan looks around frantically at the students fleeing, the students changing , and then his boyfriend beside him, writhing, crunched in on himself, as his body, too, shifts.

“ Kylo !” he yells, though he knows it’s too late. And although he doesn’t want to, he knows he has to get away from him. From all of them.

He continues to hiss and seethe as he moves, climbing down a few rows away from Kylo as his body rips and tears behind him. Pulling a hand from his right ear brings him to his knees, the near-silent buzzing consuming him. He grips the back of a seat to pull himself over, but he’s stopped by immense pressure, and then a gory pop . The screams and roars emanating around him muffle down some, ravaged by wet heat now dripping down the side of his neck. He touches it, and brings reddened fingers back to his face. Wide eyes stare at the blood from his burst eardrum, the throbbing ache loud in his head.

Below him, a flash of porcelain. Ellie. He vaults the railing, dropping down about ten feet to the green of the stadium floor, keeping his left hand against his unharmed ear. He charges toward the elf on the ground, toward the fully shifted werewolf salivating above her, and rams his shoulder—and all of his vampiric weight along with it—into the animal. It’s enough force to knock it onto its side, off Ellie, who Lathan can now hear, through the press of his hand, is shrieking.

“Go, Ellie! RUN!” he barks out, but his view of her is blocked by the massive canine bringing itself to its hind feet.

It snarls at Lathan, turning its broad shoulders to face him. Still blocking his ear from the pitch wracking his bones, he hisses back, lip curled over his fangs. I can’t take them all. But I can take one—this one. I can give Ellie a chance.

The mottled wolf raises a clawed paw high in the air, and Lathan juts into its open abdomen, sinking his teeth into the flesh he finds under thick fur. He’s grabbed by the shoulder and tossed, like a mere bug. As he flails to catch himself, both hands shooting under him, into the material of the green floor, he isn’t fast enough to collect himself and prevent that dreaded second pop .

His second eardrum.

He sucks in a sharp gasp, both sides of his head throbbing, his ears trickling warm crimson from their orifices. The world is unnervingly quiet; he knows people are screaming, flesh is tearing, wolves are howling, but he can’t hear it. It’s all amalgamated into a distant, disorienting hum that acts quickly to dizzy him.

Scared by his abrupt deafness, the distraction is long enough that it’s too late by the time he recognizes the heavy thumps padding toward him. As he looks over his shoulder, he’s staring down the werewolf’s maw—jagged, predatory teeth, thick with dripping saliva—just before it clamps down on his waist. A yell rips out from him; he can’t hear it, only feel his throat flare. The beast’s teeth puncture through his coat, his shirt, and deep into his skin. The burn of its tongue laps at his exposed side, its jaw tightening.

And then it pulls away—retracting its teeth like pulling a knife from a stab wound. He gasps again, but this time the air stays in his lungs until he coughs in the wolf’s absence as it trots away from him.

Lathan pushes himself up enough to check—Ellie’s gone. But there’s a lot of blood where she once was a few seconds ago.

His head falls back, the open sky spinning with the disorienting lack of sound, with the pain, with the gross slither of blood out of his ears. He places a hand on his side and grits his teeth. He doesn’t know how bad the wound is, but he can feel the stick of blood, the sting of his touch. In his daze, he briefly wonders why the beast attacked, and then changed its mind.

Legs fly past him. The students don’t stop. Those that can still run are sprinting past anyone hurt, for fear of being hurt themselves if they stop—if they give the surrounding werewolves enough time.

It takes Lathan a dizzying few seconds to realize this. To realize no one is going to help him. No one is going to help each other.

He rolls onto his hip and scans the stadium. Majority of the chaos is across from him, following the students outside. So he takes the chance to stand—wincing against his wounds, a hand outstretched to try and aid his deteriorating balance—and make for one of the locker rooms wedged underneath the elevated seats. He hobbles as fast as he can, pushing past the scream of his side and wrapping his coat tightly around his body in an attempt to discourage the bleeding.

Through a dimly lit tunnel, he finds an open doorway of a locker room. He pulls the door shut behind him, hoping lamely to block out any wolves that may follow his scent, and then drags his feet to the showers, where he slides his back down the tile and hides around a corner.

It takes longer than normal for the metallic of blood to hit him, to work past his shock, his brain busy with pain, with consciousness. Blood that doesn’t belong to him. Sweet blood. Fresh blood. He closes his eyes and inhales it deeply, realizing how close it is, and how much he can smell. He wraps his fingers around the tiled bend of the shower wall and wretches himself forward.

Sat in a splatter of red, Ellie holds one of her legs out straight, stiffly away from her. She’s shaking her hands and clearly sobbing.

“Ellie,” he says out loud, and it must be louder than he intends because he watches her startle, bouncing in place, with her jaw dropped open like she’s screaming.

He waves a hand in a soft apology, and when she recognizes him her face changes, just slightly, and she covers it with her hands as her shoulders shake with more crying. Lathan crawls his way across the floor to her, too exhausted to stand again if he doesn’t need to, and then he’s able to see the damage the werewolf caused. Littered with tears, the flapped skin of her leg is peeled back and curled like the skin of a fruit, exposing bone and muscle. Her foot is barely hanging on to her ankle joint, and the ripped flesh is turning black at the edges. Her fae blood—in this openness, in this amount—is overwhelming to Lathan’s senses, and he gulps back the ache growing in his throat. Keep it together.

When he glances up at her, she’s rambling, crying, hyperventilating. Her lips are moving so fast, stuttering so hard, that he has no hope of reading them.

“Ellie,” he says, trying his best to keep his voice soft, despite not being able to hear it. He touches her shoulder, avoiding where a bruise starts to lift to the surface. When she sucks in enough air to shut herself up, looking at him with wide, traumatized eyes, he turns his head and points to one of his bloodied ears. “I can’t hear you.”

She stares confusedly, her head vibrating back and forth as she looks him over. Oh, my gods , he sees her mouth, and that he can understand. Lathan presses his lips closed, realizing his fangs are still out—his body trying to give him the tools to survive—and he doesn’t want to scare her even more.

Ellie continues to cry. Lathan looks down again at her leg, and while he has no medical training, he can’t imagine how she’s going to keep her leg after this.

After this…

Is there going to be an after?

He pulls his hand from his side to undo his belt and slide it free. He taps a finger on Ellie’s thigh, where there are no wounds, to gently get her attention. She startles again and looks down in a panic.

“I have to tie your leg, okay?” Lathan says, gripping his belt up for her to see. She shakes her head furiously, mouthing no over and over and over again. But she’s so scared that she can’t even look at the mess of her leg, doesn’t try to stop Lathan as he ignores her and snakes the leather under her hamstring to loop it through the buckle. “I’m sorry,” he mutters, and then pulls it tight.

He’s grateful that he can’t hear her scream.

He slides out of his jacket, lays it over Ellie’s trembling body, and sits beside her, spine to the wall. He looks down at his torn shirt, tearing the fabric further to see his bite wounds. Blood bubbles and secretes from the worst of the gashes, so he slaps a hand over them and grunts against the sting, shuffling his legs in protest. Closing his eyes, his head hits the wall. He can’t hear anything, so he won’t hear when the nightmare is over.

When the high-pitch frequency ends.

When the wolves are released from their triggered frenzy.

Lathan’s head has been tilting with vertigo, and now it pixelates with blood loss. He knows he doesn’t have a lot to lose, and it’s escaping from both ears and a bite wound worse than what Kylo did to him months ago.

Kylo . He squeezes his eyes tighter, trying not to worry—and failing. They’re fighting each other. Killing each other, Oh, fuck, please be okay.

Ellie cries for a long time, hiccupping against Lathan’s arm. He becomes so used to it that when she stops, it wakes him from his almost-sleep. Cheeks still shiny with tears, her eyelids have drifted shut. He nudges her with the shoulder she’s fallen against, rocking her unresponsive body.

He curses in his mind, but doesn’t have the strength to try any harder to wake her out of the shock that’s finally settled over her nervous system. The ceiling lights fizzle and stretch until he closes his eyes again, too, and this time they’re too heavy to open anymore. But he curls his fingers around her wrist, keeping track of her pulse—keeping himself awake as much as he’s monitoring her vitals.

It’s okay, Ellie , he thinks to himself, I’m still here.