by Holly Hook
I would never, ever mention this to anyone.
I was still strong enough to climb the stairs and drag the librarian towards me, even though he was trying to back away into the bookshelves. Enough to bite. I was glad it didn't taste like strawberry pop-tarts this time or I never would have been able to go through with it. He screamed in pain but strength flowed back into my body and it didn't take very long. I released the screaming librarian and let him fall to against a bookshelf of tax law books, clutching his neck. He would be okay if he didn't have the rare gene.
I hoped.
I turned and I bolted out the front doors, sword in hand, not caring that it was no longer glamoured to look like a cane. I had to run. I had to get to Xavier before it was too late and I had to get away from this.
I spotted the gargoyle right away, still rising above the library. The wound was slowing the creature down, but then it took off in flight towards the ATC building. Xavier kicked his legs and a few people on the street had stopped to watch. I blazed past them, running as fast as I could. They didn't notice me. The creature was flying away now, towards downtown, sailing higher at first and then lower. The golem was struggling. The line of fire on its leg was brighter now as my new magic struggled to get a foothold and destroy the rest of the creature. Either my strength hadn't been enough to vaporize it or the wound hadn't been critical enough.
Xavier's cries met my ears above all the traffic. I slowed at an intersection, then ran between the moving cars. I must be a blur to the people around me. Someone honked. They wouldn't know what crossed in front of them.
The golem was lowering again. Xavier's feet scraped the top of a building—I could hear them from here—and the gargoyle rose again and came back into sight. The line on its leg was just a little brighter. I kept pace, then pumped my legs harder and cut in front of the gargoyle. I had to catch it and kill it now. I could.
I had never felt this strong before.
The creature flew up behind me now, hissing and flapping its near-silent wings. I dodged light posts and ran around people and little dogs who all went crazy and barked as I passed. I had to get up there. I needed a ladder.
I found one, running up alongside an apartment building. Most people wouldn't have noticed it in the shadows, but it was clear to me. I bolted for it, aware that Xavier's cries were getting louder. He would come right over this building.
I'd never scaled a building before (at least not on the outside) but now that I was sated the ladder was no problem. I climbed as fast as I could while holding the sword, scaling floor after floor. They passed in a blur. A small boy stood on a balcony. He ran inside when I blurred past. I would give him nightmares. I would hate all of this later but only one thing mattered now and that was Xavier.
The ladder ended a second later. I crossed another balcony to an apartment with no one home and jumped to the next ladder, grabbing on right before I plunged seven stories. It was a service ladder. The flapping of wings and the hissing got closer...closer. I grunted and stood at the top. I had barely made it in time.
I straightened myself on the roof, whirling around to face the oncoming gargoyle. Xavier shouted my name and kicked his legs with hope. They were thirty feet away, twenty...and then the golem swerved, taking Xavier with it and flying over the next building. It had some intelligence after all.
The burn on its leg wasn't much bigger. Maybe surface wounds weren't enough to kill even with my new power.
Xavier's feet scraped the next building over.
I would have to jump.
I backed up, every muscle tensing. I could easily go to the ground below. Thorne had never included jumping in my training—just fighting. I was supposed to be able to do it but I had never tried.
And you always sucked at something when you tried it the first time.
“Xavier!” I shouted, breaking into a run.
In a split second, my feet touched the edge of the building.
And I jumped, reaching, stretching for the next. It was slightly below me, but I landed on the edge of the roof, teetered back over the street below for a second, and caught my balance.
The golem had taken Xavier to the other end of the building now. It whirled around, meaning to take its original route towards the ATC. So it wasn't too smart. With it, Xavier faced me.
“Throw your sword!” he yelled, kicking just above the roof. “I can't do anything! It's blocking my magic!”
I raised the sword. The gargoyle looked back and forth, not sure which way to go around me. We were in a standoff above the streets. Somewhere, police sirens sounded. Someone had called about this.
“Throw it!” Xavier repeated.
I had never done that either.
I might impale him.
“I can't,” I shouted back. “I'll kill you.”
“It beats the ATC,” he yelled. “Throw it before our friend takes off again!”
I tensed again, lifted the sword above my head, and threw.
It sailed through the air like a javelin, aiming for its prey. The golem tried to take off again, but the sword impaled it in the stomach, sinking to the handle--
--but not before slicing through Xavier's shoulder first.
He closed his eyes in pain and his blood flew through the air in bright red droplets. They appeared to gleam with fire as the gargoyle let go, dropping him to the roof. Fiery veins spread out from the sword handle as the creature fell to the roof, narrowly missing Xavier.
I ignored the fact that the creature was burning from the inside and dying. I ran to Xavier and picked him up. “I'm so sorry!” His shoulder was bleeding everywhere. The wood smoke smell was stronger than ever. “Are you burning?”
“It's okay,” Xavier said, rolling onto his side and seething. “It happens sometimes. Put some pressure on it. I'm not burning. It must be because I'm your battle partner.”
He was right. There was just blood—lots and lots of blood. I searched around for something that I could use but there was nothing. The golem turned all fiery next to us, then dissolved into embers and ashes that blew away on the wind. “I need to get you help,” I said.
“You can't. Not a hospital. They can see what I am.”
“They can?”
More blood gushed out. My stomach growled again. No. Not now.
“Pressure, Alyssa. Now!”
I had no choice. I took my hand and covered his bubbling wound. My sword fell to the roof with a clunk.
My hunger was already returning. I had burned down some energy running like that, jumping like that. The wood smoke was intoxicating. I held my breath, but it was in the air and his blood was so red, so inviting, so warm...
I wouldn't.
“Keep doing it,” Xavier said, eyes closed. “Just until the bleeding slows down.”
I couldn't resist much longer. I had done the worst in the library and it had woken up something terrible inside of me.
I picked Xavier up, letting him bleed again.
“I'm getting you help.”
“Alyssa!”
“I don't have a choice! Where can I take you?” The hunger was growing by the minute. “I'm going to hurt you if I don't.”
“To my family,” he said, giving in. “I'll tell you where to go.”
Chapter Ten
I left my sword and didn't realize it until we were back down on the surface.
I put all my focus, every shard of it, into navigating the stairs through the apartment building and down to the ground floor. Thankfully no one came out to find me carrying my bleeding battle partner.
I wasted no time. He was still bleeding on me and looking paler. If I gave in to my urges I would only drain him more, to the point of danger. No. He was already there. I might even drain him to the point of death.
This was a very, very bad night.
I ran as fast as I could once on the ground. A girl moving at superhuman speed and holding a bleeding boy would definitely attract attention. Someone screamed when I had to stop at an in
tersection for a couple of seconds. I broke into run again, dodging traffic. I didn't look back. I cut through alley after alley, following street signs the whole way. Fifteenth and Cherry. Fourteenth. I was getting there. Twelfth street was where I needed to go.
“Alyssa,” Xavier moaned. “You should have held the wound shut.”
He didn't understand. “Hold on,” I said. My right hand was slippery with his blood.
Thirteenth. A police car sped by. The foot traffic got less dense. We were cutting through a higher-income neighborhood now, closer to the ATC building. The apartment windows were all shining glass, rising ahead and hiding more lavish apartments. We must be close.
Twelfth.
“Which way?” I asked.
Xavier craned his head and struggled to see. “I'm dizzy,” he said. “Left.”
The sirens faded in the distance. The police would make their way to the roof of that other building until they found my missing sword. I was never getting it back.
“One oh eight six,” Xavier mumbled. “Apartment number forty-eight.”
I recited those numbers in my head. My vision snapped into full force and every little detail popped out at me. I dodged past a woman in a fur coat with a poodle that barked at me until I reached the destination.
A building with the right number written on the red awning.
I slowed and stopped as a cab pulled to the curb and let out another woman with a bag of groceries. I didn't wait for her to gasp at the sight of us covered in blood so I pushed open the glass doors into a beautiful lobby almost as classy as the one in the ATC building. “This is an apartment complex?” I asked.
There was no one behind the receptionist counter. It was too late or they were off taking a break. I caught the scent of tobacco smoke somewhere. Yes. Break. The elevator sat open as if waiting for us.
I didn't waste time. The woman with the groceries opened the front door and asked if we were okay. “Fine,” I shouted as I boarded the elevator with Xavier. “Everything's peachy. We just came back from a Halloween party.”
“It's not Halloween,” Xavier managed.
“I know,” I said, pressing the button for the fourth floor. “I couldn't think of anything better.” His scent was even more powerful in here. The blood around his shoulder was drying, forming a crust, but it was still driving me crazy. I begged the elevator to hurry up.
Apartment forty-eight was on the very end of the hallway, in a darker part where a single light was burned out. My skin tingled a bit as I neared it, as if we were passing through some magical barrier, and I knocked on the door with my foot since I was still holding onto Xavier. I caught an eye on the other side of the peephole—a blue eye with purple flecks—and the door flew open with a squeal.
“Get in here,” said the very stern, magenta-robed woman on the other end. “Xavier, what trouble have you been up to now?”
* * * * *
Waiting was the worst.
First the middle-aged woman had ordered me to set Xavier on the couch in another room and then she shooed me back to the living room to wait as if I were some beggar off the street. She was an intimidating woman with her brown hair in a tight bun and sharp wrinkles around her eyes. Even the way she moved warned anyone within a mile not to mess with her. She vanished inside the little room, closing the door. I heard the sounds of bandages ripping.
I wondered what she was going to do with Xavier and if he was going to pull through. He had still been conscious when I set him down on the couch. That was a good sign, right?
It was a very big apartment, too big to fit inside the building we were in alongside the others. Like the entry room in the underground manse it dwarfed anyone who dared to enter. A pair of twin spiral staircases went up to a second level balcony, where rows of doors, about a dozen of them, housed what might be bedrooms. Between the stairs, a large archway led to a huge kitchen where I saw Nora scrubbing a counter. Low music played somewhere and I heard the splash of someone diving into a swimming pool. A pool, on the fourth floor of an apartment. I could smell the chemicals used to treat the water.
And I sat on a white leather couch in the middle of the room like I was waiting for an appointment. A window looked out on Cumberland from where I was sitting and the balcony featured more lion statues.
It was the most lavish hideout I'd ever seen. Some magic had caused it to be larger on the inside than the outside.
Xavier groaned in pain from the side room where I'd been ordered to take him. It was opposite the window and only twenty feet from me. The whole event was a blur now. The woman poured rubbing alcohol on his wound. It masked the scent of his blood.
It was still all over my hands, drying and losing its scent. That was good. I never wanted to feel like that again.
I really, really wanted to take a shower.
And throw up.
I would not think about what I'd done in the library. Did Xavier know?
The door came open and I caught a glimpse of Xavier on the leather couch. Someone had put a bandage on his shoulder, which was red with new blood. I caught a whiff of it, but mostly of the alcohol. My hunger was dying down now. He gave me a thumbs-up from where he was lying. Already a bit of color had come back to his cheeks. The door swung shut as the stern woman left and walked into the kitchen.
Xavier would be okay but the fear that the hunger would return was growing. I could see Thoreau laughing at me now, beckoning me to do it, and worst of all, my mother picking up her purse and leaving the house for the last time. I can't do this.
“Grab me some blankets,” the woman ordered me, coming out of the kitchen. “He's going to bleed all over the leather. They're in the closet by the door.”
I rose from my seat. Rage pumped through me. “You're worried about the leather?”
“I should have known my nephew was up to no good,” she said, shaking her head. “Grab some blankets.”
I could see Leon in her horrible glare. This must be Xavier's mother's sister. “Grab them yourself,” I said. “Let me go in with Xavier.”
“Who do you think you are?” the woman asked.
“I'm his battle partner,” I said.
“His illegal one?”
“Hey, I just saved his life,” I said. “Xavier's out there doing the dirty work you guys don't want to do to save all of our lives, so I think you should shut up and be a little more grateful.”
I left her there, standing in the middle of the living room. I shut the door behind me and leaned towards Xavier. He had his eyes closed and was lying on his back on the couch. Now that he was bandaged and treated with antiseptic, his scent was weaker and only the tiniest rumble of hunger invaded. “How are you feeling?” I asked.
“Never better,” he said with a grin. “Welcome to the family safe house. I'm sorry you met my aunt.”
“I'm sorry, too.”
He chuckled. “You might want to be more careful,” he said. “The Elders are probably going to make her Elder War Mage of Cumberland. She mentioned that when she was pouring that horrible stuff into my gaping, open wound.”
“She was talking about herself when you were lying here, hurt.”
“Yep.”
There was drying blood on the leather and Xavier had his boots up on the arm of the couch, probably to keep the faintness away. Some color was coming back to his face. He was going to be okay so long as the wound didn't get infected.
“The Elders are seriously talking about who to make Elder War Mage of Cumberland while they know Thoreau has Leon's body and it's probably at the Dark Council, waiting to have its power tapped,” I added.
“Yep.”
“Do you need anything to drink?” I asked. “Some coffee? You need to get hydrated.”
“Coffee would be great.”
I left him on the couch and went back out into the fray. Xavier's aunt was ordering Nora to grab some towels and put them under Xavier. The maid scrambled through the closet while the evil woman waited. “And make sure you clean
up any blood there is on the leather,” she said. “That couch cost us four grand and I'm not going to have it ruined.”
Yes. She was Leon's daughter, all right. I rushed past and entered the kitchen, where I found a cappuccino machine and fourteen different syrups. Xavier would smell like whatever I gave him along with his wood smoke, so I chose the syrup that smelled the most disgusting to me. Maple, like the stuff people put on their pancakes. As much as I hated the idea of Xavier smelling gross, I hated the idea of hurting him even more. I would not have such a strong urge to bite him ever again.
I squirted about five times into his coffee (after I figured out how to make it) and headed back to the makeshift infirmary, which was nothing more than a sitting room with some artsy book open on the coffee table. Nora was lifting Xavier up with great effort so she could get the blankets under him to protect the precious couch. I rushed over and helped her after setting the coffee down on the table (and getting some drops on the art book, which I was sure the aunt would notice sooner or later.)
Xavier groaned. “We're sorry,” Nora said.
“I've got him,” I said, lifting as Nora spread the blankets under him.
“That's better,” Xavier said as we set him down. “My aunt will kill me if I bleed on anything.”
“You already have,” Nora told him. “You might want to say your prayers.”
“We'll just get out of here before she notices,” I said. Nora left the room to go meet another demand of the aunt, who was now ordering a coffee made for herself. “She doesn't stand up to anyone, does she?”
Xavier opened his eyes. “You shouldn't have told my aunt off like that.”
“She deserved it.”
“My aunt might be the new Elder War Mage as early as tomorrow. She's the only child of Leon right now and really the only choice.” Pain came over his face and I wasn't sure if it was from the wound or not.
“Your mom,” I said.
“My mother would have made a good leader,” he said. “She wasn't like her sister. Aunt Primrose was the favorite in the family. She couldn't have any children, so she bosses my sister and I around now. I've spent the last few days arguing with her about all this. She didn't want me to have a second battle partner, either.”