Free Night Huntress 03.5 - Devil to Pay by Jeaniene Frost Page A

Elise. “Too warm. Need to get out.”
     
    “He’s entering the last stages of hypothermia,” Mencheres said in a low voice. “His body is past feeling cold and is suffused with a false sense of heat instead. It won’t be long now.”
     
    Elise touched his forehead, but Blake didn’t seem to feel it. His face and neck were open to the air, but the rest of him was submerged in the freezing water. All the better to bring about hypothermic cardiac arrest.
     
    If she could have traded places with Blake, she’d have done it a million times over. The past forty minutes had been hell, watching him suffer in the container. Her only comfort was knowing that Xaphan would suffer, too. He’d taken Blake over as soon as Blake lay down in the chamber. Xaphan had thrashed around, trying to break everything he could touch. Mencheres restrained him with his power, holding Blake’s body immobile even though the demon writhed and fought inside him. Xaphan had been gone for the past thirty minutes. Elise figured the demon was resting up for one last stand.
     
    Blake’s heart skipped several beats. Elise tensed, meeting Mencheres’s eyes. Soon. Very soon.
     
    Panic made Elise want to snatch Blake out of the water and start to warm him up now. What if this didn’t work? What if this was the last time she’d ever see Blake? Dear God, how could she stand her heart being demolished yet again?
     
    Blake said something she couldn’t understand. Elise bent closer until his mouth was almost next to her ear.
     
    “What is it, darling?”
     
    “Elise.” Her name was garbled and breathy, like Blake had barely the strength to form it. “Sing me to sleep.”
     
    Blake’s eyes were closed, so Elise didn’t have to worry about him seeing her tears. She started to sing, dipping her hand into the freezing water so she could hold his.
     
    Blake’s breathing became shallower, the intervals between his breaths extending longer and longer. His pulse was erratic, too, at times speeding up in bursts, then growing more and more sluggish. By the time Elise reached the last line of the song, Blake’s heart had stopped completely.
     
    She stared at him, feeling more frozen inside than the icy water that brought about his death. Blake’s eyes were dilated, no spark of life in them. Just glassy, like a doll’s eyes.
     
    Elise thought she’d been prepared to see him this way. That she was strong enough to handle it, but something inside her shattered. She ripped off the cover of the chamber and grabbed Blake up in the next instant.
     
    Mencheres’s hands shot out, stopping her. Keeping her from lifting Blake all the way out of that awful, killing water.
     
    “Wait,” he said.
     
    “No,” Elise snarled. “I have to bring him back!”
     
    Mencheres didn’t loosen his grip, and she felt his hold on more than just her arms.
     
    “Not. Yet.”
     
    Elise would have fought him, her own sire, whom she trusted more than anyone in the world. But a blast of power in the air around them stopped her. Sulfur fumes seemed to crawl up her nose, and a howl of rage filled the van until it shook.
     
    “You fool,” Xaphan hissed.
     
    The words didn’t come from Blake’s mouth. They came from behind her.

Chapter Fifteen
     
    E lise didn’t have time to turn around before the doors blew off the van, and Mencheres was sucked out into the sunshine. She dropped Blake, careful to make sure his head was hanging outside the chamber, and ran out of the van.
     
    “Mencheres!” she screamed.
     
    Nothing was around but miles of empty, ominous white salt. Where was Mencheres? Her sire was the most powerful vampire she’d ever met, how could he simply disappear ?
     
    Something slammed into her from behind. Elise fell, getting a face full of salt. Then she was propelled up and flung into the side of the van, hard enough to make it tilt on its tires.
     
    “Bring him back,” Xaphan growled near her ear.
     
    Elise whirled, but there was no one