Page 42 of The Curse of Eternity
“Apologies,” Drake murmured, so quiet I didn’t have a chance to wonder who he was talking to before I free-fell. My tailbone hit the frozen earth, sending a shock outward through every limb. I inhaled a gasp on impact, scrambling to get my numb-feeling legs working despite the cold cramping every muscle.
The stupid velvet skirt bunched across my knees when I rolled onto all-fours. Luck was on my side since I barely dodged another werewolf pouncing for me. Behind me, the sounds of a brawl was distinctive between the canine yowls and dull thuds of fists meeting fur-clad flesh. Except I didn’t dare look, my focus captured by the horrifyingthingtwo feet in front of me.
Adrenaline surged, overriding every discomfort. Even my breathing seemed like background noise. Too fast, the lycan sprang at me. Its eyes glowed, despair and pain obvious in its widening pupils, but its open maw overshadowed whateverhumanity remained behind the imperative to tear into my flesh. On instinct, I leaned away.
Raising my arms in a cross, I pulled my legs up and out from under me as my back hit the ground. The lycan hadn’t expected that, and I kicked out to hit the beast directly in the chest. Pain and terror helped my muscles to work double-time, launching the lycan several feet away.
A wet slap echoed through the narrow clearing, just like when we were in the parking lot across the street from the Two Fools Tavern. I didn’t have to look to know a bloodbath drenched the cold earth not far away. Struggling to stay in the moment, I tried to stand but my muscles spasmed when I crouched.
Shit—the lycan had regained its footing. It felt like a ton of bricks weighed down on me when I tried to stand, only to stumble and fall onto my side.Damn it,move!Hairs rose along the nape of my neck, and I sensed the shift in air behind me while gurgles slowly cut off to nothing. Then Drake was in front of me, his actions a blur as he intercepted the lycan heading for me.
This time, I didn’t have the luxury of my back being turned. Drake caught one of the beast’s elongated paws in a fist, his fingers clenching hard enough to break through the lycan’s bones. Blood spurted from the beast’s demolished front paw, but it didn’t make a sound. Instead, its mouth opened wide to reveal pointed sharp incisors.
Drake captured the lycan’s snout with his other hand, shoving the snapping jaws aside. My breath caught when my vampire didn’t hesitate to lunge for the lycan’s exposed jugular. The beast howled as Drake bit deep enough to tear through more than just a few layers of skin. When he pulled away, dropping the body, a chunk was missing from the werewolf’s throat.
I couldn’t do anything but stare in stunned silence while blood rushed from the lycan’s torn open flesh, pumping out its life.Then it went still, the strangely human eyes glassed over, and I looked up as Drake spat out a hunk of tissue. He seemed to hesitate before turning toward me. Fresh blood dripped from the corners of his mouth, covering the entire lower half of his face, down to his neck where his button-up shirt darkened—drenched.
With the back of his hand, he smeared the cascading blood across his chin. Something about it triggered the truth. Never before had Ireallythought of him as being undead. Not since I’d first encountered him at the abandoned warehouse, when my conditioning had overshadowed reason. Now, with his face coated in another’s blood and his posture unrepentant, I trembled.
He took a step closer, and I reached behind me, my palms scraping the sharp rocks protruding from the packed earth while my heart raced. Clearly sensing my knee-jerk reaction to flee, Drake halted mid-stride. Raven-dark eyes bore into mine, and the ferocity I’d seen in him a moment ago was nowhere to be found—replaced by an emotion I could only guess at. Disappointment, by the pursed set of his mouth, but it didn’t seem to be directed at me.
“Are you uninjured?” His voice hadn’t changed, still way too soothing and making me kick myself by how it calmed my rapid breathing but sped up my heart into a fury.
“Y-Yeah.” I finally exhaled a breath that felt like it’d been lodged in my lungs since before we left Albuquerque. His pale hand flashed out, and I startled, but he’d only been offering it to me. Drake’s stoic features hid the whirling thoughts behind his dark eyes. Hesitantly, I grasped his cold hand a split second before he pulled me upright.
The blood rushed down my limbs, making me sway, but I steadied myself by gritting my teeth. Drake’s hand hadn’t left mine, and he was already bending to lift me again when I said, “Ican walk.” It was a statement, not as sharp or prickly as my usual tone—and I blamed the blood loss for my weakened will. Drake frowned like he was about to argue, but his hand only squeezed mine before pulling me along in his wake.
“That is fortunate, because you will require some fortitude to cross.”
“Cross where?” I asked, staggering but catching myself before he had to. I refused to glance toward the dead littering the clearing while we walked away. A pang resonated through me at the memory of despair within the lycan’s eyes. It must have known it would die, and maybe that’s why it fought so hard.They—they were people, not things.
Not like the weapon of war they were forced to be.
With Drake’s hand holding mine, the pressure gentle enough that I barely felt the rough surface of his palm, it was hard to compartmentalize the version of him that I knew with the unfeeling monster I’d just witnessed ripping apart the lycans. Maybe that wasn’t a fair assessment. I had no idea what he felt when he tore apart flesh and bones to save my life,again.
Was it so different from what my family and I trained ourselves to do to survive and rescue others? Just because we decapitated and dismembered with a machete to make the process cleaner didn’t make Drake using his bare hands any different when the results were the same. Even knowing that the lycans were people, I would have struck them down just as fast if they’d gone after one of my own…
“The Hudson,” Drake replied, and my focus snapped back to the present situation.
“The river?” I balked, and then registered the thrum of rushing water not far off. That explained why we weren’t running anymore.
“We have to become submerged to prevent them from following us by scent. The lycanthropes may be of littleconsequence, but the other immortals will chase us as nobles did foxes. Once they have all fed to regain their senses. Can you swim?”
“I know how to, but will I make it? I’m so tired…” The forest became sparser, and through the trees ahead, the wide expanse of sky almost reminded me of home. Except the colors of dawn seemed wrong, more of a bruised-purple that hovered over the hills, visible on the other side of the dark emptiness which must have been the river.
Holy shit, how wide was it? The opposing shoreline was invisible beneath the inky black heavens, with only the tallest trees being discernible under the glow of impending day, each treetop as tiny as a toothpick.
“We will travel with the current to cross, enabling us to move downstream more quickly. Also—” His steps halted, pulling me to a stop beside him. Fading moonlight reflected the silvery shimmer off his striking features, masking what the day would reveal before long. His gaze held mine as we stood on the precipice of the riverside cliff. “I will be there to keep you afloat.”
Confidence colored his tone, and somehow, despite the wind off the river chilling me to the bone, warmth spread up from my chest to scorch my face.
“What would I do without you?” I mumbled.Wait, what did I just say?My face burned, but it was meant to be taken as gratitude. Except Drake’s pained frown made it seem like an accusation.
“Without my involvement in your life, you would still be safe in Albuquerque.” He turned away, angling toward the rocky rubble sloping downward.
What the hell could I say to that?
As much as I wanted to tell him that that wasn’t true, I couldn’t. He was right. Even if I didn’t want him to be. It’d be a lie to say that I had no regrets, because after the last several days,I was filled with nothing but confused feelings—my concept of ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ so utterly flipped upside-down that I felt like I was drowning well before reaching the water.
