Draven backed up a step. “She’s feistier than I thought she’d be. I don’t have to touch you, dear, to kill you.” He wrapped his hand around the sword hilt at his hip.
Vincent grabbed Bryna and shoved her out of the way as Draven slashed up in an arcing motion. The tip of the sword caught Vincent at the left corner of his jaw, dragged across his cheek, over the bridge of his nose, along his forehead and stopped when it reached his temple. He staggered back. Blood ran into his right eye. Bryna was screaming.
“Now!” Draven bellowed.
Vincent blinked a few times trying to get his vision to clear.
“Come, darling,” Draven said. “You do not want to be with so weak a fool. Come.”
He could hear the enthrall in Draven’s tone. Not. This. Time. He hooked his arm around Bryna’s waist and jerked her body in close to his. He could make out the fuzzy images of another two dozen or so vampires surrounding them.
“I need to go to him,” Bryna said. Her little body trembled, and there were tears in her voice. “I’m sorry. I love you.” She twisted and struggled in his arms, trying to get free.
Draven laughed. “Aww, poor boy, your girl wants the hot vampire instead.”
Vincent kissed her temple. “I love you, too, babe.” He wrapped himself around her, and focused two hundred years of pain and rage and suffering out all at once. A blue flash of light exploded from his body, incinerating the vampires, and causing the branches in the trees at the outer edges of the field to blow back.
Exhaustion hit. He dropped to his knees, letting Bryna go. She whirled around, and was on the ground next to him. “Oh God. Your face.” He heard the tearing of fabric, and then she pressed against the sore, ripped flesh on his face. “We need to get you to a hospital. Right now.”
“No,” he murmured. Draven was gone, and he hoped like hell the demon forever taking her into Oblivion didn’t show the way it always did after Draven was killed. There wasn’t enough energy left in his body to fight it off. He didn’t know if he had the ability to heal himself or not anymore, and he was too tired to do it anyway. “Zerek or Caleb. Paper in my pocket. Use your finger.”
*
There was way too much blood and Bryna wasn’t sure she was going to hold it together. She slipped her hand into his pocket and wrote a quick SOS to anyone reading the damn thing. She tucked the paper under her knee, and helped Vincent lay back on the ground. So much for vanishing scars. She held the tattered yellow fabric to his maimed face, hoping the bleeding would stop, or one if his friends would get here to help her.
“Bryna.”
Her head snapped up and she never thought she’d be so happy to see Felix in her life. “I can’t get the bleeding to stop.
“I know.” He knelt down next to them and put one hand on her head, and the other on Vincent’s chest. In the next second she and Vincent were in the bed of a pickup truck that was pulling up in front of an emergency room door.
Felix came out of the driver’s seat as the other men appeared out of the shadows of the building to help get Vincent down.
“Why don’t you just heal him?” Bryna demanded.
Felix let the other men help Vincent as he walked into the emergency room with her. “He’d want to keep his scar.”
“Why?”
“It reminds him of you,” Felix said. “I asked him once, and he said he needed the reminder.”
Bryna wasn’t sure it was supposed to be kept as a good reminder. “Will you heal it if he doesn’t want this reminder?”
“Of course,” Felix said. “Just call if you need me.” Then he was gone in a flash.
Bryna shook her head and focused on the matter at hand. She handled dealing with the nurses while Vincent was carted off to get his face stitched. His injury was bad enough they didn’t want to wait for all the usual hospital questions to be asked before they addressed the wound. She did great, right up until the triage nurse asked how the injury happened. Then Caleb was standing next to her. “It doesn’t matter how he got the injury,” he said in a tone close to what vampires used to enthrall their victims.
“It doesn’t matter,” the nurse parroted and typed into the computer unknown. She turned and gave Bryna a bright smile. “You can go back and see him now.”
Caleb escorted her back to the room Vincent was in. Zerek stood guard at the door and stepped to the side when he saw them. Caleb opted to stay in the hall, while Bryna rushed inside. Gregori and Derrick left the room to give them privacy.
Vincent lay on the gurney. Monitors were attached to him, he had an IV in his arm with a bag of blood attached to it, and a bandage strip wrapped his face, covering where Draven had cut him. His skin was pale, and he lay too still.
She crept in. “Vincent?
“Bryna,” he said in a groggy tone. He reached out with his hand, and she grasped it.
“How are you feeling?”
“Like my face was just cut open.” He tried to sit up, but Bryna put her hand on his chest.
“Don’t. You lost quite a bit of blood.” She pulled up a chair, and sat down, never letting go of his hand. “We survived. Draven is dead.” That could change, she knew, if another Hell Spawn or whatever went to another time to get a living Draven to try again, but for now, they were both alive.
“Closer,” he whispered. “I need you closer.”
“That gurney isn’t big enough for you, let alone me,” she whispered back.
“Don’t care,” he said in a weak tone. “They stitched me. They are going to give me a unit or two of blood, and then let me sleep off the narcotics they gave me.” He patted his chest. “Please. Need you.”
Bryna stood up, and laid her torso across his chest. His arm looped around her. He pulled her up on top of him, banding her in place with his arm. “Much better. Love you, my Bryna.”
She sniffled, but this time her tears were happy as she curled up on his chest. Her Vincent was alive. Nothing else mattered. Nothing had ever mattered without him to share her life.
Chapter 12
Two weeks later
Vincent stood in the tiny bathroom of the one-room apartment he shared with Bryna. He hadn’t looked at his face since he’d gotten home from the hospital. When dead he hadn’t had to use a mirror to make sure his appearance was reasonably well put together, but alive, it was a different story, especially with long hair. The bandage still slashed across his face, making it difficult to see. The doctor said the bandages could come off, and he and Bryna would be going to the doctor to get the stitches out soon.
He drew in a deep breath and slowly unwound the bandage, and then steeled himself for what he was going to see in the mirror. He looked a boy of eighteen, but with a savage scar running down his face. The flesh around the wound was still red and puffy in places, but the doctor said he wasn't infected. The scar wasn’t as bad as he thought. It was worse. No way could he keep this scar. It would scare Bryna and remind her for the rest of forever what they’d been through, but he wasn’t sure he was ready to give up a large part of his identity.
“Vince,” she said from the bathroom door. “You okay?”
He swiveled his head around, his breath caught. He went rod stiff in his jeans. Fuck. Being in the body of a teenage boy sucked. She wasn’t in anything special, just a pair of form-fitting skinny jeans, and one of those shirts with fluttery sleeves in a soft green to go with her red hair and freckled skin, with a hint of cleavage to make him stare. Her hair was pulled back on one side with a flower hairpin to hold it in place. Gone was the gothic girl look, and the soft, feminine innocence look was back. Soft, light brown leather boots covered her feet. She looked at him with those wide, mesmerizing green eyes. No wonder he’d fallen so hard and thoroughly for her. He was a stark contrast to her in ripped jeans, combat boots, a black death-metal band T-shirt, and leather jacket. His hair usually hung to his shoulders in a mess, and now he had a scar slashing down his face. They were total opposites in size and appearance. While he was sure he’d grown another inch since the night he’d killed Draven for good, she was still as tiny as ever.
He shook his head, and then offered her a grin. “Wow, Bryn, you look hot.”
A smile touched her lips. “Thanks, but I am more worried about you. How are you doing? Mrs. Hanson missed you in English class today.”
He snorted and casually leaned against the wall by the tub. “I’ve been meaning to talk to you about that.”
“Oh no, this doesn’t sound like a conversation to make me happy.” She came into the bathroom and hopped up onto the sink counter. “So, what is it?”
“I, uh, well,” he started, and then got distracted by the way her breasts strained against the green fabric. He shook it off, and focused on her face. “I’m going to drop out. With the back pay Felix gave me, I thought maybe hiring a tutor and getting a GED might be a better option for me.”
“Actually,” she said as she slipped off the sink and crossed the distance between them. “That doesn’t sound like a bad idea. I don’t like the idea of being in school when a demon or vampire could show up at any time. Maybe we should just move, and either do a tutor, or one of those online schools.”