Chapter 21

I had never seen a more glorious and monstrous thing than Abbey transforming.
She lost all sense of self. I saw the resolve crack. I saw her claws tense, her eyes changing ever so slightly. I knew that transformation well. The wolf in her had made an appearance after all this time.

I lurched to my feet and pushed myself toward Bram and Gory. Her breathing was coming in shallow gasps while he tried to calm the bleeding long enough to move her. Her face was ashen; he didn't have a whole lot of time. I slid him the keys to my truck and met his eyes. "Get her in and go."

I watched her glassy eyes flutter. For a vampire, she looked pretty human. Her eyes widened, bringing my instincts a little aid. I shot up and embedded my claws in the face of the wolf trying to ambush us. Abbey had moved off the vampire and was starting in on a pair of werewolves that were trying to corner her, leaving another two to me. They were waiting, looking at the three of us sitting on the floor like wounded bunnies about to be eaten. A soft scraping on the floor drew my eyes down to her crossbow, her fingers twitching to push it toward me. I glanced at Gory, watching the blood run from her mouth.

"I am going to cover you," I said. My muscles tensed as I picked up the crossbow, forcing back the pain in my side to cover their way. "Take her and go."

He threw me my keys. "I've got my own."

I met the vampire's gaze and understood that it was dishonorable for him to leave a fight he'd intended to start. This still wasn't his fight. He had my blessing to go. I waited until they rushed me to fire, and I didn't hold back. They let out sharp yelps and howls of agony while the silver ripped into them, punching through at least part way in each. I heard them shift and felt them go, but I didn't turn to see. I was letting it rip. They dropped to their knees, eyes glassy. Only then did I stop. When they hit the floor, something cold clicked into place.

I heard bodies drop, but I didn't move. I felt my throat tense. Slowly, I turned to Abbey and caught sight of her sniffing the air. She was a glorious creature, hunched over and primal. Her hair was wild around her, cloaking her like fur. I held the bow down at my side and went to her.

They weren't dead, they were dying slowly. She snapped their necks and her claws had cut enough major blood vessels to make it messy. The vampire, though...

I didn't feel like I should've been so calm around dead people. There was no blood coming out of the wounds anymore, it had all spilled out. It was everywhere, all over the girl and the floor and Abbey's hands. I reached out to grab her and get her out of here, but she turned to me so quickly it made me jump. Her eyes were dark, still violet and warm, but not entirely Abbey. I touched her hair softly, "Babe...we gotta go."

The touch made her eyes flutter. She crawled under my arm and pressed herself against me. A soft sound of approval burst from my lips, responding to her wolf-to-wolf. She obediently followed me out. I thought how sick it would make me to come home to that, but as soon as we reached the gravel, we were off in a run. I boosted her into the truck and tossed the bow on the floor at her feet. She shied away from the silver instinctively. "Good girl," I muttered. We forgot our seatbelts again as we left in a rush, and I pulled out my phone to send the message along the chain.
Luken, let your dad know things went down. It's a long story. Rushing out to S.G. to make sure vamps are ok. Tell all of you later.

As soon as I'd contacted, my phone exploded in texts. I dropped it into the ash tray and focused on the road.

For a long time, Abbey sat curled up in the corner of the truck, her wild eyes focused on me. She looked worse than I'd thought with her hands covered in blood, the ice on her skin melting and leaving dewdrops on her body. I cussed as a stoplight paused us, but threw open the back and reached out for the tool box. I popped the lid, grabbed a towel and tossed it onto her feet, and shut it once again before peeling off at the switch to green. She stared at it like a terrified animal. We didn't have the time to take things slow, but I gradually eased off the gas and leaned over to help her.

The first transformation was always terrifying. You lost control of yourself, in a lot of cases, completely. The instinct to hunt was almost always assuaged with actual hunts, but hers had been met the way we hoped never to meet it. I dried her skin as best I could and cleaned the blood from her hands. She crawled forward slowly until she had nuzzled under my arm like a puppy. Her eyes slowly began to lower, drooping to half-lidded before closing completely, and she sunk into laying on my lap.

"Shit," I cursed out loud. "Come on Abbey, wake up. I can't just leave you in the truck." I kicked up the gas with her asleep. If I left her in the truck, she'd swing her feet down and get hurt on one of the arrows or something. She slept deeply, though. Her muscles slowly relaxed and I watched the obvious signs of her transformation subside. Her soft, white hair was splayed like snow against my thigh, her hand on my knee and her grip gentle. She could've fallen asleep watching a movie for all the way she rested. I hoped she wouldn't remember what she'd done for her sake, she blamed herself enough for Ray.

God, Ray. Shit.

I didn't even realize how tired I was until I thought about Ray. It had been a really long two days. A lot of the time had bled together, and it was only in my race there that I remembered maybe forty-eight hours ago being rushed to the hospital by Gory and Bram. It felt like a year ago.

I pulled into a spot outside the main entrance and picked up the crossbow. Bram and Gory's hearse was maybe twenty feet from the truck, so I climbed out and headed over. Their dog laid in the back, either sleeping or sulking. I ended up locking up the truck with the keys inside for Abbey and putting the crossbow in the bottom of the toolbox.

As I walked in, I got the feeling that I wasn't supposed to have walked in on the moment of vulnerability that my sort-of friend was going through. He was sitting against the far wall, as close to his other half as he could possibly be, and his bloody hands were pressed to his face. I didn't have to be a genius to know he was bawling, his face was all wet and there was even blood in his hair from pushing it off his damp face. I swung by the nurse's station to grab the box of tissues and headed over.

I sunk into the seat next to him and put down the box. He didn't move to look at me, he just sucked in a deep breath that shook on the way in. It hadn't been that long since I wanted to kill the guy with a burning passion. I guess it was just something about seeing somebody cry that made them very human, whether they were human in species or not. I hadn't seen another guy cry since Clawd tried to dunk a basket when we were ten and cracked his head on the driveway.

"Hey," I said lightly, "You're not gonna help her going to pieces like this. You've gotta clean up and look tough."

He pulled his hands away from his face and I knew if he had the strength, he would've hit me. He was waiting for them to come through and give him bad news. It was the look in his eyes that reminded me how very few days ago I'd been in his place, even though I knew that in all my pain, I hadn't hurt as bad as he was right now. His very red lips shook as he tried to speak, and tears rolled out of his totally bloodshot eyes. There was blood smeared on his cheeks, blood smeared everywhere. I pulled out a couple tissues and put them in his hands. He didn't even look at them.

"She's all I have," he choked out after a minute of staring at me in disgust.

I hadn't really thought of it that way.
They had been together longer than most people ever hoped to be with someone. They had probably lost their families and a lot of their friends. I didn't know how it would feel to lose somebody that I had gone through that much with. It would be like losing Abbey, and the transformation was making sure that I wouldn't for a long time.

I nodded. I didn't know what else to do. He finally looked down at the tissues in his hands and sunk back in the chair. His floppy bangs dipped backward and he tried to wipe off his face, but he kept crying, and all the blood on him was making it difficult. He wasn't going to move to go clean himself up, I knew that for a fact. I knew what waiting was like; you moved and something happened. So I got up for him and went to the bathroom, wet some paper towels and came back. He looked at me like he expected them to be laced with cyanide, but he took them anyway.

I played courier pigeon for a while. I went to the cafeteria and got us some drinks, and we sat in the waiting room watching the Pink Panther in Spanish for at least half the movie. The more time we spent there, the more miserable he seemed to get. I didn't bug him either. I knew firsthand how it was when people tried to cheer you up when you felt like shit, it was half the reason I checked out early. I couldn't stand having my cousins go back and forth between crying and asking me if I needed anything and cracking stupid jokes to try to make themselves feel better.

"We started renovating because we were trying to have a baby," he said softly. It wasn't the kind of sentiment I wanted to hear out of a seventeen year old looking vampire, but I dealt with what I'd been given.

"Thinking about it a while?" I asked. I didn't know what the hell to say to a guy who wanted to have kids. Most guys that talked about getting their girlfriends pregnant were usually really pissed with themselves for doing it. I kept forgetting that they were an old married couple in teenage bodies, that they weren't like Abbey and me.

He nodded. "She's so hellbent on naming our daughter something foreign and pretty. Italian or Romanian. I like Desmond or Damien for a boy. She doesn't appreciate the Daredevil initials, but I think she would go with it." The more he talked about her, the more faded he seemed to get. It was like the grief was wearing him out. Being without her, no matter for how short a time or the reason behind it, was wearing him out. He was losing the will to exist beside me and I had nothing to say to make it better.

"She's not going to die," I said after a long and awkward pause. "I may call her a princess all the time, but she's not stupid enough to die when she knows how to keep herself alive."

He closed his eyes and laid back in the chair. It got darker and darker outside, and eventually Abbey came in with an unused paint tin out of the toolbox. She took Bram's keys and went to clean it up. I left a few bucks on the table so she could pick up something for dog food, and she took it in silence on her way out. We were operating mechanically. I didn't think any of us could take much more grief. The grim thought struck me that maybe, if Gory died, one or more of us would follow. Bram would. I'd put money on that. It sucked to think, but she was all he had. I'd seen the guy fight and I'd seen him cry. He was no wuss about either, and I was ninety nine percent sure he was still packing heat.

I was starting to fall asleep into the psychotic late night Spanish television when I heard footsteps. I nudged him to get up, and as soon as they registered, he shot to his feet and went to meet them.

He didn't come back after that. I was sure Abbey was probably sleeping in the hearse with the dog, so I got up after another twenty minutes and went outside. My parents were probably livid, so as I went into the passenger side of Bram's car and bummed a cigarette, I pulled out my phone to call them, and I really hoped that I wasn't going to have to take in their dog.