Page 273 of Golden Eagle

“I don’t – I don’t know.”

“Yes,” Alexei tried to say. Mages expended a great deal of energy wielding fire. Once they’d expended too much, they were capable only of sparks, and in need of a lie-down.

He blacked out, a little, then. When he came to, a body lay across his chest, ribs pressing against his own as the creature breathed. He – and it was a he – smelled of sweat, and dirt, and unwashed skin, and ofwolf.

Alexei’s fangs descended. His mouth filled with saliva.

“Here, love.” Dante’s voice. Dante’s hand at the back of his head, helping to lift him. The other hand held greasy hair away from a throat, one right in front of his face. A wolf throat.

Alexei bit.

He drank for what felt an eternity. Drank until he felt the tingling of warmth and circulation in his feet again. Until his belly felt full and hot. Until his vision cleared – and sharpened. Until his head stopped swimming, and his hands were strong enough to reach up and hold the wolf himself, by the hair and the back of his dirty shirt.

Until the wolf stopped whimpering.

He finally disengaged, gasping for air, blood running down his chin. He was sitting upright, now, and Dante was rubbing soothing circles between his shoulder blades. Dante himself looked wretched; as Alexei glanced at him, he reached up to swipe a finger beneath his nose, and it came away bloody. His nose continued to bleed, another drop sliding down toward his upper lip.

“Don’t mind me, just having a little aneurysm.” He smiled, his teeth bloody.

“Shit.” Alexei licked his lips clean, cleared his throat. Wiped his chin with his sleeve. “That should be healed. Sev healed you.”

“I don’t know what to tell you.”

“Here, have some…” He glanced down toward the wolf he’d fed from.

It was the feral, the other half of the pair that had attacked Trina.

He was dead.

“I don’t think there’s any left, sweetheart,” Dante said, softly.

“Oh.” He’d drained him totally. His stomach squirmed, and he thought he might bring some of it back up.

“He was mad,” Dante said, consolingly. “I had a look in his mind when I compelled him over here, and there was nothing left to salvage of the man he once was. They had him locked up here, left for dead. He’s at peace, now.”

Severin stood on Alexei’s other side. “We have to go.”

Alexei heard shooting.

“Gustav–”

“Gone,” Dante said, jaw clenching. He wiped more blood from under his nose. “And we should be, too.”

~*~

Of course, Lanny thought. Of course the scary fucking monsters caught up to them when they were standing at a dead end.

They weren’t quiet. You could hear them coming for a ways, their snarling, growling, haphazard, slapping footsteps echoing off the walls.

“Severin!” Nikita shouted back over his shoulder. “Get him up!”

Lanny reloaded the AK-47 he’d picked off a dead man and wished like hell it was something with more kick. The vampires they’d fought so far had felt pain, had reeled back, had fought more like humans – albeit wildly strong ones. But this…

He’d played his fair share of first-person shooter zombie games, and he wasn’t relishing doing it in real life.

“Okay, I gotta ask,” he said, as the sounds got louder, came closer. Christ, what was so hard about getting a prince off a table? “If one of these things bites us, are we gonna start craving brains or something? Will we go rabid, too?”

“No, nothing like that,” Will said tightly. He was nocking an arrow; they had silver heads, he’d explained. “They can’t make you what they are without the proper exchanging of blood, just like with any vampire. And a vampire can’t turn another vampire – or any immortal, for that matter. They’ll really just be able to tear you to pieces.”

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