Wraith moaned, his eyes fluttering open. “Help…”
“We’re here,” Eidolon murmured. “We’ll help you.”
“No.” Wraith coughed, spraying blood. “Serena. Help… her.”
“She’s okay, man. Right now, we need to take care of you.”
“Promise… me.”
Shade’s raw curses blistered the air, this time in plain English.
“Promise.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Shade muttered. “Just relax. I need you to relax.”
Eidolon and Shade exchanged glances. “I have to remove the blade,” Eidolon said.
“He’ll bleed out.”
“I know. We need to get blood into him.”
“I’ll start a central line.” Shade dug through the medical bag he’d brought with him and quickly inserted a catheter into Josh’s neck. Eidolon hung up a bag of blood from the door handle, and Shade connected it via a long tube to the catheter. When he’d finished, he set up another bag of blood, connected a tube to it… and held it out to Serena. “I need you to feed this to him.”
She recoiled. “What?”
“Just hold the tube to his mouth. He needs to drink.”
Oh, God, this was such a nightmare. “I don’t understand.” She still hadn’t moved, and her reluctance earned a glare from both of the demons.
“He’s a vampire,” Shade snapped. “We need to get blood into him however we can. Now, do it or he dies.”
Vampire? But he’d warned her about them. And he was warm. Had a heartbeat. Walked in the sun. He couldn’t be a vampire.
“You a vampire?”
“Yep.”
Okay, so he’d admitted to it, but… she shook her head. This was crazy. Shade cursed. “Never mind.” He propped the bag of blood against Josh’s shoulder and inserted the tube into his mouth, but it kept falling out. The bag fell over.
“I’ll do it,” she said finally, and held the tube between Josh’s pallid, dry lips. He didn’t suck, didn’t move.
“Squeeze the bag.” Shade’s deep voice was rough, his tattoo glowing.
She did as he said, and blood flooded the tube. She watched with morbid curiosity as it flowed into Josh’s mouth… and dripped out the other side. He wasn’t swallowing.
“Dammit,” Eidolon breathed. “Come on, Wraith. Fight. Damn you, I don’t want to lose you now.”
Serena’s eyes stung. She might hate Josh—she just couldn’t think of him as Wraith—for what he’d done, but he’d asked his brothers to help her when he was facing more immediate danger, and she didn’t want to watch him die. Some twisted part of her still loved him. Leaning close, she brushed her lips over his cheek.
“Please,” she whispered. “Drink.” She stroked his lips, squeezing a little more blood between them. His mouth opened ever so slightly, just enough to encourage her. “That’s it. Take some.”
His brothers worked frantically, barking out status reports and commands to each other, and the squishy noises of surgical gloves working in blood and flesh made it all so horrific. Eidolon had somehow closed up one of the stab wounds, but now he was using a scalpel to open up the other one even more.
“Manage his pain, Shade.” Eidolon put down the scalpel. “This is going to hurt.”
Shade’s tattoo glowed even brighter as Eidolon pushed his hand inside the opening he’d made. Stomach rolling, Serena turned away. Still, the wet sounds kept her imagination working overtime. Their hushed medical-speak sounded so bad, so discouraging, almost as if they’d already resigned themselves to the fact that Josh wasn’t going to come out of this.
He still hadn’t drank. “Swallow, Josh. Come on.” Gently, she stuck her finger in his mouth, unsure what she was doing, but needing to do something. He was a vampire, right? So he should have fangs… she found a sharp point, remembered how they’d felt in her dreams. Had she had the dreams because she’d subconsciously known what he was?
It was a question for later. Right now she needed to get him to drink, and she knew those fangs were the key. In her dreams they were huge, much larger than what they felt like now. Carefully, she rubbed the tip of her finger along the length of one, from the tip to the gum… and… was it lengthening?
Josh moaned and opened his mouth. Yes, his canines were definitely descending, growing into monstrous daggers. God, how could she be feeling so many things at once—hatred, confusion, fear—and, at the same time, be a little… turned on by this?
“That’s it,” she murmured, as she squeezed some blood onto his tongue. “Swallow. I need you to swallow, okay?”
The blood dribbled out of the corner of his mouth. Dammit. Sliding her finger down his tooth, she caressed the razor point… and applied pressure. She tensed, felt the prick of his fang and the welling of blood on her fingertip.
“Take it,” she whispered, letting a drop fall to his tongue.
He jerked like he’d received an electric shock, and then, to her relief, he closed his mouth, drawing her finger inside. She remained still, and when he began to suckle, the world drifted away in a swirl of pleasure.
One of the brothers swore softly and said her name, but no one interfered. Somehow, she kept the presence of mind to squeeze more blood out of the bag and into his mouth. In a matter of seconds, he was sucking greedily, and she swore the heavy shroud of despair that had settled in the room lifted.
She fed Josh until the first bag of blood was gone, and then Shade showed her how to hook up another bag to the tube. She lost track of how much he drank, lost track of time. All she knew was that at some point, she fell over, and when she opened her eyes, dark spots swam in her vision. Eidolon was peering down at her, his expression a mask of concern.
“Josh,” she whispered. “Is he—will he—”
“He’s going to be fine. I’ve put him to sleep to finish healing. Now it’s your turn. He didn’t take much blood from you, but there’s your other issue.…”
She struggled to sit up, realized someone had put her on the bed. “I’m fine.” She shoved him away.
“I’m a doctor. I know you’re not fine.” His voice was firm but soothing, and she let him push her back on the bed. “I also know a lot has happened in the last few days, and I know you’ve been hurt. Wraith will never forgive himself for what he’s done.”
“Good,” she muttered.
“You saved his life. And you knew you were sacrificing your own life to do it. We owe you. I’m going to do what I can for you, okay?”
She shook her head. “I was bitten by a Mara that’s now dead. My disease is terminal.”
“Yes.” So blunt, so like the doctors she’d remembered from years ago.
She studied Eidolon’s scrubs, the strange medical -symbol—a bat-winged dagger encircled by two serpents—he wore on a chain around his neck. “You do have some sort of new age medical center, right? You said you’ll do what you can…”
“I can make you comfortable, and I can give you a little more time, but… I’m sorry, Serena. You’re going to die.”
Wraith was really freaking tired of waking up feeling like he’d gone a round with King Kong. He’d have thought the charm would have ended that—
Serena!
He sat up so fast his head nearly fell off. It took him a second to figure out where he was—in one of the rooms in the Aegis safe house. He swung his bare legs over the side of the cot, only to have hands push him back down.
Shade was right there in his face. “Whoa. Just relax. You’re going to fall on your ass if you don’t take it easy.”
“Serena,” he croaked.
“Sleeping.”
“How… long?”
“You’ve been out a few hours. E and I have been taking turns staying with you. Tayla’s here. And Gem. Luc. Kynan. Reaver. Our other brother, but he’s in chains. He’s also a total dick. You’ll like him.”
Wraith shook his head, but that did little to clear it. “Why? What’s going on?” Wait, did he say, other brother?
Eidolon came in wearing his trademark gloomy expression, which meant bad news. Wraith vaguely remembered him in scrubs earlier, but now he was in tan cargoes and a plain black tee, which was as casual as he ever got. “We have a situation.”
“Serena?”
“Not with her.”
“Then I don’t care.” Wraith jackknifed upright again. “She’s sick. If you can’t help her, I need to find someone who can.”
“It’s not going to matter if we don’t handle the Byzamoth problem.”
A low, rumbling growl erupted from Wraith before he could stop it. “I’m going to rip his throat out with my teeth.”
“Good. It needs to happen now.” Eidolon ran a hand through his hair, which stuck up in wild tufts, as if he’d been doing that all day. “He’s going to use the amulet he took from Serena and your blood to open up a gate between Heaven and Sheoul.”
“Ah… that’s bad.”
“You think?” Shade drawled.
Eidolon put his fingers to Wraith’s wrist, checking his pulse. “Reaver said he’ll make his move at dawn.”
“Where?”
“Jerusalem,” Shade said. “The Temple Mount.”
Made sense. If Byzamoth was going to pull off something like that, the Temple Mount was the place to do it. Many humans and demons alike believed the Foundation Stone, which was housed at the Temple Mount inside the Dome of the Rock, was where creation had begun and where Armageddon would kick off.
Wraith took his arm back from E. “I’ll go after him.”
“Not alone.” E tossed him a pair of jeans. “The Aegis is mobilizing. Every cell that can arrive in Jerusalem by dawn will be there, as well as the R-XR and every sister paranormal military unit in the world.”