Page 82 of The Reveal
Ty snorts at that. “You’re just bitching because you know she wouldn’t let a vampire into her house.”
Savi smiles at Ariel. “It seems as if you found a way to create a more intimate connection, didn’t you?”
I am still woozy, and I’m not sure that whatever Savi did healed me so much as numbed me, but I get that she means Ariel and me. And probably his mark that everyone can see. And there are a lot of things I’d probably want to say about that if I felt better, but I don’t.
Because now that Savi has given me a shot of a sorcerer’s painkiller, I’m remembering other things.
The way that woman held on to me. Her blood-drenched teeth.
And the fact that I think she wassmiling, not afraid.
I shudder, and my attention is drawn back to the center of the clearing again. Now that I’m warmer, it’s easier to focus, but it also means that I’m aware of all the things the pain blocked out. Not just that woman and her face and what she said to me, but the state of me. All the clothes I’m wearing are soaking wet, no doubt because of all the crawling and collapsing and flinging myself on the damp earth. I know better than to get wet on a mountain in the cold, but then again, I wasn’t expecting the crippling headaches.
That my head isn’t currently trying to kill me feels like a miracle.
But I’m beginning to think I might need more than one.
The three of them are standing there, venting their tempers at each other in highly charged yet ferociously careful words. What I see is this trinity of power who—unbeknownst to me until right now—are responsible for everything that’s happened here over the past three years.
Everything.
That tide comes for me again, this time a different kind of pain.
Because there we were, staggering around with no idea what was happening to us, watching friends and neighbors die horrible deaths, and all the while these creatures were ... playing power games?
I feel like I’m having some kind of seizure.
But it must be emotional, because there’s too much wrapped up in it that I can feel. And because I retain consciousness.
There’s the fact that Savi, unlike my other two tenants, is the one Gran talked to. And clearly already knew. That makes more sense now, but I didn’t have to know who Savi really was to understand that she made my grandmother a little calmer. Just by being there. I can’t discount that.
There’s the werewolf alpha himself, who I’m pretty sure is responsible for the fact there have been no zombies in my trash since Maddox moved in. No stray banshees in the trees, no tunneling goblins. He might not have approved of what Maddox was doing, or even signed off on it, but he supported her. He supports her and therefore me.
That makes everything complicated enough before I even get to Ariel.
I think of that rush of relief I felt when I found him again in that subterranean hell and how that’s really not something I should feel in his presence, ever. Yet I’m honest enough with myself to admit that the sight of him here has the same effect on me.
I don’t know if I can walk, but I want torunto him.
I’m not willing to look too closely at what that is. Much less what it might mean.
I’m afraid I know. And I don’t accept it.
Iwon’taccept it.
I pull in a breath. I glance behind me, and I can see the body of that woman on the altar, the still-smoking remains of the fire making her seem to flicker and shift when she isn’t actually moving at all. Nor ever will again.
Looking at her makes me shudder, and the medallion around my neck seems to burn again in commiseration. I remember that terrible blankness in her eyes. I see her mouth wide open, her bloodstained teeth. I can feel, once more, that spiral into darkness.
Even the memory makes me feel cold all over.
She is coming,the woman says in my head once more, but it’s mixed in with too many echoes of that same phrase. Gran’s dark words. That sickening voice in my nightmares.
The world starts to spin again, dark and drunken, and I try as hard as I can not to make the connection that’s right there in front of me—
But there’s no pretending I can’t see it. That it hasn’t been the point of all of this.
Vinca.
