As he stood, Westie could see the regret on his face. He really was sorry. However, that didn’t stop him from lifting the heavy branch above his head.
Tears stung Westie’s eyes. Her little brother, whom she’d spent seven years mourning, had been resurrected and was going to kill her. She doubted she’d survive the attack, but if she did, she really would hunt him down the rest of her years. And even if she didn’t survive, she planned to haunt the little shit.
James’s face was crushed into a look of molten aggression as he brought the branch down. Westie rolled away, hearing the splash of mud when it hit the spot where she’d just been lying. With what little strength Westie had left, she sprang to her feet and swung her machine at him with enough force to kill a vampire. The damage it did to James’s beautiful face left him unrecognizable.
So much for postmortem photographs, she thought before falling to her knees.
Alistair yelled out her name, but she couldn’t call back. She couldn’t even stay upright. Rolling onto her back, she closed her eyes to fight the nausea she felt. When she opened them again, Alistair’s face floated above her, his head framed with stars.
Westie tried to speak, but all that came out were wet gurgles. She wanted to reach out and hold him, rejoice in their victory. But she couldn’t move. Her eyes couldn’t focus. She felt as if she were on the wrong end of a bola being twirled in the air. Looking at the sky for something solid and unmoving to focus on, she didn’t see any stars. With a sick feeling, she realized it wasn’t just the sky that had gone dark, but her vision too, and then suddenly there was nothing.
Forty
Westie opened her eyes in spasms. She was in her room, on her bed. There was a clatter of chairs and shuffling feet as Nigel, Alistair, and Bena swarmed her. She blinked. The first clear memory that came to her was drinking Costin’s blood and the cramping in her stomach. But no, that wasn’t right. That had happened a while back, and her stomach felt fine. It was her jaw that hurt.
Another memory flashed in front of her, as crisp and startling as a slap in the face: Cain with his knife to Alistair’s neck, about to spill his blood until Costin came to his rescue, tearing out Cain’s throat. And then . . .
Westie looked up at the ceiling, at the different patterns in the wood, the knots that looked like screaming mouths. She wanted to join them. It was hard for her to believe that such a short time ago she’d thought of creatures as nothing more than vicious talking animals put on the earth for her amusement. Never imagined one could be as selfless as Costin. She never could have pictured herself calling one a friend. He had been a friend, though, the best kind, the kind who was there for her even when she didn’t deserve it.
Westie tried to sit up, but the throbbing in her head knocked her back onto her pillow. She tried to speak but couldn’t open her mouth, and all that came out were incoherent mumblings.
“Relax,” Nigel said, peeling a damp cloth from her head. “Don’t move your mouth. Your jaw is broken. I had to wire it shut.”
Had it been any other time, she was sure Alistair would have had something smart to say about that. Instead he stared down at her with open worry, a bandage covering one of his eyes.
Without a voice she had to sign. Is James dead? she asked.
Everything had been a blur in those last moments. She wanted to make sure her memories weren’t skewed by the hit she’d taken to the head.
Nigel’s brows came together. “Is James . . . I’m sorry, I don’t know what you’re trying to say.”
Nigel’s signing was adequate enough, though not fluent, which turned out to be tiresome.
“Dead,” Alistair translated for her. “She wants to know if James is dead.”
“Oh, yes. I’m afraid so,” Nigel said.
Westie closed her eyes and sighed. It was over, finally. James and the Fairfields were dead. She had her revenge, but the loss of Isabelle and Costin made it bittersweet. She opened her eyes and felt a tear slide down her cheek.
“It must be hard to learn that James was the brother you’d mourned for so long,” Nigel said, confusing the reason for her tears.
She moved her hands in lazy arcs.
“She doesn’t care about James,” Alistair said for her.
It was true. She didn’t care about James. She cared about Tripp, but the real Tripp had died a long time ago, and the man who’d almost killed her was a demon who had possessed her brother’s body. She had already mourned her brother. That time was over, and now she had someone else to grieve for.
She took a breath that whistled through her teeth and tried to gather her emotions. She would mourn Costin on her own time, when there was space to weep without making everyone around her feel uncomfortable.
She signed again, and again Alistair spoke for her. “At least you have the money to finish your machine. Something good has to come from all this madness.”
Optimism hadn’t quite settled in yet, but it didn’t stand a chance once she saw the miserable look on Nigel’s face.