Promised in Blood: Chapter 44

The dish slips from my fingers and shatters on the floor. Porcelain shards pierce my flesh. But that pain is nothing. Everything hurts. Blinding light flashes behind my eyes.

Inhale. Exhale. Each breath is harder than the last. The window behind me explodes.

Malachi’s pained cry fills my ears. “Ophelia!” He staggers into the kitchen, his hand clutched to his chest.

“D-do you feel that?” I force out the words, unable to use my mind to speak through the pressure threatening to crush my skull.

An anguished scream erupts from somewhere. The hairs on the back of my neck stand on end. The same sound continues, and I am certain it’s coming from Axl. Xavier’s agonized cries add to the cacophony inside my mind. Where are they? They left the house a few minutes ago. Was it for pizza? Ice cream? I can’t focus. Everything hurts so much. A vise squeezes my heart. Crushes it. My soul is being wrenched from my body.

I stumble into Malachi’s arms. “K-Kai.” I choke on a sob.

His arms squeeze tighter around me. Axl and Xavier appear, their bodies joining the huddle. Our wails become one wall of sound.

At some point, we all sink to the floor in a heap. Our souls crack open as if to allow the piece that belonged to him to slither away. Leaving us mere shells of the people we were before.

He can’t be gone. Alexandros Drakos is one of the most powerful beings in the entire world. He can’t be … I bury my head into Malachi’s chest once more. Fist my hands in Axl’s and Xavier’s shirts. If I hold on tight enough, they can’t leave me too.

A forgotten conversation from a cool October night rushes back to me. Xavier’s voice. “Sired vampires can’t survive if their master is dead.”

A swirling vortex roars to life in the center of my chest. Like an inferno burning up everything it touches. Flames swirl around us, engulfing the room in an instant. A strangled scream like nothing I’ve ever heard before pierces my ears, and it takes a few beats to register that it comes from me. If I weren’t holding onto the only other people in this world who mean as much to me as Alexandros, I would scorch this entire campus to ash.

The flames creep closer, licking and blistering the boys’ skin, and I pull together every ounce of willpower that remains within me and douse the flames.

As if I swallowed it whole, the fire now rages inside me, sparking in every cell of my body like lightning at the very millisecond before it strikes. Their pain joins the inferno. Fear of staring down their own mortality, the inconceivable loss of their sire … But even more, the agony of leaving me behind.

I screw my eyes closed. I will not let that happen.

I can hear his voice as if he were still here with us. Focus on your light!

I suck in a deep breath that begins to soothe the fiery vortex inside me.

I am an elementai.

The most powerful being that ever lived.

I will not lose them.