He contacted Rumy again just as Cuba came into view. I’ll be putting us down inside the system, one of the undeveloped back ends. But Shayna has us invisible and I want to keep it that way. He told Rumy about his injuries.
I’m bringing in a healer. We’re five minutes away from your position.
Okay. Heading into the cavern now. And my mind is going.
I understand.
He flew slowly, while still taking Shayna’s blood. She’d grown very quiet, and the chain at his neck lay silent.
He’d put her through a lot.
He stopped drinking as he penetrated an uninhabited cavern. “Shayna, you can make us visible now.”
“K.” She was hardly audible, but when she released her power, he could feel the difference between the two states.
Rumy, where are you?
Almost there. I’ve got a bead on you.
Good, because I’m seeing spots. He lay down on a patch of hard rock that was relatively flat and dry. He was in so much pain, he couldn’t think, but he held Shayna in his arms. She’d grown limp and something about that bothered him, but he couldn’t put enough thoughts together to know why.
A few seconds later Rumy stared down at him, but he wasn’t smiling. Instead he peeled Shayna away from him and spoke over his shoulder. “Shit, he drank too much. She’ll need a transfusion right away.”
Marius saw a couple of med techs, but he couldn’t make sense of what Rumy had said. He tried to say something, but Rumy put a hand on his shoulder. “Just lie quiet. We’ll take care of both of you. I’m taking you to my villa. You’ll be safe there.”
No one had ever seen Rumy’s villa, so that had to be impossible, which meant Marius was hallucinating.
The healer put her hand on Marius’s forehead and a wonderful sensation of peace flowed through him. He felt more hands lift him up. The next thing he knew he was on his back, on a stretcher, and moving in altered flight.
A wall of blackness descended, then nothing.
CHAPTER 9
Shayna had no idea where she was when she woke up. She lay in a bed, wearing a light-blue cotton gown she’d never seen before. But whose bed? And she had an IV attached to her arm that ran red. A transfusion?
She stared up at a beautiful ceiling made up of purple crystals. The room had three regular, Seattle-type walls, and only one of carved rock. This had to be a house built inside a large cavern, yet it still had a partially human feel.
She released a deep breath because the squared-up walls reminded her of her Seattle apartment. It felt so human that for the first time in the past two days, she almost felt at home.
The linens had a fresh smell as though they’d hung out on a line and dried in the air and the sunshine. So where was she? Heaven maybe.
Her last thought had been that she’d needed to warn Marius to stop taking her blood. While he’d been drinking from her in flight, she’d started feeling light-headed and dizzy. But he’d been half out of his mind with pain and his own blood loss. If he fell from the sky, they’d both be dead.
She also recalled having a serious doubt that he’d be able to make it to Cuba, then landing in a cave. He’d asked her to make them visible, but that was the last thing she could recall before she passed out.
Now she was here, but she had no idea where “here” was.
She lifted her arm, and the tubing that carried replacement blood into her body. So was this a medical facility? And whose blood was this? A vampire’s?
The dizziness returned accompanied by a boatload of fatigue. Marius wasn’t nearby—that much she could sense. She quickly reached for her blood-chain and breathed a huge sigh of relief when she found it intact. The bond held.
She tried to go back to sleep but couldn’t. She was too worried about Marius. Was he okay? Had he survived his injury?
She reached out for him. Marius?
Shayna. Good. You’re okay. I’m here. They’re working on my legs.
How long have we been here?