Page 42 of Chapel at Ender’s Ridge (Ender’s Calling #1)

“Sitara,” he hissed, fighting her to bring all four hooves to the ground.

Between the jarring lurch of his saddle, his attention snapped to twigs crackling behind a jagged outcropping.

Sitara pranced in a circle, tail high, and before she could begin again, he leapt off and set her loose with a toss of reins over the pommel.

Goddamn horse. Should’ve left you with the general and you would’ve got sent to the knackery instead of being a problem.

A groan wheezed through the wind, carried from the rocks. Decker’s scalp prickled as he searched the red-tinted night.

Sandalwood and incense.

Another groan, quieter. Pained, but not to the point of bleeding dry .

The wind whistled through the gully and cut into his thin shirt. Despite himself, he shivered.

Laurie rose from the sagebrush.

The heavy form of a man lay beneath him, unmoving.

“You’ll never forgive yourself if you kill him,” Decker said softly.

Laurie hissed, fangs glinting.

No blood.

Decker breathed a sigh.

The man groaned when Laurie’s fingers tightened in the collar of his shirt.

“Come back home.” Decker eased towards him. “Safine’s been working on the stuff you brought back from Whitton. Some sort of blood he concocted—if it works, you might not have to kill.”

Laurie shook his head, shuffling backwards and dragging the man with. Cloth pouches trailed from the man’s pockets, stained red, orange, purple. Clay from the striped hills.

“I—I have to, I have to. This is what you made me, this is how I am.”

“It’s not how you have to be. Not how we have to be,” Decker said softly. Surfaced memories like corpses in a lake would save them.

His kind— their kind—wasn’t meant to be alone. Atrophied willpower, murky recollections of the past, all prevented with a gathering of people like him, if Decker had just trusted who he had become.

“I was wrong. Let me show you what I remember, Laurie.”

“No. No—I need—I need to eat,” he muttered, his tongue darting out in an attempt to moisten his lips. His grip loosened on the man’s collar .

Decker struck while he could.

The force knocked Laurie to the side and prickly brush ripped at their arms. A snarl rippled from Laurie as he scrambled up, teeth bared and gaze darting to the still form behind Decker.

He swayed in place, a tortured expression that was so painfully Laurie clawing to the surface. “I don’t want to…I don’t want to do this.”

“There’s another way, Laurie.” Slowly, Decker crouched, never leaving his gaze. The man’s pulse fluttered under his lips when he brought his wrist to his mouth. “Be patient,” he murmured.

He hadn’t fed since Nathan. He’d restrained himself enough to save Laurie. Now he had to restrain himself enough to save him a second time.

Sharing blood was a tenuous, intimate thing, and more experimental than Whitton’s manufactured blood, but he couldn’t let Laurie kill. Not tonight.

The artist tasted like aged paper when Decker sunk his fangs into the vein.

I pray I’m right, and you can return home to make your paint with these hills.

Laurie watched with a starved hunger in the slack curve of his jaw. Fists clenched at his side, feet rooted to the ground.

The artist's heartbeat slowed, steady, pulsing. The blinding need to kill, to consume , never surfaced. Decker trembled when he pulled away and smoothed his thumb over the bite.

He was alive. All those years, all that death, and all he needed was another like him to ease his thirst. Another like Laurie.

Standing, he approached until he and Laurie were chest to chest, a twin pair of flame-red eyes and shaky hands .

Decker tilted his head to the side in silent invitation.

Laurie’s touch ghosted up his arm, fragile and cautious. His breath skimmed over his neck when he leaned in, hovering above the vein pulsing with fresh blood not yet absorbed.

“Will it hurt?” he whispered.

Decker’s lips brushed his temple. “Be gentle.”

His hand slotted against the other side of Decker’s neck, tangled in the wind-blown strands of black. A wavering breath slid over his skin.

It’s just Laurie.

Decker closed his eyes. This time, he was prepared.

He latched onto Laurie’s arm until he felt bone under his fingertips.

Pain ripped through him like Elias’s fire and he grit his teeth, fully held up by Laurie as he drank, hands against his spine, pressing closer, closer.

The heady rush lapsed, edging away like receding water until pain disappeared and his body sagged like one of the drunkards at the saloon.

Too much. He needed to retain some blood.

Decker gasped out his name, scrabbling at Laurie, fingers hooked into the corner of his lips until he pried his mouth away, leaving a leaking gash.

Ragged breaths left Laurie’s parted, blood-rimmed mouth.

Eyes bleary, Decker held his head to stop the spinning. He’d done it. Fed without killing. They would be alright.

Laurie dragged the back of his hand across his face, leaving a red smear. He blinked, lips parting when his gaze flickered to the unconscious man. Stumbling back, blood pooled from the fang sank into his lip.

“Laurie. ”

“No. No—I can’t—”

“ Laurie. ” Decker reached for him. This time Laurie didn’t flinch away. He gathered his bloodied, torn hands in his own. “I will take care of you like you are my own, I will let no harm come to you, as long as you will have me, Laurie Lane,” Decker whispered.

“As long as I will have you?” Laurie’s voice cracked. “And after that? After the sun destroys me in front of my chapel I cannot enter?” He plunged ahead, heedless. “Why did you do this to me?”

“You have a life here.”

“I had unrealized ambitions, not a life.”

“It was enough—”

“Why did you turn me?”

“We needed you,” Decker said.

“Bullshit.” Laurie paled, like the fear of damnation from a filthy mouth was worse than what he had become.

“Laurie—”

He ripped his hands away, clenching them. “Why’d you do it?” Voice pitched higher. “Why did you make me? Why did you make me feel this? Why—”

“I was afraid ,” Decker hissed, the all-consuming fear finally snarling to life. “I am so goddamned tired of always trying to be the better man. I am a selfish man, Laurie. I am a selfish man, and I am not sorry. A better man would have let you die and given you a decent Christian burial.”

Saving him was selfish and indulgent and ruining, and life would never be the same. Life wouldn’t have been the same without him. Ender’s Ridge wouldn’t have been the same, even if they managed to survive Elias a second time.

Clouds rumbled across the darkening sky .

The ninth plague.

Laurie sniffed, bowing his head and scrubbing his face with the heel of his hand. He was silent for a long moment, shifting in the sand. Laces from his shoe snagged on the rocks, the other lost in the hills.

Finally, small, hesitant, Laurie asked, “Would you do it again?”

Body broken, the choice of accepting a life without him, or welcoming a life with the uncertainty of hatred. The choice was always clear.

“We can only create one in our lifetime. I would find another way for you. A second chance to be remade,” Decker murmured.

A quiet sigh escaped Laurie and he took his hands once again. His flesh knitted back together as slowly as his words. “I thought dying would fix me. It’s made it worse.”

Decker’s lips curved gently. “There’s no cure for wanting a man in your bed. Not even death.”

Laurie almost smiled, but it soon faded, replaced with a tentative, hopeful flash. “After this is over, and we’re neighbors again,” he said, “we could be something more.”

There’s the preacher I know.

“We could.” Decker brushed his thumb along his lightly calloused palm. “You have forever to realize your ambitions. I have forever to make up for the time missed.”

Laurie smiled, and his curls tousled over his face in the gathering wind.

He would never see his face bathed in sunlight again, but Decker didn’t mind.

Laurie was just as beautiful in the moonlight.