Pain scorched through my veins as it clawed my front, ripping through the leather outfit and slicing open my torso from my throat to my belly button.
"Fuck!" I kicked it backward toward Thaddeus, whose arm was outstretched for it. It slid into his hand, and he obliterated it. More demons surrounded Blaise and I, protecting us from the onslaught of abandoned.
Purple light streamed through the room, and I glanced down to see my skin gaping open. I winced as the heat of healing slithered through, stitching my skin back together at a slower rate.
I hate the fucking venom in its claws.
"Lilith?" Thaddeus was breathing heavily, eyes trained on my chest that was still healing. "I thought you had that outfit enchanted."
"I did, but specifically for a vampire bite." I hissed as it finished closing back together and ran my hand down my sticky, healed skin. "Clearly, I should've been less specific."
“Be careful,” he told me before running over toward Aziel to help him obliterate an abandoned he'd been fighting. Kai and Titan were working as a team to obliterate as well.
The number of abandoned were dwindling rapidly, thanks to the demon's help, but Blaise was still in a heated mental battle with the red-eyed abandoned. Its head kept turning from side-to-side like Blaise was putting up a good fight.
“Can’t we obliterate the red-eyed abandoned and free Blaise?” I shouted my question as I blocked another attack toward Blaise.
I hated that he was completely stuck in his fucking mind with that thing while all of this violence going on around him. He was an easy target since he was immobilized, and the abandoned knew that. I wouldn’t leave his side until they were all fucking obliterated.
“No!” Kai was quick to reply before shoving his hand into another abandoned.
“If you do that, you’ll break his bloody brain,” Thaddeus said in a heavy breath, kicking one back away from one of my demons.
Come on, Blaise. You can do this.
An icy chill zipped through my bones as another purple-eyed abandoned pushed through the demons and barreled right for Blaise. A cry caught in my throat, and I used my fucked up teleportation to appear in front of it just in time for its teeth to gnash at Blaise’s skull.
Instead, the abandoned’s teeth sunk into the arm I'd thrown in front of me for protection, ripping the leather. Hot blood pooled in my outfit, drenching my arm, spreading the thick substance down my side.
Yeah, I should’ve had her bless it for all types of damage. Not just against a vampire bite.
I pushed the abandoned back and propelled myself forward to crush its purple orb. Purple light bathed the room, and a shadow of movement caught my eye where Blaise was. Turning toward him, I’d thought he was breaking the mental bond the abandoned had formed, but it wasn’t Blaise that was moving.
Viktor's grotesque form materialized behind Blaise in a cloud of black mist, and a freezing shaft of fear impaled my chest, so powerful it drove all breathable air from my lungs. The surrounding chaos slowed as Viktor’s predatory gaze searched the room until it met mine, and a wicked grin curled around his serpentine lips.
"Blaise!" Terror jabbed hard at my stomach, and I rushed forward, faster than I’d ever willed my body to go. The musty air of the warehouse skimmed over my sweaty, bloody skin as I blurred toward them—but there wasn't enough time. It didn't matter how fast I was, because Viktor was closer.
He stalked around to loom over Blaise’s unaware form, and his massive claw blundered through Blaise’s chest. His rib bones audibly cracked from the force, and the squish of his heart as Viktor squeezed inside of his chest demolished my heart along with his.
Blaise coughed, and blood sputtered from the pale lips I’d kissed just moments before we came to this fucking place. His usually mischievous gray eyes dulled before his eyelids dropped. Viktor's arm and claw slipped out of Blaise’s chest, wet and bloody, and Blaise’s limb body smacked into the concrete like a rag doll.
"No!"
The red-eyed abandoned he was fighting blinked as the connection was severed before charging toward him. I sucked back a sob as I flew into it sideways and kicked it away from Blaise. My ankle snapped, pain ricocheting up my leg, but I didn't care.
Thaddeus rushed toward the red-eyed abandoned and obliterated it in an instant before it could lock onto anyone else. The guys were bloodthirsty, obliterating abandoned at a much faster pace. Aziel, Titan, and the rest of the demons were holding them down as Kai and Thaddeus hastened through to obliterate them.
It was all a fucking blur, and my chest throbbed in unforgiving pulses. I dropped onto my knees beside Blaise. My fingertips brushed his cheek, and his skin was ice cold. His face didn’t show any kind of expression, not pain or anger or sadness. Staring at his flayed chest, the shirt he’d had on was in tatters and his rib bones were visible through the gaping hole. I picked up his motionless hand and pressed it to my lips. Tears rolled down my face onto his hand in big droplets.
His heart didn't beat, not once, and it wouldn't. It was too damaged.
No amount of vampire healing would fix it.
“You can’t die on me.” My throat burned as I bit back the sob. “Blaise, please. You can’t die.”
He had been in the middle of a mental fight with the red-eyed abandoned when Viktor took a cheap shot. He must've been fighting through Hell if it was anything like my fight with the red-eyed abandoned from the trials...and for what?
Viktor cackled, the horrendous sound echoing off the walls. "After the arm you destroyed had regenerated, I knew it was because of who you were."
