“I kinda had plans,” said Madoc.
“Change them, will you?”
“Fuck. Whatever. I’ll go clean off in the lake and meet up with you soon. Good enough?”
“Yeah. Thanks, man.”
Madoc didn’t bother to reply. The guy was not exactly Mr. Friendly. Andra was glad he was on their side.
Paul got the women settled in one of the bedrooms of the Gerai house. Like so many other Gerai houses, this one was isolated, far away from prying neighbors. It was a three-bedroom ranch, stocked with food, clothes and supplies—anything they might need to refuel and protect themselves and any humans who might be along for the ride. Because these places of refuge were kept up by the blooded humans known as Gerai, the term stuck.
Never before had Paul been so glad they had a safe place nearby. Nika didn’t look good.
Andra slid Nika under the covers, then lay down beside her and held on tight. Nika looked so frail beside Andra, like a word spoken too harshly would shatter her thin bones.
Even if she was a Theronai like Andra, she could keep going for only so long. They needed to get some food into her, get that IV out of her arm without her bleeding everywhere. They really didn’t need to draw more Synestryn.
Andra stroked her sister’s hair and whispered to her in a voice too low for Paul to hear. Whatever she said, her body was tight with tense desperation.
Andra must have known how bad Nika was, even if she didn’t want to admit it. Her fear gave her away. He could see it in the way her fingers trembled as she ran them over Nika’s head, the way her eyes darted frantically over her sister’s thin form as if looking for a way to fix her.
Paul had to grit his teeth to hold himself back from Andra. He wanted to comfort her and pull her into his arms and shield her from all the bad stuff in life. Ironic. In his line of work, that was all he had to offer. Anything else was just a temporary illusion.
He made himself step out of the room and close the door. He needed Logan to look at Nika and see if there was anything to be done for her, no matter how small. Now that she was asleep, at least he wouldn’t scare her.
Logan was out in the front yard of the small house, sniffing the air. Darkness seemed to close in around him, but it suited him well. He belonged out here in the middle of the night. All the Sanguinar seemed to be most at ease in the dark.
Paul didn’t understand it, but he’d come to accept it over the decades. He’d much rather be lying on some sun-drenched beach, but that wasn’t in the cards for him. He could no more work during the day than a rancher could do his job in the middle of Manhattan. It just wasn’t going to happen.
“Are we clear?” Paul asked.
“Yes. For now.”
“You should go see what you can do for Nika while she’s asleep.”
Logan didn’t turn. He continued to stare out into the night. “There’s nothing I can do. She’s dying.”
Paul’s eyes slid shut in grief. Poor Andra. She loved her sister so much. He could see it in every move she made. Nika was her world, and she was going to lose her.
Whatever it took, he’d help her through this. Be there for her. “Why is she dying?”
“I can’t tell without taking her blood, and she’s too weak for that.”
“Can’t you do anything? Help her hold on for a while longer so she can get stronger?”
“Why should you care what happens to one single soul?” asked Logan.
He didn’t bother to remind him that Nika probably wasn’t human. “Don’t you?”
Logan turned and stared at Paul with those icy eyes. “No. Why should I? She was raised as a human. They care nothing for my kind. They call us vampires. Have you seen the films they’ve made about my people? The lies they tell their children about us, as if we were out to hunt their kind to extinction?”
“They’re your food. That would make anyone feel a little uneasy, don’t you think?”
“I only take their blood. I would hope that fact would put them at ease if they stopped to think about it for a single moment. Why would I kill something I need to survive? It would be like a farmer cutting down his orchard to make it simpler to harvest this year’s fruit.”
A sudden realization came to Paul—one he’d never even considered. “You resent them. The humans. Don’t you?”
“Of course not.”
“You do. You are pissed off because you need them. Or us. I have to admit, I’d be a little pissed, too, if I had to depend on someone else so heavily.”
Logan snorted. “You say that as if you don’t need a woman to live.”
Maybe Andra.
Paul stifled a thrill of excitement and chained his needs until they quieted. He was going to have to figure out what this thing between them was, but now wasn’t the time. She had more important things to think about. “I do need a woman, but I’ve lived on my own for a long time. You never have.”
“Enough of this.” Logan shoved past him. “I’m going inside.”
“It all makes a lot more sense now. You Sanguinar aren’t all dark and brooding. You’re pouting. You don’t like the rules and you can’t change them, so you’re pouting.”
“You know nothing of what it’s like to be my kind. Stop pretending you do.”
“Am I wrong?”
Before Paul saw it coming, Logan had grabbed him and shoved him up against the door. Logan was weak from exertion, but even weak, he was still strong enough to make Paul take notice.
He could feel the edges of the small window pressing into his back as well as the man’s bony forearm cutting off his air. “We’re not pouting. We’re dying. Two more of my brothers died while you slept. They starved to death because there is no food for us, and yet your people look down on us like we are vultures, resenting us for the blood we must have to live.”
Paul kept his hands off his sword with an effort of will. He wasn’t about to cut down the only person around who might be able to save Nika. He decided to be a bigger man than that and held up his hands in surrender.
Logan let him go, but Paul was going to be wearing a bruise across his throat for days, he was sure. “You want more blood?” croaked Paul. “Fine, take some of mine, but use it to save the girl.”
Logan’s eyes flared and a predatory hunger dilated his pupils. “Give me your arm.”
Chapter 9
Logan came into the bedroom without knocking, making Andra jump up from the bed. She tried to cover her startle, but the slight lift at the corner of his beautiful mouth told her he knew what she was doing. And found it amusing.
His color was better and he looked as if he’d gained weight again. It had to be some kind of optical illusion, because no one’s size changed that fast. It wasn’t possible.
Then again, she’d seen a whole lot of impossible things in the past twenty-four hours.
“Leave us,” he ordered her, nodding to Nika.
“Like hell I will. I’m staying right here where I can keep an eye on you.”
“And do what? What do you think you could possibly do to stop me if you wanted to?”
He had a point. She didn’t even have her shotgun. Okay, time to make nice. “I’m worried about her.”
“With good reason. She’s not likely to survive.”
Andra locked her knees and her throat closed up for a moment as panic grabbed hold of her. A giant well of grief was building inside her, and the only thing keeping it from spilling over was hope—the hope that he was wrong. That there was something someone could do with all the magic she’d seen to put Nika back together. “Please,” she begged, not even caring about her stupid pride. “Please do something to save her.”
Logan’s jaw bunched and his eyes fell shut in defeat. He let out a heavy sigh. “Fine. I’ll try, but there’s little I can do without her blood.”
“How much do you need?”
“Not much, but more than she can give.”
“You can have mine,” said Andra.
Logan leaned toward her until his nose was almost touching her neck. She braced herself for his bite, but it never came. Instead, he breathed in deeply, as if smelling her skin.
He straightened and shook his head. “Not today. I took too much from you before. But I will hold you to your offer and drink from you again once you are fully recovered.”
“I’m fine now. Nika is the important one here.”
Logan pinned her with a bright stare. “Paul would argue that point. Besides, he needs you. You should go to him.”
She wanted to, but that was just more of the artificial hocus-pocus stuff. As long as it wasn’t real, she could ignore it. “I will once you try to help Nika.”
He stared at her for a long moment before giving her a single nod. “Go fill the bathroom sink with water, wet a towel, and bring it to me.”
Andra did as he asked. When she returned a few seconds later, Logan was sitting on Nika’s bed with one hand on her forehead and the other between her flat breasts. His head was bowed as if in prayer, and she could almost feel a shimmering kind of heat coming off of him.
He lifted his head. His breathing was a little labored. “Come hold the towel nearby.”
Andra went to him and held it out. Drips of water slid down her hands and landed on the hardwood floor.
“I’m going to take the catheter out of her arm and put it in the towel. I want you to wrap it up as quickly as you can and shove it in the sink. Run water over it to drown the scent. We don’t want the smell of her blood getting into the air and bringing the Synestryn down on us.”
“They can really smell it that well?”
He gave her a look that made her feel like an idiot for not knowing the answer. “Do you want to take the chance?”
Andra shook her head.
“Okay. Here we go.” He took the tape from Nika’s arm. Her thin, loose skin stretched too easily, making the job more difficult. He lifted her arm. “I’m going to lick the blood away and heal the wound with my mouth, so if you don’t want to see that, don’t look.”
“Nika can’t fight off an infection. Please tell me she’s safe from the germs in your mouth. They’re magic or something, right?”
He smiled then, and the beauty of it nearly made Andra drop the towel. She wondered how many women had fallen at his feet because of that smile alone. That was one serious natural weapon.
“Magic germs. I like that,” he said. “Don’t worry. It’s perfectly safe for her.”
“Safe. That’s good.”
“Are you ready?”
“Yeah.”
The plan went just as he’d said. He pulled the IV out of her arm and plopped it down on the towel. Andra wrapped it up tight and raced it into the bathroom, where she ran water over the whole mess. She left the water running and went back to make sure Nika hadn’t suffered any ill effects of being licked by a vampire.
Her arm was fine and her skin was whole, as if she’d never had the IV. “That’s so cool,” she told him.
But Logan wasn’t listening. He was staring at the wall with wide eyes that were darting back and forth as if he were in REM sleep. Every second or two, his body would jerk like he’d been hit with a jolt of electricity.