House of Ravens (16 page)

I shake my head, surprising the smile.

There are so many secrets and hidden motives
in my world. I don’t stand a chance at uncovering them all.

That sense of dread that hangs in the air
suddenly grows thick and cold. The hairs on the back of my neck
stand on end. A sound pricks in my ears and I turn to scan the
trees that surround us.

“
Elle, get back inside,” I
whisper, throwing my arms up and backing toward her.

“
Are they back?” Quickly,
she begins running back toward the back door, me blocking her the
entire time as my eyes flick from one tree to the next.

Elle has just rounded the steps when a
beastly cry rises from the back side of Ian’s cabin. In a motion
that is invisible with its speed, the figure darts across the lawn.
My knees bend and my fangs lengthen. We meet over the grass in a
great collision.

Yellow eyes burn back at me as my hand
closes around a throat and jagged fingernails scrape my side. The
man gnashes his fangs at me.

I may be stronger in species, but the man is
built of muscle.

“
Don’t!” I hear an
unfamiliar voice cry from inside the house. “We’re supposed to
bring her in!”

My attacker buries a swinging elbow into my
gut, throwing me back ten feet and slamming into the ground.

“
But she smells…” I hear a
deep breath taken in.

Just then, I hear Elle scream.

With a bellow of my own, I get to my feet
just as the man reaches me. Sliding a stake from my purse, I meet
him with a quick swing, embedding it into his chest and tossing him
to the side.

Not hesitating a second to be sure he’s
fully dead, the ground blurs beneath me as I dart into the
house.

A figure flees out the front door. A woman
with tangled and dirty hair hovers over Elle, who lies on the
floor, still as can be.

I swing back the stake and bury it in the
woman’s back, straight into her heart, cracking multiple ribs with
the effort.

She slumps to the ground, dead.

“
Elle!” I scream, climbing
over the woman and pulling my future sister-in-law from beneath
her. Her face is ghostly white, her eyes closed. She groans in
pain. “Elle, open your eyes, honey.” I pat the side of her face.
“Open your eyes, please.”

Her eyelids twitch slightly, before opening.
Her eyes roll around in her head, but they can’t seem to focus.

“
No,” I mutter as I scoop
her up into my arms. “No, no, no!”

In a flash, I’m through the house and
barreling through the woods. I can run faster than I could get
there in my car. The trees whip by, Main Street is but a brief
flash before I’m darting through neighborhoods and back yards,
hopping fences and startling dogs. A huge field stands between me
and my House.

“
Elle, can you hear me?” I
call to her as I near the Conrath fence. “Please.”

I swear under my breath when her eyes only
flutter once.

I take the fence in a great bounding leap
and start out over the property.

“
Ian!” I scream, knowing if
he is home that he will hear me. “Elle’s been bit! Call
Nial!”

When I get to the doors, Markov is already
there, holding it open, telling me Ian is getting ready in the
kitchen.

“
What the hell happened?”
he demands as he pulls on some gloves and is a flurry of action
with some clear tubing. Three bags of blood already lie on the
island, where I lay her.

“
Someone broke in again,
stole toxins,” I share. “We were rounding the rest of it up when a
few Bitten attacked. They way they were talking, I think they were
supposed to take her, but one couldn’t control their thirst. One
was on me and the other bit her before I could get there. They’re
both dead, but I don’t know how much blood she took from
her.”

Ian swears. “Why would they want to take
her?”

I shake my head, fear and adrenaline eating
me up.

“
So there’s a chance she’s
going to turn?” suddenly Cameron’s voice comes from behind us. I
turn to see the wary and scared expression on his face.

“
Not if I can help it,” Ian
growls as he pokes the needle part into Elle’s arm.

“
Where’s Anna?” I demand of
Cameron.

“
Out patrolling town,”
Lexington says as he walks into the kitchen. He stuffs stakes into
his pockets and slings a crossbow over his shoulder. “I finally got
a lead off that computer and she went with Smith to check it
out.”

Markov walks into the kitchen, and we share
a suspicious look.

“
I need the three of you to
go out and scout your asses off,” I growl. “I have no idea if there
were more of them out on the property where we were attacked. You
check it out and call Anna.”

The lot of them nod and dart out of the
kitchen.

“
Come on, Elle,” Ian begs
as all he can do is wait for the blood bag to run into her fragile
body. “Don’t you dare turn on me.”

“
We will keep her safe,” I
say, attempting to be comforting as I walk back to the kitchen
counter where she lies. “If she turns, we’ll teach her, make her
one of us.”

“
She’s not turning,” he
growls. He shakes the bag at me, telling me to hold it. I take it
and watch as he hooks up another bag, puncturing her other arm, and
letting the blood flow into that one, as well.

“
I’m sure praying she
won’t, either,” I say, letting my voice grow quiet. “But I’m
just…if she does, at least she won’t have a Debt. I killed the
vamp-”

“
She’s not turning!” Ian
bellows, shaking the bag, as if trying to get it to slide into her
body all the faster.

“
Alivia?” Nial’s voice cuts
through the House as the front doors burst open.

“
In the
kitchen!”

Instantly, he appears in a rush, and he goes
into ER doctor mode, checking her over, testing her pulse. He pulls
a stethoscope from the bag he brought with him, listening to her
heart.

“
She lost a lot of blood,”
he says grimly. “Her heartrate is very slow, uneven.”

“
Is it getting better,
though?” Ian asks in a growl.

Nial gives him a saddened look, his eyes
telling the truth that he’s doubtful. But he places the earpieces
in once more and lays the round part to her chest again.

“
It’s fractional,” he says,
keeping his eye on the second hand of the clock above the stove. He
doesn’t say anything for a good sixty seconds. “But it’s
rising.”

Still, he doesn’t sound hopeful.

“
It’ll be enough,” Ian
says, looking back down at Elle’s face. Her eyeballs flit back and
forth under her lids. Her skin is covered in sweat, her color so
very pale.

It’s incredible how fast a vampire can drain
a human. She couldn’t have been inside the house by herself for
more than a minute, but she’s already on the brink.

If the vampire took too much of her blood,
filled her system with too much of its numbing toxin, she’ll turn
in a couple of hours. She’ll awaken as a Bitten, yellow eyes,
thirst for blood, and all.

“
You’ve done all the right
things,” Dr. Jarvis says, double checking Ian’s injection sites.
“There’s nothing more you can do but wait to see if it
works.”

The look on Ian’s face is hard as he stares
back down at his baby sister. The one he’s fought so hard to
protect over the years. The one he saved as a baby when he was only
ten years old.

“
She’s staying here,” Ian
says, never once looking away from her. “Once she wakes up, she’s
staying here. Even if I have to tie her up and lock her in a room.
I’m not letting her out of my watch again.”

“
Of course,” I say quietly.
I want to tell him that this isn’t his fault. That he couldn’t have
stopped them from hurting her.

But I have to carry the guilt, too. If Ian
hadn’t been living here because he wants to be with me, he would
have been there, with her. And he could have stopped this from
happening.

“
Please wake up,” I
whisper. Because if she turns, and has to live the rest of her life
as a Bitten, that’s on me.

“
CALL HER AGAIN!” I YELL,
the anger and confusion rising in my blood.

Leigh backs away slightly, giving me a look
of fear and annoyance. She dials the number once more, pressing the
phone to her ear.

We’ve been trying to get ahold of anyone for
the past hour, to no avail. Cameron, Markov, and Lexington haven’t
answered. Rowan and Smith aren’t answering. And Anna isn’t, either.
I need to know if they found more Bitten around the Ward property.
I need to know if they found the cell Lexington told her about.

But no one will answer.

“
Voicemail again,” Leigh
says.

I stalk past her, out of the kitchen, and
into the ballroom. Across the marble floor, to the windows that
look out over the river.

I place my hands on the glass there, bracing
myself. Holding myself up. Trying not to lose it completely.

There’s too much going on. Too many little
plots to keep control over.

Elle.

Henry.

This war.

I haven’t even had two seconds to consider
my engagement with Ian.

The breath rises up in my chest, coming
faster and faster. My heart races. My palms sweat.

And fear takes me over.

Because this is a familiar sensation.

This happened once before.

I had a complete meltdown, and Raheem was
witness to it all.

“
Deep breaths,
Alivia.”

I startle, hard, at the voice behind me. I
whip around to find Nial standing there, a look of concern on his
face.

“
Your heart is racing, your
breathing is elevated,” he says as he closes the distance between
us and places comforting hands on my shoulders. “I can practically
hear you screaming across the house without you saying a word. Have
you struggled with anxiety attacks before?”

I don’t respond at first because his words
are so shocking, so unexpected. But it takes a weight off my chest.
“An anxiety attack?”

Nial nods, his serious, gray eyes leveling
on me. “They’re perfectly common. Completely understandable with
all the stress you’ve been experiencing. I wouldn’t be shocked to
find you’re suffering from PTSD.”

“
Like soldiers do?” I ask
doubtfully.

“
It doesn’t have to just be
human war that triggers it,” he says. “Any number of traumatic
events can trigger it. Childbirth, an abusive relationship. Being
held prisoner with the constant threat of death.”

My heart is still racing, and it’s hard to
concentrate on his words right now. The breath rips in and out of
my chest.

“
Deep breaths,” Nial says.
He’s trying to stay calm, but I hear the way his voice hitches,
hear the desperation that’s rising in his own voice. “Try to empty
your mind.”

“
Liv, what’s
wrong?”

Suddenly, Ian is in the room, too, and
seeing the worry on his face just tips me over the edge.

I can’t breathe. My chest is too tight. I
can’t get oxygen.

Tears leap into my eyes as I grow more
desperate. They break out onto my cheeks almost immediately.

“
Liv!” he yells, darting to
my side. “What’s wrong with her?”

“
She’s having an anxiety
attack,” Nial says as he helps Ian lower me to the floor. “She said
she’s had them before.”

“
What?” he asks as he pulls
me into his arms. “When?”

I can’t answer him. I’m trying to get
oxygen. I’m trying to worm away from him, desperate to get away
from them touching me, but also terrified for him to let me go.

“
I don’t know exactly,”
Nial says as he seems to sense my conflict. He backs away, but only
just enough to give me some breathing room and not touch
me.

“
What can you do to help
her?” Ian asks in desperation as he looks down at me. The look of
terror on his face just makes it all the worse. I curl myself up
into a ball between his legs, squeezing my eyes closed as the
monster of anxiety eats me alive.

Ripping me to shreds. Leaving behind a
revenged mound of flesh and blood.

Their words fade away. Just muffled garbled
sounds. Not reaching my brain. Because I am in a place that is numb
and fire and ice.

I think I’m strong.

I think I can handle it all.