Midnight Ash (A Blushing Death Novel) (26 page)

My chest tightened and I swallowed the wail building somewhere deep inside me.
Danny’s blood
.

“None of them had to die,” she continued. “But you will
all
pay for Byron.”

Midnight Ash focused her gaze on me, then shoved the tough, bloody muscle of Danny’s heart into my face.

Horrified, I screamed as his still warm blood filled my mouth, my nose. I slammed my mouth shut as his blood coated my tongue and hacked off a chunk of his heart between my teeth. I gagged and tried to spit it out but she shoved her hand against my face, smearing the heart and blood across my mouth.

I needed to breathe. I instinctively swallowed.

A bolt of energy hit my system, pulsing power through me in what sounded like a sonic boom.

Midnight Ash stumbled backward. A distant howl rang out and I opened my eyes.

I ran my fingers slowly down my cheek, smearing streaks in the blood on my face. This was Danny. Danny’s power poured over me like a warm, cleansing bath. The power of the pack mixed with my own. I turned my eyes up to Midnight Ash, vengeance making my blood hot and my mind calm. Not only could I feel her power, I could see it. A soft blue mist surrounding her body, moving with her like a fog.

I stood on two shaky legs on uneven ground. I was energized by Danny’s power but I was losing blood, fast. I panted to keep from passing out.

Something else, something deeper was wrong.

I felt as if a part of me was lost.

I didn’t feel whole anymore.

Midnight Ash took a step back, putting some distance between us as I got to my feet. “What have you done?” she asked in an astonished whisper.

I had absolutely no idea.

She raised her sword but I was there first. Her eyes were wide with surprise as our swords met in a hard clink of metal. It was the first time since we’d all crashed through the ceiling that I felt like I could actually win.

My strength doubled as I moved, making me feel invigorated, like nothing could touch me. She was quick but her strokes were telegraphed by her power before she made them. Danny’s strength pulsed through me, urging me forward. Each stroke I made was stronger than the one before it. She dropped what remained of Danny’s heart and grasped her sword with both hands to meet my sword strikes.

I flipped my bowie knife in my other hand and made a quick backhanded slash across her throat while her attention was focused on my sword arm. My blade sliced across her flesh. Blood seeped from the wound in her neck, covering the front of her in a rich, thick liquid curtain. Shallow, but enough to stun her. My heart thundered in my chest as a sick sense of pleasure filled me. I drove the sword through her chest with a quick efficiency I wouldn’t have been capable of only moments before, thrusting the katana through bone and flesh until I felt the blade push out the other side of her body. Satisfaction turned the corners of my mouth up as the silver katana burned her from the inside out.

Her eyes grew wide and her mouth dropped open, showing the faint glimmer of fang.

I ripped the katana from her hand and swung outward. With a war cry and the welcome peace of death filling me, I separated her head from her body in one clean stroke. Her life fled from her body in a rush of wind and magic as she blinked out of existence.

Middonaitoshoo Asshu erupted in an explosion of glittering blue ash that filled the air like confetti at New Year’s Eve. I breathed for the very first time and felt my chest tighten as I chocked on the sob lodged in the back of my throat.

One by one, the vampires of the Daimyo fell to Dean, to Patrick, and to Alex, leaving Damsel covered in, blood, debris, and midnight-blue ash, glittering in the white fluorescent lights.

Patrick crawled over to Alex. She wasn’t moving.

With his deep intelligent Caribbean blue eyes, Dean stood tall on four paws in his wolf form, his coat a beautiful shimmering silvery gray. His power was familiar. His eyes were familiar. I knew him the minute I laid eyes on him.

Safe . . . warm . . . home
, she whispered through my mind, but I couldn’t think about that now.

Patrick glanced up at me from Alex’s side with a relieved expression and a quick, reassuring nod.

“She’ll live,” he said with a slight, pain-filled smile. He was relieved and I felt empty. I couldn’t think about the possibility of losing Alex, too. I pushed that fear deep into the growing black box where I’d stored all my ugly emotions.

I inched over to Danny’s body, so still on the floor. I dragged the sword along the floor behind me, creating a trail of sparks as I approached him. My hands shook when I let myself look at him and really see that he was gone.

I’ll kill them all for this.

Patrick stood on shaking legs but he was more stable with every second, healing.

I didn’t move. I wasn’t sure that I could. I was covered from head to toe in blood and blue ash. A tingling in my muscles and bones prickled along my wounds. I was healing, too. Thanks to Danny, my muscles had started to knit back together like nothing had ever happened. It was an odd sensation, like my upper torso had fallen asleep and was tingling on pins and needles.

Patrick limped to me. I needed him to set my collarbone before it healed wrong. I didn’t want to think about what that meant.

“Set this please and do it quick,” I clipped in a strained voice that sounded distant and detached even to my ears.

Patrick’s brow scrunched in confusion as he examined my face and then my shoulder. “Are you healing?”

I nodded as my stomach turned. The healing process was incredibly painful and just felt weird. He reached two strong fingers into my open wound and pulled the bone together. I groaned and clasped onto his forearm for support as a sharp, agonizing pain shot through me, making my eyes water and my toes tingle. Once he released my bone and removed his fingers from the wound, the pain rescinded and the bone fused together.

I took a deep breath and then another until the harsh pain was a memory and my stomach untwisted.

“I will always be thankful to Daniel for that,” Patrick whispered as he stared at my newly re-knitted flesh.

My hands shook when I let myself look at Danny and really see that he was gone. The light from his eyes was gone. My heart twisted in my chest and ached as the hazel gray eyes that had once held so much life stared back at me empty and cold.

Patrick grasped my hand and squeezed. I looked up at him with a tear in my eye. I felt a tremor of unease pulse through him as he stared down at me. Something warm and thick dripped onto my hand. I glanced down to see the open wound on Patrick’s wrist.

He’d fed Alex to help her heal faster. She would need human blood to completely heal but Patrick had given her his until she could feed properly. He’d weakened himself to save her.

I looked up at him, brought his hand up to my lips, and pressed a gentle kiss to his cold skin. His blood, warm and alive, touched my lips. I licked them without thinking. I was already covered in blood. I’d consumed part of Danny’s heart for Christ’s sake. What else could go wrong?

A cold wind of power consumed us, wrapping Patrick and me in an arctic breeze, blowing through my body, and covering my skin in gooseflesh. My shoulder stitched completely shut and my energy rebounded quick enough to cause whiplash.

Patrick’s wounds were gone, too, and power radiated out from him like a cold sun, blinding and intense, slamming out like a shot as it engulfed the room and everyone in it with his endless pool of frigid power.

Alex stood, tall and easy, as if she hadn’t been close to death a moment ago. Dean howled, a ferocious sound that filled the space like an echo through a deep canyon.

“I don’t think Darshan would’ve attempted this on his own,” I said. I glanced down at Danny’s lifeless body, pulling my bottom lip between my teeth to keep from blubbering. All I wanted to do was curl up next to Danny, clutch him to me, and cry.

“You may be right,” Patrick answered. “Who would allow Darshan to break protocol like this?” He still held my hand, but his tight squeeze didn’t hurt anymore.

“Who is responsible for this?” I couldn’t keep my rage from my voice any longer. I was exhausted, angry, hurt, and on the verge of tears. I didn’t want to deal with this strategizing and political bullshit anymore. I wanted everything to go back to the way it was. I wanted Danny alive.

“ARTHUR,” Patrick growled.

I’ll kill them all.

I peered down at Danny. He seemed alone. I found myself kneeling on the ground beside him. I don’t remember how I got there. I slammed my hand down on the ground, willing my power to protect us, from what, I couldn’t say. A sheen of red curved over Danny and me as a bubble of blood encased us.

I ran my hands through his thick, dull, russet hair drenched with sweat, dirt, and blood.
Maybe if I put the pieces of his heart back in his chest he’d be all right.
I shook that thought away. Dead was dead. I couldn’t change that.

I stroked his face, brushing my fingertips over the soft laugh lines around his mouth. I leaned over and pressed a soft kiss to his lips, still warm with the last remnants of his life. My chest seized in torment as I thought about how I would never hear his laugh again.

This can’t be happening. I’m dreaming. Wake up. Wake up, you stupid idiot! Wake UP!

The first hot tear slid down my cheek and I collapsed on top of him in a weeping mess of pain, guilt, and regret.

“What do we do with him?” Alex asked from the corner, her voice muffled through the blood boundary that beat with the frantic pulse of my heart. I gaped up through my tears to answer.

Outside of my protective circle, Dean stood tall, naked, and imposing, covered in blood from his mouth down, staring down at me with an expression I didn’t understand. He didn’t seem scared or even horrified as I’d expected. I didn’t care enough about anything to decipher his expression.

Patrick and Alex loomed over Simon Tacoma. He struggled to get free from the handcuffs that still bound him to the metal chair. He hadn’t been marked by Midnight Ash, not a true human servant. I’d seen what happened to real servants when their vampire masters died. It wasn’t pretty.

“Deliver him to Derek. Someone needs to answer for those two women’s deaths,” I said in-between sobs.

Patrick and Alex both turned and stared at me through a dark crimson sheen.

“She’s got a point,” Dean agreed as he approached the edge of my circle on Danny’s other side. He knelt on the floor and met my eyes.

“He’ll tell the police?” Alex raised her eyebrows.

“Which part would they believe?” Patrick her with a conciliatory tone. “The vampires or the ninjas?”

Patrick approached, reaching out to touch the blood-red protection surrounding me.

I pressed my body against Danny’s. I couldn’t bear the thought of them taking him away from me. I screamed, my voice reverberating off the blood wall around us. I shook my head as tears streamed down my cheeks. I’d lost it and I knew it but I couldn’t stop any of it.

Dean reached over and grazed his fingers across the blood sheen. His touch tingled through me like my entire body was on fire.

“What is this?” he asked.

“She’s done it before. Some type of protective circle,” Alex snapped.

I heard the confusion and the hint of fear in her voice.

“It’s her magic,” Patrick whispered, kneeling behind me. “Dahlia, sweetheart, will you let me in?”

I couldn’t. I couldn’t think beyond the feel of Danny’s body growing colder in my arms.

“Dahlia?” Dean whispered, still caressing the outside of the blood wall.

I gazed up into soft olive-green eyes that seemed to see straight to the pain I couldn’t wipe away, couldn’t bury. Before I knew what I was doing, I’d reached my hand out and through the wall.

Blood fell, splattering us all in the deep crimson droplets that sparkled with faint midnight-blue ash.

Dean reached across the body to me.

Oh God, the body
.
Danny.

He cupped his large hands on either side of my face, grasping my cheeks in his hands, and tilted my face up as he forced me to focus on him. He stroked my cheeks with his thumbs, wiping the tears away.

“Dahlia,” he whispered.

He’s gone. We didn’t protect him,
she howled in my mind
.

If they took him away from me, it would be real. Danny would be dead and never come back.

“I won’t let anything happen to him,” Dean promised, reassuring me.

I met his eyes, searching for something I couldn’t name. His olive-green eyes were warm and filled with the same pain that overwhelmed me.

He won’t let anything happen to what is ours,
she whispered through me, and her howling subsided.
He is ours, too.

I slumped back into Patrick and out of Dean’s reach. I couldn’t take the burning warmth of his hands on my face. It felt too good. I didn’t deserve it. I buried my face in my hands and cried as Patrick wrapped his arms around me and clung to me. I didn’t notice Dean and Alex lift Danny.

Patrick picked me up in his arms like I weighed nothing and cradled me against his chest. He just let me cry.

“It’ll be all right, sweetheart,” he whispered.

I heard his words and knew that they were a lie. We’d survived but nothing would be all right again.

I wanted to be clean. I wanted all of this blood off of me, to crawl into bed and disappear. I wanted to pretend that this day had never happened. There was already a hole, somewhere, festering inside me.