Sekhmet's Curse (Pearl Vampire Chronicles) (26 page)

“Well, what, besides that, can I do to help?”  I said, smiling.

“We need to get back to your compound.  You have hundreds of female vampires living there.  I’m sure
we would each be able to find a willing mate.  Truthfully, I already have.  But I need to assist Jason with his search.  He could just take, as we
have always done in the past.  But co-existence works better for both of our species if we don’t.  Wouldn’t you agree?”

I nodded
, “I
agree
.  May I ask who you have found for your mate?”

“Bahiti.
  We bonded when you and Jason were in the tomb.  Actually, she came to me and asked me to help her become a mother.”

My grin lit up my face, “Really?  Oh, she will make an excellent mother.  And she’s strong too.”

He nodded, “I wouldn’t have agreed if I didn’t think she was strong enough to make it
through the pregnancy
.”

“Okay.  Staying away from the compound doesn’t seem to make anyone any safer.  We’ll head back tomorrow morning.  Will that work?” I said.

“That would be fine.  Thank you, Sarah.”

We
started to
head back toward the house, when something streaked past me.  “What the hell was that?”

Aquila shook his head, “I don’t know.  But it wasn’t Jason, so it had to have been either Carlos or Matt.”

“SARAH!” Carlos shouted as he ran up behind me
.  He grabbed my hand as he struggled to catch his breath.  “I tried to stop him, Sarah.  I caught him over the water and brought him back, but he managed to get free and I lost him again.  I’m so sorry.”

“Who, Carlos?
  What the hell are you talking about?”

“It’s Matt, Sarah.  He’s lost his mind.  He keeps talking about the bugs eating his skin, and the buzzing in his head, and the flashing lights.  One minute he was sitting at his computer, the next he was scratching the skin off his arms saying it was on fire.  This came out of nowhere, Sarah
,
fucking
n
owhere.”

I immediately shut my heart down and went into “battle” mode.  I had to.  If I stopped long enough to think about the fact that Matt was infected with what, up until now, had been a one hundred percent fatal disease.  Well, that was something that I absolutely could not think about. “Carlos, you go left.  I’m going to circle right.  Aquila, can you please fly above us?  See if he sneaks out through the trees or
something?”

Aquila nodded and shot straight up in the air, stopping at about five hundred feet.  His eagle eyes immediately scanned the skies. Carlos and I looked at each other.  He quickly squeezed my hand then shot off into the trees.  Seconds later, we met up at the other side of the island. 
“Anything?”

Carlos shook his head.  My hair whipped in the wind as Aquila came down to hover over us.  “
Did y
ou see him?” I said, trying to not let the desperation show in my voice.  He shook his head.
  “Where could he have gone, Carlos?  What was he saying?”

“I don’t know, Sarah.  He kept saying that he had to get away.  Can you get into his head?”

I closed my eyes. I knew instantly when I had linked with him, because I saw nothing but black and I felt nauseous. I crouched down on the ground with my head in my hands and tried to listen to his voice, ‘
Dark.  The dark will make them sleep. 
Cold and dark.
  Got to cut them out when they sleep.’

I unlinked and stood up, “I think I know where he is.  Follow me, but hang back a bit.  I don’t want to spook him.  There are still medical supplies in the
basement, right?  Get a syringe of something that will knock him out.
”

Carlos nodded, “On it.  Where am I meeting you?”

I jumped up into the sky, “The cave,” I said as I took off
for the cave that was in the back side of the small island that was about one hundred yards offshore from us
.

I landed silently on the sand and saw him crouched
, naked,
in the back of the cave, scratching at his forearm. 
He glanced up at me and I saw no recognition, only fear, in his eyes.  “Can you help me?  I can’t make them go away.  Please don’t hurt me.  The bugs, they’re on your clothes too.  Don’t come near me.”

I looked down at my dress.  I reached down, pulled it over my head.  I dropped it on the sand.  “Better now?  No more bugs?” I said as I heard Carlos land behind me.  “Matt,” I said as I began very slowly making my way towards him, “I have something here that will make the bugs go away.
  Would you like that?”

He nodded as he scratched a
t
his arm some more.  Carlos tiptoed up behind me and placed the syringe in
my hand.

I turned back to Matt.  He was concentrating on his arm, but as I got closer to he looked up at me and I saw panic in his eyes.  H
is
crouch changed to a defensive stance.  “You’re the bugs.  You’re here to take me.”

I shook my head, “No, hun.  I’m not the bugs.  I’m Sarah, your wife.”

“Liar!” he said as he jumped at me and swung.  “I don’t have a wife.”  His fist whizzed past my cheek as I ducked out of the way
.  I grabbed his bicep, spun him around and punched him as hard as I could in the jaw, knocking him down into the sand.
  I jumped onto his back, grabbed the syringe that I had dropped in the sand, and plunged it into his neck.  Carlos helped me hold him down as he struggled for a few seconds until the drugs kicked in.  Finally, he went limp.  We flipped him over
.  I threw my dress back on
then
I picked him up in my arms.
  We both flew back to the house.  Jason and Aquila were waiting for us on the porch.  I heard the plane approaching from the distance.  “I called for the plane a while ago.  He’s charging double because of the short
notice, but I thought it was important to get back as soon as possible.”

“You’re right.  Good thinking.  Carlos, can you go down to the basement and grab about six more syringes?  That should be enough to keep him knocked out until we get back
home and get him to the clinic where David and Cameron can go to work saving him
.”

             
I snuggled into Carlos on Stefan’s plane and finally allowed myself to lose it.  I cried and cried into his chest as the enormity of the situation overwhelmed me.  My Matthew
,
a
vampire
,
a
n immortal
,
had
a fatal disease.  What the hell is happening?  I lifted my head up. 
“Oh, Carlos.
  I’m so sorry.  I’ve ruined your shirt,” I said as I wiped the bloody tears from my cheeks.  His tender finger lifted my chin.  He tried to hide the sadness in his eyes as he lovingly gazed at me, but it was there.  It was there in all of us.  “I don’t give a damn about my stupid shirt, Sarah.”

“I know. It’s just that, it’s just that, Oh God, Carlos.  I can’t lose him.  I just can’t,” I sobbed as another round of tears hit.  He pulled me tight and kissed my
head, “I know, Sarah.  I know
.  The guys are doing everything they can to find a cure.  They’re working around the clock.  They’ll find it.  I know they will.”

I wiped the latest tears as I whispered, “I know they will, Carlos.  But will it be in time?”

“It has to be, Sarah. It
just
has to be
,
”
he whispered as he pulled me tight.

             
The limo pulled into the court yard several hours later.  I saw Cameron and David waiting there with a stretcher.  Cameron pulled open the back door and climbed in the back, “First things first.  I need blood samples from everyone in here
,” he said as he plunged a needle into my arm
. 
“
We’ve identified what the bacteria looks like.  Now we
need to
see how it reacts to everyone’s blood.
  If anyone has any natural antibodies in their blood, we can use that to
try
to
develop a cure.
”

He pulled the syringe out of my arm and
then quickly
collected samples from Jason, Aquila and Carlos.  Then he jumped out, “Bring him
,
q
uickly.”

Carlos gently placed his hand on my arm as I instinctively reached for Matt.  “I’ve got him,
Sarah,” he whispered.  In that moment, I realized that he had just as much at stake here as I
did
,
h
e had just as much to lose.  He and Matt had been best friends a lot longer than Matt and I had been
a couple in
love
.  More than a hundred years longer.  I smiled, sadly, and nodded.  He scooped Matt into his arms and stepped out.  I followed closely behind, clasping Carlos’ hand in mine the moment it was free.  Cameron glanced at me, “Sarah.  I know you want to be with him right now.  But you need to let us work first.  We need to try to slow the progression of this thing in him in order to give us enough time to find a cure.  We can’t do that if you’re hovering.  Go.  Get some sleep. 
Both of you.
  I’m sure you need it.  I promise I’ll come and get you if anything develops.”

I knew he was right, but that didn’t make it feel any better.  I forced his eyes to lock on mine, “Don’t you dare get me too late, Cameron.  I don’t want to say goodbye, but if I have to, I want to be able to.  He needs me to do that.  Don’t take that away from me.  Promise me that you’ll get me before it’s too late.”

He stared for a second then nodded, sadly, “I promise,” he said then they whisked him away,
leaving the two of us clinging together in the dark.  We didn’t move.  We didn’t know what to do.  The only thing we could do was just stand there and
hold
on
to each other
.  And so we did.  We just stood there as the limo pulled out of the courtyard and into the garage
,
a
s Jason and Aquila quietly made their way to their room
,
a
s dozens of vampires made their way through the courtyard and inside for the night.  We just stood and clung tight.  We couldn’t move.  We couldn’t speak.  We could only wrap each other in love.
  Finally, after a few hours, I pulled back and looked at him.  He smiled at me and wiped the tears from my cheeks, then leaned down and kissed me.  We turned and made our way slowly inside to our room, where we collapsed, exhausted,
wrapped tightly in each other’s arms,
onto the bed.

Early the next morning, Cameron
burst
through
our
door.  He was too excited to bother to knock.  “Sarah!  Wake up!  Quick!” he shouted as he barged through our bedroom door.

“Oh God, no,” I cried, expecting the worst.  I buried my face in my hands.  Carlos’ hands were shaking as he pulled me closer.  
Cameron’s shock quickly
turned to sympathy as he realized what his hurried entrance had made us think, “What? Oh, oh shit, no.  It’s not Matt.  No, it’s you Sarah.  It’s your blood.  I need you to feed on Aquila right away then give me another blood sample.”

“Excuse me?  Did you say
that
you needed me to feed on Aquila?  Are you insane?  I can’t do that.  Cameron, what the hell are you talking about?”

Cameron forced himself to calm down.  He took a few deep breaths and sat on the end of the bed.  “Okay.  Here’s the deal.  Sarah, your blood has some natural antibodies to this virus.  They’re enough to slow its progression, but not kill it.  But your blood is different than everyone else’s, and that got me thinking.”

“My blood is different?  What do you mean?  How is it different?”

“Well, I’m pretty sure it’s because you carried Jason,
so you have some
s
eraphim
DNA in your blood.  Your blood adapted to the foreign DNA.  It combined with it.  So now you have this sort of vampire
-s
eraphim
hybrid blood.  But it’s mostly vampire.  I’d say it’s like an eighty twenty mix.  So,
last night I started messing with the mixture.  I added some of Aquila’s blood to your
s
, mixed them together then tested it on the virus.  It didn’t kill it but it completely stopped its growth. 
Sarah, it
s
topped it completely
.  So I added more of Aquila’s blood to yours,
until I had
about a fifty
fifty
blend
, and, God I still can’t believe it
,
”
he said as he raked his fingers through his hair.

“
You can’t believe
what, Cameron?”

“
I
t killed it, Sarah. 
It fucking k
illed it dead.
”