“I can’t leave this Realm. I’m the leader now.”
“Unite the Realms.” I could hardly breathe. “Gabriel always said balance was a lie because his plan was to separate the Realms, but it backfired. You proved him wrong. You’re here because he wanted to punish you. And now all those people you thought could do good while you stayed here, you’ve sentenced them to die. What would their leader do?”
“Everything possible to save them.” Rainey buried her head in her hands. “That’s what I thought I was doing.”
I ran my hand over her hair. She wasn’t crying, but she’d been rendered powerless by the sucker punch of failure. “It’s not too late, Rainey. But you’re the only one who can do it. Without you, there is no balance. There is no tomorrow.”
“DON’T LET GO.” RAINEY’S voice danced over the surface of my skin in perfect time with the vibration her touch sent through my body. Easiest request I’d ever follow. “The power has to flow from me to you.”
I hadn’t brought anything with me when I travelled. No stones, no magical dust scraped from the bottom of a jar. Just my heart, soul, and supernatural powers. Rainey was more powerful than all of it. I always knew it deep down inside, but I’d taken her for granted. She had become what I wanted to see—my angel, my rock, my soulmate, but now it was time for me to see her for what she really was. A force strong enough to summon the sun.
The spell Rainey cast put a bubble around us so she could absorb my power. I’d give her anything she wanted, and follow her anywhere...even the cesspool of a Realm we called home. Once we gave it a good scrub, it would be as good as new. Lennon’s science lesson echoed through my brain as I held Rainey’s head to my shoulder. I closed my eyes and ran my fingers over her hair. She chanted in Latin, softly at first, but certain words were loud and sharp. I jumped, then stiffened. I didn’t want to do anything to break the spell. To fall away from her and possibly never get her back.
I moved my lips along with the rhythm of the chant as she repeated it. She tightened her grasp on my waist, and I couldn’t believe I forgot how good her body felt against mine. The memory of her touch was no match for the real deal. The vibration morphed into a floating feeling, and we were on our way...somewhere. My travels didn’t always have an exact trajectory, before looking for Rainey. Her pull over me was stronger than I realized. Now that I had her back, I could smugly think I’d never really lost her in the first place.
Just like me not to learn from my mistakes.
A crash made us both scream, the impact sending us sideways. “I’m afraid to open my eyes,” I said.
“Holly! Rainey! Are you okay?” Lennon knelt over us when I did open them. We’d fallen through the glass door to our balcony. Now both panes of glass were broken. The fog of the spell had yet to lift, and I wondered if the person who sabotaged Rainey’s supply closet had entered this way too—from another Realm.
“Better than ever.” Rainey laughed and kissed me. “What about you, Holly?”
“I think I’m good.” But judging from the look on Lennon’s face, that was subject to change. “How long was I gone?”
“A couple of days, and you came back not a moment too soon.” Lennon pressed her lips together, and a tear ran down her cheek. “We have an emergency. You need to come to the Alta Vista.”
Chapter Thirty-Three
Lennon was a hot mess. Mascara and lipstick smeared all over her face, which made me think the night started with good intentions. My mouth watered like I was about to get sick as I considered the possibilities. She’d pulled a blanket off the foot of our bed and wrapped it around her shoulders while she waited for us to come back. Her energy level could be suffering, too. She’d held out, being trapped in an apartment with a volatile Tristan and a weaker than usual Callie. Rachel was an omnipresent threat. I’d ask Lennon how she was feeling, but the sobs that racked her told me almost everything I needed to know, except for why.
We scrambled up from the shattered glass and I reached for Lennon. She fell against me, and I mouthed I’m worried about her energy to Rainey.
“Do you need blood, Lennon?” Rainey asked. If she did, I’d give it to her. Rainey needed to stay strong.
“No, I’m fine.” Lennon rocked back on her heels and hugged her knees. “It’s Tristan. He’s lost all sense of humanity. He attacked Callie. Like ripped her open. He was coming for me, but I managed to hit him in the face with a bottle of Venom. It wasn’t enough to knock him out. I...ran. I should’ve stayed—” She gulped a breath. “But we’d both be dead.”
The last few words were swallowed by sobs. I pulled her back into a hug. “You did the right thing,” I said.
“Did I? She screamed my name, Lennon, help me. She begged me to kill him.” Lennon shook her head to rid herself of the memory. I could barely breathe. Callie, begging someone to kill Tristan. “And that was when she still made sense. But when I left, it was quiet,” she said.
I got up, and my legs were like rubber. “We have to hurry. We have to go help her.” As much as I bitched about Callie, and we’d never be friends, I didn’t want her to die. Especially not by her lover’s hand. It made everything I believed about love a lie.
“There’s nothing...to save.” Lennon could barely get the last word out.
“We can bring her back,” Rainey said, eyes wide, breath quickening as she readied for battle. “As long as her body’s somewhat intact, blood should heal her and I’ve got salves and crystals to accelerate the process—”
Lennon and I glanced at each other, stopping Rainey in her tracks. “Someone broke in and trashed your supply closet.”
Rainey marched over to the closet, shaking her head at the condition of it. “Fuckers. Okay, so that’s not an option. We need blood. It shouldn’t be that hard to get... right?”
“Has Tristan had any more blood?” I asked.
“Just from C-Callie,” Lennon stuttered. “No one else is allowed near him.”
“I don’t get it.” Rainey had a lot of catching up to do.
How did I explain this to her in the most streamlined way possible? “Gabriel sent his guys to Embrace around the time Rachel went to the other Realm. They roughed Blade up bad. He fed from me, and I didn’t recover right away. Like I passed out in the middle of the performance. The show’s been dark ever since. Anyway, the guys from the band came down to feed him. They never recovered.”
Rainey raised an eyebrow. “Even Tristan?”
“Hell no. Callie would’ve poured salt in Blade’s wounds. That hasn’t changed.” And there was still no good explanation about Blade’s disappearance. “But Rachel spread a virus through the band and Blade. She gave Tristan blood. Now she’s holding the guys hostage, convinced they’ll be able to survive in Gabriel’s Realm when she decides to feed them.”
“No way,” Rainey scoffed. “Gabriel wanted this Realm to be an outer ring of Hell. If he attacked Blade and it set off a ripple effect of destruction, that was his end goal. Rachel’s lying.”
Lennon narrowed her eyes, wiping her cheek and making the mess worse. “But Rachel stole Gabriel’s powers, right?”
“Yeah,” Rainey said.
“So Rachel intends to spread the wealth. Take over that Realm, but she’s bringing a bunch of hungry vampires with her. Does she plan on destroying it?”
“It’s possible.” Rainey sunk down between Lennon and me on the floor. She picked up a piece of broken glass and moved it back and forth, frowning as the reflection changed. “It’s my Realm now. I’m Gabriel’s only surviving child.”
“What does that mean for us?” I couldn’t stop myself from asking.
“Holly.” I missed being admonished by Rainey. She punctuated it with a sigh. “Things will change, and at the same time nothing will. I’m not going back to Tea Room to read fortunes. But I’ll always love you.”
“You say that like it’s past tense,” I whispered.
“It’s forever tense. But none of it will matter if we don’t stop Rachel.” Rain
ey stood and held her hand out to me. She gave me a quick peck when I rose, then held her hand out to Lennon. “We need to help Callie first. She’s the leader of the clan, and no matter what you think of her, she’s better than Rachel. And if you have any hope of getting your show back on stage, Tristan needs help, too.”
The solution was blood. Energy got weaker every time it was transferred. And if Gabriel had equipped his men with a warfare we weren’t strong enough to handle, it was a suicide mission.
“Then what?” I asked. I hoped the answers were clear to Rainey, because they certainly weren’t to me.
“We deal with Callie and Tristan first.” She headed to the door. “From there, we’ll decide what to do next.”
RAINEY WITH A LITTLE bit of power was smoking hot, but I wished it didn’t happen like this. I spent the drive back to the Alta Vista taking back every rotten thing I ever said about Callie. I snuck glances at Rainey every chance I got—distracting, since I’d been deemed the designated driver— I was driving like a maniac, swerving through traffic and running red lights. We didn’t have time for traffic laws when The Mistress could be bleeding out in the penthouse of the Alta Vista. I tried to put myself in Callie’s place. What it would be like to beg Rainey for mercy. Nothing was guaranteed when we were immortal, not even forever. But Callie found her mate, her safe place. She could guard drop and know that Tristan accepted all her flaws and mistakes. Callie and I had that in common—we both made a lot of mistakes. Until now, we’d both been lucky enough to bounce back.
But love wasn’t a mistake. Callie took a lot of chances and owned her shit. Damn it, I was eulogizing her and I didn’t even know if she was dead. She needed all the good energy I could project.
I screeched into the parking lot and no one got out of the car right away. “We can’t do anything about it if we don’t go up there.” Rainey looked at me but didn’t move.
I reached for her hand. “I love you. It might seem out of place, but I can’t stop thinking about Callie and Tristan.”
She nodded. “I love you, too.”
Lennon didn’t get out of the car when we did. It didn’t bode well for our mission, since she had first-hand knowledge of what we were about to walk in on. I opened her door, but she waved me off before I had a chance to give her a pep talk.
Her eyes were huge and tinged red with unshed tears. “Without Callie, I’d be dead. And when she needed me, I left her to save myself.”
“It’s not too late.” I held my hand out to her, and she hesitated before she took it. “You did what you thought was best at the time. You couldn’t help her if Tristan attacked you, too. And you came to the strongest, healthiest people you knew for help. Don’t beat yourself up that you didn’t put yourself in danger.”
She had another chance to do that now. The three of us held hands as we walked into the resort and got into the private elevator that led us to the penthouse. I wasn’t accustomed to Rainey’s power anymore, and it was overwhelming. Lennon kept looking down at her hand, and at the two of us. No one wanted to share what they were thinking.
I remembered the night Lennon got attacked a little differently than she did, for obvious reasons. Callie had come back to the penthouse we were about to step into, looking for Tristan, with me in tow as her prisoner. And she didn’t go to Lennon first. I gave her so much shit, knowing Lennon was suffering but no, we had to go team up with Rachel. I lost something that night, too. My fire.
Callie had done the same thing Lennon was doing now—bringing in reinforcements.
“Oh, hell.” Lennon gasped when we walked into the penthouse. Tristan lay face down, sprawled across the marble floor. A bottle of Venom had been knocked over, just out of his reach. The puddle surrounding him was a strange mixture of the amber liquid and something darker. Blood.
I dropped to my knees in the middle of the mess. There was no question of who was best to deal with this. None of us were. His face was turned to the side, eyes closed, and he was that awful gray color. He didn’t have the strength to glamour anyone.
“Tristan.” I put my hand on his face, relieved when he was just regular cold and not gross and clammy. “Where’s Callie?”
He groaned. It was a good sign, even if it wasn’t an answer.
“She’s in the bedroom.” Lennon’s heels clicked on the floor, and Rainey chased after her.
I stayed behind with Tristan, shaking him, sneaking in a good slap, hoping it was enough to wake him from his nightmare. My heart pounded, knowing full well he could be hungry when he woke and not the least bit rational. And I was alone with him.
Nothing could prepare me for the blood-curdling scream that came from the bedroom. Tristan’s eyes snapped open, but I doubted he saw anything. He clutched my wrist.
“Tristan, answer me!” We weren’t out of the woods with him, either. “Can you hear me?”
He groaned again. It took all my strength to pull him out of the puddle. He finally started helping me, and it wasn’t like dragging dead weight anymore. His eyes were unfocused, and he was making a completely unsettling humming noise. But it wasn’t worse than the cries coming from the bedroom.
“Let’s get you over to the couch.” So thankful he worked with me, I slid his body away from the puddle and rested him on the cushion. At least if he passed out again, he wouldn’t crack his skull open. These were the stupidest floors for someone with a drinking problem. I checked his throat and his limp arms for signs of damage. Like there was anything scarier than him in the apartment. At least I knew he wasn’t bleeding out. “Stay here, I’m going to check on Callie.”
“Callie,” he groaned, and his head fell back against the cushion.
Fuck, I did not want to go into that bedroom. I stood at the door and listened to Lennon cry and Rainey try to soothe her, and hopefully Callie. Tristan had looked bad, was bad, but he was still alive. I pushed open the door and almost passed out from what I saw.
Callie lay flat on her back with Lennon on one side and Rainey on the other. Lennon’s wrist dripped with blood, and she held it over the gaping wound that started at Callie’s chin and continued to her chest. She was lucky her head was still attached to her body.
I hoped her head was still attached to her body.
Rainey chanted, running her hands over Callie’s skin. I’d swear it was transparent. I saw all the things I shouldn’t. For the second time since entering the penthouse, I fell to my knees, holding my wrist out to Lennon to take a bite. Prayers were a waste of time. The only people who would help her were already in the room.
“Tristan woke up,” I said, mostly to distract myself from the pain of Lennon’s bite. No one was actually listening to me. We were all on overload. “I got him over to the couch, but he passed out again.”
Lennon concentrated on the wounds, but nothing had changed. I didn’t want to think that Callie had drank the bad blood that had gone through the clan like poison. I opened her mouth with my other hand and put my wrist in. And waited for something to happen.
And kept waiting.
Rainey stopped chanting. “What time does the sun come up?”
“Five-ish. It hasn’t really been coming up all the way. It’s been gloomy like rainy season, but no rain.” Black sky still surrounded us. Tristan’s apartment was all windows. Another horrible design choice for a vampire. “The black-out blinds will automatically close.”
“Let’s get her out of here before that happens. And Lennon.” Rainey glanced at her. “Their bodies are programmed to shut down. Lennon needs the rest. We should give Callie a chance to process the blood and time to heal. But we can’t leave her alone with Tristan.”
“Should we stay here?” Not that I wanted to have a sleep over with two half-dead vampires.
Rainey shook her head. “No. It’s not safe for any of us. We should bring her to our room.”
I didn’t like that idea, either. “Then where are we going to sleep?” Sleep was a luxury, but we had to rest. The fight didn’t end with Callie.
“I’ll stay with her,” Lennon said. “The two of you should get another room for the night.”
“I FEEL GUILTY, LEAVING Lennon alone with Callie.” I crawled into bed and reached for Rainey like we’d been doing this all along. Lennon and Callie were in my room, and we rented our own for the day. I had a feeling we wouldn’t need it longer than that, no matter what happened.
Having Rainey back with me wasn’t the ultimate victory I’d built it up to be. Had it happened a week ago, we’d be celebrating. Now it only scratched the surface of our problems. Snuggling against her was indulgent, but if our eyes were crossing and our heads swimming we’d be useless to all the vampires who needed our help.
We were brought to Vegas to destroy vampires—but we couldn’t survive without them.
“She’ll either get stronger or she won’t.” Rainey smoothed my hair away from my face. She was so close it took everything I had to not beg her to kiss me. “We’ve done everything we can for her tonight. If the blood can heal her, she’ll still need energy to thrive. Any idea where Rachel might be holding the guys?”
“Rachel and I don’t chat. Our conversations still run along the lines of her saying I’m stealing all the things and me telling her how much she sucks.” Laughing wasn’t appropriate. “My first guess would be Embrace, but not with Gabriel’s guys there.”
“Did she know what happened to Blade?” Rainey asked.
I squeezed my eyes closed. Blade. I wouldn’t be able to bear it if he was in as bad of shape as Callie. “Not sure.”
“Because there’s a possibility it’s a trap. Gabriel wouldn’t have had the ability to send anyone anywhere after he tangled with her. I’m serious, Holly. It’s horrifying to see him come face to face with his mortality. He’s scared, and that scares me. I’m worried I can’t survive without him.”
“Don’t say that,” I whispered before covering her mouth with a kiss. I had to take that fear away and bring her to a place she felt safe. It took a couple tries to stop kissing her. Our legs tangled together, and the heat from her body completed me. I would take nothing for granted ever again. Especially not happiness. “What was your life like there?”
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