As I retreated to my place against the wall, I couldn’t stop myself from glancing at Gil’s inert form again. The line of blood traveling from his face to the floor had dried, or at least slowed. Not that it mattered. He didn’t care.
The silence rang and rang, like some distant phone that no one ever answered. Though it was pointless, I decided to squeeze my eyes shut and block out the sight of Gil’s bloody, unseeing ones. The music hadn’t come back on, and I was so bleary with shock and exhaustion that sleep actually seemed possible, despite the horrible things that had just happened.
Then Gil lurched upright, gasping.
CHAPTER SIX
My heart beat so hard that it hurt, and I held back a scream.
I could see that Gil was terrified enough—it was in his eyes, which darted around the room, and to me, without recognition. He panted, his chest heaving as if he’d been underwater too long. How was this possible? He’d been dead, I was sure of it. Recovering, I hurried over to him and dropped to my knees again. “Holy shit, Gil. Are you okay? Do you remember me?”
I reached for the Nightmare’s shoulder without thinking, maybe just to reassure myself this was real. Gil jerked away before my fingers could make contact, snarling, and I caught an unmistakable glimpse of fangs.
After that, it took me less than a second to realize what was happening, and it was all I could do not to recoil. Oh, fuck. Fear and grief battled for control over my mind.
His hot skin. When the Guardians brought him back in, and I touched him, Gil had been so hot. I’d been too distracted by everything else happening to think about it. Now I flattened against the opposite wall, trying to get as far away as possible… which wasn’t far at all. Gil’s eyes tracked every movement, twitching like an insect’s wings.
He was a vampire.
Even worse, he was a vampire in transition. It was magic’s way of creating a balance, this halfway place. Until he consumed human blood, Gil would be something in between the two species. But he couldn’t remain that way for long. The way my father had once explained it, the stress of being in transition eroded the subject’s mind and body. The longest he’d heard of someone surviving in that state was twenty-four hours.
Gil had a choice to make now.
A choice he wasn’t exactly thinking about at the moment. I watched his eyes focus on my face first, then lower to the pulse in my throat. Though it was my first instinct to edge away, I sat very, very still. Vampires and Nightmares shared some similarities—fear piqued our interest. It brought out our inner beasts. If I didn’t show Gil how terrified I was, he stood a better chance of controlling himself.
Distractions. Distractions helped.
“Why did he do this to you?” I asked tightly. By he, I meant Belanor, of course.
To create a member of the bloodsucking undead, the subject had to die with vampire blood in their system. Belanor must’ve planned all this. It would’ve been easy to inject Gil with the blood, or put it down his throat while he’d been unconscious.
Sorrow swelled in my chest. The world had lost another Nightmare. No one else might weep or care, but I would. It was a unique pain, being part of an endangered species. Knowing the thing that made you special, a thing you loved even when you hated it, was disappearing from the face of the Earth.
I lowered my voice, intending my next words for Gil’s ears alone. “I’ll make him pay. We’ll make him pay.”
Nothing. The yellow-haired male didn’t speak, didn’t move, didn’t even blink. We stared at each other. With the bloodstains on his cheeks, Gil looked like a vengeful spirit. I couldn’t find any glimmer of humanity in his expression, and I kept searching, not even daring to speak now.
In those tense seconds, I forced myself to consider how far I’d go to survive this fight.
Laurie’s voice murmured through my mind, as it seemed to more and more lately. When you are in a room with a murderer, there are only two kinds of people. One is the killer. The other is the murdered. Which one would you rather be, at any given time?
“To be clear, if you try to take a single drop of blood from me, I’ll fuck you up,” I said evenly.
There was another beat of terrible, breathless silence. Then Gil started laughing. He laughed, and laughed, and laughed as if someone had told the funniest joke he’d ever heard. The sound had a hysterical edge to it that made me press even harder against the wall.
“Nicky was always saying the vamp blood would bite me in the ass,” he said at last, shaking his head with an expression that was almost… rueful.
Vamp blood? A faint jolt of surprise vibrated through the depths of terror inside me. The way Gil spoke, it had already been in his system when he was taken. Suddenly I thought of how his eyes had been pink from the moment I’d met him, not just after his brutal murder. For a moment, my curiosity overrode my caution. “You’re a V addict?”
Gil smiled humorlessly. “That I am. Partied a little too hard in my younger days, and I developed a taste for it.”
And Belanor had known, which was why he’d left Gil’s body in the cell after attempting his wretched spell. The Seelie Prince had merely spotted an opportunity. Dead Nightmare? What a tragedy. May as well use Gil’s transition to vampirism to terrify the human. If Belanor was lucky, it would turn me into another Nightmare he could use.
Damon was the one who told me about venom addicts. He was always getting invited to parties in the city, before Jassin found him in our garden and whisked him away. My brother had encountered far more Fallen in Denver than I did in Granby. It was there he learned that vampires had the ability to make their bite pleasurable, using a venom in their teeth. Goblins, hunters, and any other person seeking profit bottled and sold that venom.
A Nightmare venom addict sounded like a lethal combination.
More things started making sense, as I thought back. That was why Gil had been so calm when I first woke up. Why he hadn’t asked many questions or seemed to care about anything.
He’d been high.
I should’ve recognized the signs, considering I lived with Emma Miller, but I was sleep-deprived and traumatized. Details and moments were slipping past me. How long had I been in this godforsaken room? I hadn’t thought to ask Belanor or the Guardians. Not that any of them would’ve answered. But it should’ve been one of the first things I asked Gil when I woke up.
Now didn’t seem like a good time to rectify that. Gil squatted on the other side of the room, his spine shoved so hard against the pad that indents spread out from all around his body. Every few seconds, his red gaze shot to that flutter in my throat. To make matters even worse, I had to use the toilet. Badly.
I looked at Gil again and tried to assess his control. It seemed like a good sign that he was talking again. His eyes weren’t twitching anymore. His fangs were still extended, though. Bad sign.
I refused to die while I was taking a shit on a padded toilet.
Resigning myself to wait, I slid down the wall and sat, letting out a breath as I did so. It was strange how we were in the same positions as when we’d first met. That had only been a few hours ago. Time really flew when you were being tortured.
Gil looked like he’d just come back from war. Shell-shocked. Hungry. Whatever friends or family he had would never see him again. Not the person they’d always known. Belanor had taken so many of my choices from me, but I’d been the one to decide I no longer wanted to be a Nightmare. I took a sliver of comfort from that, ignoring the burst of pain as it slid through my heart.