TW for graphic imagery and a forced hysterectomy

Karhi Emelyn

Karhi was halfway to Lazarus before agony tore across his stomach in between jumping from one roof top to the next. He almost missed the building he was aimed at. He got it by the ledge, but Lunette had to grab onto him to keep him from falling. She hauled him up, but he was barely over before he was running again, the phantom pain disappearing before it could incapacitate him.

“She’s being tortured,” he snarled.

“You can feel it?” Lunette’s question held a hint of horror.

He nodded.

Sires and their children had a bond, but it typically fell off after a few hundred yards. He was still a mile from Lazarus. He shouldn’t have been able to feel Sloane’s pain.

Except if it was excruciating.

Karhi shoved down those thoughts. He couldn’t imagine what Sloane was going through. It would bring back too many memories that would paralyze him.

He needed to get to her.

An invisible weight on him lifted suddenly. It left him unbalanced, and Lunette slammed into him, rocketing him off the ledge of one building onto the next.

He hit the building hard, his shoulder skidding on the ground. The pain made his vision white.

He fought through it to get to his feet. He had to go. He had to get to her. Inside he knew what that sudden imbalance meant.

But he couldn’t think about it.

He forced himself to his feet and continued running. He had to get there. He had to get to her. He had to—

The sharp tang of copper filled the air, and the buildings cleared away suddenly to the Lazarus parking lot.

But where was Sloane? There were only a few cars, a field, and a huge piece of shredded roadkill. She wasn’t—

He hiccupped in shock when he realized the roadkill wasn’t roadkill. A cold sensation settled into the back of his neck.

He barely registered leaping into the parking lot, or the three bounds it took to reach her, or the blood that soaked his shoes from a yard away, or that her intestines were dumped next to her.

He could just see her face; it was the only part of her left intact. Every single other piece of her was mottled purple and mangled. Every single bone broken, every piece of her wrenched apart, disconnected and dislocated.

But her face was left. Her green eyes were open, glassy, staring up at the sky.

Whoever had done this wanted to make sure she could be identified.

The cold spread from his neck to the rest of his body. It was a numbness that he couldn’t fight. A numbness he refused to comprehend.

All he could do was slash open his wrist and press it into her mouth. A high-pitched whine settled in his ears. He didn’t know if it came from inside of him or not.

“Karhi—” Lunette stopped herself before she could say anything else. He heard the horror in her voice.

He grabbed the intestines from where they were piled on the ground next to her body and shoved them back into her. If he could get everything where it needed to be, her body would figure it out.

“Lunette, set her bones where they’re supposed to be,” he said. His voice was hollow, like the inside of a dry log. It rasped against his tongue as he spoke.

“Karhi—”

He ignored whatever argument she was going to make next, pulling his hand from Sloane’s mouth. His wrist had healed. He needed to push her ribs back together. They were open, revealing a heart and lungs. Those weren’t damaged. Good. Those were harder to heal. The fewer damaged organs, the better

But her heart wasn’t beating. Even as slow as their heartbeats were, this was too slow.

No. He could fix this. He could fix this.

He reached for her neck. Her turning scar was clear and bright against her pale skin.

The skin there broke away easily to his fangs. He sucked against the wound, but he could only find a few bitter drops there.

That was fine. All he needed was a few drops. A few drops of live blood and—

“Karhi, she isn’t alive,” Lunette cut in. “You need someone to be alive to take their live blood.”

He ignored her. When did she learn to read minds?

It didn’t matter. All he needed to do was—he cut his wrist again and pressed it to her mouth, pushing it in.

No wait . . . maybe that wasn’t right. She couldn’t swallow.

He held his wrist over her chest, digging his claws into the delicate skin and squeezing to keep the wound open. He had drunk some blood while he was out with Lunette. He had a large amount in his body. He could help her.

He could put the balance back in his shoulders. Put back the balance that had disappeared when she died—no. She wasn’t dead.

But she wasn’t moving. Why wasn’t she moving? He was doing it right. He was giving her blood and taking her blood.

Maybe he needed more blood. Maybe he needed to lick the blood off of her body.

He moved forward and before he could touch his mouth to her, claws grabbed his shoulder and tore him away from her.

He came face-to-face with one of the wolves. Mickey. The one who had defended him.

His face was dirty and streaked with tears. “Leave her alone,” he croaked at Karhi.

Karhi blinked. Why was he crying? Sloane would be okay. Mickey let go of him, confusion muddling his features. “What . . . ?” Mickey said, looking around. “Where am . . . where am I?”

Karhi shoved him away and turned back to Sloane. He needed to fix this. He needed to fix her.

Lunette sat on her knees at Sloane’s head, pushing her shoulders and elbows back into place as he had asked.

But standing up as he did now, looking down at Sloane—“She’s too pale,” he said. But his voice came out as a raspy squeak, as if he had been screaming.

The high-pitched whining had disappeared. Silence reigned and Karhi realized—he had been the source of the whining. And he had been talking out loud the whole time.

He put his hands to his face and found them wet. He pulled them away to see blood and tears.

He had been crying.

His knees gave way, and he crumpled to the ground beside her.

“No,” he begged, tearing the skin away from his wrist again and pressing it to Sloane’s mouth. “No, no, no. Not you. You were supposed to survive.”

She didn’t move. The blood pooled in her mouth, but it didn’t go down.

He knelt down and pressed his lips to hers. They tasted like salt, blood, and lavender. He blew into her mouth, doing his best to force the blood down her throat, even if just a little.

He pulled away and saw some blood seep from the slit in her throat. A bit escaped through her nose.

But it wasn’t all the blood. Some of it had gone somewhere else. Down her oesophagus, where it was supposed to go.

He opened his wrist again and pressed it to her mouth. This time he held her nose closed as he blew into her mouth again.

Come back¸ he begged her. I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry please come back.

He repeated the steps one more time—his wrist to her mouth, his mouth to hers, and blowing. He covered her nose and her throat with his hand. Her mouth was bitter.

He came up again and a weight settled on his shoulders. Hope flooded him, and he looked to Lunette.

The hope deflated, and his heart sunk again.

The weight had been Lunette. She had both hands on his shoulders, her red gaze piercing. “Karhi. She’s gone.”

He looked over at Sloane, a heavy lump settling in his throat. “No,” he croaked. “She . . . she can be saved.”

“We got here too late,” she said. But she didn’t sound angry.

She just sounded tired.

A heavy thump resounded in his ears, and he shook his head. “Lunette,” he begged. “Please.”

“We were too late, Karhi.”

Another heavy thump.

He knotted his hands into his hair, shaking his head. “No,” he whispered.

“We’ll get her collected, Karhi. Make sure she’s treated respectfully.”

Another thump.

“Wait,” he heard a voice say behind them.

They both looked up to see Bell and Mickey standing behind them, naked. Mickey’s head was buried into Bell’s shoulder. Bell’s leg was still trickling blood from where Lunette had shot him. But Bell was staring at Sloane with wide eyes.

“What?” Lunette demanded savagely.

Another thump.

“Is—is that her heartbeat?”

Karhi and Lunette whipped around to look at Sloane’s chest, searching for a sign of life.

After a second, another thump. And this one was accompanied by the slightest twitch around Sloane’s ribs.

Her heart was beating.

“Wait . . . the wounds on her neck,” Lunette murmured, awestruck.

Karhi looked to her neck.

The wounds were still raw and open. But he couldn’t see her trachea anymore.

“What the fuck?” Lunette’s words were filled with a combination of horror and awe.

“She’s alive,” Karhi whispered.

Sloane was breathing. Her heart was beating. Her wounds were healing.

Karhi pulled out his phone and called Mira. He had gotten her number from Sloane earlier.

“Hello?” She sounded panicked.

“Mira, it’s Karhi.”

“Karhi—where’s Sloane? Something’s wrong.”

“Someone tore her apart, but we have her breathing again.”

“Wh-who did it?” He heard fear and anger in her stammer.

“I don’t know, but I have a feeling I know who we can ask. Can you get to Lazarus?”

“Lazarus?”

“You control minds?”

She paused for a moment before carefully saying, “There is a rumour that I do.”

“I think it would be useful if we had your powers backing us up.”

She paused for a moment before saying, “Okay.”

“Bring someone who can take Sloane back to your house. If I recall correctly, you have a large truck. That would be ideal for delivering her back. She needs to be lying flat.”

There was a sharp intake of breath in response. “Why?”

“All of her bones were broken. They need to stay in place to heal.”

He heard her cover the receiver. A moment later she said, “Annie and I are on our way.”

Karhi nodded to himself. “We’ll stabilize her until you arrive.”

“Thanks.”

He hung up, turning back to Sloane.

She still looked like hell, but she was getting better by the moment. Her stomach was slowly healing, flesh covering her internal organs. The wound on her throat was at least closed. She was breathing, and her heartbeat was loud in her chest. Vampire heartbeats were closer to fifty beats per minute, but the beats he heard were strong.

“Are you going to confront them?” Lunette asked. She knew why Karhi wanted Mira when he went into Lazarus.

“We’ve been skirting around their involvement for too long,” he said. “She tasted bitter and wrong, Lunette. She was injected with dead man’s blood. And there was fucking hemlock in it.” He spat, his saliva landing and mixing with the pool of blood surrounding Sloane. Her blood was finally beginning to flake away like human vampire blood was supposed to. Usually it was almost immediate, but with so much, it was taking much longer.

“Is she going to be okay?”

Karhi had almost completely forgotten about the wolves that stood behind them, staring at Sloane.

He looked back to see that it was Bell who had spoken. Mickey looked dazed, and Karhi felt a twinge of regret. When Mickey had confronted Karhi earlier, Karhi had instinctively used his powers on him, and it had knocked him temporarily daft. Mickey wasn’t processing things well. It would wear off soon enough.

But Bell understood what was happening.

Lunette was the one to answer. “We’ll get some more blood in her and she should be fine. Double siring is hard, but when it works, it works. She should be up in a few hours. Tomorrow at the latest. Fortunately, the siring process also speeds up healing so it will knit her bones back together faster than it would otherwise. Only a day or two instead of a few days.”

Karhi’s head whipped around to Lunette. “Double siring?”

Lunette glanced at him, nose wrinkling. He could hear her question without her needing to ask it. Are you stupid?

When Karhi didn’t say anything, Lunette made a noise of disgust. “Karhi, she was dead. Her heart was not beating. She wasn’t breathing. Vampires don’t need to breathe, but we do it involuntarily until we die. In every sense, she was dead.

“You sired her again. So, yes, you double sired her. You got her just in the window of death. What did you think you did?”

He didn’t have an answer. She was right. What he had done was double siring—he had sired her into a vampire for a second time. It was a rare occurrence because the window for performing it was so small. It usually had some strange side effects and, in some cases, a completely different species of vampire.

“She’s still the same species?” he asked.

Lunette rolled her eyes. “That’s a myth.”

Oh, thank God. “What does that mean for her?” he asked. He wasn’t as familiar with double siring, but Lunette was a prolific sire. She’d probably had hundreds of children in the past four centuries.

“She’s never manifested any powers before, right?”

She meant a power like her cruciopathy or his fuscopathy. Any ability outside of the normal strength and speed a vampire had. Most human vampires had powers.

He shook his head, unable to keep his eyes off Sloane.

“Well, if she’s going to manifest any, it’s going to be now. Otherwise, she won’t get all of her powers until her year mark in December.”

Her year mark would be when she was a year old. She would get fully enhanced senses, strength, and speed—the whole package.

His brow furrowed. For the first time he noticed something that had been thrown to the side of the pool of blood surrounding Sloane. It was reddish-pink and maybe half the size of his fist.

“Karhi?” Lunette said.

He stepped around the blood to the walnut-sized thing and picked it up. It squished in his grip, cold and unmistakably fleshy. He flattened his palm and it settled into a pear shape.

“What the fuck?” he whispered.

“What’s that?” Lunette asked as he returned to her.

“A uterus.”