Gabriel tried to speak. He tried to tell them she would wake up.
It was ok. Everything was going to be ok. She was ok. . . .
“Dearest little girl,” Inola sobbed as she moved Kara’s curls away from her face. “I’m so sorry. . . . I should have taken you from Gabriel long ago. I should have concealed you from the world. I should have been here. . . .”
Thomas did not move. His eyes were fixed to the ceiling, tears wetting his cheeks.
“Ok,” Gabriel muttered, his voice cracking. “Ok.”
Inola looked at him worriedly, and Thomas’s eyes snapped to him. “In what part of your twisted world is this ok, Gabriel?” Thomas hissed.
Gabriel tried again. “She’s ok.” A ragged breath shook him, and he clutched her closer. “She’s ok.”
Inola touched his shoulder lightly. “Sweet boy, she’s gone. I am so, so sorry.”
Gabriel shook his head. “No. No, she’s not. She has my blood. I have hers in me. I gave her my blood.”
Inola smiled in relief, tears falling freely as she stroked Kara’s hair. Thomas looked torn, half-relief, half-anger.
“She won’t want this,” Thomas said.
Gabriel’s eyes flew to Thomas’s. “I know.”
“This is the same exact thing that happened to your sister.”
Hot anger bled into Gabriel. “Is there anything else obvious about this that you want to point out?”
“How could you do this to her?” Thomas asked.
The rage seared, encasing his mind. If Gabriel had not been holding Kara, he would have killed Thomas for saying that.
“She was dying. I could feel her dying. I cannot live without her. I won’t live without her.” He turned away from Thomas and gazed into Kara’s beautiful face. Even in death, she was perfect. “She is stronger than Lucy. She will be all right.”
“She’s not stable. She was already very emotional as a human. She also has PTSD. All of that will be amplified,” Thomas argued.
“Thomas,” Inola warned.
Gabriel shook, holding his heart in his arms tighter, longing sickly in that moment to see the life leave his friend’s eyes.
“Thomas,” Gabriel said carefully. “Shut up.”
“She will hate you. You know that, right?” Thomas said.
“I will gladly take her hatred over her being dead! I have lived with her hatred before. It won’t last forever.”
“Human hatred pales in comparison to vampire hatred. Have you learned nothing from your rivalry with Elias?”
“Thomas!” Inola said.
Thomas ignored her, staring angrily at Gabriel. “You should have left her alone. The minute you started caring for her, you should have wiped her memory and let her go!”
Although he wanted nothing more than to go to Thomas and resort to violence, Gabriel could not make himself let go of Kara. And Thomas’s words were beginning to cut through Gabriel’s anger, seeking their way down into the endless guilt inside his heart.
Inola looked furious, obviously speaking aloud for Gabriel’s sake. “Keep your thoughts to yourself! It is done now, and nothing can change that! How many times have I told you that Kara becoming a vampire was inevitable?”
“He needs to understand!” Thomas snapped. “You thought she had to be watched before? Protecting her as a human was a cakewalk compared to how we will have to watch her as a vampire. She’ll be stronger, faster. She’ll be fast enough to run away from us and strong enough to fight us. She may even try to kill herself!”
Inola froze, and Gabriel stared at the wall beside Thomas.
“She won’t be able to kill me. I am her sire. But . . . she will try to kill me,” Gabriel said quietly, finally allowing Thomas’s words to fully sink in. “She will not be thinking clearly. She will not want my blood. The blood frenzy . . . ,” he choked on the words.
Tears fell from Gabriel’s eyes, and he looked to Inola in agony. “I hurt her when she needed me the most. The blood frenzy overtook me, and I . . . I . . .” Gabriel buried his face in Kara’s hair and sobbed as if she were truly dead.
“I’m the one who killed her. I did this. I did this to her. . . .”
“It was not you,” Inola said. “It was Elias. It was the knife wound.”
“It was me. It was me. It was me. . . .”
It took a long time for Gabriel to possess the ability to think clearly.
Gabriel knew they wouldn’t be able to get her back to the coven house before she woke up, and he didn’t want to deal with Kara’s awakening inside a moving car.
There was no use in even leaving his home; Elias had accomplished exactly what he’d wanted. Even so, ten members of Violet Memory were on their way after Inola called the coven house.
Inola and Thomas found all of the cameras and smashed them to pieces. After that, the two of them busied themselves cleaning up Gabriel’s bedroom.
It was easier for them to coax the cats out of the closet, easier for them to bury the dogs and burn the bloody sheets than to do what Gabriel was doing.
Gabriel tended to Kara inside the guest room where Thomas and Inola had stayed after he cleaned himself up.
And he felt like he was dying the entire time.
He washed Kara’s body, the water turning red as it dripped off of her. Each drop was guilt, stained with anger and regret.
He took out her stiches, but the wound didn’t heal. All of her other injuries healed, but the ones caused by the silver knife wouldn’t heal until the transformation was complete.
Eventually, there was nothing left to do but wait, and when that time came, Inola and Thomas were there with him.
Gabriel lay on the bed with Kara, his head propped up on top of hers, registering the changes in her body.
She had a pulse again. It was slow and sounded strange to him, as he was so used to her tachycardia. She was breathing again, the breaths steady and
