Free Obsessed (Book #12 in the Vampire Journals) by Morgan Rice

guilty at the thought of setting Sage down just so she could eat, but
the vampire she’d become was as demanding as a petulant child.
    Then, finally,
over the misty horizon, Scarlet made out the features of a tall tower. It was a
black silhouette against the murky sky, but the image perfectly matched the one
she’d seen shining from her locket.
    “There it is,”
she whispered to the unconscious Sage.
    She couldn’t let
herself feel relief yet. It was too soon, too precarious, she might still fail
in her quest to save him. But she was one step closer and that thought
bolstered her.
    She tipped her
head down and flew faster, propelling her and Sage toward the tower.
    As she drew
closer, she picked out more features. The tower looked as though it were a
million years old, constructed of huge square stones like a Mayan temple. It
stretched up impossibly high, the tip disappearing into the clouds. Scarlet
tried to imagine the people who had built it all those centuries ago. They must
have worked by hand. There was no way such a building could have been
constructed by humans—this was an architectural feat surely performed by
vampires or Immortalists.
    Around the base
of the tower, huge waves lapped. But Scarlet noticed that the structure wasn’t
entirely surrounded by water. Just one part of it adjoined the sea. The rest
was attached to an island brimming with lush forests. She made a beeline for
the undergrowth.
    As she ducked
through the canopy with her precious bundle in her arms, shadows engulfed them,
painting lines of light across Sage’s pale face and making his sweat glisten.
    Scarlet touched
down, her feet landing in a blanket of forest mulch. The air was pungent with
the smell of bark and leaves, and filled with the buzz of insect wings.
    Scarlet laid
Sage beside a fallen trunk, propping him up. He was naked from the waist up,
his torso revealing the brutal torture he’d received at the hands of Octal. The
sight of him made Scarlet weep.
    She stroked his
cheek and his eyes fluttered open.
    “Where are we?”
he gasped, his words punctuated by wheezes.
    Scarlet smiled
at him, trying to look reassuring, hoping that he wouldn’t notice her puffy red
eyes from all the crying she’d done. She squeezed his hand.
    “Somewhere
quiet,” she said. “Somewhere safe.”
    She didn’t want
to tell him that she was still chasing a cure. In the caves he’d seemed adamant
that it was over, that she should let him die. But Scarlet knew that was just
the pain talking. That was the whole point of Octal’s torture—to make him give
up.
    Too bad for them
that I’m not the sort of girl who gives up easily,Scarlet thought to
herself.
    She turned her
gaze back to Sage. His head was bobbing as though it was taking him a great
effort to stay awake. Scarlet leaned down and pressed a soft kiss against his
mouth. His lips tasted as salty as her tears.
    “Get some rest
now,” she whispered.
    Sage’s eyes
fluttered closed and he let his chin drop to his chest, as though he’d been
waiting for her permission to sleep.
    Scarlet
swallowed her resolve and stood. She glanced around at the thick foliage. She
could just about make out the tower over the thick tangle of branches and
leaves above. She began to make in that direction.
    She hadn’t gotten
more than ten paces when movement up ahead made her stop in her tracks. There
was an animal just the other side of a low tuft of shrubbery. Immediately her
stomach growled. The vampire in her was telling her to feast and she had no
power to control it.
    Her body worked
on an instinct she’d never before possessed. It made her freeze, her breath
becoming shallower so as not to make a noise. The background of her vision
blurred out so that her sole focus was the shrub before her, rattling as some
unknown creature moved behind it.
    The creature
must have sensed danger because in a sudden blur it darted away. In a split
second Scarlet had taken in a thousand pieces of information—its size