Another loud thump sounded from outside the door.
She crossed the room, feeling a surge of relief. "Gideon, is that you?"
She wanted it to be him.
Prayed it was...until she heard the metallic snick of the lock, then the door opened and a large, blood-and-sweat-soaked body slumped in onto the floor.
"Oh, my God. Gideon!"
Savannah raced to him. She dropped down beside him, horrified at his condition. His hair and face, his hands--every exposed inch of him was covered in black ash, sweat and blood. So much blood.
He tried to speak, but all that passed his lips was a rasp of sound. "Keaton," he wheezed. "Minion...he's dead...can't hurt you now."
She blew out a curse that sounded more like a sob. "I don't care about him, damn it. All I care about is you."
He tried to sit up, only to slump back down onto the floor in a heap. Blood was pooling under him, pulsing out from scores of shrapnel wounds and a very severe injury in his thigh.
She glanced down at his leather weapons belt, cinched as a makeshift tourniquet around the upper portion of his leg. She could see muscle in the open gash on his thigh. Holy shit. She could see bone in there too.
"Gideon," she cried. "You need help. You need a hospital--"
"No." He snarled the word, his voice sounding unearthly, lethal.
His eyes were on fire, swamped completely in bright, glowing amber light. His pupils had thinned so much they almost weren't there. His fangs filled his mouth, stretched sharp as daggers between his parted lips as he struggled to drag air into his lungs.
"Get away," he gasped when she reached out to smooth away the soaked hank of hair plastered to his brow. His skin was pale white and waxy. His face contorted in pure agony. "Stay away."
"You have to let me help you." She leaned over him to try to lift him up.
Gideon's eyes rolled hungrily to her throat. "Stay back!"
The hissed command made her flinch, recoil. She stared at him, unsure what to do for him and half-afraid he was already too far gone.
"Gideon, please. I don't know what to do."
"Order," he said thickly. He recited a string of numbers. "Go now...call them."
She tried desperately to remember the sequence, repeated them back to him to be sure. He gave a vague nod, his eyelids drooping, skin growing ever more dangerously pale. "Hurry, Savannah."
"Okay," she said. "Okay, Gideon. I'll call them. Stay with me. I'm gonna get you help."
She flew into the bedroom to retrieve her wallet from her purse and a pen to frantically scribble the digits onto the palm of her hand. Then she raced out of the house and down the street, praying the battered pay phone on the corner wasn't out of service.
Fumbling change into the slot, she then dialed the number Gideon had given her. It rang once, then silence as someone picked up on the other end.
"Um, hello? Hello!"
"Yeah." A deep voice. Dark, arresting. Menacing.
"Gideon told me to call," she blurted in one panicked rush of breath. "Something's happened to him and I--"
Click.
"Hello?"
The dial tone buzzed in her ear.
It wasn't even ten minutes later that Savannah found herself standing beside an unresponsive Gideon, staring up into the hard face and unreadable eyes of a massive Breed male dressed in black leather and pulsing with lethal power.
He hadn't knocked, simply strode right in without a word of greeting or explanation. And he'd arrived on foot apparently, from where, Savannah could only guess.
Since she'd met Gideon and learned about his kind, she was coming to simply accept some things as simply part of the new reality.
Still, she could hardly curb the impulse to scrabble out of the disturbing male's way when he came farther inside the house.
The place was his, there could be no doubt about that.
He was the one who put the box of ashes in the hidden room below the kitchen.
It was his wrenching sorrow Savannah had glimpsed when she touched the reliquary.
He stared at her now without any emotion whatsoever. His green eyes didn't so much look at her as through her.
He knew. He knew she'd been down in his private cell filled with death.
Savannah could see the awareness of her breach all over his grim face, although he said nothing to her. Did nothing, except grimly go to Gideon's side. He bent his big body and went down in a crouch on his haunches beside Gideon. A low curse hissed out of big male.
"He won't wake up," Savannah murmured. "After I came back from making the call, I found him like this, unconscious."
"He's lost too much blood." The voice was the same deep, threatening growl that she'd heard on the other end of the line. "He needs proper care."
"Can you save him?"
The tawny head swiveled to face her, bleak green eyes raking her. "He needs blood."
Savannah glanced down at Gideon, recalling his sharp reprimand that she not come near him. He'd been furious, desperately so, even though it had been obvious that he wanted to drink from her--needed to. "He didn't want me. He told me to stay away from him."
That unsettling stare stayed locked on her for a long moment before the vampire returned his attention to his fallen comrade. He inspected Gideon's leg wound, snarling as he assessed the damage. "So, you're the girl."
"Excuse me?"
"The Breedmate my man here hasn't been able to stay away from since he saw you on the TV news earlier this week, talking about the sword used to kill his brothers."
Savannah felt a twinge of confusion. An odd niggle of dread. "Gideon saw me on the news? He knew I'd seen the sword?" She shook her head. "No, that's not right. We met at the library where I work. He didn't know anything about me before then."