Page 22

ROMAN

Gwyn collapses, and Caitriona hovers over her.

My uncle laughs, a dark chuckle carving out lines of delight on his pale face.

He’s amused as he allows Sasha to fall to the ground, and he doesn’t seem to hear Nico as my friend and bloodsworn sneaks up behind him, walking quietly around the perimeter of the garage.

There is no looking away just as there is no stopping this.

Because his life is the only price I can afford to pay. If Hale dies, it’s likely Remy does too. I’m betting all my chips on my uncle’s death, hoping it’s enough to stop what feels inevitable.

My uncle dies with a smile on his face.

The hollow-point bullet makes a mess of his chest, shredding and eviscerating as the silver fragments explode.

The ventricles and chambers of his heart are violated in the extreme, and he pitches forward.

He nearly falls on top of Sasha as she scrambles away from him.

He’s not dead though, not entirely, until Nico lunges forward and rips out the friable fragment of what could be considered a heart, and lifts it free from my uncle’s body.

I don’t dare move, unwilling to risk Hale bleeding out beneath me. Getting him to a hospital is paramount, but I don’t know if it’s possible. Sasha is screaming, covered in blood spatter, as she crawls toward her sister.

I’m surprised I managed to order Nico to do this.

The moment he’d come outside, I’d realized he was my only chance.

I had to keep Hale alive, and Gwyn and Emile had to be distracted by one another.

I’d never successfully issued a nonverbal command to someone sworn to me, but I’d given every ounce of concentration, begging and pleading with Ansi herself to make it so Nico could hear me.

Thank fuck he knew where my weapons stash was located, and he’d been smart enough to use the right ammo.

He doesn’t show any interest in having a firearm of his own, and I wasn’t even sure he’d know what to do with it.

But he must have felt my command, tugging him through the greystone.

I wasn’t sure if I was imagining it or not when I’d felt the thread connecting us moving down an alley between my house and my neighbor’s, and I’d been unwilling to hope until I’d heard the faint click of the side gate.

And then I’d held my breath, unwilling to risk whatever tenuous belief I still held that I’d be able to keep my brother alive. I rarely command my friends as a rule, but this was an exception I was willing to make.

Catriona slices her palm open and begins to murmur some kind of incantation under her breath.

She’s unfazed by the death of Emile, and I wonder how much it’s going to cost me to keep her from reporting all of this back to Ketill’s coven.

She drips blood over Gwyn’s unconscious form, and I swear Gwyn’s body starts to levitate. I shout at her to stop.

“I don’t answer to you. I don’t answer to anyone.”

“Don’t you fucking touch her,” Sasha screams, dragging her body across my lawn. I nod at Nico, indicating he should help her.

“You answer to money, and considering I have quite a bit, you should listen when I tell you not to fucking touch her,” I say. Quieter, I offer her all I have to give—desperation.“I need your help.”

The witch ponders what I’m asking for a moment before pulling something out of her pocket. “Fine, but I need this first.” She kneels over Gwyn, and I can’t see around her.

“She just shoved something into her mouth!” Sasha shouts, shoving at Nico to let her go.

“The hell are you doing?” I ask, but Caitriona is already standing back up, shoving what looks like a cotton swab into a vial.

A DNA test, perhaps. Had Gwyn been the witch’s payment from Emile? I wonder if the witch had been concealing herself so Gwyn couldn’t see her. Definitively, I decide it’s none of my fucking business what Caitriona does to Gwyn, as long as she survives long enough to free Remy.

“I charge by the hour with additional add-on fees for?—”

“Can you heal him?” I ask, cutting her off as I look down at the man who has barely convinced me that he isn’t dead by his thready pulse. It’s sluggish, and I don’t think he has many more beats left.

“I’m not a healer. I could try to slow things down, but...” she trails off.

“Then do that,” I say. “Whatever the cost.”

Caitriona sighs. “It’s not worth either of our time.”

“Fix him,” Sasha cries, tears streaming down her face as Nico brings her closer. Her breath steams in the air in front of her, and she won’t stop crying. “This is my fault. Heal him. Lick him or whatever you do when you bite people. Give him your blood to make him...to make him alright,” she says.

“That’s not how it works,” Nico replies, gently setting her down on her uninjured leg. His head tilts to the side as he gives her a pitied look. “He’s so injured that if he gets any vampire blood…”

Sasha stares at him, waiting for him to finish his sentence. He shakes his head, mouth going firm.

“He’ll be turned. He’ll Ascend.”

“Then do it,” Sasha says without hesitation.

Caitriona kneels beside me, smearing blood beneath Hale’s eyes and drawing what I think is a rune in the hollows of his pale cheeks. He doesn’t move, and I don’t think he’s taken a breath in several minutes. His skin has turned blue, and I fear it’s too late.

“You can’t turn him. You can’t make him Ascend,” the witch murmurs, light green eyes locked on mine.

“Why not?” Sasha’s voice quavers as she demands an answer. Without grace, her body slams to the ground beside Hale. She slaps Caitriona’s hand out of the way, gently caressing her dying friend’s face.

“He’s a sorcerer. If he Ascends, he won’t…it won’t.. he won’t want to live.”

“Why not? He’d rather die than be a vampire? I don’t think that’s true. I don’t.. I refuse to believe that. And besides, that’s a decision that he can make later,” Sasha argues.

“He’ll lose a vital part of him—our magic. He’ll prefer death.”

“Then he can decide that for himself,” Sasha argues.

I almost tell Sasha no, that vampires don’t turn people without their consent. You did it with Gwyn, a nasty little voice says in my head, and it sounds an awful lot like Margot. Besides, I want Hale to live just as much as Sasha does—for Remy.

Before I’m given a chance to change my mind though, the sound of a gun clicking into a loaded position takes me by surprise.

It’s my gun, and Sasha is holding it directly against my chest. I glare at Nico, annoyed that he let the pickpocket get the upper hand.

Muzzle against my heart, there’s no moving or else I risk dying.

“I don’t give a fuck. Do it anyway,” she says.

“I can’t.”

“Then who can?” she asks, not even bothering to push the issue with me. I don’t know why I said I can’t do it, because I can. I certainly can fucking do it. But the idea of forcing someone to Ascend again— ever again —after Gwyn is repulsive.

Thankfully, I don’t have to explain myself as she turns the gun on Nico.

She’s got it pointed directly at his dick, and if the situation were any fucking different, I’d be laughing my ass off over his facial expression.

My own balls crawl up inside me over the thought of them being shredded by a hollow-point.

“Can you do it, pretty boy? This is your fucking fault.”

“My fault?” Nico asks, exasperated as he puts his hands on his hips. His eyebrows nearly reach his hairline. “I didn’t slice his throat.”

“No, but you’re the reason Hale got caught. You’re the reason I wasn’t paying attention and got separated from him. This is your fault,” she says, and then she’s pressing the muzzle of my gun against the far too tight jeans my friend insists upon wearing. “You’ll do it or I swear to god.”

Nico sighs then rolls his eyes so forcefully his head tilts back. “Do I have to?”

I say nothing. I won’t force him to create a vampire, knowing all that it entails.

Knowing the connection that is forged, knowing just how much it fucking sucks.

I think of his staunch refusal to turn Gwyn when she’d nearly died—and god, I wish I had listened to him about that.

But the fact he’s willing to consider it now? I don’t know how to interpret it.

“Yeah you fucking have to if you want to hold onto your balls. Do you want to risk them not growing back?” Sasha threatens.

“Wake up Gwyn. Let her decide,” I tell the witch, and Caitriona shakes her head.

“The incantation I used on her won’t wear off for a while. I don’t have the necessary ingredients to undo it.”

“Fuck,” I say, and then despite the fact I don’t want to force this upon him, I turn toward Nico.

I’m tempted to repeat my direction from a few weeks ago, when I’d asked him to help Gwyn Ascend—but I don’t.

This is something I could do myself, but every bone in my body, every tenuous thread of connection between me and Gwyn, tells me that I’ll die if I do it.

So I say nothing. Nico knows what’s at stake now. He knows Remy is on the line, and if he’s willing to Ascend Hale, then I’ll be indebted to him for life.

“Don’t say I’ve never done you any favors, Roman,” he says, and then he’s kneeling on the ground behind me.

I don’t allow my relief to show, getting straight to business. “I have a feeling when I move, he won’t have very long. The blood will?—”

“I know.”

Sasha begins to sob, holding Hale’s hand as tightly as she can. She sits on one side of him and Nico positions himself on the other. Nico bites into his own wrist, and I can smell the fresh blood dripping down his skin.

“Put enough in his mouth so that when I move?—”

“Fuck, Roman, I know. I have Ascended far more people than you, I promise you that.”