I stare at her in shock, my sluggish brain having trouble assimilating this new turn of events. Only when Jaxon races, snarling, out of his room, does any sense of clarity kick in, brought on by the terror sweeping through me.
I’m pretty sure Lia’s no match for Jaxon on a normal day—no one is—but now that something’s wrong with him, I’m not so sure.
“Jaxon, stop!” I yell, but he’s too busy putting himself between me and Lia to listen.
“Get away from her!” he orders, as things start flying off the shelves all around us.
Lia just sighs. “I knew I should have made the tea stronger. But I was afraid it would kill your little pet, and I couldn’t let that happen. At least not yet.”
She shrugs, then says in a kind of singsong voice, “No worries,” right before she pulls a gun out of her pocket and shoots Jaxon straight in the heart.
56
Vampire
Girl Gone Wild
I scream, try to get to him, but all I manage to do is fall to my knees. I’m weak and dizzy and nauseous…so nauseous. The room is spinning and waves of cold are sweeping through my body, tightening my muscles and making it impossibly hard to breathe, to move.
And still I try to reach Jaxon. I’m sobbing and screaming as I crawl across the floor, terrified that she’s killed him. I know it’s not easy to kill a vampire, but I’m pretty sure that if anyone would know how to do it, it would be another vampire.
“God, would you shut up already!” Lia kicks me so hard in the stomach that she knocks the breath out of me. “I didn’t kill him. I just tranq’d him. He’ll be fine in a few hours. You, on the other hand, won’t be so lucky if you don’t stop that incessant whimpering.”
Maybe she expects me to get hysterical all over again at that threat, but it isn’t exactly a shock. As drugged and unable to think as I am right now, my mind is still working well enough to figure out that I won’t be getting out of this alive. Which is saying something considering I can barely remember my own name at the moment.
“You should have drunk more tea,” she tells me, disgust evident in her voice. “Everything would be easier if you just did what you were supposed to do, Grace.”
She’s looking at me like she expects me to say I’m sorry, which definitely isn’t happening. Besides, what would that even look like? Oops? So sorry I’m making it harder for you to kill me?
Give me a break.
Lia keeps talking, but it’s getting harder and harder for me to follow what she’s saying. Not when the room is spinning and my head is muddled and all I can think about is Jaxon.
Jaxon, twirling me through the aurora borealis.
Jaxon, staring at me with hellish eyes.
Jaxon, telling me to run, trying to protect me even when he’s drugged out of his mind.
It’s enough to have me rolling over, enough to have me trying to crawl to him even though I don’t have the strength anymore to push up to my knees.
“Jaxon,” I call, but his name comes out so slurred I can barely understand it. Still, I try again. And again. Because the voice inside me is screaming that if Jaxon knows I’m in trouble, he’ll move heaven and earth to get to me. Even if it involves waking up from a stealth-tranquilizer-gun attack.
Lia must know it, too, because she hisses, “Stop it,” as she towers over me.
Which only makes me try harder. “Jaxon,” I call again. This time, it’s little more than a whisper, my voice failing as everything else does, too.
“I didn’t want to do this the hard way,” Lia says, raising the tranquilizer gun and aiming it straight at me. “When you wake up feeling like a herd of elephants is running through your head, remember you’re the one who chose this.”
And then she pulls the trigger.
57
Double, Double,
Toil and a
Whole Lot of Trouble
I wake up shivering. I’m cold…so cold that my teeth are chattering and everything—I mean everything—hurts. My head worst of all, but the rest of me is almost as bad. Every muscle in my body feels like it’s being stretched on a rack, and my bones ache deep inside. Worse, I can barely breathe.
I’m awake enough to know something is wrong—like really wrong—but not quite awake enough to remember what it is. I want to move, want to at least pull the blanket from my bed up and over me, but the voice deep inside me is back. And it’s ordering me to lie still. Ordering me not to move, not to open my eyes, not to even breathe too deeply.
Which won’t be a problem considering I feel like a fifty-pound weight is crushing my chest—kind of like how I felt when I was fourteen and got pneumonia, only a million times worse.