Page 78 of Rapture's Edge (Night Prowler 3)
Eliana had no idea how much time had passed. It might have been minutes, it might have been hours. It might have even been centuries for all her dead heart could tell.
She was slumped against the wall in the long corridor on the level of the bedrooms, her arms resting on her bent knees, staring down at the fibers of the black carpet, seeing nothing. Demetrius had been inside the room with Mel since they arrived. She’d brought him hot water in pans and all the towels she could find, then left him alone as he’d asked. Her last sight of Mel had been of her still, pale body lying on the bed, Demetrius leaning over her with a scalpel in one hand.
She would die. Eliana was sure of it. She’d lost too much blood. She would die.
Her fault. Her fault. So much blood and chaos and the unending, nearly unendurable agony of living with half-truths and twisted lies that passed for their sad reality. And what was the point of it all, really? More and more and more years of living on the run and hiding from still more people she once thought were her friends and family. More dragging days and endless nights, hoping for a future that would probably never come, more betrayal, more assassins, a future of living in the open with another species that seemed to prefer her dead, or—worse—caged?
The answer was: there was no point. It had all been a pipe dream, a castle built in the sand. Emptied of the dreams that had sustained her for so long, she felt gutted. She felt hollowed out.
The door cracked open. Eliana’s head snapped around. She staggered to her feet.
“Well?”
Demetrius looked as if he’d gone down to hell to do battle with demons, and lost. His face was strained, his shoulders were hunched forward in an attitude of defeat, and there were dark smudges of blue under his eyes which, to her great horror, reflected the defeat in his posture. The utter lack of hope.
“You should sit with her,” was his cryptic response, and then he brushed past her and walked slowly up the twisting stairs to the level above.
No. Her heart began to pound it out like a drumbeat in her chest. No. No. No. No.
She went into the room and had to bite her lip to keep from sobbing.
There was a pile of bloody towels in one corner, gruesomely vivid, pans full of now cold water that had all turned red pushed against the baseboards along one wall. A tray of bloodied instruments lay on a dresser near the door, and Mel’s ruined shirt hung from the back of a chair, tossed there in an obvious rush. And Mel was on the bed, still, silent as a corpse.
D had cleaned her and washed the blood from her face and arms, and he’d covered her up to her neck with a sheet and folded her hands over her chest. She was peaceful and ghostly pale, and if she wasn’t already dead, she looked as if she soon would be.
On the white sheet just at the center of her chest was a tiny spot of red.
She sank down beside the bed and took Mel’s icy hand in her own. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I’m so sorry.”
Mel didn’t answer. She didn’t move. The long dark plait of her hair had come undone and lay bedraggled on the pillow, wisps like eiderdown from the softest underbelly of a black swan. With shaking hands, Eliana unwound the braid and ran her fingers through the strands, tidying them, brushing them smooth over the pillow until they lay in a glossy fan all around her head. She was barely holding herself together, and only because she thought Mel would be horrified if she could see her face, all screwed up and red with the effort not to cry. She knew she’d tell her to snap out of it and grow a pair, and then she’d laugh her wonderful, witchy laugh at what a sissy she’d turned out to be after all.
Eliana thought maybe she should pray, but all that came out of her mouth was a plea instead. “Please. Please, Mel. Don’t leave me. Don’t die. Please don’t die.”
But Mel’s pale lips formed no encouraging words, and her bluish lids stayed closed, and finally the dam broke and Eliana dissolved into tears. Her body was wracked with sobs, and she gave herself over to it, kneeling at the bedside with her face pressed to the mattress, Mel’s hand beneath her forehead, her cold, cold fingers getting wet with tears.
Time passed. Her tears slowed, then stopped. Her legs went numb. She slid from her knees and sagged against the bed, still clinging to Mel’s hand, unwilling to let go. Her lids grew heavy and she let herself drift, and finally she fell asleep in the same spot, still holding Mel’s hand.
And that’s exactly how D found the two of them when he returned hours later.
He stood in the doorway a long, silent moment, watching with a heavy heart. He thought it might only be moments now; in fact, he was surprised Mel hadn’t already passed into the arms of Anubis, god of the afterlife. He’d seen much stronger men than she bleed out and die from lesser wounds.
She was a fighter, but she wasn’t immortal. There was only so much trauma a body could take. He’d done what he could—stopped the bleeding, repaired the ruptured artery and the torn flesh around the wound—but she’d lost too much blood, and he didn’t have the tools to do a transfusion. What was left of his hope was quickly fading.
His gaze rested on Eliana. In sleep she looked younger and vulnerable as she never did when awake. Her face had lost all its hard edges, and her generous mouth was slack. She looked almost a
s peaceful as Mel did, except for the little line between the dark crescents of her brows. Slumped on the floor against the bed, her head bowed and her knees drawn up to her chest, she also looked cramped and uncomfortable, and he couldn’t bear to see her like that. D drew a breath and moved forward.
He picked her up as gently as he could without waking her and disentangled her hand from Mel’s. She made a little protesting noise but didn’t open her eyes, and when he lifted her she rested her head against his chest and sighed like a child. When she wound her arms around his neck, he had to swallow around the tightness in his throat.
He carried her to the bedroom he thought of as theirs, though there was certainly no they, she’d made that perfectly clear. He laid her down, gently removed her boots, and unclipped her sword from her belt, putting it aside on the table beside the bed so she could see it as soon as she opened her eyes and know he hadn’t tried to disarm her. He leaned down to pull the sheet over her, and when he straightened she was awake, watching him.
“Thank you,” she whispered, eyes shining. “I know you did all you could. So…thank you.”
He nodded. His heart did a strange, painful flip-flop inside his chest. He turned to go, but she sat up and caught him by the hand, and he looked back at her, arrested.
“Please. I…”
She seemed unable to go on. Her throat worked, and her face held the expression of someone entirely lost, or surrendered. Their eyes held, and hers were wet, beseeching. Her voice breaking, she said, “Demetrius.”
