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Serenity barely had time to process what had happened. One moment, she’d been sitting in the back seat with a gun pressed to her head. The next, everything had gone crazy and she’d been surrounded by a whirlwind of blood and violence. Seconds after, she’d found herself out of the car, flying through the air.
She hit the road, pain shooting through her hip and shoulder, her face grazing the asphalt as she slid to a rest. Rain pelted the other side of her face, cold and somehow quenching. For a moment, she lay still, unable to comprehend the events of the last minute. Had that pale-faced, vicious creature really been her sweet daughter? She knew it had, but her brain was struggling to put the two images together. Though she’d previously seen Elizabeth just after she’d fed—when she’d been coming down from her change—she’d looked different, but not terrifying. The creature that had shoved her out of the way and attacked Liam had been like a little monster, something out of a horror movie.
Serenity forced herself to a sitting position, her body screaming in pain, her heart beating so fast she thought it might explode. She stared down the street, in the same direction the vehicle containing her daughter had headed.
Oh, Elizabeth ...
What would be happening inside the car now? Would Elizabeth attack Conner? Would she end up hurt? Even though the girl that had attacked Liam had been ferocious and somehow even more terrifying because she was still only a child, right before Elizabeth pushed her from the moving car, she’d caught a glimpse of her daughter begin to return.
Only the thought of her child being hurt made her struggle to her feet, fresh pain speared up through her leg, shoulder and ribs. She couldn’t stop a cry of agony escaping her lips and she clutched her side, tears welling in her eyes. She must have broken something, the right side of her torso felt too loose, as if a part of her was missing, but she didn’t have the luxury to think about that now. Whatever Elizabeth was, she was still her daughter and she was in terrible danger. She needed to find her before Conner carried out his horrific plan.
She struggled to put one foot in front of the other, battling the wind and rain. Debris blew along the street—a black trash bag, torn branches, a crumpled umbrella with the metal spoke protruding dangerously—but the storm didn’t seem as bad as before. She glanced up at the sky. The black whirlpool of cloud still swirled above the city, but she could make out where it ended and the sky had lightened to an indigo blue. Conner had been right. Morning was coming.
Not knowing what else to do, she began to stagger down the road in the direction she’d last seen the car containing her daughter heading. Every step brought with it a fresh stab of pain, as if someone held a knife in her ribs. Even her breathing caused her pain and she choked and coughed, the agony of the coughing making the world darken at the edges. A bubble of something burst from between her lips and she lifted her hand to her mouth. When she brought it away, her fingers were tipped with blood.
Serenity knew what the blood meant—a rib must have pierced one of her lungs. But she couldn’t allow herself to stop. She needed to reach Elizabeth and she’d do so dying if she had to.
The scent of Serenity’s blood was on the night’s air.
Oh, no.
Sebastian could feel the pull of dawn’s arrival like hands tugging on his shoulders, his body wanting to take him to a place of safety. But this time, he couldn’t give in to the control of the earth’s cycles. He needed to fight what was one of his most basic instincts—to hide from the sun—and find his family first. The possibility of waiting this thing out until nightfall came again was simply not an option.
Helping Iona had already allowed Conner to get ahead of him. Plus, the trace of the car was difficult to follow, though at least not impossible thanks to the empty roads and the fact that the storm seemed to be losing some of its force. He used the faint tang of fuel on the saturated asphalt and heat the tires had created combined with his sense of where Serenity was in the world to chase the car down.
The wounds in his stomach and chest had knitted over, leaving just faint indents in his skin, one right between his abdominals and another between his ribs. The pain was now only a dull ache and something easily ignored.
With his full strength returned, he raced down the street. He was focused on two things: reaching his family and tearing Conner from limb to limb. His anger was like a red haze in front of his eyes, making him want to lash out at anything that might get in his way. Part of him even wanted someone to challenge him, just to allow him to unleash his fury. The weather and the dark whirlpool of clouds above his head seemed to mirror his emotions. The objects flying toward him, whipped up by the wind—a trashcan, a piece of fence, a child’s red plastic chair—meant nothing to him and he simply batted them away as he ran, lifting them and throwing them to one side with a roar. The rain tried to blind him, the wind lift him from his feet, but nothing would remove him from his goal.
Serenity, where are you?
The scent of her blood on the wind grew stronger now, carried on its planes like temptation and terror all rolled into one. No other scent could carry such a contrast of desires for him. While every inch of what made him a vampire screamed “Drink, drink, drink,” deep down, he was petrified that the presence of her blood might mean she was already dead.
No, not dead. The scent still burst with life. Plus, she was moving, he could tell by the way her position changed in the wind. She might be hurt, and he prayed not badly, but she was definitely still alive.
Where is Conner taking them?
Then he caught sight of her ahead of him, moving down the street. Her arm was lifted to try to cover her face from the onslaught of wind, rain and flying debris. He sensed her pain and saw how she dragged her right leg, the scent of her blood growing stronger still.
Putting on a final burst of speed, he came to a stop directly in front of her. She let out a scream and backed away, her dark eyes wide. Then she must have realized who blocked her path. She sagged with relief. “Oh, God, Sebastian!”
What was she doing here alone? Where was Elizabeth?
He saw the blood on her face, how pale her skin was, recognized the agony in her eyes. She was badly hurt, yet had still tried to keep going. Her love for their daughter made his heart break in two. Not only did he refuse to lose Elizabeth, he refused to allow Serenity to go through the agony of losing her daughter as well.
He reached out and caught her before she could fall, but she pushed him away. “No, no. Leave me. I’m fine. You need to get Elizabeth. Conner is going to kill her!”
When she spoke, he heard a rattling coming from deep within her chest. The sound worried him. He held her away from him slightly so he could assess her injuries. The scent of her blood flowed over him, and he felt his fangs lengthen, his face harden. The whole side of her face was scraped raw, as if someone had taken a grater from her temple down to her jaw. The rain water meant the wound hadn’t even started to clot and the blood flowed freely down over her jaw and throat, soaking into the collar of her shirt.
He swallowed hard and glanced away quickly, trying to force himself not to think about the blood.
“You’re hurt.” He reached down and tore a strip from the bottom of his shirt, wadded it up and placed it to her damaged skin.
She hissed air between her teeth and winced. She allowed him to hold the cloth to her face for a moment, but then pushed him off again.
“We don’t have time for this! Don’t worry about me. You need to find our daughter!” Her eyes darted over his shoulder. “Where is Iona?”
Sebastian shook his head. “She’s badly hurt. I think Conner somehow managed to make the flyover crack and a piece of concrete landed on her leg. She’s safe though. I left her on the back seat of the other car.”
“Then there’s only you left!” she cried, her voice breaking. “You have to get our baby back.”
“I’m not leaving you.”
“You must. You’re faster without me, you said so yourself.”
“No, the storm is too bad. You’re hurt and all it would take would be for you to be hit in the head by something. I’m not leaving.” Her eyes locked on his face for a moment. “You need me to make you better again.” He recognized her understanding in the widening of her eyes.
She hesitated for a moment and then nodded. “Okay, do it.”
Quickly, Sebastian lifted his left wrist to his mouth and bit down hard and tore, wanting to open the wound further. Serenity would need more blood than normal, her injuries too severe for only a few drops to suffice. Pain speared through his arm, but he gritted his teeth and offered the bloodied cut to her. The blood flowed, rain washing it from his skin.
“Now. Do it now.”
She grabbed his wrist and lifted it to her mouth. Her warm lips fastened around the gash, her soft tongue lapping at the skin, drawing him in. Sebastian moaned, the sensation of her mouth against his skin too erotic after all this time for it not to stir that shadowy part of him. She lifted her dark eyes to his, feeding from him hungrily, maintaining eye contact as she swallowed the essence of him. Between that and the scent of her blood still thick on her, it took every ounce of self-restraint he had not to turn the bloodletting back on her, wanting to feed from her and fuck her right out here in the middle of the street.
“Enough,” he said, wrenching his wrist away. He wouldn’t be able to restrain himself much longer. She lifted her face to him and wiped at her mouth with the back of her hand.
As he watched, the scrapes and grazes down the side of her face began to heal, shrinking, crusts forming over the tops, before melting away to reveal clear, creamy skin. The paleness of her hue deepened to a healthier color. Something inside her cracked back into place and she straightened, the relief on her face palpable. The rattling he’d heard from inside her chest ceased.
“Better?” he asked.
She nodded. “Yes, thank you. But we need to move.”
Now that he no longer had the pull of Serenity to follow, he’d struggle more with only the scent of a car to follow. Heading out of the city, the air was redolent with the acrid tang of things burning.
“Where would he take her?” he asked, thinking aloud. But it seemed this was something Serenity had already thought about.
“Somewhere he can see the see the sun coming up. He’ll want to know the exact moment the sun breaks the horizon. That’s when he plans on killing her.”
He tried not to let his heart tear in two at the thought and concentrate instead. Then it hit. “The ocean. If he wants to be able to see the horizon, he’ll take her down to the beach.”
“But this is L.A.,” she argued. “The sun doesn’t rise from the ocean here.”
“Maybe not, but at least from there he’ll be able to look back over the city and see it rise. And it’ll give him a better idea of the time of sunrise than most places in the city.”
“He won’t be able to stand on the beach. They’d be washed away.”
Serenity and Sebastian exchanged a glance. Everything had come full circle.
“The pier,” Serenity said. “He’s taken her to the pier.”
Sebastian scooped her up and ran.