Not knowing what else to do, she began to stagger down the road in the direction she’d last seen the car containing her daughter heading. Every step brought with it a fresh stab of pain, as if someone held a knife in her ribs. Even her breathing caused her pain and she choked and coughed, the agony of the coughing making the world darken at the edges. A bubble of something burst from between her lips and she lifted her hand to her mouth. When she brought it away, her fingers were tipped with blood.
Serenity knew what the blood meant—a rib must have pierced one of her lungs. But she couldn’t allow herself to stop. She needed to reach Elizabeth and she’d do so dying if she had to.
The scent of Serenity’s blood was on the night’s air.
Oh, no.
Sebastian could feel the pull of dawn’s arrival like hands tugging on his shoulders, his body wanting to take him to a place of safety. But this time, he couldn’t give in to the control of the earth’s cycles. He needed to fight what was one of his most basic instincts—to hide from the sun—and find his family first. The possibility of waiting this thing out until nightfall came again was simply not an option.
Helping Iona had already allowed Conner to get ahead of him. Plus, the trace of the car was difficult to follow, though at least not impossible thanks to the empty roads and the fact that the storm seemed to be losing some of its force. He used the faint tang of fuel on the saturated asphalt and heat the tires had created combined with his sense of where Serenity was in the world to chase the car down.
The wounds in his stomach and chest had knitted over, leaving just faint indents in his skin, one right between his abdominals and another between his ribs. The pain was now only a dull ache and something easily ignored.
With his full strength returned, he raced down the street. He was focused on two things: reaching his family and tearing Conner from limb to limb. His anger was like a red haze in front of his eyes, making him want to lash out at anything that might get in his way. Part of him even wanted someone to challenge him, just to allow him to unleash his fury. The weather and the dark whirlpool of clouds above his head seemed to mirror his emotions. The objects flying toward him, whipped up by the wind—a trashcan, a piece of fence, a child’s red plastic chair—meant nothing to him and he simply batted them away as he ran, lifting them and throwing them to one side with a roar. The rain tried to blind him, the wind lift him from his feet, but nothing would remove him from his goal.
Serenity, where are you?
The scent of her blood on the wind grew stronger now, carried on its planes like temptation and terror all rolled into one. No other scent could carry such a contrast of desires for him. While every inch of what made him a vampire screamed “Drink, drink, drink,” deep down, he was petrified that the presence of her blood might mean she was already dead.
No, not dead. The scent still burst with life. Plus, she was moving, he could tell by the way her position changed in the wind. She might be hurt, and he prayed not badly, but she was definitely still alive.
Where is Conner taking them?
Then he caught sight of her ahead of him, moving down the street. Her arm was lifted to try to cover her face from the onslaught of wind, rain and flying debris. He sensed her pain and saw how she dragged her right leg, the scent of her blood growing stronger still.
Putting on a final burst of speed, he came to a stop directly in front of her. She let out a scream and backed away, her dark eyes wide. Then she must have realized who blocked her path. She sagged with relief. “Oh, God, Sebastian!”
What was she doing here alone? Where was Elizabeth?
He saw the blood on her face, how pale her skin was, recognized the agony in her eyes. She was badly hurt, yet had still tried to keep going. Her love for their daughter made his heart break in two. Not only did he refuse to lose Elizabeth, he refused to allow Serenity to go through the agony of losing her daughter as well.
He reached out and caught her before she could fall, but she pushed him away. “No, no. Leave me. I’m fine. You need to get Elizabeth. Conner is going to kill her!”
When she spoke, he heard a rattling coming from deep within her chest. The sound worried him. He held her away from him slightly so he could assess her injuries. The scent of her blood flowed over him, and he felt his fangs lengthen, his face harden. The whole side of her face was scraped raw, as if someone had taken a grater from her temple down to her jaw. The rain water meant the wound hadn’t even started to clot and the blood flowed freely down over her jaw and throat, soaking into the collar of her shirt.
He swallowed hard and glanced away quickly, trying to force himself not to think about the blood.
“You’re hurt.” He reached down and tore a strip from the bottom of his shirt, wadded it up and placed it to her damaged skin.
She hissed air between her teeth and winced. She allowed him to hold the cloth to her face for a moment, but then pushed him off again.
“We don’t have time for this! Don’t worry about me. You need to find our daughter!” Her eyes darted over his shoulder. “Where is Iona?”
Sebastian shook his head. “She’s badly hurt. I think Conner somehow managed to make the flyover crack and a piece of concrete landed on her leg. She’s safe though. I left her on the back seat of the other car.”
“Then there’s only you left!” she cried, her voice breaking. “You have to get our baby back.”
“I’m not leaving you.”
“You must. You’re faster without me, you said so yourself.”
“No, the storm is too bad. You’re hurt and all it would take would be for you to be hit in the head by something. I’m not leaving.” Her eyes locked on his face for a moment. “You need me to make you better again.” He recognized her understanding in the widening of her eyes.
She hesitated for a moment and then nodded. “Okay, do it.”
Quickly, Sebastian lifted his left wrist to his mouth and bit down hard and tore, wanting to open the wound further. Serenity would need more blood than normal, her injuries too severe for only a few drops to suffice. Pain speared through his arm, but he gritted his teeth and offered the bloodied cut to her. The blood flowed, rain washing it from his skin.
“Now. Do it now.”
She grabbed his wrist and lifted it to her mouth. Her warm lips fastened around the gash, her soft tongue lapping at the skin, drawing him in. Sebastian moaned, the sensation of her mouth against his skin too erotic after all this time for it not to stir that shadowy part of him. She lifted her dark eyes to his, feeding from him hungrily, maintaining eye contact as she swallowed the essence of him. Between that and the scent of her blood still thick on her, it took every ounce of self-restraint he had not to turn the bloodletting back on her, wanting to feed from her and fuck her right out here in the middle of the street.
“Enough,” he said, wrenching his wrist away. He wouldn’t be able to restrain himself much longer. She lifted her face to him and wiped at her mouth with the back of her hand.
As he watched, the scrapes and grazes down the side of her face began to heal, shrinking, crusts forming over the tops, before melting away to reveal clear, creamy skin. The paleness of her hue deepened to a healthier color. Something inside her cracked back into place and she straightened, the relief on her face palpable. The rattling he’d heard from inside her chest ceased.
“Better?” he asked.
She nodded. “Yes, thank you. But we need to move.”
Now that he no longer had the pull of Serenity to follow, he’d struggle more with only the scent of a car to follow. Heading out of the city, the air was redolent with the acrid tang of things burning.
“Where would he take her?” he asked, thinking aloud. But it seemed this was something Serenity had already thought about.
“Somewhere he can see the see the sun coming up. He’ll want to know the exact moment the sun breaks the horizon. That’s when he plans on killing her.”
He tried not to let his heart tear in two a
t the thought and concentrate instead. Then it hit. “The ocean. If he wants to be able to see the horizon, he’ll take her down to the beach.”
“But this is L.A.,” she argued. “The sun doesn’t rise from the ocean here.”
“Maybe not, but at least from there he’ll be able to look back over the city and see it rise. And it’ll give him a better idea of the time of sunrise than most places in the city.”
“He won’t be able to stand on the beach. They’d be washed away.”
Serenity and Sebastian exchanged a glance. Everything had come full circle.
“The pier,” Serenity said. “He’s taken her to the pier.”
Sebastian scooped her up and ran.
Chapter Twenty-one
As the car covered the distance on the freeway, Elizabeth’s strength began to wane until she was only left with a horrible taste coating her mouth and a certainty was she going to be sick. If I’m going to throw up, she decided resolutely, I’ll make sure I’m close to Conner. If he planned on killing her, she’d at least get the tiniest bit of revenge by vomiting his friend’s blood all over him.
The thought of Liam made her glance over at where the man’s body still slumped against the door opposite. He’d gradually slid deeper into the foot well, so his lower half crumpled beneath him in a crouch. His head lolled to one side and his eyes stared sightlessly at the inside of the car roof, as if he found the crumpled segment Sebastian had left fascinating. His throat was a raw, red gash, a gaping maw that looked like it might open wider and bite her back.
She turned away, swallowing down bile that rushed into her mouth. In front, Conner drove, neither he nor Ryan speaking. The tension in the car was palpable, something caused not only, she suspected, by the presence of the dead body or herself, but because of what was to come.
The invisible bonds strapping her to the back of the seat began to loosen, allowing her to twist her shoulders. Conner’s spell was wearing off. She chewed on her lower lip. If it wore off completely, could she risk making a jump for it? They were travelling at a much faster speed now than when she’d pushed her mom from the car. By jumping, she might be risking a broken neck or back rather than just a wrist or ankle.
She hoped her mom was all right. The way she’d fallen from the car had looked worse than Elizabeth had imagined in her head when she’d been forming her plan. They hadn’t seemed to have been going particularly fast when they’d been driving with the doors closed, but as soon as she’d opened one and seen the road going by beneath them, their speed had seemed so much greater.
Her dad would have found her mom by now, she reassured herself. Sebastian wouldn’t allow Conner to get away with this, so he’d be following them. She tried not to think about how much stronger Conner’s magic seemed to be, how he was able to leave her helpless just by the reach of his hand and a few muttered words. Was that what he planned to exchange her life for? Would killing her somehow strengthen his powers even more?
She didn’t want to die. There was so much she still wanted to do. Hell, she’d never even kissed a boy properly, not a real kiss. The silly running, chasing games they’d all played when they’d been younger, where the boys had demanded a kiss in return for catching them, didn’t count. Earlier, she’d allowed herself—if only briefly—to wonder if Ryan would be the special boy to steal her first kiss. She hated herself for that thought now. He’d betrayed her and she hated him almost as much as she did Conner.
They pulled off the freeway and slowed to a crawl on the Pacific Coast Highway, turning onto Colorado Avenue. Elizabeth prayed for another tree to be down and block the way or for the cops to suddenly appear and pull them over, but their route remained clear. The road ran down to the beach, which had almost vanished in the storm. A thick layer of sand, seaweed and water covered the asphalt, spraying up from under the wheels of the car as they drove. A couple of other cars were skewed across the road, and Conner slowed to maneuver around them. There was no sign of whoever had been driving the abandoned vehicles.
Conner pulled the car over and Elizabeth realized the water hitting the windshield was no longer rain, but spray from the ocean, leaving white tracks of salt across the glass. The rain had stopped. She looked out across the water. Huge waves towered high as they headed toward shore and crashed down with terrifying force. The ocean was an angry gray. Foam and froth was carried in the high winds and blew across the road. The huge beach was all but gone, the waves as close to the road as they could get. The restaurants and shops lining the Santa Monica pier were all in darkness. Even if it wasn’t night, the buildings would still have been closed, with no help to be found within. Everyone would have been forced to evacuate this area. Many of the buildings were missing all or parts of their roofs. The rides were no more than pieces of twisted metal and broken pieces of wood. By the state of what remained, the area clearly wasn’t safe.
All of her vampire strength had vanished now. Once more, she was only a frightened girl, and this tumultuous ocean and broken scene did nothing to placate her emotions.
Conner got out of the car and opened the back door. She cowered away from him, but he reached in and dragged her from the back seat like an errant puppy.
The wind drove the spray into her face, the salt from the seawater stinging her eyes. She gasped against the rush and blinked furiously, clearing her vision.
Out on the horizon, she could make out an end to the cloud mass, a distinct line where the swirling cell above their heads ended. Beyond that, the sky had lightened to a deep blue-black. Morning would be here soon.
Conner had the back of her long-sleeved t-shirt bunched in his fist. “What we need is strapped to the bottom of your seat,” he called to Ryan. “Get it.”
The boy leaned forward and reached beneath, struggling with something for a moment before straightening back up again. He climbed out of the car, his face pale, eyes wide. In his hand he held a six-inch blade, wickedly sharp.
Elizabeth gasped and renewed her struggles.
“Good,” said Conner. “Now, get the gun.”
Ryan chewed on a piece of skin on his lower lip, hard enough to make a spot of blood bloom.
Conner snapped, “Now!”
Ryan turned from his father and climbed back into the car. Elizabeth could see him leaning over the back seat as he scrabbled around, trying to find the weapon. He lifted something up and backed out the way he had come, before holding the gun between his thumb and forefinger. The weapon dangled by the butt and Elizabeth understood the reason why. Liam’s blood spattered the metal.
“Here,” he said, holding the gun out to his father.
Conner shook his head. “You need to be in charge of the gun.”
Ryan’s forehead creased. “Why can’t you take it?”
“Because I need to kill her with a knife. Her blood needs to be spilled by a blade, and I can’t handle both, can I?” There was a snide tone to his voice. “Any sign of trouble and you use it.”
“Isn’t she a vampire? I thought we’d need to stake her to kill her?”
“She’s not fully vampire. Slitting her throat and draining her will work just as well.”
Ryan paled further. “Do we really have to do this, Dad?” His gaze flicked between Elizabeth’s face and his father’s. “Surely there’s another way?”
“Don’t tell me you’re losing your balls?” Conner spat. “You’ve seen what she’s capable of. She ripped out Liam’s throat and fed from him. She’s as bad as a regular goddamned vampire, if not worse because she can get away with acting like a normal human.”
“But we’re killing her. Doesn’t that make us just as bad?”
“She’s not a person. She’s barely alive.”
“And these things …” He gestured around and Elizabeth saw what she hadn’t before. Creeping out of the shadows and storm, demons moved silently toward them. They descended from all directions to line the road and the small strip of remaining beach. They did not seem to interact with each other; instead,
their red eyes were focused on Elizabeth. Their existence struck terror through her heart. They were even scarier than Conner with his knife.
Ryan also took in the sight of the demons, the hand holding the knife trembling. “Look at them all. What do they want?”
Conner reached out and snatched the knife from his son’s hand and then proceeded to clock him over the back of the head with its hilt. “What do you think they want? They want her blood to be spilled so they can take this world as their own.”
Ryan cringed away from his father, rubbed at the back of his head, and shot another glance at Elizabeth. She felt sure she saw something close to regret in his eyes.
“You don’t have to do this—” she started to say, directing her words at him, but Conner didn’t let her say anything else. He yanked the back of her shirt, the material tightening around her throat and almost choking her. He started to drag her past the ruins of the tourist attractions of the Santa Monica pier, toward the part where the huge structure balanced out over the water. She fought against him, willing her bloodlust to return so she could tear the son-of-a-bitch to pieces.
The far end of the pier looked as though it had been partially bulldozed. Huge waves rose and crashed over the end, but when the water pulled back to create another swell, Elizabeth saw that much of the boardwalk was splintered and in ruins.
Conner stopped where the solid ground ended and the pier started. He hauled her around to stand in front of him so they faced east, their bodies angled away from the start of the pier, looking out across the ocean, toward the city. He held his arm across her chest, pinning her against him. The other hand held the sharp edge of the knife against her throat. The blade felt like a sliver of ice against her skin.
“Now we wait,” he called to his son, who had followed along behind.
“For what?” came the nervous reply.
“For the exact moment of sunrise.”
Serenity clutched her arms around Sebastian’s neck as he ran at his full, breath-taking speed down the road toward the ocean. She prayed they were right about where Conner had taken Elizabeth. She suspected they were. Something else had given his location away. While they all seemed to have vanished now, each time she’d dared to lift her head from Sebastian’s shoulder, she had caught a glimpse of moving black shadows all heading in the same direction. Toward the ocean.
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