I looked to Emilio. “If something happened at the motel, Darius must’ve called his clean-up crew.”
“Vampire influence,” he said, shaking his head. “Hell of a drug.”
“In this case,” Elena snapped, resuming her angry weed-chopping, “a hell of a lucky break for you two. You come back here after twenty years, and this is what you bring to my doorstep?”
“He was supposed to wait for us at the motel until sundown,” Emilio explained. “I don’t know what happened.”
“Maybe he decided to order in some room service,” she said.
I shook my head. “That’s not Darius’s style.”
“He’s a vampire, Ronan. It’s exactly his style.”
“No, it isn’t.” Emilio folded his arms over his massive chest and leaned back against the counter, his jaw tight. “He doesn’t feed on live humans.”
Emilio was right. I was pretty sure the only time Beaumont had eventastedhuman blood recently was the night he and Gray made their pact and he sealed the blood bond. Now he was overdosing?
Elena picked up the kettle and poured steaming water into the mug full of weeds, then covered it with a saucer. “It needs to steep for a couple of hours.”
“What is it?”
“A tincture—just a few herbs from the garden. It should help neutralize the effect of the blood, allowing his body to focus on healing from the sun poisoning.”
Emilio raised an eyebrow.
“Shifters and vampires aren’t always good bedfellows,” she explained, “but here in the RC, the freaks stick together.”
“Better watch yourself, Elena,” he teased. “Someone might start thinking you actuallycare.”
For the first time since we woke up in her house this morning, Elena actually laughed. It changed her entire face.
Emilio’s, too.
Thirteen
Ronan
“I was attacked,” Darius explained, sipping Elena’s concoction. He’d yet to move from the couch, but he was awake and sitting up now, and whatever she’d brewed up seemed to be doing the trick. His blisters had all but healed, the normal color returning to his face, and his eyes had regained their sharp focus.
His hands still trembled around the mug, though, and his voice was weak and watery.
“Hunters,” he went on.
He told us the story of his ambush, then pointed to his inner arm. “All three had brands that matched one of the runes I’d seen on the witches’ bodies in the morgue.”
“What did it look like?” Emilio asked. As Darius described it, Emilio tapped out a text, presumably to Elena. She’d gone to the station to regroup with her team, and we’d promised to keep her in the loop.
“I had no choice but to kill them,” Darius said.
“There is always a choice, vampire,” Liam said, running his finger along one of Elena’s bookshelves.
“Yes, and my choice was to not die at the hands of hunters. One I’m sure you’d make under similar circumstances.”
“I wouldn’t find myself in such circumstances.” Liam pulled out an encyclopedia and began flipping through it, turning his back to us as if our conversation was suddenly distracting him from his studies or something.
Fucking Death.
“Everything is a bit of a blur after that,” Darius continued, “but I remember feeling a terrible thirst, like nothing I’d ever felt before.” A shadow darkened his eyes, and he closed them as if he didn’t want Emilio or me to see it. “It just… took over. I was utterly consumed; I couldn’t have stopped even if I’d wanted to.”
