Renegade (24 page)

That wouldn’t matter though. He wasn’t himself, never would be again. The vaccine had been their last hope.

You’d be doing me a favor
, he’d said.

So she’d promised him. But she couldn’t. She wouldn’t. Somehow, she’d reach him.

Another sob cracked through her chest, tightening it as though in a vise grip. “Griffin, please. You’re my heart.”

“Bitch!” he wheezed, straightening. “I’ll fucking eat your heart.” He lunged, hands going for her throat.

Tears glazed her eyes and mercifully blurred her vision. She ducked under his arms, lunging away.
Griffin, I love you.

Nothing came back to her, not even a vague sense of him, and her heart cracked.

Val pivoted to punch him, but he wheeled faster than she would’ve thought possible. He caught her hair, yanking her back, trapping her against the wall.

With death in his eyes, Griffin closed his hands around her throat. He squeezed. Val gasped for air as blackness rolled across her vision. Desperately, she tried to force his arms aside.

There truly was nothing of his essence left. Either she stopped him now, or she risked letting him escape, dooming him to live as what he most hated, a perversion of everything he believed in.

No.

Her heart splintered, the shards driving into her lungs, her gut, her soul. Val drew power from the forest outside and slammed a hook punch into his left kidney.

He grunted. His grip loosened.

“
Morere
,” she gasped, pressing her hands to his heart. She sucked in air, poured power into the contact, and screamed, “
Morere
.”

His eyes glazed as his hands dropped. His knees buckled. Keeping one hand on his chest, pouring in power behind the command, she caught him.

They crumpled to the floor together. Blinded by the tears rolling down her face, she held his head to her breast even as her other hand kept up that lethal flow of magic. “I’m sorry,” she choked through the grief and guilt clogging her throat, tearing at her soul.

“I’m so sorry.” She’d done as he asked, but she’d failed him. There should’ve been some way to save him.

“Stop,” someone shouted. “Banning!”

She couldn’t stop. She’d promised.
Oh, Griffin.

She pressed a kiss against his cool, clammy brow as her tears plopped onto his face. “I love you, Griffin. Love you with all my heart. Love you always.”

The light in his eyes faded. For a moment, less than a heartbeat, his presence brushed her mind, warm and tender and probably imagined, and then he was gone.

Wrapping her arms around him, she buried her face in his neck, against his soft, dark hair. His bay scent was gone, too.

An inarticulate, enraged roar came from her left.

Val looked up at Stefan. The tears in her eyes blurred his image, but his grief and fury thundered in the magic between them. His sword pointed straight at her heart with lethal energy crackling around the blade.

“Do it,” she said. “Please.”

I
f Stefan killed her, she wouldn’t have to live with what she’d done to Griffin. She used her sleeve to wipe her tears from his still face.

Stefan stood over them, breathing hard, his sword at the ready. “If we could’ve captured him—”

“Don’t you think I would’ve preferred that? It was too late.”

He searched her face for a long moment, then knelt in front of her and laid his sword aside. “Let me see,” he said quietly.

Because he was Griffin’s friend, she trusted him enough to raise her head, to lean out of his way, to let him touch that lax face. Looking grim, he felt Griffin’s neck, checking for the pulse.

At last, he shook his head. “I was afraid he might turn. So was he.” He drew her head against his shoulder with Griffin’s body between them. “I’m sorry. I saw you, and I didn’t think, just reacted.”

“I would’ve done the same.” Grief tore at him as it did her, and that was some comfort, that she wasn’t the only one who cared.

Val swallowed hard to clear her throat, but nothing seemed to stop the tears. “I promised him, if he ever— Oh, God, I promised. I wish I hadn’t.”

The sounds of battle had died. Since she didn’t hear any ghoul voices exulting in victory outside, the mages must’ve won. More of Griffin’s friends would be along any moment.

Stefan gave her a reassuring hug. “For whatever it’s worth to you, this was his greatest fear. You spared him that.”

A fresh flood of tears streamed down her cheeks. Shuddering with their force, Val clung to Griffin with one arm and his friend with the other.

“I’ll tell the others,” Stefan said. “They knew about the venom. They’ll understand, but better it comes from me.”

Footsteps hurried toward them, with mage anxiety swirling in the magic and heralding Griffin’s team. They halted in the doorway, but Val didn’t look up.

“In here— Shit, no. No,” a man’s voice said.

“He’d turned,” Stefan said bluntly. “There was no choice.”

“Fuck!” Chuck Porter slammed his fist into a wall.

The shock, grief, and fury of Griffin’s friends vibrated in the magic, a torturous mix that bore down on Val’s soul like an avalanche. Would they forgive her? Could she ever forgive herself?

“I’ll explain later.” Stefan told them. “Anybody hurt?”

“We’re all fine,” Lorelei said shakily. “Bumps and bruises only. No need for you to tend us or for us to share energy. Tom and the guys from Atlanta are on guard.”

Stefan nodded acknowledgment. “We’ll clean him up before we take him home.”

“Not to the Collegium, not to the people who hated and persecuted him.” Val pressed a kiss against Griffin’s dark head. “To Wayfarer. Miss Hettie.” People who loved him. “His family will understand. They can meet us there.”

“Much better idea.” Stefan glanced over his shoulder, composed despite the pain in his eyes. “Will, I need your help. Chuck, bring me a set of camos from the helo locker. Griff’s entitled to them.”

Damned right, he was.

“We’ll need a cleanup crew, too,” Will said.

“On it,” Tasha choked. She scrubbed angrily at her wet cheeks. “I’ll go with you, Chuck.” They hurried out of the room together.

Val released Griffin to Stefan and Will, then dragged herself to her feet as they lifted him onto the padded table. Will unsnapped the coverall.

Stefan said, “Someone get me a basin of water.”

The shock was fading, letting her brain kick in. Gene, she remembered, and everything in her went cold and hard. “Griffin told me who the traitor is. I have to avenge him.”

This must be how he’d felt when he’d buried his deputies and accused their killer and no one believed him. “Whether or not anyone believes me, that son of a bitch is going down.”

Lorelei slid an arm around Val’s shoulders. “He was the brother I always wanted,” she said in a voice thick with tears. “Do what you need to. I’ll have your back.”

“You’ll have lots of company.” Will stripped off the coverall, and Lorelei tactfully turned her head away.

Griffin’s arms lay limp at his sides, arms that wielded a quarterstaff with lethal skill yet tenderly cradled and comforted a homeless child. And Val herself. He’d held her in those arms, against that broad, scarred chest, in comfort, in easy affection, in driving, urgent passion.

Never again.

She clamped her lips shut against a sob, but she couldn’t look away from him. “His hands,” she said. “He dug into my neck, but—no talons.”

“Let me see.” Lorelei brushed Val’s hair aside. “You have four red marks. He broke the skin, but they’re long and narrow, not punctures. Not talons.”

Val froze. “If he didn’t go all the way, if he could’ve—we could’ve—maybe—”

“No,” Stefan said flatly. “If the vaccine didn’t work, we had nothing else to try.”

So she’d thought, but—

“I’m the expert here,” Stefan said. “Believe me.”

Val scrubbed at stinging tears. Wiping her own cheeks, Lorelei hugged her.

Javier brought the basin of water. He turned away quickly but not before Val saw tear tracks on his cheeks.

Stefan thanked him. Stone-faced, with loss naked in their eyes, Stefan and Will set about cleaning up the residue of death.

“We’ll tell everyone how he fought for our kind,” Will said. “It’s past time they knew and appreciated it.”

Val said nothing. Gratitude was fine. But vengeance was better.

Medical personnel from the Collegium evacuated the ghouls’ other captives. They would have their wounds tended and be sent home, with memory blanks when necessary. Seventeen had been freed, quite a coup, but Val paid little attention.

About three a.m., Chuck and Javier settled the stretcher bearing Griffin’s body on a rack near the chopper’s rear hatch. Val curled up on the floor next to him. Soon she would have to give him up, consign him to the flames, as he’d wanted, and be without him forever. But she would take this one last ride holding his hand.

She reached under the blanket for it. Those strong, lean fingers were so cold. So limp. The change crushed her heart.

He wasn’t turning green, which was a comfort. Stefan had said that could be because Griff wasn’t born a ghoul.

“Mind if I sit with you?” Stefan’s glance held pained comprehension.

When she held out her other hand to him, he settled on the floor beside her. He put his arm around her, and they leaned back against the equipment locker together.

“I also made him a promise.” He raised his voice as the engines started. “An easier one than he asked of you. I promised him, if anything happened to him, I’d be here for you. Whatever you need, Valeria, you can come to me.”

“You’re doing it now.” He was one of the few people whose presence wouldn’t feel like an intrusion. The chopper lifted with a familiar lurch. Next stop, Wayfarer, Georgia, and the people who had given Griffin a home.

Val leaned back against Stefan’s shoulder. She would have to tell Griffin’s family. Miss Hettie. Marc. He would do the eulogy. Danny and Missy at the bakery could make the food.

Crystals and candles would come from Sally’s and Lorelei’s. Everyone who’d become part of Griffin’s life would have some role in this, if they wanted it. Funerals, after all, were for the living.

Shielded from view by Stefan, she lifted Griffin’s hand to her cheek and blinked back tears. She would do this for him, see it through, see that Gene was held accountable. Then she could fall apart.

“You know,” Stefan said, “this team of fourteen took out a pretty big nest. Will says thirty-two ghouls live there. We’ve sent bigger groups against smaller nests and failed.”

He was offering her a distraction, and she needed one from the boulder of grief that’d settled into her chest.

“We succeeded,” she said, “because we weren’t betrayed this time.” Nodding at the flash of anger in his eyes, she continued, “I wonder why. Did the disinformation Will circulated about our destination protect us, or did the traitor decide not to risk drawing more attention to this nest?”

“Javier can dig into the computer records we seized, see what they tell us. He’s an experienced hacker.”

Suddenly, she felt a tiny twitch and froze. No. Not possible.
Get a grip, Val.
She kissed Griffin’s cool palm.

His fingers curled around her chin.

Her heart stopped. Her breath caught in her chest.

Stefan leaned closer. “All right?” he asked softly.

Caught between hope and fear—was Griffin’s hand warmer or just feeling that way because she’d held it?—knowing she was being pathetic, she choked out, “I…it…he moved.”

The kindness in Stefan’s eyes stung. “Probably just a shift in the helo we didn’t feel. Shall I check him, though, just to be sure?”

Griffin’s fingers shifted again, a hint of movement, not even really a twitch.
Stefan’s right, probably just the helo.

Mute, Val nodded. If Griffin had somehow revived, what would he be? She wanted him back, wanted him desperately, but not if he— Oh, please, not that.

Stefan reached for Griffin’s wrist. His fingers found the pulse point, and his eyes lost focus, as though he were counting.

Only a few seconds ticked by, but every one of them drew the knot in Val’s gut tighter.

Stefan turned to her with a kind smile. As his lips parted, he stiffened. His gaze shot toward the blanket over Griffin’s face.

He eased around Val as she fought rising hope. If Griffin wasn’t himself, if he revived as a ghoul, she couldn’t bear it.

“You won’t have to, no matter what,” Stefan said gently, folding back the blanket, and she realized she’d spoken.

He lifted one of Griffin’s eyelids, then the other. Holding the second one up, he drew a penlight from his pocket. He clicked it on and aimed it at Griffin’s eye, and Val held her breath.

Stefan checked the other eye before he beckoned to her.

Afraid to risk the heartbreak of not seeing a change, she made herself rise on her knees beside him and look at Griffin’s face. The whites of his eyes were just that, white, not muddy beige, around that deep, vivid blue. Stefan clicked the light on, and the pupil contracted.

Val’s heart lurched. Carefully, she touched Griffin’s cool cheek. He didn’t react, and she shot an anxious look at Stefan.

“Sit here with him,” Stefan said, “just as you were, and we’ll see what happens. This could be some weird thing from the venom in his blood.”

“But you don’t think so?” Her heartbeat roared in her ears, and her entire body ached with the sudden, desperate onrush of hope. She stroked Griffin’s hair back from his brow.

“Just sit with him.”

Stefan reached over her to grab his bag. Holding it so the others couldn’t see, he withdrew his stethoscope and slipped the tips into his ears. His facial expression stayed neutral as he opened the camo shirt and tested different spots on Griffin’s chest.

Val watched him. Maybe she was dreaming. Griffin hadn’t moved, hadn’t drawn a breath, in almost an hour. He couldn’t be alive. She must’ve fallen asleep from exhaustion, imagined all this.

Stefan looked no longer neutral but amazed. “I hear a very, very slow heartbeat. Respiration, too, with the breaths faint and far apart, not enough to lift his chest, but there.”

No. Not possible. It had to be a dream. Any minute, she would wake up and her heart would break all over again.

“Valeria.” Stefan gripped her shoulder. “Do you hear me?”

“Yes. Yes, but…” She couldn’t say it. Saying it might shatter the tiny possibility this was real.

“I don’t know what’s happening,” Stefan said. “If I try to help, I may interfere with something important. We’ll sit here and watch him, see where this goes. I have a garnet healing stone in my bag. I’ll put that over his heart in a few minutes, but I want him stronger before I do that. Only if I think we’re losing him again will I try anything more.”

She nodded. Griffin’s fingers curled loosely around hers, and she bowed her head over their hands, choking back a sob. If this was a dream, if she woke up and he was dead—

“Easy,” Stefan said, his grip on her shoulder offering much needed support. “He seems to be coming back as a mage, or at least a normal human, not a ghoul.” He waited for her to look up at his grim face. “Even if that changes, though, it’s not on you. Understand? I’m his doctor, and I’m responsible now.”

Reluctantly, she nodded. A promise, after all, was a promise.

Faint chirruping sounds, night bugs. A distant creak. Slurping, like a dog drinking. Dim light from somewhere.

Griff turned toward the light. He wanted those sounds, wanted to see what made them, but his eyelids were too heavy. His brain felt mired in mud. He struggled against it, pushing. Reaching.

I’m here
, Valeria told him. Her fingers twined with his, warm and firm.
Take your time.

So tired.
Yet he felt more alert now.
Love you.

A muted sound, choked, and her lips brushed over his knuckles.
I love you, too. Everything’s all right now, my love.

His brain ratcheted up a notch.
Where are we?

Your old room at Hettie’s.

With Magnus on guard. Drinking.

Her chuckle rippled through his mind.
He wouldn’t leave you. He spent the afternoon on your bed, bumped up beside you.
Sweet humor brushed over Griff, as though she smiled.
On the other side from me. He seems to think he has first dibs on you and the bed.

As though summoned by the thought, the dog’s padding tread approached. His tags jingled to Griff’s left. A heavy weight landed on the bed, shifted, probably as the dog did his traditional three-circle tromp. A plopping weight shook the mattress and put something big by Griff’s hip, and a cold, wet nose poked his free hand.

Griff smiled and slid his fingers into the dog’s thick, soft ruff.
He’s a guy. He’s territorial.

“Let’s not go there.”

He caught the words more with his ears than his mind. At last, he pushed his eyes open.

Valeria sat beside him. The Tiffany bedside lamp washed rich gold and green over her face, but he couldn’t see her features quite clearly, as though a thin, nearly transparent veil hung over her face.