Page 27 of Dallas

I chuckled mirthlessly. “Calling it that makes it sound clean, efficient. The incident. It was hardly clean or efficient. It was a horror. Bloody, unimaginable horror. My kin. Ones I’d lived with for a thousand years. A thousand years. Can you imagine it? They were dead at my feet. I couldn’t bring them back. I couldn’t stand up to the men with the guns, for I would merely be cut down as easily as Gavin and the others. So many.”

“H—how do you live with it?” she asked in a choked whisper.

“I simply do. But before I could live with it, I had to face it. There was still much more for us to get through before we could even begin to consider moving on. Just as you have something to get through now.” I patted Callie’s hand.

She nodded, rubbing her hands over her face. “I know. I love her so dearly. It’s unthinkable, all of it.”

“I know it is. I would take this burden from you if I could.”

She looked at me, her tear-filled eyes searching my face as if they sought the truth. She wanted to believe me but wasn’t certain she should. “You would?”

“Hecate, I don’t want to see you suffer. I don’t wish for your sister to suffer, either. It doesn’t have to be this way.”

She nodded slowly, staring over my shoulder. Seeing something that wasn’t there. What was there to see, after all, but darkness?

“Callie does not have to feel pain—at least, not for long. She will heal. My blood will heal her. Hecate.” I took her by the shoulders and forced her to look at me rather than staring over my shoulder. “I’m willing—eager, even—to give her my own blood if it means saving her. You can understand, can’t you, that in a situation like this I would normally be begged to share my blood if it meant healing her?”

“I understand,” she whispered, albeit with a frown.

I shook her—gently, as gently as I could—but enough to startle her. “Why is it not good enough for you? Why do you insist on refusing? Why won’t you help her?”

Her chin quivered, and her eyes welled up anew. Rather than offer an explanation, she collapsed against my chest and sobbed.

Nothing could have surprised me more. If she’d struck me, it would have made more sense than the act of her leaning against me and sobbing gustily, as she was at that moment.

I enfolded her, cradled her, allowed her to let it out, while wondering what I was supposed to do. Every protective instinct in me flared to new, blazing life in light of this shift. If only she wouldn’t refuse me.

There was no refusal at that moment, however, so I held her. It felt right. Foreign, of course, but right. As though I’d waited for this my entire life.

“I’m sorry if I hurt you,” I murmured close to her ear. “I did not mean to.”

She shook her head, breathing in hitching gasps. “No. You didn’t.”

That was a relief, at least. “Will you allow me to help her?”

“I—I want—” She pulled back with a start, as if surprised to find herself in my arms. As if she hadn’t fallen into them of her own accord. She bore the look of a woman about to blame emotion for her actions. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have done that. It wasn’t right.”

I watched in consternation as she wiped away her tears and squared her thin shoulders. “You cannot mean it.”

“Why can I not mean it? Please, do not get ideas about us. I’m very upset and frightened for her. I shouldn’t have laid my difficulty at your feet.”

“You didn’t lay it at my feet. You threw it at my chest. And I allowed you to, and I didn’t push you away. I want to help you. Why won’t you allow it?”

Anything she was about to say was lost forever as a tremendous cracking sounded, followed by an ear-splitting crash. I pulled her to me and wrapped my arms about her head and shoulders, away from the mouth of the cave as a massive tree fell across it and shook the ground on impact.

Her fingers were like claws, digging into my shoulders.

“Everything’s fine,” I assured her, though the pounding of my heart said I believed otherwise. It seemed there was no safe place anywhere until we reached the mountain’s peak.

She was breathing hard, trembling. “What happened?” she asked, her voice muffled against my shoulder.

“A tree fell. It blocked the mouth of the cave, but we’ll be fine.” The thing was a monster, hundreds of years old by the looks of it, and the saturated ground and wind had been too much for it.

And still, Hecate clung to me. I couldn’t help the keen awareness of her which began to develop. How warm and soft she felt in my arms. How good it was to hold her. The scent of her skin, of her hair—even after being rained on, even tangled and damp, it brought to mind lush sweetness. I couldn’t help turning my face toward it, breathing her in, holding the scent of her inside me as long as I could.

She raised her head, eyes downcast at first but slowly, slowly moving up until they met mine. There was no pretense now. No flippant words, no snappishness. I found tenderness, vulnerability, uncertainty.

Mere inches separated us, a mere fragment of space filled with tight, pulsing energy which drew us closer…

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