Roland’s large hands wouldn’t budge no matter how strongly Sarah fought.
Her throat thickened. Tears spilled down her cheeks. “Don’t do this, Roland. Please, stop healing me. I’m fine now. You have to stop healing me.”
His brow creased as his lashes lifted. When his eyes met hers, she bit back a sob. They should have been glowing amber from his skirmish with Bastien. Instead they were brown and one pupil was much larger than the other.
“You have to stop, baby,” she whispered hoarsely, cupping his face in trembling hands. “For me. Please, stop.”
He withdrew his hands. The heat faded away.
Sarah cried out when he toppled sideways and hit the floor. Flinging herself from the chair, she knelt over him. “Roland?”
“I’m okay,” he murmured. Bracing his hands on the floor, he pushed himself up to sit with his back against the wall. “I just lost my balance for a second.” His voice was weak, pained.
“What have you done?”
“What I had to.” Reaching up, he stroked her cheek with bloody fingers. “I couldn’t lose you.”
She covered his hand with hers and held it to her face. “But Bastien is coming.” She could hear his dragging footsteps entering the room behind her.
Roland glanced over her shoulder, expression hardening. “Help me up.”
“Roland—”
“Help me up, Sarah.”
Swearing silently, she wrapped her arms around his waist and, thigh muscles straining, helped heave him to his feet.
Roland leaned against the wall and glared daggers at Bastien.
Sarah looked back and forth between them and thought they both looked as weak as kittens. Yet recent experience had taught her that when it came to vampires and immortals, looks could be deceiving.
“You fractured her skull,” Roland growled furiously.
Sarah looked up at him in surprise.
Was that why her head had hurt so badly, why she couldn’t recall what had happened?
No wonder healing her had taken so much out of him.
“I didn’t mean to drop her,” Bastien snapped, surprising her even more. “I was running with her over my shoulder and she stabbed me in the ass.”
Her eyebrows rose.
Roland’s lips twitched as he lowered his gaze to meet hers. “You stabbed him in the ass?”
Sarah shrugged. “I don’t remember.”
She wasn’t sure why Bastien felt the need to offer an explanation. He still seemed intent on killing Roland, moving steadily closer with drunken steps.
Sarah bent and retrieved Roland’s sai, then positioned herself in front of him, feet braced for an attack.
Bastien shook his head. “Step aside, Sarah. This is between me and Roland.”
“What is?” she challenged angrily. “Why are you doing this?”
Bastien turned his head and spat blood, then pointed his blade at Roland. “He killed my sister.”
She sucked in a shocked breath.
“What?” Roland asked behind her.
“You killed my sister, you bloody bastard!”
Drawing on what little strength remained, Bastien attacked with a burst of preternatural speed.
Roland grabbed his sai and shoved Sarah aside.
Blades clashed and the battle resumed, slowed nearly to mortal speed by the toll their wounds had taken.
It took only moments for Bastien to perceive he would lose. Roland’s swings gained in strength as his own continued to weaken, driving him incessantly backward. Every breath was like a knife in his chest.
“Was she a vampire’s minion?” Roland asked through gritted teeth.
“She was an innocent,” Bastien denied furiously.
Roland’s sai connected with his sword, swung, and propelled it out of his hand.
It landed with a clatter on the far side of the room, where Sarah hurriedly claimed it.
“Then I didn’t kill her,” Roland insisted evenly.
That he would deny it after savaging Cat the way he had infuriated Bastien.
With no other weapon left him, he drove his fist into Roland’s temple.
It must have hurt like hell on top of the skull fracture.
Bastien heard Sarah cry out.
Roland’s eyes flashed from brown to glowing amber.
A second later, pain crashed through Bastien’s back as Roland hurled him into the wall with the chains in the next room and pinned him there, one of the manacles digging into his shoulder blade, with a hand at his throat.
“It wasn’t me, Bastien. The only innocents I have ever killed were my wife and my brother.”
“Bullshit!” Sarah blurted from the other room.
Bastien felt Roland’s surprise and confusion as Sarah marched toward them.
“That bitch wasn’t innocent and neither was your brother. They were the ones who handed you over to the vampire who turned you. Damn it, Roland, I told you to stop feeling guilty about that!”
Love and amusement replaced Roland’s confusion but couldn’t quite blot out old guilt.
“I stand corrected,” he drawled. “They weren’t innocent.”
When Roland’s grip loosened, Bastien drew in several jagged breaths and rested a moment in hopes of rebuilding a final burst of strength. “My sister was innocent. She knew nothing of this world, yet you killed her.”
“Is that her?” Sarah asked, motioning to the painting.
It was a portrait of Cat and her husband, Blaise.
“Yes.”
He waited for Roland’s reaction as he looked at it, knowing his gift would tell him the truth regardless of any lies the immortal may spout.
“I don’t know her,” Roland said simply.
Bastien frowned. Unless his gift was failing him, Roland truly did not recall seeing her. Then …
There it was. A spark of recognition.
“You’re lying. I can feel it. You recognize her.”
Roland’s expression darkened as he stared at the painting. “Not her. Him. Who was he?”
“Her husband. He was like a brother to me. You turned him after you ripped her throat out and made him watch her die.”
Roland looked at him sharply. “Who told you that?”
“He did.”
“He lied, Bastien. In all of my nine and a half centuries of living, I have never transformed a human.”
Bastien stared at him in confusion. He was telling the truth, or seemed to be. He hadn’t turned Blaise.
Then the rest of Roland’s words hit him. “Nine and a half centuries?”
“Yes.”
“That’s impossible.”
“No, it isn’t. There is an immortal fighting your men right now who is millennia older than I. Immortals live far longer than vampires.”
“Because you kill them!” he countered, incensed.
“Not all of them,” he denied, annoyingly calm. “We aren’t everywhere, Bastien. Vampires have always dramatically outnumbered us, finding safe havens wherever they could thrive unchallenged. Even so, the oldest vampire I have ever heard mention of had been a vampire a mere seventy-nine years.”
“What of me? I was transformed two centuries ago.”
Roland sighed and, releasing his hold, stepped back. “You aren’t a vampire. You’re an immortal.”
Bastien almost laughed. “Now I know you’re lying.” He wasn’t an immortal. He hated immortals. Had despised them ever since he had found a hysterical Blaise weeping over Cat’s torn and bloody body and learned that an immortal had killed her.
“It’s true,” Sarah interjected softly.
When Bastien looked at her, he felt a stab of unease.
There was pity in her gaze.
“That’s why Roland and the others haven’t killed you. You’re one of them, Bastien. They just didn’t know it until after you attacked him.”
A sick feeling slithered through him as he recalled the way Roland had intentionally avoided striking a killing blow. Though he had scored numerous hits during the fight, not one of the wounds Roland had spawned was fatal.