Rans nodded cautiously and reached for something on the table next to the bed. A moment later, the handcuffs popped free of first one wrist, and then the other. I sat up and stretched, rolling my shoulders. To my surprise, I didn’t feel stiff or sore. I looked at my right wrist. Aside from the blood spatters painted across it like some sort of bizarre modern art, there were no marks. No bruising.
“Zorah?” Rans asked, still with that same strange reticence coloring his tone. “Talk to me love. What do you remember?”
I blinked several times, struck once again by how clearly I could see the contents of the room, despite how dark it was. “We... were... running from the Fae?” I said, the words pitching upward until the sentence became a question.
“Yes, we were. And then?”
I tried to pump my recalcitrant brain for more information. “And... there was a boat?”
“We stole a bloke’s powerboat in Basseterre, on St. Kitts, yes.”
Try as I might, no more information seemed to be forthcoming. Instead of memories, there was a great big gap stuffed full of bad and wrong. Nothing more.
“I can’t remember,” I admitted, trying not to let panic overtake me at that fact.
Rans cupped my face between his hands, heedless of the gore covering us both. I could detect a fine tremor running through his fingers, and that realization tipped me closer to panic than even my lost memories had managed to do.
“What is it?” I begged, a vaguely formed suspicion beginning to coalesce in the depths of my mind. “Rans, tell me what’s happening!”
Anguish touched his blue eyes before he hid it behind a poker face seven hundred years in the making. “After stealing the boat, we made for Antigua in hopes of outpacing the Fae that were chasing us, so we could try to lose ourselves in the capital city. They were too fast, though. They caught up with us while we were still some distance offshore, and our boat stalled when their magic disrupted the electronic components in the engine.” He paused, his gaze boring into mine. “Is any of this ringing a bell?”
I tried to picture the scene he described. Flashes of... something... played out behind my closed eyelids. I saw a blond figure standing in a boat behind us, arm outstretched. I saw an explosion of red. A familiar form, slumping sideways and rolling into the water.
My eyes flew open. “They shot you—”
“Apparently so,” Rans said dryly. “At any rate, I woke up in the ocean. By the time I pulled myself together enough to transform into mist and fly after you, they’d already tethered their boats to ours. You and Guthrie were fighting six of them on your own.”
Again, I tried to picture it. “I don’t remember that part.” My right hand came up, fingertips worrying at the skin across my breastbone.
“You fought the way you always fight when lives are on the line,” he said in an odd tone.
I frowned, scratching absently at the place over my heart. “What do you mean?”
Rans sighed. “I mean that you somehow managed to seduce a bunch of straight-laced Fae into wanting you, and then you pulled animus from them until two of them collapsed dead at your feet. The others must have twigged onto what you were doing and cut the magical connection before you could kill them, too.”
Again, I tried to picture it without success.
“Oh,” I said stupidly.
“Guthrie succeeded in taking out three more of them, and I took down the fourth. You’d already been shot in the gut by that time, mind you.”
My mouth worked for a couple of seconds before words came out. “Is... Guthrie okay?”
He drew breath and held it for a moment before replying, “Guthrie is... more or less recovered. Physically, at least. I wouldn’t care to speculate about any potential mental scarring he might have suffered after draining eight or nine pints of succubus blood from his own granddaughter.”
“Um... he did what, now?” I asked.
Rans gave his head a tiny, sharp shake. “I’m getting ahead of myself. I tried to feed you my blood to heal you—”
At the mention of blood, my stomach gave a sudden clench of need—the reaction so visceral and unexpected that I glanced down at my belly button like some kind of dunce.
“—but you couldn’t keep it down. I managed to close the bullet wound by dripping my blood directly into it. Even so, you were weakening. I have a theory that pulling so much Fae animus at once poisoned you. Fatally.” I looked up, startled, and Rans’ piercing gaze trapped mine. “It poisoned you fatally, Zorah.”
My hand pressed flat against the space between my breasts, where I’d been mindlessly worrying at the skin with my fingers. No heartbeat pulsed through the cage of flesh and ribs. Understanding dawned.
“Oh,” I said again.
He was still staring at me as though he expected me to, I dunno... curse at him, or hit him or something. To rail at him...
Like Guthrie had railed at him.
I dragged my hand away from my unbeating heart and cupped his jaw. It was sticky with blood.
“Thank you,” I whispered.
His chest gave a sharp lurch as though he’d gulped a breath in reaction to my quiet words. He leaned forward and I met him halfway, our foreheads resting together. I could feel him shaking.
“I figured out fairly quickly that you were craving sex as well as blood,” Rans said into the space between us, the words spilling out as though they’d been dammed up, waiting to tumble free. “Guthrie had to be the one to turn you, Zorah. It was the only way, because I will always die in the same instant that you do. I couldn’t have finished the job on my own. But since then, I’ve been the only one to feed you. We’re in a rental villa south of St. John’s right now. He’s been mesmerizing random tourists and bringing them back here to keep me topped off.”
I took a moment to process
