Part 18 (1/2)

”Fire away,” Kat said, trying to sound hearty but mostly coming off as a bit pathetic. ”Have a seat.”

Faith declined, preferring to stand by the bed with her arms crossed, looking incredibly f.u.c.king scary. ”What can you tell me about her appearance?”

Kat closed her eyes and swallowed, trying to concentrate. ”She was blond,” she said. ”Short hair . . . really short, kind of severe. I didn't really focus on her eye color because it was dark and I was being stabbed and all.”

”Understandable,” Faith said. ”Just give me whatever you can remember.”

”She was wearing black like all of you. Her teeth were . . . out. I mean, they were all fangy and pointed. She was skinny . . . I don't know how tall, but she seemed about average height.”

”Did she speak to you?”

Kat shook her head. ”She just grunted. No, wait . . .” Kat thought hard, trying to fight her way through the fog around the memories. ”There was one thing . . . something startled her, and she jumped up and ran. She made this noise like something hit her, and she said . . . I heard her say something, like the way you'd say 'Holy s.h.i.+t!' or 'G.o.dd.a.m.n it.' ”

”But it wasn't in English,” Faith surmised. ”What language was it?”

”I have no idea. It sounded like a cross between German and something out of Tolkien.”

Something flickered in Faith's expression, but it was gone as quickly as it came. ”One more thing, Kat . . . was she wearing any sort of technological gadget, like a Bluetooth earpiece or one of these?” Faith lifted her arm to show the metal band on her wrist.

”No. Not that I saw.”

Faith nodded. ”Thank you.”

She started to leave, but Kat called her back with, ”What happens now?”

Faith turned to her. ”Meaning?”

”Well, obviously having one guard on me wasn't enough.”

A raised eyebrow. ”I was given to understand that you had refused additional guards.”

”Something about having my hand chopped off made me rethink that.”

Faith nodded. ”I suppose it would. There's a room for you at the Haven, where you'll be under twenty-four-hour watch and safer than any other place on the planet. Your man would be welcome to join you. I would guess, however, that you don't want to give up your job and life for the duration of the investigation, in which case you go home, but we a.s.sign you a full Elite detail of bodyguards and digital surveillance. It's up to you, but either way you need to be watched much more closely until the situation has been dealt with.”

Kat pa.s.sed her hands over her face. The tube from her IV hit her lightly on the nose. ”Can I think about it?”

”Of course. The staff wants to keep you until morning; you can notify us of your decision then. There are two guards outside your room.”

”Thank you.”

Faith bowed, then departed.

They sat without speaking for a minute, Kat fiddling with her IV, Drew pointedly not talking about the baby. Kat found that she was exhausted just from the two short exchanges, and though the last thing she wanted was to spend the night in a hospital bed, she got why they wanted her there. She felt like her entire body had been beaten with a bat.

She'd nearly died. Her hand had been cut off and then reattached . . . with magic. She'd been jumped in the dark and stabbed in the abdomen. Whoever had stabbed her might try again . . . and it was all because her best friend was a vampire.

She was pregnant. She hurt . . . G.o.d, she hurt . . .

And she couldn't even have any real painkillers. Somehow she didn't think Tylenol would do much good after all this . . . What she really wanted was a bottle of vodka and a plane ticket to anywhere else in the world but here.

Drew didn't ask why she was weeping again. He just held her and let her cry herself to sleep.

The spell went unbroken through long, soul-shaking kisses; through clothes and sheets thrown aside with reckless antic.i.p.ation; through teeth piercing skin, nails clawing shoulders, the soft cry of joining together and the raggedly drawn breaths that rose and fell; through the worldshattering peak and subsequent tumble down, down . . .

. . . until, shaking and bruised, David lowered himself onto the mattress, and his heart battered its way through his rib cage, screaming the question into his mind: My G.o.d, what have we done?

Neither Prime could speak. For a long time the only sound was panting as David tried to slow his breath and still the cyclone of his thoughts, most of which were a single word: No.

He looked up, meeting eyes that were as dazed as his own. He knew that whatever shame and shock he was feeling, for once Deven felt it just as strongly, if not more so, because he would never, ever have expected David to do . . . this. Deven's hands were still twisted in the pillows, holding on, perhaps, to the last precious seconds before reality drowned them both.

David tore his eyes away and sat up, feeling the air in the room cold on his bare, sweaty skin. He wasn't sure what was worse: lying there entwined with his transgressions or pulling himself away.

Strong, warm hands touched his shoulders, and he felt Dev lean against him and kiss the back of his neck. ”It's all right,” Deven whispered.

”No, it's not,” David said back, barely able to summon words. ”It's so very not all right.”

”I mean . . . this isn't your fault. I accept the blame.”

Tempting as the idea was, David couldn't let it happen. ”No. I started it. I could have stopped at any moment, but . . .”

”You didn't, and neither did I.” He ran his hands down over David's biceps, and for a moment, just a moment, David let himself forget what existed outside the room and almost relaxed into the embrace. They had shattered the world beyond the door, but if it would just stay closed a few more minutes . . .

It was Deven who broke the silence, sounding achingly young and sad when he asked softly, ”How are we going to tell them?”

”Her,” came a voice.

Both their heads snapped up at once.

Jonathan had entered the room without making a sound and shut the door behind him; he was standing just inside the threshold, watching them.

They were both frozen in place, unable to pull away from each other, as if it would have made a difference in what the Consort knew. But Jonathan didn't look shocked or angry; his expression was one of resignation.

”You knew this would happen,” Deven said.

Jonathan smiled with an uncharacteristic edge of bitterness. ”Of course I did.”

”You didn't try to stop us.”

The Consort tipped his head to one side, making a noise something like a laugh. ”Who can stop the earth from quaking?”

”We could have,” David said, carefully moving away from Deven and pulling the sheet up around himself, acutely ashamed, like Adam in the Garden. ”No one forced us to do this-not fate, not anything. Either one of us could have said no.”

Now Jonathan looked amused; he often did when David tried to argue with his a.s.sertions of destiny. ”You're not helping your case any here.”

”I'm not trying to.” David couldn't look at Deven, and he couldn't meet Jonathan's eyes, but he spoke as certainly as he could, given the aftershocks in his mind. ”I'm not asking for a pardon . . . if you're going to be angry at someone, let it be me. Don't take it out on Deven.”

”I'm not angry.”

”How can you not be?”