by Ramona Wray
Without wanting to, I flinched at that. At the sadness beneath his words, at the loneliness, the pain glimmering dully in his eyes.
“What’s the matter, Katherine?” he asked quietly. “Hard to decide if you care?”
Words, clipped by alarm, made it past my lips before either of us could blink. “I can’t care! I don’t even know you.”
That sounded pathetically weak. I tried harder.
“You claim to be William Kingscott from way back when, but you call yourself Lucian Bell. And what about your parents? How can you have —?”
“I’ve been alive for almost four hundred years!” he bit back, the unflappable air shattering at last. “I can’t go by that name all the time. It would raise questions. And there are no parents, obviously. Just a carefully maintained lie.”
“And why is Ryder called William Kingscott, then?”
“How should I know? Twisted sense of humor?”
I shook my head stubbornly. “But you, I mean, I don’t know you,” I repeated lamely. “You came out of nowhere, with your claims and the historical trips to cuckoo land, and now my best friend is lying in a hospital bed.”
“You blame me for J, too?”
No, of course I wasn’t. He’d had nothing to do with it. So I wasn’t making any sense. So what?
“But that’s not why you’re so mad at me, is it?” he asked, calm again. “You’re mad because I forced the truth on you. Your life was great before I opened my mouth. It’s me who ruined everything, correct? I’m the one who told you the truth about him, so instead of blaming him, you’ve decided to hate me. Don’t deny it!”
I bit back a whimper, resenting his insight, the fact that he was flat-out right, and that he’d actually gotten there before me. And, as always, being attacked only turned me that much more aggressive.
“Everything was great before you showed up in Rosemound! He’s been here for twelve months and never even glanced in my direction until recently, let alone done something to hurt me in any way. And now, what, he’s after me? And you … where were you? This story of yours doesn’t make sense. I mean, shouldn’t I feel something for you? After all, I betrayed my own sister for you. I died for you so then … how come I don’t ...”
Since I couldn’t finish, he, ever so considerately, did it for me.
“Love me? No, Katherine, that’s not it. What bothers you isn’t that you don’t love me. It’s that you do love him.”
I felt compelled to meet his eyes, and when I did, to my surprise I found that even more than hurt, he seemed furious. Fingers raking through his hair, he speared me with a look devoid of life. The lips pinched in a line made his cheekbones stand out. He was beautiful, but also a bit scary, now that he was mad.
“He’s had some tricks up his sleeve, Katherine,” he hissed. “He’s made it very difficult for me to find you this time around. But I got here as fast as I could.” He paused. “As for why he hasn’t made his move yet, as I said, he needed to gain your trust. Your love. Only then can he hope to get access to your power.” He let out a sharp breath. “It looks like he’s succeeded. There isn’t much you wouldn’t do for him now, is there?”
I tried. “That’s —”
But he cut me off. “Tell me, sweet Katherine, what would you do if he asked you for a taste? If he explained that, without it, he’d be condemned to long, long years of hardship? Trapped in between realms, one foot in each world yet part of neither?” One eyebrow rose disparagingly. “Hmm? What would you do? Say no to him?”
In spite of wanting to dismiss the idea on the spot, I found myself hesitating.
“That’s what I thought,” he continued, standing abruptly.
He gave me another sideways glance, eyes gleaming with cold anger and something akin to disappointment.
“Like it or not,” he added in a low, subdued tone, “I am the one for you. The very fact that I have to stand here explaining this to you …”
Now he looked really hurt. Confusing! Hillary-Clinton-landing-in-Bosniaunder-ghost-sniper-fire confusing.
“Our love wasn’t just some love, Katherine. Divine intervention was involved. Our lives …”
My throat pulsed with the ache of gulping too hard. “I —”
He held up his hand, brusquely. “Don’t! I don’t want your pity. I … I’ll go find us some coffee, okay?”
Not waiting for an answer, he turned on his heel and was suddenly gone. Leaving me all alone with mixed feelings and my doubts.
I sat there thinking dumbly, Why, if I haven’t been the busiest bee today! So, apparently, I was a bona fide witch, with a lineage going back to a group of rebel angels. I was also a treacherous vixen who had stolen her own sister’s fiancé. And I was cursed to be reborn again and again, only so that my long-lost lover could watch me die. Not to mention that I’d somehow gotten my best friend involved in the weird maze that was now my life and, as a result, she was now in a hospital bed. And, of course, I was in love with the halfling charged with killing me, but I had no clear, concrete feelings for the boy who had followed me through the centuries because our lives were, as he’d put it, intertwined. Because the hex and our actions from four hundred years ago had bound us together. Forever. But no, I loved Ryder. All I felt for Lucian was regret. Living the way he had was a tragic way to go on, especially for hundreds of years.
I should be shot! I decided. By real Bosnian snipers.
When I’d woken up yesterday, figuring out my own identity wasn’t even a blip on my radar. Today I had no idea who or what I was anymore. Only one thing hadn’t changed: my feelings for the creature destined to kill me.
Yes, I was still sure of my love for Ryder, but it didn’t change anything. I was still going to die. At his hand.
Chapter: Twenty-One
Balancing a steaming cup of coffee on top of a Drake’s apple pie in one hand and a pack of Austin peanut butter&cheese crackers under a second cup of coffee in the other, Lucian gave me a sheepish smile. “Sorry,” he shrugged. “I know this doesn’t exactly qualify as food, but the cafeteria is closed and I thought you might like something to eat.”
I pushed my laptop away. After a good amount of poking around the Web, I’d finally stumbled on an article featuring halflings. The source, obscure, I’ll grant it, claimed that the creatures in question, much like the “full” angels, had their name tattooed on their backs. One symbol, impossible to pronounce by a mortal, burned between their shoulder blades, at the very spot from which their wings would sprout. If anyone should call the halflings, or angels, by their real name, that is, reading the unreadable symbol etched into their skins by the “primordial fi res of Creation”, a magnifi cent pair of wings should burst from the center of that tattoo. More food for thought. Did it mean that Ryder’s name wasn’t even Ryder, since, apparently, William was bogus, too? Did he really have a weird tattoo on his back that, when read properly, suddenly made actual wings shoot out?
Forgoing the food for thought in favor of some real nourishment, I accepted Lucian’s offerings with much sincere gratitude, now embarrassingly aware of my not-so-discreetly growling stomach. He sat on the couch, careful not to touch me, and sipped his coffee in small gulps while staring into space.
“You could go home, you know,” I suggested between mouthfuls.
“So could you.”
I gulped some coffee, pleasantly surprised that it wasn’t half as bad as expected. Still, an unpleasant taste swamped my mouth. “Why would he go after J?” “You’re joking!” he exclaimed.
I only wished. “J said so herself.”
The effort to understand lined his high forehead, but with little to show for it, from what I could tell.
“I have no idea,” he admitted. “She’s your best friend, but other than that she’s irrelevant. To him, to us, to the whole situation. She looks like Elizabeth, but only on the outside. She’s not magical. It doesn’t make sense that he’d view her as a threat.”
Good argument. Because so much in our lives
made such perfect sense lately!
I drowned the sarcasm in more coffee, forgetting to be careful and scalding my tongue in the process. “Aw! This is all —”
But my grumble was swallowed up by the screechy ringing tone emerging from J’s room. We both bolted upward at the same time, though neither of us actually made it inside the room because of the medical staff barring our way.
“Wait here. Let us work,” a nurse said, in response to our frantic jumble of questions. The door shut in our faces.
“What’s going on?” I turned to Lucian, frenzied.
“I … I don’t …” He kept shaking his head, eyes widened and wild, glistening like a pair of almond-shaped tears.
With our noses pressed against the window, we watched the doctor and the nurses trying to help J. The high-pitched sound stopped. She just looked asleep, but the knot in my stomach told me otherwise. Cold sweat trickled down my spine as I waited, motionless, for someone to explain what was happening. The whole thing seemed unreal. But it wasn’t. Something horrible was going on. And it was all my fault.
Minutes, or maybe hours, later, a verdict was passed on. The injury to her head had been more serious than it first appeared; she’d slipped into a coma. My best friend was in a coma!
This time, when the first tremors zapped through me, I welcomed the chill. At least the cold was something I’d feel. The guilt, knowing that J was now lying there senseless simply for being my friend, chewed at my insides like a hungry termite colony. It left me desensitized and vacant.
“Again?” Lucian was stricken by the sight of me quivering again. “Twice in the same night?”
I shrugged, my teeth already chattering like castanets. Olé!
“Katherine,” he went on, sounding frightened, “has this happened before? Twice in the same day?”
“N-n-no.” It was doubtful I would’ve survived if it had.
He nodded and then swept me into his arms without asking for permission.
“Wh-wh-what … ar-are you —”
“I won’t bloody have you pass out again! I’m sorry if my touch repulses you, but I will not let you suffer.”
He may or may have not said that last thing, it was hard to say at this point. I fought to keep my eyes open. His energy and those tireless blue tendrils linking us were already working their magic. It was as if I’d stumbled on an open fire after blundering through snow and ice for days. My body relaxed instantly, growing sluggish and soft. Fingertips, tens, hundreds, or maybe thousands of them, yanked me back into feeling, inch by inch, artery by artery. And the more it lasted, the harder it got to consider shrugging them off. Maybe if I just closed my eyes for a second. I could do that, couldn’t I? Just a little nap. I’d be safe with him.
Wherever it was that he carried me to.
* * *
A new scent, vaguely sugary, welcomed me back into the land of the living, and I knew right away that Lucian had to be somewhere nearby. He always smelled good enough to eat. I opened my eyes to find that we were still in J’s room, where I lay sprawled across the floral-patterned couch, with my head resting on his folded jacket. I noticed his tie slung over the metal end of J’s bed and then I saw him. Hands deep in his pockets, lingering by the window and staring out in the darkness motionlessly.
“You still cold?” he asked, without turning around.
I had to mend my voice before answering. “No. Thank you.”
He didn’t move. I did, though, using the back of the couch for support and grimacing at the aggressiveness with which my muscles objected. Still, he didn’t turn around.
“Something fascinating out there, in the darkness?”
“You called his name,” he said in an undertone. “While you were dead to the world, you called for him.”
My mouth opened, but no words came out. Something about his fallen shoulders made me choke on whatever argument I was about to slap him with. I wasn’t just tired of fighting him, I was beyond tired. Tired of having to figure things out. Tired of the hurt it brought me.
So I didn’t answer, shifting my attention instead to J’s bloodless face. She was breathing through a tube now, seeming as fragile as the first spring blooms, her skin almost translucent, so alarmingly frail. Tears rose in my chest again.
He was the one to break the silence. “I’ve been thinking. This is very strange.”
Surprise overtook me when he finally turned around. With his vest unbuttoned and hanging loosely over his half-opened shirt, he was a very different sight from the Lucian I’d come to know. It felt as though there were no constants left in my life; everything was changing fast, and trying to keep up was exhausting.
I wiped away the tears and croaked, “What do you mean?”
“I’m talking about J. That she should suddenly get worse. I wonder if maybe the reason behind it has something to do with the nature of her injury.”
Alertness flooded me. “Meaning?”
“Well, she was hurt by a supernatural being. Maybe what’s happening to her now isn’t physical but mystical.”
I licked my lips nervously, not liking the sound of that. “And what does that mean? She’ll never ...” I gulped hard, “wake up?”
“It’s a possibility. Unless —”
“Unless?”
He shifted his weight, wavering.
“Katherine, you’re the most powerful witch in the world. Your blood is consecrated. If anyone can heal a mystical injury, you can.”
He spoke with his trademark calm, but underneath there was a buzz. Like an electric charge. Like he was treading on tiptoe when what he really wanted to do was run. Maybe he was trying not to scare me, which would’ve been both smart and considerate, because it really was scary, the way everything came back to my blood. Ryder needed it to stay in our world. My candles needed it to work. Now, my best friend needed it to find her way back to me. It was my blood that made me special. Freakishly special. It was why I could help people in ways no one else could. It was also what would get me killed. My blood … Elizabeth’s blood. Our blood. Yeah, it sounded just about right.
I held my breath. “What do I do?”
Eyes bright as if from a fever, he squared his shoulders and answered in a staccato rhythm. “That, I do not know.” I opened my mouth to protest, but he went on before I could speak. “But I would imagine that you’d have to prepare a potion of some sort.”
“Like I do with my candles,” I said, catching on.
He looked confused. Duh! He didn’t know about the candles.
“Mixing blood with plants and wax,” I explained.
“Possibly.”
I glanced out the window where the day was gently but noticeably breaking. “Shoot, it’s morning already.”
“So?”
“So, I can only work at night. I probably have the plants I need at home, but the mix only works if I prepare it at nighttime.”
“So, tonight, then.”
My eyes drifted over J’s face again. “Tonight.”
He kept on staring at me, as if there was more he wanted to say, but couldn’t.
“What aren’t you telling me?”
His poker-face crumbled and something strange moved in his eyes. A cold fire. Something fierce.
“You have to be careful, Katherine,” he urged. “What you’re about to do is exactly what he needs. A willing taste of your power.”
An invisible hand grasped me by the neck and I couldn’t breathe. “Come again?”
The composure slipped away completely, leaving him exposed, undeniably scared. Doubtful. But eager, too, somehow. “He will feel your spell. He’ll be drawn to it. To you and to the blood. And if he gets that one taste of your power …”
The rest was left unsaid. But I got it. If I was going to save J’s life, it would most likely be the last thing I did.
“Isn’t there a way to keep the potion from him?” I asked softly, already resigned.
With a sigh, he came to stand before me, speaking low, gently, as i
f I were a fragile thing. As if his words could shatter me.
“In the past, any spell you’ve ever worked, one that involved your blood, that is ... I don’t know how to explain it to you. A great burst of power is released when you willingly bleed yourself with the intent to save someone’s life. Potent forces are at work. You’re about to go against the Grim Reaper, Katherine.”
I trembled, barely swallowing the whimper in my throat.
“The pure intent, altering destiny, the willing offering ...We’re talking about a powerful trifecta of forces, welded together by hallowed blood. Simply getting close will be enough for him. He doesn’t need to physically sip the potion because your power will be everywhere. In the air. In the trees. In the ground. Everywhere within a mile radius.” He paused. “You won’t be able to keep it from him.”
The floor seemed to slip from under me. I grabbed on to the edge of the couch and closed my eyes for a second, willing the world to stop spinning so fast. When I opened them and peered at my best friend’s frozen face again, I saw more than just that horrible tube coming out of her mouth. I saw sense.
“So that’s why he went after J. This was his plan all along.”
“Looks that way, doesn’t it?”
I laughed a broken laugh. “I guess my time’s up.”
“Not if you don’t want it to be. You can still … You don’t have to cast the spell, you know. Delaying it should keep you safe. At least, for a while.”
If there were any energy left in me, I would’ve used it to scowl at him. “This,” I said instead, pointing at J, “is all my fault and I can’t let her pay the price for it. I can’t stand seeing her like this! I’m going to die anyway. The least I can do is to give her back her life before I go.”
Even if it by doing it, I was removing the last thing standing between me and certain death.
Chapter: Twenty-Two
I left Lucian at the hospital and, after promising him to be careful and run the other way if I saw Ryder, I set off to spend my last day on earth. I should’ve been terrified; I was only scared. Nobody knows when he, or she, will die; I guess it’s the unknown that scares everyone so much. Hardly my case, though; I had solid knowledge of both the “when” and the “why.” Sure, it was all insane to some extent, but there was meaning to be drawn from it. Not only would I not die for nothing, unlike most people, but it wouldn’t even take me by surprise. And, as an added bonus, I was going to check out the same way I’d lived: with a big supernatural bang. Morbid? Probably. But then, who wouldn’t turn a little morbid with less than twenty-four hours left to live?