Immortal Rage

by Jax Garren

  “What’s that?” Emma asked, drawn like a magnet toward the most hopeful, positive words she’d ever heard from her fledgling’s mouth.

  One of the Empower girls turned to her, leaning the phone enough that she could see. “I guess you were getting the food. He gave this speech, miss. We put it on social media, and it’s all over already.”

  She checked the posting, labeled #survivor, and sucked in a shaky breath as the watch count grew while she was, herself, watching. One of the Scarlet whores gave a fist bump to one of the Empower girls as the girls around them smiled. “I can’t stop watching this,” somebody murmured. “Imma survivor.”

  “And we gonna survive this,” someone else added.

  The speech concluded with him hugging his mother, of all things, and Emma turned back to Danielle, wonder on her face. “What happened to him?” she mouthed.

  Danielle smiled a proud, sad smile. “He’s always been like that. Except for hugging me, of course. Not that I did much to deserve those.”

  Emma headed back to her as somebody started the video up again, the phone making rounds of the room so everyone got a dose of inspiring Javier. “I think, maybe,” Emma said quietly, thinking of her own mother, “he was waiting for you to hug him.”

  Danielle shook her head. “No, he didn’t want me near him.”

  “Course he did—even when he acted like he didn’t. Didn’t you do the same to your mama? I did. But all I ever wanted from her was to love on me anyway.” The overwhelming need to see him—to try, at least, to save him—assaulted her so hard she gripped the doorframe and felt something internal to the wood break. “Where is he?”

  Wherever that was, he wasn’t going to let her help him, not while the risk to her was so high. She gripped the door harder until the frame broke. She just had to convince him there wasn’t a risk. She didn’t have to cajole or force. She just had to tell him the lie he needed to hear, the lie that would make taking from her okay.

  Danielle frowned at her. “You don’t know?”

  The shaken horror in her tone made the hair on Emma’s neck stand up. “Know what?”

  * * *

  “Cash, I don’t care what’s going on, you let me in there to see my fledgling.”

  Emma’s voice came loud and clear through the door, and Javier pulled his knees in tighter to his chest, like somehow he could hold himself together that way. She’d come back. He didn’t know how he felt about that. It would be so much easier to dismiss her from his mind if she didn’t keep coming back.

  “I wasn’t going to stop you, Em,” Cash muttered in reply. “But if he changes, try not to shoot. We’ve been discussing big plans for the CoVIn hospital that I need him to tackle. Give Witchy Girl a chance to figure this out.”

  A moment later the door opened, and Emma stood in the relatively dim light of the hallway, looking like a nervous angel. “How you doing?” she asked cautiously.

  He swallowed and lifted his head up. “Still me.”

  “Good, good.” She came in and shut the door in Cash’s face. A glorious smile broke over her face like sunshine as she rushed to him. “Because they did it.”

  He blinked. “They… what? A cure?” Hope tried to stir in him as he dropped his feet to the ground. “Where is it? Did you bring it?”

  She nodded and sat down beside him, her expression so full of confidence he felt more relaxed just looking at her.

  “Well, where is it?”

  “Dumbass vampire, you can’t take no medication unless it’s in blood. I got it. In me. You bite me, drain me near good—”

  “What?” He felt the blood drain from his face as the same fucking fear and desire she spawned in him every time spiked. “I can’t.” He trailed off as her fingers ran through his hair, soft and comforting.

  “And you get to keep that good brain of yours.” Her lips upturned in a teasing smile. “Don’t drain me dead, though. I would like to survive this.”

  The ember of hope curled back in on him as he waved his hands at her. “No, Em, I can’t bite you. I’ll pass this on to you.”

  “No, I’m immune,” she insisted. “You can’t pass it to me.”

  “You’re immune?”

  She put her hand on his cheek, her big blue eyes captured his, and a confusing swirl of emotion cycloned through his chest. She was normally so distant—what was going on? She’d really come back for him?

  No, it didn’t matter. He couldn’t risk her. He couldn’t. “Have you looked at your blood? Tested it against spell antigens—I can’t believe I’m using the phrase spell antigens—to make sure it reacts the way my sister thinks it will? I love Rhi, but…” But she’d send Emma here with a hope and a prayer and a magical maybe for him. He and his sister might bicker, but morality took a back seat when it came to each other’s health and well-being. “Wait. Where’s your hair?” It was gone, leaving her in a far more modern hack job of a cut that brought out her freckles and the brightness of her eyes. It looked good on her, stole some of her old-fashioned girlishness and made her look strong. Not that she wasn’t strong—she was powerful beyond measure.

  A blush feathered across her cheeks as she stuck a hand in her new bob like she’d forgotten. “Spell component. I ain’t seen a mirror yet, but in my head it’s cute.”

  “It’s—you’re beautiful.” He rubbed his forehead, which had started to ache about half an hour ago—a sign of the disease progressing. “I can’t bite you. This is you losing your mind if they’re wrong.” And something in him knew there wasn’t time for a test. Sitting alone in a room, discussing Cash’s desire for a modern hospital that catered to immortals—something Javier would really like to be involved in—interspersed with the vampire prince’s amusing stories about a prostitute he’d known in Shakespeare’s London, he’d realized this was really it. The change was happening. It was too late. All the chemical recitations in the world weren’t helping anymore.

  He’d never expected to have four hundred years—or a thousand, like Cash—to collect stories. But somewhere in his twenties he’d allowed himself to believe in a few decades.

  Her forehead touched his, comforting him. “Sometimes, babe, you gotta have a little faith. Your sister? She makes miracles happen all the time. You and I have seen ’em.” Her other hand came up, bracketing his face in her palms, and a sense of calm seemed to come over her. Surety. He’d never seen her quite like this. “I’m a survivor too, Javi. And we’re going to survive together. I know I am one giant ball of fuckup, and I know I don’t deserve your faith in me. I lie. And I run. And I don’t take chances, and I don’t take responsibility. But I’ve never met anyone who made me want to try. Not until I saw you dying on the floor of that ugly-ass apartment you used to live in. So…” She released his face and stroked her fingers down her wrist—the same one he’d drunk from that night when she’d restarted his life by making him a vampire. “I saved you once, against the odds, by giving you my blood. Let me do that one more time.”

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Fifty-fifty—those were the odds of a human turning. Emma had known that when she’d made Javier drink her blood months ago. She had no idea what the odds were here—the odds of saving Javier, the odds of her getting the disease, the odds of Rhiannon and Dez making anything at all work with vaccines and voodoo and a ponytail of her hair.

  But when she’d walked up the stairs to see him, she’d realized two things. First, her fledgling would bang his own head against a wall for even the slightest scrap of a chance for success. Her? Some people wouldn’t say being a prostitute was playing it safe. But for her, it had been. It was easy work to get, with a regular income and a place to live. Food. The lowest-risk solution to the problem of survival for a poor, uneducated girl whose virtue had been stolen.

  But she was done with that. She wasn’t a whore. She was—what’d they say now? An entrepreneur. And entrepreneurs took big risks for big rewards.

  Rewards like saving the brilliant mind of a man she… well, she didn’
t love him. The Emma she was now wasn’t capable of that. But the Emma she could be? She was pretty sure that Emma was gonna fall head over heels for him.

  Nerves made her jittery, but she maintained an external calm, determined to get her way on this. “So, if you don’t want to end up a zombie, you need to do this. Trust me. Trust Rhi.”

  He hesitated, likely torn between his worry for her and his fear of what was happening. “What did they do? How’d they put it together?”

  “Sweetie, I ain’t a witch or a doctor. Or a witch doctor. They put hoodoo with the, uh, immune goblin, and I bit Rhi. Yeah, I bit your sis. We can fight over that after you’re no longer zombifying.”

  His eyes closed as his lips twitched from an amused smirk at her getting the medical term wrong to pursing at the thought of his sister getting bitten. Funny how well she knew him in such a short period of time. “Immunoglobulin,” he corrected, his voice calm and firm and maybe a touch irritated.

  Her tongue twisted into the first sounds of a joke about how she was too stupid to say words like that, but she stopped. Swallowed. She wasn’t too stupid. It was just easier to make jokes than to change. “Immunoglobulin,” she repeated slowly, making sure she got every syllable right. “The shot in her hip that protects her until the vaccine kicks in.”

  Javier’s eyes popped open, and he looked at her in confusion, like he couldn’t believe she’d bothered to get it right. “Yeah.”

  A sense of rightness settled over her as she looked into Javier’s handsome face and watched confusion turn to vulnerable hope. She gave his leg a squeeze. “All right. I’m gonna call the witches and tell them we’re starting. That way they can chant or light their candles or consult with their crystal ball or whatever. And we’re going to believe in them and believe in each other tonight.”

  Javier actually relaxed, his limbs loosening as he slowly nodded. “Okay. If you’re sure.”

  “I’m—”

  She cut off as her fledgling’s eyes went wide as he gurgled out a breath, then collapsed back onto the bed.

  “Javier?”

  He breathed in for three quick breaths, then silenced—just like Sergio had done before dying. But Javier, knowing what was happening, widened his eyes in horrified defeat.

  “No! Nuh-uh.” She hit call and speaker and listened to the first ring. “Javi, it’s now or never.” She stuck her wrist in front of his face, and once again he shook his head.

  “No,” he said between gasping breaths. “Can’t… risk… you. Too late.”

  The phone picked up. “Hey, Emma, how’s it—”

  “Javi’s turning. I’m giving him blood now.”

  “Shit! Shit!” Rhi yelled.

  “Wait!” Dez yelled.

  “We need more time,” Rhiannon wailed in the background.

  “We need a witch there!” Dez added. “Rhi was about to come over. Can he hang on for a few more minutes?”

  Fear hollowed out Emma’s insides, and she glanced down at Javier. He was curling into a fetal position. “No. He can’t.” Emma lay down next to Javier. “Javi, sweetie, this is your last chance. I know you don’t want to risk me, but this is my choice.”

  He gasped and held his head as if he could keep it together through sheer force of will. “She said no. Can’t risk your life. Not worth you.”

  She put a hand on his cheek and pulled his forehead to hers. “Your life is worth a shit ton, but this isn’t just about your life. It’s about mine too.” Turning to the door, she yelled, “Cash! We need another witch! Here! Now!”

  “I don’t want to go,” Javier muttered as tears hit her hand. “I don’t want to go.”

  Cash poked his head in, saw what was happening, and for once he looked worried. “A real one? Or any magic user?”

  Emma hesitated. “I dunno. Rhi was gonna come over, but she ain’t gonna be here in time.”

  “Don’t bring Rhi,” Javier insisted through gritted teeth. “Too dangerous.”

  “Fuck…” Cash muttered and then vanished in that vampire-quick way he had.

  “Hang on, Javi. We got plans. Dez and I are going into business together, and you’re inventing a new branch of science. And you and me? We’re gonna try dating, okay? It’s gonna be weird, and I’m going to mess up all the goddamn time, but you’re going to roll your eyes at me and we’ll get back on track.”

  “What?” he muttered, then shook his head. “You’re lying again. You lied when you said they had a cure.”

  Chanting came over the phone in funny-sounding French as Rhi yelled, “Do you have somebody? It’ll take me twenty minutes…”

  “Cash’ll be there,” Emma assured her. He was fast, but vampires were more cheetah than antelope—their speed came in short bursts. Fast as he was, there was no way he’d get to Dez’s and bring Rhi back in time. She turned back to Javier and grabbed his shirt between her knuckles as emotions she didn’t know she had in her came bursting to the surface. “Look, Javi, I know you got no reason to believe I can change. People say they’re going to change all the time, and they don’t. But I never met anyone like you. I never met anyone who got out.”

  He shook his head. “I never got out, Em. Look at where I am. I’m dying of a rage disease in a brothel after getting fired.”

  “Yeah, because you ain’t that asshole’s bitch. Why do you want that when you got your own lab at CoVIn? Huh? Why do I want to be cleaning toilets when I can be running my own damn company? There ain’t nothing wrong with cleaning toilets, mind you, but you and me, we got big ideas. And we’re going to support each other and we’re going to do them. And that starts with this—now. You bite me and we face whatever comes next together.”

  Over the phone, the chanting intensified. Dez’s voice broke into song as Rhiannon continued cursing and hyperventilating.

  She heard arguing outside—sounded like Cash and two women. The door burst back open as Cash manhandled Elvira into the room. “I’m not a witch,” she hissed, slurring like she’d spent her down time drinking.

  “Close enough,” he said darkly. “Close as we’ve got.”

  Winnie came into the room behind them, for some reason carrying a bucket of paint and a brush. “Cash, you can’t just grab people and…” She trailed off as she looked into the room, eyes widening. “Oh.”

  Cash grabbed the phone. “I got a witch.” Rhi started yammering at him. “Whoa, whoa, I have no fucking clue what you’re saying. Hang on.” He shoved the phone at the drunk brunette.

  Her crazy violet eyes darkened to a stormy purple as she took in the scene and did not take the phone. “Why is she here?”

  “Uh…” Emma muttered, cowed. She’d seen Elvira around, mostly hanging with Winnie, but despite her normally whimsical demeanor, something about her freaked Emma out. She couldn’t put her finger on exactly what, though. All she really knew was that Elvira was oldish—like Spanish Inquisition old, not Pagan Europe old—spent her life partying… and crazy freak accidents seemed to happen to anyone who messed with her.

  “It’s Emma,” Winnie said quietly. “I told you about her—the LongHorns story.”

  Elvira’s lips twitched as amusement flashed through her eyes, then vanished. “He’s turning into a zombie?”

  “Yeah,” Emma managed.

  Cash’s voice came out low and calm. “I know you can do this. How many times have I pulled your ass out of the fire? I don’t ask for much from you, Elle, but I’m asking now.”

  Elvira narrowed her eyes. “And it’s worth it because…?”

  Cash passed the conversation to Emma with a look. Her fledgling, her job.

  She swallowed the emotion clogging her throat, trying to say something intelligent. Because he’s working on a cure with Rhi. Because he’s going to help vampires with science. So many good reasons. And she said, “Because he’s my guy, and I didn’t ever think I’d have someone good like him, someone who didn’t assume I’d always be a whore.”

  Strangely, defeat and fear passed through Elvira’s eye
s, as if that selfish reason meant something to her. She pointed at the door and took the phone, muttering, “One moment,” into it. “Out. Everyone.”

  “But—” Winnie started. Cash took the paint bucket and brush from her and set them on a bedside table. “Cash!”

  “Win, I got this,” Elvira said. “I do owe him one.”

  “One?” Cash asked.

  She shot him a look that might as well have been both middle fingers before turning to Emma. “You too.”

  “I…” Emma swallowed, summoning the courage to stay. “I need to give him my blood. I’ve got the vaccine in me.”

  “Cash, how smart and silent can she be?”

  Cash turned back and said with absolute certainty, “She talks all the damn time, but she can keep a secret when she needs to. And she’s a hell of a lot smarter than me.” Emma shot the general, who could read in umpteen languages, the look that deserved. He just grinned his incorrigible smile. “Em, don’t ask questions. Don’t get involved. Don’t talk about anything to me or anyone else outside this room. Make sure Reyes does the same. She’s doing a favor to your baby bat. Zip it like your immortal soul depends on it.” With that ominous proclamation, he exited, Winnie’s hand loosely caught in the crook of his arm.

  “Be careful, my friend,” she muttered, but followed Cash out. The door shut behind them with a click and tremble that seemed to echo.

  Elvira muttered witch talk on the phone as she went through cabinets, snatching up a horde of candles and ripping pages from notebooks. Emma curled up against her fledgling as his eyes opened, indecision running through them along with his fear. “Honey, we’re out of time. I didn’t give you a proper choice last time we did this. But this time I’m begging you, stay with me. You don’t want to be one of them.”

  “It’s too late,” he muttered.

  “Not yet—you ain’t gone yet.” He was holding on a lot better than Sergio had—not that that was a giant surprise.