Eternal [HS]

Chapter Forty-Five

The person she once was three months ago is no longer in existence. The person she once was died at the moment it took Niall to drag her through the gateway to the other world, because the old her never would've been able to justify something like this. But that version of her also did not know how it felt to love someone with every piece of her soul, and she knows she wouldn't change a single thing if it meant going back to the person she was before.

While she was content enough, she wasn't happy, nor did she have something in life worth fighting over. But now? The sound of him sharpening his knife hides her footsteps, and she doesn't hesitate to fight for the man she loves now.

One of her hands clamps down over his mouth before he can make a sound as the other drives the knife through his back to pierce his heart—the only way that one of her kind can die, either by a wooden stake or silver blade. He tries to bite at her palm and kick back at her legs, but it's useless. No matter what he does, there is nothing to stop her from tugging the knife out of him so the black blood spurts out onto the cement and stains in it a puddle as he becomes weaker in her arms.

She lets him down just as gently as she did the others on the rooftops, then continues.

From room to room, it seems that Harry is nowhere to be found. A few times, she crosses paths with Mitch or Niall, and none of them spend time acknowledging each other past confirming they're not enemies before stalking further through the warehouse.

Every room around the backside of the building is cleared and the guards are slain in their posts by the time she finally gets around to the front, main room of the building. Part of her should've known that they'd keep him so out in the open. It makes sense. If he's chained up in plain sight, it makes it harder for them to sneak in and lead him away as they would if he were kept in one of the smaller back rooms they already cleared.

Fresh off of her human body, she can feel her nonexistent pulse race. Though the heart inside of her body does not pump warm human blood anymore, she feels the lost sensation of a fast-paced heartbeat and knows what it means. It must mean that she's closer to him than she's been all night.

This entire time, ever since crossing over into the human world and nearing the place where his captors are detaining him, his presence has been palpable to her. It made something inside of her chest flutter with feelings of calmness and anxiety that contradicted each other wildly. The anxiety due to her own feeling for what's happening tonight and the calmness due to the blood bond becoming satisfied again.

The farther apart they are, the angrier it gets. Behaving much like an immature child, the bond throws tantrums in the forms of aches and pains in their bodies when they're separated, and those pains grow worse the further they are, all accumulating in the worst physical pain known to man if/when one partner dies. So, it calmed its tantrum over their distance into a dull freak-out once she walked up the street leading to the building.

That's how she knows where he is. The closer she gets, crouching and sidestepping behind the wall leading to an open archway to the main room, the more those contradicting sensations battle it out inside of her. Her phantom pulse races all while her muscles relax in response to their close proximity. All she can do is focus through the varying feelings on what matters most: freeing him.

The main room is a wide-open space that takes up the majority of the space available in the building. At first, it doesn't appear to be too different than the last rooms in terms of protection. Guards are posted at the front door of the building that she remembers from the dream Harry visited her in, leaving most of the space open to an expanse of nothing. Not even machinery or storage fills the space, so there's nothing obscuring their view or giving her a hiding place.