Page 60 of The Wayward Sons & The Vampires of Fortune
He’d never survive.
Before they had the chance, the Hellhounds cut them off. Winston plucked the closest right out of the air, his jaws clamping down hard around the vampire’s neck. Two others followed his leave.
Body parts scattered in the whistling wind. Blood spilled everywhere, and bones shattered and fragmented in the air.
Bile bit the back of my throat as I watched the horrific scene unfold, unable to look away, no matter how badly I wanted to. This was one of those moments that would be forever imprinted in my brain—one I wished I could forget. Even still, the carnage would be minimal as the vampires turned to dust and vanished.
The wind died down.
The earth stopped shaking.
The roots receded into the ground.
And in the middle of it all, the light from Gray’s power faded until the darkness swallowed him.
“Ooh-wee!” Gray exclaimed with a loud huff. “That was fuckin’ intense.”
Relief flooded my system. Holy fuck, he was alive.
We were alive.
“Well, fuck me sideways,” Nash said into the quiet. “We fuckin’ did it. We fuckin’ killed them all.”
“Yeah,” Sam agreed, the word disappearing into an awkward chuckle. He sagged on the ground next to me. That chuckle turned into a full-blown laugh, one that caught on until all of us were laughing, high on adrenaline and the relief that we were alive.
CHAPTER 41
Okay… no, stop that.” Andrea slapped Gray’s hand. “Jesus fuck, you’re a terrible listener.”
“You just got to learn how to talk to me, darlin’,” Gray teased, giving her his best grin. I held back a laugh as I watched her glare at him in response. Gray was trying—I had to give him credit where it was due—but Andrea was an immovable force to be reckoned with.Stubborn meet stubborner. Even Andrea’s husbands had a whole bet going about how long it was before she threw him. She hadn’t yet, and I hoped she didn’t, but Gray hadn’t met a challenge yet that he’d back down from. Getting that woman to like him was about to be his Mount Everest.
In the hour after killing the vampires, we were all relaxing in the hangar. There was an active plan to leave, but before we could fly out, there were Hellhounds that needed tending to.That was a sentence I never thought I’d say.Gray had taken it upon himself to get a few tips and pointers from Andrea about using his power. Thankfully, he’d conceded that he couldn’t handle flying but now had her teaching him how to throw airrazors… or spikes… or something. Honestly, I wasn’t sure how good of an idea it was to equip him like that, but it made him happy.
I stood off to the side alone, worn down and emotionally rubbed raw. The relief in the room was welcome, but I knew I’d be recovering from this for weeks. My emotional barriers were fractured and just waiting for an excuse to break.
“Well, she hasn’t killed him yet,” Sam announced as he wandered over to join me. He crossed his arms, standing next to me and staring at Gray and Andrea. “I think that’s as close as he’s going to get to her liking him.”
“She likes him enough,” I said. “Which honestly frustrates her more.”
“That sounds about right for her,” he chuckled, “Gray just has that effect on people. He always has.”
“Yeah,” I agreed. That wasn’t news to me. Gray was just sunshine wrapped up in a Twizzler-loving, Taylor Swift admiring, dangerous hunter package. He had his moments, but ultimately, it was hard for anyone not to like him—Andrea included.
Sam and I fell into a comfortable silence as we watched her teach Gray more about his power. While we did so, I glanced at Sam. Something had been nagging at me—a question about his past that I wanted more answers to if he was willing to give me them.Something that could help me.
“You know,” I began, hesitant to even bring up the conversation. At the very least, I knew it’d be an uncomfortable topic for him to talk about. “Gray told me about your parents.”
Sam made a small sound but said nothing else. His gaze remained on the interaction between Andrea and Gray. I could feel the spike of pain the topic incited for him and almost backed down.Almost.
“Is it true they were going to tie your power?” I asked. I’d heard rumors about tying off powers. Some parents did it with their children before they came into their hunter powers. It was a painless, magical procedure that was done in infancy or early childhood, but I’d never heard anyone doing it on adult hunters. It was damn near taboo, and the information out there was practically non-existent. Sam was the first hunter I’d ever heard of who almost underwent it.
“Don’t go there, Ryder,” Sam whispered as if reading my mind. “What my parents wanted to put me through… it would’ve been fucking torture. It would’ve killed me. You wouldn’t survive it.”
“Children survive it,” I reminded him.
“Yeah, because their hunter blood is dormant. The procedure ties off their power at a molecular level before it has any impact on them. They feel nothing because being a hunter hasn’t taken over. Doing so now… it’d burn off every single hunter molecule in your body while they gave you a blood transplant.” He turned to face me, his eyebrows furrowing together as he considered me. I looked away. He was the last person in the world I wanted to judge me about my desperate desire to get rid of my power. Softly, he added, “No matter how awful your power is, Ryder, going through something like that… the pain would kill you.”
But I could handle pain.More so than most. I lived with the pain of the world every single moment of every single day.
