He still loved her. The impact of just how much nearly suffocated him.
And now dawn hovered below the horizon and it was too late. Too late to change the course he’d taken and return to complete their bonding.
Today, Diana’s hunger for him would consume her. As his for her would disrupt his sleep until night fell. If he hadn’t deserted her, she could have held on, bolstered by her faith that when he returned at dusk, her undeniable hunger would be appeased.
Now, because of him, she would have no hope. She would allow the hunger to creep into her mind and destroy it.
He wrapped his arms around the young tree before him. Unmindful of the bark shredding his already raw flesh, he yanked it from the ground and flung it high into the air. He probed the night, searching for her and again felt nothing. It didn’t make sense. His blood ran through her veins. Her emotions should be tangible enough to touch, even if they were hatred for him, even if she tried to hide them from herself. But he felt nothing! As if she had managed to cut him from her life.
He spun around, his eyes searching for something, anything to destroy. He snarled viciously at the line of elders standing before him. “Leave me.”
“Calm down, child,” his grandfather demanded.
“Child? I’ve suffered in this wretched existence for nearly a century.” He groaned, falling to his knees. “I want it to end.”
“Sebastian, you must listen to us. There is so much you don’t understand.”
“I understand that you forced Damien to spend eternity with someone he didn’t love. Is that your answer for me? Do you have someone already lined up?”
“Sebastian, let’s discuss this inside. Dawn is only moments away.” His grandfather held his hand out.
Sebastian raised his eyes, not caring that the elders would see his tears. “Why didn’t you warn me? You must have known. Why did you let it go this far?”
His grandfather’s hand fell to his side. “You know we’re not allowed to reveal what we know. And once you entered the bonding ritual, we could not interfere. The ritual is based on trust, Sebastian, not just passion and love. That’s why you couldn’t find the truth about her father when you probed her mind. Your blood, the moment it entered her veins, altered your powers over her.”
Sebastian shook his head, his guilt bringing a bitter taste to his mouth. “No. I was able to lead her into the first night of the final stage. I blocked out her doubts.”
“Only because deep down she wanted them blocked. If she had wanted to accept the knowledge that you may have gone to her to hurt her, she would have, no matter what you did.”
The other elders began to mumble to themselves and shift nervously closer to the school.
“Come, Sebastian. Let fate take its course.”
“Leave me,” Sebastian demanded, his voice hoarse from the lump lodged in his throat.
“We can’t force you to take shelter, Sebastian. You know that,” his grandfather said.
Eternity stretched out before Sebastian, dark, empty. A nightmare without Diana. “Then I suggest you leave.”
Chapter Fourteen
Angelina and Diana cowered in the corner of a dark alley and warily eyed the sidewalk. Terrified that the next group of Slashers would be too ravenous to accept the wafers if they caught a whiff of Diana’s blood, Angelina flung a handful as far away from them as she could.
Diana touched the tips of her fangs. “They’re still there.” Her voice cracked.
Angelina looked at the blood seeping from Diana’s wounds. “Your fangs are the least of your problems, Diana. How are you feeling?”
“Hungry. Tired.” She drew her knees to her chest. “And I’m so cold.” She reached into her backpack and retrieved a wafer.
“You just had one.” Angelina clasped her wrist in a viselike grip. “Drop it, now.”
“But it hurts, Nana Lina. It hurts so much,” she cried as she dropped the wafer into the backpack. “How could he leave me?”
Angelina watched as her granddaughter’s eyes once again overflowed with crimson tears. A torrent of tears was better than the way her eyes had looked when she’d first been lowered from the helicopter.
She had stared vacantly at the ravenous pack that immediately surrounded her the moment she fell to the ground.
When the first one bit down on her wrist, she hadn’t even flinched. Then as more joined in, feasting upon her exposed arms and neck, she’d merely closed her eyes, the tendons bulging on her neck the only sign that she felt every ragged tooth ripping into her flesh.
It had taken almost half of the wafers Angelina had stashed in her bag to draw them away from her willing granddaughter and the fresh vampire blood coursing through her veins.
And now, too weak from her blood loss to leave the alley they’d taken refuge in, Diana could only sit and battle her hunger. One moment she’d give in to her anguish over Sebastian’s desertion, then, mumbling incoherently about him and her mother deserting her, she’d try to throw herself into the hungry jaws of the Slashers. The next moment, she’d curse them both and try to steal their only weapon as her eyes darted to Angelina’s neck.
Angelina moved the backpack as far away from Diana as she could. “You’re stronger than this, Diana. Just hold on a little longer. Someone will find us.”
“Nana, I can’t take it. Oh God, I’m going to be like them, aren’t I,” she cried. “This was his plan all along, you know. Olympia told me. This was his plan from the very beginning.”
Angelina cringed, watching the tears fill the open scratches trailing down Diana’s cheeks. Her granddaughter had clawed at her face the last time she’d brought up Olympia’s revelation. “You mustn’t believe her, Diana.”
“No, it’s true. He came to me while I was sleeping, took my virginity, and gave me his blood before I even knew he existed. Just so I’d go mad. That’s the only reason why he started bonding with me. Not because he loved me. Not even because he was my soul mate. He wanted me to go mad all along!”
“Diana, please.”
“I thought he loved me.” Diana started to giggle. “I thought my mother loved me too. Silly me. Silly, silly, me. I can’t hold on to my mother or my soul mate.” Her voice grew shrill. “Do you think when I become one of these creatures, I’ll finally find someone who’ll want me?”
“I won’t let that happen to you, do you hear me, Diana? I’ll never let that happen.”
“You can’t stop it. You can’t!” Diana hugged her knees to her chest and began to rock. “It’s not just the unbearable hunger for blood that drives them mad, Nana. It’s because they gave their chosen vampires their love, then watched them devour it and toss the remains back in their faces!”
“Diana, calm down. You’ll survive, just as I did.” Angelina tossed another handful of wafers at a small group of Slashers and shuddered as they pounced on the promise of temporary sanity. They clawed and snapped at each other like a pack of wild dogs. Within moments after swallowing the wafers, they calmed down and left. She turned to hand some to Diana and froze.
Diana’s upper lip curled up as she gazed at her own wrists. “Don’t you see, Nana? You survived because you left him. Damien didn’t rip your heart to pieces. Damien didn’t leave you. Oh God, I can’t take it anymore.”
Diana shoved herself to her feet. Her legs buckled, sending her crashing face first onto the trash-covered ground. She whimpered when her grandmother grasped her shoulders and tried to lift her from the filth. “Just leave me here. I don’t want to live without him. I’m so tired.” She rested her cheek on her hands. “I’m so very tired.”
“Diana Nostrum, you get up this instant. Sebastian’s not worth this. No man is worth losing the will to live. Diana, please.” She shoved until her granddaughter rolled over.
Diana’s eyes rolled back, revealing only white. Angelina leaned over and grabbed her wrist. Barely feeling a pulse, she feared Diana wouldn’t make it off Fentmore Island alive. Baring her fangs, she tore at her own wrist and
held it to her granddaughter’s mouth.
Blood poured over Diana’s lips and, for a second, she weakly sucked at the oozing wound. But when she blinked, then gazed up at the wall towering above them, she turned her head away. “Please, Nana, just let me die. We will anyway when we run out of wafers. It hurts so much when they bite.”
“Don’t you dare give up on me. Don’t you leave me here alone.” Angelina sobbed. “Now, drink, drink for me, Diana.”
Diana released a long breath. “Only for you, Nana. Maybe, if by some miracle we get out of this hellhole, you and Damien could—”
“You the lady with the wafers?”
Angelina glanced up. A man at least six foot four with muscles that would put Arnold Schwarzenegger to shame stood not two feet away. He let out a long breath when she nodded.
“Come with me, then.” He turned and walked toward the wall.
“Wait. My granddaughter’s too weak to walk.” Angelina cried, terrified that the giant would leave. She picked up Diana’s backpack and hugged it to her chest. “I won’t leave her.”
The man returned and looked down at Diana. “If you ask me, you’re wasting your time.”
Angelina backed up. A group of Slashers hovered on the sidewalk at the opening of the alley. “I’ll give every last wafer to them.”
“Okay, okay.” He swept Diana into his arms as if she weighed no more than a baby. His eyes flicked over the dozens of wounds covering her. “How’d she get away,” he asked as they ducked into a doorway she hadn’t noticed earlier in the wall.
“I threw them some wafers. I don’t know how they even knew what they were, but they quickly forgot about Diana and dove for them.” Angelina puffed, trying to keep up with the man’s breakneck pace as they made their way down a long, dark tunnel. “I knew you would come, but I was still scared.”
He stopped and spun around. “You knew?”
She leaned against the wall, relieved for a chance to catch her breath. “I’m psychic. I saw Diana here. That’s why I stashed so many wafers in her backpack. And I knew a giant…I mean tall man would help us if we had them. I don’t usually see visions with myself in them so I wasn’t sure if it was real.”
He frowned, then grinned and shook his head. “I guess after seeing the creatures on this island, I could believe anything. Here, let me carry that.”
Angelina’s jaw dropped when he deftly shifted Diana into the crook of one massive arm, but when he reached out for the backpack, she pursed her lips and took a step back.
“Look, lady—”
“Angelina.”
“Yeah, look, Angelina. If I wanted to steal those from you and—”
“Diana.”
“Well you’d both be lying in that alley. Dead.” He held out his hand.
Angelina hesitated a moment more before relinquishing the backpack.
“Man, how many of those things did you bring,” he muttered, flinging the strap over his shoulder and resuming their journey.
Angelina swiped at the damp hair clinging to her forehead. “Every one I own. There’s about four hundred. I packed some of them in Diana’s backpack the other night. The rest I grabbed just before I was taken.”
He stopped at what looked like a dead end. Bringing his face up to the wall, he mumbled something, then stood back. The wall slid to the right, revealing a young boy.
“Dad’s back,” the boy yelled over his shoulder.
A slender woman, no more than twenty years old, ran through the door and wrapped the man and Diana in her arms. “Thank God, you’re back. We were so worried.”
Angelina entered the room, then quickly realized it wasn’t a room at all. Thirty foot walls surrounded a small town. Towering pines lined cobblestone streets. The tops of swing sets were visible behind some of the white picket fences that surrounded dozens of flagstone cottages.
A squat man wearing a black suit and tattered top hat ran up to them. Removing his hat, he bowed, then, after running his fingers through the few strands of hair covering the top of his head, plopped the hat back on.
“Welcome! Welcome! I’m Mayor Cutter. I see you’ve met John and his family.” He glanced at Diana’s limp body cradled against John’s chest and frowned. “They didn’t tell me she was in such bad shape.” He withdrew a wooden whistle from his breast pocket and blew.
A group of young men carrying a wooden stretcher suddenly appeared at the end of the road and ran up to them. Angelina watched as John adamantly refused to put Diana down.
“I’ll carry her to Doc Jenkins.” He took off, the woman and boy running to keep up with his long strides.
But when Angelina moved to follow them, the Mayor blocked her path and clucked.
“Now, now. She’ll be just fine. Doc Jenkins always keeps fresh blood on hand for Night-timers. Our lookouts have been watching you ever since you arrived.” He slid her hand into the crook of his arm. “We would have come sooner, but it took you so long to find your way into the alley. And when you finally did, John was working in the fields on the other side of the island. No one else is brave enough to enter the city at night.”
“I really should go with my granddaughter,” Angelina firmly stated, pulling her hand away.
“If you insist, we’ll both go.” He linked his arm in hers and led her across a small square. “I’m dying to hear all about the outside world.”
Angelina blinked when a woman pushing an odd stroller smiled, baring small fangs. “How many live here?”
“Oh well, that depends on whom—or should I say, what—you’re asking about. Over the years, we’ve grown to a total of three hundred inhabitants. Fifty Survivors, one hundred Night-timers and one hundred and fifty Fentmorians—you know, those born here. And we haven’t lost one to the Slashers since we finished the wall, twenty years ago!”
Angelina shook her head. “How many are normal?”
“Normal? We have the quote normal unquote people, like yours truly, who never even believed vampires existed until we arrived here. We’re the Survivors. Our plane crashed here over thirty years ago during a blizzard. There weren’t that many Slashers then. First one I saw nearly took my head off!” He chuckled, tugging down the collar of his coat to reveal a mass of bulging scar tissue as he led her down a street lined with one-story buildings.
Wooden, hand painted signs were nailed above each door. Angelina noted they had a grocer, barber, blacksmith and tailor. One long building had an equally long sign with the words “CLARA’S KITCHEN” surrounded by artfully painted flowers. The last building on the block bore a huge red cross.
Angelina winced when her sore ankle twisted in a crevice in the street. The Mayor wrapped his arm around her waist and nearly toppled her as he strove to help.
“We were ninety Survivors then. We crashed in the hills and realized, before we ever set foot in the city, that the place was crawling with blood-sucking maniacs. But they’re sensitive to the sun. They don’t incinerate like in the movies. But they do burn, so they stay indoors.
Well, we spent our days during those first years here building a wall around the city and our nights hiding out in the hills. You had to see the Slashers then. Coming out at night, staring at that wall like it had magically appeared.” He chuckled again and opened the door to the doctor’s house. “Ah, here we are!”
Angelina shielded her eyes from the bright lights filling the room. “You have electricity?”
“Yes. We have it all. We were on our way to Malhali, a small Caribbean island our company purchased, expecting to take advantage of the wave of tourists searching for a less modernized Hawaii. Our plane had doctors, scientists, carpenters and electricians and was stocked with enough supplies and building equipment for a year.” He arched his brows. “And of course, yours truly, politician extraordinaire, was hoping to help organize their government. Unfortunately, we crashed not long after we took off.”
“If you had carpenters and building supplies, why didn’t you build a boat,” Angelina asked, waiting for
her eyes to adjust to the lights.
“We did. We tried again and again. Our boats would be at sea for hours, sometimes days, then we’d spot land.” Closing the door, he snorted. “We’d find ourselves landing on this island. We lost quite a few since we’d land on the shore of the city.”
“We tapped into the power of the river that first year,” added an elderly man drawing blood from a patient lying in a bed.
Angelina’s heart lurched when she realized the patient was Diana.
“What are you doing? She’s already lost too much blood.” She ran across the room, prepared to personally yank the syringe from his hand.
A hefty nurse blocked her way and gently grasped her shoulders. “We can’t give her a transfusion until Doc Jenkins knows her type. Why don’t you take a seat?”
She led Angelina to a wooden chair on the opposite side of the bed.
“How far into the bonding,” the doctor asked, withdrawing the syringe from Diana’s arm. He handed the vial of blood to the nurse. “Katie, get this to the lab.”
“Tonight would have been their last.” Angelina leaned over and clasped Diana’s cold hand in hers, recalling how often Damien had helped her deal with the excruciating hunger she felt before their last night. How many times had he answered her pleas for his blood, for his touch?
Doc Jenkins shook his head. “That’s going to make this one hard to match. Their blood’s almost completely merged, unique. Hopefully, one of our Night-timers, one whose original blood type matched hers, bonded with a vampire related to the one she bonded with. Sometimes that works.”
“Then test my blood. I might match.” Angelina stood.
“I figured as much. Wearing a sweater in eighty degree weather pretty much gave it away. And John said you called her your granddaughter.” He tossed the syringe in a wooden pail. “Judging by the fact that you look more like her sister, I’d say your ritual took place when you were about her age.”
“I nearly made it to the last night.” Angelina said as he tied a rope around her arm.
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