wound didn’t close, the internal section appeared to be knitting together. He wondered if he was hallucinating.
He could feel his heart slowing down.
“Now,” Robert barked, pulling Wade’s wrist out of Rose’s mouth.
Rose snarled and snapped after it, but Robert held her down, and Wade felt Eleisha jerk him backward. Then he was lying on the concrete floor, and she was holding his head in her lap, rocking him back and forth. He was dizzy and weak, and his mind wandered. Rose had stopped fighting Robert and lay quietly now.
“God, I hope no one walks by and see this,” Wade murmured.
For the most part, they were hidden between the column and the van.
“It doesn’t matter,” Eleisha said, and she laid him down on the floor. She untucked his shirt and ripped a strip off the bottom, tying it tightly around his wrist.
“What the hell is going on?” a low voice with a French accent demanded, and Wade looked up to see Philip standing over them.
Eleisha didn’t answer and pulled Wade’s head back into her lap.
“There was no other way,” Robert answered, still sounding emotionless. “Where’s the vampire?”
Still angry, Philip shook his head once. “Gone. I lost him.”
Robert stood up. “We can’t stay here. Philip, find something in that bag to hide Rose’s throat and cover her dress. Anything will do,” he ordered. “Then get her on her feet. Wade, you’ll have to walk, too, but we need to board that train. Right now.”
When Eleisha looked at him, her expression was flat—almost bitter.
She had no reason to be angry. Robert was doing all the right things, and yet . . . even drained and weak and dizzy, Wade understood exactly how she felt.
Jasper was bleeding and groveling on the floor of the suite, but the sight of this didn’t make Julian feel any better.
He kicked Jasper’s side again, watching him roll hard against the fireplace.
“What do you mean, you think you took her head?” Julian demanded.
Jasper was gagging, black blood dripping down his chin, and he tried moving up to all fours. “I cut through most of her neck! I swear, Julian, her head was hanging by a thread!”
He crawled backward, and Julian was suddenly too disgusted to kick him again. Unless Rose’s head was severed, she would heal after feeding.
“You said Mary would help me!” Jasper shouted. “And you didn’t tell me Eleisha could make me see things . . . feel things!”
Julian put his fist to his mouth. Where exactly was Mary? This situation was bad, and he was completely in the dark. Jasper, the fool, had run from the station parking lot after botching up any attempt to decrease the numbers in Eleisha’s group. Then he’d left! Just left them there.
Julian ground his teeth.
“Mary Jordane!” he called.
Her transparent form stumbled as she appeared near the terrace.
“Hey!” she exclaimed. “I’d just gotten back to the station to look for Eleisha. Why’d you pull me away?”
“Where have you been?” Julian demanded. “Did you leave Jasper to fight alone?”
She crossed her arms. “They’ve got their own ghost. A big guy who looks like something right out of Braveheart. I had to take off.”
Julian lowered his fist. “What?” Another ghost? “Can he injure you? Do anything to harm you?”
“I don’t know! I wasn’t waiting around to find out. He can’t travel as easily as me, so he must be tied to one of their new vamps.”
Eleisha’s group had a ghost? This unsettled him. It leveled the field too much. “What do you mean, ‘right out of Braveheart’?”
“You know: his clothes, his hair. He looks about eighteen, but he’s old. A lot older than the earthquake ghosts here in the city.” As she said this, she noticed Jasper bleeding onto the carpet. She frowned. “Geez, Julian, you didn’t have to do that.”
He focused his cold anger upon her.
“You left Jasper,” he said.
“I had to, but I went back as soon as I could. Did he nail one of them? I found a big pool of blood on the parking lot floor.”
Julian turned away, fighting to keep himself from slicing off Jasper’s head and banishing Mary tonight. “Where are they?” he asked softly.
She shrugged. “I don’t know. They probably just got on the train.”
“No, they couldn’t have made their train,” Jasper choked, trying to stand up. “I had ’em scattered for too long, and that Rose woman was a mess.”
Julian looked at him.
Although Jasper’s words made sense, he did not yet know enough about his own kind. Julian tried to think like Eleisha—what she would