ADRIAN
I walked faster down the street, eyes scanning the crowd.
Now where the hell's that kid?
The cold bit through my skin, but I didn't feel it… vampire skin couldn't care less about weather. People pushed by in their monstrous trench coats, looking like a herd of dumb cattle, and I stuck to my suit.
That was a good suit, tailored. I felt like I owned the place. These sheep could not know what walked among them.
The streetlights hummed, spattering the sidewalk with patches of darkness. Exhaust and some chick's cheap perfume, so thick you could choke on it, hung in the air. My ears registered the buzz of cars, the insipid gabble of strangers, white noise to the tempest raging in my brain.
Lucian. Where are you, man?
I had left him with half-truths, believing he would fester and return. Dumb move. I should've just laid it all out, ripped the bandage off. He was out there now, blind to the shit I had gotten him into, and I was running… running against time I couldn't see.
Some blonde strolled by and looked me up and down, her hair all ratted in some knotted-up hairdo. Hot, certainly, but I wasn't taking the bait, literally or otherwise. I gave her a stiff nod and plowed on past.
My mind was locked on Lucian. My world would fuck him up.
He'd be totally clammed up, tighter than ever; worse, he might turn cold and dead inside, like Corvin had. I couldn't do that to him. If this is going to work, he had to want it, to hunger for the truth, the power.
I don't want him lost to this life like I was. If he turns, it has to be a decision he makes… not some panicked, cornered choice, like your scene in The Eddy. But that window's closing fast. I know it. I feel it heavy in my gut.
And then I realized, in a flash, like a sledgehammer crashing down on my chest. I stopped short in my tracks, my boots anchored to the sidewalk. Something was wrong. My insides twisted and clawed against my ribs, shrieking after blood. Someone was in my domain… hunting.
My fucking domain. The violation was like a knife sliding under my skin, burning, raw, and personal. My teeth longed to tear something to shreds. Who would have the balls to pull this?
I started running, pushing through the crowd. People scattered like mad pigeons, clever enough to duck. The slow ones? I knocked them aside, hard. A dude smashed into a lamppost, shrieking. A couple holding hands obstructed the way, and I forced my way past them like firewood. Bones snapped when they hit the pavement.
I didn't stop. Couldn't. That was when the smell struck me… the smell of blood, distant but sharp. Lucian's blood.
No, no, no. Panic scraped its way up my throat.
Someone knew. Somebody had been spying on me and decided to make their move tonight.
Lucian couldn't be far, he only had one path, but with every alley I turned into, I was rolling the dice. What if they had taken him away? Down into the sewers? Or worse?
Rage surged, hot and wild. Whoever did this, I'd rip them apart limb by limb, my fingers down their throat and yank. Nobody comes into my town and fucks with my shit.
I turned a corner, and there he was. Lucian, slumped in an alley, blood running from his body. A woman in a coat towered over him with liquid predator grace.
Daeva. Had to be.
"Get away from him!" I shouted, the sound reverberating off the filthy walls.
She startled and looked into my eyes. Then she was gone, like water, so fast she couldn't be chased. Daeva bitch. She had drawn him here, dug her talons in, and…
"Lucian! Shit, Lucian!" I fell to my knees next to him, hands shaking as I hovered over his little body. "Bloody hell, are you able to hear me?"
He coughed, blood spattering against the pavement, and he huddled there even more. He had always been small, but now he...? He resembled nothing. A speck adrift in red, buzzed head lolling, cheap suit drenched.
"I... I just got… stabbed, didn't I?" His voice was a rasp, hands clapped over his gut as if that'd keep him from falling apart.
"Get your hands out of the way, I gotta see." I grabbed onto his wrist, pried them away. He growled, fighting me, but I was stronger than him.
Panic sliced through me as I tried to undo his shirt, ripped the thing. Ten holes. Ten fucking stabs. That fucking Daeva had sliced him up like a piece of meat.
"Fuck!" I growled as panic washed over me, my heart speeding up.
No hospital in the world could patch this up in time. He was sliding, and I was helpless. Rage seared hotter. I'd tear her to pieces with my own two hands, my teeth, anything, but it melted beneath the weight of him dying in front of me.
It's all my fault. I yanked him into this nightmare.
"I ain't no doctor, but I think… I'm dead," he mumbled, cool like he was commenting on the weather.
"Don't say that!" I pulled him up and leaned him against the wall. "You're not dead yet, goddamn it!"
He coughed once more, and blood flecked his chin.
"Guess I'm just... intellectualizing. It'll hit me... later. When I'm dead."
"Stop it!" I spoke with a raw, ragged voice. "This is on me. It was that fucking Daeva… she did this to get at me. To hurt me."
"Daeva? I don't..." Another cough interrupted him, softer, his eyes dimming as they found mine. His cheeks had gone ghost-white, and they were draining fast.
Guilt washed over me. My world, my enemies… and he was bleeding out because of me. I couldn't lose him.
There was one way to save him, turn him, make him like me. and that was a curse, not salvation. Could I damn him to this?
"Lucian," I murmured, my throat constricting, tears I could not cry behind my eyes. "I'm sorry."
"It's okay... Adrian," he whispered, hardly there, even now trusting me.
But it wasn't okay. Nothing was.
His pulse was slowing to nothing, and I had seconds to decide, let him die or pull him into the dark with me.
I couldn't get my head clear, couldn't breathe through the fear. I had no sense of what to do; I just knew that I had to do something, one way or another, goddamn now.