Andre followed the smell, his strides purposeful. They passed through beautiful rooms cut from rock. Sacred rooms. But not Christian ones that could keep demons—and Andre—out. If they could, he would be a pile of ash resting at the threshold of this place.
The next room they walked into halted Andre in his tracks. He’d been expecting the carnage, his nose had prepared him. But there were some things the eyes were never ready for.
The room was full of butchered innocents. Slashed throats, glassy eyes, mouths open in silent screams. Blood and gore covered them and the ground they lay upon. It was a shock every time evil showed its true face.
A small noise slipped out of Leanne’s lips.
Andre’s fear only deepened as he studied the wounds of the dead. They’d been torn apart, no one death exactly like the other, but each always had one consistent wound. A cut along an artery.
If they did this to innocents, what did they do to his mate?
His mouth tightened as he passed through the room. None of the bodies were Gabrielle’s. Her body would no longer exist on this realm if that were the case.
The smell of so much blood had distracted him from Gabrielle’s scent. Now he caught a whiff of it, and it overwhelmed his senses.
He was moving before he was even cognizant of it.
Her blood.
Her blood.
Her blood.
Too much of it outside of her body. Far too much to survive. And that excluded all the blood that had hit the ground and vaporized.
Andre almost fell to his knees then. Leanne had warned him they’d probably be too late. He’d braced himself for it, but just like seeing great evil, there was no preparing for the reality of losing the love of your life.
No matter how many times it happened.
Masochist that he was, Andre pressed on. When he entered the chapel, he saw her.
Dios mio.
He stopped at the threshold, his feet taking him no farther.
Gabrielle lay on a stone altar, her arms folded across her chest, her face serene. She wore a crimson gown, the color saturated with her blood and the blood of the dead. The fabric stuck to her skin, and he could see rivulets of the viscous liquid dripping down her arms and snaking through her hair. Even her bare feet were mostly coated with it.
Drip, drip, drip.
Blood snaked down the sides of the altar, drenching most of what had probably once been a holy surface. Only her face was untouched, and she looked … serene.
So long as Andre lived, he would remember the sight of her so at peace amongst this bloodshed.
Behind him he heard the pattering of Oliver and Leanne’s footsteps.
When they got to his side, the fairy gasped. “Is that—? Did she kill—?”
“No.” Andre couldn’t believe Gabrielle was responsible for the carnage in the other room. He wouldn’t.
“What happened?” Oliver asked.
They stared at the one person who might know, but she was as still as death.
Tha-thump.
She lives.
The sound of her heartbeat jolted him into action. Andre moved as fast as his legs could take him, crossing the room, his boots splashing through puddles of blood. Whatever had happened to her, she’d at least survived it. Finally, finally, some of Andre’s fear dissipated. The desperate need to protect her grew in its place, borne from the possibility that she really was losing herself to the devil.
He dragged her off the altar and into his arms. With one hand, Andre cradled her head and shoulders against his chest, uncaring that the blood of so many men and women now seeped into his clothing. His soulmate, his beautiful, tormented soulmate.
He’d been here before, done this before. And now he’d do it again.
Andre brought his wrist to his lips. His fangs dropped, and he used them to slice open his skin. Blood welled and he pressed the wound to Gabrielle’s lips.
She wasn’t responding.
His wound sealed up, and he had to reopen it, again and again. On the seventh try, he felt her mouth latch onto his wrist. His body relaxed as she drank from his vein, and he pulled her closer.
“I will never give up on you, my sun,” he whispered to her in Romanian. “I will pull you from the dark, just as you have me.”
Leanne and Oliver watched from the doorway, not daring to come any closer.
Andre pushed the blood-matted hair away from his mate’s forehead. Her skin brightened, either from the blood or the close contact, and after another minute or so, her eyes fluttered open.
“Soulmate,” he said.
Her mouth left his wrist and her throat worked. She stared at him as he pulled her more fully into his arms, a strange look on her face. Her throat still worked and her nostrils flared. She began to shake in his arms. And then, all at once, she came apart.
She let out a shuddering sob. Her eyes grew faraway as the trembling increased. He’d seen this before, usually from men freshly removed from battlefields. Trauma.
She drew in a long breath and closed her eyes. When they opened again, she was back with him.