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As he cried, the body of his mate grew cold on the treatment table before him.
The medical staff had departed from the bay, and when Dr. Bluff eventually came back, the vampire had the smarts to move slowly and speak softly.
“Do you want to cremate the body?” the male asked.
“Yes,” Darius replied, even though he didn’t know what he was responding to.
“I’ve put the young in the system, and gotten her a social security number. That’ll help with what comes next.”
Did anything come next? Darius wondered. Maybe he just stayed in this plastic chair forever, holding the infant and trying not to see all the blood.
“Thank you,” he mumbled.
“You know, she may not be a vampire,” the doctor offered. “If she’s a half-breed, she may not need to be exposed to your side of things.”
Darius looked up. “Don’t you mean ours.”
“No, I don’t. I made my choice a long time ago and I’m urging you to do the same for your daughter. If you leave her in the human world, she won’t be hunted.”
“I’m not letting my young get raised by—”
“Think about it. Can you keep her safe in your world? From the Lessening Society? It’s much safer here. On the other side.”
He thought of the two estranged young he had already lost to the war. And lied to himself: “No, it isn’t.”
“Yes, it is. And I know what you are. I found out who you are. If the lessers discover a member of the Black Dagger Brotherhood has a young, they will find her and take her just to get to you. And when you go to try to retrieve her, they will kill you both—after they make you watch your daughter die in a horrible way.”
With the sound of a wounded animal, Darius squeezed his eyes shut and cradled the fragile being he and his beloved had brought into the world. The idea that anything could ever hurt her made him both weak and powerful.
“I will hide her to keep her safe,” he countered dully.
“From the Omega? Really? At your house, wherever that is? Where fighters go in and out every night and slayers stalk the shadows. She’ll be safe there?”
Darius blinked. “Yes… she will.”
“You’re going to keep her from all that, from the evil who has engineered an army of undead just to kill us because of what we are.” Dr. Bluff walked through the bloody mess on the floor over to Anne, whose body had been covered by a fresh white blanket up to her neck, whose face was frozen and growing more inanimate by the moment. “Truly, you’re that powerful.”
Darius looked at his love’s expression. Anne seemed so peaceful, like she was sleeping, and he prayed she was in the Fade… prayed that she had made it to the Other Side—and wished he knew whether humans were allowed there.
If not, he would see her in her Heaven. Someday, somehow—
He thought of Vishous’s vision. For the last nine months, he had prayed for that fireball, but it had yet to come and now he was glad. What would have happened to his young now if he were dead? She would have been lost to the human world. Or maybe Bluff would have saved her somehow. Or maybe the male would have let her die.
Either way, Darius never would have known about his own young.
“You can watch over her from afar,” Bluff said roughly. “Keep her safe that way. You have a doggen, right? He could keep tabs on her during the day.”
Darius looked down at his daughter’s angelic face. Her eyes were closed and her little bow of a mouth was parted as she breathed in a quiet pant, like she was already growing so fast.
“I’m not looking for your advice.”
“You should take it. Like I said, there’s a reason I’m on the human side—and I’m still alive.”
Dearest Virgin Scribe. Darius had thought that the pain of losing Anne while she was living had been bad. But now she had died and he knew an even greater grief. While facing an even more overwhelming loss…
It was as his agony exponentially expanded that he realized, as much as he hated the doctor being right, he was going to have to let his young go.
“How did Anne know it was a daughter,” he murmured numbly.
“I don’t know.”
“What will happen to my young?” he asked as he stroked his daughter’s soft cheek.
But neither the doctor, nor anyone else, knew the answer to that. It was more a statement of his stark terror at the future.
When a soft cooing noise came back at him, it was like a knife to the heart, and then her eyes opened and she seemed to focus on him.
Dr. Bluff said quietly, “I will make sure she gets into the right situation. I swear it to you. Your mate was my patient and I lost her. I owe her independently of you and I sharing a common species.”
