“Yes.”
Kane’s math on how long he’d been in the camp was a revelation, and he was tempted to ask her if she was sure. “I thought I was in there for… much longer than I had been. I lost count of the time.”
“That would be expected.”
“Who are you?”
“I am a friend Fate has seen fit to provide you. And you’re with me now because it is time for you to choose.”
“Choose what.” He lifted his good hand and wasn’t surprised that he couldn’t hold the slight weight up for longer than a heartbeat or two. “What am I choosing.”
“Whether you stay or go.”
“I didn’t know I got a vote in that,” he muttered.
“We are in a unique situation, you and I. I have something that I can offer you, a rejuvenation of sorts. There are some… unusuals to the commitment, but given your situation, I have a feeling they may be worth what you get in return.”
A breeze entered whatever room he was in—no, it couldn’t be a room. Unless it was made of windows and all were open.
“You’re in my private quarters,” the voice explained, as if she read his mind. “It’s a bit of a tent, a bit of a hut. This is where I live.”
He closed his eyes, weariness catching up with him. As he felt his strength ebb, he thought back to another disembodied voice that had kept him going. Under all the robing, Nadya had seemed mysterious and formless to him, too.
His lids popped open. What about her?
“You are dying,” his host proclaimed.
“No.”
As the word exploded out of him, hazy memories of a guard all but ripping him off the bed he had been lying on were so vivid, he remembered the male’s face with all its satisfaction, as if the domination was enjoyed. Nadya had begged the guard to stop. Pleaded.
He had pushed her aside and she had fallen hard on the concrete floor.
“I want to see them,” he demanded. “My friends. They need to go back and—”
“What if you could take care of that female yourself.”
Even though Kane heard the words, he could not comprehend the statement: “That is so absurd as to be cruel.”
“No, it is not.” The voice seemed closer now. “Your heart is going to stop in approximately eight minutes. You must decide what you want to do. Live or die.”
“I am past resuscitation, there is no breath you or anybody else can give me.”
“There is something else.”
“Like what?”
Abruptly, a surge of strength entered him, the source of which was unclear—unless it was true that there was a kindling before death, a final flare of coordination and impulse: He sat up. On his own.
And as his face caught the draping, he pulled its fragile weave off of—
A coffin. A pine coffin.
How fitting, and he told himself that his eight-minutes-left needed to be spent ordering the others back to the prison camp. Nadya had done nothing more than treat him, but what if the guards thought she’d been in on the breakout?
The veil was pulled free of him, and what he saw was a source of great comfort: an older female, who was not a vampire, was sitting cross-legged next to his final resting place, her hair in great platinum waves spilling over her shoulders, her dress deep red and beaded with a pattern that was somehow both symmetrical and free-form.
“Welcome to the mountain,” she said as she balled up the shroud that had covered him.