Page 42 of The Reveal (Bloodlore #1)

“You must have mistaken me for one of your lost acolytes,” Ariel returns, sounding so deadly it makes me want to hide, and he’s not talking to me. “I bend a knee to no one. Your parlor tricks do not impress me.”

“How about we stop measuring dicks?” Ty interjects. “We all know I’ll win.”

I still haven’t managed to sit all the way up, but for the moment, I decide that’s okay. I lean against Maddox and watch the scene before me as the three of them face off, standing in their little triangle of power.

The vampire king. The werewolf alpha.

And Savi, who seems impervious to the weather and the raw power emanating from the two of them.

“There seem to be failures of communication all around,” Savi says. She sounds tranquil, as usual, but her words still send a shiver of apprehension down my spine.

“Do you mean like your decision to move into Jacksonville, conceal your true identity, and insinuate yourself into the life of two oracles?” Ariel asks her, each word a different bite, sharp and deep. “All without calling a summit?”

Ty snorts at that. “You’re just bitching because you know she wouldn’t let a vampire into her house.”

Savi smiles at Ariel. “It seems as if you found a way to create a more intimate connection, didn’t you?”

I am still woozy, and I’m not sure that whatever Savi did healed me so much as numbed me, but I get that she means Ariel and me. And probably his mark that everyone can see. And there are a lot of things I’d probably want to say about that if I felt better, but I don’t.

Because now that Savi has given me a shot of a sorcerer’s painkiller, I’m remembering other things.

The way that woman held on to me. Her blood-drenched teeth.

And the fact that I think she was smiling , not afraid.

I shudder, and my attention is drawn back to the center of the clearing again.

Now that I’m warmer, it’s easier to focus, but it also means that I’m aware of all the things the pain blocked out.

Not just that woman and her face and what she said to me, but the state of me.

All the clothes I’m wearing are soaking wet, no doubt because of all the crawling and collapsing and flinging myself on the damp earth.

I know better than to get wet on a mountain in the cold, but then again, I wasn’t expecting the crippling headaches.

That my head isn’t currently trying to kill me feels like a miracle.

But I’m beginning to think I might need more than one.

The three of them are standing there, venting their tempers at each other in highly charged yet ferociously careful words. What I see is this trinity of power who—unbeknownst to me until right now—are responsible for everything that’s happened here over the past three years.

Everything.

That tide comes for me again, this time a different kind of pain.

Because there we were, staggering around with no idea what was happening to us, watching friends and neighbors die horrible deaths, and all the while these creatures were ... playing power games?

I feel like I’m having some kind of seizure.

But it must be emotional, because there’s too much wrapped up in it that I can feel. And because I retain consciousness.

There’s the fact that Savi, unlike my other two tenants, is the one Gran talked to. And clearly already knew. That makes more sense now, but I didn’t have to know who Savi really was to understand that she made my grandmother a little calmer. Just by being there. I can’t discount that.

There’s the werewolf alpha himself, who I’m pretty sure is responsible for the fact there have been no zombies in my trash since Maddox moved in.

No stray banshees in the trees, no tunneling goblins.

He might not have approved of what Maddox was doing, or even signed off on it, but he supported her. He supports her and therefore me.

That makes everything complicated enough before I even get to Ariel.

I think of that rush of relief I felt when I found him again in that subterranean hell and how that’s really not something I should feel in his presence, ever. Yet I’m honest enough with myself to admit that the sight of him here has the same effect on me.

I don’t know if I can walk, but I want to run to him.

I’m not willing to look too closely at what that is. Much less what it might mean.

I’m afraid I know. And I don’t accept it.

I won’t accept it.

I pull in a breath. I glance behind me, and I can see the body of that woman on the altar, the still-smoking remains of the fire making her seem to flicker and shift when she isn’t actually moving at all. Nor ever will again.

Looking at her makes me shudder, and the medallion around my neck seems to burn again in commiseration. I remember that terrible blankness in her eyes. I see her mouth wide open, her bloodstained teeth. I can feel, once more, that spiral into darkness.

Even the memory makes me feel cold all over.

She is coming, the woman says in my head once more, but it’s mixed in with too many echoes of that same phrase. Gran’s dark words. That sickening voice in my nightmares.

The world starts to spin again, dark and drunken, and I try as hard as I can not to make the connection that’s right there in front of me—

But there’s no pretending I can’t see it. That it hasn’t been the point of all of this.

Vin?a.

Vin?a is coming.

A dying woman used her last breath to tell me so, and I don’t have to know all the ins and outs of this gruesome monster world to understand that means something.

Almost certainly something bad.

A lot like what’s already happening inside me, because I can feel all my organs again, and not in a good way. It’s more that I’m beginning to feel like I might actually be falling apart from the inside out.

I don’t want to think about that.

Augie’s medallion is so hot that I ought to worry about it scorching my skin and raising welts, but I find I like the reminder. Of him. Of me.

Of the fact that if it hurts, I’m still alive.

Though I’m beginning to wonder if I’m getting off this mountain tonight. Or if that vision was leading me to my own high-country grave.

My medallion burns even hotter and my head starts to feel fuzzy again. I’m having trouble tracking the conversation between the three of them as they stand there, carefully equidistant, as if the harmony they represent can only exist if each of them maintains their own distinct space.

I think that’s pretty funny, but when I have the urge to laugh out loud it comes on so fast that I suspect I’m actually hysterical. That’s no good.

No one wants to be the laughing maniac in the middle of a crime scene.

Though I’m not sure this will ever be a crime scene, since I very much doubt anyone here is going to call in whoever or whatever qualifies as the creepy police.

For awful things that happen on mountaintops because of the full moon and ancient death goddesses and all the rest of this shit that I’ve accepted on one level—that level being that I have no choice and am plagued by terrible visions—but haven’t really thought through.

I also think that I’m losing my shit.

“Here’s the thing,” Ty is saying in that growl of his. “I don’t think the situation is contained.”

“That’s easily enough done.” Ariel inclines his head at Ty. In an exaggerated fashion. “Isn’t that what your bitten minions are for?”

“I’m not talking about cleanup.” Ty jerks his chin at me. “I’m pretty sure that bitch left a little parting gift when she went.”

All three of them turn to look at me then. I can feel Maddox’s gaze on the side of my face.

I respond to all this scrutiny by going very, very still. Like any wise creature would when she suddenly looks out and sees the equivalent of three terrifying birds of prey peering down at her from ... not that far away.

“I don’t need any more gifts,” I protest. “I can barely deal with the visions.”

I decide that it’s imperative that I prove I’m fine, and fast.

Nothing happened tonight, not to me. Despite the fact that I’m wet and tired, headachy, and almost certainly covered in sacrificial blood, I’m basically at the top of my game.

Reports of my own death have been greatly exaggerated, no matter that my insides currently feel pureed, and I just need to show them this.

I need them all to know that I am perfectly fine .

I shift forward and slap my hand on the ground, the very same hand that the woman grabbed, thinking I’ll just vault on up to standing—

And despite all the warnings since I woke up, the grays and the spins and all the terrible pain, I’m completely unprepared for the agony that shoots through me, somehow bright and hot and dark and sick all at once—

I hear Ariel, very clearly, as he says—and loudly—“Fuck this.”

But then everything swirls around, and it doesn’t mess with any gray. It goes black once again, sucking me in fast and hard and deep.

Too fast and too hard to do anything but let it kill me.

Maybe this time for real.