Page 75 of Blood Magic

He came back.

He gulped down the remaining blood, then flipped to his back and grabbed my face between his rough palms. His eyes, lidless and horrible and empty only seconds earlier, opened, and he saw me.

“There was only darkness,” he told me, his voice a thing of nightmares. “But I felt you.”

I scrambled back, jerking out of his grip, and he wasn’t strong enough to stop me. Though he looked better, his black, raw skin healing, it was a slow process. And I needed fast.

“Cover us,” he said. “I will tend Farrow. We will sleep and heal and live.”

I closed my eyes, then looked at him. “There’s no time for that. I need your help, Bastien.”

His body spasmed, and something, a bone or a tendon or some part of him I couldn’t see, snapped. His eyes were bright with pain, but they were also bright with life. “I can only lie here,” he whispered. “Return in a week.”

“No.” I scooted to him. “I can’t wait. You have to come with me.”

“Kait,” Joe murmured, grimacing. “Look at him. There’s no way he can—”

“Feed me,” Bastien said, his voice scraping along my nerves. “So I can help you.”

I swallowed convulsively and shook my head. “I saved you. You owe me. My friend is caught by Axton and he will die if you don’t help me.”

“Would you have saved me,” he murmured, refusing to release my gaze, “if you had not needed me?”

Would I have? “I don’t know,” I told him. And that was the truth. “No,” might have been closer to the truth, but I didn’t speak that word. I believed he knew, anyway.

“What will you sacrifice for him?” Maybe his bloody lips lifted in a slight smile. It was hard to tell. “Will you give me a taste of your blood, Kait Silver? Is he worth that much to you?”

I began to cry. I was overflowing with too many emotions and they needed an outlet, so they leaked from my eyes. “Fuck you,” I whispered, enraged, grief-stricken, horrified. I was a wolf. Wolves did not feed vampires. They just didn’t. If I gave him my blood, I would be offering him myself. Me. It was like submission when I wanted to dominate. It was aligning myself with a revolting enemy. It was repulsive and wrong and it would create a dark bond between us forever. The magic in a wolf’s blood was strong, pure, and sweet. It was ours.

And a vampire wanted mine.

I did not want to give myself to him. I wavered, bringing the detective’s face to my mind’s eye, thinking about his pain and what the world would be like without him in it. What my life would be like if I let him die.

“What will you sacrifice for him?”

I groaned, my voice little more than a hoarse whisper, and I gave him my wrist. The same wrist he’d caught his fangs in before. “Take it, you bastard,” I said, but I wasn’t even sure he heard me.

He didn’t have to hear me to know what I offered. He grabbed my arm in a surprisingly strong grip, and he didn’t hesitate. He sliced into my flesh with his sharp, sharp fangs, and he began to drink.

My wolf’s coldness slid through me and I welcomed it with open arms. It was best to feel nothing, sometimes.

“Suck it up, Princess. Suck it the fuck up.”

I nodded, as though my father were standing at my shoulder, and I did what I had to do.

I fed the vampire.