He loosened his hold on me and I took a step back. Our eyes locked before he cleared his throat and looked back through his doorway.
We both knew what had to be done now.
Chapter 21: Ben
I was thinking of River as I left her in the apartment and made my way up to the desert.
When I’d bent down so close to her face, her radiant eyes gazing into mine, I’d found myself drawing closer to her than I had either intended or needed to… without even realizing it.
I shook myself.
Stop being a fool, Novak.
Focus.
Arriving aboveground, I was glad to see that nobody was still up here. Everyone had returned to their rooms. Thank God. It was 2:45am already. That left only fifteen minutes before Jeramiah knocked on our door. Fifteen minutes to get three humans up here undetected. We couldn’t afford for anything to go wrong.
Sure that the area was empty, I ran back down to the atrium and headed back to my apartment. I found River alone in the living room, standing over a basin that she’d placed on a coffee table. She had already cut herself again and was draining more blood. I walked over to help her, slitting my own skin and allowing my blood to flow into the wide container. Both of our bloods mixed and formed a dark red pool at the bottom of it. Once I felt like we had enough, I healed her, then took a mouthful from the small container of River’s blood in my pocket while she hurried toward the sauna to retrieve the humans.
I backed away, watching as she herded them into the living room. Walking to the basin, she dipped a hand in the blood and began to smear it over her sister. She looked toward Morgan and Hassan.
“Cover yourselves with this blood as much as you can.”
The humans had looks of disgust on their faces—especially Lalia.
There wasn’t enough blood to completely douse themselves with, but it was enough to dull their scent. It shouldn’t be much more detectable than the other human blood that was stored in all of the vampires’ apartments around The Oasis.
After the blood in the basin had been used up, I went into my bedroom and grabbed the dark beige rug that lined one corner of the floor. Rolling it up, I put it over one shoulder and then returned to the hallway to find that River had gathered the three humans to wait outside the door.
We had only ten minutes now before Jeramiah knocked.
I glanced at the three humans. I was going to have to carry two of them—the largest ones, Morgan and Hassan—while River would carry her sister.
This would be the closest I had ever been to a human without ripping out their throats since I’d turned into a vampire.
I swallowed hard. River looked nervously at me.
Here goes…
I allowed Hassan to climb onto my back—it was lucky that he was shorter than me—and then I picked up the girl in my arms. Even with River’s and my blood smothering them—as well as River’s blood on my tongue—they still called to me like a siren, especially the girl.
Her neck was so close to my mouth. So painfully close. All it would take to have her warm blood flooding down my throat would be leaning down a few inches…
I forced the thought out of my head and was about to head out of the door when River said, “Wait!”
She put her sister back down on the ground, and hurried into the living room. Reappearing a few seconds later, she was clutching her backpack, which she flung onto her back. I supposed that taking the backpack was a good idea. River didn’t know how long it would be before she reunited with her family. She might need money in the meantime.
River picked up Lalia again, so that the girl clung to her front like a monkey. And then we ran. I was so fast, I was sure that I was a blur to any onlooker. River was slower, but she wasn’t too far behind me. Reaching the elevators, we hurried inside and made our way to the top. And then the final stretch of the journey… I carried Hassan and Morgan through the trapdoor and began speeding through the sand toward the edge of the boundary.
Six feet away from the exit, the brand in my arm began to burn again.
I looked over my shoulder to see River staggering, her face contorted in pain. Her brand was scorching her too.
What are these damn things?
It was almost as though they were conscious and were aware of our intent. I had been aboveground in the desert before without the tattoo causing me agony—like earlier this evening at the party. It only burned when it sensed that I was trying to escape. It sensed. I felt mad thinking of these tattoos as though they were conscious beings, and yet there was a clear pattern.
Clenching my jaw against the pain, I continued forward. As soon as we reached the boundary five miles away, I lowered Hassan and Morgan to the sand. Removing the beige rug from my shoulder, I waited until River had caught up with me and placed Lalia next to the other two humans.
“My God, River,” Lalia gasped as she staggered around, apparently dizzy. “When d’you learn to run so fast?”
All she got from her sister in reply was a hush.
I dropped the rug and moved backward. The blood covering them felt like it was wearing off—or perhaps I was just becoming immune to it. I took another swig of blood out of River’s container and breathed in deeply, desperately trying to distract myself from the humans’ sweetness, especially the little girl’s.
River picked up the rug that I had dropped. “Sit down in a huddle,” she said. The trio did as requested and then she placed the rug over them so that they were somewhat camouflaged. Then River handed the backpack to Hassan for safekeeping.