by Keary Taylor
Now I do it for survival.
Cyrus releases the man he drinks from, and quietly waits for me to finish, his human leans back in the chair to recover.
I pull another, and know that I need to stop soon.
But I drink just one more time, because there’s a small little flame left in my stomach I haven’t put out just yet.
Footsteps from the doorway pull my eyes to the side, and I allow my eyes to follow for just a moment without releasing the woman.
It’s Grace Stevens, the human woman Cyrus brought here from New Orleans. The one who is a death detector. The one he forced to give up the rest of her life so she could give us warning if I was going to die soon.
Honestly, I haven’t thought about her in weeks. I feel terrible, suddenly. Because neither Cyrus nor I have thought to protect her. We haven’t checked on her. I wonder now how she survived when Moab and his people invaded the castle.
How did she survive?
The dark and confused look in her eyes is enough for me to release the human woman. The stiff set to her shoulders is enough to make me stand straight. The way her mouth hangs open just a little is enough to get Cyrus to his feet instantly.
But neither of us says a word. We keep staring at Grace, both of us utterly frozen.
Grace takes a step further into the Great Hall. Her expression doesn’t change. She doesn’t look scared to have just seen me sucking a human’s blood down. She’s seen plenty in the last three weeks since she’s been here at the castle.
She holds that look of fear and hesitancy.
“Grace,” Cyrus finally breathes, as the older woman slowly makes her way across the large space. “What is it?”
My stomach sinks, to that same place where there is a little fire still burning.
Grace’s eyes meet mine. And I feel it.
I know it.
“It starts as this…smell,” she says, her first words. They come out raspy and quiet. “Like this…cold, misty smell.”
Her eyes are locked on mine.
It isn’t Cyrus she looks at with those suspicious, fearful eyes. It could and never will be Cyrus she looks at in that way.
“Just faint, barely detectable,” she says, taking another two steps forward. “And then it gets stronger. And the bad, oppressive dark feeling starts, and the weight on my chest grows heavier.”
I hear it.
Cyrus’ heart stops.
He doesn’t breathe.
No blood pumps through his veins.
Maybe he can die.
Because everything that qualifies him as living just stops right then.
“I smelled it just a few minutes ago,” Grace says, fixing me with her gaze. “It called to me all the way up to the next level. It found me, even that far away.”
She reaches forward and takes my right hand between both of hers. She looks so scared, so sad. Emotion wells in her eyes, just slightly.
“It’s faint,” she says. She lets her eyelids fall shut, and it pushes out two tears, one from each eye. “But there’s no mistaking it.”
She opens her eyes as she turns her head toward Cyrus. “Death is closely following your wife.”
Chapter 16
I swallow once.
No.
She’s wrong.
I tell myself that there’s no fire in my stomach.
I just didn’t drink quite enough. I wasn’t quite done when she walked in.
“No,” I say, shaking my head. “You’re wrong. I just…I just need a little more. Watch. See.”
I stalk back to the human woman resting in the chair. She has a look of fear in her eyes for a moment that I completely ignore as I grip her shoulders. I sink my fangs into her neck.
And I drink.
Oh, it’s so good.
I pull. One deep pull. Another.
I feel the fire in my stomach and it grows smaller. I drink another pull, and the fire dampens a little.
My eyes open, and I stare with wide eyes at the stone floor.
I take another pull. I’m so close to putting out that fire. Just one more. I suck.
I just need one more. I draw again.
So close. My stomach only burns a little.
I pull again.
But nothing comes out.
I snap upright, letting go of the woman. She flops in the chair, hanging awkwardly over the side of it.
No.
My hands raise to my mouth, finding blood on my lips, dripping down my chin.
No.
No.
With eyes wide with horror, I look up at Cyrus.
I killed her.
I drained her dry.
But still there’s that little flame in my stomach.
Cyrus is white as a ghost. He stands rooted on the spot, he doesn’t breathe. Tears well in his eyes, and his lower lip begins to tremble.
“Cyrus,” I breathe, taking a step away from the body. I look down at her and shake my head. “No, I just, I just wasn’t paying enough attention. I…”
I look up, my brain stumbling over itself, going a million miles an hour, trying to come up with a solution, anything, to reason why I just did what I did, and why I’m still thirsty.
I meet my husband’s eyes again. His face breaks, though he tries very hard to keep control over it. He squeezes his eyes closed, bracing his hands on the back of a chair as he collapses forward, barely catching himself.
“No,” he whispers, so quiet my ears barely catch the word. He collapses down, dropping to his knees, even as he clings to the back of the chair for dear life. “No. No, no, no.”
It breaks me, and I completely forget Grace Stevens is still in the room. I’m at his side in the blink of an eye. I kneel down on the stone floor beside him. I take his hands in mine, but find him limp. I place my hands on his cheeks, forcing him to look at me.
“Cyrus,” I breathe. “Im yndmisht srtov. Cyrus, I…” But I can’t find any words.
I’m supposed to be strong when he is weak. I’m supposed to carry him. Because that is what marriage is—picking up the other when they’re down.
But I can’t find any strength right now.
“Cyrus,” I say as my voice cracks.
He opens his eyes. They’re bloodshot. They’re broken. Shattered.
He raises his hand to my own cheek, and studies my eyes. He searches deep, probing. He’s memorizing, I know it, learning every line and every curve.
He’s storing every detail for the time when he won’t be able to look at my face again.
He presses his lips to mine. The kiss is gentle, as if I’m instantly fragile. Like I’m about to break. His lips caress mine. They don’t move. He breathes a breath in, as if he can suck my soul into him and we can just inhabit the same body instead of mine wasting away before his eyes.
He pulls me into his arms, and he tucks his face into my neck. And here I can hold him. I can keep him upright. I can support him. I can keep it together as he falls apart in my arms.
I can’t believe it. After 286 years apart, we only got three months together. Seventy-nine days. Never has our time together been so short. Never have we been so robbed.
It’s not fair.
Not fair when this time was so different.
We should have had centuries together.
My shit luck continues, I think to myself.
Of course when I marry the perfect man for me I’d learn within hours that I would die soon. This is just my life. Everything is too good to last.
I lace my fingers through Cyrus’ thick hair, letting my eyes close.
Even if I had known from the start that this would be all we’d get, I wouldn’t change things. I would still have let myself fall in love with him. I still would have married him last night.
I love you, my heart beats, over and over and over.
Suddenly, Cyrus pulls away and turns back to Grace. “How long?” he demands.
She’s pinned to the spot by his smoldering gaze. He’s the ultimate predato
r and every nerve in her body knows it right now.
“I never know exactly,” she says. And to her credit, her voice does not tremble in fear. “But once I sense it, it’s never too long.”
Cyrus looks back at me, and we’re both thinking the same thing, doing the same mental calculations.
Once the unquenchable thirst starts, I’ve never had longer than three weeks.
“Once again I have shit timing, don’t I?” I say, doing the only thing I can think of right now, trying to lighten the mood. “Deciding to die right as we’re about to go to war.”
Cyrus shakes his head. I knew he wouldn’t think it was funny, but I had to say something. “I’m so sorry, im yndmisht srtov,” he says, once more bringing his hand up. He brushes his knuckles against my temple, brushing my hair out of the way. “For doing this to you. That you have suffered for my greed, for my ambition, over and over again. I…” his voice cracks and he closes his eyes for just a moment. “I wish I could take it all back.”
For a second, I’m scared. I wonder what is wrong. Because his expression suddenly goes blank. His eyes widen. His hand freezes against the side of my head.
I can see it in his eyes, the gears spinning in his head a billion turns per second.
Finally, he takes a deep breath, and I see something spark in his eyes.
“Alivia,” he breathes under his breath. He takes my hand, and before I can demand an explanation, he’s on his feet, dragging me with him through the Great Hall and out into the hallways.
“Alivia!” he bellows, looking every direction.
“Cyrus,” I say, trying to pull him to a stop. But he’s determined and focused. With singularity, he follows his ears up to the next floor.
“Alivia!” he yells, his voice filling the entire castle with its power.
Down the hall, I see her step out of a bedroom.
She’s terrified. From head to toe, I can read the fear off of her. I can sense her flashbacks of their past, when Cyrus tortured this woman, when he left scars so deep they took sixteen years to heal, and now only two seconds to reemerge.
“Was it true?” Cyrus demands, stopping just three feet from her, his hand still held tightly around mine. I’ve never seen this kind of focus on Cyrus’ face. Such determination. “Did he create it? Was he successful in making a cure?”
More of my internal organs disappear.
Cure?
“Cyrus?” I breathe, fighting through the confusion raging through me like a panicked toddler. “What are you talking about? What cure?”
Alivia’s eyes flick from Cyrus’ to mine. And I see it there. Written all over her face, over every inch of her body language. She knows something. Something important.
Something life-changing.
“Alivia!” Cyrus bellows when she hesitates in answering. He releases my hand and suddenly grabs her, gripping her upper arms and shaking her. “Did Henry really make a cure?”
“That would be impossible!” she yells. And I see a spark in her eyes. She’ll fight back. She yanks back, out of his grasp. She glares at him, stepping out of his reach.
“Don’t toy with me, Alivia,” Cyrus hisses. He takes a step forward, glaring death and curses at my biological mother. “In this matter, you have never learned your boundaries.”
“Cyrus,” I scold, stepping forward and grabbing him by the back of his shirt as he stalks forward and Alivia slinks back. “What the hell are you talking about? You’re acting like you’ve lost your damn mind!”
“I am losing my mind!” he shouts, turning, his eyes igniting red as he looks from Alivia to me. “I’ve only just found you, Logan! I will not lose you. Not this soon. Not ever.”
Instantly, Cyrus eyes soften. They break with grief.
“What?” Alivia breathes. “Lo…Logan. What is he talking about?”
I look at her, and in my brain, I open my mouth, and I very clearly explain it.
The curse is coming for me. My time is up. I’m going to start getting sick. I’m going to starve, no matter how much blood I drink. I’m going to wither and die a painful death.
It’s simple.
I’ve done it eight times before.
But my lips don’t part. Instead, the bottom one trembles, just a little.
It’s answer enough. The entire world knows the story. Alivia knows it.
She understands.
Without a word, she reaches out, grabbing my wrist and Cyrus’ and pulls us into her bedroom.
“Come inside,” she says before she looks both directions down the hall and then closing the door behind her.
Slowly, she turns around and crosses her arms over her chest.
“What does a cure have anything to do with it?” she asks simply.
I go to the chair in the corner, because suddenly, I am tired. Maybe it’s mental. I pretend there’s no way it’s physical. Not this fast. Not this soon.
“She cannot die Sevan’s cursed vampire death, if she is not a vampire,” Cyrus says.
My brain trips. It falls smack on its face, bloody nose gushing, and wonders what the hell just happened.
“I need the both of you to explain what you’re talking about,” I grit out from between my teeth, looking from Cyrus, to a very guilty-looking Alivia.
“Alivia’s father and I were enemies for centuries,” Cyrus says, obliging in giving an explanation. “Bad blood over other issues aside, there were rumors about some research Henry Conrath was conducting. Research on me.”
My eyes widen at the words, and I look back at Alivia, whose expression darkens. But she doesn’t say anything. She just stares at Cyrus.
“He’d taken samples of my DNA without me being aware, and had built a laboratory of sorts for the age, and was studying what made me what I am.” Cyrus’ grip on my hand tightens and I can feel his hatred, his rage. Cyrus hates this man, my biological grandfather, Henry.
“My spies broke into the lab, analyzed what Henry was working on,” Cyrus says. “They were not men of science. But they had their suspicions.”
My heart pounds a little faster.
“They did not seem to be complete, however,” Cyrus continues. “So I told them to return again in a year and see what became of Henry’s experiments. But when they returned, they found that the lab no longer existed and Henry had moved. To America, with his brother Elijah.”
This is one of those beautiful and incredible parts about what we are. Our immortality. The time that can pass, and the changes that can happen in those large spans of time.
“We watched Henry for years. As he bounced around New England, and then finally settled in that swamp you call home.” A little sneer curls on my husband’s lips as he looks at Alivia and recalls the area she rules. “We waited to see if he resumed his studies. But we never found evidence of a lab. So, we came to the conclusion that he had abandoned whatever study of my DNA he had been conducting. And then he was killed, sixteen years ago.”
I’d never heard Alivia talk about her father. I knew he had to have died, or he would have been ruling at her side. But here I hear it. The quick summary of his demise.
“But you think he created something?” I say, my voice quiet. I swallow once. The burn in my stomach is a little hotter, a little more present. “You think he made some kind of cure?”
Cyrus does not look away from Alivia. He stares at her like he can see right down to her soul and read the truth off of her blood cells.
“We thought he had created two cures,” he says. And when I smell the sweat break out onto Alivia’s palms, I see the smile begin to curl on Cyrus’ lips, just faintly. “A cure for the Bitten. I have my suspicions he used it on his friend, Rath. The man is neither human or vampire. I think Henry altered him, somehow made him age slower. And then I think he made a cure for any kind of vampirism. Even mine.”
Shit.
Shit.
No. No way. Not possible.
Not freaking possible.
“I really did think Henry Conrath was de
ad,” Cyrus says. He takes a step forward, and Alivia takes an equal one backward. “And was relieved for it. But then ten years ago, word of someone curing Bitten circulated back to me, and I remembered my old enemy.”
The smell of Alivia’s fear doubles.
“You are quite the actress, Alivia, I know this from experience,” he says as he drops my hand and takes another step forward. I climb to my feet, ready to pull him off of her at any second.
I’m just waiting for him to pounce.
He’s utterly terrifying right now.
“But I know how to put on a face myself,” he continues as his voice drops in volume. “Elle told me a beautiful story about how a professor helped her create a cure for the Bitten, but I knew better.” Cyrus smiles. And I love his smile, but it is the most frightening thing in the world right now. “I let her think I believed her. But it sparked my doubt. As far as we suspected, Henry hadn’t completed his cure for the Bitten, only experimented on Rath. But then I learned the cure had been in use for several years. So either Henry hadn’t utilized it for a space of time before his death. Or he never really was dead.”
Alivia doesn’t say a word. She just stares darkly at Cyrus, as if willing him to stop reading her so easily.
I realize that Cyrus has been quiet for a long moment. I look up at him at the same time he looks back at me. There are emotions beginning to pool in his eyes. His breathing is shallow. He’s trembling slightly.
His emotion draws my own out.
I’m not ready.
I don’t want to die.
I want to live. I want to live with Cyrus and have a life together.
It’s not been enough.
Not even close.
And I’m only twenty years old, damn it!
Cyrus turns back to Alivia. And to my shock, he drops to his knees in front of her.
“I know you hate me,” he says. “I know you and your family have every reason to. We’ve been enemies for so long. But Alivia,” he reaches forward, taking one of her hands in his. He presses his forehead to the back of her hand. “I will forget it all. I will erase it all, somehow. Just please tell me. Did Henry succeed in creating a cure?”
Alivia stares down at Cyrus, and I see tears gathering in her own eyes. She’s shaking. Like she’s holding something in. Like she’s not quite strong enough to keep it all.