A second scream. Her heart pounded. Chills rippled over her spine.
She didn’t know enough about him. How to get in contact with help if he needed it. Did she take him to a hospital, where they might discover he was a vampire?
No. He’d avoided the hospital before for a reason. Whatever help he needed would have to come from her. No choice for it.
Alice flew through the back door. “Sebastian! Bast!” She scanned the pool’s interior, searching desperately to see if he might still be in the water. Heaven forbid he lay unmoving at the bottom of the pool. “Talk to me!” she screamed.
The pool was illuminated, the bottom clearly visible. No matter how hard she looked, however, she couldn’t find him within. She didn’t know whether to be more thankful or fearful of that.
“Sebastian,” she called again, ears straining for the tiniest sound. He’d passed out previously and maybe was unconscious now. She had to find him. If the fever raged as before, unchecked and at precarious levels, the chances of him surviving it slimmed to almost none.
At once Alice realized that the air was thick, making it difficult to breathe. A forest fire at a distance, perhaps, sending smoke into the backyard. Not just smoke though. The scent of hard-boiled eggs clogged her nose too.
Her head swiveled toward a sound. Crinkling, like cellophane. It wasn’t the light crackle of something paper-thin though. This was heavy. A sluggish weight.
“Bast?” she whispered, moving gingerly toward the noise. What if it wasn’t him? What if one of those werewolves or something like it had come for him, and he was unable to help himself?
She’d gotten rid of the little letter opener too soon but didn’t dare return to the kitchen to brandish a knife. No weapon in hand, but she would scream like a raving lunatic if it came down to that. Then again, it hadn’t done him much good, had it? Shit.
She crept forward, heart thumping.
A moan. A new sound, like a kite. No—a sail. The loud, indignant snap of material being shoved by the wind.
She moved forward even slower. “Bast.” Desperate.
In a dark corner, a place the moon seemed to have shunned, something—someone—flopped. Graceless, inelegant movement of limbs and torso, uncoordinated and nothing like what she expected from Bast. Damn it, he was hurt, and badly.
Dropping into a crouch, she searched for broken bones, fever, trembling. Any signal of what had claimed him.
His skin was hot. So feverish. Worse than she’d ever encountered. A viscous fluid covered her hand as she lifted it away, and Alice’s stomach turned. Blood?
Holding out her arm, angling it toward what little light shone, she squinted at her palm. Instead of red, this was clear. Thick, almost mucus-like. Her hands dropped to her pants, to quickly wipe away the gunk making her gorge rise.
Her stomach rolled again, but she returned her focus to Sebastian. Somehow he’d found a blanket of some sort to wrap around his body. The zig-zagging patterns on it twisted as he struggled to rise from beneath its depths.
“Let me help,” she murmured, already reaching for the coverlet. She lifted the material, a thick leather, and a scream clawed its way through her throat.
This wasn’t a blanket. It was flexible. Moving. Alive. And dear God...attached to Sebastian.
He turned his face toward her, his eyes different and captivating. Dark with agony and confusion.
Sebastian shifted, and every vein in her body chilled. Her heart pounded, kicking its way out of her chest.
Not a blanket.
Wings.
Chapter Fourteen
Another scream bubbled, ready to burst, yet terror held Alice immobile. Jesus God, what was this? “Sebastian?” It came out in a harsh, grating whisper barely capable of carrying sound. Every hair stood against the back of her neck, goose bumps rioting on her forearms.
“What’s happening to me?” he croaked.
“Let me help you,” she repeated, voice trembling. Alice crouched over him, ignoring every howling instinct to run. To leave him and his world behind and go back to her own. “Can you stand?”
She’d thought his eyes had gone from beautiful to incomparable, but words failed her at trying to categorize them right now. They were a crystalline blue, while silver and pearl swirled through its sea. His pupils had elongated, the darkness a slice that seemed out of place.