But all the fight went out of her when Elias wrapped her in his warm coat, sweeping Roksana off her feet and laying her in the center of the bed, cradled in his scent. “Rest now.”
For now, she didn’t have a choice, did she?
Soon, though.
Soon she would have nothing but choices—each of them harder than the last.
What else was new?
CHAPTER EIGHT
Roksana stared at the door of the apartment, her body paralyzed—and not because of her injuries. After Elias broke off the kitchen cabinet doors and nailed them up over the windows, he’d left to go find food, clothes and painkillers for Roksana. She’d shrugged when he announced he was leaving, not even bothering to roll over. Or attempt it, anyway.
How could she have been so flippant about him going outside this close to morning? When would she learn not to let her emotions win out over reason?
There was approximately five seconds until the sun came up and he wasn’t back.
He wasn’t back.
She shouldn’t even give a damn. It was only a matter of time before she killed him!
“Kozyol,” she breathed shakily, using her grip in the mattress edge to haul herself upright, her joints grinding together like rusted engine cogs. “Asshole. Where are you?”
Voices meandered by down on the street and she closed her eyes, babbling the rosary, though she had no beads. If people were awake and going places, it was morning time. Or close. There was no clock in this empty apartment to alert her to the exact time. Maybe he’d holed up somewhere because he couldn’t make it back in before sunrise? Her cell phone was stuffed in her luggage somewhere, but she’d left the suitcase in the basement of the library, hadn’t she? There was no way to call Elias and scream at him for being a careless idiot.
Roksana clenched the cheap memory foam tightly, using her grip to twist sideways and throw her legs over the edge of the bed. “Oh. God,” she screeched through her clenched teeth, dizziness rattling her brain. Her infirm status was unacceptable. She’d never been so badly injured she couldn’t get up and be useful. Not even the time she hunted a vampire at a rave and fell off the pedestal they were battling on, landing two stories below in a pit of glow sticks.
There wasn’t even a way to look out the windows and see if he was coming, since they were all boarded up. But she couldn’t just lie there. This helplessness was like trying to do a cartwheel in an MRI machine.
She placed both of her flat feet on the floor and took a deep breath, calling on the discipline of her training. Remembering the afternoon she’d knelt at her mother’s feet in the courtyard of their home, her hands bandaged and bleeding from hours of combat.
When you are at your weakest, that is when the true strength finds a path.
Her mother’s words. Words she’d been so determined to live by, but she’d lost her way. Lost sight of what was important; avenging the fallen. Her friends.
Roksana tilted her head slightly and listened to the growl of her stomach, the back and forth glide of her big toe in the grooves of the floorboard. She took stock of each finger, each muscle, the hunger plaguing her bones—and having reacquainted with her body, she ordered it to stand. And it did.
One foot moved in front of the other, bringing her across the floor at a snail’s pace.
What the hell did she hope to accomplish by leaving the apartment?
She didn’t have a clue.
But it went against every facet of her nature to lie dormant when death was imminent.
It didn’t matter whose death it was. Really, it didn’t.
Roksana gathered Elias’s coat tighter and pressed it to her face, the rattling of a shop gate opening outside making her scream with her mouth closed. Any second now. Any second now and he would poof into a dust cloud. She’d seen hundreds of those. She’d been responsible for them. Staking vampires had been an enjoyable pastime until her mother deemed her ready to go after Elias.
“Elias,” she juddered through her teeth.
The apartment door opened and there he stood, outlined in the doorway, stuffed plastic bags in each of his hands. “Yes?”
Roksana’s legs chose that moment to protest her standing, liquefying beneath her.
Distress spilling across his features momentarily, Elias’s figure became distorted with speed and he caught her in his arms, the grocery bags spilling onto the floor seconds later. “What are you doing out of bed?” he gritted.
She forced down the apple-sized lump in her throat. “I was bringing a broom and dustpan outside to sweep you up!”
Carefully, he lifted her against his chest, her useless legs dangling over the crook of his arm. “Sunrise isn’t for another twenty-eight minutes.” He started toward the bed, though his curious gaze never left her. “Worried you wouldn’t get breakfast?”