Chapter Twenty-Five
Sera loaned me a pair of socks and stretchy leggings. The leggings were small, but I managed to cover most of my exposed skin. I was tying my shoes, feeling slightly more in control, when I was struck with a premonition like a knife to the chest.
I gasped.
Seb. Something was wrong.
“What’s the matter?” Sera said.
“Something’s happening. To Seb. Something terrible.”
“But how? He’s at the negotiation. There’s only the three of them inside, and Camille, Thor, and Nikos are outside the building to make sure there’s no cheating.”
“I don’t know.” I sprang to my feet and began to pace, trying to put my finger on what was off. A bad feeling, yes, but I’d already felt bad. How was this different?
The picture of Seb, once strong in my mind’s eye, was fast losing color saturation. Its intensity was fading like a bleached towel. Like it was being leached of its reality.
Like Seb was dying.
“Seb’s in trouble.” It rang in the marrow of my bones. “I have to get to him.” I shrugged into my backpack and grabbed the gun case.
“We can’t. There are ten kinds of horrid for interrupting ritual. We can’t enter the Bargaining Rights chamber until they let us in. He’s okay, Brie. All the Roller-Blayd Hall doors are locked, and the Alliance is patrolling outside. Even without weapons, nothing will get past them.”
“I don’t care.” I’d let my fears keep me from trying to connect with Seb until it was too late. Cold shafted my belly. Almost too late. I was not going to let fear get in the way now. “I’m going to see for myself.”
I should have pushed past his sadness and made him explain to me exactly why love weakened him, figured out a way to help.
Too late.
Not too late, almost. I had to believe that.
“Brie,” Sera shouted from behind. “Wait!” Panting, she caught up. “Oh, hon, it’s okay. He’ll be okay.”
It was the first I realized I was crying.
“I love you, but it makes me vulnerable.” Seb had looked so sad. “Feelings are the enemy of staying alive.”
Seb didn’t need me lost, scared, and vulnerable.
He needed my strong, forthright self, running at life full throttle.
Dashing the tears from my cheeks, I pushed myself to go faster. “Yes. He’ll be all right,” I said firmly to both of us. “Because I’ll make it that way. Call your brother. Ask him to bring weapons, especially ones that’ll handle vamps.”
“Weapons are forbidden.”
“Even if this is an emergency?”
“Brie, if we bring weapons anywhere close, Chicago will belong to Owun. But I’ll call Bruno.”
Okay. I wouldn’t tell her about the case in my hand, then.
Sera slid out her cell phone as she trotted alongside me. A moment later, she said, “It’s me. Call me as soon as you get this.” Then she slid the phone away. “He didn’t answer.” Her brows were tight with worry. “He doesn’t ever not answer.”
“Damn.” My fear for Seb expanded to Sera’s brother.
When we got to Roller-Blayd Hall, vampires were tearing into each other with fangs and claws like angry wolves.
Sera’s husband, Thor, and Spartan mountain Nikos were in the thick of it, but I recognized other Meiers Corners vampires fighting, too. Camille. Her second lieutenant, Rebecca. Solomon Stark of Stark and Moss funeral home. Drusilla.
Fear turned to sheer terror. It wasn’t my imagination. Something was very wrong.
“Thor.” Sera kicked into a sprint toward her husband.
“Sera, no!” Thor peeled away from the fight to intercept her. I ran toward them.
“What happened?” Sera cried. “This was supposed to be peaceful negotiations.”
“Treachery,” Thor exploded. He wore his usual jeans and weapons vest, but the vest was distressingly empty. “No sooner had the door locked after Rikare than a wave of Cleomenes’s vamps arrived—half in gas masks.”
“Gas masks?” Cold spread through my stomach.
“We called for backup then intercepted the main force. They had a couple magazines of silver-bullet cartridges, but we managed to evade them. We’ve been locked fighting with them ever since.”
“I have to get into the building,” I pleaded. “I know tradition doesn’t allow it—”
“Fuck tradition,” Thor snarled. Normally he was the quiet sort, intelligent and observant, not often putting himself forward. But now he practically spat his anger. “We’d be inside already, if we could. Despite our best efforts, that group of thugs with gas masks got in—and a lot of nasty-smelling air rolled out. And when Camille misted in after them, it was only a few seconds before she misted back out, coughing. She’d gotten dizzy enough that she couldn’t find the door to let us in. In fact, she barely made it out, and she was reeling around for a good minute. We can’t mist in and open the door because there’s some sort of drug that incapacitates us.”
Cold, severe enough to burn, sliced my stomach. “I have to get to Seb. If the air is drugged… We have to get the door open.” I started for the building. “Break it down if we have to.”
Thor stopped me with a hand on my arm. “We can fight through the vampires to the door. But there’s six of them for every one of us. Every time we try to break the door down, those thugs fight like crazy to pull us away. It’ll take too long to beat the door in. Unless we can unlock one, I’m afraid it will be too late.”
“Open the lock?” I set down the gun case and threw it open, revealing Seb’s guns, knives, and other deadly things. “Seb has a lock-pick gun in here.”
Sera groaned. “Brie…no weapons.”
But Thor took one look inside and smiled. “Hell, yeah. I can use this.” He snatched out a gun. “And this.” He plucked up a magazine loaded with silver bullets, set it in the handle, and shot it home. Then he slid it, most of the knives, and more ammunition into slots on his vest.
“Okay.” I picked up the lock-pick gun and a needle. “Let’s go.”
Gently, Thor plucked them from my hand. “You’re not trained. Let one of us do it.” He reached inside the case, got a couple other parts, and fastened the needle on the gun. Then he got a thin, double-ended tension wrench.
“I practiced a little.” I could still help. I grabbed extra needles and tension wrenches, and slid them into the pocket of my hoodie. Then I dropped my backpack beside the gun case and prepared to close the case.
“Wait.” Tucking the lock-pick gun into a pocket, Thor snatched the sleek rifle. “For Nikos.” He grinned. Then he turned and strode toward the fray. Sera grabbed the only handgun remaining. I took a knife, closed the case, and dashed after them.
Thor shot a hole through the vampires, tossed the rifle to Nikos, and gestured. I didn’t understand the gestures, but they must’ve been signals because abruptly all the Alliance vampires fought to clear a path to the door.
Holstering his gun in his vest, Thor bent like a bull and charged through.
He made it to the door. I screamed, “Yes!”
But just as he was about to fit the gun to the lock, a goon stabbed him in the back. In the instant before he rallied, another seized his hair and wrenched back on his head, exposing his throat. His Adam’s apple convulsed as the vamp brandished a knife.
A glitter of metal and moment later, he collapsed. The snap gun fell from his hand.
“Thor!” Firing her handgun, Sera bashed her way into the mob.
“Sera, wait.” I tried to follow, whacking anything in the way with my knife.
Nikos roared, fell in behind Sera, and started going ape-shit with the rifle. Surprised, hopeful, I let the bubbling fight push me back. While the ammunition wasn’t silver, the spray of bullets put distracting holes in the thugs. He mowed through the center of the mob until the firearm ran empty. Throwing it aside, he grew claws and simply hacked his way the last few feet. While Sera dropped to her knees beside her mate, Nikos stooped for the lock-pick gun and wrench. He fitted the wrench to the lock, slid in the needle, and squeezed the trigger several times.
Nothing happened.
Suddenly, the gun seemed to pop away from the door. Nikos held it up to glare at it, and the needle was shorter. It had broken.
He dropped the gun just as three vampires jumped him, knives gleaming in the building’s exterior lights. The fight bubbled up around him and carried him away from the door.
I clenched my jaw. I didn’t know what was happening with Seb inside, but that door had to open, to let in fresh air. It was up to me.
My heart thudding hard enough to rattle my sternum, I ran in.
I hit the edge of the fight. Instead of using the knife or even all the things I’d learned studying martial arts, I put my head down and simply wriggled my way through gaps in the fight. Maybe that actually worked in my favor. The vamps pushed me this way and that like an obstacle, but they didn’t attack.
I made it to the door and picked up the snap gun. The wrench and broken needle had come out of the lock and were nowhere to be seen, swept away in the fight. I twisted off the tiny wing nut, pulled off the attaching sleeve—I didn’t know the part’s name—and the remains of the broken needle came off. Scrabbling in my hoodie’s pocket, I came up with another needle. I fitted it to the gun, secured it with sleeve and wing nut, then cranked on the thumb wheel for more force. Another pocket hunt came up with a spare torsion wrench. I started to slide the wrench into the lock.
That was when the first vampire stabbed me.
It was a glancing blow, knife skittering along a rib in back. But it hurt like hell and scared me into dropping the wrench.
I panted through it, managed to keep my mind clear enough to dig out a second spare wrench.
I stabbed it into the lock just as the second knife thrust into my back.
This one went into something soft. Agony sliced through me. A second later, warmth oozed across my side.
Instinct screamed at me to run. To save myself.
Give the lock pick to someone else. Vampires are faster, stronger. The stabs that were injuring me, they could heal. Leave the gun and wrench and run away.
But despite being vampires, neither Thor nor Nikos had managed to finish the job. And maybe, like simply struggling through the mass of thugs had worked, my being human and less capable made me less threatening. Maybe they wouldn’t try to stop me too hard…until it was too late.
Maybe I was the only one who could possibly do this.
Brie. The memory of Seb’s voice hit me, along with a wrongness stabbing my heart, bleeding into my very bones. Seb’s image wavered, rapidly losing focus and form in my mind.
He was nearly dead.
I got a renewed grip on the wrench, put steady pressure on it, and squeezed the lock-pick gun’s trigger.
Nothing.
Another knife flew toward me. Without releasing the wrench I dodged. The blade bit into my arm.
The thugs knew. They knew what I was trying to do, and though the Alliance vampires were doing their best to keep them off me, those thugs knew I wasn’t harmless.
They’d go after me with everything they could throw. Maybe I could open the lock, maybe I couldn’t, but if I stayed to try, they’d kill me.
My life, or Seb’s?
His.
My heart beat the answer, strong, shockingly immediate. I wasn’t falling in love with him.
I loved him.
Another thrown knife hit my thigh. Embedding. I screamed, falling against the door.
As agony sliced through my flesh, I used it to pound a fist against the door. “Seb!” I shouted his name, yearning for him with everything in me. Willing color and saturation into my mental picture of him, drawing him line by line with my mind, as if that would help. “Seb, I know you’re there. Come to me. I’ll get you out!”
…
Seb’s head was running with buckets of primal paint, his ears ringing with color, his taste buds exploding with light, when the jangling started. Like tiny bells in the wind, almost inaudible.
Dazed, he rose and tried to orient on it. His head was shaking, palsied like an old man’s, and he had to shuffle his entire body around.
He lost the sound. His whole being cried out in despair.
He turned more. Nothing but the roar of males, including Elias’s hoarse war cry. The Ancient One still struggled, but he was probably fighting on sheer willpower now. Precious seconds. Seb turned more.
There. Light, tinkling, bright as life itself.
Instinctively, he headed toward it. Leading with his chest, as if his heart was pulling him.
She needs me.
Thoughts, clear thoughts, began to condense in Seb’s befuddled, drugged brain. Brie. Her yearning was as primal as a bloodcall, waking an answering call in him.
The closer he got, the more easily he picked out her sounds from the cacophony. Her jangling bracelets. The bang of her fists on metal. Her bright voice.
He staggered straight into the door without seeing it. Reeled, shocked, back.
“Seb! Come to me.”
Slapping palms against the door, he slid them down to find the handle. To open the door.
His fingers bushed against sheared-off metal. With a cry of despair, he threw himself against the door.
Locked, it wouldn’t open.
A click. A ka-chunk, as if the lock was miraculously open.
Then Brie made a horrid groan, and he heard no more.
…
Seb was on the other side of the door. Thank God. I grabbed the lock-pick gun with renewed hope, put gentle pressure on the torsion wrench, and pumped the snap gun’s handle…until the wrench gave way. With a cry of joy, I turned it.
A hand grabbed my hair, forcing my head back. Desperation filled me. I cranked the wrench.
A breathtaking pain sliced my throat.
The lock opened just as utter blackness took me.
…
“No!” Seb roared it and slammed everything he was into that door.
It gave way. He staggered into the cold, fresh outside air.
Where Brie lay, lifeless.
“Gods.” He dropped to his knees at her side, ignoring the battle raging around him, prepared to pour the very last of his healing heart’s blood into her.
It would kill him, and it might not bring her back.
But he’d die without her. He had to try, to believe that he could save her life.
“Rikare!” Camille, wielding two knives like a blender, cut through to his side. She gave a piercing whistle. Her sturdy blonde lieutenant Rebecca plowed through to join her. Between the two of them, they’d keep the enemy vampires busy for a few moments.
It would have to be enough.
Seb concentrated on misting his hand. The fastest and safest way to deliver blood into a human was to thrust his misted hand into her body. His heart would pump the blood into his wrist, which was dissolved in her, and retrieve a measure of her blood to keep her pressure steady. In a way it made her part of his circulatory system.
But his hand wouldn’t mist. Grinding his teeth, he focused on willing the appendage apart, cell by cell.
He managed to mist the tip of his finger. It was enough—it had to be. He thrust it into her sternum.
Just as a vampire rose from the ground right behind him.
No! Not now. Seb didn’t think, he just acted. With a surge of his heart, he pushed all of his blood from his deepest cells into her, all at once.
His heart stuttered. He’d given too much of his strength, first to Blackthorne, then losing more in the fight, now giving the last of his energy to Brie. He could feel what was left of his vampire scrambling to keep his body together…and failing.
Yet he kept pouring his blood into Brie. Red tears leaked from his face onto her candy-apple hair. “It’s okay. It’s okay, love. Please, let it be okay. Please, love.”
And the ugly, ragged line across her throat…got less ragged. Began to heal.
His heart stopped. He fell.
His eyes began to disintegrate, no longer enough of the glue that was his vampire to hold the human together. But before his ears went, he heard her diaphragm kick hard, and a bushel of air filling her lungs, bringing her back to life.
He died, happy at last.