Page 95 of Bite at First Sight

A hand clamped down on her shoulder. Cassandra squeaked and turned to face one of the vampires assigned to her guard. He shook his head.

“No interference is allowed at this point. It would be best to avert your eyes until it is over.”

She slumped in despair. She could do nothing to aid Rafe.

Eyeing the agonized faces of the fallen, her soul ached with sympathy. The weight of her satchel suddenly filled her awareness.

There was plenty she could do.

Cassandra touched the vampire’s sleeve. “What is your name?”

“Eric, my lady.”

She curtsied awkwardly in her trousers. “Eric, could you cover me while I tend to the wounded?”

At first he looked as if he were about to object. Then his eyes scanned the writhing, wounded vampires and his mouth compressed in a grim line. “Can you help them?”

“Some, though unfortunately not all,” she answered honestly.

He nodded and gestured for the remainder of her guard to come forth and flank her.

Cassandra knelt before the nearest wounded vampire, a young male with an ugly gash in his chest above his heart. With vampires’ rapid healing abilities, it must have been much worse before she’d gotten to him. He bared his fangs and snarled.

Swallowing her trepidation, she placed a gentle hand on his. “I am going to help you, but you will have to lie still.”

She opened a vial of vampire blood and poured it into the wound. The vampire’s eyes widened as his wound knitted shut.

“I am in your debt, my lady,” he whispered.

Rafe’s yell of pain made her flinch. I must not look, I mustn’t. I’ll lose my senses.

As Rafe’s battle raged on, Cassandra waged one of her own with the injured vampires. She administered blood, bandaged, and stitched wounds for what seemed an eternity. Some were cooperative patients, while others needed to be drugged and held down. Eric assigned a pair of vampires to aid with that.

The worst were the ones who had to be killed. Thankfully, Eric took care of that heartrending chore for her. Despite that, many looked on her with tear-filled eyes and thanked her profusely.

Giving a dying vampire’s hand a final squeeze, she rose and squared her aching shoulders to move on to the next patient. There were too many wounded for her to manage alone. She needed another doctor or three.

Immediately an idea crept to her mind. A dangerous idea. She surveyed the multitude of injured vampires with determination in her mind and an ache in her soul. I must.

She approached the first vampire she’d healed. “I need you to fetch the surgeon Thomas Wakley. I’ve seen you guarding him, so I know you know where he lives.” Holding up a hand to ward off his protest, she rattled off his address. “Please, the lives of your people depend on it!”

The vampire nodded shakily. “Only because I owe you my life will I do this. I pray you know what you are about, my lady.”

With that, he was gone and Cassandra was left to face the bleeding masses and pray that Rafe won the battle—and that her decision to involve Wakley hadn’t cost another life.

* * *

Rafe swung his sword at Clayton with a roar. Again, his enemy blocked the blow. Steel clashed so hard that sparks flew to rival the fireworks in the sky.

They had been fighting for hours. His people had held strong against Clayton’s, though with heavy losses on both sides. Vincent had taken many prisoners, while Rochester mercilessly cut down turncoat London vampires and Clayton’s allies alike. He and his retinue had driven the Lord of Derbyshire’s vampires off shortly after the melee commenced.

Blackpool and his people fought Farnborough’s forces with such savagery that Rafe wondered if some previous personal hostility existed between the two lord vampires.

The most agonizing part of the fighting was the effort it took not to look for Cassandra. The last time he’d turned to check on her, he’d nearly been stabbed in the back by one of Clayton’s people.

A bullet had whizzed past Rafe’s ear and dropped the cowardly sod like a sack of rubbish. He’d turned to see Lydia raising her pistol in a salute. He nodded in thanks and plunged his sword into the craven’s black heart.

By the time he and Clayton faced off, fewer than half of the fighters remained on their feet. Rafe’s lip curled up in disgust while his chest ached with grief and rage. Such senseless waste of innocent lives…all because of a foolish vampire’s mindless greed for power.

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