Blood Lily (Lilith Adams Vampire Series Book 1) (43 page)

Lilith moved the flashlight further down the hall and caught a glimpse of a heavy metal door covered in rust and curling paint. When she moved the light back to the floor, it glinted against a metallic surface on the floor. She moved a little faster, following the glint, and stooped down. Her fingers brushed over something metal and she grabbed it. When she angled the light at it, her eyes went wide. It was a name badge…a name badge that read Humphries.
Wait. That meant that he’d been here…

A shot rang out behind her, making her jump back against the wall
. Blood roared in her ears as she whipped her 9mm around with the flashlight in her other hand. The light caught Chance’s chiseled face and he looked genuinely confused. Had she just been hearing things? She was panicking, yes, but delusional? Chance slowly looked down with that same look of confusion. It was all a matter of seconds, but it stretched out in slow motion.

Lilith followed his eyes with the light. His black t shirt looked wet.
She frowned, completely unable to make sense of what she was seeing. His shotgun clattered to the floor, a sound that echoed in her ears, one of those sounds that you knew would haunt you for the rest of your life. It snapped the spell of denial in her mind as he grabbed at his chest, his eyes meeting hers with shock and despair.

“No, no, no, no,
no!” Her voice trembled. God she couldn’t breathe. Lilith scurried across the floor as Chance sank to his knees and then fell forward on all fours, coughing. She heard the blood splatter across the floor and her heart seemed to shatter. This could not be happening! This was her nightmare all over.

She finally reached him, and cradled his face in her hands.
“No, god, Chance. Please! You have to stay with me!” Blood trailed from his mouth and his eyes were having trouble focusing. He tried to say something but he gurgled and coughed, more blood bubbling from his mouth. Tears stung her eyes as she dropped the gun and flashlight and frantically tried to move him, get him to lie down. He had to have a punctured lung. She had to stop the bleeding and keep him from drowning in his own blood. God, there was so much of it, so much blood.

Her hands scrambled to put pressure over the gurgling wound on his chest, but the blood just kept seeping through her fingers. No! Not like this!

The click of a gun cocking rang through her bones like pure ice. She just froze. Very slowly, she looked up to see Officer Humphries pointing his pistol straight at her. Lilith’s heart went into overdrive, pounding furiously in her chest. “He said he was an unnecessary threat. He serves no purpose. You, on the other hand, he wants alive.” There was no southern drawl. His voice was calm, emotionless, dead inside.

Chapter 22

L
ilith scrambled for the gun, but her hands were slick with blood and it just slid through her fingers. A hand dug into her hair and pulled her back hard enough to make her scream. Chance’s eyes widened and he tried to move but violent coughs racked his body with more blood gurgling from his mouth. Lilith reached up and clawed at Humphries’ hand while her feet kicked uselessly in front of her, slipping and skidding in the blood on the floor. Scratching at him didn’t seem to do anything, he didn’t even wince. It was like he was running on autopilot.

The officer flung her against the wall shoved his gun against her head. “Stop resisting. I don’t want to hurt you
, but I will.” His voice held a dangerous edge that was a million times scarier than Spencer’s had ever been. He was completely calm and completely serious. She couldn’t goad him into mistakes like she had with her cousin. She didn’t care. She was a ball of blind rage and desperation.

“What the fuck are you doing?” She could barely see t
hrough the tears in her eyes. Lilith slapped his gun away and flung her fists out with everything she had. One shot landed on his thigh and Humphries stumbled backward. Lilith took the opportunity to push off the wall and skid across the floor to get back to Chance. Her fingers brushed against the gun on the floor but she couldn’t get a hold of it before Humphries’ strong hands dug into her hair again. He pulled her to her feet before slamming her against the wall. His arm pressed against her throat hard enough to make her choke. His body pinned her to the wall. She couldn’t kick, couldn’t throw punches. She tried to pull and claw at his arm but nothing seemed to affect him.

“He’s going to die! Please, let me help him!” She pleaded desperately, throwing everything she could into it, willing him to
take pity. She wanted to empty every single clip into him for what he’d done, he needed to die, but she was powerless. All she could do was try to reason with him

“Ashcroft wanted him out of the way.” Humphries jerked his arm a little harder against her throat and she gasped, her vision going blurry for a second. “Now settle the fuck down.”

“He’s out of the way. That doesn’t mean he needs to die. Please, just let me stop the bleeding.” Her voice croaked out around the lump in her throat.

“You won’t care for long. You’re expected.” Panic seared through her whole body. She couldn’t let it happen like this. She didn’t care what Ashcroft did to her, she was going to make sure Chance had a shot at surviving. With blazing clarity, she remembered Chance in the parking lot. She’d taken his hand for strength and he’d gotten dizzy. Cohen said that you could seriously harm someone if you drew on their energy. Well she needed strength right now more than ever.

Lilith wrapped her fingers around Humphries’ arm, closed her eyes and concentrated. Some more religious types, might have called it prayer, but to her it was just screaming out
to the universe that she needed this to work. She felt a surge running through her body, lighting up every little nerve ending. When she opened her eyes, she saw Humphries hard face, covered in fine wrinkles, staring at her in confusion.

That second of hesitation in his eyes made her stronger. Anger and hatred consumed her. She wanted him to suffer. Her nails dug into his skin
as she thought about ripping away every bit of strength he had left in him. Suddenly, his skin seemed ten shades paler. His arm loosened against her throat and he stumbled. Lilith used the wall to push off and knocked Humphries to the ground. Her nails were still dug into his arm and she pinched them harder, drawing blood.

Lilith pinned him to the ground and hammered her fist against his face. The first shot knocked him out cold but she just kept punching him
. She was a ball of rage and tears, screaming with every hit that connected. Her knuckles burned but she could feel the abrasions healing as soon as they happened. She felt strong, powerful and no one was going to take that away from her again. She was tired of being everyone’s fucking punching bag.

She was just about to swing again when a gurgled scream sounded behind her. “Lily.
Stop.” Chance’s voice cut right through the red haze of fury in her eyes. She looked down at Humphries face, a mass of bruises and blood and was horrified. Her fist fell limp at her side as she thought about Miriah’s face after Spencer had finished with it. What the hell was she doing? Chance…he’s the reason she needed to get away from Humphries and now she was sitting here pounding in Humphries’ face while Chance was bleeding to death?

She pushed away from the unconscious officer like he was infectious and scrambled across the floor. When she finally reached Chance his eyes were floating around unfocusing
and the gurgling cough was more violent. Screaming for her to stop took too much out of him. God, he was so pale. Blood was just barely trickling out of the wound in his chest. He’d lost too much blood. Even stopping the bleeding now wasn’t going to save him. He was going to die. Her throat tightened with tears and she pulled him closer as she sobbed. No. Not like this. Not now. She needed him to live.

Sudden clarity, or perhaps plain old desperation, clicked in her head.
Her blood. Cohen’s blood saved her life at the last possible second. Maybe there was enough of whatever healed her left in her blood to help Chance. She felt the unfamiliar pang of pain as her fangs clicked down before she could think about anything else. Without any hesitation she bit into her wrist deep enough that the wound wouldn’t close up right away like the cuts on her knuckles had. She held it to Chance’s mouth and shook him.

“Drink it, Chance. Please, please, please. I need you. You can’t die on me. Please!” His eyes had trouble focusing, but she could see the muscles in his throat working. “That’s it.
Drink.” She smoothed her bloody hand through his auburn flecked hair in soothing strokes as tears kept streaming down her face. This had to work. It just had to.

Chance coughed a few times, choking on the blood. Lilith pulled his head into her lap, angling his neck to make it easier on him. After several minutes she felt the blood flow stop at her wrist and she bit into it again. She had no idea how much it would take. He could have all of it if it meant it would actually work. She put her wrist to his mouth again and this time his lips closed around the wound. That was a good sign, wasn’t it?

With her free hand she tugged his black T-shirt up. His tan skin looked like it was coated in fine white dust, paled by the loss of blood. Smeared blood covered his chest, but she could see the puffy, angry bullet hole on the upper right side. He wasn’t bleeding anymore. Hopefully that mean that the wound was beginning to heal and not that he just didn’t have any more blood to lose.

She felt his lips stop moving. No. Sudden panic stole all her breath and her eyes flicked to his face. His eyes were closed, his mouth still open around her wrist, but unmoving.
“Chance?” It felt like her lungs were about to implode. “Chance, stay with me.” She shook him, but his eyes stayed closed, he wasn’t moving. “Chance!” She erupted in tears again and shook him harder. “You can’t leave. I love you. I need you here. I can’t lose you. Not now. Not like this.” She buried her face against his neck, completely dissolving into gut-wrenching sobs. It felt just like her nightmare. If Chance was dead, she didn’t care what Ashcroft would do to her. Nothing could be worse than this.

She felt a
tickle of warmth in her hair. A breath? She froze for an instant, completely paralyzed, afraid to believe it but desperately wanting to. There it was again. Lilith slid her hand onto his chest, closed her eyes and waited. His heartbeat was faint but there and he was breathing shallow little breaths. A spark of hope lit her up from the inside. He was still alive. She stayed perfectly still, as if moving would somehow change everything. She kept her eyes closed and just counted, focusing on his heartbeat and his breathing. They were both slowly getting stronger. Lilith let out a relieved sob and said a silent thank you to whatever corner of the universe had been listening to her.

They stayed that way for a long time, Lilith silently counting his breaths and heartbeats as they slowly got a tiny bit stronger. He wasn’t conscious, but he was alive and that’s about all she could ask for right now. She didn’t think about the creepy, dark hallway lit only by the flashlight on the ground, or Humphries unconscious, possibly dead, body laying a few feet away. She didn’t even think about Gregor, Alvarez or Ashcroft. Her entire universe at this moment only consisted of one, two,
three, breathe.

“Lily?” His voice was thin and weak. In fact, if her face hadn’t still been nuzzled against his neck she may have missed it. It was the best sound she ever remembered hearing and it lit up every inch of her. She slowly pulled back and opened her eyes to look at him. His skin was still pale, but
not nearly as pale as it had been. His hazel eyes were still moving around, disorientated, dilated, but he was conscious.

“Chance?
I…I was so scared I lost you.” She dissolved into tears again, her heart pounding furiously in her chest. She wiped at her cheeks and just tried to breathe.

“You can’t get
…rid of me that easy.” When she looked down at him, his soft lips were stretched into a tenuous grin. She half laughed, half cried and bent down to quickly kiss that grin, however tenuous it may be.

“You seem to be breathing okay.” She was trying to reign in her emotions. He may be alive, but he was still seriously injured. She had to make sure he stayed alive.

He closed his eyes for a second, his chiseled face drawn with pain and then he let out a small breath. “I hurt like a son of a bitch…but I think I’ll…live.” He was still struggling with his breaths, but a collapsed lung will do that. “Can you help… me sit up…against the wall?”

Lilith nodded and wiped the rest of the tears from her eyes. Very gently, she scooted out from under his head, and scrambled around him. She hooked her arms under his, locking her wrists behind him and slowly they worked up and back until he was resting against the wall. He was still wincing in pain, but his color was rapidly improving and his eyes were more focused.

Lilith crouched down in front of him, her eyes studying his handsome, slightly stubbled face, memorizing every line. She had been so close to never seeing it again. The very thought made her chest impossibly tight. Her hand slid softly through his chestnut brown hair before cupping his cheek. Her olive green eyes stared into his hazel ones, and his hand slid over hers. He closed his eyes and leaned against her palm. It was enough to break her heart all over again. She’d almost lost him. He’d almost died. It kept repeating in her brain over and over again.

“My head is still really mixed up. What happened exactly?”

“It was Humphries. He shot you.”

“Humphries?”
Chance frowned, completely confused. “Why?”

“Ashcroft got to him. I found his name badge on the ground. I heard the shot and there he was behind you, gun raised. He said that Ashcroft instructed him to get you out of the way. You weren’t…useful.
Just a liability.” She hated saying the words, even if they weren’t hers.

“Where is he?”

A cornucopia of fear, anger, guilt, and resentment washed over her and she looked down the hall for the first time. Humphries was still exactly where she’d left him, lying in the middle of the floor.

Chance followed her eyes and stared for a moment. “Is he…”

“Dead? I don’t know.” She thought back to Goditha Labs and that hard look Chance had when he shot Spencer in the head. She’d called him all kinds of names for that, even compared him to a soul-less monster. A person can never understand until they’ve actually been in the same situation. Humphries had almost killed Chance and she’d gone into a state of blind rage and beat his face into the linoleum. Hell, she almost had more understanding for her Father now.

“Well, d
o me a favor…check on him. If he’s just unconscious, we need to find a way to secure him.”

Lilith couldn’t bring herself to look Chance in the eye. She stared down at his chest and simply nodded. She’d been so hard on him, certain that she was so much more evolved than him. When it came down to it, however, Chance had simply eliminated the
threat. She was the one that acted like some insane animal and just unleashed all her pent up anger on a man’s face.

Chance crooked a finger under her chin and lifted it, making her face him. There were tiny lines of pain on his face, but she could already tell he was doing much better. Her eyes finally met his and his lips curled into a soft smile. “I’m gonna be okay, Lily.
Whatever you did, it’s working.” When that didn’t seem to melt away her hesitation, he glanced back down the hall. It all seemed to click in place for him and he looked back at her. “You did what you had to…”

Lilith squeezed her eyes shut and pulled back. “No. I lost control.”

“Lily.” His hand slipped around the back of her neck and he pulled her closer. “Look at me.” Reluctantly, she opened her eyes and his face was firmly set in determination. “Don’t over analyze yourself based on one situation with overwhelming circumstances. You are okay, I’m going to live. Now let’s make sure everyone else gets to as well, Gregor, Alvarez and Duncan especially. Okay?”

He was right, of course. She couldn’t fall apart now. She may have saved Chance’s life but there were still people counting on her. “Okay.”