“Very good, Elder Maledictus,” Josh said—likely feeling the order all the way to his bones. “That will help a great deal.”
“Oh, backup.” The red-haired Drake pointed to a dark SUV that pulled onto the road in front of us and the black car that joined our caravan behind us, both cars driving with the same high speed as Josh.
“Hold on,” Josh advised before he took another sharp corner.
Jade and I didn’t move, but the red-haired vampire had to brace himself from getting tossed around.
“How far out are we?” I impatiently asked.
“Less than five minutes,” Josh said.
“You can administer the red potion,” the redhead said. “Here.” He pulled a white kerchief from the pocket of his suit, then took the red potion back from me—uncorking it and pouring some of it over the kerchief. “Pour it on the cloth, then wipe at her lips or stick it in her mouth. You don’t just want to pour it in—she could choke.”
I took the moistened kerchief and potion, juggling them so I could properly support Jade, then followed the directions and dabbed at Jade’s mouth.
Josh watched for a moment in the rearview mirror, then nodded before returning his attention to the road.
Neither of the vampires, I noticed, had mentioned my bespelled clothes or the general weirdness of the situation.
The red-haired one, however, eyed Jade’s blood. “Elder…” he slowly said. “Do you… to be safe…”
“The poison in her blood doesn’t affect me,” I said. “I’m too old.”
“Ah.” He sat back in his seat looking vaguely terrified.
“I didn’t know that was possible.” Josh gunned the car through a red stoplight after glancing to confirm that a few vampires were standing in front of the rare car at the intersection, holding it back. “But I suppose it makes sense—you can likely heal faster than the poison can affect you.”
The redhead clutched the door. “You just ran a stoplight.”
“I’m aware,” Josh said.
“Could younot? You might like to wax poetry about thesweet embrace of death, but I’d like to survive tonight.”
“I looked—see?” Josh looked left, then right before he blew through another stoplight in which the intersection was blocked by vampires.
The redhead made a noise.
“Look back at Elder Maledictus and tell me if I don’t drive through stoplights that our lives won’t be in danger.”
The redhead sank lower in his seat and gulped. “Point taken.”
A phone rang. The red-haired vampire checked it. “Gavino,” he announced, before accepting the call. “Yes?”
“I’m calling to confirm that Elder Maledictus has Jade O’Neil in his custody?” A deep voice boomed through the phone’s speaker—I was assuming thisGavinowas the muscle-y vampire we’d left behind, given I recognized the background chatter as the voices of the vampires who had first arrived when I’d made my command. “I’ve got a member of the Curia Cloister’s task force. She said she recognized Jade before you left,” He paused, then added, “She’s getting hysterical and is threatening to call the Cloisters—ouch!”
“Yes, the slayer is Jade O’Neil,” I said before the redhead could repeat the question to me.
He nodded. “Did you hear that, Gavino?”
“Ow! Yes—stop kicking! I’ll notify His Eminence—we’ll need to stop the Cloisters before they mobilize.”
“If the Cloisters are so concerned, her team should have thought twice before leaving her,” I snarled.
It was an unrealistic sentiment—Jade and her team had been pushed to their limits. If I wanted to assign blame, I should have just stepped in and ended the fight. But it had taken me holding a lifeless Jade to realize that revealing my location to Killian, officially standing against Gisila, none of it mattered.
“Coming up on the hospital,” Josh announced. The inky black sky was more of a dull charcoal from all the light pollution as we turned a corner and the street opened to reveal a brightly lit, multi floor building. “We’ll be taking you to the ER—the emergency room, the place humans go for medical attention in case of emergency. Might I suggest to you, Elder Maledictus, that you only harness a few ER staff? If you daze them all toomany will attempt to help, and the uncared patients will suffer and get in the way,” Josh added.
“What are you talking about?” the redhead asked.
