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“Should we help her?” the wolf asked, giving me a worried look.
I wouldn’t know what the witch was about to reply, because a new voice interrupted.
“Leave,” was all it said, and I couldn’t understand how it came from everywhere and nowhere all at once.
I turned my face on the rug so the uninjured side was against the soft, musty fibers and watched them both leave the room without closing the door. I had to close it before sunrise, but I didn’t know how I would get to it. Before I could come up with a plan, a tall silhouette filled the frame and then disappeared when the door shut.
It was mere seconds to sunrise, and I didn’t have any time left.
“Secret, my sweet, have they hurt you?” a familiar male voice asked, and my blood ran cold.
I looked up at him, his blue eyes showing cool compassion. His blond bangs were brushed off his forehead. The honeyed tones of an ancient accent sweetened his every turn of phrase.
Seeing Death himself would have filled me with less fear.
“Sig?” I asked, unable to believe he was here.
He touched my face, and I winced. Pulling his hand away, he looked at the blood on his fingers, then placed each impossibly long digit in his mouth, cleaning my blood from them with a smile.
I shuddered.
“Sleep,” he ordered. “You’re going to need it. ”
I don’t know if it was meant to sound so threatening, but as I slipped into the abyss of vampire sleep, I found myself wondering if I’d ever wake up again.
Chapter Five
I awoke hungry, with only a faint recollection of where I was. Someone had moved me off the floor, and I gathered it was the same someone whose chest my head rested on and whose fingers were tangled in my hair.
My mind went blank, and for a moment I let myself enjoy the feeling of being in someone’s arms without worrying about whose they were. Then, bit by bit, the events of the last several days started coming into sharper focus, until I could no longer ignore them. I couldn’t pretend I was safe in my current embrace.
“Why didn’t you kill me while I was sleeping?” I hadn’t opened my eyes yet, so for the time being I could still think of this as a dream. I knew better, of course, because it lacked the surreal, hyperrealistic feeling my usual dreams had.
The motel room smelled stale and musty, and there was a harsh fungal aroma laced in with the decay. The blanket under us reeked of age and stagnation. I was glad to be on top of it rather than underneath.
Sig, on the other hand, smelled clean, like fresh air-dried linen. There was no warmth coming from his body, only the feel of hard, room-temperature flesh. Like a corpse. Sleeping next to a vampire was a strange feeling.
He sighed and stopped playing with my hair. “Now, why would I want to kill you?”
“Why does the Tribunal do anything it does? Why kill Holden?” I opened my eyes and was looking at his stomach, which was covered in a soft, ribbed, gray shirt. I brushed my cheek against it, wondering how it felt. At the same time, putting pressure on my face allowed me to judge how my healing was coming along. A+ on both counts.
“I didn’t bring you here to kill you, Secret. It is time for your sabbatical to come to an end. ”
“Sabbatical?” I couldn’t help but make a derisive snort at the word. “That’s a polite way of saying ‘ran away from home’. ” I turned my head so my chin was resting on his abs and I could look up to meet his gaze. Without the typical blond bangs obscuring them, his ice-blue irises were alarmingly bright. I’d seen them before, but they looked more serious without the hair to soften their edge.
Sig wasn’t interested in softening any blows tonight. He hadn’t kidnapped me so we could have a polite chitchat in bed. He meant business.
“Sig,” I began, my voice losing its childish sarcasm. “I can’t. ”
He closed his eyes and leaned his head against the wall, sighing. You haven’t heard a sigh until you’ve heard one two thousand years in the making. All the frustration and angst of a hundred generations worth of lives was compressed into that escape of air. It did what it meant to, be
cause I felt guilty. Overwhelmingly guilty for telling him I couldn’t kill my best friend.
“Maybe…” As I started again, he opened one eye. “Maybe if you could tell me why?”
I still had no idea what Holden stood accused of. At first I’d believed he was being punished for refusing to abandon me at the brink of death, as a council representative had demanded he do. But his loyalty to me wasn’t the cause for the warrant. I’d learned that much by bombarding my immortal caretaker, Calliope, with ten thousand questions until she confessed what little she knew. Holden had betrayed the council somehow. And it was for something much more serious than being a dutiful friend. With Sig here, I thought I might be able to get real answers.
Now he was fully focused on me with a chilling stare. His hand tightened into a fist in my hair, and the extra pull hurt.
