Cold Reign (Jane Yellowrock #11)(14)

“How long?” I asked Alex.

“Twenty-two minutes before they get here.”

“He won’t last that long.” I knelt beside Eli and pulled a blade from a sheath at his spine. I slid up my sleeve and sliced my wrist, saying something my house mother would have washed out my mouth for. It hurt. I said it again as the sting expanded and blood welled into the open flesh. Edmund stopped sucking. His eyes were still on me.

“Take it,” I said. “Don’t make me call you a fanghead piece-a’-crap. ’Cause I will. Now let go of Eli’s wrist and take mine before you kill my partner and I have to take your head.”

Edmund’s eyes went from mine to Eli’s, and shock flashed across his face. His mouth released, fangs sliding free. “I have taken too much,” he whispered.

“Yeah. But two vamps are on their way to help. One of them can feed you and the other can heal Eli. Now drink.”

His eyes went back to the blood that was now coiling around my arm in a spiral. He looked sick, ashy, starved. He needed to drain a few humans to heal, and yet he was holding back from attacking me. “You offer me your blood? Freely?”

I knew what he was asking. Freely sharing blood was part of the binding ceremony between master and primo. Edmund had freely given me his blood several times when I needed healing. Half of the sharing. If I gave him my blood freely, that was a second part.

Edmund’s eyes fell from my arm to Eli, cradled on the floor. His lips widened the same way Pavlov’s dogs salivated. Unconsciously. Needing.

“Jane?” Alex asked, warning in his tone. He was standing over Edmund, a silver-plated vamp-killer pointed at the vamp’s cervical spine.

“Yes,” I snapped. “Freely.”

Edmund’s eyes whipped back to mine, and I had a moment to wonder if I had been played before he released my partner and snatched my wrist. His tongue cold as a body in a morgue refrigerator, he licked my arm free of the trailing blood and dipped into the wound. The pain was instantly eased, the anesthetic in vamp saliva so effective that he bit through the slash and started sucking and I didn’t even notice.

The pull was oddly familiar. Kits, Beast thought at me. Suckling. Like kits.

I blinked, closed my eyes, and the world faded from view. I was in my soul home, the cavern where I communed with Beast, with my own spirit, and with my memories. It was the memory of the first place I ever shifted forms, before I ever stole Beast’s soul in an accidental act of black magic, blood magic. Before my family died. When I was a child and happy. It was the place I went to when I needed healing or solace or when I needed to learn stuff.

Before me was a fire flickering with warm yellow flames, tossing shadows on the smooth stone walls. The smell of fire eating black walnut wood was slightly sour, dry on my tongue. Across the fire pit was Beast, lying in a curl, so her head was on her paws, thick tail around her side. Golden eyes were staring at me, lazy, happy eyes. At her teats were kits. Suckling. Five of them.

Like kits, she repeated the thought. Suckling.

As in the way of dreams, I was suddenly sitting beside her. I put out a finger and stroked the head of the one closest to my ankle. It was soft and warm and smelled of milk. I looked at my other arm in the real world.

Not exactly, I thought back, seeing nothing remotely kittenlike in the vamp hanging on my arm. But the sensation was pleasant, nothing like the experience of Leo and Katie when they attempted to bind me against my will. I should have killed them for that, I thought.

Did not want you/us to go back and kill them, Beast said.

That wrenched my attention from the kits, fast. You stopped me? Understanding rolled over me in a tsunami of comprehension. Stopped me from . . . even thinking about killing them. Didn’t you?

Jane needs vampires to survive Europeans. Needs vampires to save littermates. To save Angie Baby and EJ and all witch kits, many more than five.

I could just send Yellowrock Clan into safety. Back to the mountains. Why did you stop me? Secrets. You’re still keeping secrets from me. What do you know? I demanded.

Edmund sucked and sucked, his mouth moving on my wrist without pain, but with a sensation I couldn’t name. Tingly. Cold.

Beast went silent for a long time, as the tingles raced up and down my arm and pulsed into my bloodstream with every beat of my heart. My heart rate was beginning to speed. Racing. My breath came fast. Edmund was taking too much blood. Even with all his control, he was draining me. Beast! I commanded.

She thought, I/we will not die. In the deeps of my mind the kits vanished. Beast rose to her feet. Her lids closed and opened, in the lazy way of cats. She turned and pawpawpaw’d into the dark.

“Dang it,” I snapped aloud, and opened my eyes. And realized that Edmund’s eyes were on mine. Without asking, I knew what he was thinking, feeling. He had experienced the entire conversation with me. Just like when Leo healed me that very first time. “Oh crap,” I said.

But Edmund was still dying. Fast. The pool of blood around us was spreading. My sweatpants were soaked with it.

Edmund released my forearm and reached up toward my face. His fingertips were cold as death, pale and ashen. I reached for him with my skinwalker magics. Felt myself falling into his mind. Into a dream not my own.

The house was dark, lit only by a single oil lantern in the front room and a single candle in one of the back rooms. The four large rooms that comprised the downstairs were fraught with winter chill, the house buffeted by icy blasts, the timbers creaking. Frost in intricate patterns caught the lantern light, sparkling on the precious window glass. Snow piled against the house in deep drifts and fires burning on the hearths could do little but hold the worst at bay. There were no customers on this blizzard night, snow such as Charleston had never seen—perhaps eighteen inches by morning.