Chapter 23 The Toxin Kills
Brea POV
"Hold on." I grabbed his shirt with both hands and he launched. This was nothing like before. Before had been fast and brutal and exhilarating in a terrifying way. This was different. This was desperate.
The landings were harder, the gaps between jumps shorter, no pause between impact and the next launch.
Branches snapped against us as we went through instead of over.
I turned my head and immediately wished I hadn't.
They were following. Not falling behind keeping up. Some on the ground in that wrong lurching run, covering distance in bursts that didn't look possible.
Some in the trees, moving branch to branch in erratic leaps, no grace, just relentless forward motion.
There were more of them than before. A lot more. "Don't look back," Rayne said.
"There are so many—"
"I know."
"Rayne they're keeping."
"I know." His grip on me tightened. "Don't look back."
The burning reached my shoulder. I didn't say anything about it.
I pressed my face against his chest and held on and felt the heat spreading,
"Rayne." My voice came out smaller than I meant it to. "Something's wrong. My arm—it's spreading—"
He didn't answer. That silence was worse than anything he could have said.
The castle appeared through the trees..lights, walls, the courtyard stone and he didn't slow.
He came down out of the canopy in a single long arc and hit the courtyard so hard the stone cracked beneath us in every direction and I felt the impact slam through my whole body.
Guards turned as weapons came up and someone shouted.
Rayne set me on my feet and I immediately needed the wall behind me to stay there.
"Activate the shield," he said. Not loud. Not panicked. But something in his voice made every guard in the courtyard go very still. "Now."
One guard stepped forward. "My lord, the shield hasn't been—"
"Now." The guard turned to say something else and then stopped.
Because the forest was moving. The treeline erupted. Not one or two, dozens, pouring out of the dark in that same wrong lurching motion, covering the open ground between the trees and the castle walls in seconds.
Then more behind those. Then more behind those.
"Activate it," someone said. Then all at once everyone was moving and shouting and the guards who rushed forward to meet the first wave. but it didn't matter.
The Dreadborn didn't slow when they were hit. Didn't register it. One guard went down under three of them at once and didn't get back up.
Another caught one across the jaw hard enough to take a human's head off and it came right back with both hands and took him down with it.
Something ignited along the top of the outer wall. The barrier spread like a blue-white light and fast in both directions, crackling as it sealed the gaps.
The first wave of Dreadborn hit it and went up instantly igniting, bodies collapsing into ash mid-motion. The ones behind them didn't stop.
They hit the shield and burned the same way and the ones behind those kept coming, pressure building against the barrier like a tide that didn't know what a wall was.
I watched it from the courtyard wall and felt my legs go soft underneath me.
Rayne caught me before I hit the ground. He picked me up and went inside and I heard him shout from somewhere above me the only time I had ever heard him raise his voice.
"MEDIC."
The hall went silent. I don't remember being laid down. I remember the ceiling. I remember voices, multiple, fast, overlapping and I remember the burning had reached my chest by then, slow and steady and rhythmic, like a second heartbeat that didn't belong to me.
"She's losing blood. ."
"The toxin is already..."
"She's losing blood fast," the doctor said. He looked at the bite mark and went still. "How long since the bite?"
"Twenty minutes," Rayne said. "Maybe less."
"That's too fast." The doctor looked up. "That shouldn't be possible." As he turned my head.
A doctor older with gray-haired, hands already moving over my arm...looked up at his colleague with an expression I didn't like at all.
"What does that mean," I said. He looked at me.
"It means the venom is aggressive." He chose his words carefully. Too carefully. "The Dreadborn haven't been studied in over a thousand years. We don't fully understand what their bite does to a human. But if this progresses the way I think it will—"
"Say it," Rayne said.
"She may turn." The room went very quiet.
"No," I said. "That's.....no. That's not—"
"It is possible," the doctor said. "The Dreadborn are corrupted vampires. Their venom is unstable. It doesn't work the way a clean turn does. It's...erratic. We don't know what it does to human blood at this stage of progression."
I looked at the ceiling. The burning pulsed in my chest again.
"There has to be something," Rayne said.
"There is one known counter." The doctor paused. "Royal vampire blood. The purity of it is the only thing documented to have neutralized Dreadborn venom." Another pause, longer. "Though even that is not certain."
"Then do it," I said.
"It is not that simple." The doctor looked at Rayne. Not at me. At Rayne. "Vampire blood does not regenerate quickly. The amount needed to counter venom at this stage of spread.." He stopped. Started again.
"It takes two days for vampire blood to convert from human intake. If too much is given—"
"How much is too much," Rayne said.
"Enough to save her," the doctor said quietly, "may be enough to kill you."
Nobody moved. I turned my head and found Rayne standing at the edge of the light, looking at the doctor with an expression I couldn't read.
Around us the hall was full of people, guests, guards, court members, all of them completely still, all of them watching him.
Outside, the shield crackled and burned and the sound of the Dreadborn pressing against it didn't stop.
I looked at him. "Rayne." My voice came out thin. The burning pulsed again, deeper this time, and my fingers had gone cold.
"Don't." He looked at me, and I already knew from his face that the decision was already made. He turned to the doctor. "Take my blood."