The Vault (A Farm Novel) Read Online Free PDF

through his heart pinning him to the ground. His eyes are closed, his always pale skin paler than pale, as white as the ghost I feel like I’m seeing.
    This—apparently—is the limit of Chuy’s friendliness. He stops maybe fifteen feet away, letting out a low, tense growl. “Stay,” I tell him, and this time he listens. He lies down, submissive, but not relaxed, wiggling backward without taking his eyes from Sebastian’s form.
    Instinctively, I take a cue from Chuy, and move forward slowly, crouching down by his body, my eyes searching for that final proof that he is truly dead. I hear no music from him at all. No annoying buzz. He seems as lifeless as Roberto’s headless corpse. And yet I can’t believe that’s true. How could Sebastian be dead?
    I lay a palm on his motionless chest. It doesn’t rise and fall with breath, but when I rock back onto my heels, his eyes are open. The gleam of life in them is dulled by pain and blood loss, but somehow he still lives.
    Relief surges through me.
    I didn’t kill him. As much as I wanted to, I didn’t. Somehow, through some miracle—if vampires can be granted miracles—he has survived.
    I keep my hands on his chest and lean over to study him. It’s almost as if I’m seeing him for the first time, not with the eyes of the autistic girl or the angry fledgling vampire, but with eyes made new. His pale skin is smeared with grime and blood and too hot to touch. The spark of his eyes is faded. And despite all that, the sight of him fills me up with something unfamiliar and so big it is almost uncomfortable, like it is squeezing out all the soft tissue of my body, making me both harder and more vulnerable.
    “You’re still here,” I say softly. “You haven’t taken out the stake.”
    He draws in a deep breath and I can almost hear the wheezing in his chest. “I was just getting around to it,” he says. “But you see, it’s ever so comfortable.”
    His gaze stays on mine long enough that I start to feel shaky. I don’t know what to say. How to excuse what I’ve done. I don’t know if he’s glad to see me or angry at me and simply too weak to kick my ass. With his normal strength, he could easily dominate me. I would never have been able to stab him at all if he hadn’t been distracted and drained by his fight with Roberto.
    Not sure what to do, I lean closer and say the only thing that comes to mind. “I don’t want to kill you.”
    His lips twist in that familiar sardonic smile. “Then you probably shouldn’t have stabbed me through the heart.”
    I frown as it takes me a second to get his point. “No,” I say. “I mean I don’t want to kill you now.”
    “I know. I was”—he pauses and sucks in a pain-laced breath—“just teasing you, Melly.”
    “Why?” I ask.
    “Because you’re fun to tease.”
    I nearly smile at that and can’t help wondering when the last time was that I did smile. Certainly not since I’ve turned. And only rarely before. Music made me smile, back when I was Mel, but since then? Nothing until now.
    “No,” I say gently. “I should want to kill you, shouldn’t I?”
    He quirks an eyebrow. “Because I lied to you about Roberto?”
    “Because of the vampire berserker rage. I wanted to kill Roberto. I wanted to kill you before. Why don’t I want to kill you now?”
    His shoulder twitches, almost like he’s thinking about shrugging, but it must send a bolt of pain through his body, because he writhes with it. After sucking in several deep breaths, he says, “Well, off the top of my head, I’d say it might be because I’m an inch from death.”
    I lean a little closer. “Does it work that way?”
    “I don’t know. First time I’ve been staked.” His lips twist again, but it looks more like a grimace than a smirk. “Let’s take the stake out and we’ll see, shall we?”
    I look then at his hands. His fingertips are scratched and bloody from trying to get the stake out. I realize now that the stake did not