Chapter 29

Sara and I carefully backed away from the necromancer, though I kept my knife on him as long as I could. Fabian stalked forward as soon as we gave him some room.

As the vampire knelt beside the necromancer, I checked on Devon. Sara knelt beside Tiny. I was pretty sure Tiny was just out cold; Devon, on the other hand, was bleeding profusely from the wounds on his throat, and awake, but not moving save for weakly clawing at his neck and gasping for air.

I cut a strip off my shirt with the knife, using the least filthy swatch I could find. I pressed the wadded material against the cuts to staunch the flow. His voice, when he managed to choke out a word or two, rasped and squeaked like that of a kid going through puberty.

“The hell . . . did you . . . did you do that for?”

“To save your life,” I hissed at him, hoping Fabian was too busy to pay us any attention. “Here, hold that compress—yeah, right there. Come on, we’re getting out of here.”

I hooked his free arm behind my neck and helped him to his feet, staggering slightly to one side with the weight of him. He wasn’t deadweight, but not far from it, either. Judging by the groans and wincing, Fabian had done a number on him. Getting out of here wasn’t going to be easy, but we needed to get moving before the vampire finished seeing to Gideon and decided to retaliate.

I turned us toward Sara, opening my mouth to tell her and Tiny to hurry up, but the words caught in my throat when I saw her tear-streaked face. My gaze slid from her to the downed hunter, and it felt like the blood in my veins froze solid.

Tiny wasn’t unconscious like I’d first thought. His neck was at an unnatural angle. There was no rise and fall to his chest.

Fabian had killed him.

“No . . . Tiny, no!” Devon’s voice was faint, hoarse—and broken.

The two had been good friends for as long as I’d known them. Tiny was a good man. I’d never really understood what drove him to hunt Others, what led him to live the life of a vigilante, and now I’d never have the opportunity to ask.

Did he have family? A girlfriend or a wife? Someone out there who would never know how he had died, someone waiting for him to come home?

Devon pulled away from me, dropping to his knees beside Tiny’s prone form, bowing his head. Sara set a hand on Devon’s shaking shoulder. He didn’t make a sound, but I had no doubt he was crying.

My hand fell to the hilt of the knife I’d tucked into its place at the small of my back. Drawing it once more, I hefted the blade and stomped over to Fabian, who was ignoring me in favor of cradling Gideon to his chest, crooning encouragements to the necromancer as he pressed a bleeding wrist to his mouth. It would heal his wound, yes, but that didn’t mean it was worth the price. The two might have been lovers, but I had to wonder if Gideon had any idea what kind of personal hell he was in for, being bound to the vampire.

I pressed the tip of the knife against the underside of Fabian’s jaw. He tilted his head to the side, looking at me out of the side of his eye, one fang visible as he sneered. “What do you want now?”

“You killed him.”

Jerking back from the blade a bit, he tilted his head a little more to see what the others were doing. Then back to me, his expression neutral. “Perhaps. He attacked Gideon. I saw no reason to be careful with how I handled him.”

With a snarl, I put enough pressure on the blade to give him a shallow slice, only enough to let him know I meant business. “As soon as that necromancer wakes up, he’s fixing what you did. You understand me? He fixes it, or I will kill you and whatever miserable remains of your bloodline I can get my hands on.”

A blur was the only thing that registered before I felt the bite of my own blade against my throat, his hand wrapped around mine, my other arm pinned, and Fabian pressed behind me, close as only lovers should be. His fangs brushed over my cheek and then earlobe as he whispered in my ear, his voice a seductive hiss.

“Oh, will you now? You think you have what it takes to kill me, little girl? Do you know how many have tried over the centuries?”

“Not nearly enough if you’re still here,” I spat.

He laughed softly, mocking, reminiscent of someone I had heard before but couldn’t quite place. “You just wait. Gideon told me what he promised you and your little friend. He can’t reverse death—that power is beyond him—but he can do something about her curse. Isn’t that what you came here for?”

I stopped squirming against his hold, some of my anger fading. The promise of help for Sara was the only thing that could have cut through my murderous rage at that moment, sending the bestial need to hunt and kill back to the depths it had clawed from.

“Watch. ”

I did as Fabian directed, turning my attention down to Gideon. The necromancer was stirring, grimacing and rubbing the back of his head where it had thumped against the carpeted floor when the vampire let him go.

Gideon sat up with a groan, then staggered up to his feet. His shirt was still bunched up near his shoulders. The only sign of the wound was an angry red line that showed Tiny had expertly sliced deep into his back, right between his ribs. That he was still alive meant Tiny had missed his heart, but it couldn’t have been by much. He was coming out of shock remarkably fast.

Gideon tilted his neck to one side, then the other, rolling his shoulders until a sharp crack sounded. When he finally opened his eyes, they turned to Fabian before anything else, hot with desire and an adulation that hadn’t been there before. I wondered if that was how I had looked at Royce and Max when they gave me their blood the first time.

Dimly, I heard the sound of tires crunching on gravel drifting in through the windows. Police? Backup? The first few Goliath warriors, here to even the odds? I could only hope. The quiet hiss of tires on cement and brief flash of headlights through the curtains and broken window heralded a newcomer, but whether he or she would think to come upstairs to find us was anybody’s guess.

Fabian didn’t seem terribly concerned. He continued to hold the blade to my throat, keeping me from pulling away, but he lifted his other hand to brush the back of it against Gideon’s cheek. The necromancer leaned into the touch, giving a visible shudder of ecstasy. It was hard to tell whether to be horrified, disgusted, or saddened by what the bond had done to him. Seeing someone that powerful made into a fawning puppet was like seeing a wild lion de-fanged and de-clawed. It might have made it safer to be around him, to some degree, but in its way it was still heartbreaking to witness.

“You promised to do something for these ladies. Do you remember?”

Gideon’s gaze briefly flicked to mine, the glittering green color flaring brighter. There was a tug in the back of my mind, like he was doing something to mess around with me again, but it didn’t last long. With a nod, he turned his attention back to Fabian, awaiting direction like an eager, demonic puppy.

“Good. Go take care of it.”

The necromancer moved with purpose, showing little sign that he’d suffered from shock and severe blood loss only a few minutes ago. He reached Sara’s side in moments, pressing a hand lightly on her back. She didn’t look up, still holding Devon as he shook in silent grief over Tiny’s body.

Though she refused to be budged, it didn’t appear to bother or slow Gideon down. He flicked his wrist, dislodging a small, slender blade. I stiffened , but Fabian hushed me and held me tighter, keeping me from rushing over to stop him.

Gideon put the blade between his teeth, using long, slender fingers to roll up the sleeve of her free arm, holding her forearm out in front of him. She watched him from behind a curtain of blond tendrils, clinging to Devon a bit tighter.

Gideon said a few words, the sounds foreign and strange to my ears. Guttural, almost. Something Slavic, maybe. It didn’t sound like any language I was familiar with. Having heard Arnold cast spells before, this felt . . . different. Darker. More ominous.

Sara jerked her arm, but his grip was too tight. She couldn’t pull away.

The fae glow in his eyes grew brighter—and the runes on her arm began to glow, too.

Devon tilted his head up, red-rimmed eyes staring dully at what was going on. Then widening. His fingers tightened around Sara’s, but there was nothing he could have done. Interrupting the spell could have disastrous consequences, not the least of which being a backlash of whatever energies Gideon was summoning right now. From the look and sound of it, they weren’t beneficial, either.

The bluish-white light slowly faded, the color draining away until the symbols were left in stark relief, black against her white skin. Sara made a sound of pain, soft in her throat, that grew into an agonized scream as Gideon whipped the blade out of his mouth and slashed the tip down her wrist—a line directly over the runes, cutting each of them in half.

She never stopped screaming as he held her, keeping her still, the words flowing like the black and yellow pus that seeped from the wound. Devon must have known the consequences of letting the spell be interrupted, because he helped hold her still, even though his eyes were wide and it was clear he was just as afraid for Sara as I was.

She writhed and twisted, kicking at Gideon, but he didn’t stop until every last rune had been cut in half.

The fluid corruption flowing from the wounds became clear, the stink of death and rot that I had thought must have been zombie leftovers abruptly clearing out, leaving something that seemed almost sweet in its place. Gideon slowly ran the flat of the blade over her arm, and the stuff began to sizzle and pop, but left her previously scarred skin unblemished.

He had done it. The runes were gone!

I could have kissed the crazy bastard. Now Sara wouldn’t be in danger from every passing mage. It felt like a hundred pounds of worry were lifted from my shoulders in that moment, knowing that she was no longer going to suffer for my mistakes.

I had finally made something right.

Sara slumped against Devon once Gideon let her go, her eyes wild with pain and terror, but she had clearly been too weakened to do anything to fight him off. The necromancer tucked his dagger away, flicking some of that clear goop from his fingertips, before turning an expectant look back to Fabian. A dog looking to its master for a treat after performing a neat trick.

The vampire finally loosened his grip on me, and I immediately ran to Sara’s side, wrapping my arms around her and Devon both.

I would never forgive Fabian for Tiny’s death, but knowing that he had a hand in making sure Gideon kept his word and healed Sara went a long way toward keeping me from feeling a need to exact revenge on him.

Which reminded me—I wasn’t sure what time it was, but if Gideon, Fabian, and Clyde remained here, they’d no doubt be killed by rampaging Goliath werewolves. The pack was supposed to show up at midnight. We had arrived not too long after sunset, and the battle had not taken terribly long. They still had a couple of hours to get a head start and find a safe way out of town.

I looked up from Sara’s bowed head, my fingers running through her hair, trying to console her as best I could. Gideon had returned to Fabian’s side, folded into his arms like a child seeking reassurance from his parent. Fabian watched us over Gideon’s shoulder, a sly smile I didn’t like hinting that he still had something up his sleeve. But whatever he hadn’t put on the table yet wasn’t going to stop me from doing the right thing.

“You should get out of here while you can. There are werewolves coming to kill him,” I said, tilting my chin in Gideon’s direction.

“We weren’t planning on staying much longer.”

Gideon glanced up at Fabian, then nodded as if he had been given some instruction. He turned back in our direction, flicking his fingers in a “come on” gesture at Clyde. The prone vampire finally opened his eyes, blinking a couple of times before rising slowly to his feet. He moved like he was buzzed—not quite sure on his feet, hands out to catch himself in case he bumped into something or fell—coming to an unsteady, swaying halt at Fabian’s side.

“Come on.”

The command was directed at Devon, Sara, and me. She wasn’t in any kind of shape to be on her feet, still shaking from aftershocks of pain or fear or who knew what, probably caused by Gideon’s spell. Between the two of us, we were able to get her up, though Devon wasn’t too happy and was having difficulty keeping pressure on his wound with the hand not being used to steady Sara.

“I can’t just leave him here. Not like this.”

Fabian was unmoved by Devon’s unspoken plea. “We’ll make arrangements. If it is as you say, and werewolves are going to be coming along anytime now, we need to be gone before they arrive. Let’s go.”

We didn’t argue, following the three Others out. The acrid stink of smoke was still drifting from somewhere deeper in the house, mixed with the smell of zombies. There might have been a fire on a lower floor; I wasn’t sure, but I was beginning to wonder why Fabian had already planned to leave, even before we mentioned the Goliaths. Now that he had control over the vampire in charge of this city, why wouldn’t he take over his seat of power?

The trio of Others stepped aside for us once we reached the front doors, letting us go out first.

I figured they were just being polite. Though once I saw what was waiting for us out there, my heart clawed its way from my chest to lodge high in my throat, choking off thought, reason, and air in one fell swoop. That moment of shock and panic was all Fabian, Clyde, and Gideon needed to swoop in from behind to grab us, keeping the three of us from running off or escaping back into the house.

We were so fucked.