Page 54 of Let Sleeping Vampires Lie

“What if I push instead?” I asked.

She blinked once, slow. “You can try. But don’t aim at the wound. Aim at the core. My center.”

“Where your power sits,” I said.

“Yes.”

“How do I keep it from spreading?” I asked.

Raven drew a shaky breath, voice turning low but even in its explanation. “Think of it like… a circle. Contain first, then cleanse. Use your magic to wrap around the poison, not blast straight through it. If you hit it head-on, it will scatter.”

“And that’s bad.”

“Very,” she breathed. “You want to cage it, then burn it out a little at a time.”

I nodded slowly. “You’re asking me to do delicate work while I’m pissed and running on adrenaline. Lovely.”

Her lips curved. “I believe in you.”

Con shifted. “This is too risky.”

“So is bleeding out while we drag her to the house,” I snapped. “We need to slow it.”

His jaw worked, but he didn’t argue again.

Raven’s fingers fumbled for my wrist, gripping it weakly. “You’ll have to draw deeper than you did for tracking or boosting. Not from your usual reserves. From our link. From where our souls touch.”

The words made the air feel thinner.

“I don’t want to take from you,” I said.

“You’re not taking.” Her gaze sharpened for a moment, cutting through the haze. “You’re sharing.”

She was asking me to reach into the very core of what tethered us. Not the surface magic, not the convenient flow we used to track relics or send warnings. The deeper place. The thread beneath everything.

“Okay,” I said softly. “Then talk me through it.”

We sank to the ground together, knees dampening on the cold grass. Con shifted to kneel behind Raven, giving her something solid to rest against. He braced her gently, his hand pressed against her uninjured side, the other hovering near mine in case he needed to drag me away from this brilliant idea.

“Close your eyes,” Raven whispered.

I did.

The world narrowed to sound and sensation. The distant thump of my undead heart. Raven’s uneven breaths. The metallic scent of her poisoned blood cutting through the usual night smells.

“Find the tether,” she said.

I reached inward.

I’d touched it dozens of times by now—when we coordinated across distance, when I hunted for the echo of stolen artifacts, when she showed me glimpses of the visions that haunted her. It usually sat like a line of warm light behind my ribs, connecting my center to hers. Tonight it flickered, but it was still there.

“I have it,” I murmured.

“Good,” she said. “Now follow it to me. Not my body. Not the wound. Me.”

I let my awareness travel along the line of warmth. It crossed the small space between our physical selves, then slipped deeper into something that didn’t have distance or direction. Her presence surrounded me; wild and electric and layered, like all the storms she’d ever called were whispering at the edges of my mind.

Beneath that storm, I found the core of her. The place where Raven existed when everything else fell away.