Page 74 of Immortal Bastard (The Order of Vampires)

“Shh!” she said, as if that would help her concentrate. He was in her head, but not making a sound. The faint chirp simpered again and she had to strain to hear it. Her senses pinpointed the location and she pivoted, bolting in the direction of the pained cry.

“Delilah!”

She ignored Christian’s call, her focus devoted to the faint wail of distress that pulled her deeper into the wooded tree line and away from their intended path. He shouted for her again, but she kept moving. The cries became easier to follow once under the shade of the tall cypresses.

Her feet moved swiftly over the layer of fallen pine needles, shots of emerald, evergreen, and piercing shards of sunlit blue blurred at her periphery. Her heart raced as she zeroed in on the weak cry, and nothing else registered as she moved faster than she had ever moved in her life.

Delilah wait for—

The snap of their severed mental connection came after a swift, subconscious command she hadn’t realized she could order. Her body shifted into fight or flight and she put all her focus on the pained cry howling from the woods.

The hollow of her mind where Christian’s presence had been, flooded with new information that guided her toward the wounded creature. She hunted the sound, her heart racing as if she could sense the creature's pain and fear, somehow processing it as her own.

When another cry shrieked, there was a fatal ring to the pained chirp. “No!” She doubled her speed. Christian’s desperate call for her to stop was as lost as the wind through the trees.

She stilled, turning left, then right. Her head quirked to the side, eyes closed, ear tilted toward the canopy above as she listened, but the pained cry had stopped. She sniffed the air, her brain cataloging and sorting a thousand sources in the span of a second. Her senses fanned out into the woods, blanketing the forest floor in search of the tiny creature. When she caught the slight murmur of its fluttering heart, she bolted, not stopping until she located the injured fledgling.

Crashing to her knees, careless of the brush that created little cushion for her landing, she leaned over the broken bird. Her shoulders rounded as she gently scooped the delicate critter into her palms.

“It’s okay. I’ve got you.” She cradled its fragile wings in her open hands as she mumbled words of compassion to soothe the animal. Its tiny heart beat so fast within its small breast, she did not wish to frighten it more. “I won’t hurt you.”

The tiny, green warbler lay on its side, eyes wide, beak open as it tried to sing one last song. “No,” she gasped, rocking her body to soothe the poor, dying creature.

Cushioned by the bed of needles and detritus, she stared into the bird’s beady, black eyes as they bulged with panic. “Be calm. I have you,” she whispered, drawing the wounded bird close to her heart and protectively warming it. It must have fallen from the nest.

The underbrush crunched, and her attention snapped to the trees, protectively using her body to shelter the tiny bird from whatever approached. Christian stood at a distance, watching her with a peculiar look.

Her tear-filled gaze lifted to his. “I think it’s dying.”

Christian nodded silently.

She turned her helpless gaze back to the nestling. “We have to help it.”

Its feathered belly puffed as it quickly breathed, panicked in those last moments of life. Its beak opened on a silent cry, too weak to go on. Life escaped its tiny feathered body, and there was nothing she could do to prevent such an inevitable end.

A broken sob fled her throat as a tear rolled down her cheek. Its little heart stopped and the life vanished from its black eyes. She held the unresponsive feathered body to her heart and wept, the loss deeply personal, far beyond her usual love for animals.

Christian lowered to the ground and gently pulled her to him. She needed his comfort in that moment. “It is life, pintura.”

“He was only a baby,” she cried, pressing her face into his neck.

Christian gently ran his hand over her back. “It’s in God’s hands.”

“It was just an innocent fledgling.”

“Birds are fragile creatures—”

“No.” She shouldered out of his hold, no longer finding his touch comforting. “I don’t want to live in a world where baby birds die and vampires live forever. How is that fair?”

His startled expression unnerved her. She sensed his judgment and his desire to enlighten her, but she was sick of his version of reality. Why was she here? What good was this new existence if she would only outlive everything else? She couldn’t bear the thought of surviving while every beautiful thing around her eventually died.

“Delilah, there’s a natural order we all must follow. God’s plan—”