Page 66
K IDAN POUNDED ON THE BARRED ENTRANCE TO THE CRYPT WITH one hand, the other carrying GK’s journal. A frightened Yusef opened the door, face gripped with terror.
Kidan’s vision tunneled, darkness swallowing everything else except the figure in the middle of the room. Blood pooled beneath GK’s body, the chain of finger bones outlining his head like a crown.
Kidan stumbled and collapsed to her knees, a sob tearing out of her. She reached out to his drained cheek but couldn’t touch him.
GK.
The one soul who wanted to protect them, the one soul who deserved all the happiness in this world.
Dead.
His chest wasn’t rising or falling.
Breathe, please .
Tears flooded her eyes. Two stab wounds, one in his lower stomach and the other along his ribs, poured out dark blood in a continuous flow, fading into his black shirt. Her trembling fingers sank into them.
Her voice came out mangled and raw, almost inhuman. “Why?”
Slen crouched next to her, the scent of black coffee and rosin cutting the damp air of the crypt.
There was a bloodied knife curled in her gloved grip. Yusef had withdrawn into himself in the corner, mumbling, head in his bloodied hands.
“ Why? ” Kidan’s voice cleaved like death. “Why did you two do this?”
“There was no other way.” Slen held her gaze with brutal intention. In those damned eyes, Kidan’s world fell apart. “I had to make sure he wouldn’t call the authorities.”
She offered the knife to Kidan like poisonous berries. “It’s like you said. We share our crime, we share our mistakes.”
Kidan didn’t understand at first. They wanted her to break GK’s skin, complete a third knife wound. Kidan recoiled from the blade, from them, and saw them for what they truly were.
Savages.
She was in league with people who’d cut down a friend for their own sake. There was no redemption here, no forgiveness for such an act. They were hurtling into the depths of hell.
“Take it.”
In a storm of fury, Kidan seized the knife and yanked Slen to her feet. Slen’s neck stretched under its sharp edge, eyes split wide.
“Kidan! What are you—”
Kidan raged with enough venom that any words of protest from Yusef died immediately. “After everything, you still don’t understand.”
She vibrated with such violent intensity that Slen’s soft skin beaded with a pinprick of blood.
“You’ve killed us all.”
Slen blinked, studying Kidan’s shaking form. “He wanted to turn us in.”
“And?” Kidan yelled, making her flinch. “You robbed him of finding us, of finding himself.”
While Kidan’s tongue was razor-sharp, her face was in complete anguish, tears coating her lashes. This kept Slen confused and still. The tear in Kidan’s heart was unbearable.
Kill her.
Her body locked. The voice was stronger now, and she couldn’t fight it off. The blade pushed forward.
“Kidan?” Genuine worry twisted Slen’s face.
Kill her. Kidan shook her head wildly. None of them should leave this place alive.
Yusef’s voice trembled. “Let her go, Kidan.”
Kidan couldn’t. Tears glided down her cheeks. Slen choked against the pressure. A thin line of blood soaked into Kidan’s thumb.
“Stop it!” Yusef shouted.
“And you?” Kidan barked at him. “Why did you do this?”
Yusef’s eyes were red, voice lost like a child’s. “I…”
“Why shouldn’t we all die here?” Kidan demanded.
He didn’t dare speak. There was no answer.
Kidan shoved Slen away with disgust and sank down to the floor. GK’s brown face had lost color, becoming a pallid yellow. His warm eyes would never reflect light again.
How could they?
Yusef slid down to a crouch. They stayed there, having no more to say and far too much to feel. For half an hour, maybe more, none of them spoke. They’d torn open something too horrific to explain and lost themselves. Driven by control, creativity, and revenge, they’d lost the only thing that had let them survive all these months.
Kidan had known it first, this power the three of them had, a shield made to protect them. They’d saved her life. Under protection and in defense of their actions, she’d learned not to loathe herself.
Yusef mourned without tears, eyes haunted and absently running his finger along GK’s journal pages. Slen played a tune silently with her fingers.
“He didn’t fight us.” Yusef’s voice was a frail, confused whisper. “He just stayed still. As if he always knew we would do this to him.”
Kidan fought against this image of helplessness, but it was no use. It would haunt her every dream from now on. They’d murdered him when he wasn’t even fighting back.
There was no saving them. No saving herself.
Kidan rose to her feet without control, grip tight on the knife. She’d do it quickly, painlessly, and be done with it.
But she couldn’t take another step, an equally strong force rooting her in place. Her bones jittered like they were caught between two rotating walls. The more she pulled, the deeper the snares set in. Her entire body whimpered. She’d remain in this frozen crypt forever, neither dead nor alive, always half of something.
Please. Please, help me. No one heard her plea. Yusef and Slen remained unaware of how close she was to snapping. She wanted to warn them to run like hell, but her mouth wouldn’t open.
A pathetic, desperate sound rattled from her lips.
Yusef lifted his head. “Kidan?”
It was a mistake to speak her name with so much familiarity and care. Where was this concern for GK? At once, the snares released and fury set in. She marched toward him, knife shaking.
I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry we all have to die––
You think death will free you from this. It will burn hotter than any sun, that nothingness.
She stilled at once. They were his words, of all people, drifting into her from the suffocating dark.
She wavered on the spot, shutting her eyes against Yusef’s confused expression. Kidan imagined Susenyos close. The shape of his body leached the savage cold from the crypt. Soft rain and burning wood lulled her into his scent. He removed her fingers one by one, gently, whispering along the shell of her ear and sending tremors down her spine.
I don’t know what to do , she pleaded in her mind.
Forgive them and forgive yourself.
They killed him.
It was quiet. So quiet she was afraid he’d disappeared.
An immortal is in love with life. I can’t bear to see the end of it. Mine or anyone else’s I care about.
The knife clattered to the floor. Kidan gasped as if coming out of drowning water. She wiped her nose on her sleeve, the answer coming clearly to her.
“Forgive me,” she whispered to GK.
Slen and Yusef lifted their heads. Kidan spoke with a hoarse voice.
“We’re going to save him. He’s going to become a vampire.”
They stared at her like she’d gone mad. Maybe she had. But this death was unacceptable, sacrilegious. One life hadn’t been taken today. All of them were fighting to live the moment he stopped breathing.
“It’s too late.” Slen furrowed her brows. “He’s dead.”
“There’s more than one way to transform into a vampire.” She spoke slowly.
“No.” Slen straightened at once. “Death transformation? Absolutely not.”
Yusef rose to his feet slowly, a tightness that could be mistaken for hope ringing in his voice.
“Where will you even find a vampire to give up their life? Uxlay will never let you perform a death transformation.”
Kidan had already decided. “The Nefrasi. I’ll find out where they are.”
Stunned silence descended upon them.
Yusef finally spoke. “What are you talking about? The faction that took your sister?”
“I’ll find out where they are,” she repeated with force, pulling out her phone. “I don’t have time to explain. We only have a few hours before we lose him.”
Kidan remembered GK’s lesson. He needed dranaic blood infused into his heart before it was unable to accept it.
The others remained still, not erupting into action as she expected them to.
She fixed them with a frightening look. “You’re both going to help me save him, or so help me God, I will end us all.”
“That’s not it,” Yusef said quietly. “He’d rather die than turn into a vampire like this.”
Kidan had believed that too, once. Choosing death over a wretched life was better, honorable. But fuck an honorable life.
GK would learn to love himself. She’d help him do so.
His spilled blood dried around the edges.
“A few hours,” she repeated like a prayer and a curse. “We’re bringing him back.”
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