His black eyes took in everything at once, and he vamped out. His fangs ripped his arm from wrist up to mid lower arm, through his clothing, tearing them away. He bent over Eli, shoved me aside, and poured his blood over the bandages wrapping the wound.
I saw everything at once.
Florence was dribbling her powerful blood down Eli’s throat, massaging it.
In the other room, screams, shouts, ululations, gunshots rang out. Positioned over us was Quint. Her short sword dripping. Her nine-mil firing. Precise. Deadly. I didn’t have to look to know each shot was a head shot. And that she was using silver-lead rounds.
“Remove the bindings,” Leo said to me.
I slipped the tiny blade between blood-soaked fabric and swollen flesh. Slid it gently up, the gauze separating. I heard/felt/knew as Eli’s heart skipped a beat. Another.
Leo laid his cut arm on the flesh, his blood flowing. Florence added her blood to his and I bent over as well, letting the blood from my head wound merge and mingle with the vamps. Eli’s flesh began to heal. But we were in a spreading pool of blood. So much blood. Too much...
Eli’s heart...
Stopped.
Stuttered.
Beat.
Our blood flowed.
Beat.
Beat.
Stopped.
“Change him!” Alex demanded over the earbuds.
“Leo?” I whispered, begging.
“I am now outclan.”
I looked at Florence.
“I am outclan.”
Leo said, “You are Dark Queen.Youhave the power to heal him.”
“I tried,” I said, weeping. “I tried.”
Brute padded through the wide pool of blood and stopped inches from my face.
Stinky dog breath,Beast thought.Good wolf. Follow good wolf.
Holding Eli’s body together with my left hand, I put my bloody right hand on Brute’s white head. My magic rose. It shivered and trembled, silver energies whirling and spinning, darker motes whirling. A single red mote coiled and looped. The red mote of evil magic I had thought was gone, not seen in months, was still here. Or was back here, released by the Glob when I opened the tiny pockets of power. The Glob blistered my flesh at my hip where I had somehow tucked it when Eli fell. The red mote circled the Glob, but wasn’t sucked into it.
Was I still evil? Or were power and magic just that—inanimate—energy tools needing only the will and might, to be focused and used, making magic not a force with a conscience and principles and morals. Just a tool. Was magic less the might and more the compassion and humanity of the wielder? Even the Glob?
Suddenly we were in my soul home. The temps dropped. The stone walls of the cave were cold and wet. The walls were gray and pale yellow and shades of white. No fire burned in the firepit in front of me.
Eli wasn’t here.Was that important? Did it matter? Was he dead?
On my right side, Brute stood. On my left, stood Beast. On the other side of Brute stood Leo. He was looking up. Into the dome overhead. His eyes widened, his mouth opened, his fangs clicked closed on their little hinges. His eyes bled back to human. He dropped slowly to his knees.
I followed his gaze and saw the angel wings draped over and against the stone dome, where they offered protection to my soul home. Hayyel keeping watch.
