Page 181 of Envious Of Fire
But to offer some.
A taste of Kyle’s real despair. Grief from the night he lost his family. Anguish from the loss of believing Tristan died in a pile of ashes a year ago. And the freshest agony of his childhood friend Brock being murdered before his eyes.
Brock, the bloodied face behind La-La’s fiery white hair.
The one who perhaps drew out every one of these feelings.
These feelings, offered to La-La like a gift upon the bleeding palm of Kyle’s Reach.
La-La, who tastes the offering with something other than his teeth, who suddenly finds himself flooded by secondhand misery, drowning in the sadness, consumed by the grief.
And being moved to tears.
“It’s so … p-p-pretty …” the vampire whispers in fascination, his laughter gone entirely, just a ghost of his grin stretched over his pale, beautiful face, tears falling.
Tears, falling.
From a vampire with nothing left inside to feel.
Then La-La lets go, and the vampire and the bloody man are gone, the storm swallowing them up at last.
Still sitting on the floor, astounded at what he’s done, Kyle brings his bleeding hand to his own face, finds it wet with tears.
What the hell just happened?
Did his Reach just work in reverse?
Has it been capable of such a thing all along?
Raya stands next to Kyle, towering over him, her face stern yet vulnerable, still wounded by the vampire’s cruel words to her. “I do not wish to see that one ever again,” she decides grimly.
Kyle’s gaze is lost to the racing sands through that ripped-open back door, wondering about the bloody face he saw.
It looked so much like him …
Like Brock.
But Brock is dead. How could a dead man drop out of the sky at exactly the time Kyle needed him to, saving him, with such impossible strength that rivaled a full-blooded vampire?
And how did Kyle sense Wendy at first? That cold, terrible abyss of nothingness his Reach found, Wendy, whom he swore he would never Reach for again?
Then something comes whirling back out of the storm.
Long and sharp.
Grazes his ear, inches from impaling his face.
He bends away with a shout.
It pierces Raya through her stomach, throws her backwards down the aisle.
Kyle slaps a hand to his sliced ear, turns. “Raya!”
For a second, she is perfectly still, clutching seats on either side of her, balanced in the aisle. Slowly, she peers down at what impaled her—the decorative hilt of La-La’s sword, protruding from her, the entirety of the long, curved blade penetrating her body clean through.
“What’s Thirst made of …?” asks Raya, a rhetorical note of humor in her voice. “A high-carbon steel, most likely,” she then answers herself. “But … I sense that this particular blade … may be lined with silver. However …” She grimaces. “I happen to be one of the few of us not allergic to it … Lucky me. A fact not even Tristan knows. I guess we all keep secrets.” She takes hold of the hilt. “But … itdoesstill hurt like a motherfucker, and so …”
She begins to pull the sword out.
