Bast realized at once what kind of clusterfuck they were in. The injured man didn’t have the strength to make it to the wheelchair, his friend kept trying to shove past the aide to get inside and the aide tried to maneuver around him and the wheelchair to get to the outside. Best of all, the jostling crush of bodies blocked him and Alice from Antaeus.

“Go,” he urged, barely above a whisper. The man had begun to sob openly, and Bast prayed to the universe that it was enough to drown his command to Alice. If Antaeus heard him before she could take at least a few steps, witnesses to the resulting carnage could not be helped.

Her gaze snapped to meet his, then a subtle tilt of the chin followed.

Bast did his best to remain still as she sidled away, inch by slow inch. An achingly subtle crawl away from them. Please let Antaeus keep his focus on the man. Not on her.

He swore he could hear his heart speed up, pounding against his ribs and telling anyone and everyone within a five-mile radius about his state of agitation, but Antaeus had little choice but to focus on the crowd in front of him. Her movement might be caught out of the corner of his eye or simply because he’d turned his attention to her at the wrong time.

Still sobbing, the man leaned forward, hands flailing as he tried to collapse into the waiting chair. Bast managed to step to the side at the same moment and somehow, the wheelchair decided to simultaneously teeter on one large wheel. The man slipped and a thick, wet sound belched into the air. He began to scream, a high-pitched, spine-curling keen of pain, and Bast sharply turned his head away from the sight of organs and other matter that bulged from the now gaping wound.

“Go!” he shouted at her, already starting to run in Alice’s direction. It came out as a boom of noise, drawing Antaeus’s attention. Didn’t matter though. Antaeus was waylaid by the hospital employee, the injured man and his friend trying to shove the wheelchair back inside. Between the screaming, blood and gore, all of them moved in clunky uncoordinated starts and stops. None in sync. All three, hell, maybe even Antaeus himself, panicked by the sudden turn of events.

Bast couldn’t be bothered to linger to watch the outcome though. By the time he reached Alice’s side, he pulled her into his arms and took off at a dead run. Destination to be determined.

Forefront on his mind was getting away.

And then turning Alice into a vampire.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Bast opened his eyes, almost jerking upright before remembering where they were. Alice’s breathing, bordering on snoring, drifted from beside him. Arm draped across her middle, even in the exhausted coma they’d fallen into, he had to know she was physically there. With him. Always.

The motel clerk hadn’t batted an eye when they’d stumbled in just before dawn. He’d taken one look at the couple, made Bast sign here, here and here and fork over a couple hundred dollars when a credit card was not about to happen. With a Council executioner on their tail, Bast wasn’t about to make it that easy for the guy. Get real.

Stopping to rest while on the move might not have been something he would have normally done, but Alice was running on empty. He hadn’t fed or slept in more than a day, either. If they’d kept going, he would have made a mistake. And they just didn’t have time for that. Not now. Not when things had reached this level of chaos and uncertainty. Even now it pained him to gently rub her shoulder, arousing her to wakefulness.

“Wake up, princess.”

Her mumbled words colored the air blue.

“I know you’re tired,” Bast soothed. “But we’re not safe here.” Not like he knew where they would be safe.

“Eight hours,” she groaned. “That’s all I want! We can’t have been here more than three or four hours yet. Can’t we sleep a little bit longer?”

Almost six hours had passed, actually. Way more than he should have spared. “Not yet. Not here. I promise you’ll get to rest, but we have some things to do first.”

Alice struggled to sitting, hair plastered to one side of her face. “Christ, like what?”

Bast sat up too, allowing his hands to drape between his thighs. Face cast down, he searched for the courage to say the right words to her. An eternity of self-doubt passed, only to be overtaken by a rush of pride and possessive love. He tilted his face toward hers, taking a moment to brush away those sticky strands of hair. Faint purple lines circled beneath her eyes, but he didn’t find any hint of annoyance lingering in them. “You need to decide what you want. You have to know for certain.”




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