“The Shadowrealm is endless and ever-shifting. You can’t possibly know if and when the forest will appear, or if your rune gate will even be in the same place. I understand your desire to find the loophole in this, Gray. I just don’t want you to—”
“To what, Liam? Hope? Well too bad. Iamhoping. Hope is the most human thing about me right now, and I’m not giving it up, no matter how tough the odds are, no matter how crazy I sound. Hope is my life raft, and you can bet your ancient, all-powerful ass I’m clinging to that bitch until my very last breath. If the black forest doesn’t reappear, I’m just going to have to find another way to the rune gate. If that rune gate is a pile of rubble, I’m just going to have to make another one. So you go back to the material plane and you tell Emilio to have a hot batch of brownies ready for me, because as soon as I find the way out of this nightmare, I’m coming home.”
With no room for argument and nothing left to say, Liam nodded brusquely, then vanished, leaving his signature black feather floating in the air between us.
He was gone before I could be sure, but I swore I caught the hint of a smile on his lips.
Twelve
Ronan
“I smell a bloodsucker on the porch.” Elena handed me the last plate to dry and turned off the faucet, reaching for the towel on her shoulder. “Tell me he belongs to you or I’ll go out and behead him.”
“Beaumont?” Hell, it was still daylight. What was he doing here? I bolted for the front door and wrenched it open, the sight nearly knocking me on my ass.
Liam stood on the front porch in human form, looking like some kind of half-stoned, post-Grunge Ken doll. Darius was leaning against him, his arm draped over Liam’s shoulder, his feet barely touching the ground.
I couldn’t even tell if he was conscious.
I opened the door and gestured them inside just as Elena stepped into the foyer, still holding the towel.
“Madre Maria!” Elena gasped when she saw Liam, stumbling backward against the wall and pressing the towel to her heart. “You’re…”
“Not here for you,” Liam assured her. Then, to me, “It seems I’ve found your vampire.”
“I’m no one’s vampire,” Darius slurred. “I am a king. The king of blood and bones. Bones are… important.”
“Get him on the couch,” I said. “Elena, close all the blinds.”
I shouted for Emilio, who’d been in the back bedroom checking in with the Blackmoon Bay PD.
Liam laid Darius on the couch in the living room. The vampire was babbling and delirious, the skin on his hands and face black and blistering where it’d been scorched by the sun. He was wearing a black hoodie I’d left at the motel, but from the looks of things, it hadn’t offered much coverage.
“Did you find him like this?” I asked Liam.
“Yes. I sensed his dire situation the moment I materialized here, and located him in a garden shed about four miles away. I don’t know how long he’d been exposed to the sun before that. I brought him here posthaste.”
“What’s going on?” Emilio emerged from the hall, his face falling as he took in the scene. “Shit! What happened? Why isn’t he at the motel?”
“He hasn’t said a coherent word yet,” Liam said.
Emilio propped Darius’s head up with a pillow, wincing at the sight of his face. Angry black patches covered his cheeks and nose, the skin charred and cracked. His lips were a blistered mess. His chin and neck were stained a rusty brown that could only be one thing.
“Blood,” I said, wiping at it with my thumb.
“It’s…” Darius began to shiver uncontrollably, his teeth chattering, his fangs protruding and retracting on their own.
He needed to heal. He needed nourishment. Now.
Without a second thought, I pushed up my sleeve and pressed my wrist to his mouth. Fresh or not, demon blood was never a vamp’s first choice, but it would have to do.
Darius clamped his mouth shut and turned his head away from the offering.
“Don’t be a dick,” I said. “Just hold your non-existent breath and pretend it’s one of those snooty French wines you love so much.”
I pressed harder, but he shoved my arm away—a gesture that took a hell of a lot of effort for a vampire with supposed superhuman strength.
“Can’t,” he said, his voice cracking. “Too… much.”
