into the same position recently vacated by my partner, and jogged back to the SUV. “I don’t know if you can feel while paralyzed by ash wood, but I hope this hurts like a mother,” I said. Vamp Two didn’t reply.
I dumped him into the hatch area with my partner and ripped open Eli’s shirt, revealing gunshot wounds. Two chest wounds, one below his right shoulder, in and out, that had to have clipped the artery that fed his arm, and probably nicked a lung. The other was on his lower left chest; that probably took out a rib and his spleen and maybe a kidney. Its exit wound larger. Much larger.
I tore open four of the next-generation XStat syringes and shoved them each into a wound, depressing the plungers almost simultaneously. The specially coated, biodegradable sponges shot into his body cavity and stopped the bleeding within seconds. But he was cold and his breath rate was too fast. Eli was in shock.
Eli was already dying.
He needed a trauma team and multiple transfusions and surgeries.
Or vamp blood.
Pulling one of my partner’s blades, I sliced Two’s shirt off and raked his inner arm with my claws. His blood smelled horrible. I hesitated and then licked a claw. The taste was even worse, burning my tongue.
I spat it out, remembering the first time a sane-ish vampire caught my scent. The first time I smelled their blood, like sulfur and nitric acid, something caustic. Awful. And then Bethany healed me. Everything changed when I was healed by Bethany. Why?
Beast likes blood. All vampire blood is strong. But not for littermate.
There had to be a . . . a “come to Jesus moment” between paranormal predators before scent and blood taste were acceptable. Leo had accepted me and that made my scent acceptable to his people. I let Bethany heal me with her blood.
I was the Dark Queen. That supposedly gave me power and gifts, probably accompanied by lots of things I should be able to do, unknown gifts. I was the freaking, dang Dark Queen of the fangheads. That had to mean that I could, theoretically, claim bloodsuckers. I’d done it once. With Edmund.
I didn’t want another vampire servant.
Eli’s heart skipped a beat. It stuttered fast. Skipped.
I tore my wrist with my fangs, deliberately missing nerve and artery, and held the welling wound over the vamp’s mouth. I reached for the Gray Between.
Skinwalker energies burst from my chest and rose around me. I reached for the magics that were mine and the magics that were other—witch and vamp—and gripped them together in my mental hands. Power strummed through me, heated against my palms. I pulled the magics away from the star pattern of my middle. They gave a soft twang and realigned into two figure eights, one in each mental hand. One blue-gray, one scarlet, both pulsing in time with my heartbeat. Okay. That was new.
I studied the energies of life around me. Eli was the stagnant stink and dark reddish brown of death, with only flickers of living blue and purple. His life force had almost bled away. The vamp’s energies were darker, deep rose in tone, and smelled of ginger. Despite the ash wood in his belly, he was still undead. I touched one finger of my free physical hand to the vamp’s chest and tapped the vampire energies. They rang with a note like a fingernail striking a crystal glass.
The first drops of my blood dripped into his mouth. A version of words that I vaguely recalled from Leo came to my mind. I snarled as best I could with my Beast-mouth, “My blood to your blood. Your heart to my heart. Your loyalty, I demand. Now.” And I reached for his mind. His heart.
His soul . . .
I ripped out the ash wood arrow. The vamp swallowed.
His brain was a kaleidoscope of shadows and light, pinks and purples and a burst of what looked like glitter in black light. His name was Klaus. He was sixty-two years old, born in East Germany. He was weak. A lower-level vamp.
I remembered the silver chain that once bound Leo, king of the U.S. vamps. I fashioned a silver chain of the Gray Between and wrapped it around Klaus’s energies. Tied it to myself, in my soul home. I realized that wouldn’t help Eli. I reached for Eli’s energies and braided a second tiny strand of my skinwalker magic to Eli’s will to live. “Just a minute or two,” I whispered. “I’ll break