Covet (Clann)

choked.
    “Please, don’t,” I cried, on my knees, cradling his upper body against me as I’d once held Nanna here in this same cursed clearing.
    Once again, the Circle would claim someone I loved.
    No. Tristan couldn’t die. I wouldn’t know how to exist without him in this world. He had to live.
    I pressed a hand to his chest, but I couldn’t stop the blood from pulsing out in a feeble rhythm to match his heartbeat. That rhythm was slowing even as I watched.
    “Oh God. Tell me how to save you,” I whispered in his ear, pressing my cold cheek against his, which was beginning to cool, too.
    Nanna said I didn’t need words. So I closed my eyes and concentrated on his heart, willing it to heal. I pushed energy into him, a little at first, then with everything I had as I grew desperate. I didn’t care if I had to give him the last drop of energy within me, as long as he lived. “Come on, Tristan! You always told me to fight. Now it’s your turn. Fight!”
    I told his heart to repair itself, focusing on the magic and what I needed so much that I didn’t realize Dad had joined us until his hand covered mine.
    “He is dying, Savannah!” Dad yelled. “Turn him!”
    Time slowed, until each of Tristan’s heartbeats seemed to last several seconds.
    “I can’t,” I tried to shout, but it came out as a mumble.
    “You can. Do it now! He is wounded too much and losing too much blood. Turn him before his heart stops and it is too late!”
    I shook my head. “I don’t know how. You—”
    “I cannot, his body will reject the pure vampire blood. You must give him yours. It is the only chance he has.”
    “But he’ll die!”
    “He is already dying. There are only seconds left before his heart fails. Turn him now or let him go.” Dad pressed a hand to my shoulder. “It is what he wanted. He loves you. Do you love him?”
    I nodded, my throat too tight for me to speak.
    Tristan grabbed my hand, his eyes going wide, pleading with me.
    Praying I was making the right decision, I used my teeth to open a gash in my wrist then held it to Tristan’s mouth.
    Leaning close to his ear, I whispered, “I’m sorry. I know it’s selfish. But I can’t let you go. Not yet.”
    Then I did what I’d vowed never to do: I sank my fangs into the side of Tristan’s neck where his life pulsed and drank.
     
     
    TRISTAN
    I didn’t know where I was, or even who I was at first. A cloud of red filled my vision when I opened my eyes, giving me no additional clues.
    But that scent, the smell of warm lavender filling my nose and lungs…that I knew. It meant home, and love, and everything I needed to be happy.
    I reached up to touch that red curtain of softness across my face. I knew that, too. It was hair, soft curly hair, long and thick. My fingers remembered burying themselves in this curtain of red many times, always with joy.
    The curtain slid away from my face and hands.
    “Tristan?” a girl’s voice whispered, low and husky, and it too was familiar and meant love.
    Then a face came into view, and instantly I knew who she was.
    “Savannah.” The girl I loved and would die for.
    Maybe I had died. I knew there had been pain, so much that I had been drowning in it. The pain had started in my chest, spread to every part of my body, then retreated back to my chest before fading away completely. In its place had come a flood of memories of Savannah as a little girl, playing in a tree house with a boy. Me. I was that boy, her best friend. And then the memories changed, showing us when we were older…the day I rescued her from someone named Greg outside a round brick building…the night we’d danced together under the moonlight, autumn leaves rustling around our feet, plastic armor covering me like a knight while Savannah flowed in a white dress with small white wings at her back.
    “Are you an angel?” I murmured, trying to remember how to speak, to move enough to reach for her face.
    She looked up at someone else, a man whose voice was less familiar, who said, “It will take a while for him to remember. Possibly days, even weeks.”
    I ignored the rest of what they said. None of it mattered. All that mattered was that the girl before me was Savannah, and I was Tristan, and I loved her.
    And then another scent came to me. Something good, and warm. A smell that made my mouth ache and my stomach cramp with need.
     
     
    SAVANNAH
    “Tristan,” Nancy Coleman screamed. She ran over to us and dropped to her knees beside