Scorched Ice (Fire and Ice #3)(74)

“What if you take from all of us?” Prue asked.

“I can’t… won’t… ask that of you,” Quinn replied.

She didn’t have a choice in the matter as far as Julian was concerned. Stepping closer to her, he rested his other hand tenderly against her cheek. Her skin was so hot he swore it burned the healing skin on his palm. Instinctively, she turned into his touch, wincing when the deeper contact abraded her raw flesh.

“Grab hold of me,” he commanded Prue.

“No,” Quinn whispered.

“Yes,” he insisted.

“We can take it, little one,” Vern said and rested his hand on Julian’s arm.

Prue placed her hand on his right shoulder, and Chris grasped the other one. All around him, the vampires took hold of each other until all of them were connected together. Quinn’s eyes burned into his as tears streaked down her cheeks, but he knew this time they were not tears of pain. He carefully wiped one away with the pad of his thumb.

“All of us are willing to do this for you. You cannot drain us all to the point of death,” he said to her.

“You don’t know that. If I lose control—”

“Yes, I do,” he interrupted. She gulped and her gaze flickered over the group surrounding them before coming back to him. “Trust yourself. Trust me.”

“I do,” she whispered.

Her eyes remained locked on his as the tendrils of her power spiraled into him. Her ability moved sinuously through his body and onward into those standing beyond him. He felt the interconnected pathways binding them as her power slipped further out to the other vampires and she drew the life from them. Her eyes closed as she swayed toward him.

The swell of power increased within him as she funneled from all of those around her. She’d given most of their life back to them before, but he knew she was too badly injured for that to happen now. The vampires had to know that too, yet they all willingly remained standing with him. There should be enough of them that the small loss of a piece of their life wouldn’t create a lasting effect in any of them.

He lifted his head to take in those around him, and for the first time in all his years, he saw a unity among his kind that he’d never seen before or ever would have believed possible. And it was because of Quinn. He’d loathed that prophecy since the second he’d heard it, but he realized now she’d brought them all together, and she would be the key to keeping them united.

They would follow her to Hell and back.

Quinn’s cheek turned further into his hand, drawing his attention back to her. As he watched, what remained of the white foam on her skin flaked away from her charred and blistered flesh. The harsh redness and the crispy black of her surface peeled away. The countless blisters were replaced by smooth, flawless skin. Skin so flawless that the scars on her face and the one on her sternum were no longer visible. Her ears and lips pieced themselves back together as new flesh replaced that which had burnt away.

Her eyelids fluttered open to meet his again, and a small smile curved her lush mouth.

“Dewdrop,” he breathed as her tendrils released him and the others. “Chris, give me your shirt.”

Chris tugged his shirt over his head and wisely kept his gaze averted from Quinn as he held it out to him. Julian took it from him and slipped it over Quinn’s naked form as the others all released him and took a step away. The hem of it settled around her thighs.

“For you, Boss.” A hand thrust forward, and he took the pair of jeans dangling from them.

“Thank you,” Julian said to the male vamp standing in his boxers, who had offered them to him. He hadn’t even realized he was naked until then.

Quinn rubbed a hand over her bare head as he pulled the jeans on. “Still bald,” she murmured.

“You can’t perform all miracles,” he replied.

“I’m alive,” she said with a shudder.

“Yes.”

“My hair will grow back.”

“It will, and you make a beautiful baldy.”

He pulled her closer and kissed the top of her smooth head. Her hair could never grow back, and he wouldn’t care—she was here with him. She hadn’t been destroyed by the flames.

“You are a powerful woman,” he murmured against her ear.

She lifted her head to look at him and then turned to take in the vampires grouped around them. “I didn’t expect this.”

“No one did.”

“Look!” a woman shouted. She pointed to where a figure was emerging from the ground on the other side of the fence, nearly half a mile away.

“Another exit,” Julian murmured before turning to face the crowd gathered around them. “I don’t care who goes after them, but leave one of them alive so I can try to learn if we’ve destroyed them all, or where any of the others might be. Kill the rest.”

The vampires nodded to each other before a dozen of them took off for the fence line. Screams resonated through the air as those who had emerged from beneath the earth fled for the woods.

“So much for our ‘Kumbaya’ moment,” Chris muttered.

Julian bent and swung Quinn up into his arms. She draped her arms around his neck. “I can walk,” she said.

“I know, but I much prefer to hold you right now.”

She didn’t protest further as she rested her head in the hollow of his shoulder and nestled closer. “Where are we going?”