Page 6 of Thirst
Yet my hands wouldn't stop shaking.
Then, as suddenly as it began, the fire in my veins did not extinguish; it banked, sinking from a roaring inferno to the deep, pulsing heat of a forge. My iron hold on the bench loosened. A shuddering gasp escaped my lips, loud in the sudden quiet of the lab. Not a sound of pain, but of something cracking deep inside.
The wounds held. No miraculous knitting, no sudden relief. Only the familiar cadence of dhampir healing, suspended between vampire speed and human delay. I hoped the fiery heat meant something more.
My gaze, unfocused, drifted from the gleaming, sterile equipment to the corner with my cot. I spun my engagement band with my thumb as sweat dripped down my spine.
The mission, the queen, my kill list—it all dissolved into a single, silent name that echoed in the space the pain had left behind.
Zane.
A tear traced a warm path on my cheek, stinging acut as it fell. I swiped it away with a curse, furious at the weakness. The catalyst wasn’t working.
I fumbled for a roll of bandages and wrapped the deeper gashes on my arms as they leaked fresh blood. The crude field medicine would hold for now. I should have cleaned them properly and stitched the worst wounds, but the curative formula called to me.
The door creaked open behind me. “Sidney?” I didn’t need to look up to know Carlyle stood in the entryway. His voice, smooth and easygoing, cut through the haze of pain with notes of concern mixed with fatigue. “I heard you come in. How’d it go?”
I didn’t turn around, a calculated move to hide the involuntary wince that tightened the side of my face. My jaw burned as the catalyst kicked in at last. A concert of ruin and repair, a wet, grinding sound as a mosaic of shattered bone settled and fused. Each piece grated into its proper place with sharp, rhythmic agony. The temple taught me to master pain, to relegate it to a distant hum on the periphery of my focus. Yet this was a roaring symphony of it, and I, a poor conductor, failed to conceal the tremors in my hand as I reached for a fresh vial and my measurement tools.
The pain ebbed far more slowly than it came on.
“Queen Nemea is dead.” The words slurred as my jaw protested the movement. I cleared my throat, hoping Carlyle would mistake the strain in my voice for exhaustion.
His footsteps approached, slower than usual. Carlyle had been a mentor since I arrived at the temple fifteen years ago. The priest who’d taken in a dhampir child with nowhere else to go. He’d been father, teacher, and confessor all rolled into one patient package. The gray threading through his brown hair had multiplied in recent months,each strand a testament to the weight he carried as one of the temple’s senior clergy.
He sighed. “You’re bleeding all over my laboratory.”
“Dr. Hillman’s laboratory,” I corrected, facing him. “I’m just borrowing it.”
He wore the gray robes of a servant of Aetherius, but they did little to dull the keen intelligence in his brown eyes. His practiced gaze swept over my injuries. Years of patching up slayers had given him medical skills that rivaled most doctors’.
“Sit,” he said. “Let me clean those wounds before infection sets in.”
I wanted to refuse. There was work to do. But my body swayed, and the examination stool looked inviting. I found myself sinking onto it before I’d decided to move. Carlyle gathered supplies from the medical cabinet.
“Tell me about the fight,” he said as he removed my wraps and began cleaning the deeper cuts still lingering on my arms.
“She was as tough as I expected.” I straightened, forcing my spine to cooperate despite the screaming of my nerves. “She caught my crossbow bolt.” The memory still stung my pride. “But the rupture slowed her down enough for me to get close.”
“And the intelligence about her weakened state?”
“Accurate. Her magic was compromised.” I clenched my fists as he probed a particularly deep gouge near my elbow. “She was strong enough to break my cheekbone, but not strong enough to stop me from putting a stake through her heart.”
“But she’s dead. The House of the Sanguine must be in chaos.” A slow smile spread across his face. “You did it, Sidney. You actually did it.”
“It’s a start.” I winced as he cleaned my chin.
He frowned and peered more closely at my face. “This is pretty bad.”
“It’ll heal fast.” I shrugged. “Advantages of dirty blood, remember?”
He resumed his work, but I caught the tension in his shoulders. Carlyle had never been comfortable with the more violent aspects of our calling, despite training dozens of slayers over the years. He preferred research, strategy, and the intellectual chess match of dismantling vampire society from within. The blood and stakes were necessary evils to him.
To me, they were justice.
“The temple’s list just got shorter,” he said, his tone shifting with a hint of official business creeping in. “With Nemea gone, we can destabilize the entire power framework. And with the House of Whispers already pressing their advantage, the timing couldn’t be better.”
“The temple’s list and my list are different, Carlyle.”
