Wisdom updated edition, p.26
Wisdom: Updated Edition, page 26
The force of it slammed my hand into the pulley, but I stayed in place, anchoring the chain to the ceiling.
“Alice, listen to me,” Jack said. “You need to stop. You can’t pull me up, and if you try, you’ll lose your hand and end up falling down with me. Free your wrist and swing back on the cliff. We both don’t need to die for this.”
“No! If you die, I die! You asked me to spend forever with you, and I’m going to!”
I strained harder, pulling the chain farther up. I only had to pull Jack up a few more feet, and he’d be able to reach cliff. Peter was still busy fighting off Thomas, so I was left struggling with Jack on my own.
His head was nearly crested the top of the cliff, but my grip slipped again. Jack dropped, and the chain crushed my wrist. I heard the bones snap when it hit the pulley, but everything hurt so bad, I barely noticed it.
I was losing blood, which only made me weaker, and the blood left the chain impossibly slippery. I couldn’t get a grip on it again, and it didn’t matter how strong I was. I kept pulling at the chain, even though I couldn’t get traction anymore.
“Alice,” Jack said. “Please, save yourself.”
“Jack, I love you, and I won’t let go of you. I can’t, I won’t, not ever.” I hung upside down above him, my feet pressed to the ceiling and my wrist wedged in the chain against the pulley. His eyes held mine, and they were wistful and serene as he smiled sadly at me.
“I’m sorry for everything,” Jack said, his voice thick. “I really wanted to see forever with you. Not that one lifetime together in this world would’ve been enough. If there is anything beyond this, I promise that I will find you there.”
“Jack.”
I clung to the chain, but I could feel it slipping, pulling my skin with it. But the only thing I saw were his blue eyes. They were the only thing I wanted to see. They never wavered, not even when the chain slid off my wrist.
Chapter Twenty-seven
I hit the concrete hard. I had wanted to fall over the edge of the cliff, following Jack down, but I’d been angled just the right way with enough momentum so that I landed on my back on the floor of the cavern. My eyes were open up to the bricks on the ceiling, and for a minute, I couldn’t feel anything.
Then I heard Peter grunting. With some effort, I turned my head to see him crouched over the edge of the cliff nearby. Hand over hand, he pulled the chain up, and within a moment, he heaved Jack up over the edge.
“Jack!” I screamed. With his hands still bound and his chest and stomach covered in wounds, I dove at him. “I love you, I love you, oh my god, I love you,” I repeated over and over between kisses.
I had thought that I had truly lost him, and there was a desperation to the kiss that he matched with equal fervor. I wrapped my arms around his neck and held him to me, breathing him in, tasting his lips, relishing his heart pounding against mine.
Tears of relief streamed down my face. “I’ve never stopped loving you, and I never will. Never,” I promised him fiercely. “And I was wrong. You’re all I need to be happy. You’re all I’ll ever need.”
Jack smiled at me and shook his head. “I’m not all you need, and I don’t even want to be. I just want to love you, for the rest of my days, and as long as you let me do that, we’ll be okay.”
I leaned to kiss him again, but he stopped me.
“I hate to do this, but would it be okay if we popped my arms back in their socket before we made out?” he asked, and when I apologized, he laughed, sending the same dazzling tingles through me that he always did.
“Need help?” Peter asked, crouching down next to us.
I got over the shock of seeing Jack alive and looked over Peter for the first time. He’d sustained a few blows himself, but Thomas was the one with a metal poker through his heart in the corner.
Jack grimaced as Peter shoved both his arms back in place, and then they got to work getting the shackles from around Jack’s wrists. Based on the grimacing and audible cracking, Jack’s thumb was likely dislocated — and then relocated — in the process, but he was finally free.
He sat up, rubbing his battered wrists, and Peter tossed the chain off the cliff.
“Hey, Peter?” Jack asked, and his brother faced him. “Thank you.” They shared a meaningful look for a moment, until Peter nodded and looked away.
“We should probably get you guys out of here,” Peter said. “Alice’s hand needs a bit of attention.”
“Holy hell.” Jack gasped when he finally looked down at it.
The chains had partially degloved my hand, leaving it a gory hunk of meat with half the skin gone. The tingling heat had taken over, as my vampiric body scrambled to heal, and I wasn’t really sure how it would grow back on a wound this major.
Peter grabbed a towel, and I wrapped my hand in it. He helped both Jack and I out to the car, and Jack explained how he’d ended up there in the first place. He’d gotten home from the business trip to find the vampire hunters demolishing the house, and Matilda in the process.
Apparently, they were obsessed with finding Daisy. They were certain she was part of the movement and sent to expose vampires. The hunters would do anything to stop that, and nothing Jack could say would convince them she was dead. If he’d been there when she’d been buried, that might’ve helped.
Samantha had seen the Lamborghini parked outside the tunnels before when they were following me, and she insisted that Jack take them down there. When they still didn’t find Daisy, they resorted to torturing Jack for information, and that’s when I had come in.
On the car ride back to the house, I called Milo to tell him to come home. Ezra and Mae were already waiting, and the crisis had set Mae back into motion.
As soon as Milo and Bobby arrived, Jack sent them back out to take Matilda to the emergency vet clinic. Ezra thought she had a few minor injuries, but he was certain that she would be fine once she had proper medical care.
Mae wrapped my hand in gauze and assured me the skin would grow back in a few hours, but I didn’t want to be bleeding on everything until then. Ezra took care of Jack, checking his wounds and forcing him to compensate for his blood loss.
After Mae finished tending to me in the main floor bathroom, I wanted to go lie down. Jack was already upstairs in our bedroom, and I could hear him arguing with Ezra. Ezra told him that he needed to rest and heal, and Jack kept insisting that he should be at the vet with Matilda, even if he did have bleeding wounds all over.
Peter was in the dining room, picking up the mess the vampire hunters had left, and I stopped.
“How are you?” I asked.
“Better than you.” He looked down at my hand. “How is that doing?”
I shrugged. “I’ll live.”
“Glad to hear it.” His emerald eyes met mine, and though they didn’t captivate me the way they once had, they still held my attention.
“Thank you, Peter,” I said softly. “For what you did tonight.”
“You know, I didn’t save him for you.” His gaze went to the stairs, toward Jack. “He’s my brother, and the world wouldn’t be as nice a place without him in it.”
“I know,” I agreed. “But thank you anyway.”
I went upstairs, and Ezra stood in the bedroom doorway, blocking Jack from making an escape. He sat on the bed in his boxers. Most of his cuts had healed, but some were still raised and red. A deep one across his stomach was still bloody and scabbing.
“Mattie’s gotta be terrified without me!” Jack said.
“Milo and Bobby are with her,” Ezra insisted and looked back at me. “Maybe you can talk some sense into him.”
“I’ll try,” I said.
He left us alone, and I went over to Jack. I could see him working up some argument about how he needed to leave, but I climbed on his lap. I kissed him on the mouth, so deeply I could feel his blood pulsing through his lips. His arms went around me, pressing me close to him.
Maybe I had never been meant for Jack or Peter. Maybe I had only been meant to be a vampire. That thought had terrified me before, but I realized it was better this way. When I held Jack to me, feeling how much he loved me and how much I loved him, I knew it was real.
I loved Jack because of every little thing about him. The way he laughed, the way he made me smile, the way he’d stay up until nine in the morning watching zombie movies he’d seen a hundred times, and the way he could never hold a grudge.
I loved him because I loved him, not because it was fate or destiny or in my blood. We had chosen each other, and that felt more powerful and more magical.
Matilda came back home with a broken rib and a broken back leg, but she was slated to make a full recovery. Jack immediately went about spoiling her rotten, since she’d been injured protecting him.
After things had settled down a bit, I sat down with Jack and told him exactly what I wanted to do. With everything that happened with the vampire hunters, it had become clear to me. People and vampires were being hurt and tortured, and I wouldn’t stand by and let that happen.
Jack wasn’t thrilled about how dangerous it would be, but he understood and supported my aspirations. I drove to Olivia’s with his blessing, and that was all that mattered.
I arrived at V in the early morning hours when the club was empty. That was the time they received deliveries of alcohol for the drinks for the human bar. The club always looked bizarre and cavernous when it was empty, but I supposed that was true with all clubs.
Olivia sat at the bar next to the dance floor, going over her inventory checklist. Violet was behind the bar, helping the delivery guy stock up. They were at the opposite end, far enough away where they couldn’t hear me talk to Olivia.
“If you’re looking for Rebekah, she left last night, since you didn’t need her anymore,” Olivia said, and I got up on the stool next to her.
I shook my head. “No, I’m not looking for her.”
“Then what can I do for you, Alice?” She lifted her head and smiled at me.
“Those vampire hunters that were here, they were bad people,” I said, and she nodded. “They didn’t do what was best for vampires or humans. They only cared about money, and they were monsters. We never did anything to them, and they tortured us.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” Olivia said, and I knew she meant it. “That’s not how they should be. That’s not how I was, and I’ve always hoped that hunters could live on the side that benefits both humans and vampires.”
“Ezra told me that because we’re vampires, there are no good guys. But I don’t think that’s true. I want to be one of the good guys,” I said. “I want you to train me to be a vampire hunter.”
She smiled at me. “Honey, it would be my pleasure.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Amanda Hocking is the author of over twenty-five novels, including the New York Times bestselling Trylle Saga and the indie bestseller My Blood Approves. Her love of pop culture and all things paranormal influence her writing. She spends her time in Minnesota, taking care of her menagerie of pets and working on her next book.
To learn more, please visit www.HockingBooks.com
Amanda Hocking, Wisdom: Updated Edition
