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Just a minute or two later, the Blackmore vampires and the shifters who’ve joined the search are streaming out the back door to the library, heading for the bad side of town.
Sophie and I sit on the steps after they’re gone, watching the dusk light fade from the air and night gather beneath the trees, our fingers double-crossed as we wait to find out if we’re still going to be seven sisters by the end of the night.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Darcy
The blood kiss only lasts a few seconds, but it’s long enough for me to sense the terror and agony ricocheting through Blaire as I force my fangs deep into her neck and her honied blood flows down my throat.
There isn’t time for foreplay or to talk her through the ways to make a blood donation almost painless. I have to feed—now—or Janet will kill us both. I don’t stand a chance of fighting her off in my current, weakened state.
Still, in just those few seconds, Blaire’s body softens against mine and I feel pleasure rising beneath her pain like a balloon trapped underwater. Bliss surges through her suffering as she moans and presses closer, her fingers tangling in my hair just seconds before I pull away and order her to, “Run. Now. Go!”
“What? I—” Her words end in a cry of surprise as I push her back onto the mattress on the floor just seconds before Janet lands on my back, her own fangs bared. They dig into the place where my shoulder meets my neck so deeply that when she pulls back, she takes a chunk of my flesh with her.
A roar of pain rips from my throat and my vision blurs as I stumble out the door, batting at Janet with my hands as she clings to my back like a bloodthirsty spider monkey. Outside, I charge away from the shed, needing to give Blaire room to get out and run, before I spin in a tight circle, hoping the centrifugal force will rid me of my murderous passenger.
But Janet holds on tight, howling, “You could have had me. You could have had me, and you chose her instead! A chubby little human with bad hair and no fashion sense! A wrap dress after 1978 is derivative and uninspired!”
“Get off of me,” I bark, my head still cloudy despite the restorative effects of Blaire’s blood rushing through my veins.
“Not until I separate your stupid head from your stupid body, you stupid asshole,” she shouts as she tears hair from my scalp, making my eyes wince shut. “I hate you!”
I want to tell her that the feeling’s mutual, but her arm is now locked around my neck, squeezing so tight I couldn’t pull in a breath if I tried. And while I don’t require breath for survival or even to speak, I do need my head to remain attached to the rest of me.
Decapitation is one of the few ways a vampire can be killed, and Janet is stronger than she looks.
Digging my hands into her forearm and pulling it away from my throat, I continue staggering up the hill away from Blaire, my protective instincts demanding I get Janet as far away from her as possible. Hopefully, she won’t succeed in killing me, but if she does, I don’t want it to be easy for her to leap straight from my dead body to Blaire’s alive one.
Hopefully my little goblin is halfway back to town by now, headed into the arms of people who will love and protect her.
I was too short-sighted to realize I wanted to be that person for her—that I want it more than I’ve wanted anything in centuries—but as long as she’s safe, I can move forward to whatever comes next without regret.
“Just lay down and die,” Janet shouts as I emerge into a clearing at the top of the rise, close enough to the cliffs that the smell of salty sea air spins through my head. “Save us both the production, Darcy, you fucking drama queen.”
“I’m not a drama queen,” I seethe as I drag her forearm a few more inches from my neck and quickly hook my arm through hers. The result is an insanely uncomfortable tangle of limbs that has my shoulder shoved into my ear, but at least I’ve made it harder for Janet to snap me in two.
“Ha!” she shouts as she wraps her legs tighter around my waist. “This from the man who’s been boo-hooing over his dead wife and kids for two hundred years. You’re pathetic, Darcy. You aren’t fit to call yourself a creature of the night. You’re a whiney emo loser who’s wasted two hundred years brooding in his blood wine when you could have been fucking and sucking and having a goddamned good time like the rest of us.”
I want to tell her that I’ve done plenty of fucking and sucking, while also continuing to mourn the people I loved and lost too soon—something that proves I still have a soul, something she might want to cultivate—but it would be a waste of time and energy. Janet has no moral or emotional compass. Whether she was like this in her former life or if she simply lost touch with her humanity like some vampires do after the change doesn’t really matter.
What matters is that she doesn’t hurt the people I love. One way or another, I have to make sure this is her last battle, even if it’s the end of us both.
“No! Don’t, Darcy!”
I hear Blaire’s shout and turn to see her staggering up the steep rise at the edge of the clearing.
Somehow, Janet and I are already at the cliff’s edge. A glance back over my shoulder grants a glimpse of the jagged rocks far below and the icy sea crashing into the cliffside, sending mist swirling into the air.
Two steps. That’s all it would take. One, two, and a jump into the ether. All I’d have to do is hold onto Janet on the way down, ensuring that she keeps falling until we both hit bottom. We’d be too damaged to run before the ocean swept us out with the tide for the sea monsters to feed on.
And then…
And then I’d never see Blaire again.
I spin back to the woman who’s turned my world upside down in the course of just a few short days and shout, “Run, woman! Run!”
“No, I won’t leave you,” she says, tears streaming down her face as she dashes across the dry brown grass, stopping when she’s just a few feet away from myself and the still seething and spitting Janet. “We’re leaving together, Darcy Blackmore. And I’m going to bang you in a forest, and we’ll renew the shield, and everyone in Nightfall will be safe for another hundred years without anyone having to marry someone they don’t want to marry.” She pulls a tattered piece of paper from her overall pocket and thrusts it into the air between us. “See? I found a spell in the catacombs. It’ll work. I’m sure of it and then we can…go back to being friends or whatever.”
