“What are we talking about for cash.”

“I will pay three times what you were earning with Ricardo.”

“I’m in.”

“Good.”

Vitoria smiled and glanced around the barren room. Then she focused on him. “Now, tell me, what do you think happened to my brothers.”

* * *

—

“It’s the bonding.”

As the Brother Rhage spoke up, Ehric looked across the training center’s corridor. The pair of them were outside Assail’s room—and he was trying to ignore the arguing he could hear through the closed door. “What?”

“That scent. Can you smell it? I can. It’s his bonding for that woman—good call bringing her in.”

“We’ll see how successful it is.”

With a curse, Ehric paced up and down, but didn’t go far. The healers were still having an angry exchange and he wondered what in Fate’s name was being done to his cousin.

The Brother tapped the outside of his perfectly straight, perfectly proportioned nose. “Nah, when she came into the room, it woke him up. She did what nothing else could.”

“She sent him into a death rattle is more like it.” Ehric rubbed his eyes. “I had thought she might revive him with less trauma.”

“Love will bring him through. And then it’ll all be cool.”

“Your optimism is not something I share. And even if it does work, she will have to return to Florida.”

“Why?”

“She does not know.”

“That he lives here? I don’t get it. I thought she was—”

“What he is.” Ehric looked back at the Brother. “She does not know he is a vampire.”

Rhage frowned. “That’s not necessarily a deal breaker. My Mary didn’t know what I was and it worked out—well, it took a miracle. But they do happen.”

“ ’Tis all a moot point, if he dies the now—”

The door opened and Dr. Manello came striding out. “It worked. I can’t believe it, but it worked. For the moment, he’s back to being stable.”

Ehric all but jumped into that hospital room, except then he stopped dead. Indeed, his version of “it worked” was his cousin sitting up and asking for some pudding. Manello’s idea was clearly more along the line of a heartbeat and some respiration, and yes, one could put paid to that: Assail was lying back on that pillow, still tied down, still the color of the white sheets, still with his eyes closed.

But he was breathing on his own and that little graph of regular beeps suggested his heart was doing its job correctly. Or at least correctly enough so no alarms went off.

Doc Jane and the nurse were at Assail’s head, talking quickly, nodding and pointing to the machine readouts while they traded syringes.

Ehric looked at Marisol. The human woman was all the way in the far corner, her body shrunken in on itself, her eyes so wide she was nearly an anime version of herself.

He went over to her. “What may I get you?”

After a moment, her stare shifted to his face.

Something passed between them, something unspoken and powerful. And the next thing he knew he was opening his arms and she was in them like a sister.

“I don’t understand,” she said as she turned her face toward Assail. “This happened so fast. How much longer can he hold on?”

“I don’t know. I believe no one knows that. And let us not speak of it the now or here.”

“You’re right.” She pulled back a little. “I’m glad you came down and told me. I’m glad I’m here for him, for however long he has.”

Ehric nodded. “My cousin picked the right female.”

Marisol grabbed his arm and squeezed. “I’m not leaving. Not until it’s over. Just so you know.”

Ehric sagged in his own skin. “Thank you.”

Doc Jane came over and nodded to the door. “Let’s talk out there, okay?”

Ehric went across and held the way open. As the females filed past him, he glanced back at the nurse, who was adjusting something on one of the monitors. Then he focused on his cousin. Assail had always seemed indomitable, the sort of male who was so controlled and had such strength of purpose that whole armies might well fall before him, not because he was royalty, but because he would will it no other way.

And now there was naught left of him save a balded shell.

So this was the evil that death wrought, Ehric thought. It was the ultimate emasculator, rendering even one such as his cousin into a decayed shadow of what he had been, the essence departed with rind left to rot.

I shall take myself before I e’er allow this, Ehric thought. To hell with the Fade.

He would go unto Dhunhd before he conscripted himself to disintegrate until his heart stopped. Or better yet he would die with honor, protecting those he loved in battle—which now numbered three, he realized: Evale, Assail…and this human woman.

For loyalty shown unto his blood was loyalty earned.

As he joined the females, Doc Jane cleared her throat. “There’s no easy way to say this. But in spite of his brief return to consciousness, nothing really has changed. I’m not suggesting you take action tonight”—the doctor put her palms out toward him—“I just want to align your expectations. With the scans as they are, it is impossible—”

“He looked at me,” Marisol said in a steely tone. “He looked right at me.”

“Or he opened his eyes,” Doc Jane countered gently.

“No. You’re wrong.” Marisol went back to the door. “I’m going in there. Don’t bother saying anything else to me. I know he saw me.”

As the woman disappeared back into the room, Ehric had to smile. “He chose someone just like himself. She will not take no for an answer, Healer.”

Doc Jane shook her head sadly. “It’s not up to her, unfortunately. And I fear his body and brain have already made their decision.”

Ehric thought about all the time he had spent in this underground facility, all the nights, even some days, too. As much as he wanted to believe otherwise, he knew the doctor was right.

“I have brought her up here to say goodbye, then.”

Doc Jane put her hand on his forearm. “I’m really sorry about this.”

In an inexorable advance, exhaustion curled like a boa constrictor around his body, squeezing, squeezing, squeezing his breath and energy from him. “This is a nightmare, the ending of which is the only thing worse than its middle.”

“I wish I could have done more,” the healer said. “Just don’t feel rushed, okay? You and Sola and Evale take your time. We’re keeping him as comfortable as we can.”

Ehric looked over at the door. “I will not allow this to continue forever.”

FIFTEEN

Marisol…Marisol!

As Assail screamed the name of his female in his head, he floated above his body, sure as if his consciousness were a separate entity from its corporeal confines, a kite of self aloft in existential winds, tethered unto the flesh by an invisible string—that was held in his Marisol’s hand.

Her presence was what had pulled him back down here, to this hospital room in which he had watched over his body for how long? Her arrival here, unexpected, joyous, a miracle, had been a calling siren he had followed back from the foggy netherworld he had been transitioning into.

Marisol! he said again.

He was directly above her, hovering like a thought yet to be spoken. Why could she not hear him?

As he tried again, she lowered a hip upon the high mattress and brushed a tear from her own eye.

Do not give up on me, he told her. For you, I will come back…do not let them kill me.

When she started to cry in earnest, he smelled the tears and shifted around such that he could watch her. He wanted to have arms to hold her, a chest to pull her in against, a body to protect her and serve her with.

Instead, he was nothing but spirit.

“Oh, God, Assail…” She sniffed and took one of his tethered hands in her own. “I wish I had known. I would have come sooner. Is that why you were calling me? Why didn’t you talk to me when I answered? Why didn’t you tell me?”