Page 135 of Beds and Blades

Skip hit the floor hard, twisted onto one knee, and tried to rise again. Rage and pain tore me, so fierce that for an instant I could not tell which of us it belonged to.

The vampire lifted one hand to strike again.

“Enough.”

The creature holding me spoke without raising its voice. The other vampire stopped.

“Varia wants him alive.”

Skip looked up, blood running from the corner of his mouth. The vampire’s grip tightened around my arms.

“She wants him to watch.”

Then Varia walked in.

***

The thing Varia had become wore her face perfectly.

All of it was present.

None of it was her.

The eyes were fully red. The flat red of the command layer, the color that replaced everything that had been there before.

She was smiling.

Varia’s mouth formed her old smile, but it stopped before it reached her eyes. I had seen that emptiness on Mira.

“Restrain him,” she said. “And gag him. I have no interest in hearing him interrupt.”

The blood-covered vampire seized Skip before he could regain his feet.

He fought anyway. He drove an elbow backward, twisted against the creature’s grip, and nearly tore free despite the rope around his ankles. Then his eyes found mine.

The vampire wrenched his arms behind him.

“Meghan, I love you.”

He said the words like this might be the last chance he would ever have.

“I love you too,” I said. My voice broke, but I forced the words out.

The vampire dragged him back toward the chair.

They forced Skip into the chair and bound his wrists to the armrests again. Another rope went around his chest, cinched tight against the chair back.

He never looked away from me. I didn’t look away from him.

The gag was pulled across his mouth and knotted behind his head.

I felt his fury, his fear, and the echo of the words he could no longer say. I love you.

Varia turned to me.

“Bring her here.”

The vampire holding me tightened its grip and started forward.