Page 43 of Dance With Death

“By ‘share’ do you mean me in the bed?”

Violet shuffles to one side, leaving more than enough room for me—enough that we wouldn’t touch. I lie down, saying nothing, partly because I’m still speechless. We’re side by side, Violet clutching her phone to her chest as if it’s a lifeline to Holly.

My fingers link with the other hand by her side, and we continue to stare upwards in silence, a bizarre calm after the havoc from minutes ago.

“I care for you as much as Leif and Rowan,” she says quietly. “But you speak to the wrong side of me.”

“There is no wrong side,” I say to the ceiling. “Just two halves of you.”

“I should, perhaps, stop reacting to you in that manner because the repercussions will be extreme.”

I turn onto my side, looking at her profile as she talks to the ceiling too. “If I lose control too, and fight back? You worry the hybrid might kill me?”

Her head turns. “No. I crave everything that you do, and I worry because my blood might kill you. Tonight, I faced the possibility somebody I love had died. I don’t want to experience that situation again, but caused by my own hands.”

“Someone you love?” I whisper.

Violet says nothing.

She tells me that my love speaks to the wrong part of her, but doesn’t she understand that I’m wrong? That I’ve murdered without caring more than once? I’ve almost killed an innocent through a lust that overtook the pretense that I’m anything different to how I was born. I’ve died. Returned. Experienced torture that changed my soul. Josef’s treatment may’ve given me control but hasn’t taken away the desires.

Is my own pitch darkness what recognized Violet that first day? Why I stepped down when she wanted my blood at Kai’s party and I ran? We’re wrong, but oh so fucking right. Violet’s hemia bloodlust lies inside the hybrid, and I’m the one person who she can safely become the hybrid around.

Violet Blackwood is everything to me.

15

VIOLET

I’m determined to see Holly at the earliest moment and arrive at the hospital within half an hour of waking. Rowan and Leif guide me away from the entry where I encountered the ER reception desk on the night Oz suffered his magical injuries and toward another building on the sprawling hospital grounds. How much room do humans need to place their sick and dying?

As I pause outside, I gaze up at the window of the orange-bricked, five-story building and consider how trapped these humans must feel. Is their ability to leave the place any easier than my failed attempt to enter the ER triage area? Or do guards disguised as nurses prevent these inmates’ movements too?

I’m silent as I step into an elevator with Rowan and Leif where, despite the number of humans waiting, nobody wishes to share the metal box with us. Granted, there’s little room, but one mother pulls her child exceptionally tight into her side before the little girl can follow, despite my attempt at a friendly smile.

Grayson remains at the academy this morning, due to the un-welcome he’d receive as a hemia vampire walking into the hospital. I’m overwhelmed by everything that happened last night, and uncomfortable that Grayson witnessed a new vulnerability that sprang from both my love for Holly and tangled feelings for him.

He understood the need to reach Holly as soon as possible today, and I told him that I understand his need to address what happened. Grayson stared, then laughed at my choice of words, before kissing me in a way that made it very clear things need addressing before more blood is spilled.

Even though he brings out that unwanted vulnerability, Grayson also helps in a contradictory way. Grayson doesn’t react, or care about, nor is he frightened by, the vicious traits I target him with when I’m lost to the hybrid side. Instead, Grayson allows me an opportunity to extinguish the overwhelming and frightening reactions that take away my self-control, and he reconnects me with the world. Grayson’s blood runs through my veins but that isn’t the only part of himself he sees inside me. He knows that darkness and knows what to do because he’s as dark as I am.

I’m united with Grayson through his blood. Partially. Unless I reciprocate, the tie won’t become absolute. Vampire blood ties match human unity, sometimes driven by physical desires and the heightened pleasure the tie allows. If deeper emotional connections grow, the hemia tend to bond and cease pursuing that blood connection with others. Bond. Good grief, I have enough of those.

Rowan and his bond create a comfort for me due to his acceptance that I am what I am, and that I will struggle to change, but in the hybrid state our tie becomes dangerous. He’s dangerous to us both if my magic inflames his.

But Grayson doesn’t take my darkness onboard and thrive on the shadows like Rowan does. Grayson keeps his own darkness contained, a skill learned through Josef’s sadistic treatment and through Grayson’s rejection of his ancestry.

I gaze at Rowan across the confined elevator. He traveled in the ambulance with Holly and attended the hospital last night, where the human authorities immediately removed him for questioning. As planned, Rowan denied to the police that I was with him in the woods, even though Marci can easily tell the authorities otherwise.

The truth will out once the supernatural authorities become involved unless everything from Rowan’s superior magical skills keeps the initial investigators out of his mind.

Dorian isn’t aware, unless Mrs. Lorcan informed him, but she never had the chance to accost us before we left campus since we left earlier than lessons start. Have the police not told her that one of the academy students was found in the woods with chest injuries beside a large wolf?

The humans’ reason not to share the information could match mine: Dorian’s interference. I don’t want my father to speak to Holly before I do, but not because I’m concerned what she’ll say. My concern is that Dorian’s eagerness for answers could find him shoving into Holly’s head before she’s physically ready. Will the human girl ever be physically ready for that exploratory magic? Leif struggled with the aftereffects, and he’s half-supe.

No. I won’t risk Dorian harming Holly when my friend is suffering already. When Dorian discovers I didn’t inform him and enters one of his fits of rage, I’ll claim that because Holly was unconscious, I felt there was no point in him seeing her yet.

Not that the lie would fool him.

---