chapter 5
Quinn blinked. Before his eyes, everything was tinted red. Had he landed in hell? To tell the truth, he’d hoped for heaven, not that he’d gotten his hopes up too high. After all, he’d led a thoroughly debauched life, even though he’d never committed any violent crimes. Well, killing while defending one’s own life wasn’t considered a crime. If there was a god, then he hoped he—or she—would cut him some slack. After all, hadn’t he always donated to charities and taken care of orphans and other less fortunate people? Didn’t that count for anything?
“Thanks a lot!” he cursed and winced instantly.
His lip was split, and the taste of his own blood was in his mouth.
“What the . . . ?”
If he was dead, why was he injured and feeling pain? His head shot up, quickly assessing his surroundings.
“Shit, I’m alive!”
His gaze darted to his right. There, where the metal beam should have entered the car and decapitated him, another metal pole was wedged between it and the shattered car window. It had stopped the beam’s path. Where it had come from, Quinn wasn’t sure. Maybe it had been catapulted off the nearby stack of supplies when the crane had toppled.
Relieved, Quinn straightened, pushing away from the steering wheel and easing back into his seat. His hands made a quick assessment of his body: no major injuries. His heartbeat slowed somewhat. He’d escaped mostly intact. His vision was still blurry, though, and everything appeared with a red tint. Carefully, he wiped his eyes with the sleeve of his jacket, then blinked a few times. The tint disappeared, only leaving a faint red at the edges of his vision.
Sighing, he looked past the nearly deflated airbag and through the blown-out windshield. His heart stopped and his stomach lurched. If vampires had any content in their stomachs, he would have lost it now.
Oliver.
What he saw, chilled him to the bones: Oliver was impaled on the shovel of the dipper, one of its jagged teeth sticking out through his stomach. Blood gushed from him. His body hung there, suspended like a limp rag doll.
Quinn scrambled forward, lunging through the remnants of the windshield, ignoring the crumbled pieces of glass.
This was all his fault. He’d distracted Oliver while he was driving. He should be the one impaled on those spikes now, not Oliver, not the innocent boy who had an entire lifetime ahead of him.
Within seconds, he reached his friend.
“Oh, God, Oliver.”
Why did he have to die so violently? Why so young? He hadn’t even begun to live yet. Out of its own volition, Quinn’s hand touched the boy’s cheek, where dirt and blood had mixed. His skin was still warm.
“I’m so sorry. I would do anything to make this undone.”
He would have gladly given his own life for Oliver’s. He’d lived three normal lifetimes, and he was tired of it. Recalling Rose in the moments before the beam had hit the car, had brought it all home for him: he couldn’t continue like this, whoring his way through life in the hope he would one day forget her. He knew he never would. He’d always known that his heart belonged to her, that she’d taken it to the grave with her. She would never release him, just as he could never release her.
He should have died tonight. Maybe then he would have finally found peace. He would see her again—if there was such a thing as heaven. Maybe he would get one more glimpse at her, see her, touch her, love her one last time.
“God, why? Why are you so cruel?” he screamed, lifting his head toward the night sky. Stars glittered in the dark, unaware of his turmoil. Mocking him in his despair. No help would come from that direction.
Resigned, he wrapped his arms around Oliver and held him, cheeks touching, wanting to give comfort even though the life had already left his body. All of a sudden, he felt a pounding, beats of two different rhythms dueling. Startled, he pulled away, his hand instantly sliding to Oliver’s neck, pressing against it.
There! A movement against his fingers. Was he dreaming? Imagining it? A beat. Then another one. Faint and growing more irregular, it was barely recognizable, but it was still there: a heartbeat.
Oliver was still alive.
There was no time to lose.
As gently yet as quickly as he could, Quinn drew Oliver forward and pulled him off the spike, bringing him down on the ground where he kept him in his lap.
“If there was another way, I wouldn’t do this,” he said to his unconscious friend. “But there’s no time left.”
The kid had only seconds to live. His pain would soon be gone. He would surrender this life, but in its stead, he would be issued a new one—a less vulnerable one.
Quinn brought his own wrist to his mouth and extended his fangs, piercing his skin so the blood dripped from it. Touching Oliver’s neck again, he listened for the heartbeat growing fainter, anxiously waiting for the short window during which a human’s body would be susceptible to a change, when it could accept what Quinn offered. When the time between the beats stretched longer and longer, he brought his bleeding wrist to Oliver’s lips.
The first drops of blood entered his mouth. Quinn pumped his fist, causing more blood to drip from his wound and into his dying friend’s throat. When he saw the boy swallow for the first time, he expelled a sigh of relief.
“More,” he commanded.
Relieved that the unconscious Oliver obeyed, Quinn brushed a wayward strand of dark hair away from his face. Glass splinters had left him with cuts to his young face, but they would heal quickly. Once the transformation was complete, Oliver would bear no sign of the accident—if he survived the turning. A fair percentage of humans didn’t. He could only hope that Oliver’s body didn’t reject the change.
Still feeding him his blood, Quinn looked up at the night sky, searching it, yet finding nothing.
“Are you happy now? Are you?” he yelled out his frustration. But God didn’t offer an answer.
Quinn had never turned a soul, never considered it. He didn’t want this responsibility, didn’t want to be the one who changed another’s life for eternity. This had been thrust upon him. But now he was stuck with it, with his decision and the newfound responsibility it brought with it.
He would be a sire now. A maker. Something he never wanted to be. Would he fail in his duties the way his own sire had failed him? Would he desert his prodigy just as his sire had deserted him soon after he’d been turned? Just when he had needed him most, when he had been in the depth of despair, his sire Wallace had disappeared, simply left him never to come back. Quinn had searched for him, but never found a trace. He’d felt alone and abandoned. And heartbroken.
Violently, Quinn shook his head and looked back down at Oliver.
“I won’t do this to you. I won’t abandon you like Wallace did. You understand that? You’re my son now.”
A son. God, how often had he dreamed of having a child, one that had the fair looks of its mother, of Rose. They could have been a happy family. But the war and what had happened on the battlefield had destroyed that dream.
In the distance the canons continued to thunder even though night had fallen already. Somewhere he heard drums, interrupted by screams of wounded men, dying men like himself. Quinn knew it was over. He’d fought, but this time, luck had deserted him. There would be no more decorations, no more medals, no more heroic deeds that would bring him closer to his goal of returning as a decorated war hero. All so Rose’s father would accept his suit.
He had gambled and lost.
Now he lay in a pool of his own blood, life slowly slipping from his grasp. He was cold and wet, and from what he’d witnessed on the battlefield over the last few months, he knew it was a sign that he didn’t have much time left.
“Rose,” he whispered. “I’m sorry. I meant to keep my promise. I meant to come back to you.”
“Is she waiting for you?” a voice suddenly answered.
With difficulty, Quinn turned his head and saw the man who stood over him. He squinted. The man wasn’t a soldier but a civilian. The few times he’d seen him at the camp, he’d conducted business with some of the soldiers, and Quinn suspected that he was procuring whores for the privates. There was something commanding about him. An odd fellow, he’d always thought.
“Wallace, is it?” he asked.
The man nodded. “Does the lady love you?”
Quinn closed his eyes, pushing away the pain. “She professed it.”
“You promised her to come back?”
“Yes,” he choked out, at the same time wondering about the odd conversation he was having with a man he didn’t even know.
“Then you shouldn’t disappoint her.”
Quinn tried a mocking laugh, but all that escaped his throat was a helpless gurgle.
“Don’t talk. Just listen to me. I can save your life. But it will be different. You will only walk in the shadows, and the thirst for blood will be unbearable at first. But you’ll be alive, strong, almost invincible. And immortal.”
The words were outrageous, unbelievable. But Wallace looked serious.
“And if I say yes . . . if I agree, what do you want for this life?”
Nothing was free. He’d learned that long ago.
“A place to call home.”
“I have a small estate . . . ”
Wallace nodded his head. “That will do for now.” He crouched down. “When your heartbeat becomes so faint that it is barely there, I will feed you my blood.”
It was all Quinn remembered until he came to the next night. There was no pain, only the thirst for blood. The battlefield provided all the nourishment he needed.
He was different now, human no longer. But one thing that hadn’t changed was his love for Rose. With Wallace’s skill of mind control, a skill Quinn himself had yet to master, he secured an honorable discharge, which allowed him to return to England. Their travels were fraught with difficulties, since they could only travel at night and had to hide during the day. However, the need to see Rose, made everything bearable.
But Rose . . . she hadn’t loved him enough to see past what he was, what he had become to survive. He’d done it all so he could come back to her. And it was all for naught. Had he known, he would have chosen death instead.
Quinn hugged Oliver tighter, pumped his fist harder to make the blood spurt from his open wrist with more pressure. A moment later, Oliver stopped swallowing, his head rolling to the side.
Quinn’s heart stopped. Had Oliver had enough blood? Should he force him to take more?
He licked his own wrist to allow his saliva to close the puncture wounds then reached for the cell phone in his pocket. He speed dialed.
“Hey, can’t get enough of us, can you?” came Zane’s voice from the other end of the line.
“I need you now. I—”
“Whoa! I’m not sure Portia will like that kind of—”
“We had an accident,” Quinn interrupted, breathing hard. “Oliver’s dying. I’m turning him. I need help.”
Instantly, Zane’s voice was all business. “Where are you?”
“On Highway 1, about five minutes south of you. Use the GPS tracker.”
“On my way.”
The line went dead, and Quinn tossed the phone to the ground. The next few minutes felt like hours. Hours in which his entire life seemed to replay before his eyes. Was this what he wanted for Oliver? The same debauched life he’d led, all because the woman he’d loved with all his heart hadn’t loved him back? What was in store for Oliver? Would he be rejected too?
Oliver was still in his arms. He neither stirred nor moaned. Quinn put his fingers to his neck. No pulse. It could mean one of two things: the turning had started, or he was already dead. There was no way of telling.
With his thumb, he pried an eyelid away from his eye to look at the boy’s iris. It was still the way a human’s eye looked. During the turning, it would turn entirely black, leaving not a single spec of white until the process was finished. But so far, the tell-tale black color was nowhere to be seen.
Quinn felt his hand shake. What if it didn’t work? Or was it not meant to? What if Oliver wasn’t meant to survive? Maybe it was better this way, better that he wouldn’t be subjected to a life in the darkness. But who was he to judge? He wished he knew what Oliver wanted. But he’d never made the effort to really get to know him. After all, he’d only met him on a few occasions, and during most of those, Oliver had stuck to Samson and Zane, who he seemed to idolize.
Screeching tires and the beam of headlights alerted him that he wasn’t alone anymore. Quinn turned his head and saw Zane’s Hummer arrive behind the crashed SUV. From it jumped two people: Zane and Amaury.
Quinn let out a deep breath. Good. Those two would know what to do. As they rushed toward him, another car door slammed, making him jerk once more. From the corner of his eye, he saw another figure emerge. He recognized him as Cain, the vampire who had joined Scanguards only a short time earlier after helping them eradicate a group, which had planned to create a master race of hybrids.
“Oh, f*ck,” Zane cursed as he reached him.
He instantly dropped down and examined Oliver’s body. “You did the right thing.” He pointed at the torn muscle and flesh in his stomach region from which even now blood was oozing. “He would have never survived it.”
Quinn met his friend’s gaze. He’d never been so glad to see the bald vampire than at this moment. “I was making jokes in the car. I distracted him.”
He suddenly felt a big hand on his shoulder and looked up. Amaury towered over him. His linebacker-sized friend gave him an encouraging nod. “It’s all good. He’s young and strong. He’ll make it.”
Then Amaury turned to Cain. “We’ve gotta clean up before a passerby alerts the police or an ambulance.”
Cain nodded, his dark hair looking almost black in the dim light. “No prob.”
He and Amaury instantly went toward the toppled crane.
Zane reached for Oliver. “Let’s get him in the car and take him back to Samson’s.”
Quinn pulled his prodigy closer. “I can take care of him.”
Zane raised his hands in capitulation. “Didn’t mean to . . . ” His voice died. “I know you can do it.” Then he rose to his feet and motioned to Amaury and Cain.
“The tow truck should be here in a few minutes. If you need anything else . . . ”
Amaury waved him off. “Go. We’ll take care of this.”
With Oliver in his arms, Quinn rose, accepting Zane’s strong arm in the process. He briefly nodded his head at his two colleagues. “Thanks, Amaury, Cain.”
“See you at the house when we’re done here,” Amaury replied as he braced his body against the crane, Cain at his side.
Slowly, Quinn turned, the weight of Oliver’s body suddenly weighing him down. His knees buckled. If Zane hadn’t grabbed his elbow and propped him up, he would have collapsed.
The realization of what kind of life he’d imposed on the young man in his arms suddenly crashed in over him.
“Oh, God, what have I done?” he murmured.