Ronin clenched his fists and opened his mouth to argue.
Diego cut him off. “Look, do us all a favor and shut up before he changes his mind about dismembering you, all right? Believe me when I tell you you’re doing more harm than good here. Now will you get the hell out of here so I can try to get him calmed down before she dies of blood loss?”
Eli roared with rage at those words and both men looked warily at him. His eyes glowed red as he glarled at Diego for daring to speak such a thing aloud. Diego’s entire body tensed in expectation of an attack which thankfully did not come.
One thought pounded in his head—Renee could not die. If she died there would be no pulling Eli back from the madness, and sweet Dios, he didn’t know how they’d stop Eli if that happened. Diego glanced at Ronin even as he reached for Renee’s failing consciousness, sending her the strong compulsion to stay with them. “Go, Ronin,” he repeated quietly. “Please.”
Ronin glowered at him but finally strode back to his motorcycle. Only when the sound of its engine faded in the distance did Diego turn back to Eli. He stepped closer, ready to stop at the barest hint of aggression, making sure the mark of his bond with Sian was clearly visible as he approached. He hoped it removed him as a threat. The last thing he wanted was to provoke a jealous rage when Eli was already feral from fear, hunger, and pain.
“Let me help you, Eli. I can keep her safe so she can heal. No one will harm her, I swear it. I know she can’t use the bagged blood, but I can give her—”
Eli bared his fangs again. “My blood,” he growled, the first words he’d spoken since their arrival. “No one else’s.”
Diego took a deep breath. He understood Eli’s feelings perfectly—he hated the thought of Sian taking anyone’s blood but his—but this was a desperate situation. “She’s weak,” he pointed out, choosing every word carefully to avoid any hint of accusation. “You must know she can’t hunt with you. She might not be able to wait for your return, Eli, and you have nothing to spare for her now.”
“My blood,” Eli repeated, his eyes blazing. It wasn’t a metaphor. Looking into Eli’s eyes was like gazing into the pits of hell. “Not yours. Mine.”
Diego stopped arguing. It was pointless and the longer they debated it, the weaker Renee became. He stepped to within arm’s reach of the pair, his hands still outstretched, his posture as non-threatening as possible. As he drew closer, Diego saw the newly-healed cuts on Eli’s throat. The raw pink slashes testified to his failed attempt to give her what she needed. He’d seen how fast Eli healed, and the fact that those marks hadn’t vanished yet told him how great Eli’s own need was.
“Hunt now,” Diego urged. “I will keep her safe for you. The sooner you feed, the sooner you can return and care for her.”
Diego held his breath as Eli stared at him for a long, tense moment. At last his gaze left Diego to touch Renee’s face. The tension of his body eased a bare fraction, but it was enough.
Diego reached forward slowly, keeping a wary eye on Eli the entire time, but Eli let him take Renee from his arms without protest. Diego felt the full weight of the responsibility he’d been given as he carefully held her. Her weakness was alarming and Diego worried what would happen if he was forced to give her blood before Eli returned. He knew he would do it—it would be too dangerous to all of them if she died—but Eli would hate it.
He didn’t want to think what Eli would do to him should he violate this sacred trust.
Oblivious to Diego’s worries, Eli reached out and placed his hand over Renee’s heart. Diego felt a sudden forceful surge of power flow from Eli into her, steadying her heartbeat, sending strength through her weakened body and buoying her fragile life-force. It felt like he was willing her to live. Her lashes fluttered as Diego’s eyes widened in shock.
Suddenly the freak storm seemed like nothing. Even at full strength, Diego knew he was unable to do such a thing. Not for the first time, he wondered just how powerful Eli truly was.
Renee looked up at Eli and tried to smile for him before her eyelids slipped closed again. He placed his trembling hand against her cheek and closed his eyes for a moment.
Then he fixed his dark gaze on Diego. “Don’t let her die.”
Diego breathed a quiet sigh of relief. Eli’s eyes, while tormented, were sane at last as they bored into his. His words had come out as a command, but Diego heard the terror beneath them and understood they were a plea. He knew what Eli wanted to hear and wished he could reassure him Renee would be alive when he returned.
“No one will touch her. She will be safe,” Diego replied, promising what he could. He hesitated, then added, “Eli, if she can’t wait for you, Sian can aid her.”
Eli’s eyes flashed but after a moment he nodded, agreeing to the idea of Sian giving her blood. Diego was immensely relieved—even with Eli’s amazing gift of strength, Renee was still so weak Diego wondered if she’d survive until Eli returned. After all, even in the swiftest animal form, it would take Eli some time to get from this abandoned and empty area to a place where humans lingered—
Eli simply dissolved.
Diego gaped for a moment. No, he had to be mistaken. Eli couldn’t have disappeared. He had never seen that before, had never heard of any vampire with that power. Renee shivered in his arms and he snapped back to the present.
Confusion could wait. Right now he had a promise to keep.
* * *
Urgency rode Eli hard as he shot across the sky to the closest concentration of humans. His fear and pain combined in a volatile mixture that made it hard to control himself as he plummeted to the ground. He made only a cursory effort to conceal his sudden appearance from those thronging the streets. When a young woman jumped and stared at him, he simply beckoned her and her friends into the nearest alley and took as much blood from them as they could stand to lose.
He fed heavily, taking far more than usual. His body cried out for the healing sustenance and he knew Renee was depending on him to provide for her. He barely bothered with subtlety or secrecy. Everyone who walked past his alley was diverted down it, emerging minutes later, dizzy and confused. Only the vast numbers of humans around him, the certainty of plenty of prey, kept Eli from draining each dry.
He didn’t care if he killed tonight. Renee’s terrible need was all that mattered.
When his own hunger was sated at last and his veins were bursting with life, he streaked across the sky to Diego’s home. He searched for Renee, felt her in one of the bedrooms—she was so weak!—and tried to seep in through the window.
Something held him back. An invisible barrier separated him from his Chosen. A killing rage burst through Eli’s mind before he realized Diego was only fulfilling his vow to keep Renee safe. Seething with impatience at the delay, he materialized on the doorstep and pounded on the door.
James opened it at once and quickly stepped out of his way. Eli didn’t even notice. He was already moving with preternatural speed toward the bedroom where Renee lay. Even though separated from her by half the palatial house, Eli heard her heart laboring to beat despite the strength he’d given her. There simply wasn’t enough blood to support it.
Sian looked up from her perch on the bedside when the door burst open and Eli charged into the room. Diego rose from his chair in the corner and pulled Sian to his side, ready to defend her should Eli show any sign of his earlier madness, but he strode past them without a word. He sat on the edge of the bed and drew Renee carefully into his arms. Diego urged Sian into the hall and pulled the door closed behind them, but Eli paid them no attention whatsoever. He had eyes only for Renee.
Eli cradled her against him and stroked her hair gently, hardly noticing that her torn and bloody clothes had been replaced by a soft knit nightgown. “Wake up, Renee,” he murmured, sending strength rushing through her again. “You have to feed now, baby. Wake up.”
Her eyes opened slowly and softened when she saw him. Eli shifted her in his arms, bringing her mouth to his neck. A moment passe
d before he realized she was too weak to use her fangs. He prayed she had the strength to drink as he pierced his skin with one elongated claw. This time the blood flowed. When her mouth closed over the cut, Eli felt a tiny brush of power.
The pain of the little wound faded to a barely-discernible sting.
Guilt suffused his soul. She thought to spare him this pinprick when he had brutally torn her own throat. “Save your strength, little one,” he whispered, his voice rough with emotion.
Her gentle touch wavered, then strengthened. The sting vanished altogether.
You took…enough pain for me. Her voice in his mind was weak, the mental equivalent of the faintest whisper, but he heard her clearly. How many times…tell you…not little one?
He held her tight, tears stinging his eyes. As she drew the life-giving liquid into her body, he felt her fangs first lengthen and then pierce his skin. A moment later, she drew on her weak power and brought a tiny wave of pleasure rushing through him. It shattered his heart.
“Beloved,” he murmured, stroking her hair, her body, reassuring himself that she was alive and would be all right. With every touch, her burns faded and vanished. “Can I call you that?”
Her lips curved against his skin in a smile. I might allow that, she replied, and relief filled him as he felt her growing stronger again.
Only a few minutes passed before he felt her heal the little wounds on his neck. He looked down at her, frowning in concern. “You didn’t take enough. You can’t stop now, you need more.”
She snuggled against him, her eyes already closed in her pale face. Her voice was barely a whisper in the silent room. “Too tired.”
Her words made him aware of the nearing dawn. In this state there was no way she’d be strong enough to fight off the day sleep. He sent his senses searching through her, then relaxed as he felt her body healing with the aid of his powerful blood. She was still desperately ill but he thought she’d be all right until night fell. Then he’d tend to her again and make her take everything she needed to heal completely.
He closed the curtains and secured the room for day with hardly a thought before gently tucking Renee beneath the covers. A moment later, he was beside her, his clothes flung carelessly over the arm of a chair, pulling her into his arms and holding her tight as she fell asleep. It was a long time before the terrible memories of this nightmare day and night released him. At last his exhaustion overcame him and his eyes closed, the relief of holding Renee in his arms again following him down into oblivion.
He awoke at sunset with dread hanging heavy over him and the certainty that something was horribly wrong.
Renee. He reached for her, wanting to feel her warm skin and see her topaz eyes alight with life, needing to reassure himself she was well.
But her skin was cold beneath his fingers and her eyes were closed. Eli let out an anguished cry of denial and caught her shoulders. This couldn’t be happening. He refused to accept this! She might not have taken all the blood she needed from him last night, but she’d been better when they’d gone to sleep. Damn it, he had felt her growing stronger last night!
All the denial in the world would not make this nightmare go away. She clung to the very edge of life again, her pulse slow and uneven, and nothing he did would rouse her. Eli caught her close and slashed open his throat again, pressing her mouth to the flow of blood. Despair threatened to overcome him when she didn’t drink.
“Don’t do this,” he whispered to her, refusing to heal his wound, hoping at least some of the life-giving fluid would seep down her throat despite her weakness. “I won’t let you leave me, little one. I can’t let you go!”
“I thought you had decided on that path, Lycidas,” a feminine voice remarked. “Why did you change your mind after you left her?”
Eli didn’t raise his head even though it had been more than two thousand years since he’d last heard his mother’s voice. For once, the sound of it brought him no joy. “I was a fool to think I could live without her,” he admitted without reservation, his voice bitter. “But I’ve always been a fool, haven’t I?”
Nyx moved to the bedside and healed his wound with a glance. “You weaken yourself needlessly,” she said when he simply reached up and opened it again. “Surely you can feel how useless it is. This one goes on to her next life.”
Angry words of denial died on his lips. He felt Renee’s life ebbing away. “She won’t have a next life. Apollo won’t let her be born into this world again. He knows I would find her, no matter where on Earth he puts her. No, he’ll keep her in the afterlife, out of my reach.”
Nyx shrugged gracefully. “It may be.”
Her calm acceptance was beyond him. Eli raised tormented eyes to look on his mother, her dark, lovely face shimmering with all the night’s mystery. Nyx was one of the most ancient of goddesses, and it was rumored that her power rivaled Zeus’s. She feared nothing. In all the aeons Eli had been bound to the mortal world, Nyx was the only one who had ever defied Zeus and done anything to ease his pain. She’d given him sanctuary in her realm of night, had visited him and spoken with him from time to time when the loneliness threatened to crush him. She was the only one who had never abandoned him, and in his gratitude, he had never asked anything of her.
He asked now. “Can you save her?”
Nyx sighed, a sound like the rustle of an owl’s wings. “She has been poisoned by a powerful venom. It has been in her body for many hours now, Lycidas. She is too far gone for me to save. It would be kinder to let her go.”
Those words crushed him. Eli bent his head over Renee’s, hiding his tears from the goddess. Now that Nyx had pointed it out, Eli felt the insidious taint of the poison in her body. It was far beyond his power to heal. “Then let me die with her,” he whispered. “You can kill me. Let me follow her.”
He felt her place a gentle hand on his shoulder, healing his wound again. This time he didn’t have the heart to reopen his vein. His heart bled enough for both of them.
“Why do you give such devotion to one of these?” Nyx asked, sounding genuinely puzzled as she brushed her fingertips over Renee’s hair. “She is lovely, but she is still human, a lesser being. You are a god, greater than her in every way. Why would you wish to cast your immortality aside for an inferior creature?”
His arm tightened around Renee and he shoved Nyx’s hand away. “I won’t hear you speak ill of her,” he said, his voice a low rumble of menace. “You know nothing of her.”
Nyx was silent for a long time. He felt her in his mind, reading his feelings for this woman she’d disparaged, but Eli didn’t bother trying to hide it from her. Every ounce of his attention was given to the dying woman in his arms, the faint rise and fall of her chest and the unsteady beat of her heart. Now he cursed his immortality, his divinity, his so-called superiority. Had he been like Renee, the poison in her blood would have finished him, too.
But he wasn’t like her. He was like no one on Earth.
Renee was the only one who had ever made him forget that, just for a little while.
Finally he felt the goddess shift away from him. “I felt your suffering and brought you a gift, Lycidas.” He heard her place something on the bedside table. “Perhaps it will ease your pain.”
He knew what she’d left him. She had brought it to him several times during his years in exile, coming to him when the pain had become too much to bear. The last time she had done this had been nearly two thousand years ago, long before the memories of any of his current companions. The scent of ambrosia, the food of the gods, the essence of what made them divine, filled his body with an almost painful longing.
Eli refused to reach for it. He wanted nothing to remind him of what he was right now. Not even the power in that substance would strengthen him enough to save Renee. Only a few gods had the power to give life and he cursed bitterly that he wasn’t one of them. He felt Nyx withdraw from the room and couldn’t even spare the energy to wonder when or if he would see her again. Surely Zeus wo
uld put a stop to it should he ever find out she brought ambrosia to him, and after yesterday, Apollo would certainly be watching.
His head came up sharply as realization hit him. Ambrosia. Nyx had said she couldn’t save Renee, but she’d brought him the very thing which separated the gods from mortals. The source of their divinity and power.
And poison didn’t affect gods.
Hope burst inside him as Eli reached for the crystal dish Nyx had left. He tilted Renee’s head back against his shoulder and her lips parted, the stain of his blood on them vivid in her chalk-pale face. His hands trembled despite his resolve as he lifted a spoonful of the divine food and brought it to her lips.
What he was about to do was against all the laws of Olympus and well he knew it. If Zeus found out about this, he would come down and destroy Eli personally.
He didn’t care. All that mattered was saving the woman in his arms. He called her name as he eased the ambrosia onto her tongue. “Try for me, baby,” he whispered, using all his power to help her swallow despite her terrible weakness. “You must do this. Please, little one, try for me.”
* * *
Nyx watched from the shadows that were her home, a faint smile curving her lips as she watched her son defy every law and god to save his woman. Never had she been prouder of him.
“Well done,” she whispered as she spread the net of her power over the house to conceal them from any other’s prying eyes. She would see to it that nothing disturbed them before this was finished.
* * *
Renee’s consciousness faded in and out. At first she was only intermittently aware of strong arms around her and she was glad Eli was with her now. She knew she was dying and she was afraid to do it alone.
Amelia Elias - [Guardian's League 02] - Outcast Page 25