Maybe it wasn't true.
De Marco seemed to swell again, then let out a scream of sheer frustration. "One."
"Huh?" I stopped edging toward Noelle, who was in turn sliding covertly away from de Marco.
"One." His nostrils flared. "I will have the Guardian summon one more person, but that is it."
"But . . . I have two friends there."
"Then you will choose between them. Now!"
I swallowed back a little zing of fear at the look in his eyes. He didn't strike me as being too mentally stable. "Um . . ." I thought frantically. Diamond, I should tell him to get Diamond out. She was my friend . . . of a sort . . . and she didn't do anything to deserve being banished to the Akasha. I would get Diamond out.
Leaving Alec behind.
Alone.
With no one to feed him.
And worse, he would know I hadn't cared enough about him to rescue him, too.
But he was a murdering vampire and, by his own admission, had betrayed his friend. He had accepted the punishment meted out to him. He was resigned to being in the Akasha.
"All right," I said, sending a little prayer that Alec would understand why I had no choice but to pick Diamond. "I've decided."
"Give the name to the Guardian, and let us be through with this!" de Marco snapped.
"Noelle, would you please summon . . . ?" I looked at her. She looked at me, waiting. I thought of Diamond. My inner devil wept and called me all sorts of names.
No one had ever tended Alec's wounds.
"Summon Alec Darwin, please," I heard someone say, and to my astonishment - and inner devil's joy - it was my mouth that spoke the words.
Alec stared at the spot where, seconds before, Corazon had stood. He narrowed his eyes. He put out a hand to touch nothing but empty air.
She wasn't there. Just like that, she was gone.
Someone must have summoned her.
"Good riddance," he said defiantly, not wishing to admit to the hurt that spiked through him as sharp as a dagger. It was annoyance, not pain, he told himself. She was simply someone put there to torment him, and he'd be damned if he gave her the power to hurt him.
She had left him, just left him, without so much as a backward glance, or one last jab at his appearance. She hadn't even called him a murdering bloodsucker before she left, dammit, and he was beginning to be fond of the way she caressed the words in her mind.
"Very well," he said aloud to no one, gritting his teeth and looking around for a new spot in which he could almost die. "So be it. She's gone. I'm here. That's all there is to it."
But it wasn't all there was to it. Cora was out in the mortal world with no one to protect her, no one to keep her safe from anyone who might want to use her.
"I don't care," he told the nearest rock, stomping off to find a new resting spot. "She's not my problem anymore. I don't mind at all never seeing her again, never smelling her, never watching those hips that know how to make me hard with just a little twitch, never letting her suck my tongue almost out of my head, never making her hum with ecstasy. I don't need her or her blood. I'm quite happy being miserable here on my own."
He kicked a rock, defying it to dispute his words, knowing he was a fool, but in too much pain to care.
She had left him.
He spotted a rock that he felt would suit as a spot where he could perch and be even more miserable than he already was by admitting that her defection had, in fact, hurt him as deeply as anything could, but just as he was approaching it, the world shifted, gathered itself up, and punched him in the gut.
"Alec!"
He was groggily aware of a voice that seemed to sing in his veins, a scent that wrapped itself around him, gentle hands that turned him over and touched his face.