Page 56 of Taste of Forever (Vampires of Sanguine #3)

Heather

“ A nything?”

I shook my head, fighting tears of frustration.

The Blood ‘til Dawn vampires and I were sitting in a vacant lot across from the gas station where the kind attendee had let me use her phone. I had insisted on them not making themselves visible to her, considering she’d recognize me and would be alarmed that I was surrounded by a bunch of scary-looking guys.

“I don’t know what to feel. How am I supposed to sense him?” I looked at Cyan as if I hadn’t asked the question a dozen times already.

“You just do. I’m not sure how else to explain it.” He rubbed a hand over his buzz cut. “Like when you know he’s in bed next to you without seeing him. You can feel how near he is, right?”

“I mean yes, but there’s way more physical and contextual clues to that.” I rubbed my leg, nursing an odd ache above my knee that seemed to come from nowhere.

“Can you try turning off the science part of your brain?” Des suggested. “I know it’s hard not to rely on logic and what you know to be true, but there is magic to the blood bond. Turn off all your filters and try to tap into the magic.”

“There’s no fucking magic out in this world.” Rhain rubbed his massive arms as though he were chilly. “The air here feels…wrong. Can you feel the difference, Heather? Between here and Sanguine? What if you focused on that?”

It was a good idea. Despite his rough, intimidating appearance, Rhain’s suggestion was spoken gently. He hadn’t said a word on the drive out here and I convinced myself he was pissed off at me and everything else in the world. But maybe I was wrong.

“It does feel different. I don’t know how though. The air in Sanguine does feel…not humid exactly, but heavier somehow.”

“That’s the magic.” Des wiggled his fingers.

“What time is it?” Thorne grunted.

Cyan checked his phone. “3:17 a.m.”

“Under two hours.” Thorne leveled a heavy gaze on me. “We need something, Heather.”

“I know. Fuck! Trust me, I know. I want him back more than anything. I just don’t know how.”

“Putting pressure on her won’t help,” Des said. “We’re all worried, but she’s his blood mate. She’s already frantic enough.”

“We can just start driving,” Rhain suggested. “Split up, take a few different mountain roads and see what we find. Maybe she’ll start sensing him if we’re closer.”

“Great. Sounds like our only option anyway.” Thorne turned abruptly and headed for his motorcycle. Cyan and Des did the same, while Rhain and I climbed into the van.

“Fuck.” I brought my knees up and rested my forehead on them. “I wish I knew what I was doing wrong.”

Rhain’s seatbelt clicked into place next to me, then he turned the engine on. “It’s not your fault. You don’t know what you don’t know.”

I turned my head on my knees to look at him. His gaze was on his phone, scrolling through part of a map.

“Do you have a blood mate or…anyone special?” Now that he was talking, it made me realize how little I knew about him. He was definitely the most closed-off one of the group.

“No, I don’t.” Rhain didn’t pause in his scrolling.

“Any reason why?”

“Don’t want one.” He set the phone in the holder on the dashboard, then started to pull out of the parking space.

Before I could distract myself with more personal questions about him, a shooting pain zipped up my left leg. I clutched it with a small cry of pain, thoroughly confused and alarmed. It was not the same leg where my knee had been hurting.

“Heather, are you okay?”

“I don’t know,” I gasped. “I don’t…fuck…I don’t know what this is.”

“Muscle cramp?”

I shook my head, squeezing my eyes shut against the pain. It felt worse than a cramp. I’d had plenty of those during my dancing days. It felt like I was being stabbed right in the thigh muscle by a red-hot knife.

“Hey. I’m gonna reach over you and recline the seat, okay?”

“God, what the fuck!” I clutched my leg, trying to sit still as Rhain awkwardly reached over my lap for the lever on the far side of the seat. “Feels like my leg’s on fire.”

“I’m sorry. I don’t know how to help you.” Rhain looked truly stricken when my eyes peeked open. His phone was at his ear, his gaze averting when the call picked up. “Hey Thorne, something’s wrong with Heather. She’s in a lot of pain all of a sudden. I don’t know. Nothing happened.”

I started to hyperventilate, my breaths coming in short and ragged while my mind repeated, What the fuck? What’s happening to me?

“I don’t know, but there’s no way we’re driving up a mountain like this,” Rhain said. “She probably needs a hospital, a human one.”

“Ah!” Pain exploded in my left shoulder and I clutched it on a choked gasp. It felt like the flesh should be torn and ragged, blood seeping through my fingers, but there was nothing.

“She’s having a heart attack or something, I dunno! But I’m dropping her off at the nearest emergency room because…”

My vision and hearing faded in and out. I felt underwater—cold and disassociating but also burning hot and painfully present. The pain was so intense I thought I was going to die.

Just for a second, Rhain and the van melted away and my surroundings changed. It was quick as a flash, but I thought I saw…Soren?

Soren holding a bloody knife and a murderous look on his face.

The pain was so intense but so was my determination to fuck with Soren, to make this psychopathic piece of shit feel as small as possible. He had no fucking sense of humor, so it was honestly pretty easy. At least Heather was far away. That was all I could truly ask for.

Just as quickly as it came on, the pain, Soren, and the basement subsided, and the van came back into view.

But they weren’t completely gone.

I felt like I could reach out and touch them. Not with any physical sense, but with a type of knowing. Like that place and those feelings were on the end of a thread I could tug.

Laith! The realization was as liberating as it was heartbreaking. I was feeling Laith. Feeling his emotions and his pain as Soren tortured him.

“Hang on, Heather.”

The van started to move again. My hand shot out and landed on Rhain’s arm. “Wait.”

His heavy foot hit the brake and the van lurched to a stop. “You okay?”

I was absolutely not, now that I knew what Laith was going through. But I needed to go straight there.

“I know how to find him.” My voice somehow came out stronger than I felt. “Get out of this lot and go straight through that traffic light.”

A smile touched Rhain’s lips as he cranked the steering wheel. “Fuck yeah. Now we’re in business.” He nodded at the cell phone. “Call Thorne and tell him to follow us, yeah?”

I made the call and then sat back, trying to keep my worry in check. We had to make it in time to save him. We just had to.

The van’s dashboard clock read 4:21 a.m. when Rhain pulled the van over to the side of the road several houses down from the cabin. Dawn would come just after 5 a.m, and I was a ball of nerves in the passenger seat.

I couldn’t see where they kept Laith from here, but knew it was just over the crest of the hill in front of us. My stomach remembered the climbing sensation from when Soren’s men brought me, and the descent when I left.

Laith’s presence felt close, but weak. I hadn’t felt any emotions or even pain sensations from him for at least fifteen minutes. He wasn’t dead, though. He couldn’t be. I would know, wouldn’t I?

“We’ll have to leave cleanup for another night,” Thorne was saying through Rhain’s phone speakers. “And hope human cops don’t find any remains in the meantime. Get in, kill them all, grab Laith, and get the fuck out.”

“I’m ready.” Rhain was strapped with weapons, mostly knives. “Where do you want Heather to be?”

“She stays in the van.”

“I’ll need to give him blood right away, right?” I piped up. “What’s the best way to do that?” I would be useless in a fight, but my blood was literally key to Laith’s survival, and I intended to be ready.

There was a pause on the phone as Thorne considered. “Hang out in the back. That’ll probably be the safest place to put him.”

“Got it. You guys be careful,” I said. “I’ll be here.”

“Keep the van parked and the doors locked,” Thorne added. “I don’t expect any humans to escape but in case one does, I don’t want them getting to you or sabotaging our vehicle.”

“Got it.”

“Let’s go, Rhain.”

Rhain ended the call and placed the van keys in the other cupholder. “Unlock only when you see me.”

I nodded. “Please bring him back to me.”

“I will.”

Rhain pulled a small knife from some hidden sheath and pointed it toward a spot on his forearm. Faster than I could blink, he cut two small symbols just below his elbow. His skin reddened and swelled angrily around the shallow cuts.

“In our language, these letters translate to the phonetic L and H sounds,” he said, sheathing the knife. “This is my vow, Heather. To ensure you and Laith are together again.”

My throat closed up with emotion as I remembered Laith telling me how solemnly his clan took their vows.

“Thank you.”

Rhain nodded curtly before slipping out of the van and jogging into the darkness.

Eerie silence settled in as I drew my knees up, hugging around them. The only illumination came from a few dim porch lights in the spaced out cabins. I couldn’t see Rhain or any of the other vampires. It was like they’d melted into the shadows.

My hand rested over my chest, the edge of my palm pressing against the tender bite marks I’d asked Laith to not heal.

I tried to listen, to feel him through our connection that went far beyond a chemical bond.

I didn’t know when I’d accepted our connection as something more than physical chemistry, as something magical, even fated, but after he showed me what real love could be like, I’d believe in anything that would get him back.

That connection now felt like a tender thread unraveling while I desperately grasped to keep it in tact. Every eternally long minute I waited in silence put more stress on that thread and brought it closer to severing.