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“She’s being handled by the Hunters. Don’t worry about her. She’s been compromised, but we’ll try to help her if it’s possible.”
“What about his friend Toby and the others?”
“Toby is dead, Jace. I’m sorry. He was drained and discarded by Malone. The others will be looked after.”
I kept holding his hand, giving him time to process all of it. Toby hadn’t exactly been his friend, but his death was still tragic. He sighed then and squeezed my fingers. “I should have tried to help Dylan at the cabin, shouldn’t I? When he…”
“No,” I said gently. “He was too far gone. Don’t think any more about it.” I could tell him that all I wanted to, but I knew he’d have to undergo a lot of therapy to ever come to terms with it all. He’d once thought himself deeply in love with Malone.
I leveled a long look at him. “Jace, you’re going to have to go and be treated.”
“No. No! Damn it, you know I can’t go. I can’t very well explain this to my mother, not to mention Tyler. He’ll suffer if I go. I still feel like I’ve dreamed this whole thing. Like I’m insane.”
I reached for his hand, and I saw Conway give me a warning look, which I ignored. “I know this is hard, Jace. I went through it, and so did Conway. I still don’t like to talk about it. But the reality is that you have to go.”
“No, I don’t.” he said, his voice sounding prim. He pulled his hand away. “None of this can even possibly be real.”
“It is real, though,” Conway cut in. “And you know it. Vampires exist. They prey on humans, and they have done so for centuries. They’re very real and vampire venom is coursing through your veins from the numerous bites that monster has given you over the last year. It hasn’t really affected you too much yet, but it will eventually change your body into something not human. And the number one target for new vampires is their family members. Is that what you want? To wake up some morning and find you’ve slaughtered your own family?”
Jace shot me an angry look, but then whimpered. I leaned closer, wanting to pull him over in my lap, but knew he’d hate that in front of Conway.
“The monks have anti-venom potions and medications they can give you to prevent most of the changes, but those need to be started right away. We’ve already waited too long, frankly. Malone must have been feeding you a few drops of his blood from time to time to keep his venom from killing you, but youaregoing to change into a half-blood without it. It’s only a matter of time. You saw for yourself how much Malone devolved since he was bitten in New York. He’s been using compulsion to hide the way he truly looks now from you and his other thralls. But that night in the cabin, he dropped all of that and let you see him for what he had become. He wanted to scare you. You don’t have any choice but to take the treatment we can give you.”
I gripped his hand and showed him a little of my strength, and he gasped and looked up at me. “You’re hurting me.”
“You’ll be hurt even more if you don’t wrap your mind around this. What if you injure your mother or your little brother or do something even worse? Can you live with that?”
His shoulders slumped. “No,” he said. “Of course not. But how can I leave them?”
“I’ve spoken with May Anderson from next door. She has agreed to help all she can, and if that’s not enough, our organization will help cover the expenses of more specialized help. We’re telling your mother you need psychological help after what Malone put you through. She’s also aware of his death, and we told her you witnessed it. She understands.”
We had discovered in recent days after extensive talks with May that she didn’t have any training in Hunting or even demonology, but her father had been trained as a monk as a young man, and he had taught May some of the magical signs, sigils and methods of protection once he realized that she had the ability to recognize vampires and other monsters and see through their compulsion. It was a kind of psychic ability and not as rare as most people thought. It was similar to the “bad feelings” a person could get about someone from the moment you met them. When she’d been introduced to Dylan Malone, she had “known” something was really wrong with him. She had been doing what she could to protect Jace and his family.
“Well,” Jace replied bitterly. “You just have all the answers, don’t you?”
I smiled gently at him, because I knew it wasn’t really me that he was mad at, but the almost unfathomable situation he found himself in. “I have a few of them anyway. And you know I’ll do whatever I can to help you.”
He still wouldn’t catch my eye, but when he slipped his hand into mine, I knew we had his agreement. He left a few days later for treatment, and I settled in to wait for him.
The weeks passed slowly, and we kept busy traveling to North Carolina, where an attack at a local funeral home had taken place. They had been trying to bury a victim of a vampire when the woman had suddenly sat up on the embalming table and killed three people before escaping.
We were busy chasing her down for a week and discovered her in a new nest in the mountains, near Asheville. We destroyed them all, but cleanup took another week or more.
It was three weeks later, when we were called down to help investigate some attacks on tourists in New Orleans, when we were told we had a new half-blood trainee on our team. When the door opened and Jace walked in, I had to sit down hard and fast in the closest chair.
“Jace,” I gasped, and he looked over at me and gave me a shy smile. He was just the same, only more beautiful, if that was possible. He’d gained some weight and his color was restored. He looked healthy and all the bruises were gone.
“Hi,” he said. He put me out of my misery then and came over to kiss me on the cheek, while everyone on the team gaped at us.
“This better not be a problem, Logan,” Conway growled at me. Jace took a quick step back, but I grabbed his hand so he wouldn’t get farther away.
“If it’s a problem for you. I can resign,” I said, and I meant every word.
Conway turned away, his face like a thundercloud. “No need for all that. Just keep this shit under control on the job. Both of you.”
“I will,” I said, and when he looked over at Jace, he nodded his head.
“Okay then. You can train him. What you do on your own time is your business.”
