Page 49 of The Eighth Isle

My God, I had actually found him, and he looked sodeadmy mind refused to accept the image in front of me.

“Come on, wake up!” I called, pressing my hands harder to his cheeks, then slapping him, lightly at first. “We have to go, right now. We have to get out of here, Grey. Wake up, please!”

I slapped him so hard the sound of it echoed in the tall ceiling. Shadow was flying in circles over our heads, snickering as he went, and I kept screaming at Grey to just open his eyes, look at me, get up and follow me out of here before it was too late.

He didn’t.

Somehow, I was standing again and I was pulling him to sit up straighter, even though every inch of my body was shaking. He couldn’t be dead. He just couldn’t. No pulse on him, no heartbeat, and vampires didn’t fucking breathe—so he wasn’t dead, he was just sleeping. Just resting because the fight had tired him.

“Wake up, Grey, wake up!”I shouted at the top of my voice, slapping his face and chest and arms, shaking him as well as I could, yet he didn’t react.

He didn’t react at all.

My legs gave up on me again and I tried to calm down, I really did. But my heart was racing and these thoughts in myhead were awful, insisting that he wasnevergoing to wake up again, and I couldn’t accept it. I just couldn’t accept it.

“He looks alive,” I told myself becausethisthought couldn’t win in the chaos inside my mind, so I had to say it out loud to give it strength. “He is, he is, he just needs blood,” I whispered, driving my nails into my palms, and my skin broke, but not enough. “Blood, blood, he just needs blood…”

The sharp edge of the armrest of Grey’s chair was in my wrist before I even realized what the hell I was doing. It was sharp enough to cut a clean line on my skin vertically, from my wrist and down to the middle of my palm.

Blood, red and warm and thick, came out of me, and I didn’t even feel it. If it stung or burned or hurt in any way, I didn’t feel it. I just sat on Grey’s lap and I pressed my wrist to his lips.

“Drink,” I urged him. “Come on, take my blood. Take it.” With my other hand, I pulled his lips open until my blood stained the inside of them, stained his teeth and enough of it slipped inside his mouth, too.

Wake up, wake up, wake up, wake up…I couldn’t stop saying it, couldn’t stop pressing my wrist to his mouth as my blood slipped down to his chin.

“Come back,” I whispered as my eyes closed, the exhaustion, the fear getting too heavy to bear. But I was on Grey’s lap and I was leaning against his shoulder and my wrist was between his lips, so I could pretend that he was awake easily.

“Don’t leave me, Grey. Please, come back…”

I must have said it a hundred times before I was so exhausted that I couldn’t speak anymore. And it was okay, I decided. I’d seen Grey, hadn’t I? I’d seen his face. This was all I’d wanted, and I was glad I’d had this chance.

But then…

“Fall.”

Every thought in my head that had been bouncing from one side to the other relentlessly came to a halt. Every muscle in my body locked down, too.

Was that my imagination, or did Grey say my name?

“Fall, look at me.”

I was crying before my eyes opened all the way, and I saw his—dark grey, bloodshot, fangs extended and hair all over the place,madand pale and half his face bloody—but alive. Speaking. Looking at me.

If I’d had any voice left, I’d have screamed.

“What are you doing here, baby? How did you get here? What?—”

I was already on his lap, and to hear him talking and see him blinking sent a jolt of energy throughout me, so I wrapped my arms around his neck lightning fast and squeezed him with all my strength.

I wasn’t too late.

Grey was indeed alive, and I’d found him.

Twelve

I couldn’t let goof him for a little while. Grey crushed me to his chest and wrapped those strong arms around me, too, holding me like he used to what felt likeyearsago, not only days.

“How did you get here, Fall?” he whispered in my ear, caressing my hair, and it took all I had just to allow myself to lean back, to see his face, to really accept that he was awake and he wasn’t going to disappear into thin air any second.

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