I don’t know how I manage to make it to his side. I can’t process anything. It’s like my body is moving on its own. Like my brain has decided I can’t be trusted to make decisions, so it’s shut my conscience out and taken over.
The early morning sun is just beginning to peek over the hill, witnessing all the horrors the night holds. I’m on my knees, searching for the wounds on his body, but there isn’t a speck of blood. Nothing giving away the reasons behind his body not moving and his eyes sealed shut. I smooth back a lock of his dark hair from his forehead, confused by the relaxed look on his face.
I don’t think I can breathe. Ever again.
“I told him we had to go, but he insisted on being a hero,” Weldon says as he crouches down next to me. He takes a deep breath, as if he’s having trouble processing this himself. Hangs his head a little. “Damn fool.”
“What happened?” I hear myself ask, my words a hollow whisper. I feel like a thousand needles are pricking at my skin. Like everything in the world is suddenly upside down. Not as it should be.
He runs his hand through his disheveled golden locks, trying to smooth some order into them. “They had Sterling. Mack managed to get most of the prisoners to the rooftop, but not Sterling. He was kept by Clara’s side. An insurance policy so to speak.”
“And?” I ask, pressing my hand against Jaxen’s face. His skin is unnaturally cold, and my skin goes hot with rage, anger, and all the hateful emotions my mind is allowing me to feel, to keep me from feeling sorrow, loss, and despair.
“And so, he decided to go after her. Even after I told him not to. There was nothing I could do, Faye,” he rushes out, panic in his words. “I had to get the rest of the prisoners back first. He knew that. And after I finished bringing everyone else here, I went after him. Found him and Sterling like this on the rooftop.”
Sterling’s hand twitches by his side. Weldon and Mack surround him at once. “Sterling?” Weldon says hesitantly, lightly slapping the side of his cheek. “You awake?”
Sterling’s eyes flash open. They’re completely black, rimmed in crimson red.
So hollow. Equally empty.
“Shit,” Mack says, turning away from him.
Weldon doesn’t move. Although his face has gone unmistakably pale, his lips remain firm. His body remains strong. He’s holding it all in. A perfect form of composure. “Sterling?”
“Th-thirsty,” Sterling manages to say, his voice paper dry.
Weldon looks up at me. Blinks once.
“He’s turned?” I’m surprised I even managed to get the words out. I already know deep down. I felt it the moment he crossed the threshold… the certain darkness that alerts the Hunter in me, but I didn’t want to acknowledge it. I didn’t want it to be true.
Weldon nods at me. “And once a vamp wakes, if they don’t feed, they die.” He’s looking at me like I should be connecting what he’s saying to something. Like the five words he just said to me is some kind of exchange we share every day.
It takes me a long moment to realize that he’s asking me. Asking me for my blood.
“You can’t be serious,” I say, eyes scrunched as I pull back away from him, still holding onto Jaxen.
But Weldon latches on to my forearm. “There isn’t time to waste or second-guess, Faye. Do you want him to die?” he asks, his eyes crazed with anger. “Do you want what Jaxen risked to bring him back to us to be in vain?”
I’m sure now that I can’t be in the same universe I once was in, because this is not something that would ever be considered.
Weldon doesn’t wait for me to answer. He just grabs my hand and forces it against Sterling’s lips. The minute his teeth sink into my flesh, I scream out. Everything in me, every good, whole part, wages a war against the lips and tongue sucking and pulling the life from my body. I feel like my bones have been ripped out of me, leaving nothing but skin and blood that’s offered to him. That’s been unwillingly given to him.
As strength moves into Sterling’s limbs, his hands latch onto my forearm, fingers digging into my flesh. He sits up, sucking desperately now.
“Weldon!” I cry out, trying to pull from Sterling’s iron grasp. Trying to keep my mind from shutting off as the edges of sleep reach out for me with greedy hands.
“That’s enough,” Weldon says sternly to Sterling.
Sterling doesn’t stop.
Vampires don’t have control over their blood lust.
“Sterling,” Weldon says, sharper this time, but his voice slips away from me because my mind is growing faint. My skin feels like a blizzard has wrapped its arms around me and pulled me close. I blink, sluggishly, trying to find something to focus on. Anything that will keep me in the present and far away from the icy cold that’s settling in my bones as my grip on Jaxen’s hands slips away.
But then my eyes close shut.
I breathe in, slowly, faintly, as time takes the shape of eternal darkness.
When I open them again, Weldon’s features have darkened to his demon side and Sterling has flown across the porch, snapping one of the banisters clean in half. Weldon lifts my body from the ground. Plants me firmly on my feet, holding me upright by my waist.
“Faye?” he says, holding my face within the V of his hand. “Faye, look at me.”
“Huh?”
“What the hell, Weldon!” Jezi says, shoving him away from me.
I stumble back a step, caught by the railing. Blinking rapidly, I try to gain my senses, but everything is so blurry. So foggy and distant.
“He needed to feed!” Weldon says hotly. “Look at her. She’s fine!”
“She’s your partner!” Jezi retorts in disgust. “Not food!” Jezi’s in my face, and I have to lean back to bring her into focus. “Faye, listen to me. I’m going to help you.” She grabs onto my hands, and warmth spreads up my arms as her magic fills the gap left behind by Sterling’s bite.
Once I can see clearly again, she lets me go and spins on Weldon. “If you ever do that again, I’ll kill you. Without warning. Do you understand?”
Weldon rolls his eyes. Avoids my gaze as he heads over to Sterling, who’s looking around, his face screwed up in confusion.
“Wha-what the hell happened?” Sterling asks, picking himself up from off the ground. He’s looking at me. Touches his face. Pulls his hand back to find blood on his fingertips. “No.”
One word… one syllable, pulls at the little composure I have left.
He looks up at me again, his eyes filled with so much sorrow. “I didn’t mean to. I didn’t… I didn’t want thi—” He stops and his nose lifts into the air, teeth poking out over his lips.
Blood.
It’s in the air. On the lawn. Still on my hands from helping Joanna.
The cords in the general’s neck pop out, one by one, as a low growl slips past his bared teeth. He’s on his feet now, crouched down like a predator waiting to pounce, when Weldon places his hand on his shoulder and calls his name out like he’s talking to Jaxen.
In one brotherly gesture, it’s like watching a solid oak tree struck by lightning, snapping it clean in half. All the general’s strength… everything he stood for, I can almost see it spilling out of him as he fights to keep control over what he has now become. As he fights the urge to feed.
“I know this is a lot to take in right now, but you’re here because of him,” Weldon says. He’s pointing at Jaxen, who’s lying motionless right in front of me. “I know you’re still in there. I know, because I’ve been in your shoes. Still am. I need you to go to that place inside you where all of your strength is stored, and I need you to use it, man. Use every last bit, because I—” He pauses. Looks over at me. “We need you to tell us what happened to Jaxen so we can help him.”
Sterling’s eyes go distant. He looks down at the palm of his hands like he’s searching for something. For some distant memory he can’t quite make out, and then he sags under Weldon’s hand.
“Everything is so blurry. Once the turn started
to take hold… it was hard. Hard to cling to reality.” He looks up at Weldon, wearing ghosts in his gaze.
“Try,” Weldon says firmly.
Sterling nods, rubbing his eyebrows as he tries to recall the events as they took place. “Clara… she knew what Mack had done.” He pauses. Squints his eyes. “And then there were alarms.” He looks up at Weldon. “Yes, the alarms had been set off, but by the time she rounded up enough men to storm the rooftop, they had already made it up there. It was chaos,” he says, his memories slowly gaining speed. “She knew she wasn’t going to be able to keep Weldon from moving in and out through the shadows, but she wasn’t going to let him go without a fight. So she ordered the murder of them all.
“By then I knew I wasn’t going to make it. She was never going to keep me from turning, even if Faye had turned herself in. All I could hope for was that Clara would let me go once it happened, and then I could kill myself.”
His words are an ocean, vastly filled with a deep darkness I don’t think any of us will ever understand. Not truly.
He swallows so thickly. Tries his best to appear whole and in control. But his hands are trembling by his sides. “For me, it was over,” he continues, sounding so tired and defeated, and I want to tell him it’s okay, but I can’t find the words. I can’t find the strength to lie, because it’s not okay. It never will be.
“I heard the reports of those who had been hit on the rooftop and knew Clara was going to win,” he says. “And then I started to feel my change, so I let go. I embraced it. There was nothing left for me. But then someone from the outside started taking out the men protecting her office and, when I looked to the surveillance monitors, I saw Jaxen. It was remarkable. He was using power beyond what I thought was possible. It was like watching Faye, all over again.
“He managed to take them out, sucking them dry, and then forced his way into her office with only his bare hands. I couldn’t let him take on this fight alone. Not when I knew the risks he took just to come back for me. So I got to my feet and rushed Clara into the wall of monitors. It was enough of an unforeseen blow to knock her out.
“But more of her men came and Jaxen could only absorb so much of their energy. He managed to get us to the rooftop, but by the time we made it, there were so many and his body couldn’t take it anymore. He dropped. We were being shot at still, so I covered him, and then the next thing I know, I’m picking myself up from the banister.” He looks up at me. “Wearing your blood.”
There aren’t enough words in this world to help me form a reasonable response. Something that will settle his nerves. Thank him for helping Jaxen, even when his world was rapidly falling apart.
I drop to my knees beside Jezi and take Jaxen’s hand. He isn’t hurt… he wasn’t hit by anything. He’s just… gone. Overcome by too much power. The same thing I’ve felt time and time again, before my body grew more tolerant to it.
And I don’t know how to fix him.
“What are we going to do?” Jezi asks, tears sliding down her cheeks as she looks at him.
“There’s nothing we can do,” I say numbly, feeling like a dried-up ocean. Like a wilted garden with no chance for saving.
Time doesn’t mean anything anymore. Nothing does. Not the cries from those still recovering on the lawn. Not the metallic smell hanging in the air that I’m sure will never go away. Not even my heart, which can’t seem to pick a rhythm to stay on.
But then a familiar voice splinters the heavy silence. “That’s not true.”
Every affinity pair that can jumps to their feet, magic and volation at the ready.
“Werewolves!” Chett shouts. A whip formed out of volation appears in his hand, crackling with static energy. He snaps it against the ground, and then whips it in the air toward Evangeline. Spells hurdle past me, through the air, all aimed for her head.
“Wait!” Mack yells out.
Magic sizzles midair, stopped by Jezi and Cassie, who are moving toward Evangeline now, using their magic to form an invisible wall of protection.
“You better have a good explanation for this,” Jonathon says, his fists balled in the air, electricity dripping to the ground beneath him.
Evangeline stares at me and, somehow, I know she’s waiting for my invitation.
“You can come in,” I say. I watch as she crosses the yard. Moves up the stairs and past every Primeval without a blink of fear. She kneels down over Jaxen. Brushes her fingers through his dark hair in a loving caress, and then finds my gaze.
“He used your ability, correct?”
I nod.
She looks back down at him. “He’s absorbed too much energy. His body had to shut down to prevent him from hurting himself.” She looks up at me again, resolution in her eyes. “Because, like his father, he wouldn’t have stopped fighting. No matter what. Not even if it meant killing himself in the process.”
I can taste the tension in the air as every eye is pinned on Evangeline and me. Everyone waiting for the go-ahead to take her out.
“What can we do to help him, Mother?” Gavin says, moving over to us. He has his hands out, telling everyone to back up. Back off.
Gasps sound all around us as one by one, the rest of the newcomers put the pieces together about who she is and why she’s here.
She looks up at Gavin, her face giving nothing away. “I can help him with my magic, but I need something from you in return,” she says, turning to stand and face the rest.
I can’t swallow what she just said. Can’t make sense of her words.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Jonathon says heatedly. “You’re going to bargain with your son’s life?”
She doesn’t pay any mind to him. Doesn’t cower to the magic and power sizzling all around her, vibrating with a need to take her down. She’s only speaking to Gavin and me. “I need you to let my pack stay here. We can help you. We want to help you. But we need this in return.”
“Hell no,” Chett says, trying to push his way past Jonathon to get to her. He’s all biceps and misplaced anger, itching for a fight. “There’s no way I’m letting those butt-sniffing assholes live here.”
“Letting?” Gavin says, bowing his chest out. “Since when did you have permission to let anyone do anything here? Last I checked, you were on my turf, dipshit.”
Evangeline takes a step forward, eyes locking on Chett. “Carter, isn’t it? The Witch-hating family?”
Chett’s callous demeanor vanishes like a plume of smoke.
“The very same family that is responsible for Harper’s turn.”
His mouth opens and shuts in shock. I didn’t think the shade of white residing on Chett’s face existed. He’s shaking his head, stumbling over the thoughts crammed in his mouth, and I’m trying to figure out who she’s talking about. “I-I never… I didn’t have anything to do with that.”
“No?” Evangeline says, her eyes glowing a startling shade of yellow now. She stalks toward him like a predator, like a wolf hiding amongst the trees. “Maybe not. But even so, a Carter is a Carter, and I have no problem taking any of them out.”
“Faye,” Katie calls from next to Chett. “You’re not going to let her say this, are you?” Her eyes are asking me to back her up, but how can I when I need Evangeline to help Jaxen?
Evangeline’s eyes flick over at Katie. “This has nothing to do with you. What you know about your partner is only what he wants you to know. Keep that in mind.” Katie opens her mouth to respond, but Evangeline has already turned her focus back on Chett and says, “I could give you that benefit of the doubt if you’ll have the decency to explain to your partner the truth about all that your family has done. And if you’ll explain to Harper exactly why she was turned.”
Chett backs up even further before bumping into one of the fence posts surrounding the herb garden. “Wait… you—you know Harper?”
The smile that curves the length of Evangeline’s thin lips is almost unsettling. It’s filled with plots of revenge and secrets untold. “She’s one
of my own, Carter. My pack—” She turns and her hand sweeps in the general direction of her ragtag group hidden somewhere within the forest before continuing. “—is made purely of Primevals robbed of their former lives as Watchmen and tossed to the curb like garbage. I’m asking that you look past something as petty as appearances, and remember who we were before it all was forcibly taken from us,” she says, looking directly at Weldon now, “and let us help you. Let me help my son. None of us can do this on our own.”
Her body is rigid, eyes flickering over to Jaxen’s still form every few seconds as she waits for an answer. I can almost see how desperately she wants to go to him. How hard it is for her to stand still as her fists clench at her sides, and somehow, I know deep down that this isn’t an easy thing for her… offering this kind of demand. This kind of weak bargain that is all she has left to work with.
But she’s done it anyway because she’s an alpha. She’s a leader, responsible, just like I am, and if the shoes were switched, I’d do anything and everything to protect those I loved.
I look up at Gavin, Mack, Jonathon, and everyone else as fear snakes around my limbs and constricts. Hatred and misunderstanding has poisoned their minds. Stereotypes meant to snuff out what we aren’t familiar with has grown arms and legs and decided to stand for us all, and I can’t let that happen. Not when I’ve come to know a demon who I’d trust my life with, and only just saved a freshly born vampire who I’d do anything for to help get him through this trying time.
“Okay,” Gavin says without hesitation, and relief rushes out of me.
“Gavin!” Cassie hisses. “We should think this through first. We don’t know that we can trust her.” She leans into him and says on a low voice, “She left you.”
He looks at her. “I was there for it, Cass. I think I can remember. She can help Jaxen. Need I say more?” He turns to everyone else. “This isn’t up for discussion. This is my house. My decision. If you don’t like it, leave. No one is making you stay.”
Cassie’s lips form into a scowl.
Everyone else looks caught. Like they’ve been backed into a corner they know they can’t escape.
Everlost (The Night Watchmen Series Book 3) Page 14