Nightwolf

My stomach feels like lead.

“I went into her mind,” he goes on. “There’s nothing there. No brain activity. She’s gone.”

“Gone where?”

“I don’t know. The CT scans and EEGs will have shown the same results, though naturally they won’t tell me what they are since I’m not considered family. But she’s not there.”

“That doesn’t mean she won’t come back,” I say, and I can hear the desperation in my voice, the way it tightens in my chest.

“I’m not a doctor, Wolf,” Solon says simply. “I don’t know if she can or not.”

“But don’t you know any doctors? Of our kind? They could help.” I curse myself for not staying in touch with any over the decades.

“I do,” he says carefully. “But it wouldn’t do much good. This isn’t a disease or an ailment that defies traditional medicine. It’s not something a vampire doctor would be able to put their centuries of knowledge toward. This is about the mind, the human mind, a mystery to us as much as it is to them. Brain injuries, comas, these are things that puzzle everyone, that sometimes escape our understanding. We know so little,” he adds with disappointment.

That desperation in my chest feels like a rubber band squeezing. “Maybe…maybe you could go in there, in her head, and find her. Pull her out.”

Solon blinks at me in surprise. “It doesn’t work that way. You know that. And as much as I love and adore Yvonne and would be devastated by losing her, I’m not about to start fucking with God’s will.”

“God’s will?” I scoff bitterly. “Since when the hell have you cared about God’s will?”

“Since always,” he says, his gaze sharpening.

“Since you died and Lenore brought you back? Was that God’s will too?” I practically growl, the desperation now turning to anger, building in fire.

“Wolf,” he snaps, taking a step toward me but I stand my ground. “You know as well as I do that the less we mess with things the better. I can’t help Yvonne and I don’t know anyone who can, so we just have to let things take their course.”

“But if you could help, you’re saying you wouldn’t? That if she’s going to die it’s God’s will and that’s that?”

“I didn’t say that,” he glowers.

“That’s exactly what you’re saying!” I yell.

Solon looks through the ICU doors, probably noticing a few heads turned our way from the outburst in the hallway, then puts his hand on my chest, either to try and calm me down or push me back, but I’m as rooted as a tree.

“Don’t do this here,” he says.

“Do what?”

“I know how much you love both of them,” he says. “And I know that you’re scared to lose them.”

“Oh, what do you know?” I snap. “You’ve never lost anyone.”

His eyes spark, pupils going into tiny black dots. “That’s not true.”

“You lost your first love, but only because you killed her,” I say, though the minute the words come out, I immediately regret them. We don’t normally throw each other’s most awful moments in each other’s faces like this.

Even though the beast no longer lives inside Solon, the very beast that killed his first love, there’s a simmering maliciousness just beneath the surface, one that reminds me of a viper about to strike. I’ve tussled with Solon before and won, because I’m bigger and I’m stronger, but he, for lack of a better word, is scarier.

I take a step backward while he sucks in a sharp breath.

“Be that as it may,” he says with icy deliberation, “I know what loss is. As do you. You’ve suffered more loss than most vampires do. But, because of that, perhaps you need to just take a moment and think. Amethyst needs you right now. She always has and now she needs you more than ever. I know you’re scared to lose her mother, but you have to be strong for her. No matter what. Whatever fears you have, you have to ignore them and deal with them later. Just be there for her, that’s your job right now.” He pauses, brows raised in question. “Can you do that?”

I’m breathing hard, but the anger inside me is fading. I don’t know if Solon just compelled me or used some borrowed witchcraft, but I feel myself calm, my heart slowing. “Yes,” I say hoarsely.

“Good,” he says, patting me on the arm. Then he looks around me. “I’m going to go, Ezra is here. If we thought people were suspicious of us when Lenore was here, I’d hate to see how they’d act if it was us three.”

Solon walks off in the opposite direction just as Ezra approaches, his hands shoved in the pockets of his vintage motorcycle jacket. “Is it something I said?” Ezra asks, chewing gum as he stares down the hall at Solon.

“Something about too many vampires in the kitchen,” I comment, my attention going back to the ICU.