Chapter Thirty-One

I lay on the sand and took in long gulps of fresh air.

We were alive. Vanessa was dead. She had killed Lissa, and then Mason had killed Vanessa. DeWitt had predicted a redheaded woman with a crown would die. He had thought it was me. But he’d seen my mother’s death instead.

I hadn’t loved her because I hadn’t known anything except the vampire she’d become, but we’d grown closer when she’d tricked me into believing she was human.

I’d miss the possibility of who she could have been, not the reality of who she was.

As we crawled away from the mine’s opening, the ground began to shake, then there was a series of booms. Something in the mine had exploded. We threw ourselves on the ground as debris flew.

Time passed, but it was fuzzy. I couldn’t focus.

“Tansy, look at me. How many fingers am I holding up?” I heard Skyler ask.

My head was throbbing.

“What happened?”

“You passed out,” Skyler said.

My stomach clenched. “Did my sister make it out?” I asked frantically.

“Lucas has her,” Connor assured me. “They got out before we did. Beckett too.” He hesitated and then added, “The silver cuffs messed Beckett up. He can’t shift. I told Lucas to take him to Xavier.”

“You did the right thing,” I said. “But why didn’t they take Vaughn?”

“Lucas shifted and is carrying Rose and Beckett on his back,” he explained. “He will be back as soon as they can with help.”

Vaughn groaned.

“We tried to stop the bleeding,” Skyler said. “But there’s something in there.”

“It won’t stop,” Connor said. “And it’s silver, so Vaughn can’t shift.”

“How did I lose track of the full moon?” I asked

“Blue moon this month,” Connor said. It wasn’t polite to ask a werewolf if they were bitten or born. Hereditary werewolves could shift at will but bitten wolves could only transform during a full moon.

I looked blank, and Skyler said, “Two full moons in one month.”

I’d left my chalk at the hotel, and I wasn’t sure I had enough magic left to stop Vaughn from bleeding to death. I couldn’t think about that possibility. It wouldn’t happen, not on my watch.

“We need to get as far away from here as we can,” Connor said.

A snake slithered by and I thought it might be Mason, but its rattle issued a warning that told me it was a plain old desert rattler. Did Mason make it out or get caught in the blast? My stomach clenched when I realized how badly I wanted him to be safe.

“I need to try to get the silver out first. Slow the bleeding.” My eyes scanned the desert. I needed herbs or a magical amulet or something. All I saw was sand and cactus.

Cactus. It wasn’t ideal, but it was better than nothing.

We were all running on fumes, but I managed to tear off a few pieces of cactus and mash them into a kind of paste. I called up the last reserves of my magic.

“It’ll be light soon,” Skyler said. “The vamps won’t be able to follow us then. Her eyes were red and she was covered with dust and blood, but she was alive.

We’d made it out alive, but barely. Vaughn was bleeding. Whatever they’d stabbed him with made it impossible for the werewolf’s quick healing to work. If we didn’t leave the area soon, the surviving suckers could find us before the sun rose. We were nothing more than fresh meat to them.

I couldn’t look at the pile of rocks that stood where the entrance to the mine used to be.

I didn’t know what happened to Mason. But my friends were safe. The four of us were together, and Vaughn was still breathing.

“One of us has to go for help,” I said.

“I’ll go,” Connor said. “I’ll shift and cover more ground quickly.”

Vaughn was hurt, Skyler was human, and I would never make it before sunrise. I didn’t know any transportation spells, and even if I did, my magic was draining from me as the vampire inside me was taking over.

I couldn’t let him die. With every bit of magic left inside me, I sent a healing spell Vaughn’s way.

And then I collapsed.