Page 134 of Beds and Blades

Skip caught my wrist with his newly freed hand.

“No.”

“They’re killing him.”

“I know.”

The words broke in his throat. I felt his anguish and the brutal certainty beneath it.

“If you go, they take you too.”

The second vampire stood between me and Gaius now. Blood ran from its ruined eye, though the wound was already closing. It watched me with the patient certainty that I would come.

That was what they wanted.

They wanted me to abandon Skip. They wanted grief to choose for me.

The creature holding Gaius drank slowly. Deliberately. It kept its eyes on mine as his struggling weakened and the strength left his body.

It wanted me to witness every second. Gaius’s hand opened. His body went still.

The vampire released him.

He struck the floor with a final, terrible weight.

Its mouth was covered in blood. Its red eyes remained fixed on mine.

Behind me, Skip made a broken sound.

Flavia did not move. Gaius never would again.

Grief rose inside me, vast enough to drown the room. Then rage caught fire beneath it.

I dropped the knife, snatched my hook and sword from the floor, and lunged at the blood-covered vampire with the strike Varia had taught me.

It moved too fast.

The vampire with the healing eye intercepted me. It ripped the sword from one hand, wrenched the hook from the other, and seized both my arms before I could recover.

It held me with casual, overwhelming strength, using only a fraction of what it possessed. I could not move. I was not going to be able to move.

Behind it, Skip forced himself out of the chair.

“Let her go.”

The vampire did not even look at him.

“Skip, no.”

His eyes found mine.

“I’m not watching them take you.”

His wrists were free, but his ankles were still bound. He caught himself against the table and threw his body at the vampire holding me.

He had no armor. No weapon. He could barely stand. He came anyway.

The blood-covered vampire intercepted him before he reached me.