The Lady of Toryn Anthology (Lady of Toryn trilogy) (55 page)

Drake held her hand tighter, his eyes burning
straight to her soul.

“I don’t know about that, Drake,” Sara said at last.
“Your condition…your blood might have contagions that could…affect Ashlyn.”

“She won’t turn.” Drake’s voice was sharp. “Please. She
is dying. My blood has healing properties. A direct transfusion is the only
way.” He didn’t release Ashlyn’s hand, instead jerkily raising his silver
glove, unbuckling the straps with his teeth, and dropping the heavy contraption
to the floor with a loud metallic clank. He offered his wrist to Sara, and the
light gleamed off the scar tissue that covered his forearm. “I’m ready.”

Sara hesitated, clearly flustered. Skye appeared
beside her, and his expression was grave.

“Drake, can you guarantee that she won’t become a
vampire if you give her blood?” the blond swordsman asked, folding his arms
across his chest.

“Can you guarantee that she’ll live if I don’t?”
Drake countered, and Skye glanced at Sara, clearly expecting a response.

Sara’s face was white. “I- I can’t guarantee
anything,” she stammered. “But every moment we wait changes the odds.”

“Then let me
save
her,”
the vampire hissed, and even in her half-conscious state, Ashlyn
could feel the angry heat radiating off him in waves. “You know I’d never do
anything if I thought it might hurt her.”

“I know you wouldn’t,” Skye said, nodding. He
glanced down at Ashlyn, seemingly considering the options. Finally he turned to
Sara. “Do it.”

The scientist rushed to the cabinets and began
pulling out equipment, and Ashlyn watched her silently. Skye distracted her by
suddenly holding something to her mouth, and she looked up at him, feeling the
dampness of the canteen’s opening against her lips.

“It’s only water,” he said. “Drink.”

She was immediately frustrated to find that she was
too weak even to swallow, but she let the water trickle down her parched
throat, and it was soothing nonetheless. When she had drank it all, he moved
away, touching a hand briefly to her shoulder for reassurance.
 

Her eyes eventually drifted shut, lulled by the
comforting warmth of the infirmary. She listened quietly as the people around
her spoke in hushed tones, and began to drift off to sleep, only to be
interrupted by Drake.

“Ashlyn,” he said, and his voice was soft but
urgent. “Stay with me.”

“You
…stay
with
me,”
she retorted hoarsely,
angry at being awoken. She was at once irritated and exhausted, and in her
grief-stricken and weakened state, Drake’s uncharacteristic display of
affection was as frustrating as it was comforting. With a monumental effort,
she managed to open her eyes again, and turned her head slightly to see what
was happening.

Sara was pushing something into Ashlyn’s wrist,
attaching her to a long tube that was already hooked into Drake’s arm. Ashlyn
had never seen Drake without his silver glove before, and the complex web of
scars starting just above his wrist and continuing up the inside of his arm was
both horrifying and fascinating. There were so many crescent-shaped ridges
crowded onto the skin of his forearm that some of them overlapped onto each
other like some kind of morbid patchwork quilt.

She watched fuzzily as the blood began to flow from
his body into hers, and felt an immediate jolt as the foreign blood touched her
veins. “Your arm,” she whispered. “What…are those?”

“Bite marks,” Drake replied.

Skye appeared on Ashlyn’s opposite side, eyebrows
knitting as he surveyed what must have been extensive damage to Drake’s entire
forearm. “How many bites does it take to turn you into a vampire?”

“This wasn’t done to turn me,” Drake answered, and
the brevity of his answer spoke volumes.

Ashlyn had never questioned why he wore the silver
glove, but now she found herself wondering what else he had kept hidden from
her- and also wondering just how extensively Lord Angelo had tortured Drake
before turning him into a vampire. Most of Drake’s wounds healed with little or
no scarring, so these bite marks must have been inflicted while he was still
human.

She could feel the blood strengthening her, little
by little. Hesitantly, she tried to squeeze Drake’s hand, and was pleased when
her fingers responded.

His gaze locked once more with hers, and Ashlyn took
a deep breath, feeling almost like time was standing still, trapping the two of
them together in a strange limbo. With her delirium slowly dissipating, she
felt like she could finally see him clearly, and the events of their last
meeting crowded her mind uncomfortably. It wasn’t something she wanted to think
about right now, but with Drake holding her hand and staring deep into her
eyes, his blood flowing into her veins, it was impossible to focus on anything
else. She could tell from his expression that there was something he wanted to
say too, but it certainly wasn’t the appropriate time or place.

“Tag is…dead,” Ashlyn rasped, turning her head
towards Skye and breaking eye contact with Drake. “I wounded Kou…but he
escaped.”

“You did good, Ash,” Skye said firmly. “We left
Trace and Ellis in the Heavenly City. If Kou is still on the northern
continent, they’ll find him and kill him, and we can finally end this.”

She nodded faintly, a lump in her throat. If her dad
had still been alive, Skye would be reprimanding her right now for running off
alone for the third time in a row. Somehow Skye being nice to her was a million
times more soul-crushing than Skye yelling at her for being an irresponsible
brat.

The light in the room was brightening, her
surroundings gaining an astonishing clarity with every passing moment. Ashlyn
glanced at Sara, who was standing a few feet away from Drake, holding a
clipboard and chewing nervously on her lower lip. She could see every detail of
the scientist’s finely pretty features, even noticing a tiny smudge on the lens
of the older woman’s glasses.

Strength was flowing through her muscles, enveloping
her entire body, and her skin was tingling. The blood was working. She was
healing. Heat unfurled in her core and began to spread through her limbs.
Ashlyn frowned. It didn’t…feel right. Something was wrong.

Pain spiked unexpectedly in her chest, and she
gasped, arching off the table as the agony blossomed out in a solid wave, the
heat sweeping through her body. It burned like someone had dumped a bucket of
hot coals on top of her, and Ashlyn wailed helplessly, desperate to escape the
feeling.

“It’s trying to turn her,” Drake said beside her,
and let go of Ashlyn’s hand to yank the tube from his own wrist. Blood spurted,
but he clamped his opposite hand over the hole, stopping the flow and applying
pressure.

“How do we stop it?” Skye demanded. Ashlyn could
barely hear him over the roaring in her ears. She grabbed the sides of the
table, fingers digging into the metal with inhuman strength. The solid pulse in
Skye’s neck was throbbing insistently, beating out of sync with the loud
fluttering of her own heart.

Resist!
she
thought abruptly, and tried to reach into her pocket, where she’d put the
resist
stane the day before. Normally
the Spartans kept it just in case Drake somehow lost his own
resist
stane, but Drake had given it to
her yesterday. Another stab of pain froze her in mid-motion, and Ashlyn yelled
out a string of profanities, cursing every deity she knew and a few she was
probably making up.

“What do you need? Tell me!” Skye exclaimed,
catching her hands and pushing them down to the table. Ashlyn thrashed wildly,
fighting inwardly for control even as her body betrayed her.

The words she’d said to Drake when he’d lost
resist
were repeating over and over
again in her head.
Find the will, you
moron! Vampirism doesn’t control you any more than the
resist
stane does! Fight it!

She didn’t need
resist.
She was a ninja. She could do this
.
She
squeezed her eyes shut, trying to find her center, trying to focus. She felt a
fresh rush of pain consume her, and pushed it aside, imagining herself sinking
into the ocean…letting the cool waves sweep over her face, tickling her limbs
as she slowly disappeared beneath the surface. She was
weightless…powerless…submitting herself to the serene and steady tide of the
water.

The weight of her grief made it easier, somehow, to
turn inside herself, to rise above the physical agony.

There.

“Ash?” Skye said uncertainly.

She lay still on the operating table. Her entire
body was trembling with the effort of maintaining control, the metal of the
table’s edges bending beneath her fingers.

“
Resist
,”
she whispered tightly. “In my pocket.”

Skye shoved his hand into her pocket and immediately
produced the necklace. “Got it,” he said, hurriedly slipping the cord over her
head and pushing the gem firmly against the bare skin of her chest.

The relief was instant, but not as dramatic as she’d
hoped, and Ashlyn let out the breath she hadn’t known she was holding, feeling
some of the heat and tension fade from her body. Her eyes were still closed,
but she could hear every movement in the room, echoing back to her ears and
presenting a perfect mental picture of her surroundings. Drake was slumped
weakly against the counter to her right, waiting for his body to heal itself
from the rapid blood loss. Skye was to her immediate left, his breathing quick
and shallow. Sara had finally advanced and was trying to remove the tube from
Ashlyn’s arm.

“Drake! What’s going on? Is she turning?” Skye
asked.

Drake’s voice sounded very far away when he
answered. “No. She’s not.”

His words were the last thing Ashlyn heard before
her body reached its breaking point, and she finally succumbed to exhaustion, letting
the darkness take her.

That’s all it was- darkness- for what seemed like an
eternity after she closed her eyes. The vampirism fought for a temporary control
of her mind, but Ashlyn resisted, her inward stillness providing a barrier
against the change.

When she awoke in her dream, she knew immediately
that she was still asleep, partly because she could still feel the pressure of
the transformation lingering in her mind, much weaker now but still insistent,
and partly because she knew that there was no way her father would be standing
in front of her now. Not when she knew he was dead.

The landscape around them was strangely blank-
colorless, without any depth or defining characteristics. Ashlyn and Lord Li
stared at each other silently across the expanse of nothingness.

“You were never meant to lead a normal life,” her
father said at last, and Ashlyn blinked, surprised. It wasn’t exactly what
she’d been expecting.

“I’m a Li,” she responded. “Nothing we do is
normal.”

He nodded in agreement. “It would serve you well to
remember that.”

“That I’m not normal?” she asked, fighting a smile.

“No. That you are a Li. No matter what happens.”

She tilted her head, frowning. “Are you worried
about me disowning you, Dad?”

“Do not forget.”

She woke up for real then, opening her eyes to see
the red stone of Cosmea surrounding her.

Ashlyn bolted upright, her hand flying to her face.
Her skin was warm, but not burning hot like a vampire’s. Neither was it cool,
like Drake’s was when he was wearing
resist.

“Took you long enough.” Vargo’s voice came from her
right.

Ashlyn turned towards him, marveling at the crisp
clarity of the sound of his voice. “What happened?” she asked, her voice low.
“I’m not a vampire, am I?”

The red-haired Spartan raised an eyebrow, pulling
one knee up on the chair with him and resting his arm across it. The sleeves of
his shirt were rolled up, and his forearms were still bandaged. “Not as far as
I can tell.”

Ashlyn looked down, noting that she’d been dressed
in clean clothes and the
resist
stane
was gone. She looked around and saw it resting on the stone nightstand beside
her bed. “I guess I was able to fight it,” she said softly. But her senses were
sharp, almost too sharp. The fine cracks in the stone floor jumped out at her,
far-off sounds echoing in her ears.

“Lockhart said you might feel some effects
afterwards,” Vargo offered, watching her closely as she took in her
surroundings. “It should wear off soon. But he also said it was unlikely you
would have turned, even with as much blood as he gave you. It wasn’t a
‘ritualized exchange,’ whatever that is.”

Her relief at
not
being a vampire was nearly overwhelming, and Ashlyn took a deep breath,
relishing the fact that it was a necessary habit, that she hadn’t been robbed
of the requirement to breathe. With that breath came a catch in her throat as
she remembered why, exactly, the transfusion had been necessary in the first
place.

“Where is Drake?” she asked quietly. “And Skye? Did
they bring me here?”

“Aik was the only one who stayed. The others went back
to Toryn to search for the rest of the
shift
stanes.”