Gabriel was looking at me with the eyes of a vampire who only knew that I was bleeding, and he was thirsty.
Elias chuckled. “Well, well . . . Looks like someone has lost too much blood. I actually didn’t anticipate this. It will be much better this way, even if you do kill yourself when you come to your senses. Go ahead, Gabriel. Give in to the blood frenzy. Drain your beloved dry.”
In a single fluid motion, Elias sliced me deeply across the stomach.
White-hot pain, worse than anything I’d ever felt, flew into every speck of my being.
I fell to the floor, my weight pinning my broken arm beneath me.
Through a haze of pain, I saw Elias’s body blur. He stopped at the doorway, smiled at me, and then he was gone.
Gabriel walked to me, his eyes glowing black, the irises swallowed entirely by his pupils. His fangs snapped from his gums.
“Gabriel,” I choked out in disbelief. “Don’t . . .”
He bent down, took me into his arms, and sank his fangs into my neck.
The worst part of it was that it felt good. The light, the bliss.
Gabriel loved me, but he wasn’t Gabriel right now. I could feel that it wasn’t him. In this moment, he was an animal driven by his most basic instincts. There was no willpower. There was no logical thinking. There was scarcely even an acknowledgement of who I was.
My Gabriel was gone, and in his place was the vampire I had always feared.
The light he was giving me was stronger than any pain-relieving drug, and my death ceased to matter anymore. I closed my eyes and allowed him to drink the life from me, neither one of us able to care what was happening.
“It doesn’t matter if Gabriel loves me. It doesn’t matter that we are Eternals. I know now that whenever a human crosses paths with a vampire, it ends in blood.”
I winced as I recalled the words I wasn’t even sure I had said, as they sounded so distorted.
Had I truly believed it, even in our first moments? Had I always truly known Gabriel would kill me, or had I always, even the first time I’d seen him, thought desperately that he wouldn’t?
With calm clarity, the buried truth resonated within me, pouring into him as well.
I had always known, and yet still I loved him.
Chapter 7 Kiss Of Blood
Kara’s revelation tore through Gabriel. Her fading thoughts, combined with enough blood to sate him, ceased the monster inside.
He blinked his eyes, felt the sweetness of her life inside his mouth and veins.
Cold awareness shook him as he lifted his head away from the puncture wounds.
“No,” Gabriel whispered.
What he saw in front of him was not real. It could not be real.
Kara was deathly still, her eyes closed. Her face was the color of bone. Black blood ran from the gaping cut in her abdomen.
Gabriel reached blindly behind him and grabbed a torn sheet, pressing the cloth as hard as he could against her wound.
Silver knife. Elias had cut her with a silver knife. The memory of it clashed inside his mind.
And the power of the blood frenzy he had been unable to fight . . . He saw himself standing over her. He had ignored her plea for him to stop. Instead of helping her, he had drained her life even more.
She was hardly breathing, and the nearest hospital was an hour away. An ambulance would never make it. He wouldn’t be able to drive or run her there fast enough before she bled to death.
“No . . . No . . . No. No. NO!”
He pressed harder against the cut. The sheet was nearly soaked through.
“Kara, please,” he begged uselessly.
Because he knew what he had to do. There were only two options.
Vampire blood could not heal the wound, and in this situation, could not replenish her blood loss in time. It was too late, and Gabriel knew it; she had lost too much blood. He could give her his blood, and she would die, but she would wake up as a vampire.
Kara’s blood already coursed through his veins. All she needed was his. She would hate him forever, but she would be alive.
Or Gabriel could not give her his blood, and her death would be permanent.
There really was only one choice, and he knew it.
He would betray her one last time. He would take away the choice that had been stolen from so many vampires, including himself.
He loved her too much to let her go.
Gabriel brought his wrist to his mouth and tore it open with his fangs, taking as much of his blood as he could into his mouth. He cradled Kara in his arms, allowing her head to fall back. He brought his mouth to her lips, parting them and forcing the blood from his mouth into hers in a kiss, rubbing her throat to help the blood go down.
When he broke the bloody kiss, Kara inhaled shallowly.
He waited for the next breath, but there wasn’t one. Her heart thumped once, twice. Three times.
Kara died in his arms. He felt her die.
A force welled up inside of Gabriel, something beyond pain. It sliced through him until nothing remained, until he was consumed with an agony that had no name. A raw scream poured from deep within him, and eternities passed as he held his heart in his arms.
He didn’t even hear them come into the house.
Thomas and Inola stood inside the doorway, stakes dropping from their hands. They looked around in horror, their gazes finding Kara’s lifeless body.
“No,” Thomas whispered. His steps faltered, and he fell back against the wall and slid to the ground.
Tears poured from Inola’s eyes. She came to Gabriel, staring at the scene in disbelief. As if she needed to reassure her perfect hearing,
