Take me?
Lazarus looked at me, a fanatical gleam in his eyes that made my stomach churn. “Imani, you have the power to save all those who suffered the same fate as you.”
“What?” Was he high? Maybe I was high, because this was all fucking weird.
“Within you lies the answer to the cure for vampirism. Your blood has the answer.”
“I’m not cured,” I clipped, anger building inside me as it began to penetrate that, hey, he’d totally betrayed me. And I wanted to smash his face in. “There is no cure.”
“Wrong, Imani. You are partly transformed. With your blood, we can find a true cure. Then all of us who had this life forced upon us can once again be human.”
He said it with so much yearning and desperation that I almost felt bad for him. I had been in his position. I’d had everything ripped away from me, and for a long time I’d thought of nothing but getting back what I’d lost. I knew what it was to despise what you were, knew what it was like to long for all the things you once had and took for granted in—
I gaped as the truth slapped me hard across the face. “You’re Beau Irons.” I wanted him to deny it. He didn’t. He smiled.
“Well done, sweetheart,” said Marco. “It took me a while to figure that out. By the time I knew, he was already planning to take you while everyone was distracted in battle.”
And if Lazarus was Beau Irons… “All these vampires you’ve brought with you…They’re part of The Order, aren’t they?” Which meant they were fighting against The Hollow’s vampires, not alongside them. Shit.
Lazarus’ smile turned a little creepy. “Yes. And you will join us, Imani. You will leave with us.”
Marco slowly shook his head. “I can’t have that.”
“This is not about what you want,” Lazarus told him.
Staring at the vampire who’d once taken care of me, who I’d trusted with my life, I swallowed. “I can’t believe you’d do this to me. To anyone.”
“It’s really nothing personal,” Marco told me, his eyes still locked on the Master vampire. “He’s so intent on being human again, so focused on the end goal, that he can’t see anything or anyone else.”
Lazarus again held out his hand. “Come with me, Imani. You were brought into a life you did not want. You deserve to have back what was so callously taken from you. I can give you that.”
“There is no cure, Lazarus.” Marco shook his head. “You’ll never find one, because vampirism isn’t an illness. It’s just another state of being.”
Lazarus went on as if Marco hadn’t spoken. “You once told me that you would give anything to be cured. Now we can work together to make that happen.”
Maybe I’d felt that way in the early nights, when I’d been filled with hopelessness and confusion and found it very difficult to adjust. But now? Now that would mean giving up the one thing I wanted more than anything. In which case… “Fuck. You.” I distantly noted that a whirl of energy had built behind me, and I knew the portal had re-opened.
His jaw hardened. “You want this as much as I do.”
He was wrong. “What I want is very simple. I want to be with Butch.”
“If you are thinking that he or anyone else from the legion will save you, prepare to be disappointed. Their gifts will not get them passed my force-field, and my vampires will prevent them from trying.”
Well that explained the weird energy I could feel in the air.
“Imani, come with us.” Eleanor’s voice was soft, desperate. “Please?”
I snarled at who I’d considered a friend. I supposed I should have expected her betrayal—people with perfect teeth couldn’t be trusted. “Fuck. You. Too.” She made the slightest move toward me, so I reached into her mind and flicked her blood-bond to her Sire—the warning wouldn’t have hurt her because my psychic hand was weak as all shit, but it made her halt with a hiss. “You weren’t Turned against your will. You wanted this life.”
“Because I was stupid,” said Eleanor, bitterness in every syllable. “Ignorant. Blind. Too scared to grow old, too frightened of death. I made a mistake, and I’m tired of paying for it. I want to be human again. Your blood can give me back my life.”
“You see, Imani, this is about more than just you,” said Lazarus. “It’s about more than just me. Your blood can help so many people.”
“You expect me to go with you? Seriously?” He was high.
“I understand that you feel I have betrayed you and that you are hurting. But you are a good person, Imani. You will quickly come to see the wisdom behind what I have done; you will understand that this was necessary.”
Oh he was fucking special. I felt my upper lip curl. “You don’t even see it, do you?” I hit him with a truth that I knew would be like a bullet to the chest. “You’re just like Marco and the vampire who Turned you.”
Every muscle in his body seemed to tense. “That is not true.”
“You did this to me without my consent. You didn’t think of the impact it would have on my life. You didn’t care about the pain it would put me through. You were only thinking about what you want. So yes, Lazarus, you’ve become what you loathe. And I wouldn’t go anywhere with you even if I wanted to. What I want is to stay with Butch.”
“I cannot allow that, Imani.” Lazarus made a hand gesture to the vampires at his side, and their eyes zeroed in on me as they went to move. Marco reached back and shoved me hard, knocking me off my feet and right into the fucking portal.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
(Butch)
“Butch, this is going to really hurt.” Jared yanked the spike out of my chest. I grunted through my teeth because, yeah, it hurt like a motherfucker—especially since my skin had started to heal around the spike.
One of the damn dragons had brought his tail down hard on my chest. I wasn’t sure whether the spike came off by accident or not, but it had pinned me to the fucking ground. I’d been stuck there as the shield fell, the dragons tried to flee, and the smoke cleared.
Jared had teleported to me with Paige seconds ago, and she was now healing my gaping wound. I’d lost a lot of blood and I was woozy as hell, but I didn’t care. Didn’t care about anything except one thing. “Where’s Imani?”