When we hit the shore, the force of the blow knocked me from my mate’s embrace and sent me skidding into the sand. I scrambled to my hands and knees, not trusting my legs to hold me if I stood up.
“Just hold it a little longer,” I told Vincent, barely able to get the words out between large gulps of breath. “Enough for us to get you inside.”
I lifted my head, searching for my mate through my mess of wind-tangled hair.
My stomach bottomed out as a wave of nausea slammed into me. A strangled cry fell from my lips, and I slapped my hand over my mouth to keep myself from wretching.
Slumped over in the sand was Vincent’s body. The waves gently rushed around him, making him look like a washed-up corpse.
He couldn’t hold it.
It was weird to think how hours ago, I would have been overjoyed to see him shift back to his vampire form.
Now, all I felt was raw dread. The wings and feathers and deadly talons were gone. His ashen skin, with the threads of dark veins running beneath the surface of his skin, pulsated with the dark energy coursing through his bloodstream. This was my Dark Knight, as I preferred him.
Only, he was burning to death.
No. Not burning.Melting.
I’d never seen a vampire in the sun before. In the few vampire movies I’d caught on TV, they’d always catch on fire like an ant under a magnifying glass.
I’d prefer that to this stomach-churning bullshit.
I crawled through the sand, my hands scrambling over his chest as if to feel for a heartbeat that wasn’t there. He wasn’t moving. “Vincent!” I screamed his name as I gave him a violent shake, trying to get him to speak or twitch an eyebrow—anything to tell me he was still alive.
“Fucking speak to me! What do I do?”
His eyelids flickered. He opened his mouth, but nothing but black, frothy foam bubbled on his lips.
Vincent’s flesh was burning off as if acid had been poured over him.
His skin sizzled, and grotesque little holes started to appear all over his body. A sob caught in my throat as I watched my mate’s body start to dissolve at an alarming pace.
We were so close to home, a mocking distance away. Somehow we’d fallen straight out of the sky and into Hell because this was impossible torment.
“Help!” I screamed bloody murder. “Someone help us!” I looked up and down the beach, but there was nobody. We were on vampire territory in the middle of the damn day.
No one was going to come.
I was too weak to summon my monster. I was too weak from casting the spell that had destroyed Valkera. Grabbing hold of Vin’s wrists, I scrambled to my feet and tried to drag him off the beach.
Even when he wasn’t a hulking bird monster, this was a big ass boy.
In all reality, how quickly was I going to be able to drag a vampiric MMA champion up the shore and into the house?
Maybe it was residual magic or just the heady surge of adrenaline coursing through me that enabled me to move him at all.
Still not fast enough.
Panic began to set in, its cold fingers wrapping my throat and putting me in a fucking chokehold.
I couldn’t let him die. I wouldn’t. There had to be another way…
My attention settled on a rock at my feet, and without thinking, I picked it up and hurled it toward the mansion.
The rock sailed straight through a window, the sound of breaking glass splitting the air.
Several moments later, a freckled face appeared.
