chapter TEN
“So what now?” Denver’s voice cracked and she hated herself for it. She refused to look at Reed. The need to have him was still strong, bubbling in her blood. She didn’t want the rage to show in her eyes.
Reed didn’t answer immediately. He grasped her hand, wouldn’t let it go when she wanted to tug it away.
“We fight back.” Reed stopped, glanced up toward the sky and the rising moon and lifted his head. He inhaled once, twice, closed his eyes and sniffed.
She stood in silence and watched. He was feral. Wildness danced across his face as he curled his lips into a snarl. Reed turned his head north and began walking. His pace faster but not hurried.
“Where are we going?”
“Home.”
Denver stopped dead in her tracks, stared into Reed’s expressionless face when he turned toward her.
“Is that safe?”
“No.”
“Are you trying to get us killed?”
She knew she could never go home again. Not after everything that had happened. She wasn’t sure if she could trust Magnimus, not anymore and that cut through her gut and sent bile to the back of her throat. Hurt tightened her chest. She would never understand why. Was he grooming her just to get her killed? At what price did she come? And what about Reed?
He’d distrusted Maggie from the first second he’d met him. Would that mistrust filter over to her? God, she hoped not. She needed someone to trust. That had been her staple, having Maggie at her side. She’d be lost if she was totally alone. She was so lost in her thoughts she hadn’t realized Reed had stopped walking and was staring at her.
“You are thinking too hard. Stop.”
“Can’t help it.” Moisture coated her eyes but she refused to acknowledge it.
“None of this is your fault. Our fault.” Reed took a step closer to her.
“This is all my fault!” Tears dripped from her eyes and coated her cheeks, but she didn’t wipe them away.
“Actually—” Reed closed the distance between them “—if I hadn’t entered your life, you would be tucked away at your hospital, oblivious to this and safe.” He sucked in a haggard breath. “Away from the horrors of my life.”
“Well, put that way…”
Reed interrupted her with a soft brush of his mouth across her lips. He cupped her face with his hands and stared into her eyes.
“Not sure what’s gonna happen, but we will get through this.”
“What about--” She diverted her gaze, embarrassed now by the earlier events. She could taste him on the tip of her tongue, just thinking about it.
“We’ll figure that out as well. Now come on.” He started walking again. “I’ve got a plan.
A plan?
Reed didn’t know what he was going to do. But he wasn’t going to let Denver take the blame for this. They were up against evil men. He didn’t know how far it extended and who he could trust, but he did know one thing, he was going to stop it even if it meant his death. He’d gladly die knowing no one else, and he glanced at Denver, would die at the hands of these people. He would take all of them to hell with him.
“At what point when you feed, do you change a person?” He changed the subject.
Denver’s eyebrows rose, a question etched across her face.
“I don’t want to die.” He tried to answer the question she silently asked.
“No.”
“It may come to that.”
“Then we need to come up with another plan because if we are at that turning point I’m most likely dead as well.”
“Don’t you know how to do it?” He made it a joke. It didn’t go over well.
“Damn you, Reed. I told you. I haven’t turned someone in decades. Not my forte’.”
“Besides that. Tell me about it. How does it work?”
He was serious. He saw the moment she knew he was serious.
“At the point of death you will need to feed to replace your blood.”
“Does it hurt?”
“Death?”
“Yes. No. I mean the process.”
“Does it matter? If you’re dead already, dying again shouldn’t matter.” The corners of her mouth twitched into a smile. It wasn’t pleasant, but dark. It showed the dark part of her he’d not seen before and it unsettled him, twisted his gut.
“I don’t want to die,” he said again as he stopped, grabbed her arm and turned her so she looked into his face. “Do you understand what I’m saying, Denver?”
She twisted her arm free. “Then you’d better not die, at all.”
In silence they walked. Seconds turned into minutes, minutes into hours before they saw the first sparkle of lights from distant homes.
“Where are we going to go?” Uncertainty peppered Denver’s voice.
“Back to Magnimus’.”
She stopped, sucked in a breath. “Is that a good idea? I mean if he is--”
“Exactly. He wouldn’t expect us to return. He probably thinks we’re dead. Besides, if he betrayed you, I need to have a word with him… or two.”
What he needed was to rip Maggie’s throat out and eat his heart. No one would put Denver in danger, not as long as he was alive.
Denver didn’t respond.
Best that she didn’t. He didn’t want to spell it out to her what he planned to do to her friend if he found out he was a part of this. And it disturbed him that a vamp, a powerful one of all people, would betray his own. Didn’t Magnimus know that he was a pawn and it would end in his death as well? These people would cleanse the world of him as soon as he finished doing their bidding. He meant nothing to them. It was a shame Maggie didn’t see it. Reed welcomed the urge to teach Maggie. It is what it is and Maggie was going to die, either by the hunter’s hands or by his. It didn’t matter to him, one way or the other. Reed felt his lips curl into a smile. No. He wouldn’t be happy in the death of another, but he would be satisfied.
***
Don’t want to die. To hell with that. No way could she turn him. She hated her life for what she was. Why would he think she could give him life? There’d been times that she relished the idea of death. Many had died before her, again leaving her alone. If the sun did like the television portrayed, she’d have walked into the light a long time ago.
But a slow painful death was not what she wanted. What she wanted she knew she’d never have. She wanted to stand face to face with Maggie and have him tell her he wasn’t a traitor. She needed to hear the words even though deep down they meant nothing. She needed to hear them before Reed killed him and he would. This she knew, because she was going to help him.