Page 50 of Bloodbane
CHAPTER FIFTY
Never Again
{ G R A Y S O N }
Ruby’s head lolls to the side when I place her on the table. My hand trembles on Ruby’s chest as I close my eyes, focusing my every sense on trying to find a pulse, a beat, the smallest electrical impulse or stuttered breath.
Something.
Anything.
The heartbreaking howl beside me trails into a scream, and my eyes fly open to find Thayne, human, kneeling on the floor. He grabs the table’s edge with shaking arms and pulls himself to a standing position. His eyes are golden, and he has a large gouge ripped into his chest that is healing much too slowly, leaking blood steadily. But his pinched face is fixed on Ruby.
”Fix her!”
I open my wrist again, dripping dark blood onto bright. Nothing happens. The web of black is already bleeding out under my skin. The shifter venom in my blood has turned it thick. Slow. Soon it will begin to decay, turn to ash in my veins. The laceration on my wrist isn’t healing, so how can I hope to heal Ruby?
“Eirik?” Thayne grinds out, still clutching at the table for support. “Why isn’t it working?”
“Oh, shit. Oh, fuck! I’m sorry! I’m so sorry. This is all my fault.” Cooper scrubs the tears from his face. “She’s dead, isn’t she? I killed her. Oh my god. Ruby…”
“She’s not dead,” Thayne barks. “She’s not… Eirik? She can’t be dead.” Thayne’s agony has teeth sharper than any wolf.
I move as swiftly as I can, racing to the sitting room to grab a large syringe before rushing back to the table. I slide the needle into my wrist and fill the syringe before thrusting it directly into Ruby’s heart and depressing the plunger. Carefully, aware how easily I could crush Ruby’s chest cavity, I press down—again and again and again—trying to pump my blood through Ruby’s body.
“It’s not working. Why isn’t it working?”
“It will.” It has to. There’s no other choice.
“Listen to me. She’s going to…” Thayne swallows, blinking wetly. "Ruby is dead. Your blood can’t heal her now, but there’s still time. There’s only one option left.”
Never again.
I shake my head. “I can’t.”
“Yes, you can. I know what you think, I know, but you’re wrong. You’re not a monster and Ruby won’t be, either. Life is a choice, remember? Fate put her in your path twenty years ago and again now. It brought you here, brought us here, together, for a reason. You are meant to save her. You were always meant to save her. You have to turn her.”
Never again.
“I can’t.”
“Please.”
“Thay…”
“Save her or damn her. She lives or dies by your hand, Eirik. No one else… can help her… now.”
With a pained gasp, Thayne slips from the table and tumbles to the floor. His eyes drift closed and immediately begins to phase. Skin shifts and contracts as muscles mutate with practiced efficiency. Odd snaps, like knuckles cracking, fill the room as bones break and transform, and soft hair pushes through flesh, forcing up in patches until there’s no skin left to see. Thayne’s whole body shudders, curling in on himself before his neck arches back and his skull deforms, pushing outward, elongating until finally, a large white wolf is stretched out unconscious on the floor.
The rhythmic thumping of Thayne’s heart is strong and steady. I turn my attention back to Ruby.
Thayne doesn’t understand what he’s asking. It’s not his hands that Ruby’s blood will stain if this doesn’t work.
Never again.
Unwanted memories burn before my open eyes. My roar fills the silent cabin as indecision tears at me.
Even the strongest will succumbs to the thirst. I won’t have strength enough left to restrain Ruby. If she wakes and slaughters every living thing in sight, I will be powerless to stop her. When the thirst is sated and the fog lifts, she will see what she’s done... what she’s become. She’ll surrender herself to the sunrise. I will have damned her soul to Hel’s keeping for naught. And I will follow her down. Just like I should have done all those years ago.
But if she doesn’t wake…
It’s a thought I can’t bear. My thoughts splinter dangerously.
Some small part of me is still waiting, hoping my blood combined with Ruby’s new lycan healing will yield a miracle. And maybe it can. With a little help.
It’s been so long since I’ve activated my venom glands that I worry they’ve atrophied. Uncertainty flickers through me, but after a minute, I can feel the viscous liquid flowing to my fangs.
I collect a large bead on the pad of my finger. It’s opalescent in the warm light of the kitchen, sparkling like a pearl instead of the death sentence it is… or, more accurately, a life sentence of death.
With a trembling hand, I press the shiny drop of fluid to the puncture mark in Ruby’s chest.