Page 46 of Cold Sacrifice

Bastien gave him a nod. “I apologize.”

Zach took a deep breath. “I got rid of that magic,” he said. “Kait helped.” He looked at me. “You have it now.”

I sucked in a breath. “That’s what you did,” I whispered. “That’s the magic you added to the daywalker’s bite.”

“And the vampire ghost’s bite,” he said. “I’m sorry, Kait.”

“No,” I told him. “There’s nothing to be sorry for. This is how we’ll free the spirits. Maybe the necromancer will be satisfied and will stop killing.”

“She can’t stop killing,” Bastien said. “It is not possible for her. She needs to kill. She doesn’t drink only blood to survive. She drinks life. She drinks death. And Frederick made sure she would not only find extreme pleasure in it but would crave it.”

“She told me she would get her revenge and then she’d kill herself,” I told him. “She said she wanted to die. To rest.”

His smile was grim. “She lied, Kait. And she is not only killing the vampires.”

Rick touched the handle of his gun. “In the last two days, suicides in the city tripled. Families are stunned. They insisted their loved ones would never have killed themselves. You’re saying this…creature is killing humans as well as vampires?”

“Yes,” Bastien said, his face blank. “That is what I’m saying.”

I clenched my fists. “Trinity. Let’s free these spirits. I have to go hunting.”

She walked toward me and stood at the grave staring down into the hole like she could see more than just bones.

“What do you need me to do?” I asked her, when she remained silent. “How can I donate the magic? It’s not something I can call or use, so how do I give it to you?”

“The same way as the vampire will give me his blood,” she told me, finally looking away from the grave. “By opening a vein.”

She pulled a velvet cloth from her bag, and when she opened the cloth, she revealed an ornate silver chalice. She set her bag on the ground, and holding the chalice with both hands, she looked at Bastien. “The vampire first,” she said, “and then you, Kait. Take the blade he uses on his flesh for your cut and let the blood and magic intermingle as they drip into the vessel.”

But Bastien didn’t need a blade. He dropped his fangs and in one quick, almost angry movement, he sliced open a vein in his wrist. Then he held his wound over the chalice and let his blood drip into it, reaching for me with his free hand.

I felt a quick flare of anger that he hadn’t used a blade. He knew I wouldn’t resist, because I wanted to free the spirits.

“Do it, Kait,” the witch urged. “Quickly, now.”

I gave him my wrist. He didn’t take his stare from me as he lifted my wrist to his mouth, and he didn’t hesitate. He sliced into my wrist with a sharp fang, something dark flaring in his eyes as he tasted me. He closed his lips around my flesh, and for a second, he seemed unable to let me go.

“Enough,” Jared said, not loudly or sharply or angrily, just with a note of command that Bastien heard, and acknowledged. He took his mouth from my wrist, and somewhat shakily, I lowered my wrist to the chalice and pressed my wound against his.

At first, I felt nothing. But then, abruptly and startlingly, I felt power, dark and cold. I felt magic inside my body, and I felt it draining out through the wound to mix with Bastien's blood. When it dropped into the chalice, I felt that, too, as though part of me went with it.

I didn’t like that feeling. “How much do you need?” I asked hoarsely, ripping my stare from Bastien’s hypnotic eyes.

“That’s enough,” she said. “You may close the wounds, vampire.”

And Bastien would have closed my wound, but Jared wrapped his fingers around my arm and pulled me away from the master. “I’ve got her.”

Honestly, the wound didn’t need closing. I wanted whatever bitter magic remained from Kaloni and Frederick to leak out before it poisoned my whole system, if it hadn’t already.

I remembered thinking I’d rather have bad magic than no magic at all. Vampire ghost magic, maybe. But not Kaloni magic. I didn’t want that shit.

Zach had told me that the daywalker and ghost vampire bites had changed into something good for me. But neither of us seemed to know what that meant.

Jared eased his grip on my arm. “Are you all right?” he asked.

I linked my fingers with his. “I’m fine.” Then I turned to Trinity. “What now?”

But she was no longer listening to any of us. Her focus was on the job she was being paid to do, and I stood with my alpha’s arm around me and waited for her to free the spirits. Then they’d come to me, and I would give them what they’d needed for so very long.