stay like that. He needs medical attention right now.”
Joie noticed Traian didn’t attempt to plead his case to either of her siblings, he was conserving energy and leaving her to do the explanations.
Gabrielle made the first move, her compassionate nature getting the better of her. She pushed past Jubal and, carefully avoiding looking at the vampire, stepped right up to Traian, studying the wicked stakes pinning him to the wall.
“You do know the strangest people, Joie,” she murmured softly. “I don’t even want to ask where you met him.”
Does everyone in your family have the same weird sense of humor?
Joie nodded. Pretty much. We’ve had to find humor in everything to get by. It’s that or cry. Laughing is better.
Gabrielle frowned and stepped closer. “I’m going to touch this. I’m sorry if it hurts you.” Her fingers probed gently around the wound in his shoulder where the stake had gone through his body. “Jubal, you’ll have to pull these out. They go all the way through and are buried pretty deep into the ice.”
“If I pull out the stake, is he going to bleed to death?” Jubal inquired. He had followed Gabrielle into the middle of the chamber, but stopped beside the vampire, crouching down to study the undead. “This guy is twitching. I don’t think he’s dead.”
“Twist the knife in deeper and cut out the heart. That will buy us a little more time,” Traian suggested.
Jubal’s gaze jumped to his face. “Are you kidding me?”
“No, he’s going to rise again and soon. The only way to kill one permanently is to incinerate the heart.” Traian closed his eyes, took a breath and slammed his body forward against the stakes holding him.
Blood oozed around each of the stakes and Gabrielle jumped back, nearly tripping over Joie. “Don’t! You’re going to make it worse. Jubal, you have to help us.”
“You have to cut the heart out of his body and do not get any of his blood on you. It acts as an acid and burns through flesh and eventually bone.”
Jubal’s eyes met Traian’s.
“If you cannot,” Traian continued calmly, “then your sister must. That blood will eat through the blade and he will be free.”
“I’ll do it, Jubal,” Joie said, her stomach churning madly. She wasn’t certain she could find the courage to touch the hideous creature, not now that he was twitching.
“Like hell,” Jubal said and grasped the hilt of Joie’s knife, glancing back at Traian, over his shoulder. “But you had better be telling the truth. If you lay one finger on my sisters, I’ll shoot you right between the eyes.”
Sickened, Joie looked away from the black thick goo bubbling up around the blade of the knife to look once more at Traian.
“We have to get the stakes out of him one at a time,” Gabrielle said. “I think we can do it, Joie. As soon as we do, I’ll apply pressure and you’ll have to find something to pack the wound to stop the bleeding. He can’t afford any more blood loss.”
“You’ll have to pack it with a mixture of my saliva and any dirt you can find.”
Gabrielle made a face, and pointed to her pack. “The first-aid kit is in my pack, Joie, but I don’t know how we’re going to get him to the surface.” I think he’s in so much pain, Joie, that he’s delusional. Saliva is not going to save him.
Joie looked around the cave. “If there’s dirt, it’s under fifty feet of solid ice. It will have to be my shirt.” She opened her jacket, stripped quickly down to her Patagonia tee shirt and quickly cut it into strips before retrieving the first aid kit.
When she would have put the cream onto the material, impatience crossed Traian’s face. “I told you what to do, Joie.”
“Do you really want your saliva on the strips?” Caught between Gabrielle and Traian, Joie didn’t know what to do.
“Yes. My saliva will heal me faster. Hurry,” Traian advised. “Or we are all going to die. Vampires are very dangerous and extremely hard to kill. You were lucky.”
Joie hastily donned her jacket, zipping it up tight, and shoved the strips of cloth into his hand, his urgency catching at her. Clenching her teeth, she grasped the stake in his shoulder. “Are you ready for this?” The question was more for herself than for him. She glanced at Gabrielle, who nodded.
“Just do it.”
Her stomach lurched as her fingers curled around the thick stake. She closed her eyes, took a breath