Page 169 of The World Undone

“Well, I guess not anymore. That day, she attacked Xavier, drained him. And she’s been better. More like herself. According to Nash and Claude, I mean. I obviously had nothing to compare it to. Anyway, Darius had a hunch and it paid off, for once.”

I grunted at the memory of his smug face when he realized it.

Nash was too shocked, too excited to have his sister back—well, mostly back—that he didn’t even give Darius shit for his arrogance.

The animosity between them had been slowly dissolving since, not entirely gone, but I was no longer concerned that Nash would try and covertly kill our vampire in the middle of the night.

Dec still locked the door as an added caution, just in case. Not that a locked door would keep a vampire out if he wanted inside. Love made people irrational though.

“Darius collected Jarrod’s blood,” I continued, “and now Seamus is…not entirely back to his old self, but he’s close. He’s better. He doesn’t even need to be chained up anymore.”

I laughed, but it sounded flat, even to me. “Darius even has a board that he’s keeping track of his progress on. Right now it says something like ‘18 days since Seamus has tried to eat someone.’ So, yeah, your vampire is still as ridiculous as always. He misses you too. We all do.”

In truth, I was fairly certain that Darius would start killing everyone around the site, just because they had the audacity to wake up before Max, if she didn’t come to soon.

He wasn’t exactly well known for his restraint.

Max’s head tilted slightly, a loose strand of hair sliding off her cheek.

Was there more color there than I’d remembered? Her skin was still tacky with sweat, but her body didn’t seem quite as tense as it had on that first day.

Was I imagining it? Was I so desperate to see improvement that my brain had started fabricating its own reality altogether?

Eager that this was working, I pushed on. “Seamus and Darius have taken an antagonistic liking to each other. I think Darius is just milking the fact that someone other than him has experienced blood lust in the family.”

22 Days After the Ritual

“Max, you have to wake up. Please.”

She looked more at peace now, like she did in the real world. Like this sleep was nothing but a typical rest, even though it had been almost a month.

There’d been no improvements, no changes in her awareness. But physically, she seemed fine.

Izzy, Ro, and the others in the med ward couldn’t figure out why she wasn’t waking up.

Something about her peaceful expression here scared me though. Before, it seemed like she was fighting something.

Had she just given up?

What would happen to her if she had?

Would she be resigned to this sleeping world forever, until her body withered away?

“We miss you. I miss you—” my voice hitched, my eyes blurring her slightly out of focus as I fought the wave of grief back. “Things are different. We don’t have much access to information out here to confirm anything, but electricity has been out for the most part, phone service is fucked, and the world just feels…strange. Claude, and some of the others left a few days ago. They wanted to get back home, to check on things. See if this is happening everywhere or just—here. There’ve been a few earthquakes, some weird weather. Charlie is pushing for us to head somewhere else, to find another location and set up a space there, in case the ritual upset some tenuous balance here. We need to get a better grasp of what’s going on.”

But we didn’t want to leave. Didn’t want to move her. Taking her from this place felt wrong somehow, like she was tied to it in some fundamental way. Like the power in the atmosphere might help push her back to us.

I swallowed, unsure how much to reveal. I didn’t know much, had no clue what the world would look like when she opened her eyes again. Maybe it was better to focus on the positives, in case she could understand me?

“Izzy and Ro are doing well. Ralph too.” I knew she’d want to know about the others, about Samael and Lucifer. But when we awoke, they were gone. We had no idea if they were dead or alive.

Same with Levi. No one had seen him.

Eli swore that he wasn’t worried about his brother, insisted that he’d probably woken up and left to get a fresh start, away from this mess. But I knew him well enough to know that it was bullshit. He just couldn’t split his concern right now, his sanity wouldn’t allow him.

Right now, Max was the only thing we could collectively focus on.

“I’m going to try dream-walking with one of the others next time, see if I can bring them here. I’m getting stronger, slowly. I think I might be able to. Darius and Atlas seem to have a secret battle going on between them. It’s called ‘who can be the biggest prick.’”

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