As I ran up, Beatrice recovered from becoming human again, a beat faster than Ariadne, and scrambled to her feet. She flashed me a grateful look and jumped back as Ariadne bellowed with fury. The goth girl rose and lowered her head like a bull’s, charging straight for Beatrice. Positioned behind her, I saw what Bea couldn’t—a long, wicked-looking sliver of glass clutched in Ariadne’s hand. The charge was just a distraction. “No!” I yelled, but I was too late. Ariadne tackled Beatrice and drove the long piece of glass into her stomach, angling up to get the heart.
Ariadne’s hand was bleeding hard from the edges, but she must have found her mark—Beatrice dropped like a stone in water, a tangled Ariadne falling with her. I realized that I was just standing there, and ran forward, grabbing Ariadne’s wrist and dragging her off Beatrice. Ariadne crouched on all fours, panting, as I turned back.
“Bea? Bea!” I yelled, but Beatrice’s eyes didn’t so much as flutter in response. “Fuck,” I groaned, and beside me, Ariadne began to cackle. I heard Dashiell screaming behind me, and the other vampire yelling in response, and then both of their cries were cut off suddenly as my temper flared and I felt the barriers of my power begin to swell. And swell.
The vampires behind me were human again, too, and I heard the sharp pop of a gunshot behind me. I turned and saw Dashiell standing over Hugo’s body, holding the dead vamp’s gun. It was pointed at the vampire he’d been fighting, who was crumpled on the ground. I could see the blood from this far away.
I didn’t register any of that, though, because something was happening inside me. The edges of my aura had grown and grown and still wanted more ground. I felt it all, in that moment—my rage, my guilt, my sorrow for my parents, all of it rose and rose within me, and I poured it into my power, into the circle that had ceased to be a circle at all. Then I looked to Ariadne, who gazed up at me in sudden fear, and I turned that power toward her.
And then something broke inside me, and I felt a warm rush of blood from my nose as the world went dark.
Chapter 35
When I woke up, I could hear rain pattering against the window. Weird, I thought sleepily. Then I opened my eyes, squinting them into focus, and realized that I was lying down, that I wasn’t wearing my clothes, and that I was in an unfamiliar bed, in that order. As my mind began to clear, I noticed the details—the disinfectant smell, the squeaking of tennis shoes on linoleum, the generic decor—and put together that I was in a hospital room. If it sounds as if I came to this realization very slowly...Well, I did.
“‘Lo?” I croaked, my voice hoarse with disuse.
“Scar?” I turned my head left and recognized Eli, his face worried and pleased at the same time. “Are you really awake?”
“God, I hope not.”
He laughed, much more than was warranted, and reached over to take my hand. “Oh, man, you had us worried.”
“Why?”
“It’s Wednesday afternoon, Scarlett. You’ve been asleep for three days.”
“I have?” I tried to sit up in bed, then immediately regretted it. “What happened? Where’s Corry? Is Beatrice okay?”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa. Hang on, there. They said you had some kind of seizure or something at Dashiell’s and passed out while a bunch of vampires were fighting. Dashiell dragged you away from Beatrice, and she turned vampire again and healed from her wounds.
“Is Dashiell still gonna kill me?”
He frowned. “I don’t think so, or he wouldn’t have gotten you to the hospital.”
“Dashiell brought me to the hospital?”
“Yeah.”
“Corry?”
“The girl? I talked to your friend the cop—he’ll be here after his shift, by the way; we’ve been trading off—and he said she was fine. She had to get a cast on her arm, but her family was okay. When that guy went to the hotel for them, Corry ran out to meet him so he wouldn’t mess with her mom and brother. Pretty ballsy move for a fifteen-year-old, if you ask me.” He smiled. “She’s a really nice kid, Scar. I can see why you wanted to protect her. Oh”—his brow furrowed a little—“if I talked to you first, Cruz wanted me to tell you that he took care of Corry’s tape. He said you would know what that meant.”
It took me a second, but I figured it out: Jesse had destroyed the tape that Jared Hess had used to blackmail Corry. Thank God.
“S’wrong with me?”
His eyes flickered with worry. “I’m not sure. The doctors aren’t, either, it sounds like. I’ll call them in a second, but there’s something else you should know first.” He took a deep breath, and his face looked...almost nervous.
“What is it?” I asked.
“Uh...What do you feel?”
“What do you—Oh. Oh, wow,” I said as I finally noticed that I couldn’t feel him in my radius. I closed my eyes and concentrated. My eyelids flew open. “I can’t feel anything. You’re still a were. Did I...Am I broken?”
He shrugged. “Dashiell says no. He told Will it’ll kind of...grow back. I think he’s telling the truth—you still don’t smell.” He smiled, a little shyly. “But without it, you’re vulnerable, which is why Cruz and I have been taking turns being here. He fixed his schedule to work days this week, so he’s in at night and I’m here now.” Eli’s face darkened a little. “Dashiell stopped to check on you a couple of times, but Jesse didn’t leave him alone with you.” He grinned then, remembering something. “He pulled some cop language on the nurses, got them to let him stick around after visiting hours. They were kind of fawning over him.”