Page 201 of Eternal Craving

“I can read your mind, boy.”

He squealed like a girl, and I laughed and stepped back.

“Are you going to kill me?” he asked, his voice shaky.

“Where’s Archer?”

“I…I don’t know.” He surreptitiously gave me the answer.

“Tell him that if he isn’t out of London by morning...”

Looking distraught, he withdrew a small wooden cross from his coat pocket and waved it in my face.

“That’s a lovely thirteenth century artifact.” I wrapped my fingers around his throat. “Whatever they told you, it wasn’t adequate. I’d reconsider this vocation if I were you.”

“You’re going to let me go?” His lips quivered.

I leaned into him again. “You’re a pretty young thing,” I revealed my fangs. “I imagine if I were to turn you, you’d be more fun?”

A tell-tale patch of wetness at his groin spread down his trousers.

I laughed.

Marcus appeared out of nowhere.

You have to go home,he said telepathically, his expression fraught. He glanced at the young man and gave me a wary look.It’s Jacob.

“What?”

He has it.

The ground beneath my feet became unsteady. I knew what he was saying but I had trouble believing it.

“Go.” Marcus glanced at the boy. “I’ll take care of him.”

Archer was relentless. The Stone Masters were a threat that needed my full attention – but they would have to wait.

The stark reality of human frailty sent chills down my spine.

The Black Death. Anger struck me that Jacob had caught it, probably while tending to a patient – my most awful fear realized.

“Which room?” I asked Sunaria as we headed up the stairway.

She grasped my arm. “Ours.”

I pulled away and stared at the door, dreading what I’d find on the other side. Sorrowfully, trying to keep my emotions in check, I entered.

Jacob was in a fevered sleep, lying beneath a sweat-soaked bed sheet on our four- poster bed. His face was eerily grey.

I settled beside him, trying to steady my hands.

He shuddered, caught in the terrible grip of a nightmare. Peeling back the sheet, I saw that his chest was covered with dark pustules and his lymph nodes were swollen on his neck. He mumbled something.

Suppressing a moan of despair, I tried to comfort him, fighting back tears.

I wiped away a few damp locks that had fallen into his eyes, and then grasped his hand, pressing it against my lips, as though the very action might help him.

Sunaria gave my shoulder a squeeze.