Chapter Thirty-Two

“Tansy, wake up!” Skyler’s voice was shrill with panic.

I didn’t want to open my eyes. My head was pounding, the nausea coming in waves. I rolled over and threw up black bile. We were in the middle of the desert, miles from the city, and I didn’t have any tonic.

After my stomach was completely empty, I asked, “How’s Vaughn?”

“Better,” she said. “The bleeding stopped. I think the spell worked.”

“Oh, thank god,” I breathed.

Vaughn’s eyes were closed, but he was breathing more easily. “This thing came out of him when you did the spell,” Skyler said. She handed me a small metal blade covered in runes.

“This explains why he couldn’t shift,” I said. “Where’s Connor?”

“He went to get help. Vaughn’s stable, but we need to get you somewhere safe.”

There wasn’t even a flicker of magic left inside me. Every muscle in my body ached. I didn’t know if my friends were okay. I didn’t know where my father was or if anyone in my family had survived.

“Did Travis make it out?” I asked. If Travis was dead, I’d be human again, wouldn’t I?

But I didn’t feel human. The vampire side of my brain was taking over. It wanted blood. To drink and drink and drink. I didn’t want to let my vampire win, so I took a deep breath and tried to focus on something else.

Vaughn and Skyler were both alive, and sunrise was still a little way away. It would work out; I was telling myself that, but I’d run out of time. Rose hadn’t discovered an antidote and my magic was gone. The poison had killed the witch inside me.

“Any word about your dad?” I asked my boyfriend.

He shook his head. “My phone is toast.”

“Maybe Mason got him out,” I said. “Those two love each other.”

“Maybe,” Vaughn replied, but he didn’t sound hopeful.

I picked up my parasol and was reassured by the tiny rattle. I popped open the end of the handle and slid out the ruby.

“It’s hard to believe that Vanessa was willing to kill everyone we know just for this.”

Vaughn’s eyes opened. “And we still don’t know why she wanted it.”

“It does something,” I said. I palmed the ruby. So many people had died in order to possess it, and I still didn’t know why.

When the sun came up, my parasol would be my only shelter from the sun. And I wasn’t sure that it would be enough.

It was bad. I knew it was bad, but my mind kept trying to find a way to make it work, to let us all survive, to finally end this. But every scenario I ran through ended the same way, with me losing my humanity, becoming a vampire, and possibly killing the people I loved.

That wasn’t going to happen—not the last part, at least.

We were miles from the city, no phones, no car. I hadn’t seen taillights in at least an hour. Connor wasn’t going to make it back in time. I wanted to cry, but the tears wouldn’t come.

Hunger gnawed at my bones, making it hard to think. I could feel the witch dying as the vampire in me started to take control. I whispered a water spell, a rain spell, but nothing happened. My witch was nearly gone.

A bright glaring light almost blinded me. Don’t go toward the light, Tansy. I didn’t want to die, so I was avoiding any lights. Except that wasn’t just any old light—it was the sun, creeping up over the horizon.

Our temporary shelter would help, but I was starving. I didn’t want my best friend and my boyfriend to see me like that, a hungry, unthinking monster who would do anything for blood.

“I don’t want to end up like my mother.” I handed Vaughn my drumstick. “You know what to do.”

Vaughn looked as though I’d plunged it into his own heart.

Skyler gasped. “Tansy.”

“Only if you have to.” I took a shaky breath. “Don’t make Skyler do it. She’s not as strong as you are. Please, Vaughn. I know you can do it.”

“Why me?” He wanted to know why I was asking him to do this horrible thing. His gray eyes were like a storm, wild and terrifying.

“Because you love me.”

“I love you, too,” Skyler said. “But I don’t think I could do it.”

I’d nearly killed Vaughn before, but he was a werewolf with supernatural strength now. He could do it.

He’d taken off his tee and used it to help cover my head. The ink on his tattoo flared bright.

“We’ll find some shade,” Vaughn assured me. I had my parasol, but without my Thermos of tonic, it wouldn’t be enough. My bones ached, my tongue was swelling, and my fangs were sharp in my mouth.

“Connor will be here soon,” Skyler said. But she didn’t sound convinced.

The sun would come up, and I would die.

“You should drink,” Vaughn said, offering his wrist.

I shook my head. “It won’t do any good. The sun will be up soon.” And if I started to drink his blood, I didn’t know if I would be able to stop.

I was doomed. I cursed my mother with every breath. But Vaughn would live.

I could feel myself starting to fade. I reached up a trembling hand to touch his face. “I love you.” Now, when it was too late, I wished I’d told him how much I loved him more often.

I placed the ruby in the palm of his hand. “Give this to Granny.” He entwined his fingers with mine with the ruby touching both our palms. For a moment, we stayed like that, hand in hand, the ruby between us.

Vaughn’s gray eyes filled with tears. “I love you, Tansy. I’ll always love you,” he said. His expression was a mixture of love and anguish.

“I love you, too.”

Our lips touched, and he breathed into my mouth. “Stay with me,” he pleaded.

“I would if I could.” Pain lanced up my spine, and I hunched over. Something warm was coming out of my nose. I reached up a hand. Blood. I opened my mouth to talk, but there was blood in my mouth, in my throat, everywhere. I tried to get up but fell onto my back and lay there. Bile rose in my stomach, and I managed to turn my head in time. I vomited over and over until there was nothing left.

“Do it now, Vaughn,” I said.

“Can’t we wait just a little while longer?” Our hands still clasped, Vaughn pressed his forehead to mine and stared into my eyes.

The human part of me was almost gone. Only vampire was left, and that would be gone when the sun finally rose.

The sky was lightening, the first soft rays of dawn appearing. It felt warm on my skin, and I raised my face to it. The warmth spread through my body. It felt good to chase the cold from my bones. But the warmth turned hot, like I’d been dipped in boiling water. There was no shade, no hope.

My chest hurt. It was getting hard to breathe. I took shallow breaths, trying to face the end without crying. It was dawn and it was so beautiful, the colors from pale pink to brilliant crimson.

“I’m so cold,” I said.

Vaughn pulled me close, sharing his body heat.

“Do it, Vaughn,” I whispered.

“I wish we’d never gone to that fucking party,” Vaughn said.

My mouth watered as I watched the pulse in his throat. I realized what I was doing and looked away. “You have to do it before it’s too late.”

His throat moved, gulping back tears. He gripped the drumstick and stepped closer. “Just one more minute.”

“Why didn’t you leave me when you had the chance?” I asked sadly.

“I’ll never leave you, Tansy,” he replied. You know what our tattoos mean,” he said. “Say it again.”

“They mean we love each other,” I finally said. “That we’ll love each other forever.”

“That’s right,” he said. “I will always love you. No matter what.”

Skyler was sobbing, but it sounded far away, muffled, as the blood drummed in my ears.

The pain was pressing into every part of my bones. My fingers wouldn’t work, and I let go of Vaughn’s hand. The ruby dropped onto the ground at our feet. Neither of us expected it to shatter into pieces.

One fragment embedded in my arm. I winced at the sight of my blood pouring from the wound. The vampire in me wanted a taste, but then the torn flesh started to close. The vampire inside me howled, its power beginning to fade. A spark of something magical lit inside, warming me.

Vaughn hadn’t noticed, and I was almost too weak to say anything. “Vaughn, the ruby. It’s healing me.”

Then his eyes lit up, the hollowed-out expression disappearing as he realized what was happening. He jumped to his feet and started searching for the glowing red jewels.

Skyler joined him, and they gathered up the fragments. I was still too weak to help, but I could feel myself growing stronger as the jewel made me whole. Made me human.

The craving for blood, that cold, dead part of me was receding. The vampire inside me snarled and hissed, but its power was beginning to disappear.

It seemed too good to be true, but I could breathe again. I could feel.

The vampire part of me was gone.

I whispered a little spell, one that would make a flower bloom, even in the desert. I stared at the ground, hoping that my magic would return. And finally, I was no longer a striga vie, but I was still Tansy Mariotti, Queen of the Vampires.

The ruby didn’t need power for the magic to work; the magic needed love.

“Tansy, you’re in the sun,” Skyler said.

I smiled at her. “It feels wonderful on my skin.” I could feel the blood rushing through my veins. My stomach growled. “I could really use a burger right now,” I said. “Well done. Not bloody.”

“You got a little drool going on.” Connor had arrived. He’d done as I’d asked and gone for help. And then he’d come back for us.

“I can’t believe I didn’t put it together sooner,” I said. “It’s in the frickin’ name. Blood of Life ruby. No wonder Vanessa wanted it so badly. And Lissa, too—she said she’d found a cure for being striga vie. I guess this was it.”

“What should we do with the fragments?” Skyler asked.

“Let’s gather them up and keep them,” I said.

I thought of the feral vampires. Could it help? If I dropped the fragments down the shaft and it turned a few of them human, the suckers would just eat them.

But I wanted to help the two suckers who’d helped us escape.

I gathered as many pieces of the ruby as I could find, and when Skyler and Vaughn figured out what I was going to do, they handed me the fragments they’d collected.

“There’s something I need to do,” I said.

“Remember,” Vaughn said. “You’re human again.”

“I won’t,” I said.

“What’s the plan?” Connor asked. “What are you going to do with the shards of the ruby?”

“I want to take the pieces back and see if they work on all the girls The Drainers turned into vampires. The baby vamps like Marisol and the others.”

In theory, it sounded like a doable plan. In theory.

“Tansy, it might not work,” Vaughn warned me.

I had to try. Travis was dead. Vanessa was dead. Mason had killed her.

He’d protected his daughters. He’d protected me. And because we loved them, he’d protected Granny and Vaughn and Connor’s pack, too. Maybe Mason could help me. I’d been so used to thinking that my father must have been evil, it was hard to shift my thinking to realize he wasn’t good or evil but somewhere in between.