Valin had almost caught up to Bennett when the Paladin went all commando and burst through the bedroom door. He’d made it inside the room as far as the Paladin’s heels when the warrior roared. And because of the shock that Valin, too, experienced when he saw what was in that room, it was still almost too far away to stop what happened next.
Bennett drew his knife and lunged; Valin had no doubt he truly meant to kill with the blade.
Terror displaced shock and he dove after the warrior, tackling him around the waist and bringing him down just feet from where Gabby was stretched over Annie lapping at the jagged wound at the base of her neck. He needed to go to her, needed to stop this madness, needed to…fuck, he didn’t know. But he couldn’t do anything until he’d knocked some reason into Bennett.
“Bennett, wait—” An elbow jabbed into his side, taking away his breath and anything else he might have said. From there, their struggle devolved into a whole lot of hitting, rolling, scrambling, and cursing. Precious moments slipped by, fear spiking anew when someone leapt over them.
“Don’t hurt her!” he yelled, even as he slammed Bennett’s arm with the knife into the floor. Bennett swore, trying to roll, but Valin latched onto his wrist, twisting the arm behind him as he ground his knee into the Paladin’s back. From the other side of the room rose an enraged scream. A second later Gabby’s slight form went sailing across the bed and landed in a heap in the far corner.
Valin glanced up in time to see Roland leap over the bed, his feet barely making noise as he landed and began stalking across the floor after her, his eyes boiling a deep crimson as he cowed her into the corner of the room.
“Annie!” Jacob yelled and rushed by toward the crumpled form of his daughter.
“Back off!” Bennett growled from beneath Valin, straining against Valin’s hold.
“You won’t go after Gabby,” he told the Paladin, though he saved his glare for the handful of soldiers who were piling up behind the five-foot-six barrier named Karissa who blocked the ragged doorframe.
“How can you defend that thing?” Bennett asked.
“She’s not herself,” Valin said from between clenched teeth.
“She’s a rabid dog!” Bennett yelled, then closed his eyes, taking a long breath. “Just let me up.”
Stiffly, Valin rose to his feet, his body tense and ready, but all Bennett did was rush over and kneel next to Jacob, who was quickly and efficiently binding his daughter’s wound.
“Her pulse is lower than I’d like but steady,” Jacob told Bennett. “The wound was already stitched once. Looks like it was only reopened.”
A rumble rose from Bennett’s throat, but all he did was nod as he carefully began checking her over for signs of injuries beyond the visible obvious, which, shit, numbered a whole hell of a lot.
“Gabriella, stop this!” Roland barked, snapping Valin out of the surreal haze he’d been watching events unfold through. Annie fighting for her life, Gabby reduced to little more than a rabid animal. This was wrong. A nightmare.
Now if only I could wake up.
Valin eased over behind Roland, his focus completely on the snarling and spitting creature crouched in the corner that looked so very much, and so very little, like the woman he loved. After seeing the destruction in the hall, he half-wondered why she hadn’t ripped them all to shreds yet, but then he realized that she’d de-evolved even further since that bloodbath and was acting purely on instinct. Thank God Roland was the more dominant vampire; otherwise he might not be getting this chance to bring her back.
“Gabby…” Reaching for her, he stepped past Roland, but stopped when she lifted her head, her lips parted as she panted through her blooded fangs. There was positively no sign of recognition in her crimson eyes. Not even the most tentative thread of connection between them. The only thing he felt emitting out of those crimson eyes was pure, unadulterated hate.
Hollow horror settled around his heart, his lungs clamping down on the soiled air he breathed as the reality of his nightmare hit home. Gabby stood before him, her body painted in blood, her hair matted, her eyes red, and he couldn’t see one bit of the woman he’d made love to just hours ago. His Gabby was already gone.
You failed, again.
In his mind he fell to his knees, crushed beneath the impotence that seemed to be his curse. Why could he never be enough? As little more than a second-class Paladin he hadn’t been powerful enough to save Angeline, hadn’t been the protector of their child. And now…Gabby…
Not her too.
The world twisted, scents and colors becoming too sharp, the air like jagged blades sawing in and out of his lungs. Something snapped in his mind, sanity slipping askew as he tried to make sense of this reality. What did you do when there was nothing left to be done?
Rabid dog. What do you do to a rabid dog?
No! He wasn’t strong enough…he couldn’t…he wouldn’t survive…shouldn’t survive…
Then go with her.
A calm eased over him, a hidden pathway opening up before him. This wasn’t the end. He’d do what he must but they’d be together after, even if he had to follow her into hell.
“—all I can do for her. The sealant properties should help, but you still need to get her to a hospital.” Karissa’s voice, soothing, yet matter-of-fact as she spoke with the others over Annie, brought him back. That’s right; there would be witnesses to his fall unless he got them to leave.
Gabby’s gaze kept on shifting between the others and him, or more specifically the others and the hand he held on his knife. In fact, he sensed that knife was the only thing that kept her from attacking.
“Get Annie out of here,” he commanded, his eyes tracking Gabby’s own. She hissed as he switched the blade from his right to his left as if she knew it was his killing hand, which would suggest a state of memory and awareness that wasn’t evident in her crazed eyes. More likely she just didn’t like any sort of movement involving the knife.
He knew the moment Bennett, Jacob, and his team got Annie down the hall by the comfortable weight of the shade filtering back into those gaps in reality and easing the sharp focus of colors back out. Good—when he’d done what he needed to do, that is where he’d go. Only this time he wasn’t coming back.
“Valin,” Roland growled from behind him, alerting him to the fact that not everyone had left. “What the fuck are you doing?”
Guess Roland had, at one point, seen him fight with his knife in battle.
Despite the surreal sense of detachment, it was still difficult to draw enough breath to speak and even more painful to put the knowledge of necessity into words, so it was amazing to him when his voice came out steady and strong. “You know who Gabby was in her heart, Roland. Tell me, would she want to live like this?”
“Fuck…FUCK!” Roland roared, his own pain and loss exponentially fanning Valin’s. Valin clenched his teeth, trying to tone out Roland’s explosion.
Rabid dog. Put her down. You’d want her to do the same for you.
“Look at me, Roland. I need you to look at me,” Karissa said, her voice alone like a soothing bit of coolheadedness in a room burning with misery.
Roland growled again. Valin spared the briefest of glances to see Karissa wrapping her arms around her mate. It was only a split second, but long enough that their eyes met, a silent moment of understanding passing between them before she looked away and flickered out, pulling Roland along with her as she teleported.
And then it was just him and Gabby, though not really. Without the balancing effect of Karissa’s inherent light, he could feel the evil seeping out from every molecule in the room, the dark magic that had sunk into and sustained this house of horrors for so long like a living entity breathing for the house itself.