Page 1 of Prodigal Son

CHAPTER 1

A gush of hot blood soaked the fabric of Cain’s shirt as searing pain shot through his chest. His knees crashed onto the cold earth as a grunt coughed out of him, the metallic taste of his own blood rising in his throat with his burning, now untethered, rage.

She truly shot him. That mortal terror of a female shot him. His stunned gaze lifted from the arrow protruding from his chest to the startled woman still angling the crossbow at him. Destiny Santos, star reporter for the Channel Six news, had finally gone too far.

“You must have a death wish,” he snarled, and her dark brown eyes widened under the fringe of her black lashes.

“I…” Stark horror bleached the color from her face until her skin shined like white bone under the blue moonlight. “I told you not to move. Y-you didn’t listen.”

Her finger, still hooked around the trigger, trembled slightly. The scent of mortal fear filled the air in an inescapable sweet stench. The pain should have blinded him to the details, but he spared a second to wonder why any female would shape their fingernails as pointed claws. Hers were blood red—like his now drenched shirt.

He was going to kill her. Slice open her flesh and tear her limb by limb—as soon as he found his bearings.

Fluid filled his lungs and he coughed, choking as he drowned internally from the blood pumping through his punctured heart and lungs. The rattle of his cough no longer sounded hollow. Now, breathing felt more like waterboarding as he gasped in flimsy sips of air. Not enough.

Consciousness flickered. He needed to extract the arrow from his heart and feed before he lost all awareness. Falling unconscious as deep in the woods as they were, with a predator afoot, would leave them both in danger.

His stare latched onto her rapidly fluttering pulse. Mortals were a no-no, but the shrew shot him. He gripped the arrow, his mind reaching for Anna, as his concentration quickly severed by the unexpected pain. Gasping, he fell forward to his hands and knees.

“No, don’t pull it! You need a doctor!”

His body wobbled as the blood drained from his chest, rushing faster as his heart pumped wildly around the hole. Too weak to access the cognitive link he and Anna shared, Cain waited, gasping. But the connection faded, fainter and fainter until he could no longer find the thread. He needed to heal before his injury spread to his sweet, pregnant…Annalise.

Stretching a hand in front of him, he forced himself to rise, wobbling precariously on his knees as life giving blood gushed from the open wound of his chest. His arm trembled beside the protruding arrow and he commanded the mortal female. “Come—”

Choking on the thick saliva crowding his tongue, he struggled to give the order. His mind scrambled with an effort to remain conscious, making telekinesis impossible, as his balance gave out and his heart went into a wildly agonizing spasm.

Collapsing onto the frozen forest floor, his shoulder took the brunt of his weight but the protruding arrow knocked hard into the solid earth, driving deeper into his chest and tearing at his back muscles. He rolled to his side, gasping and groaning, the mortal’s ceaseless chatter blurring into a cricket’s song lost behind the blaring in his ears.

The others were edging closer. He could vaguely hear their approach in the rattle of leaves overhead. They were outnumbered, and he was desperately in need of blood.

Slumber threatened to pull him into a deep sleep, tempting to release him from the horrific pain. His vision moved in trails of light and dark shadows as the mortal prattled on with her ceaseless chatter, worrying over her dead phone battery as he slowly died at her feet.

Silver stars blurred in the sky in an opaque smear of black as a scream tickled the back of his skull. A pool of heat cooled under his back as he stared up at the swirling sky.

“Anna…” he wheezed, desperate not to fail her, but fearful he might black out from the pain.

His shaking fingers, sticky with blood, wrapped around the arrow. He needed to get it out. Gritting his teeth, uncaring that his fangs were showing, he tensed and growled as he tugged at the shaft.

An ungodly roar of frustration escaped as the arrow refused to budge, the barbed tip shredding through the pulp of his organs as his blood pumped wastefully. Panting and sweating, chills took over as his heart thrust in an erratic assault, spilling more blood and causing his body to lock and tremble against the radiating agony.

“What have you done?” he snarled at the woman, frustrated with the endless assault that followed such a small intrusion. “You’ve impaled my heart—”

“I’m sorry!” her shrill cry tried to claim sympathy, as if she were the victim here. “I didn’t mean to actually shoot you. I was scared!”

And so she should be, out in the woods with predators thirsting for her blood. Isaiah had nearly ended her. Cain wasn’t sure what had chased him away. But he wasn’t alone. By no means did Cain assume they were out of danger. They had to leave before the deranged army that served his uncle returned.

Gritting his teeth, he yanked the arrow. The barbed tip tore at tissue and his heart spasmed wildly. Pain knifed into his back and shoulders, exploding in an attack that would kill a mortal. He bore down, his body going into shock as he braced. Agonizing tremors jerked his focus and his grip loosened.

The offending spike wouldn’t budge. So long as it remained, he’d continue to lose blood and weaken. He wrapped his bloodied hand around the shaft and heaved again, this time spewing the contents of his stomach onto the earth and crying out in pain.

A bouquet of store-bought perfume filled the air as brittle, fallen leaves crunched under the female’s rushing footsteps. “Shit, shit, shit!” she babbled, her voice pitched with panic. “Wait! You’re making it worse. Let me help.”

His head snapped back and he hissed with unrefined venom. The mortal bitch doubled back, spewing a startled curse in a foreign language. Her words faded, sounding further and further away as the blackness of the sky flowed into his vision and he struggled to stay awake.

A strange numbness took over his body and he could no longer feel his legs. How much blood had he lost? An unwelcome peace settled over him, the back of his mind weakly whispering for him to yank the arrow free. One or two more tugs should do it, but his body shivered and the numbness overtaking his limbs stole away the sting. Perhaps he could just rest…

Exhaustion pulled him gently into a tempting calm. Tranquility lured a sense of ease, inviting him into an eternal peaceful slumber immortals rarely found. Was this it?

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