“I’m sorry, Tess.” He wiped his face with the back of one hand. A trickle of blood oozed from the corner of one of his eyes, and Raoul’s clinical voice continued in her head.

First it attacks a Vampyre’s small blood vessels then it leads to internal bleeding, shock, convulsions, unconsciousness and eventually death.

“You’re not going to die.” She turned very calm. “I won’t let you. Raoul told me about this. We have to drain you and get you a massive infusion of untainted blood as fast as we can. I need a knife.”

While she might have sounded calm, her hands were frantic as she patted his pockets. No knife. She whirled on her knees to search Diego’s body.

Come on. Come on. It couldn’t have been all flying bullets and trolls flinging garbage trucks. After the carnage tonight, there had to be a sharp object, somewhere.

Sirens sounded in the distance. With a dim sense of incredulity, she realized the entire confrontation couldn’t have taken ten minutes, and had probably taken much less time.

“Check the back of the SUV, in the weapons storage compartment.” Xavier sounded calm too, and he looked it, despite the blood leaking out of his eyes. “There will be a couple of knives, or at least a short sword.”

She sprang to the backseat and lunged for the back. Diego had left the compartment open and knives had been Velcroed to the inside of the lid. Snatching one, she scrambled back to Xavier. “How do you want me to do this?”

“We have to work fast. The poison’s been in my system for a few minutes already.” He held out his arms, palms up. “Cut both wrists. Go deep.”

Hesitating, she asked, “What about your tendons?”

He told her, “Don’t worry about it. If I make it, I’ll heal.”

“You’re going to make it,” she snapped. The terror hadn’t eased up, not in the slightest. It drove her on, like a devil riding her back, whipping her to the next thing, and the next.

She used the terror to strike with the knife. As the point drove deep into his flesh, he stiffened and sucked in a breath. Blood flowed out from the cut, in a shockingly plentiful river.

He held out his other wrist to her. “Again.”

She almost couldn’t see what she was doing, which was when she realized she was crying. Once more, she cut him deep, and his blood flowed freely, and there wasn’t going to be enough liquor in the world, or enough therapy, to get over the sight of him hunched in pain and drenched in his own blood.

His face twisted, and he doubled up and fell to his side.

She went down with him to the ground and embraced all of it, every last gory, wonderful inch of him.

“Don’t you dare give up. You’re not done yet.” Lifting him slightly, she took his head and guided him to the crook in her neck. “Come on, bite.”

Tess. His lips moved.

He had kissed her. Even with all the pain she could tell he was feeling, as it strained his strong body, he still kissed her.

She sobbed, “Xavier, if you don’t bite me, I will pummel you. No, I won’t, I’ll take the fucking knife to my own neck. I refuse to let you go. Do you think it matters in the slightest to me anymore? DO IT.”

A brief, sharp pain stabbed her skin, then warmth where his mouth rested on her. She felt the flow of her own blood and how he drank it. Despite the discomfort of sprawling on the ground, and the fear that after everything, she might still lose him, nourishing him felt so good. So good.

Thou fairest among women, he whispered in her head. My beloved is mine, and I am hers.

Ignoring the flashing lights that appeared at either end of the alley, she cradled him as close as she could.

Even though the time they had been together could be counted in hours, not days, they had already been through too much for it to just end.

It was too strong, surprising and beautiful.

Too necessary.

NINETEEN

The flashing lights grew closer, and people ran toward them. Reaching to her waist and sliding her hand around the butt of her Glock, she watched them sharply, looking for any sign they weren’t who they appeared to be.

Xavier had stopped feeding. Afraid he hadn’t taken in enough nourishment, she gripped him tighter. His body grew taut and he shuddered. The convulsions had started.

“Ma’am?” A uniformed policewoman approached them cautiously. “Ma’am, can you hear me? I’m here to help you.” She raised her voice. “These two are alive! Get paramedics over here!”

More people ran over, two of them wielding a stretcher, and a paramedic went to his knees beside them.

Taking her hand away from her gun, Tess said, “This is Xavier del Torro. Do you know who that is?”

The paramedic’s quick, intelligent gaze flashed up to hers. “Yes.”

“He’s been poisoned, and he’s dying.” The force of what she felt made the words snap out like a whip. “He has to have fresh blood now. A lot of it.”

The man shouted, “I need more help here. Stat.”

Others came running, and several people converged on them as the two paramedics pulled Xavier out of her arms and turned him on his back.

She stroked back his hair as she watched his face for any sign of consciousness. He had started bleeding from the nose now, as well as his eyes.

Don’t die. Please don’t die.

One of paramedics rolled up his sleeve and tried to offer blood to Xavier, but he was unresponsive. “He’s not taking it,” he said. “We need to do a direct transfusion.”

His partner pulled out phlebotomist equipment, tore open packages and started a direct transfusion from the paramedic to Xavier, linking them by needles inserted into their forearms. The procedure would have been impossible if Xavier had still been human.

Other people were talking. The words rolled over her.

“. . . His wrists are healing. We have to reopen the cuts.”

“We don’t have time to get him to a hospital—let’s get him off the ground. Put him on the stretcher. . . . Who else will donate blood?”

She moved with them as they lifted Xavier onto the stretcher and positioned him on his side so that one limp arm hung to the ground. One paramedic crouched to reopen the wound in that arm, using gravity to help drain the poisoned blood, while the other set up a new donor, the policewoman who had found them originally.

One of them asked, “How much poison did he take?”