Page 190 of Envious Of Fire
“Save him how?” comes Elias, standing by Kyle’s side.
“You pick up a trick or two, living with vampires.” Drake lifts his arms to stretch, lets out a yawn, claps his hands. “So should I do it? Go save the guy? Be the hero? I’m bored.”
Kyle senses something slippery in Drake’s heart. “You know how to draw blood from passed out college kids. Doesn’t exactly make you a surgeon. What are you suggesting to do?”
Drake settles back into place against the doorframe. His eyes grow soft as he gazes at Kyle. “I think you already know.”
Kyle stares back. “Y-You mean …” He’s so mentally drained after the night they’ve had, it’s difficult to believe what Drake is suggesting. “Wait. You know how to do it?”
“Seen it,” says Drake, then adds, “once or twice. Never done it myself. From what they’re saying, Nico won’t survive the night. I can give him many more nights to live. As in … all of them.”
All of them.
All of the nights, forever. From this moment until eternity.
Elias realizes with a start what they’re talking about. “You’renot gonna … gonnaturnhim, are you?”
“Do we want him to live or not?” asks Drake almost sweetly.
“I don’t … I don’t think that’s …” Elias looks back and forth between Kyle and Drake in shock. “That’s notourchoice to make. Nico deserves a say in the matter. He should get to decide if—”
“Too late,” says Drake, then winces.
Kyle turns his ears toward the wall, listens. The doctors and nurses are heatedly arguing, trading orders, stressed, hearts heavy. The machines are going crazy, beeping. “What’s going on?” cries Raya. “Why isn’t he talking? Excuse me? Hello?” A specific kind of emotional heat has consumed the room and everyone inside it, working with fleeting hope to save a life.
Everyone save for Nico, from which Kyle hears only silence.
“Well?” asks Drake. “Shall I go and play God?”
The machines keep beeping, both Kaleb’s and Nico’s.
Raya keeps asking for someone to tell her what’s happening.
Kyle can almost feel the sword through his own body, with a second’s attachment of his Reach. He presses a hand to his belly as if to suppress the ache.
Then: “Y-Yes,” he breathes before he’s completely certain.
Elias looks at him. “Kyle …”
Drake nods. “I don’t take this responsibility lightly,” he says, “but I will say, before I depart this room, I find it incredibly sexy that you’re letting me do this. Let’s hope I don’t fuck up, alright? Pray for me.” With that, Drake slips from the doorway.
For half a second, Kyle considers telling him to stop, that he’s changed his mind. But something keeps him silent and glued to Kaleb’s bedside, frozen in place.
“Kyle …” Elias comes closer. “Are you … Are you sure …?”
“No,” he mutters back, “about anything, about any of this … no, I’m not.”
Elias studies Kyle’s face, then pulls him close, giving hisman the comfort of burying himself in his chest again. Kyle closes his eyes tightly, but can’t seem to contain his Reach. The outrage of the doctors when Drake enters the room. Raya’s confusion. Even Drake’s hesitation as he approaches the table, dismisses the others from the room, takes over with shaky confidence. “Whatever your last sunrise was,” he then says to the unresponsive Nico, “however many years ago it was before you became a prisoner … I hope you cherished it. I regret to take the rest of them from you. But maybe someday in the future, you’ll come to appreciate how little a price it was … to still be alive and among loved ones.” Drake’s heart is full. Kyle even senses something close to love swelling inside it as he says, “You don’t know me, but soon, we’ll be brothers, and for the rest of your nights, you will never again be alone.”
“Just get on with it,” groans Raya, knowing exactly what’s to happen, twisting inside with her own knot of complicated feelings, disgust and sorrow, dark and guilty relief, dread.
Warm resolve surges within Drake. “Alright. Let’s unsheathe that sword already.”
The ringing sound of metal and flesh and bone—and the pain Raya feels as she cries out—cause Kyle to double over, his hands pressed to his ears, as Elias’s shirt grows wet with his sobs.
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“It is imperative, now more than ever, that we be grateful for all He has given us, for the evil He has delivered us from …”
