The panicked muttering stopped.
“Maya?”
Nell came closer, crouching down, and put her hand on Maya’s shoulder. Her touch felt like it was made of white-hot steel.
“Are you… Are you alive?”
Maya curled her fingers again, producing another pained groan. Nell let out a shaky sigh.
“You’re alive. Thank God, I thought… I thought you were dead.” Her breathing went shallow again. “No, youweredead. He killed you, he… There’s an actual branch sticking out of your back.”
Maya pushed through the agony. When another groan escaped her clenched teeth, she forced it into a word.
“Pull…”
Nell took a sharp breath. “What?”
“Pull… it…out…” Maya managed. Her mind filled with white lights, eating away at her consciousness.
“Oh. Oh, right!” Nell shot to her feet, hurrying around her. She touched the branch, the slight jostling sending pure ruin through Maya’s chest, but it might as well have been a tickle when compared to what followed.
Nell yanked at the branch, pulling it free with a wet squelch. The second the stake was gone, Maya’s eyes flew open, and an airless, silent scream twisted through her throat. She curled in on herself, fingers digging into the snow as her limbs tensed and contorted.
She’d only felt this level of pain once before. When she was freed from that warlock and months of distanced starvation hit her all at once.
A maddening pain. But a passing one this time. With every second, it lessened slightly.
“I’m sorry!” Nell dropped the bloody branch as though it had caught fire. “I didn’t know what to do. I just pulled at it. I should have been more careful.”
“No. You did fine.” Every word was spoken through gritted teeth.
She should be dead. The branch had impaled her right through the heart, which meant she should bedead. There was no way in hell Kieran had missed.
“What do you need?” Nell asked. “Please. Tell me how to help.”
Maya almost couldn’t hear her voice. Her pulse overpowered it, deafening like the boom of a drum.
Maya knew what sheneeded. But she needed far too much of it for Nell to safely offer.
“Blood,” Maya said. “Blood bags. Lots of them, they’re… they’re in the basement.”
Nell ran off towards the cabin, leaving Maya lying in the snow.
She tried pushing herself into a seated position, but her body hurt too much. Now that the stake was gone, the fiery pain mainly radiated from her shoulder. The silver bullet she’d been shot with hadn’t gone through.
She touched her face, her mouth, her ears. No blood. Other than a few shallow cuts and the injuries to her shoulder and chest, she wasn’t bleeding at all.
But she should be. When vampires were staked, the blood that kept their bodies alive was excreted. It left through the nearest orifice it could find, including your pores.
Maya’s skin was clean. She’d gotten staked and survived it.
She groaned again. Sunlight sensitivity clearly wasn’t the only vampiric weakness she lacked. It just wasn’t one her dear warlock creator had wanted to test on his single successful experiment.
“I got as much as I could carry.” Nell had returned, dropping a pile of bagged blood next to Maya. “There’s a bit more. I can get it if you…”
Maya extended her fangs. When she bit a hole in one of the bags and started gulping down the contents, Nell turned her eyes away, gagging.
If Maya wasn’t desperate for sustenance, she would have done the same. The blood was thick, cold, and tasteless, but her body needed energy to heal her injuries. Or at least dull the pain from them.
