“Because I was stupid,” said Eleanor, bitterness in every syllable. “Ignorant. Blind. Too scared to grow old, too frightened of death. I made a mistake, and I’m tired of paying for it. I want to be human again. Your blood can give me back my life.”
“You see, Imani, this is about more than just you,” said Lazarus. “It’s about more than just me. Your blood can help so many people.”
“You expect me to go with you? Seriously?” He was high.
“I understand that you feel I have betrayed you and that you are hurting. But you are a good person, Imani. You will quickly come to see the wisdom behind what I have done; you will understand that this was necessary.”
Oh he was fucking special. I felt my upper lip curl. “You don’t even see it, do you?” I hit him with a truth that I knew would be like a bullet to the chest. “You’re just like Marco and the vampire who Turned you.”
Every muscle in his body seemed to tense. “That is not true.”
“You did this to me without my consent. You didn’t think of the impact it would have on my life. You didn’t care about the pain it would put me through. You were only thinking about what you want. So yes, Lazarus, you’ve become what you loathe. And I wouldn’t go anywhere with you even if I wanted to. What I want is to stay with Butch.”
“I cannot allow that, Imani.” Lazarus made a hand gesture to the vampires at his side, and their eyes zeroed in on me as they went to move. Marco reached back and shoved me hard, knocking me off my feet and right into the fucking portal.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
(Butch)
“Butch, this is going to really hurt.” Jared yanked the spike out of my chest. I grunted through my teeth because, yeah, it hurt like a motherfucker—especially since my skin had started to heal around the spike.
One of the damn dragons had brought his tail down hard on my chest. I wasn’t sure whether the spike came off by accident or not, but it had pinned me to the fucking ground. I’d been stuck there as the shield fell, the dragons tried to flee, and the smoke cleared.
Jared had teleported to me with Paige seconds ago, and she was now healing my gaping wound. I’d lost a lot of blood and I was woozy as hell, but I didn’t care. Didn’t care about anything except one thing. “Where’s Imani?”
Jaw hard, Jared sighed. “I don’t know. Well, I have a general idea of where she is, but—”
“What does that mean?” I growled, unease slithering through me. “And why can I hear bullets being fired? What the hell is happening?”
“About ten seconds ago—which was roughly a minute after a small army of vampires appeared and started attacking us—Imani sent me a message to tell me to find you, but she didn’t respond to my reply.”
Healed, I jumped to my feet. Jared and Paige did the same. “Go to Imani,” I urged impatiently.
“Tried that.”
“And?”
“And something bounced me right back to where I teleported from.”
“What the fuck?”
“She told me you were hurt and that she was watching Lazarus and Marco having a standoff,” Jared explained. “I’m thinking that one of them is here to hurt her and the other is here to protect her.”
I suddenly recalled Marco’s words…Good people do bad things sometimes. I cursed. “Lazarus came for her. He’s who we should have had locked up.” And I was going to kill him, and I was going to enjoy watching him suffer. I drew in a slow, steady breath, needing to keep calm and think.
Jared nodded. “That would be my guess. The vampires who’ve arrived all have guns and little badges that have a familiar insignia. That tells me that they and Lazarus are part of The Order. It wouldn’t surprise me if the bastard is Beau Irons.”
“The armed vamps have formed some kind of wall,” began Paige, “so Imani must be somewhere behind it, right?”
“I’d say so,” replied Jared. “Sam’s on the front line with the rest of the two squads. Whenever anyone gets close, The Order starts firing to pin them in place.”
Like the night hadn’t been hard enough until that point. “Why can’t you teleport to Imani?”
“There’s some kind of force-field around her that’s repelling psychic energy,” replied Jared. “It’s obviously a vampiric gift. It’s like your shield in that it deflects whatever power comes at it. But the force-field isn’t solid.”
“So we could walk through it, but not get through it using any kind of preternatural force,” I mused.
“Yes,” said Jared. “That’s why my telepathic messages aren’t getting through to her.”
“If she managed to get a message to you, the force-field doesn’t contain psychic energy and prevent it from escaping; it only deflects it,” I reasoned. “That means if we get through it, we can use our gifts once we’re inside it. We just can’t use them to get inside.”
Jared swore as more bullets rang through the air. “Getting to her will be hard while we have a wall of vampires in the way. It wouldn’t be so bad if they weren’t standing inside the force-field. Our gifts can’t touch them, but theirs can hit us. With gifts and guns, they’re doubly armed.”