Warrior (Relentless #4)(138)

“Ow!” He pulled out of her grasp and rubbed his arm. “Demon strength, remember. We’ve seen him a few times. And you should know that he –”

“Where is he? I want to see him.” She sat up quickly and almost fell out of bed.

I caught her and gently pushed her back against the pillow. “Hold on. You’re too weak to go anywhere.”

I looked at Roland to tell him to get Nate, but Sara began to struggle against me.

“Let me go! I have to see Nate,” she shouted frantically. “Let go of me, Nikolas, or I swear I’ll never speak to you again.”

“You never did like to be told what to do,” Nate said from the doorway.

Sara went still. Then she strained to see past the people standing around the bed. “Nate?” she said hoarsely.

Nate approached the bed, and I moved back to let him get close to Sara.

“Hey, kiddo,” Nate said.

She broke down, and he pulled her into his arms. I could see that he was shaking too as he held her close and spoke to her.

Sara pulled back from him with a loud gasp. “Nate, you’re walking!”

He laughed like a man with a new lease on life. In truth, that’s exactly what he’d received, though he’d had to go through hell to earn it.

“Tristan says my spine was healed when the vampire demon possessed me. And then you killed the demon.”

Sara sank back to the bed. “I don’t understand any of this.”

“What do you remember?” Tristan asked.

“Sara has been unconscious for two days, and this is obviously overtaxing her,” the healer cut in. “Perhaps we should let her rest before –”

“No. I’ve been asleep long enough.” Sara sat up again and pulled Nate down to sit beside her. She looked around the room, and her mouth parted in surprise. “Desmund? I thought you hated coming downstairs.”

I smiled. Something told me the disdainful English warrior would do almost anything for Sara.

He walked over to her. “Well, they would not accommodate me by moving you upstairs, so I was forced to spend time in this depressing ward.”

He lifted her hand to his lips, and I felt foolish for being jealous of a gay man. “Welcome back, little one. And if you worry us like that again, I will lock you up myself for the next fifty years.”

“Get in line.” For once, Desmund and I were in total agreement.

“I will go and let you catch up with your family and friends,” he told her. “Come see me when you are feeling better.”

After Desmund left, Tristan said, “Sara, do you feel up to telling us what happened? What you did has never been done before, at least it’s never been recorded in our history. I don’t know where to begin to try to understand it.”

She lifted her hands and let them fall back to the blanket. “I didn’t know I could do that. I knew I could kill demons, but I never dreamed it was possible to make a vampire human again.”

Biting her lip, she looked up at Nate with tormented eyes. “I was so upset and angry about what happened to you. I went down there to kill you, not to save you.”

“I know,” he replied kindly. “I remember everything, especially the horrible things I…the vampire said to you. I know you did what you had to do.”

Roland raised a hand to get her attention. “What exactly did you do?”

She took a deep breath. “Like I said, I planned to kill the vampire. The first time I hit him with my power it was enough to knock him out. While I was connected to him, I could see the vamhir demon attached to Nate’s heart. I was going to hit it again, but then I heard its thoughts. Actually, I think they were its memories.”

My eyes met Tristan’s, and I was sure the shock I saw in his was mirrored in mine. She’d seen a live vamhir demon inside a human host, and heard its thoughts?

Tristan cut in. “You understood what it was saying?”

She nodded. “Bits and pieces.”

“Only our oldest scholars can understand demon tongue, and they spend centuries learning it,” he told her.

“But we can understand our Mori demons,” she argued.

“The Mori demon was chosen to create our race because it is compatible with humans,” he explained. “Our demons are born inside us, and we learn to communicate with them as we grow.”

She looked at me. “You mean my Mori talks in a whole other language and I didn’t even know it?”

I nodded.

“What happened after you heard the demon?” Peter asked.

“Then I saw –” She looked at Nate. “I saw your memories of me. Then I saw you being changed and the pain you went through. I couldn’t let you suffer anymore. I held your heart, and I felt it stop. I thought you died.”

Her voice broke. I wanted to hold her and soothe away her pain, but it was Nate she needed in that moment.

“I think I did die, but then I felt something pulling at me. It was so bright and warm that I honestly thought I must be looking at an angel. Then heat spread through me and it got so hot I thought I was going to burn from the inside out. The next thing I knew, I woke up on the floor of the cell with Tristan standing over me, looking like he was going to finish the job.”

Tristan wore a serious expression. “I almost did. But then I saw his eyes, and I knew something was different, especially after what I’d witnessed.”