Chapter 19

CHAPTER

NINETEEN

I regained consciousness upside down.

It took me a few blinks to understand what I was seeing, but thankfully the moonlight helped illuminate the ground. I watched Zane’s leg moving, the shadows of the tall trees around us casting long stretches of darkness across the ground.

One of Zane’s arms was hooked behind my knee, my stomach across his shoulders and my right arm held in one hand. I could smell the cool breeze tossing dead leaves around, and I tried to lift my head to see the sky.

“Are we outside?” I asked stupidly, then wrung my eyes shut to blink some sense back.

“Yes,” Zane answered, continuing to walk. “We’re heading back to the car.”

“Can you put me down?”

“You passed out, hunter. I don’t think you should try walking.” He grunted. “Stop wiggling.”

“Your shoulder is pointy.”

“Deal with it.” He adjusted me a bit over his shoulders, the jabbing in my ribs worsening.

“How are you so damn bony?”

“Because I have bones,” the oh-so-hilarious Thrall quipped. “Hunter, I’m going to run you into a fucking tree if you don’t stop moving.”

“Then let go of me, you giant, bony ass.” I used my free arm to poke his side, which caused the best reaction possible. He jerked hard and huffed a noise of annoyance, and I practically squealed with the result. “Are you ticklish?!”

Before I could try to test my theory, Zane put me down.

And by “put me down” I mean he dropped me like a sack of bricks.

I landed on my shoulder and it hurt, but it was so, so worth it.

Barnaby added aid by shining his flashlight in my face.

“I see you’re back to yourself again,” Barnaby said. “You were out cold for a little while.”

“How did we get outside?” I pulled myself to my feet and whined a bit from the aches in my body. “I thought it was too steep to climb back up?”

“Barnaby found a secret exit behind the altar.” Zane nodded his direction. “It led us through without any issues, but we’re a little further from the entrance to the crypt.”

“I remembered it from my research,” Barnaby explained without prompting, seeming a little more sweaty than he should. He was busy swinging his flashlight around instead of focusing on anything in particular.

“Huh. Lucky,” I mused. “Funny that the archeologists didn’t mess with it but felt the need to add it into the book.”

Barnaby coughed and adjusted his bag.

“Who knows why. We should probably keep going, right? It’s getting late and we have a long drive ahead.”

“Barns,” I tried, but Zane distracted me by picking some dirt out of my hair. I swatted at his hand, only then remembering the horrible cut on his face. The swelling had gone down just a fraction, but the wound itself was still angry and raw. “Saint, Zane. Your face. Does it still hurt?”

“It’s not pleasant.”

“Will you heal if you drink blood? That’s not…permanent, right?” I took my knife out and he shook his head, motioning for me to put it away.

“Yes, it will heal, but I’m fine for the time being. We need to focus on getting to the car.”

“It’ll take two seconds. Here.” I tried to put the blade to my palm but he stopped me, his hand touching mine.

“Hunter, you can barely stand. I can handle a little discomfort while you get your strength back.”

“Zane, that’s not ‘a little discomfort.’ You have a hole in your cheek.” My heart thumped poison through my chest at how horrible the injury looked, the sound of his screams still haunting me.

He was hurt. Wounded. His cheek punctured with a slice of life magic that my family caused. Austin had tortured him because I hadn’t answered the way Magnus wanted, and I hadn’t stopped it fast enough.

Zane was hurt because of me, because I had a fucked-up family dynamic and couldn’t handle my own bullshit.

“Dallas,” he started softly, but I surged ahead.

“Let me do this,” I told him, chest aching. “Let me help.”

“This isn’t your fault.”

“How the fuck do you figure that?” I snapped, guilt festering into cruel anger. “All of this shit is my fault, Zane. We could have died, do you understand that? The Saint’s Army kills people like us—” I heard myself say it, admit it finally, and I felt something slide apart and break.

People like us.

I wasn’t human anymore, not in the same way I had been.

I had become a monster, a necromancer. A part of the Death Goddess’s harem.

It terrified me that I wasn’t repulsed by the idea anymore.

Barnaby cleared his throat, his discomfort thunderous.

“I’m going to…go on ahead and find the car,” he told us, backing away. “This seems important and shouldn’t involve me.”

I heard Barnaby retreat, slowly at first but then picking up speed to let Zane and I hash out whatever the hell I was currently unpacking.

“People like us,” Zane said. “Don’t owe each other apologies.”

“I’m sorry anyway,” I countered. “Even if you don’t need to hear it, I need to say it.” I rolled my knife around in my grip. “This whole trip has been a nightmare. Saint, the whole damn week has been a nightmare, who am I kidding?”

“It had its highlights.” He smirked when I looked at him like he was an insane idiot. “We got to crash a gala and wear nice suits.”

“I got my ass kicked during the gala,” I reminded him.

“Bonus.” He casually dodged my attempt to hit him.

“We went through hell—or more specifically, a dark, terrifying crypt—conversed with the council, who is now ultra dead, dealt with my shitty family, and we still have nothing to show for it.” I gestured around at the bleak cemetery we were still standing in. “I fail to see the highlights in this.”

“We’re not dead,” Zane answered with a shrug. “Therefore, we have the opportunity to continue to figure this out. This isn’t the hardest we’ve been knocked down. Wallowing doesn’t look good on you.”

“I fucking hate your optimism, you know that? It’s annoying.” I exhaled a full breath, the tension easing in my chest. “And I wallow like a champ, fuck you very much.”

“Noted.”

I flipped my knife open and flexed my free hand, mentally preparing myself for the slice of pain across my palm and the promise of what was to follow. It felt different that time.

I felt different that time.

“Thank you.” I swallowed. “For what you said back there. For standing up for me.”

Zane gave a nod, his red eyes focused on me. The weight of them was hard to bear, so I watched my skin as I rested my blade across it.

“I give you this gift…” I began, pausing when Zane started to laugh. “What the hell are you giggling about?”

“I don’t giggle.” He continued to giggle. “You don’t need to say that.”

“What are you talking about?”

“The whole, ‘I give you this gift,’ thing. You don’t need to say it.” His giggling turned into a real chuckle, the kind of laugh he wielded when I was annoyed or angry about something. “It’s all bullshit.”

Somehow, through his stupid Thrall magic, his laughter jumped off him and landed on me. My annoyance was smothered with the infectious laugh, murdering any hopes I had of staying angry.

“Barnaby read it out of that stupid book!”

“Yeah, I don’t know what that was about. I had never heard of it before that point.”

“You’re telling me,” I aimed my knife at him, the threat not even registering to the giggling, tall, undead jerk. “I’ve been saying all that stupid nonsense this whole time for no reason? Why the hell would you make me say all of that crap?”

“Because it’s really funny,” he explained, fully proud of himself.

“I don’t like you.”

“Yes, you do.”

The hand that had been offered up as a sacrifice was taken in his, his skin bordering on cold from being drained. A thumb traced over the pathway the blade usually took, caressing a soft line across my palm.

“We almost killed each other the first time we met.” Zane lifted his eyes from my palm to look into mine. “You tackled me over the railing of an abandoned hotel and we fell two stories.”

“I remember.” My smirk wasn’t strong enough to stick. “I stabbed you three times; you dislocated my shoulder. It still clicks if I sleep on it wrong.”

“Four times,” he corrected. “I’d never been tackled like that. I had never faced a hunter that charged headfirst into a Thrall, ready to embrace the void with no fear. I saw it in your eyes that day. You were something I wasn’t ready for.”

Something in my chest moved. It clicked and rotated and my heart started to fight against the tug it caused. Zane’s eyes were boiling blood under the filtered silver of the moon, skin ash and lips the color of a dying rose petal.

He whispered to me in the cemetery, surrounded by death and shadow, and I didn’t stand a chance.

Not a damn chance.

“I knew that day I was going to be your vampire.”

For the first time in my life, I didn’t know what to say. I couldn’t speak. I couldn’t do anything other than take him by his stupid, handsome face and kiss him.

I kissed Zane. I was kissing a vampire.

No.

I was kissing my vampire.

If there had been any lingering part of myself that recoiled at the idea of touching a vampire in any other way than violently, it had been evaporated the moment I felt his lips on mine. He was cold but wonderful, lips catching mine as his icy palm cupped my cheek. My world fell into grave flowers and wet earth with every breath, my fingers tangled in the silky mane behind his head.

The breeze around us cooled me as my blood started to heat, my tongue teasing his lips for an invitation. I wanted to know what he tasted like, what this undead man’s mouth felt like in mine. It was thrilling and shattering all at once, my sensibilities dying a slow death under the wave of molten curiosity of the unknown.

I didn’t know when we moved, or when I had started walking backwards as Zane guided me, but my back pressed against the smooth surface of a mausoleum. My weight leaned back against the marble, freeing my legs to move without the burden of holding me up.

Zane caught me under my thighs as I jumped and wrapped my legs around his waist, his hips pushing against me just how I wanted. I felt him smile at my happy exhale, his tongue finally coming out to play.

I had never tasted vampire tongue before.

It was a new, surprising experience.

While his skin was cold, his mouth was deliciously warm, tongue demanding and tasting like rain. I gripped him with my legs like I was worried he was going to escape, and Gods help me I wanted to hold on to his hair forever. I loved his longer hair, loved how soft it was, loved how it felt in my fingers. The urge to touch him was making me crazy, and I was embarrassed that I was intimidated to grab at him like I usually did with my more…carnally inspired meetups.

It was kind of delightful that Zane made me feel a little bit like a teenager again. He was new, unfamiliar—a road I had never traveled before. I felt the same type of magical ants I normally felt when wielding power march around in my belly with the idea of exploring more of him. It kept me from slipping my hand under his shirt like I wanted, desperate to touch his chest hair.

Zane pressed his hips into mine, a shudder dancing up my spine at feeling his ridge against mine. My breath hiccupped, lips parting to sigh, and I dove into his mouth to get lost in the invitation he was giving me. I wanted more; more of him, more of his touch, more of his wonderful mouth?—

“Ow, fuck.” I jerked back out of reflex from the pain, the sharp stab of his fang slicing through my tongue like a razer. My head bumped the marble behind me and I winced.

“Mind the fangs,” the vampire said around his heavy breathing. “They’re still sharp.”

“No shit.” I dabbed my tongue with my knuckle, a red smear painted across it. “Damn, you got me good.”

I heard the shift in his breath before I realized what I had been doing. The red in his eyes flared before being eclipsed by his expanding pupils, gaze locked on my lips. His fingers dug into the meat of my thighs as he leaned harder into me, the evidence of how excited he was made me squirm a little.

“You can’t kiss me without permission, can you?” I grinned at how he growled. “Oh-ho. This is great.”

“Hunter.” Zane bared his teeth, wild and feral with blood desire. “This is not going to end well for you if you play this game.”

“Yeah? What will happen?” I bit my lip as I squeezed my legs around his hips. He shivered, and I almost melted into a puddle from watching it.

“You think you’re being cute, but I warn you, I’m a bastard if you test me.” He moved his hands up from my thighs to my ass and squeezed. “I can give you anything you want. I’m yours to command. But if you keep your tongue from me, your warm, blood-flavored tongue, I will leave you in this cemetery unsatisfied and whining.”

“Mine to command? That’s a tall order, vampire.”

“Then challenge it, hunter,” he snarled. “Test my abilities, but not my patience.”

With anything on the table, my sexual curiosity won out over my almost overwhelming desire to fuck with Zane. It was a close race, I’m not going to lie, but I didn’t want to be left in the cemetery unsatisfied with only myself to blame.

I gave the grumpy vampire what he wanted and kissed him, sliding my cut tongue into his mouth to taste.

Apparently having a cut on my tongue and having him licking at it counted as a feeding for him, because the jolt of ecstasy that pulsed out from our kiss was bone melting.

If I had felt like a teenager before with all my gooey feelings of hesitation, it was nothing compared to the unhinged, hormonal explosion that happened now during our blood kiss. I went from teasing him and getting tingly about imagining touching his chest hair, to basically fucking him with my pants on. Only teenage levels of horniness would excuse the noises I was panting into his mouth, or how shameless I was in bucking my hips into his.

It would have been fatally embarrassing if I gave even an atom’s worth of a fuck, but in the moment, I didn’t care if the entire planet saw us.

I had never wanted anything more than Zane in that moment, and I made it evident by running my tongue over his fang again.

The taste of rainwater was gone, the swirl of metal and blood was everywhere. Pain danced along the edges of the sea of pleasure my body was floating in, like sharp rays of sun biting through the waves. Zane’s cheek healed, his skin brightened and came back to life, and I ran my fingers over the rich stubble that coated where the wound had been.

I felt my body tense, the curl of passion tightening with each new swipe of his tongue. His teeth nipped at my bottom lip, a fang gliding along without piercing it, making me jerk with the promise. His lips moved off mine, landing across my jaw until they came to a tense pause under my ear.

Just as the pain had danced along the edges of pleasure, fear teased the line of excitement. My heart began to storm, the twisting in my chest churning so definitively that it took my breath away. My fingers clung to Zane’s jacket as he breathed against my skin, hot and hungry, one hand moving up to curl at the nape of my neck.

He took his time, lips gliding down onto my neck, his grip easing my head to the side.

“Zane,” I managed to plead, my breath catching as my heart swung like an ax. I was shaking, from lust or fear I couldn’t tell, because the two had combined into a sensation I couldn’t fully process. All I knew in that moment, that defining, heart-pounding moment, was that I knew I wasn’t going to be the same again.

When the vampire touched my neck, his lips planted the softest, most sincere, wonderful kiss right across my rose tattoo.

Right across the scars I had hidden underneath.

No teeth. No pain.

A promise—a vow.

The rotating in my chest stopped, all the pieces coming together in a perfect line, and I felt a fuse lighting within me. The pressure across my sternum almost hurt with the sudden intensity, and I felt the warning knock come just a few seconds after.

Zane dropped my legs as I pushed back, the ache stealing my ability to explain what I was feeling. When I felt the cannon fire building behind my ribcage, I shoved Zane aside just in time for a magical burst to rip itself free from my skeleton.

The stick that had been playing peek-a-boo in my chest for the past twenty-four hours shot out of me like a spear, destroying my shirt in the process. It spiraled out in a cartwheel, arching into a sideways spin before landing with a deep slice into the thick trunk of a gnarled tree.

Not only had it taken flight from my body, but it had also changed its shape, bending into a soft curve on one end while the other changed entirely. It wasn’t the sudden, mildly painful but dramatic discharge that left Zane and I staring at it in dumbfounded horror.

It was the sharp, crimson scythe blade that formed out the top that had buried itself deep in the tree trunk.

We stood in silence a long time before creeping over to it, the silver moonlight gliding over the blade’s curved edge. The stick—which was now the handle of a scythe—was the ivory color of bone, etched with runes that spiraled up from the bottom. The blade was the color of crystalized blood, comprised of glassy ossified feldspars of concentrated necromancy magic. The dark magic within the blade bent the light into its own hues of black that didn’t exist for the living, whispers of the void within its creation.

“You see that too, right?” I asked Zane, worried that maybe I had finally snapped or died.

“Yes.”

“Is that?—”

“Yes.”

“Did…did we do that?”

He shook his head slowly out of my peripheral. “I have no idea. Careful,” he added as I reached for it. “Careful, hunter.”

I wasn’t sure why I wasn’t more afraid of the damn thing, but I pressed ahead all the same. The bone handle was cool when I reached out and tapped it with my fingers, slapping the thing like I was testing to see if it was hot. My hand came away intact, and the world around us didn’t explode, so I reached out again for a more confident attempt.

The curve of the handle felt smooth under my fingertips as I ran them over the length, tracing the gentle wave of the scythe up to the blade. The runes were carved deep in the bone, magic beyond my understanding radiating out from it like an unwavering flame. When I dared to tap against the blade, it felt as if my body heat was absorbed into it. Where it had buried itself into the tree was cut so clean, so perfect, that it almost seemed like the tree had grown with a massive gouge down the side, instead of it being shanked by a flying, magical scythe.

I was expecting more of a fight when I gently wrapped my hands around the handle and tugged, but the thing came away silky smooth.

The weight of bone and death magic solidified felt heavy yet somehow familiar, like I had always had this weapon stashed away. I twisted my grip to rotate the blade, the reflection splintering into jagged, geometric lines. Traces of the void traveled like smoke around the crystalized edges, and I knew without reason that this blade was mine.

It was made from me; my magic solidified, the necromancy crystals from my bones, reshaped and repurposed into the divine blade of the Goddess.

“Dallas.” Zane brought me back from staring at the weapon honed from my chest, his eyes locked onto the deep carving in the tree trunk. Something was wrong with it.

Or moreover, something was dead about it.

I peered into the scar, sucking in a breath through my teeth. The endless darkness that stared back at us was infinite nothing, a cold window into the endless.

We had accidentally opened up a sliver into the void.

“That’s not good,” I mumbled.

“We can’t leave it like that.” Zane took a step toward it. “If we opened it, we can close it.”

“Maybe?” I followed him, not feeling particularly qualified to be making any decisions. “This is where it would be useful to still have a council member around to ask.”

“I worry about it spreading or opening up wider.” Zane paused by the tree and nodded to the scythe. “Try running the blade over it again.”

“The blade is what made it open, so I don’t think that will help.” I held the scythe out to him. “Hold this.”

Zane recoiled from it like it was a snake at first, then did the quick tap test to make sure he was allowed to touch it. We didn’t know the rules of the damn thing, so I didn’t blame him for being terrified of it. It was scary, powerful enough to rip a hole through the fabric of reality, and a tool of his Goddess.

He was correct to be a scaredy cat.

When it didn’t seem like the scythe was going to bite him for touching it, Zane took it from my hands and held it with the reverence and awe of a vampire holding his Goddess’s weapon. He turned the blade in his grip, tracing the runes with his fingers, and whispered a prayer I didn’t catch.

While he fawned over our new toy, I went to inspect the void gash in the tree. The darkness peering back at me from the trunk was haunting, even if I was intimately familiar with the other side at this point. There was a stark difference between dying, or almost dying, and dancing on the line between life and death, and having death staring at you from the living world. Peering into the void while I was fully alive made my blood run cold, my insides shriveling up in a creeping dread that I was looking at something my mortal mind shouldn’t be able to fathom.

I flexed my hand and reached for it, and the tear began to knit itself back together. The tree’s bark crackled and shifted, the carved wood reforming where the tear had been. The void turned into natural shadow, dropping away like it had all been a dream.

To be sure it was gone, and for my own sanity, I touched the cold bark where the void had been, meeting with the dry, damaged wood of an old tree.

“If I hadn’t seen into the void before, I would be convinced that wasn’t real,” I whispered. “It melted away so fast.”

“I don’t think we’re supposed to have this, hunter.” Zane turned the blade again, the awe turning into understandable concern. “This is beyond us.”

“We can agree on that.” I took the blade back and gave it a slow inspection. “No one should have this, especially since it can cut a fucking tear into the void. This is…Saint, Zane. This is a world-ending weapon. We have to find a way to destroy it.”

“We’ll find a way,” he agreed, solemnly. “I hate to defy the Goddess, but this is not meant for mortals.”

“Let’s get the hell out of this place. Maybe we can figure out how to stash it back in my chest to keep it hidden until we figure out how to destroy it.” I started back on the path to the car, Zane at my side. The bony handle didn’t respond as I pressed it to my chest, and the rune carvings didn’t seem to want to shift or rotate along the handle anymore.

The trek back to the car didn’t feel as monumental as the voyage out, and we arrived back at the front of the Silence Steps with the moon still hanging in the sky. Barnaby was waiting for us in the back seat, not even budging after Zane leaned in to pull the trunk release.

It felt a little like sacrilege to drop the Goddess’s death scythe into the trunk of a car, but I didn’t want to throw it into the back seat with Barns. If he panicked and dropped the thing, I was worried it would rip a hole into the bottom and we’d all plummet into the void or something equally terrifying.

The trunk would have to do.

“I’m ready to get out of here,” Barnaby said as we climbed into the front seats, Zane taking the first shift as driver. “I want to be back home in my bed, away from all things death themed.”

“Amen,” I agreed, leaning my head back. “We can all agree this trip has been a touch more stressful than planned.”

Zane brought the engine to life, a smirk playing at his lips. “Maybe not all of it.”

I coughed to cover the smile threatening, butterflies dancing up my chest. The deadly tingles that fired off at the memory of our little moment in the cemetery made me shift in my seat, and I reached up to confirm that my emotional blocker was still set.

I got a new wave of cold horror when I remembered it wasn’t.

And hadn’t been.

For quite some time.

Enough time for me to go through all the stages of grief for my very well-maintained stone wall I had placed between us that had been shattered to smoldering rubble.

That bastard had felt everything.

Everything .

“Fuck,” I whispered, and Zane chuckled in a way only a very satisfied vampire could.