House of Ravens (19 page)

He looks around him again, searching the
walls, the bodies. The mass level of violence. “It looks like your
apartment in Colorado.”

I nod as my blood chills. “Henry.”

“
Wait a second,” Samuel
says. “Your dad, who’s supposed to be dead, is helping us in this
war?”

My stomach is in a tight knot. A riptide of
emotion is raging through me. “I think so.”

“
Liv, I think he saw all
this coming, way before we did,” Ian says. “I mean, what we found
back in Colorado was months old.”

“
Wait a second,” Samuel
says, his eyes growing wide with some kind of realization. “Your
mom had been buried in Colorado before she was dropped off here, at
your house, right?”

I nod, my veins turning to ice all the
more.

“
And you really think your
dad did this
and
whatever you found back in Colorado?” he asks.

I nod, looking over at Ian. “The patterns
are all the same,” he says.

“
Do you think they were
Bitten that were killed?”

I shrug, shaking my head. “There weren’t any
bodies left at the scene, but they very well could have been.”

Samuel pales, his expression growing grim.
“What is it?” I breathe.

“
I don’t think it was
Jasmine who dug up your mom, Liv,” he says. “I think it was whoever
is at the head of this war.”

I lose focus. The breath stills in my chest,
and I actually take a step back.

The patterns are the same. The evidence of
war is the same.

Jasmine insisted that she didn’t do it.

She didn’t seem to understand why I would
attack, using her dead husband as emotional warfare.

She didn’t do this.

That was the final tipping point in losing
myself. I had tried to be a good person. I’d tried to reason and to
do things the right way when it came to fighting Jasmine. But that
sent me over the edge.

And Jasmine didn’t even do it.

And I’ve been being manipulated, molded, for
far longer than I realized.

“
I think we should go,” I
say quietly. “Burn the house. Burn it all.”

“
HE’S CLOSE BY,” I SAY as
we walk back into the House. “He’s got to be in Silent Bend, now.”
My brain is reeling. I’m trying to form coherent thoughts. “I… I
need Henry found. We have to find him!”

“
Nial, you watch the
House,” Ian commands as everyone begins gathering down in the
ballroom. “Everyone else, go take a good long look at Henry’s
picture in the library.”

“
I need you to search
Silent Bend and the surrounding area,” I say as Francesca, Rowan,
Holland, Mary, and Smith all file into the library. “We are not
letting him slip through our fingers this time!”

“
Liv, can we talk to you
upstairs for a few minutes?” Ian asks, standing next to
Nial.

“
Make it quick,” I growl as
I watch everyone head out the door. They’re armed to protect
themselves, but this is a search and recover mission.

The door closes as we reach the upstairs
floor and walk into my father’s office. I pace the space like a
rabid animal. The pictures of my father from the lab hang from the
walls around me now, his tense eyes staring at me, as if daring me
to figure this out.

“
Liv, I need to see where
your head is at,” Ian says.

“
What do you mean?” I ask,
throwing a glare in his direction. “We’re this close! I can’t let
him get away right now.”

“
Yeah, I get that,” he
says, grabbing my arm and forcing me to stop. “But what if there’s
a reason why he’s been hiding all this time?”

“
Alivia,” Nial says in that
calm manor of his. “What if Henry Conrath is not the man you
imagine him to be?”

“
What do you mean?” I ask,
my eyes angrily darting between the two of them.

“
It’s just weird, you
know,” Ian says. “You’ve been here for ten months now. Why would he
fake his own death? Why would he abandon you like this? What is he
hiding from?”

There’s a great clattering sound, followed
by breaking glass, coming from the ballroom. For a moment, we meet
each other’s eyes, running through the possibilities, and there’s
only one.

The Bitten are making their move.

I sling my crossbow out in front of me, Nial
grabs a stake from the desk, and Ian raises a gun before him.
Together, we descend the stairs, turning the corner to face the
ballroom.

A single man lies on the floor, his head
down, his entire body quaking. A trail of blood stretches from the
broken doorway to him, where it pools around him. His fingers
stretch out before him, attempting to crawl toward us.

“
Don’t move!” Ian bellows,
taking five quick steps toward the man. “Show me the backs of your
hands!”

Shakily, he raises his outstretched hand,
blood covering his skin. He draws his other up, every movement
looking pained and on the verge of his last breath. He uses it to
lift his chest.

And slowly, he draws his head up.

Staring back at us with gray eyes. Serious
brows.

“
Alivia,” he breathes
out.

“
Henry!”

I RUSH FORWARD, PAST IAN and Nial, dropping
to Henry’s side, rolling him over. He lets out a great cry of pain,
hissing in agony, holding his hand to his chest.

He’s covered in bite wounds. Deep fang marks
sink into his flesh, the reason there is blood covering his entire
body. A deep wound in his chest seems to be the source of most of
his pain, and I can make out the shape of jagged wood from inside
of it.

“
Henry!” I cry in horror
and shock. “What… How…”

“
He needs blood,” Nial
says, going into saving mode instantly. “Human blood. Now. Ian, get
my cart from the supply room. We need to remove whatever is in his
chest.”

Ian swears, looking back over his shoulder
as he practically trips over his feet to get what Nial asked
for.

“
Henry,” I say as I pull
him up into my lap, my hands instantly slick with blood. “You’re
alive. You’re…here!”

“
I’m so sorry, Alivia,” he
breathes, his voice coming out in a strangled breath. “So…” But he
can’t finish his sentence. His eyes flutter closed.

“
Nial!” I scream, even as
he examines Henry for injuries. “Do something!”

“
He’s been staked,” Nial
says as blood instantly coats him. “It’s broken off inside of him,
dangerously close to his heart. Please don’t move him, it might
dislodge it and kill him.”

I carefully back away, lowering his head to
the marble floor. Ian races back into the ballroom, pushing a
medical cart, the look in his eyes wild.

“
Henry,” I whisper, leaning
over him, my hand coming to his cheek. “Open your eyes. Please open
your eyes for me.”

But he doesn’t. One of his hands reaches up,
resting over mine. “Alivia,” he breathes.

“
Take the gauze, a lot of
it,” Nial says frantically. “When I remove the stake press it to
his chest immediately. He’s going to bleed profusely.”

Ian, hands gloved, wads a huge chunk of
gauze and stands at the ready.

“
He needs to feed—fresh,
not bagged,” Nial says, shaking his head. “I can’t repair
this.”

“
I’ll do it,” a calm voice
says from behind us.

“
Elle, no,” Ian says in a
panic as he looks over his shoulder. Elle stands there, in a white
nightgown, staring at my dying father on the floor. “You were
already nearly killed. You can’t.”

“
If I don’t, he will die,”
she says as she walks barefoot over the marble floor. “I feel fine,
Ian, really. Let me do this. For Alivia.”

His eyes dart from his sister to me.

I don’t know what to say. I know Elle
shouldn’t be fed on. But I’m afraid if Henry doesn’t feed, he’ll
die.

I’m so selfish.

“
Please,” I whisper to
him.

The fear in Ian’s eyes is so apparent. He
looks at me, wide eyed, as if frozen in slow motion.

“
It needs to be now!” Nial
says. “We cannot wait for another human.”

And everything speeds back up. “Come on,
Elle!” He waves her forward.

She crouches down beside Henry, who still
won’t open his eyes. His grip on me loosens with every passing
second. Drawing her sleeve back, she raises her exposed wrist up to
his mouth.

The second she presses her flesh against his
teeth, he sinks them in to her.

Nial yanks the broken stake from Henry’s
chest, and Ian immediately presses the gauze there, trying to stop
the bleeding.

So much blood. It pours from his chest. The
gauze doesn’t stand a chance of stopping any of it. Ian’s hands are
coated.

I look at Elle, her eyes glazed over, her
head lolling back. She’s perfectly still.

“
Keep drinking, Henry,” I
beg, pressing his head to her arm. “Just a little more.”

“
It’s working,” Nial
breathes. I turn to see, and the bite marks are indeed closing up.
The blood flow slows. One by one, the fang punctures knit
themselves closed.

“
It’s working,” I sigh,
hope lighting in my chest.

“
That’s enough,” Ian
growls, swatting Elle’s wrist away from Henry’s mouth. It drops
away without any fight, and he barely catches his sister before she
collapses to the floor. “Elle? You okay? Open…open your
eyes.”

“
I’m…” she struggles to
speak as the fog clears from her head. “Okay. I’m…okay.”

Slowly, she sits up on her own, blinking
several times.

Seeing that she is indeed alright, I turn
back to Henry.

By this time, most of the bite marks are
healed. The gaping hole in his chest is still bleeding, but it
seems to be slowing.

“
Is he going to be okay?” I
ask.

Nial turns to the cart and begins digging
through it. He comes out with a bottle of brown liquid and what
looks like a cotton ball on the end of a stick. “I’ve never known a
vampire to bleed out, but my experience is limited. If there are
any more shards in his chest, that could be dangerous. They could
dislodge, puncturing his heart.”

“
Is there anything you can
do about it?” I ask, feeling frantic. Henry’s eyes are fully
closed, his entire body limp. But he keeps breathing, ragged,
strangled pulls.

Nial shakes his head. “Even surgery would be
very difficult, this close to his heart. We can only hope the blood
helps him to heal and push out any remaining particles.”

“
How long?” I ask as tears
pool in my eyes. I brush his hair back from his head, which is
long, hanging down to his shoulders. It’s amazing. He hasn’t aged a
day from the pictures taken of him that I found in the lab. “How
long until we know?”

Nial’s eyes are so sad and unsure when he
looks at me. “I don’t know, my dear.”

A comforting hand is laid on my back as I
look back down at my father, lying there so still and quiet. Two
tears break free from my eyes, landing on his own cheek.

“
Someone needs to call
Rath,” I cry, rubbing a thumb over my father’s cheek. Nial
instantly pulls his phone out and is talking just moments
later.

“
Please, Henry,” I whisper.
“Don’t die on me.”