Page 37 of The Curse of Eternity
I looked down, and my heart seemed to stop. His scorched hands were a bloody peeling mess, continuing up his forearms before disappearing beneath his dusty black long sleeves. Not nearly as bad as his bare fingers, flayed to the bone, right where he’d detonated the orb. My hand covered my mouth as I fell to my knees beside him, shivering too hard from the frigid room or my spent adrenaline to stand anymore.
I started to reach out, but withdrew my hand when his eyelids fluttered open. His raven-dark eyes, now stained with blood, stared unseeing up at the painted ceiling. Terror pulsed in my chest, and I clutched the fabric over my left breast.
What the hell was I supposed to do now?
Hot fingers swathed in material dug into the skin around my shoulders, roughly pulling me upward and back. Eyes widening, I was about to shriek when one hand moved from squeezing my collarbone to clap down over my mouth. Warm breath tickled my ear, followed by a British accent.
“Quiet. You don’t want them to hear us,” Ezra whispered, barely audible, and my whole body stiffened. I turned my head to find piercing green eyes roving over the room of bodies. Then his focus zeroed-in on me. When I inhaled a ragged breath, but didn’t scream, Ezra released my jaw one gloved finger at a time.
“What are you doing?” I mouthed at him, too surprised to balk when he took my hand in his. He practically dragged me forward toward the doors in a lurch, but I dug in my boot heels when we passed Drake. Nearly slipping on the bloody floor, Ezragripped my arm hard to steady us both. It hurt, but the pain only redoubled the rage surely visible in my glare.
“You’ve got to get out of here,” Ezra said, leaning close. “They won’t stay down forever. If you have any hope of escaping the surrounding woods then you have to move—now.”
“Not without Drake,” I said, and then startled when strangled gurgling emanated from behind me. Looking over my shoulder, I found Lucian slumped at the foot of his brass throne. Blood trickled from his eyes, his sharp features now charred and flaking. Remembered fear stabbed through me, urging me to run, but then I glanced down at Drake, lying helpless on the floor.
Wrenching my arm from Ezra’s grip, I stormed to Drake’s side. His handsome features were almost unrecognizable except for his strong bone structure and straight black hair. My molars ground together as I grasped Drake under his arm to lift and drag him. Then I glanced up at Ezra.
Sweat beaded my brow when I heaved Drake a few inches off the ground, almost dropped him, and stifled a cry of frustration.
“You’re being foolish,” Ezra muttered, moving closer. At first I figured he might try to physically overpower me, and in my current state, he probably could even without the psychic abilities. Instead, he bent to take Drake’s other arm, hoisting it up and over his shoulder. I mimicked him, and together we held Drake teetered between us.
My vampire’s head lolled, falling onto my shoulder, and my jaw clenched while I forced myself not to cry—stupid, dumb Maria.What the hell had I been thinking, chasing after a vampire by myself? Ezra and I shuffled toward the doors, giving the fallen undead a wide berth while trying to keep our path as short as possible.
“Thank you,” I mumbled, barely audible under my heavy breaths that I tried to quiet despite my strained muscles burning for more oxygen.
“Thank someone who’s earned it,” Ezra retorted, his tone filled with so much loathing that I didn’t bother to argue.
When we crossed the threshold into the entrance hall, I started for the double front doors made of solid oak. Ezra tugged us in the opposite direction, heading past the display case that I refused to look at. Confusion pinched my brow, and I had to work twice as hard to keep up with Ezra’s hurried pace, leading us deeper into the heart of the mansion.
“Where are we going?” I hissed, barely managing it between inhales.
“Somewhere you can momentarily rest to recuperate.” His cryptic words rang alarm bells in my head.
“Why aren’t we just going out the front doors?” I demanded, and Ezra’s bitter laugh made my stomach sink lower.
“Are you mad? You want to try carrying an incapacitated immortal through miles of woods by yourself, in the dark, with no idea of where you are or where you’re heading?”
We shuffled further into darkness until the distance muffled the agony ongoing in the ballroom. Feeling blind until my sight adjusted to the gloom, and stupid from Ezra’s condescension, I bit my lip and focused on each step onward. In the middle of a long corridor that seemed less insulated than the previous ones, Ezra stopped short.
Staggering, I huffed out a fogging breath while maintaining Drake’s weight.For such a lithe guy, he sure did weigh a lot.The muscles in my shoulders shook while Ezra whispered a word, and the paneled wall we stared at suddenly shifted. In the blink of an eye, a set of stairs leading downward appeared before us.
Gaping, but trying not to show it, I took a careful step down after Ezra. The two of us kept Drake aloft despite his shoesdragging on the rickety wooden steps. Cobwebs caught in my hair, and I swallowed hard. At least it was too cold for creepy crawlies. Nearly at the bottom, where the darkness seemed thicker, Drake groaned.
The pained sound carved an ache into my chest. It took every last ounce of my willpower not to drop him. Which was exactly what Ezra did the minute we passed through a low doorway. I exclaimed nonsense when I tried to take the full brunt of Drake’s body weight, and failed. He slumped to the floor, me along with him when my legs finally gave out. Sconces along the wall lit up with purple flames while I panted through chilled breaths.
As the room became illuminated, an enormous iron oven was revealed against the opposite wall. Nearly attached to it was a long countertop with a wooden surface. A steel bucket rested on a lower cabinet, clearly meant to be the ‘sink.’ At the center of the room stood a farmhouse-style table, coated in dust but large enough to feed a family as big as—well, mine.
Ezra crossed his arms, almost leaning back against the wall before he seemed to think better of it. Roughly fifteen feet separated him from where Drake laid on the floor beside me. Piercing green eyes stared directly at me, and a million questions drifted through my head.
“What the hell was that back there?” The orb, faery-made so it would have been equally chaotic as it was deadly, was starting to feel like a mistake. Somefriendthat faery had been. He must’ve known what it would do, and that Drake wouldn’t walk away from it.
Who the hell had I become? First trusting a vampire, and then a faery…
“The sphere Ignatius Drake detonated? I thought I’d sensed something with grand magick potential…” Ezra’s gaze studied me, but when I didn’t say anything else, he explained, “It contains the power of sunlight. Quite dangerous, and unstablein the best of circumstances. I can scarcely believe it somehow survived your battles with the lycans.”
Sunlight—except, vampires weren’t damaged like this from just the sun. Had it been so concentrated that it did more than strip their human illusion? Breaking through not just the exterior, but chipping away at their animated death…
Hang on a second—
