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“Wait, something is wrong,” Jay said, falling still.
Saint lifted his head, thoughts fogged by weariness, hunger, and desire.
Jay sniffed. “You smell that?”
Saint breathed in, and beneath the musky smell of male and sex, he smelled it too. Cooking gas.Octavius. With a growl, Saint stood, grasped Jay by the arms, and spun him around. “Stay here. Do not come out.”
“Wait—”
Saint’s senses prickled with a warning too late, and the rest of Jay’s words vanished beneath a thunderous blast of debris and heat. Time slowed. Noise broiled, heat scorched the air.Protect Jay.Saint turned his back on the blast and freed the reins on his true form. Wings burst from his flesh. Fire scorched clothes from his skin. He lunged, threw his arms around Jay, and folded his wings in. Agony lashed up his back, burning like a hundred whip lashes. Jagged debris rained—metal, wood, and glass. It clanged and thumped and pounded, trying to crush Saint under its weight. He had Jay, could hear his strong heartbeat, feel him trembling in his arms.Protect him,that was all that mattered.
The blast came and went in moments, leaving a ringing in Saint’s ears. He couldn’t hear, but that would pass. He heaved, pushing his back up through the mound of rubble, and thrust out his shredded wings, flinging bits of building back.
Jay.
Saint dragged Jay’s immobile body through the smoldering wreckage—get him away—into cold night air, then stumbled to his knees as weakness washed over him. He was hurt too, hurt bad. Instincts roared and lashed, trying to tear out his control, but if that happened, he’d kill Jay for his blood. No, Saint had control. His wounds would heal. They always did. But Jay’s wounds…
“Jay?” He laid Jay down near the edge of the lake, away from the burning house. Why wasn’t he moving? Saint’s heart stuttered. Jay’s head lolled to the side, eyes closed. Blood painted his golden hair.
“No.” What was wrong, where was he hurt? Saint eased back and stared, struck silent by the jagged piece of rebar jutting from Jay’s chest. If Saint removed that bar, he’d bleed out in seconds. If he left it in, he’d die in minutes. Death was here, stalking them, in the rattle of Jay’s breathing and his ragged heartbeat.
“No, no, no…” Saint could save him, but Jay had already consumed too much of Saint’s blood from frivolous sex. If he let him take more now, it risked turning him, and then Saint would lose his bright, brilliant, fun-loving feeder to the curse. Jay would be nyktelios.
Better that than dead. Or was it? He’d lose him as a feeder, might lose him as a person too. But he couldn’t sit back and watch Jay die.
There had to be another way.
Octavius.
The vicious fiend who had done this. His blood, not Saint’s, might fix Jay. It could work.
Saint glanced back at the wreckage of the lake house. The building looked as though a huge beast had bitten half of it away. Smoke billowed from the smoldering rubble. Some of the nearby trees smoked too. Sparks sizzled. Saint didn’t care about any of that. He narrowed his eyes, searching for movement in the woods.
There. The Brotherhood vampire was fleeing the scene, fast.
Octavius was about to pay for this with his gods-damned life if Jay died.
CHAPTER4
Octavius
He ran.
He’d get far enough away, watch the dust settle, and then go back in for the kill, while Saint was weak. The blastmusthave weakened him. This was Octavius’s moment to prove he was still Brotherhood. He’d kill Saint, and Mikalis would have to listen to him.
A rustle in the trees to his right was all the warning he had. A shadow rushed from the dark, a shadow even Octavius’s night-attuned eyes struggled to see. Something hard slammed into his middle and hauled him into the air. Branches tore at him, cutting his face and hands as he was dragged backward. He twisted, bucked, tried to kick away from the hold, but he couldn’t even see the creature he fought. Just smoke and a warp in reality, like a heat haze on a desert road.
The shadowy haze stopped and Octavius slammed into the ground so hard, bones in his chest snapped like twigs. He roared, but a hand clamped around his throat,crushing, cutting off his voice.
“I will snap your neck, Brotherhood.” It wasn’t even a voice, more a collection of growls and snarls resembling words.
The rippling weaves in reality coalesced into solid form, and while the face belonged to Saint, the flesh was burned from bone, most of his clothes were gone—burned, some torn—and behind him, enormous shredded wings arched so high and wide, they seemed to blot out the world.
Octavius bucked and clawed at the hand on his neck, but with every moment he struggled, the more the grip tightened, crushing his windpipe. Muscles and bone creaked and fractured.
“If that man dies, so do you.” Brilliant silver eyes blazed.
Man? What man?
