Drink Deep - Chloe Neill [120]
But then Ethan shuddered. I looked up at him, and his eyes were glazed, his skin suddenly pale.
“Merit,” he said, gripping my arms fiercely, his legs suddenly shaking with the effort of standing. I wrapped an arm around his waist.
“Ethan? Are you all right?”
Before he could answer, he collapsed.
Luc and Kelley arrived at the Midway to inspect the damage, their joy at seeing Ethan muted by their fear—our fear—for his condition. Once assured Mallory was being cared for, the Maleficium was back in safe hands, and Jonah had control of McKetrick, we focused on getting Ethan back to Cadogan.
The trip was surreal—escorting my evidently resurrected vampire lover and Master back to his House. Luc led us back through a gate in the fence I hadn’t known existed. We hustled through the back of the House and up the back staircase into Ethan’s suite.
Luc placed him on the bed and stepped away while Kelley, apparently having been trained in medicine in some former lifetime, looked him over.
Maybe having seen the fear and exhaustion in my face, Luc moved over to me. “You okay?”
I lifted my shoulders. “I don’t know what I am. Is he going to be all right?”
“Hell, Merit, I’m not really sure what he is or why he’s here. What happened out there?”
I filled him in on what I’d seen of Catcher and Mallory’s magic before he’d arrived. “Is Ethan her familiar? Will she be able to control him?”
“I don’t know,” Luc quietly said. “If Catcher interrupted the spell, I’m not sure why he’s here at all.”
“I’ve been having dreams about him—prophetic dreams about him and the elemental magic—since she took the ashes. Maybe he’s been coming back, bit by bit, since then.”
“So Catcher’s magic finished the resurrection, but kept him from being completely mindless? That’s certainly a possibility, but it’s not my area of expertise. Hell, I doubt Catcher even knows.”
The unknowing, the risk Ethan would be at the beck and call of a girl so addicted to black magic she was willing to throw away her friends—and her city—pushed me over the edge. Fear and panic bubbled to the surface, and I looked away, tears suddenly streaming down my face.
I moved to the nearest chair and sat down, then covered my hands in my face, sobbing from the toll of the emotional roller coaster of Mallory and Ethan—and at the possibilities that I’d already lost Mallory . . . and that I’d have to endure losing Ethan all over again.
I don’t know how long I’d cried when I heard rustling, soft but certainly there, from across the room. Slowly, I uncovered my eyes and looked up. Ethan was propped up on the bed. He looked obviously weak, his eyes barely open. And as in my dreams, he said my name. But this was no dream.
I wiped away tears and hurried to the side of the bed beside Kelley. “Are you all right?”
“I’m fine. Tired.” He swallowed. “I need blood, I think.”
I looked back at Kelley. “Is that an effect of the . . . whatever this is?”
“Possibly. Luc, can you check the second-floor kitchen? Grab some blood?”
Luc immediately went to the door of Ethan’s apartments, but came back two minutes later empty-handed, muttering a few choice words about Frank. The second-floor refrigerator was apparently empty of blood. As were the first- and third-floor fridges.
“Long story short, hoss, we’re out of blood at the moment.”
Ethan sat up a little. “I’m sorry? The House is out of blood? Why would Malik let that happen?”
“I’m going to re-stress the ‘long story’ bit. It also happens drinking from vampires is currently against the rules of Cadogan House, but I’m pretty sure we’ll go to bat for you on this one.” He winged up his eyebrows. “Although you may need to impose upon a Novitiate for nourishment.”
Now my cheeks were flaming red, but the suggested intimacy—the possibility that my Master needed to take blood from me—didn’t seem to faze Ethan.
Luc and Kelley silently slipped out the door.
Suddenly as anxious as a girl on a first date, I sat down on the