another master vamp to come heal him. Beyond Tex was the female vamp, the one from the cave. And Stacey, the little witch. Also skinned. Dying. Two vampires, a witch, a white werewolf with a grindylow clinging to his back, an Onorio, and a skinwalker on the floor of a crevasse, dying, lying beside the exoskeleton of a Son of Darkness, the Flayer of Mithrans. He was headless, limbless. At his side were his arms and legs, twitching.
This time, the shadow wasn’t here to carry his parts back to him. The shadow was dead. Brute had Shimon’s head, his jaws clamping down and spreading the crack I had started in the exoskeleton skull.
Eli knelt and put a cervical collar onto my neck, then half lifted me in his arms. I felt the stricture of bandages and sticky tape, and my middle burned. Eli had tried to put me back together. I wanted to chuckle but could only make the feeblest of breaths. But I caught the smell of more vampire blood. Of Kojo and Thema. Tasted them on my cracked, dry lips. They had made me drink their blood. If I had been human, I’d be bound to them and to every other vamp who had fed me to heal me over the last few years. And so would my people.
Leo had bound me and Beast had bound him. But my people, they had never been bound by the blood of the MOC. More important, Beast and I had broken Leo’s binding.
Only a master vamp could break a binding, could keep her people from being bound by a strong vampire. Only death or a master vamp could shatter bonds. Or me.
Understanding bloomed, another layer, as if I finally understood all the questions of my existence in this moment of imminent death. I understood that I was the Dark Queen, had always been the Dark Queen, from the very beginning, from the moment I first touched le breloque and it recognized me as its own. But the words didn’t make it past my lips, falling away into silence without enough breath to speak.
Was the Dark Queen the sacrifice that led to a safe future for all the paranormals in the world? Is that what I had always been? A body to die?
“Babe,” Eli said gently. “You still with us?”
I grunted, too soft to hear, yet he did. Ranger ears.
“Helo is on the way, but the cleft is too narrow for it to land. Thema and Kojo went to get the helo’s rescue litter and scoop stretcher and more climbing gear. We’re going to have to haul you out.” He hesitated. “It’s going to be bad.”
I had worked with search and rescue in the mountains before. Being taken out in a rescue litter or a scoop stretcher would be a long, arduous, painful process. And time-consuming. And time was something I no longer had. “Ne’er easssy,” I managed.
He laughed, some foreign emotion on his face. Maybe grief. “Now that I know you’re conscious, is this a rift?” he asked me.
“Yeessss,” I breathed.
“You said that if we ever find a rift, we should break the crystal and free Soul. You want to watch?”
“Sssssure.”
“Go ahead,” Eli said. He shifted me slightly to see the hot pool.
If I hadn’t been dying, I’d have screamed with the movement. As it was, my vision went dark until I managed a breath. Shaddock leaned out over the blue water. Without hesitation, he broke the crystal of quartz and instantly dropped it into the water. He leaped back to safety.
From the corner of my eyes, I watched as Edmund performed cardiac compressions on Bruiser. My heart was breaking. But something wriggled in the back of my mind. Something about the rift. Unlike the other things that had come clear, I couldn’t find it, whatever it was. The fleeting memory was gone. Important. It was important.
From the water, Soul leaped high, in partial mermaid form, pearlescent teeth gleaming, her legs ending with huge fins instead of feet, her fish frill wide. She landed with a broad splash. I caught a glimpse of horrible scarring up one leg and all along her body on that side, as if Soul had been hit by lightning or burned. The scarring led to one ankle where a thin braided strip of silver alloy was linked, burning her. I had thought it was jewelry, but it was a prison. Holding her in human and fish form. Soul was still being punished for helping Leo, or