76 Vampire CPR

"If I may, sir," Sirius spoke up hesitantly. "It looks like you're doing some sort of vampire CPR. Restarting the heart is only part of it; she needs air in her lungs as well. You need to tilt her head back, pinch her nose shut, and breathe into her mouth for her. Then keep doing whatever it was you were doing and repeat until she wakes up."

He had absolutely no idea what the werewolf was talking about but he seemed to know what he was doing. Sirius did have more experience with various fae constitutions than he did so he decided to trust him with Ruby's life.

"Two breaths then thirty compressions…or I guess a minute or so of whatever it is you were doing," he instructed seriously.

Ash did as he was told, pinching Ruby's nostrils shut before covering her mouth with his and blowing into it twice. His fangs clinked against her teeth slightly as he went. He resumed the blood control of her heart immediately after and did it for a minute before doing two more breaths.

Her heartbeat was getting slightly stronger but she still wasn't waking up. This wasn't working!

His actions grew more frantic. He poured every scrap of effort he had to give into the breaths and the blood control. Live. Live! All she had to do was live! He desperately thought of nothing but forcing her back to life through sheer will as he continued for the next fifteen minutes to no avail. Her heartbeat stopped again.

Ash cursed in the old language before letting out a terrible scream as he continued to try and force the blood where it did not want to go. Dorian's laughter echoed in his ears as he worked and he wanted to destroy everything. Every single thing in this world that led to Ruby leaving him.

"LIVE!" he shrieked.

Another bolt of that blood lightning came out of him but this time it went directly into Ruby's heart at random. He immediately stopped what he was doing in a panic but was shocked to discover that it seemed to have worked.

Her heart was beating again. Normally. But she still didn't breathe.

Ash desperately pinched her nose shut in a last ditch attempt to get her to breathe properly and blew with all his might. She rewarded him by coughing directly into his face and groaning.

"Ruby?" he dared to ask in a tiny, pathetically hopeful voice.

Her purple and gray eyelashes fluttered and when her eyes focused on him he noticed that one was entirely black and glassy like obsidian with no white at all while the other did have a white and pupil but the iris looked exactly like her namesake.

Disgusting? How could anything about her ever be disgusting? Seeing her mismatched eyes open was the most beautiful sight Ash had ever seen in his nearly seven hundred years of life.

He couldn't deny that she was a bit unusual. There were an awful lot of clashing colors and patterns all over her body and they could be slightly overwhelming if you tried to take them all in at once. But that didn't mean she was disgusting.

Ruby looked like an amalgamation of rocks and gems, which made sense given her mineral controlling ability. Fairies' appearances were directly related to their powers. He should have expected as much.

Granted, every other fairy he ever saw had uniform skin, eye, and hair colors but so what? That didn't make her ugly. Just different.

Ash tenderly cupped her face in his hands with a soft smile on his face. "Now why would I go and do something as stupid as that when I'm so happy to see you awake?"

More greenness than before pooled in Ruby's cheeks and she wouldn't meet his eyes, though she did finally open them. He supposed that was her blushing face in her true form. Her expression was exactly the same as when she blushed with a glamour on. So cute!

Reggie coughed and brought his attention back to the situation at hand. "Uh…not to interrupt your moment or anything but everyone in this room is dead except the leader. At least we think he's the leader. You wanted to kill this one personally, right sir?"

Oh. Ash had completely forgotten about Dorian.

He rubbed Ruby's cheek with his thumb and planted a soft kiss on her forehead before promising that he would be right back. She was still blushing terribly and whispered "okay", unable to even nod because all of her energy had been spent.

His eyes blazed as he towered over the vampire pinned down on his stomach. Dorian gave him a defiant glare as he tilted his head back to look at him, refusing to admit defeat.

One werewolf sat on his legs and had his arms pulled back while two others each took a shoulder to pin down. His core was left wide open for the taking. And Ash would take it but not before getting an answer to a question that had haunted him for months first.

"Why did you attack my coven?" he asked in a venomous tone.

Dorian smirked. "I suppose you can say it was because I do not like to share."

He refused to say more but Ash knew what he meant immediately. Resources. The two covens had been in a dispute about them since they were all back in Romania.

Had he seriously slaughtered three dozen innocent vampires when there wasn't even a food shortage simply because he didn't like the fact that they had to utilize the same witch coven?! His logic made Ash feel sick.

Unbelievable. Everyone he loved died for such a pathetic reason!

Well, not everyone. There was still the fairy lying on her back in the other corner of the throne room. Ruby was alive, no thanks to this monster. He nearly killed her too. And for what? What had she done to earn his ire?

The petty whims of Dorian Cromwell were both unfathomable and ruthless. Ash's entire coven had died for one. And now he would suffer the same fate at the hands of a vampire he always thought of as weak. Justice had its poetic moments.