Page 71 of A Heart Of Bitter Poison
I look down at my body. I’m covered in blood and debris. Everythinghurts. My head. My hand. One of my fingers is bent the wrong way. Broken ribs grate against their shattered points. A deep slice on my thigh screams as I shift to look at the driver’s seat.
Ashen’s head is tilted forward, chin to chest. Blood runs down his face in rivulets and taps on his leg in thick drops. I hear the rumble of a punctured lung and the swirl of internal bleeding. He’s unconscious and badly injured, but alive.
There’s a noise from the back of the van. I can already sense and smell the damage when I look back at Urtur.
The jackal’s amber eyes meet mine and I hear the swish of his tail, even as he whines. He pants in stuttering, shallow breaths. I can smell blood on his breath. The marrow of broken bones. Bile from a punctured liver. Urtur cries again and lays his head down, his body quivering with shock.
My fingers fumble with the button for the seat belt until it finally releases. I grit my teeth through the pain and shift, turning back toward Urtur. He whines as I drag myself out of my seat. My broken ribs are starting to knit back together, but not enough to stop from digging into my lungs with every breath.
“Hey, buddy,” I whisper. I kneel on the floor of the van next to where Urtur’s head is jammed between the seats. My hand flows across his silken, sulfur-scented fur. He cries, but it’s weaker now. Every breath is shallower than the last, every heartbeat fainter.
“It’s okay,” I whisper. I wrap my hands around Urtur’s neck. Tears slide across my skin. Urtur’s whines fade. I feel him slipping away in my grasp. His body slackens. “It’s going to be okay.”
Only a few last whispers of breath are left, and then Urtur is gone. I watch, and wait, and at first nothing happens, but finally the first flakes of ash lift from his body and I bend my head with relief. He’s going back to the Shadow Realm.
But my relief doesn’t last long.
“LuLu…” a voice calls from higher up the hill we’ve just rolled down.
Fuck.
I scramble over Urtur’s disintegrating body and look out a hole in the cracked glass.
Shitshit.
Ashen groans as he stirs in the front seat.
“Lu.” His voice is weak and slow, like he’s fighting to hold onto the consciousness he’s just claimed. I watch as he shifts his head to look at the empty passenger seat. His voice comes out stronger with rising panic. “Lu?..Lu-”
I don’t answer as I climb back into the seat next to him. He winces in pain as he tries to move, and when I land next to him I can see that his left shoulder droops down, the bone dislocated. It’s one of many injuries to that side of his body, and his heart sings to me with a steady beat of alarm.
“All right, vampire?” he asks. Ashen’s eyes roam over me with concern as he scans the cuts across my face and the blood seeping through my shirt. He reaches up to brush away the pebbles of tempered glass still stuck to my cheek. I lean back, just out of reach.
“Lucky LuLu,” Ember sings. She’s getting closer, picking her way down the steep embankment. “Time to go back to the Shadow Realm, Lu.”
Ashen eyes meet mine and time stops.
I see fear. Real fear.
“How did she know?” I whisper. Hot, fierce tears gather in my eyes.
I should already be out of here but I can’t move. My lips tremble. My hands shake with shock.
Only one truth exists. It’s the pain that scours every inch of me, body and soul.
Ember pushed us off the hill knowing Ashen would only need to die to resurrect unharmed in the Shadow Realm. And me, a vampire, I could be mangled and still survive.
Especially if I had taken enough blood in advance. Alberto’s blood.
And Ashen’s. The blood he brought for me. And the blood he kept pushing me to take.
“How did she know where we would be?” My voice cuts as sharp as shattered glass this time. My eyes burn. My heart turns to cinders and sinks through my chest.
“Lu, I-“
“What have you done?”
There is rage in my eyes as they burrow into the layers of hurt and sorrow that surface in his.
