“You did,” Lacey pointed out. “And that still doesn’t explain why you’ve got every vampire for hundreds of miles coming after you.”
The wind gusted violently. Topher shivered. West started forward, starting to shrug off his fleece, but Brody put out a hand to stop him.
“Answer the question,” he growled, voice infused with Alpha power. “This ends tonight.”
Topher scraped a hand over his face, the dark circles under his eyes more prominent than ever. “You know what the undeads did to me, how they… used me. They fed from me every night. All those days, weeks and months ran together until I lost track of how many times, how many violations, how many months had passed since I’d last seen sunlight, last felt grass under my feet.”
He stared down at his wrists. Intricate tribal tattoos covered his arms, partially obscuring the black silver burns from a year spent in shackles. But the scars from so many feedings were another story, silver track marks puncturing every visible vein, the silver and enzymes in the vamp blood having prevented him from fully healing.
West’s hands had balled into fists. He caught me staring and looked away.
“I don’t know if it was the hundredth time one of them fed from me or the thousandth, but eventually I began to notice a sort of twitching under my skin anytime one of their kind came near, a sort of headache at the base of my skull.”
“You’re telling us you’ve got a spidey-sense for vamps?” Lacey said sharply.
Brody propped his hands on his hips, pacing the length of the clearing.
I shook my head. “Look, man, we all want to believe you. But you’d think if what you’re describing was possible, we would’ve heard of it by now.”
“Tracers have recovered blood slaves alive,” Cal said quietly. “It’s just that the ones who’ve been held for more than a year rarely make it out mentally intact, at least according to Mom.”
“You think there were others, that the Council’s known about this and been keeping it quiet?”
“Just ask yourself what they stand to gain.”
A shifter who could sense the presence of vamps? The Tracers would be all over that.
Something Brody had said days before stirred in my memory.
The Council wasn’t going to try to rehabilitate Topher at all until we offered to take him in.
Had that been their plan all along, to pretend Topher had died, then try to recruit him, or hope he caused too many problems in Blood Moon so that when he was sent back later, questions wouldn’t be raised?
“We should put out feelers, see if we can get information from Mom or River—”
“So help me, I will smash every phone in this clearing if I have to,” West growled. “We don’t tell anyone. This information is too sensitive. If it leaks—”
“He’s right,” Cal said. “This has to be kept need to know. That means not even River.”
Brody rubbed his stubble. Trying to keep things from our youngest brother was hell on a logistical level. And when he found out we’d all been in on it—
West leveled Topher with a look. “You’re going to have to trust us.”
“Yeah?” Cold gunmetal eyes met his. “You trust a lot of people that keep you locked in a cage?”
Closest to him, Lacey shifted, prepared to cut off his access to the woods in case he tried to run. West started to say something, but before he could, Topher’s head snapped to the north. His eyes glazed over, instantly losing focus, and I knew we’d run out of time.
I didn’t feel my feet begin to move, wouldn’t recall until later shoving West to the ground or the frantic shouts of my brothers as I hurled myself across the clearing.
In front of Lacey.
A split second later, a fierce crack rent the air, the second wave of vampires materializing right on top of us. For the space of a breath, time seemed to freeze. I saw the flash of the blade a split second before white-hot pain lanced through my chest, the force of the accompanying body blow knocking me back into the snow. A scream rent the air. I gasped, choking on the hot, metallic taste of blood.
Arms locked me in an iron grip, silver snowflakes whipping upwards into the black abyss of the winter night. I clung to Lacey’s heartbeat, every terrified, frantic pulse a warm reassurance she was safe.
She and our baby would live.
The vampire hissed over me, hand poised on the hilt of the knife.
“Go to hell,” I growled just as the stars went black.
14
Lacey
OKAY, SO I MIGHT HAVE STARTED TO GO A LITTLE BUFFY on the last vamp. But you try being tied up in a barn while the undead talk about making you into a walking bag of O-neg and see if it doesn’t give you pent-up aggression issues. The second wave didn’t stay long. The instant they realized they weren’t going to be able to grab Topher and ghost out, they ditched the scene. I had no sooner jammed a stake into the shoulder of the closest fang-head when I whirled in time to see Dallas fall.
And my heart stopped.
There are some things you can never prepare for, like the feeling of coming unrooted the first time you leave home, the thrill of new freedoms, hole-in-the-wall restaurants to explore and the giddy buzz of independence tempered by the uncertainty of unfamiliar sheets when you go to sleep at night. You never forget your first huge betrayal, whether it’s a lie from someone you thought you could trust, or a secret that leaves you alone in a house full of strangers as one by one your bones snap and reform under the light of the full moon. But maybe the worst is the devastation of losing someone before you’ve had the chance to tell them how desperately you need them to stay. Dallas Caldwell had already been taken from me once before. I couldn’t lose him again.
I tried to catch him, tried to cradle his head before it could hit the hard-packed earth. His hair spilled through my fingers, dark blond strands cast silver in the moonlight. Hot crimson blood pulsed from the wound in his chest. Quickly, I applied pressure with shaking fingers.
“Naomi,” I screamed as Dallas’s eyes drifted closed.
“Brody, get over here.” Naomi was deadly calm, unzipping a black duffel bag and tearing open supplies. “He’s bleeding out. West, I need an evac—”
“On it.”
Topher shoved past Ethan and Hayden, who’d been monitoring him. “I can help.”
Brody didn’t look up, tearing open gauze pads while Naomi established an airway. “Back off. We’ve got it covered.”
“I was an EMT.”
Typing into his phone, West started to respond. Brody cut him off.
“Your call,” he said to Naomi.
She jerked her chin. “Get over here and bag him.”
While Topher gloved up, Naomi started an IV line. I held pressure even as blood began to seep through layers of gauze pads, a cold weight settling in my chest as I watched Dallas’s eyelids flutter.
You can’t die, I begged, my heart threatening to shatter into a thousand pieces.
Maybe fear was a self-fulfilling prophecy. My mother hid from the monsters of the outside world. Dallas practiced the fine art of self-destruction. I’d convinced myself nothing in life was permanent, that no one ever stayed. And all I’d managed to do was wall off my heart so nothing good could take root.