by Kait Nolan
But he couldn’t imagine away the blood.
At the sound of the crackling fire, Marley lifted her head, gasped. “How did we…?”
“I said anything.”
“Not back to the cave?” she asked.
“It’s not safe there. I don’t know what’s waiting.” And he couldn’t fight them while keeping her from bleeding out. So he brought her here. Better his abilities be used for this, to ease her pain in any way he could, than to draw out the worst of her fears to feast on like an animal. It’s all he was good for. His power could make her believe the lie, could force her to imagine harm and make it real. But he couldn’t trick her mind into healing her body. Couldn’t transfer his own energies to her in anything resembling a useful ability. An unbound wraith could do nothing but take. A fucking battery.
Ian lifted his head slowly, staring into the flames as his mind ground to a slow halt.
A bound wraith fed energy to his master.
How many battles had Nikandros survived because of that link? He’d avoided slaughter in the Jacobite uprising, lived long enough to immigrate to the Americas and fight again for independence from the British. As his comrades lay dying of musket shots, bayonet strikes, and limbs severed from cannonballs, he’d survived because of his link to Ian.
“What is it?” she asked.
Purpose flooded through him, and along with it came the incantation seared into his brain from a part of his life he’d done his best to forget. He drew the knife from his belt. He had to be fast. Lifting the hand staunching her bleeding, he made a quick gash across his palm. Only seconds before he pressed it back again, but already he could feel fresh blood welling up. Lifting her other hand, Ian pressed it to his heart and met her eyes. “I need you to repeat what I tell you.”
Marley’s eyes were starting to droop, her head to sway.
“Marley!” He shook her a little, his voice snapping out like a whip, and she opened her eyes again, focused on him. “This is very important. You have to repeat what I say.”
“All right.”
“Word for word, love,” he cautioned.
Her gaze sharpened and she nodded.
“Eternal magic of ageless time.”
“No. I won’t do to you what he did.”
“You must. Marley, it’s the only way. Please.”
Understanding flickered in her eyes, acceptance. She spoke the words, her voice soft, weak. He hadn’t noticed any noise before but noticed the lack of it now as the world seemed to hold its breath. Waiting.
“Heed the call in my rhyme.”
A whip of wind broke the silence, rattling the windows he’d conjured as the magic wrapped around them. The ground beneath them shuddered, and Ian felt his blood heat even as hers seemed to sear his hands.
“Bind two souls like molten steel.
“Let fire forge the woven seal.
“Me to you and you to me.
“Forever enslaved. So let it be.”
Ian braced himself, waiting for the feel of invisible shackles.
Marley hesitated, frowning. Her breath hitched and she began to cough, deep, wracking explosions that shook her tiny body. Blood dribbled in a narrow trail from the corner of her mouth.
Panic reared up inside Ian, a beast tearing at him with teeth and claws. Not too late. It can’t be too late.
“Finish it. You have to finish it.”
She drew in a ragged breath, lifted her hand to his cheek. Her eyes were bright with pain, her voice barely above a whisper. “Forever…one. So let it be.”
The wind died. The fire lapsed, settling back to a cozy glow. The ground went still. And tears continued to glimmer on Marley’s face, caught in her now closed lashes. Her hand fell in a clumsy stroke down his cheek to rest against his shoulder, limp and cool.
“Marley?” Ian’s voice was barely louder than hers, muted by terror.
He shook her, his voice rising when she didn’t respond. “Marley wake up. You said it wrong. You have to start over. Marley!”
The sound had him freezing, hunched protectively over her. Just a faint scrape, a rustle of fabric. His senses opened wide, parsing reality and illusion, scanning for the threat.
At the sound of a chambering bullet beside his ear, the last of the illusion faded. They were back in the cave and a gun was pressed to the back of his head.
“Get the fuck away from my daughter.”
Chapter 13
“She’s healing in a way she shouldn’t. Harm, are you sure it’s her?”
The voice trickled through the dark, muffled and indistinct. Marley wanted to stir, but her limbs seemed unconnected to her mind. So cold. She was so tired of being cold.
“It’s her.” Another voice. Grim. A thin layer of repressed anger and…fear. “Will she survive?”
“When she first came in, I’d have said no. But now? See for yourself.”
Footsteps. A slow exhale. “I don’t care why. Just finish up here.”
Marley fought her way to the surface of the dark as she felt some kind of tugging. What was going on? Why couldn’t she control her eyes? With great effort she cracked them open, only to slam them shut again at the glare of bright white lights. It seemed to take a year to angle her head down and try again.
A man hunched over her middle, everything but his silhouette erased by the blinding light. As he moved, something glinted. Marley squinted, zeroing in on the thing until it became clear.
A blade, already coated with her blood.
Panic geysered through her. She jacked up, catching the man in the face with her foot, and some machine began to beep. The man’s head snapped back, and he stumbled. In her periphery, Marley caught a blur of motion. She rolled off the table, striking at the hand still holding the blade. It sliced her palm, leaving behind a bright crimson ribbon as she staggered away. Desperate to find some balance, she grabbed at a cart. It spun away from her, but not before she snatched a tool off the tray.
Scalpel. Shifting her grip so the blade angled away from her arm, she lifted the small weapon in a defensive position and staggered back a few more paces, eyes wheeling. No windows. No doors. No escape. Heart hammering, she yanked off the leads from some kind of monitor, pulled out the IV from the back of her hand. Stepping free of the restraints, she brandished the scalpel as the nearest of the two men—the one she had kicked—took a step toward her.
“Stay the hell away from me.” Her throat was raw from screaming. What the hell had they done to her? Was this real? Or some new illusion?
“Just calm down.” The one who’d had the knife—another scalpel she realized now—held up both hands. Empty hands. “I’m a doctor.”
That fit with the antiseptic scent burning the back of her nose and the stainless steel throughout the room. It did not, however, fit with the rough stone ceiling sloping overhead. There was a door on the far side of the space, but both men, a surgical gurney, and several lab tables blocked her route to freedom.
“You’ve been wounded.”
Marley glanced at her hand, where blood trailed down her fingers to drip on the floor. As she watched, the line of red began to narrow and close. “What the hell?” she whispered. Definitely another illusion.
“Ah, not that,” said the doctor. He pointed lower, to her stomach. “That.”
Blood oozed down the slope of her belly from another, deeper gash a few inches to the left of her navel. The wound was partially stitched, a needle and surgical thread dangling.
“What—”
The memory slammed into her, a sucker punch to the mind. The dungeon. The knife. The unimaginable pain and the cold as she lay dying.
Not real. Not real.
Where was Ian?
Her attention and her defensive hand snapped back up at movement to her left. The second man—the one the doctor had called Harm—had edged a few paces closer.
“It’s all right.” His voice was a rumble that seemed too big for his chest, like the purr of a giant cat. “You were wounded, a
nd we brought you here for treatment. We’re not gonna hurt you. I’d never let anyone hurt you.”
Long and lean, with deep-set gray green eyes in a sharp, weather-beaten face, he stood very still, but she could sense the coiled readiness in his body as he watched her. He was older. Surely if it was an illusion he’d look the same as he had then.
Marley began to tremble. “Daddy?”
Shock and a painful hope flickered over his face. “You…know me?”
Part of her wanted to crawl into his arms and burrow in, as she had when he’d found her in the air duct. To let him protect her from all the fear and the pain. But she couldn’t forget waking up alone in that office, couldn’t forget that he’d walked away.
Because it was the simplest of the storm of emotions battering through her, Marley grabbed on to temper, used the energy to straighten her spine and steady her shaky legs. “I know who you are. I know you left me behind. And I don’t really give a damn about the rest. Where is Ian?”
Harm’s momentary vulnerability vanished, and his expression chilled, but Marley could still see the rage that leapt into his eyes. “The wraith is in holding. He won’t get near you again.”
“Take me to him. Now.”
“Confronting him isn’t wise. He’s unstable.”
“Confronting him? Are you crazy? I don’t want to confront him. I want to see that he’s all right.”
Her father stared. “You want to verify the well-being of the man who tried to kill you.”
It was Marley’s turn to stare. “Ian has saved my life more times than I can count in the last few weeks. He’s the reason this didn’t kill me.” She gestured at the half-stitched wound and realized she was clad in only her bra and jeans. A fresh wave of gooseflesh swept over her exposed skin.
“We can talk about what he did to you later. Thane needs to finish stitching you up.”
“I don’t want to talk. I want to see Ian.”
“I don’t want you to bleed out or end up with sepsis, so put down the scalpel and let him finish.” There was a thrum of something in Harm’s voice, something Marley knew would have most people leaping to obey him.
She didn’t budge.
“If I could just finish your stitches,” said Thane, “Harm can go get you some fresh clothes.” His expression was patient, affable. About as far from her father’s current glower as could be. “I’m sure you’d be more comfortable.”
Because she wasn’t keen on bleeding out either, and she figured being reasonable would get her further than attacking both of them with her stolen scalpel, Marley nodded.
Her father made a growl of protest and the doctor shot him a steely glare.
“Get the clothes,” he said, “and go cool off. She’s going to be fine.”
Harm gave her a long, measured look. “Be a good patient. Please,” he bit out. He stalked across the room and out the single door.
Marley exhaled and lowered the scalpel.
God. God. Her father. What kind of Twilight Zone existence had she fallen into?
Thane held out a hand and helped her over the fallen equipment, back to the surgical gurney. The surface was cold beneath her bare back, and she had to fight not to shudder.
Thane gently prodded around her wound. “Can you feel that?”
“Not really.”
“Okay, good. The local anesthetic hasn’t worn off yet. I’ll make this quick.”
A few minutes later, the door opened and the warlock from her apartment stepped inside, a small pile of clothes in his hands.
Thane lifted a brow. “Where’s Harm?”
“He went to talk to Tara.”
The two men exchanged a glance that had her stomach twisting into knots.
The warlock stepped up to the table. “He sent me with some scrubs. I’m Diego.”
“What aren’t you telling me?” she demanded. “Harm said Ian was in holding. He’s all right, isn’t he?”
“Settle down,” said Thane. “You’re tensing up again. I’m trying to keep these stitches neat.”
She made a conscious effort to relax her muscles. “Tell me. Please.”
Another wordless communication between the doctor and the warlock.
“There’s nothing for us to tell,” said Thane. “He’s in holding, all in one piece. Other than that, our full attention has been on your condition.” He snipped off the suture. “Done. Now, wait just a bit. I need to check you.”
Marley lifted her gaze to Thane, intending to ask what he was doing, but the sight of his eyes gone pure white stopped her tongue. He held his palm just above her skin. The space between began to glow and pulse as some kind of energy gathered there. Tendrils of light shot into her, like one of those electrostatic globes. The sensation was odd, pins and needles beneath her skin, but it didn’t hurt. After a few more moments, the energy faded, and his eyes shifted to an ordinary brown.
“Clean bill of health,” he said. “There’s no interior damage, no internal bleeding. Despite the complete impossibility of that, you’re fine.” He flipped off the blinding light above the table. “Medically, I’d love to know the explanation for your condition.”
Marley thought of the binding spell, wondered what exactly she’d done by changing it. “I don’t actually know.”
Thane helped her sit up. “Well, we won’t look a gift horse in the mouth. Now, I expect you want to clean up.” He showed her into a bathroom behind a screen at the far side of the room. “We’ll be right out here.
Marley stripped out of her grimy clothes and turned on the water. Through the door she could just make out the low murmur of their voices.
“…sure he needs to go there without supervision?”
“Corin’s there. He won’t let him do anything stupid.” She could almost hear the shrug in Diego’s voice.
“We don’t know how far Harm will go. She can say he didn’t hurt her until she’s blue in the face, but I don’t think Harm will believe it.”
Alarm prickled along her skin.
“Why do you think he’s taking Tara? He wants the truth. He’ll get it with her, whether the wraith likes it or not.”
Moving quietly, she hurriedly toweled off and dressed, leaving the water running to mask her movements.
“Doesn’t that worry you?”
“The guy will either be vetted or he won’t be. You know the drill, Thane.”
“Yeah, I know the drill. And I know if he’s not vetted, nothing will stop Harm from ripping the guy limb from limb.”
Marley stepped out from the screen. “Then you sure as hell better take me to them now before my father adds more unforgivable sins to his list.”
~*~
Ian couldn’t feel Marley. Pacing the tight confines of his cell, he tunneled his fingers through hair that no longer brushed his shoulders. His brain still hadn’t quite readjusted to reality, hadn’t quite grasped the how of what had happened. Between desperate pleas to an Almighty he’d lost the right to speak to centuries before, he wracked his brain, trying to sort it out. The shields he’d thrown up around her during the fire illusion—he hadn’t taken them down. They must have somehow protected her mind from violation. So it had been his nightmare, not hers, that fueled the illusion. But the shields hadn’t been enough to keep her out of it entirely. His mind believed it, and she’d been trapped. No matter that she’d recognized it for an illusion, her body hadn’t been immune. Traces of her blood still covered his hands, his chest. His pants were stiff with it.
The binding hadn’t worked, but she was still breathing when they took her away. He clung to that. He had to or he’d go mad. No one would tell him a fucking thing.
A heavy metal thunk presaged the exterior lock being disengaged. The door swung open, and Marley’s father stalked in, a storm of crimson flashing around him, but his eyes—his feline eyes—were cold with purpose. Ian recognized the cougar in a human skin. He was too charged up, Marley’s energy crackling beneath his skin, to be surprised that he could read Mirus emotion
s now. Another, younger woman trailed behind, followed by the scar-faced shaman who had been on guard outside.
“Where’s Marley?” Ian demanded. “Is she all right?”
The Felis said nothing.
Ian went cold. “Damn you, is she all right?”
When the shaman opened the cell and gestured him out at gunpoint, Ian acquiesced. Going into a rage and fighting his way out of here wouldn’t do Marley any good and might get him shot in the process. He didn’t even know where he was beyond somewhere in a series of caves. He sat in the large wooden chair with suppression runes carved along the back, arms, and legs. Steel manacles for wrists and feet were mounted onto the wood.
As Ian was locked in, the woman grabbed a folding chair from the corner. She set it up in front of him and nodded at Marley’s father. “I’m ready, Harm.”
For what, he wondered. Her voice was hardly above a whisper, and that diminutive stature wasn’t going to intimidate anyone.
“In all your time working for the Council, have you ever dealt with a Truth Taker?” asked Harm.
Ian flicked a glance at the woman in front of him. No one could have been further from his experience of full-blooded sirens. “I have.”
“Then you know how this will work. I ask questions, through Tara. You answer. Corin will maintain his position with a gun to your head. If I suspect you are feeding off Tara or manipulating us in any way, I’ll have him shoot. Understand?”
Tara jolted a little, but said nothing.
Wanting to get on with things, Ian inclined his head in acquiescence. Harm and the shaman put in earplugs.
“Begin,” commanded Harm.
“Who are you?”
Tara didn’t quite sing the words, but manipulated their cadence, modulated her previously soft voice to a tone that cut into Ian’s mind with the precision of a laser. He wasn’t fighting, but he could feel his natural shields stripped until he was laid bare. Exposed, he felt a fresh wave of guilt over forcing Scarlett’s abilities on Marley.