Instead, he spins the sphere between his palms faster and faster. The ceiling starts caving in, the walls fall to pieces, even the stones on the floor start to crumble. And still Jaxon doesn’t relinquish his hold. Still, he continues to pull.
The oxygen in the room is getting thinner, and I’m really struggling for breath now. He must be, too, but you wouldn’t know it from the way he continues to manipulate every single thing in the room.
The smoke struggles to escape one more time, but with a roar, Jaxon yanks it back inside the sphere once and for all. And then he just shuts it down, just turns off the conduit or the energy suck or whatever it is so that everything around us just settles.
The room stops shaking, the walls and ceiling and floor stop breaking apart, the remaining candles drop to the floor, and the oxygen slowly starts to stabilize. I settle back against the ground and just breathe for a few seconds, even as I watch Jaxon condense the sphere between his hands into a glowing orb only a little larger than a tennis ball.
And then he pulls his hand back and fires it straight at Lia.
It hits her in the stomach, and her whole body arches off the floor. She gives one last terrifying gasp as she absorbs the energy, the matter, the smoke. Then she looks straight at him and whispers, “Yes. Finally. Thank you.”
Seconds later she explodes into a cloud of dust that slowly settles back onto the ground.
All I can think is that it’s over. Oh my God, it’s finally over.
“Jaxon!” I turn to him, try to crawl toward the only boy I’ve ever loved. But I’m weak, so weak, and the altar is too far away. Instead, I hold a hand out to him instead and call his name over and over and over again.
Jaxon staggers across the altar toward me, then half jumps, half falls off of it to the ground below, where I’m waiting for him.
He takes my hand, brings it to his lips. And whispers, “I’m so sorry,” before falling into a dead faint at my feet.
“Jaxon!” Frantically, I call his name. “Jaxon, wake up! Jaxon!” He doesn’t move, and for one, terrifying second I’m not even sure he’s breathing.
Somehow I find the strength to roll him over. I press a hand to his chest, feel the shallow movement of his chest up and down, and nearly sob in relief. But there’s no time for that, not when he’s still bleeding out from the chest wound Lia gave him. And not when he’s turned a pasty, sickly white.
“I’ve got you,” I whisper to him as I grab on to one of the ragged strips Lia actually left on my shift and rip it off. I ball it up, press it firmly to Jaxon’s wound in an effort to staunch the blood. “I’ve got you.”
Except I don’t have him. Not really. Not when he could die on me at any second. He’s lost so much blood—more than I have at this point—but I don’t know what to do about it. If I leave him and go for help, he might very well bleed out while I’m gone. If I don’t, he may bleed out anyway, since I can’t seem to staunch the blood.
Desperate, I look around for any untouched jars of the blood Lia had lined up around the altar earlier today. But they’re all gone now, sucked into Jaxon’s vortex or spilled onto the floor around us.
“What do I do? What do I do? What do I do?” I mutter to myself as I try to get my panic-stricken and pain-addled brain to work. Jaxon’s heart rate is slowing down and so is his breathing. I don’t have much time to do something, anything to save him.
In the end, I do the only thing I can think of. The only thing I can do in this situation. I claw open one of the wounds on my wrists until it starts to bleed freely again. And then I press my wrist to his mouth and whisper, “Drink.”
At first there’s no response as my blood drips onto Jaxon’s lips. Seconds go by, maybe a full minute, and I’m beginning to despair. If he doesn’t drink, he’ll die. If he doesn’t drink, we’ll both—
He regains consciousness with a roar. Then his hands are gripping my arm like a vise as he bites down right over my vein. And sucks and sucks and sucks.
It feels nothing—and everything—like it usually does when he drinks from me. There’s pleasure, yes, but also a lot of pain as he takes in as much of my blood as he can with every swallow. Despite the pain, relief swamps me even as the room around me goes black.
There’s no fighting it this time, no need to fight it this time, because I’m not alone. Jaxon’s here with me, and that’s all that matters. So when the next wave of blackness rises up to swamp me, I don’t struggle against it.