by K. N. Banet
I panted heavily, looking back to see what we had. The mute. Damn. He wouldn’t be able to give us any information. I backed away from the mouth of the cavern, Jabari with me after he dropped the arm.
I looked around the cavern, blood everywhere. When I looked at Heath, my stomach dropped, and I began to Change back into my human form.
He had wrapped his shirt around his neck, blood trickling down his chest. There were nearly a dozen scratch marks over his chest and shallower bites on his arms. He busied himself with slowly tying up the vampire left behind by his companions, the mute with the ruined midsection.
“Heath, let me check your injuries,” I said, my jaw aching more than I expected. “Jabari, are we safe for now?”
He must have Changed while I did because he was a man when he walked over to the vampire. “Yes. They won’t risk attacking with the injuries they sustained. I was able to have the other two severely bleeding by the time they ran. They will lose energy and power throughout the night until they feed again.
“They have one of the wolves left alive,” Heath whispered weakly. I didn’t like how shallow and pale his face looked.
“Heath, please let me check your injuries,” I begged softly. “Please.”
“I got a few hits in. The stupid bitch got the jump on me and took a mean bite, but it’s the worst of it,” he informed me, keeping his eyes focused on his slow task. I reached out and took the ropes from him, and he growled pitifully at me. “I broke a few of her bones, and that hand will be useless or weak the next time we see her.”
“That’s good, but I think you’re about to drop,” I said gently. Looking down, I realized I might drop too. My abdomen was already bruising and there were long thin lacerations running across it. Blood was everywhere.
“Let her tend you,” Jabari ordered. “I will handle this.” He reached down and picked up the vampire who hissed before giving a pained whimper. “You have no tongue, but that’s okay. I don’t need you to have one.”
That nearly made me sick from the implications.
“It’s just some blood loss,” Heath bit out. “I’ll take a fucking nap and be fine.”
“Yeah, but…” I felt awful. He would have never been up in these mountains if it weren’t for me. He had a family to go home to—a loving one, one he should have already been back with.
“We can clean off in the stream together, but please don’t coddle me,” Heath said, moving to stand. When I tried to help him, swaying on my own feet, he growled softly. “They hit you in the head with a fucking big stone, Jacky. You need to be careful yourself.”
I touched my head and felt the blood. I remembered being hit, but I hadn’t paid attention to any bleeding.
“And your jaw,” he murmured, reaching out to touch it with bloody hands. “It’s going to be swollen and bruised by dawn.”
“Yeah, it hurts like a bitch.” Looking down, I saw scores and scores of cuts and bruises on my body again, taking them in further. “Fuck.”
“Yup.” Heath looked over me, wobbling as he did. “Jabari—”
“You’ll both clean up and rest while I keep watch,” my brother said, not unkindly. “We leave to hunt them down at dawn.”
“We need to go sooner,” Heath growled. “The last wolf will be dead if—”
“If they intend on draining him to heal, they will be done with it by the time we get there,” Jabari growled back, baring his bloody teeth. “Let me handle this one. I didn’t take as much abuse as you two did.” He jerked his head, obviously annoyed, his jaw clenched. “And good job tonight. We took one out of the fight, and the others are going to be very weak and easy to track.”
“So, we’re still going to hit their hideout during the day?” I asked, fighting to see him clearly.
“If you two get enough rest, yes.”
I grabbed Heath’s elbow weakly and tried to guide him away. He pulled away, but when my hand dropped, he wrapped his arm around my waist, and we walked together to the stream at the back of the cavern. Before washing off, I drank. I wasn’t worried about ingesting the blood because it would do nothing to me. It wasn’t the case for humans, but Heath and I would be fine.
I was just thirsty.
Heath leaned into me as he tried to wash off. I touched his hands to stop him before taking some water into my hands and rinsing off his face. The stream was cold because it was snow melt, but that didn’t bother me and didn’t appear to bother Heath. I worried, though. Vampire bites had the tendency to heal slowly due to something in their saliva. Pulling the shirt back to see the bite, I watched blood push out of the punctures with each of Heath’s heartbeats, which were steadily getting faster. For the first time since I had met him, something leaked into his scent he probably didn’t want anyone noticing.
I ignored it and pressed the shirt back to the wound. I could ponder what it was later. It wasn’t important. The lack of control was interesting from him but considering his injuries and the last two nights we’d had, I was honestly impressed he still had so much control.
“Hold it,” I ordered softly. He reached out and pressed it down. “It’s slow, but it hit something because it’s not clotting yet. It might take time, and we might have to wrap it. Let me find my shirt—”
“Clean mine off,” he said huskily, pulling it back off his neck.
“It won’t dry if I dump it into the stream,” I explained. “We need dry bandages for your neck. The rest will heal without a problem. Same for me.”
“None of it will scar,” he added to my explanation. “None of it was caused by silver, so none of it should scar.”
“Yeah, I know. Are you worried about going home with battle wounds?”
“No. You.” His eyes drifted down to the older gunshot scars I had. Scars I had gotten in the line of Duty protecting Carey. Scars that showed the frightening story of how I died once.
“You have some scars of your own,” I pointed out softly. It was so faded, I had missed it when I first saw him shirtless. The bite mark on his shoulder and neck from the vampire was right next to the bite mark from a werewolf. “When you were human?”
“The bite that Changed me,” he explained. “Fatal in most cases, a werewolf needs to bite down on and puncture the jugular or very close to the heart, so as much of our saliva gets into the wound as possible.”
“Same for werecats,” I said softly. “And yes, fatal in most cases, but when it’s not, the bite closes up immediately as the body accepts the curse. I’ve just never seen it scar.”
“I was unlucky, I guess,” he said, chuckling softly. “Fuck, my head is spinning.”
“Let’s get back to the fire.” Mine just ached but I could function. My injuries weren’t bleeding, but everything ached. I helped him to his feet, knowing he was right about sleeping, but I still worried so much. It was funny because I had more of a chance of problems going to sleep than he did. I knew better than to try to sleep after being hit over the head, but I wanted the nap as much as he did. Blood loss, his problem, generally made someone a bit out of it, weaker, and tired.
I got us to the fire and leaned him against the wall. His eyes drifted closed immediately, and I went to steal Jabari’s extra shirt, remembering he had it at the last minute. My brother looked up and saw me but made no comment when I used it to wrap Heath’s neck.
I touched my own after, glad to feel scabs where I was injured the first night. They would be gone by the end of the week as long as no silver got into my system.
“Thank you,” I whispered to Jabari.
He just nodded, sitting in the mouth of the cave. I caught him looking back at me for a moment and saw a frown on his face I didn’t want to deal with. I sat down with my back to the same wall as Heath, letting my body’s need to heal take over.
“You…”
My eyes were closed, and I was fast asleep before he finished.
24
Chapter Twenty-Four
I woke up to something being dropped on my lap and ju
mped.
“Good morning. You forgot to get dressed,” Jabari said as I looked up at him with a glare.
He was clothed, thank god, because the angle was terrible. I looked down at myself and noticed what he was talking about. In my haste to pass out and let my injuries begin healing, I had forgotten to get dressed, naked as the day I was born. Behind Jabari, Heath was squatting next to the fire, poking it with a stick. There were no fresh logs on it, and I realized that meant we were about to leave. I was also too embarrassed to say anything or look too long at Heath, who was not looking at me at all.
I grabbed my underwear and slid them on first without standing up, trying not to think about how I had been sleeping fucking naked in a cave with two grown ass men—one I was kind of related to and one who I found much too attractive for my own good. My bra and shirt went on next because I didn’t have to stand up to get those on either. My jeans were more of a struggle, forcing me to stand up and lean on the stone wall.
When I was finally decent, I looked around to see that it was dawn out, and there was a vampire, wide-eyed and terrified at the mouth of the cave, just out of the sun’s rays, stripped bare. I looked back at the fire, hoping either man there would acknowledge my question.
“Um. Why is he still alive?” I asked softly, pointing at the mute vampire.
“I wanted you to be awake. This is educational for you.” Jabari gestured to him. “I’m going to show you what we do when we have to kill a vampire who might have belonged to someone, and we must report the death.”
“Wolves do it too,” Heath commented softly. “Good morning, Jacky.” His gaze was guarded. I felt like he was shutting me out, and I had just woken up. “When this is over, I want—”
“No. You shall report to the werewolves in Seattle,” Jabari snapped, cutting off Heath. “I shall handle the nest. Divide and conquer. Don’t worry, I shall make sure reparations are paid to all appropriate parties, including the local pack.” Heath settled, accepting that from what I could tell.
“What are we about to do?” I had no idea what they were even talking about.
“Come.” He waved me to follow him. Other than some slight dizziness and a minor ache around my injuries, I was fine. The dizziness was the more worrisome problem.
We stopped in front of the vampire, and Jabari grabbed him by the ankle. His head began to shake violently, and he screamed. I wondered if he was trying to beg for mercy. By his face and Jabari’s slow walk, dragging him along, toward the sun, that’s exactly what I thought he was doing.
“Jabari, what are you—”
He let go of the vampire once most of it was in the sun. I couldn’t breathe as blisters formed, and the vampire screamed.
And screamed.
And screamed.
He was struggling to survive, trying to lift his arms to drag himself back into the shade.
I was horrified. The blisters burst, and the skin began to…melt.
The screaming didn’t stop. I could only stand there, shell-shocked by the horror unfolding before my eyes.
Chunks began to solidify again and crack like drying mud, crumbles of dust falling from the vampire. When I jerkily stepped forward, Heath grabbed me. Jabari looked up from the vampire dying below him.
“This is the exact same execution vampires would have given him.”
I wanted to be sick.
The body began to crumble except for the piece Jabari left in the shade—his head. When the vampire was dead, and the screaming stopped, his face was frozen in a look of sheer terror and pain, the likes of which I never wanted to see again.
Jabari picked the head up. Heath left me, carrying a black bag. The head was dropped in, and the bag was closed.
Then I was sick. I staggered to the wall after the first ejection of everything in my stomach. The second had about as much as the first—chunks of rabbit and water.
“It’s hard seeing it for the first time,” Heath whispered, understanding dripping off him like sweet honey. I was overwhelmed by the urge to punch both of them in the face for making me see that. “We could have beheaded him, but…Jabari felt you needed to see.”
“Did my family come up with that?” I demanded, looking past Heath, gagging again just from the memory burned into my mind. Fuck both of them: Jabari for thinking I ever needed to see that, and Heath for letting him get away with showing me.
“No. Other vampires did. Certain crimes must always be punished in certain ways. They broke the two most important rules of their kind, and to show respect to other vampires, I will execute them in the manner dictated by their section of the Laws.” He didn’t seem bothered. “This is just one way we keep peace among the different species, honoring the customs of others when necessary.”
“They wouldn’t have known,” I mumbled.
“Yes, they would have. If I had cut his head off and sun-burned the body, they would have known.”
The screams echoed in my head. “Not…that was wrong.”
“Do you think the execution wasn’t justified?” Jabari sounded deeply confused now.
“No, I just…” Of course, I thought the execution was justified. He had helped kill so many supernaturals without cause, and there had to be a punishment that was final in the end. I took a deep breath, hoping my stomach didn’t try to leave my body again. “That was gruesome. I wasn’t ready for it.”
“You still have a human constitution. You’ll grow out of it.” His voice sounded weird and awkward. He stepped closer to me and patted my shoulder, obviously uncomfortable with his own actions. “You fight well. Now, you just need more experience with the harsher parts of our world, so they can’t catch you off guard anymore.”
Is he trying to comfort me and talk me up?
I wasn’t sure what my expression was saying to him, but he pulled away quickly. Heath was left next to me, holding the black bag with a head in it. I stepped away from the bag, looking down at it, my stomach doing a couple of flips.
The screaming was all I could hear.
“We have to get moving soon. The vampires were bleeding last night, which should make visually tracking them easy. We need to get to their nest and kill them before another night comes around. I burned the arm, so don’t worry about there being any evidence of a fight left behind.” Jabari was back to a stony General, ready for his army to pack up and fall in. I found my socks and shoes, slipping them on. Jabari kicked out the fire and buried it under dirt and sand in the cavern. Heath repacked Jabari’s bag and handed it off to him, throwing the black bag on his own back. Heath’s lack of disgust at the execution surprised me, but he had said werewolves did it too. When we started walking out of the cavern, I let Jabari take the lead. I didn’t ask as we walked down the steep, thin path on the cliff face, but the moment my feet were on solid ground, I turned on him.
“Have you seen that before?” I asked quietly as we walked.
“Yes. A few,” Heath answered. “I was in the Boston pack for a very long time, probably a hundred and twenty years. We had a vampire nest, and every couple of decades, someone in the pack caught a vampire doing something illegal. I was part of the inner circle to another Alpha, so I attended with him when he and the local Master executed the vampire.”
“Did you…”
“Puke? Yes, the first time I saw it. Everyone does.” He gave me a small reassuring smile. “You aren’t the first, and you won’t be the last.”
“Davor still retches at the thought,” Jabari said loudly from the front. “I won’t tell anyone you threw up if you don’t want me to. You might have lost your stomach at the end, but you held out for the entire thing. Better than most. The only person I never saw get sick was Niko, but he was exposed to it growing up.”
I sighed, not wanting to continue this line of conversation. I couldn’t even hate on Davor for his physical reaction because it was completely understandable. The part about Niko didn’t surprise me, for some reason.
“How far do you think they are?” I asked, ho
ping he had some sort of answer. Jabari only shrugged. Great.
“Look at the blood, little sister. This is what we’re following,” he said, pointing to a bush. I stepped up to see what he was talking about. Blood was splattered on the leaves, and the dirt was stained with it. “One stopped here, exhausted from the loss of blood, and because of that, we have a trail to follow. Consider this your introduction to tracking lesson.” He gave me a pondering look. “You can also look for fibers caught on branches. I would pay attention to footprints as well, but vampires generally walk softly and don’t leave many traces of their activities.”
“I know how to track,” I told him softly. “I do it all the time.”
“With your nose. It’s our best resource to track, much like the wolves, but you need to learn to track with your eyes. Do you ever hunt in your human form?” He continued to stare at me, waiting impatiently for an answer I knew was going to upset him or annoy him.
“No,” I said, crossing my arms.
“We’ll go hunting together. We’ll start with easy game like your deer in this country. When you get better, you will visit Zuri and me in Africa, and we’ll teach you the thrill of hunting real game.” He awkwardly patted my shoulder and started walking again.
I gave Heath the most confused look I could muster. When Jabari was once again some distance ahead of us, I dared to speak again.
“What changed? Did you talk to him again?” I asked softly.
“I woke up to him mumbling about how he didn’t understand you. I didn’t say anything but heard a lot of grumbles about what his father would do.”
“Oh, dear god,” I muttered. “He’s trying to be Hasan and turn everything into a lesson. All my favorite times with Hasan were when we pored over a book, and I was learning something new. He was the keeper of knowledge into my new life, and I soaked it in.” I sheepishly shrugged. “I soaked it in as best I could. You know, applying knowledge helps one remember the lesson, but until recently, I didn’t have to apply a lot of it.”