I grabbed at my neck, only to feel it slick with blood. The liquid drenched my hand in a matter of seconds as my arteries pumped it out. It dripped down my hands and into my clothes, and I heard it hiss as it hit the ground.
“No.” Andre lunged for me just as my legs gave out.
He cradled me in his arms as my blood continued to spill. My wound hadn’t healed. It should’ve. Weakly I reached for Andre’s hand. I caught it, only for it to slip away, so slick my hands were with blood. Pain should’ve assaulted me—and distantly I could feel it—but I think I was in shock.
Andre rocked us. “Stay with me, love.”
I reached for his hand again.
My vision was fading, and I couldn’t speak. I tried forming words on my lips anyway. Keep fighting. I—love—you … soulmate.
Chapter 15
Andre
The moment he was sure her spirit had fled, Andre curled his body over hers, and he began to weep. He’d gone from one of the highest highs since she’d returned to … this.
Hopelessness.
His body shook with the force of his sobs as he crushed her to him. Her arms hung limply at her sides. So much had been asked of her—of them both. He let himself be weak now that she was gone. Taken. This time by a mortal hand.
Around him dozens upon dozens of demons formed. He stayed there rocking her body in his arms long enough for several rounds of them to rise from the ground. He ignored them and they ignored him. One by one, they flew off into the night to torment the innocent.
He didn’t care. His bloody tears dripped onto her skin.
All I want to do is join you, soulmate. Fighting that impulse took more work than he’d let on earlier.
The earth shifted beneath him. Andre thought nothing of it until the first vines sprouted between cracks in the asphalt. They grew fast, deepening the fissures in the street as they did so.
“You can’t have her.” Andre’s hair began to lift. If he lost control now, he might never regain it. The thought appealed to him.
The ground shifted some more, splitting the street open. The vines grew and stretched, and Andre tightened his grip. He didn’t want to let her body go. There were people out there, people who could coax life back into the newly dead. Pay or threaten them enough and they’d do it.
The plants slid over Gabrielle’s body, avoiding him entirely. Andre attempted to rip them off only to have more sprout and tether her to the earth. He yanked his soulmate away from the unnatural plants, and to his great horror, rather than breaking, the vines sliced into his soulmate’s skin.
Skin he’d spent months memorizing. He could trace each and every contour of her body. He knew all her angles and the shape of her smile. He’d committed to memory how she felt in his arms and precisely how they fit together.
Letting out an anguished cry, Andre stopped trying to free her and simply stared down at her body cradled in his arms.
“This was never how it was supposed to be between us, my love,” he whispered. Her dying over and over again and taking bits of him with her. Maybe that was how he was destined to enter hell—little chunks at a time.
He knew death, had seen it claim mortals over and over again. None of it could’ve prepared him for hers.
The earth opened up and vines tugged his mate’s body out of his arms. He pulled a knife strapped to his belt and slashed at the roots. He fought the vines to the bitter end. It didn’t change anything. The earth still claimed her. It sucked her down and the ground resettled.
Andre placed a fist to his mouth to stifle the sobs shaking his body.
There was no one here to witness this. No one save for him. This girl that no one could stand to look at. Her end shouldn’t be like this—murdered on some abandoned street. Just like her mother. Killed and discarded like someone’s trash.
Andre had to shut his mind against these thoughts before they destroyed him.
He now had another face to add to her list of enemies, a face he’d seen before. The man was a Politia officer and a shapeshifter. It had to be Caleb’s father, based on his features and what he’d said.
The loose bits of asphalt vibrated against the street. He’d hunt down both Caleb and his father, then he’d kill the man’s son before his eyes.
Pieces of the broken street had lifted off the ground.
Only once he knew the pain of losing what he most loved would Andre kill him—or maybe he wouldn’t. Right about now death seemed like a godsend.
“Andre?” An old man hobbled out of the store he knelt in front of.
He almost didn’t react to his name. Not until he smelled the divinity of the being.
The fury he’d nurtured had found a target.
He swiveled to face the man. “You coordinated this.” Andre’s hair lifted, and the bits of gravel and loose asphalt lifted higher, beginning to swirl around him.