Page 42 of Crimson Bond

“Stay right behind me,” I said to Abbi, extending an arm to prevent her from moving past me and farther into the house.

Drawing my weapon, I moved from room to room, alert and ready in case the intruder—or intruders—were still here.

There was no one, and it was a good thing because when we reached the kitchen I wouldn’t have been able to keep Abbi behind me no matter what. Larkin was lying on the floor bleeding from a head wound.

“She’s been shot,” I said.

Both of us knelt at her side.

“Larkin. Larkin, can you hear me?” Abbi said. Tears streamed down her face at the sight of her friend’s grave wound.

Larkin wasn’t dead. I could hear her heartbeat. It was weak but there.

I pushed up my sleeve, preparing to rip my wrist open and offer Larkin my blood, but Abbi stopped me.

“No. Let me.”

She bit her own wrist and placed it at Larkin’s mouth. Her friend drank, feebly at first then with increasing energy and enthusiasm.

After a minute, I said, “That’s enough. You’ll weaken yourself.”

Abbi shot me an annoyed look. “I don’t care about that. She needs it.”

Grabbing her arm, I pulled it away from Larkin’s lips. “Icare. She’s had enough. Her pulse is strong now. She’s going to be okay.”

Sure enough, within minutes, the bullet pushed its way to the surface of her skull and fell to the floor. A few minutes later Larkin was fully conscious and sitting up.

“Did you get him?”

“No. Did you see who did this?” I asked. “Human or vampire?”

“I’m not... sure. I heard your car stop outside. I was getting ready to take some last-minute stuff out of the fridge. I turned around, and someone was behind me. Male, I’m pretty sure. He shot me before I could get a good look at him.”

As if just now thinking of it, she lifted a hand to her forehead and probed the healed wound. “You gave me blood?”

She looked from one to the other of us.

“Abbi did,” I said. “How are you feeling?”

“Good. A little woozy still but a lot better than I should be considering I was just shot at point-blank range. Thank you.”

Abbi looked embarrassed. “At least this alleged ‘queensblood’ of mine is good for something.”

Now that Larkin was out of danger and thinking clearly, it was time to figure out what was going on.

“Do you think it was an assassination attempt?” I asked, looking around again for signs the cottage had been ransacked.

Larkin shook her head. “I don’t know why anyone would want to kill me. It’s not like I’m some kind of leader or a famous figure like Sadie. I’m a science nerd—I practically live in the lab.”

“It had to be about the cure then. How many people know about it?”

She shrugged. “A handful? It wasn’t a secret, but we hadn’t published anything about it yet either. We were waiting on the clinical trials so we’d know if it actually worked or not before we contacted the medical journals. Everyone at the lab knew about it, but outside of that, there were probably only a few people, like their significant others.”

“Do you have a boyfriend you might have told?” Abbi asked.

“No. No one since Curtis, and I haven’t talked to him in a while. He has a new girlfriend.”

“I know,” Abbi said. “I saw him in San Francisco. He helped us.”

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