SWNOVELS Chapter 38
"Where am I?" she asks Darius, who's still holding her hand. His jaw is clenched tightly and his muscles are tense, like he's the one in distress.
"In a room that keeps you safe from the outside," Darius answers, "but not safe from yourself."
"Can you take me away?"
The vampire shakes his head, a look of pity etched on his brow. "I can't take you anywhere you'd be better off. Matilda, do you recognize your granddaughter?"
She turns toward me, the warm smile still there, and nods her head.
"Bernie. I'm so sorry."
"What for, Nanny?" I can't imagine what she feels the need to apologize for. The tears I've been holding back begin to spill as I rush to her side, kneeling next to Darius, and only slightly resenting that it's his hand she's holding instead of mine.
"I couldn't save you," Nanny says. "I couldn't save my Lauren, and after I tried, I couldn't save you."
"Save me from what?" When she doesn't respond immediately, I turn to Darius. "Save me from what? What's she talking about?"
He throws me a quick look, and with it a mental warning. If you want me to learn anything, you'll stay calm.
I nod, his point well taken, and he gives his attention back to Tilly.
"You've more power than I remember," Darius says, a slight quiver in his voice. "Do you know what changed? What happened to your mind?"
Nanny keeps her eyes on the ceiling, and I see a tear fall down her weathered cheek.
"I thought I could end the line," she says matter-of-factly, her voice clear and strong. "I thought, perhaps, I could be the last one."
I don't understand what's going on, and I can't quite tell if Darius does either. His face looks pained, like he's having this conversation while squatting a thousand pounds.
"Why didn't you know better?" the vampire asks. The question isn't so much scornful, as one filled with regret. A sadness born from whatever my grandmother did.
She turns to him again, the smile coming back, though this time with a mischievous curl in her lip. "Why don't any of us know better, my sweet?"
My sweet? That better be some endearing grandmother shit, because I'm not prepared to hear that Nanny and my vamp boy had a thing before I was born.
"Matilda," Darius says, the strain in his voice more pronounced. "The Order is back. Or perhaps never left. We know they want the baby, but we don't know their intention. Without your guidance, I fear they're being misled." Tilly's smile fades, replaced by a look of concern.
"I know nothing. Leadership came through my bloodline, protection spells from our family books. It... it must be a new--"
Before she can finish her sentence, the door to her room crashes open, shattering the fragile silence.
"Get away from the bed!" screams a male voice.
I look over to see a man dressed in black, his face covered by a hood just like Karl's, only it's not Karl's voice. It's obviously not medical staff, unless they've really changed their methods since last I was here.
"You! Get up. Let go of the woman's hand!" he shouts, holding up a gun and pointing it at Darius.
The vampire raises his left hand, the one not locked with Tilly's, to show he's defenseless. Then he leans in and whispers to my grandma, just loud enough for me to hear.
"This will hurt, and I'm sorry. But you're strong."
With that, he releases her hand and she immediately starts to convulse violently. It's worse than I've ever seen before, and I'm sure her neck is going to snap.
"What did you do?" the man at the door shouts, stealing my question. He makes a move toward Tilly's bed, but as soon as he lifts his leg, Darius waves an arm and sends the man flying through the doorway, crashing against the wall on the opposite side of the hall. "More will be here soon," Darius says, his voice raspy and his eyes bloodshot. "Follow me through the window."
"I can't leave Nanny. What if they hurt her?"
"They won't," he says as he unlocks and opens the window frame. "If the Order of the Star wanted her dead, she'd be dead."
"That's not as comforting as you
might think," hiss, but I know he's right. We have to get out of here, and we can't take Tilly. I glance once
breaking that I have to leave belnet
more at my Nanny, my heart
like
this. "I'm sorry, Nanny," I whisper, but before I do as Darius says dart into the hall, needing whatever answers I can find.
The man he threw against the wall is barely conscious, definitely concussed. As he moans, I lift the ski mask that was covering his face.
It's Alex.
Joe's son.
What the hell?
The sound of footsteps running
down the hall forces my hand, and I sprint back through Nanny's room and Darius hoists me through the window. We run around the building, the sound of sirens in the distance and getting closer by the second, and finally reach the car.
There's only one driveway leading away from the facility, and that road's about to be filled with cop cars or Order members. The other option is to drive through the fence in front of me and down a hill. So that's what I do.
I start the engine, leave the lights off, and slam on the gas. We crash through the chainlink and roll into the darkness, just as the lights from the squad cars blink in my rearview mirror.
As my Subaru rolls downhill, I realize I just drove us off a snow-covered slope in the dark. I pump the brakes to no avail, the car still rolling and picking up steam.
"Um, Darius? Think you could...?"
I don't bother finishing the question, assuming his best solution will be better than whatever I could think up.
When he doesn't answer I give a quick sideways glance, and don't love what I see. He's breathing hard and still looking haggard. The one time I decide to rely on his magic, and he's got the flu or something. "Darius! I know you can't die, but I've still got bones and organs and shit that will not survive when we hit a tree. So WAKE. UP!"
As I yell the last part, I dig my nails into his leg and feel a jolt of electricity shoot through me. It's strong enough to knock me against the car door, my head bumping hard against the window.
I try to shake it off, but my vision is
blurred and it's pitch black anyway. Instead of last-minute ideas for how to save us, I've just got pictures Rain
g in my head. Her tin). Prek
toes, her sweet little nose.
Who's
going to take care of my baby?
And then my body lurches forward, my sternum slamming painfully against the steering wheel. My eyes are shut and I'm positive we just collided with a huge maple tree. The only reason I'm not feeling intense pain is because I'm already dead. For a moment, there's nothing but silence. Finally I pry open my eyes, for no other reason than to see what heaven looks like. Or hell, I guess. No point in being presumptuous.
Instead, I see the inside of my car. I look to the side and see Darius, his hands pressed against the dashboard in front of him. He looks at me, his face less pained than before, the beginning of a smile at the corners of his mouth.
When I turn my head again, I can see faintly out the windshield. No more than ten feet in front of us is a crumbling stone wall, one of those old property lines people made with huge boulders in the 1700s. If we had stopped a second later, I'd be dead. I look back at Darius. "Why'd you wait?!" I yell, the emotion from the near-death experience boiling over. "We... I, almost died!"
He puts his hand on my knee, trying to calm me as he speaks.
"When I clasped hands with your grandmother, I took on the burden of her powers. She has a tremendous amount of magic inside her, that's the reason she's been... the way she's been."
He takes a moment, clearly still recovering from whatever he's trying to describe.
"The longer I held her hand, the stronger it became. Had we stayed in contact a moment longer I might have been knocked unconscious. It took everything I had to disable that man. I barely made it to the car." "And then...?"
"And then you grabbed me. I'm not sure what you felt, but I felt whatever power that had been constricting me release."
I raise my hand to my head, feeling the knot forming where I bounced off the window.
"I felt something, all right. Guess Nanny's powers almost took us both out."
I smile at Darius, glad he's okay, even more glad I'm alive.
"So I timed it out perfectly, then," I say with a slightly unhinged chuckle. "I screamed and pinched your leg just in time for you to stop the car."
Darius returns the smile, though he also shakes his head--there's still something I'm missing.
"No, Bernie. I didn't stop the car." He looks out at the line of rocks that would have instantly killed me, then returns his focus to my eyes, a new and exciting energy brewing there.
"You did."