“Liv?”
The soothing voice was accompanied by a cool hand stroking gently against the small of my back. It was only when I felt his touch on my skin I realized my coat and top had been torn so badly they no longer covered me.
“Liv, I need you to breathe for me.” Warin rubbed his hand soothingly against my skin, avoiding the many scrapes and cuts. “I need to you calm down so I can feed you my blood.”
I shook my head vigorously in between sobbing and retching up bile. I knew he was trying to help, but just the thought of ingesting blood while still being surrounded by broken and bleeding body parts was more than I could stomach.
“No blood,” I managed in between dry heaves.
Warin didn’t respond, but he moved his hand from my back to my forehead, and I pressed gratefully against it, relishing in his cool touch. Slowly, my breathing became less labored, and my stomach’s convulsions eased.
Once I was breathing normally again, Warin scooped me up into his arms and cradled me against his chest.
Safe.
“I need to heal you,” my savior said, voice gentle but firm.
I looked up into his face, touched by the obvious concern I saw there. He’d retracted his fangs while I’d been vomiting, leaving only a faint blood smear as evidence of the monster he’d unleashed to save me.
“I’m… I’m not that badly hurt. You came in time.” It was the truth. I was covered in what felt like a hundred scrapes and bruises, and my shoulder and side hurt from where the wolves had clamped down, but it could have been so much worse. Certainly nothing that required ingesting vampire blood. “And… and if you try to make me drink blood, I think I’ll throw up again,” I said, my stomach twinging in warning just at the thought.
The vampire frowned, letting his eyes roam over my face and body as if to confirm my claim. Lips pinched, he nodded once. “As you wish. I will attend to your wounds later.”
Without losing his grip on me, he fished out his phone from his pocket, pressed a couple of buttons and raised it to his ear. “Carina? Send a cleanup crew to McMahon Woods. Bring iron. Five skinwalkers—one’s still alive.” He hung up without saying goodbye.
One is still alive? I was hesitant to look back at the carnage, but his words made me overcome my queasiness.
Sure enough, one of the last two men was faintly twitching on the ground. His body was badly broken, far beyond what any normal human could have hoped to survive, but when Warin walked around the front of him, I saw his eyes were half-open.
Warin turned halfway to let me slide to the floor, ensuring I could stand before he released his grip on me. “Stay behind me,” he murmured.
I was only too happy to obey. The wolf might be on the ground, but I didn’t know how long he’d stay there.
Warin put his foot on the man’s—the skinwalker’s—broken neck. The skinwalker gurgled in pain, but snapped his eyes open to look up. The moment he did, Warin asked, “Why did you attack the human?”
“Deadwhore,” he groaned. “Traitor.”
“Who sent you?”
The skinwalker groaned unintelligibly.
“Who?” Warin snapped, and even from my spot behind him, I could sense the darkness welling up around him, demanding obedience. He was Compelling him, I realized.
The skinwalker only gargled in response.
“Maybe you need to give him air,” I suggested, casting a worried look at Warin’s shoe planted firmly against the other man’s windpipe.
Warin growled, but eased his weight off the skinwalker’s throat just a bit. “Tell. Me. Who!” The air of command around him was so strong, it seemed to wrap around every part of the small clearing, making even my knees buckle from the raw power of his Compulsion.
The skinwalker gaped, but still no words came up. Then he convulsed once, twice—and fell limply back down, staring blindly up into the night. Blood trickled in a fine stream from both his nostrils.
Warin stepped off his neck and turned to me, a dark look on his face.
“W-what the hell just happened?” I stuttered. “Did you… did you kill him with your… mind?”
“No. He was either bewitched not to speak of who sent him, or…” His face darkened further.
“Or?” I prompted.
“Or he was Compelled by another vampire.”
12
“Another vampire?” I asked, not entirely sure I was following. “I don’t understand. First it was witches, then these… these skinwalkers, and now you’re saying it might be another vampire? Is this still related to the slaughterhouse and the blood contamination? Why would another vampire wish to harm your kind? Or attack me, for that matter?”
Warin shook his head. “I don’t know. But I’ve never seen a spell like that before. It looked… too much vampire Compulsion.” Then he looked at me, his expression softening. “We need to get you home, Liv.”
I nodded, too wobbly to argue. As much as I wanted to make sense of what’d just happened to me, what I needed most right about then was to get away from the stench of dead in the small clearing where I’d nearly lost my life. I took Warin’s offered hand and clutched his neck when he lifted me into his arms once more.
The trees and bushes blurred past us, only to be replaced with roads and houses, and soon he stopped in front of my apartment block.
That was when I realized I’d dropped my keys, along with my bag, during the attack.
“Oh, shit. Warin, we’ve got to go back—I don’t have my keys, or—“ I quieted when he pulled a key out of his pocket, shoved it into the lock, and let us into the stairway.
“I picked your key up from the clearing,” he said easily as he swooshed us up the stairs and let us into my condo.
“Oh. Thank you,” I said, wishing he’d also picked up my beloved leather bag, but not being enough of an ungrateful brat to mention it.
He didn’t answer as he carried me to the couch and gently lowered me onto the soft cushions. Then he fished out his phone from his pocket and typed on the keypad so quickly my eyes could hardly follow the movements of his fingers. Finally, he returned his attention to me. His gaze swept over my disheveled figure, the same worried frown he’d looked at me with in the clearing marring his pale features. “Will you still not accept my blood? It would heal your injuries.”
I grimaced. “I know. And thanks for offering, but…” An unpleasant flash of the vertebrae sticking out of the neck hole of one of the wolfmen made my stomach threaten to roil again. “I think I’m on iodine and Band-Aids today. Would you mind getting the First Aid kit, please? It’s in the bathroom cupboard above the sink.”
He shook his head and sat down next to me. “That won’t be necessary. Take off your top.”