Page 100 of Caretaker

“She just didn’t realize it,” I whispered. “That poor child.”

In Miriam’s tormented mind, Clayton and her father had been the same person. She loved them more than anything, she hated them more than anything. They were everything to her. Everything good, everything bad.

Her damage had begun the moment she was thrust into cages by her handlers. Her adoptive father and Clayton had turned that damage into insanity.

My heart broke for the child she’d been.

But I hoped she would never escape the demon’s cage.

Clayton kissed my tears as they slid down my face, but none of us said another word. I wished I’d never asked him for the truth.

We waited.

“You’re a bloodhunter,” Shane said, finally. “There’s magic inside you. You’re not dying.”

“Amias will return,” Clayton said.

“I’ll take her now.” Angus slid his arms beneath me and Clayton allowed him to pull me into his embrace.

“Seriously,” Leo bellowed. “Not even prison held such despair.”

“Yeah,” Angus told him, calmly. “It did.”

Leo only sighed.

The giant had a tenderness to him that not even prison had managed to defeat.

Then Shane leapt to his feet, his shotgun up. “About fucking time,” he snarled.

Amias fell to his knees beside me. He was burned and bloody and smelled overwhelmingly of sulfur, but he had Silverlight’s sheath in his hand. He slid the sword into my pocket. “Drop her,” he commanded, and Angus reluctantly placed me on the ground, on my side, and moved out of the way.

“We are both in dire straits,” Amias murmured. “And there is no time. The demon will come and he will bring hell with him. When he does, we will need to be strong.” He put his fangs to his flesh, ripped open a vein in his arm, then shoved it against my lips. “Drink.”

Blood splattered my face, and my stomach rebelled, and if I’d been closer to life I would have struggled. But I was dying as they watched me, and Amias was right. There was no time.

I opened my mouth.

When I did, his blood seemed to leap down my throat. I didn’t swallow it, though. It didn’t flow into my stomach and slosh there like morning coffee. My flesh absorbed it before it could reach my stomach. Absorbed it and carried it into my bloodstream, my heart, my brain, my soul.

And it burned.

As I dwelled on the awfulness of being consumed by vampire blood, Amias struck. He grabbed my wrist, and I felt his fangs popping through skin and tendons and my blood rose up through his fangs and hit his bloodstream, the same way his was hitting mine.

I wanted to scream with the agony of it, but I couldn’t.

I wanted to cry with the finality of it, the wrongness of it, but I couldn’t do that, either.

When it was over, I was healed—the blades were expelled from my body, the wounds had closed, and the bone in my broken arm was mended.

But my mind…

It was a little more shattered.

I guess that was the one thing he couldn’t heal.

No one could.

Someday, I would die, and I would become a vampire.

Deep down, I wasn’t sure I could live with that.