Hunter wasn’t sure he understood her words. But he understood the look in her eyes. Tenderness wasn’t something directed at him. Ever. And for a moment, he drowned in it.
Hesitation filled his voice as he asked, “A chance of what?”
She took a deep breath and seemed to steel herself as she replied, “Life. The chance of living a life that’s more than just war and duty and honor. A chance to be the boy I saw, a chance to be the boy who grows into the man.”
“I’m not a mere soldier,” he insisted, his chin lifting. “Even though I believe this has become a war.”
She lifted a brow. “Not exactly true, now is it? I mean, considering you’re lying in a hospital bed wounded during what could be construed a battle?”
“Point taken,” he bit out not liking the reminder.
“Hunter,” she began in earnest. “Listen to me. You need to fight this. With all the guts and determination and cunning you used in the arena. I can’t do this without you. I need you to put things back into perspective. Survival is ninety percent will, mind over matter.”
Mind over matter? How simple this sounded. He should let go. But Tori wouldn’t let him do that. So he had to ask the question.
“Why do it at all?” She stopped short and frowned. “Why do you care? After the way I’ve treated you, you should be rejoicing in my suffering.”
“I took an oath to save lives. No one ever said what kind of lives. Or that the one who’d hurt me the most would need me the most. It’s called forgiveness.”
No. This wasn’t the way life—or death—worked. “I give no quarter. I deserve no quarter.”
She crossed her arms over her chest. “True. And you’ll keep on doing the same. Until you understand one thing.”
“What is that?”
“You need to forgive yourself first.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
Forgiveness.
Tori stood under the stinging spray of the shower and wondered if Hunter would ever understand. How many nights? Doubled over and unable to breathe? Telling herself how she should never have left them, how she would’ve been able to stop the thieves if she’d just been home. Then beating herself into a pulp because she’d been partying, having a blast, enjoying a weekend away.
How long had it taken? To even think of coping? A year? Longer, maybe. And how long had it taken until she’d been able to even think about trying to smile? To laugh. Until she’d been able to even go out to a restaurant without wanting to flay herself alive. Because her life had come to consist of going home, then going to the hospital or to the school, then going home again.
Of course there’d been the temptation. Sedatives. Happy pills. Begging for one night of respite so she could sleep without the nightmares. But she’d deserved those nightmares. Right? They’d been her penance.
Better to be dead than without them. Her family. Her loved ones. Her baby. Right?
If it hadn’t been for Stacy and Kelley and a couple of other sorority sisters, she’d never have survived. They’d forced her to go to a support group. They’d set up therapy sessions and made sure she’d gone. And they’d reinforced what the doctors, the police, every analyst had said.
It wasn’t her fault.
And was she coping? She smiled, still not sure about that one but finally accepting the words. What had happened wasn’t her fault, at face value. Bad things happened to good people. Innocent children died every day. She was just as much a victim as they were.
Tori knew all the platitudes too.
Would she ever accept them deep inside? Hard to say. The wall would have to come down first. Or else she’d have to make a door and let someone in. Someone who’d suffered just as much, if not more.
Hunter Pierce.
In big, bold letters.
Hunter Pierce?
The man who considered her a filet mignon? With mushrooms and onions?
And yet for all his protests, he’d thrown himself in front of that dart and protected her as he’d said he would without worrying about his own life. Duty and honor?
His shining moment. Her—God she knew all about that kind of failure. Her duty to protect her family. Her mother. Her father. Beautiful. Sweet. Oh God, Kelly. No more arms wrapping around her neck. No golden halo resting on her chest. So much love in such a small package.
Tori shuddered as a piece of the wall blew away. Her fists clenched. Tears filled her eyes and mingled with the water dripping from the shower. She straightened and, in her mind, reached out. She slapped mortar down onto the broken wall. A brick. Then another. And another. And when she could breathe again, she started in surprise. The agony. A little bit less painful, a little bit easier to bear.
Because of Hunter. Because he put his life on the line for her.
Did he need her as a woman? Or did he need her as a doctor? Did he care, even a little? If so, she’d need to know the why before she even thought about framing the portal.
All of which would become a moot point if she didn’t figure out what was wrong with him.
After she toweled off and threw on some clothes, Tori grabbed her laptop and went back to the lab.
Stacy joined her. “How’s it going with the dart?” Tori asked.
“Gonna be a while,” Stace answered. “But I found something interesting. As we know, vampire skin knits almost immediately. Seems it might go back to transcription factors in their cells. You know, we could really use a molecular biologist on this.”
“Or a cellular kineticist.”
“Or both,” Stacy added. “Morgan?”
Tori wasn’t sure. “Three humans knowing about vampires?”
“Gotcha,” Stace murmured. “Last resort.”
Until then, they were stuck. “Okay, you keep going. Our best bet is still to find out what Nirvana is. I’ll keep trying to get Hunter back on his feet.”
Hmmm. Symptom mitigation. If you couldn’t beat a disease right away, you tried to live with it until you could.
As soon as he was able to eat, Hunter would become strong again. Tori hoped.
First rule, what goes in must come out. Poison went in. Now poison was coming out. And normal human blood cells weren’t strong enough to fight whatever was attacking them.
But what about royal blood cells? Was it possible that Sam might be able convert blood cells to make them stronger? Could she carry some kind of innate mechanism because she was one of the first of their kind? After all, she was the strongest and oldest of them all.
Tori nearly killed herself running over to the microscope.
SAM!
Chapter Twenty-Four
Hunter knew two indisputable facts. One, the sight of Sam’s wrist, pulse fluttering beneath her pale skin, was akin to an oasis in the Sahara. And two, no matter how much he wanted to drink, he couldn’t.
“Hunter….” Sam chastised.
“We can do this the hard way or the easy way,” Tori chimed in. Her words sounded a touch eager, didn’t they?
He shuddered. “You’re not putting another IV in me,” he shot back.
“If I didn’t know how much you want my blood or how sick you really are, I think I’d be insulted,” Sam retorted, rolling her eyes. “Don’t make me get rough with you.”
Hunter didn’t know how to explain. Every time he tried, that sour, disgusting taste came back. That old, tainted blood taste. The kind he’d never ever go near.
How Casperian must be laughing.
Taking matters into her own hands, literally, Sam tore at her wrist and shoved it into his mouth. Each time he sucked he forced himself not to clench and let the blood surge back. After a moment his whole body quaked. He had to tear away. Either that or he’d be bending over and heaving into the bucket again.
“How much did he get?” Tori asked Sam.
“Not nearly enough,” she replied.
They both stared at him like he was some sort of experiment gone bad. “I’m fine. I feel better.”
As he said the words, he kn
ew them to be true. He did feel a little better.
Sam simply stared. Tori frowned. “All right,” he sighed. “I’ll try to take a little more.”
The reaction was even more violent this time, and he only got a couple of sips before he had to stop. About an hour later, though, the ants stopped marching.
“They’ve stopped,” he whispered in wonder. Then he said the words louder. “They’ve stopped.”
Tori came running over. “The ants?”
“Yes. Though I’m still not sure about the rest.”
Hunter had rarely overindulged as a human. But he did remember the morning after he’d watched Casperian grope Antonia, knowing what was going to happen next. He’d gotten violently sick from too much wine. He felt the same now, wanting the sickness to end and impatient with himself for getting into this situation. “I haven’t felt sick in nearly two thousand years. I’d forgotten what the feeling was like.”
“I could tell you all payments come due eventually,” Tori told him, part of her words sounding like they were in jest, part of them sounding way too sincere.
He hung his head. Feeling remorseful wasn’t something he was used to. “You’re right. I deserve every moment. I was very nasty to you.”
She nodded. “And if I wanted to play this kind of game, we could go tit for tat. But this isn’t your fault.”
What? “I don’t understand.” After everything he’d done to her, she was being kind? No. Impossible. “Without me, Casperian disappears.”
“Do you really think so?” she asked, her tone intense.
Hunter thought about that a moment. Casperian wanted nothing more than to break him and keep on breaking him. “He wants me to suffer.”
She shook her head. “No. He wants everyone to suffer. I don’t know why. Maybe it doesn’t even matter. What matters is that we must stop him. I can’t change his behavior. You certainly can’t.”
“Oh yes I can,” he retorted. “I can end his worthless rotten life.”
“You can,” she agreed, her hand gripping the railing on the bed. “Or you can let go of your hatred.”
What? “Let go? He tried to kill you!”
She shook her head at him as if talking to a child. “Haven’t you ever heard that the definition of insanity is performing the same act repeatedly and expecting a different outcome? The Casperians of this world will always try to kill and keep on trying. Yes, he needs to be stopped. And yes, I need to figure out how to neutralize Nirvana and any other drug he comes up with. Because he can harm others. Not because we’ve already been harmed.”
Hunter stared at her as if she’d grown a pair of horns. What was she trying to tell him? “You’ve lost me.”
“What he’s done to you is over. The past can’t be changed. If you set out to stop him out of vengeance, you’ll never heal yourself.”
Heal? Why would she want him to heal? After what he’d done to her? “Doesn’t matter. He’ll be dust.”
“And what will you be?” she hammered home. “Whole? The man you were before?”
Hunter frowned.
Tori sighed. “Funny, I don’t think the men who murdered my family have stopped robbing houses. But I do know if I keep letting bitterness rule my life, then my life is over.”
She paused to let her words sink in. “At one time this might have been acceptable. I called it justice. And I was willing to make that trade just as you are right now. What you need to understand is it isn’t justice anymore.”
Not justice? Of course it was. An eye for an eye. Still not understanding, Hunter stared at her. So beautiful. Her doe-like eyes filled with warmth. And—yes, he was certain—compassion. For him. “Why not?”
“Because I found out I still care about people. And people are worth caring about.”
“After everything you’ve been through?”
She nodded. “I have a group of friends who’d lie down and die for me if they could, who forced me to stay alive when all I wanted was to join my family. You can’t imagine how it feels to be cared about like that, to be loved like that.” She paused and grinned at him. “And a very stubborn vampire who just saved my life trying his damnedest to do the same and die for me.”
What was she driving at? His insides were a swamp. His head pounded with the steady dirge of a bass drum. He couldn’t think straight.
Did she simply want him to turn the other cheek? Did she think it was possible? “Then you don’t want these men to pay for their crimes?”
The doctor. The oath. Her oath. Not exactly the way she was staring back at him at the moment. He knew death when he read it. “After it happened, the only way I was able to go to sleep at night was imagining I had a red-hot stiletto and I put it through each one of their eyeballs.”
Hunter backed up a bit. “Sorry I asked.”
“No you’re not.” She laughed.
“I can’t turn the other cheek,” he told her, a sliver of remorse running through him as he thought of what he’d done to her. “I’m not made that way.”
“I understand.” She leaned her elbows on the railing to get closer to him. “And I don’t think I’m asking you to. But what I am asking is if you really want to be judge and jury. I tried it that way for a while, and I found out in the end the only one who was suffering was me.”
Suffering. Now there was a word he understood in spades. “Surely you don’t want them to go free, do you?”
She breathed in deeply and answered in the most honest tone he’d ever heard. “I have to believe somewhere along the way they’ll pay. You do the crime, eventually you’ll do the time. Karma’s a bitch, and all.” She paused, then added, “But it’s not up to me to make sure that happens. Because then it’s not justice, its revenge.”
Hunter paused. He wasn’t quite sure he saw the difference. He’d lived by the sword. He’d been meant to die by the sword.
“I’ll miss my daughter to my dying day and beyond. Every time I pick up her favorite stuffed animal my body implodes. I can barely stand.”
Hunter nodded. Words weren’t necessary.
She swallowed hard and fought to get herself under control. “I’ll want all the moments I wasn’t able to share. All the birthdays. Kelly riding her first bicycle. Digging holes in the sand at the beach.” She paused and swallowed again. “The first day of high school. Proms. Oh God, her wedding day,”
Tori’s voice broke, and she gripped the railing by the bed to stay upright. Suddenly he knew, really knew, her pain. As she knew his.
“I’ll never know why she was taken from me. And no parent should ever, ever bury their child. Her loss will never be fair. But I made a choice, and I’m sticking with it. I refuse to wallow in bitterness. I refuse to give in to hate. Not because I’m this grand being but because I did that already, and living there was worse than dying.”
Was it? Bitterness and hatred were the fuel that had kept him alive for centuries.
“For the record, it took so much more to rebuild than to allow myself to break down, I finally stopped falling apart.”
Hunter had never thought of the possibility before. In his human life he’d never cared enough to fall apart. Those walls were his protection, his safety net. As far as he’d been concerned, feeling equaled weakness, so he’d stopped feeling.
She smiled. “I get it. You still think Casperian needs to be punished, and if you need to punish him, you need to be in a place to do that. But isn’t two thousand years long enough to live without warmth, without caring, and, most of all, without love?”
“I don’t know,” he heard himself confess. “I don’t know what love is.”
Her smile filled with something he didn’t understand. A strange, knowing warmth. “Then don’t you think it’s about time you tried to learn?”
Tori walked away, and Hunter closed his eyes. All these centuries, all this time, trying to prove what? That he was worthy—worthy of living. He had earned the right to his life, not by just being born but by trying to make amends for the blood
on his hands. And by giving his people safety and security, by creating a society so they would know the peace he craved so much.
Hadn’t he proved it all with his willingness to give up his life for those in his care? Didn’t his sacrifice count for something?
He stilled. She was asking him to dig deeper. All right. But there was a problem. The night Antonia had died, he’d died. He hadn’t moved fast enough; he’d been frozen, unable to comprehend. He hadn’t been able to save her. For ages, he’d blamed himself for his hesitation, and it had taken those ages to realize he’d never have been able to best his new master. But now, all he really wanted was to thwart Casperian and the vampire prince who’d made him, Antu Si-Tayat, high priest of Egypt. Sam’s brother.
Beware the little word revenge. At least in this, Tori was right. There was a difference between justice and revenge. Justice was blind. Justice was impartial. But revenge? Revenge was personal. Revenge was all about retaliation. Because there were right reasons and wrong reasons for everything, Hunter had believed he could live in the place Tori had described and rebuild himself without consequence. Now he wasn’t so sure.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Tori walked away with a heavy heart. She couldn’t believe she’d opened up this far with Hunter, exposed so much of herself to him. Deep inside she realized he’d never come around, never be able to feel the way she did. And yet she continued to care? Why?
Tori dragged Stacy into the elevator and up through the main floor and out into the gardens. She pressed a finger to her lips so Stace wouldn’t say anything. For once, just once, she wanted to have a private conversation.
“What the hell?” Stace muttered. “Are you all right?”
“I’m beyond tired of everyone in that damned building knowing what’s going on inside my head!”
Stacy didn’t seem surprised by her outburst. “Chaz has been teaching me some meditation techniques. They help.”
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