I grabbed the nearest sekhor and twisted her head right off and threw it into another coming at me. “Are you going to just stand there?” I asked my brother blandly.
With a shrug, Fallon jumped into the fray, eyes alight with violence in moments. He worked his way through the throng until we were fighting back to back.
Qwynn and Crane were getting away, and they might be taking Vivien with them. If Crane escaped he could make even more sekhors.
That’s when Timothy, Miranda, and Galina showed up. They wasted no time jumping into the fight.
“Where is Jamal?” Miranda yelled to me. A vampire flew at her on the left, but she reared around and shot the sekhor between the eyes.
“I will find him,” I said, using the opportunity to break off to follow in the direction Qwynn had disappeared. I needed to find her and Crane and stop them. The rest would hold off the sekhors. I trusted Timothy and Galina to protect Miss West, though I’d no doubt she’d hold her own.
With super speed, I raced through the tunnels. I stopped on a dime when I caught sight of a barred cell on my left, in an alcove. It was a recent construction.
A human figure was inside. It was sitting, hunched over. I recognized the warm glow of a sekhor, but unlike Vivien’s this was muted, dull. Whoever it was, they were talking. “Oh god, oh god, oh god.”
“Vivien?” I said, my voice echoing down toward the figure. The figure twisted and I saw Vivien’s eyes. They were bigger than usual and blood red.
The second she saw me, she got to her feet and stumbled to the bars with a sob. She hung on them as if helpless. I grabbed the locked door and ripped it off the hinges, throwing it behind me. Everything inside me shouted with joy as Vivien fell into my arms. She was okay.
She clutched my arms as her words tumbled out. “Tell me this is a dream. Tell me you’re not really here. This is a nightmare and you’re not here.” Vivien seemed out of her mind, gripped by fear and anxiety.
“What did he do to you?” I asked, every part of me coming to attention.
A sob bubbled out of her throat as she shut her eyes tight. “You are here, aren’t you?” I smoothed her wild, messy hair away from her face, but I couldn’t soothe away her tortured feelings which radiated out of her as if from a gaping wound. Then her eyes snapped open. “You can fix this. You are the only one who can fix this.”
Then she was tugging on me, urging me over to where she’d been kneeling on the ground. I saw the source of her pain. I grimaced.
Jamal lay on the ground, his neck a mangled, bloodied mess. She’d fed from him. His warm brown skin had turned ashen. Even in the darkness, I could see his soul was barely clinging to his body. She’d all but drained him.
“I tried to stop.” Vivien pulled at her hair and shut her eyes again. “I tried everything I could to stop, but the master was in my head. Crane is so much stronger since he made an army of sekhors. His power is growing. He forced me to feed, then took my strength.”
The fact she had left anything of Jamal showed great control on her part, but the child was still not long for this world. Then turning to me, she grasped at my shirt. “You have to save him.”
“I can’t do that,” I said quietly.
She grasped at my shirt, bunching the fabric in her hands. “I didn’t trap his soul in his body. I didn’t make him drink my blood. He won’t be a vampire. You can save him.” She choked on a sob. “You have to. Jamal doesn’t deserve this. He shouldn’t have been here.”
I’d faced the pleas from millions upon millions of souls. Death was part of the cycle of life. Yet Vivien’s entreaties tore at me. “I can’t…I never meant to…I tried to stop. But you can save him.”
I gripped her arms with a bruising force. Her tortured babbling cut off abruptly as she focused on me. I spoke slowly, deliberately. “Death is necessary, and it is natural.”
A new fire lit in her eyes as she pointed at Jamal’s prone body. “This is not necessary. This is our fight, not his. And if you have the power to save him, you would do it. You were the one to say that you valued human life. That Qwynn betrayed you when she used mortals. Don’t let him be collateral damage in this battle. Don’t let her win. Don’t let that bastard, Crane, get away with this.” Her words broke at the end. “Take my soul. Anything.”
“You know you don’t have a soul to bargain with.” As soon as I said it, I knew that wasn’t entirely true. No force in this universe was without a cost. And while I could not take Vivien’s soul to save Jamal’s, there was another price she could pay to preserve the balance. There was something I could take from her that would permit me to save the boy while keeping the scales of fate even.
But if there was one thing I learned about Vivien, she would never agree to the price.
“There will be a cost.” The words came out before I knew what I was saying.
Her head bobbed emphatically. “Anything. Just do it. Do it now.” Eyes continuing to flicker to Jamal, she knew he had mere moments left.
“Vivien, you must know the price—”
“Now, Anubis.” She appealed to me using my real name, and power surged in me. Her use of my true moniker left me heady as energy pulsated through me anew. There was power in a name.
“You need to drink my blood.”
Vivien’s blood-red eyes widened. “I can’t,” she whispered. She thought she would hurt me. She thought it would make her a monster. She didn’t know the truth but there was no time to explain.
