by A. E. Lowan
Interesting. She mentally shrugged. She really had no idea how magical healing was supposed to work, in practice. What did she have to lose by letting Cian’s instincts be their guide? She was dying. “Follow that pull. I’m right here with you and I won’t let you go too far.”
The swirl of magic converged on her stomach, and as she watched the flesh was rebuilt, the bleeding stopped and the standing blood reabsorbed. The swelling subsided leaving behind a healthy organ. Winter realized that she had stopped breathing and inhaled. It was amazing! “Perfect. How do you feel?” She checked to make sure he was maintaining his connection to the flow of power from the earth.
“I feel good.”
“Then we can keep going. Don’t stop pulling energy from the earth. We still have a long way to go.” And with that she continued, guiding him organ by organ, structure by structure, through the intricacies of each system, performing repairs beyond her wildest dreams down to the daintiest of capillaries. She made him pause often, but he only forgot to maintain his power flow a couple of times and only showed minimal signs of tiring. The inflammation of her abdominal tissues caused by the degradation and internal bleeding dwindled to nothing as her body was restored, and the hurt faded away. Winter was limp with relief as Cian finished. “Thank you,” she whispered into his hair. She closed her eyes and reveled in breathing without pain.
But Cian didn’t shift away from her. He kept his hand on her abdomen and brushed his thumb once over her in a sweeping movement. Still traces of the magic swirled through her body.
“Cian, you’re done. You can stop now.” Winter could feel heat rising to her cheeks. Now that spikes of agony weren’t lancing through her, the little movements of his hand and his magic were causing tiny shivers of pleasure – something very new for her. She knew what was happening, of course. She was a modern woman and a physician, not some ingénue in one of the Gothic romances Katherine used to write. Cian was turning her on.
She’d just never had it happen before.
The reasons for it… were entirely beside the point. At just this moment she had a young man wrapped around her and she needed to figure out how to unwrap him. At the thought of “unwrapping” she blushed harder and then pushed the thought away. She wasn’t afraid or exactly uncomfortable. The opposite, in fact, but as much as she felt the urge and curiosity to just stay here and be comforted and held – and maybe feel these lovely touches for a little while longer – her intellect was beginning to push through the numb feeling. She reminded herself that sexual arousal was perfectly normal in the wake of death, but there was still a sidhe prince out there who wanted to turn Seahaven into his personal faerie realm. She had a city to try to save.
Besides, she barely knew the young man in question, and Cian was quite a bit younger than her. He was heartbreakingly beautiful, yes. She was inexperienced, but she wasn’t blind. And… she caught herself at the memory of the morning’s events and her sudden pang of guilt was like slap. Cian had just been through what must have been a terrible ordeal. He was a rape survivor. In her daily life she worked with so many survivors like him – and not, because each was an individual who dealt with their experiences differently. What she knew was she didn’t have the right or permission to be having any of these thoughts about him. What was she doing? She began to squirm away from him. “Cian? Cian, let me up.”
He shifted his face higher and spoke against her throat, the sensation making her breath catch. “There’s still something not right.”
What? “You repaired everything. Pull the magic back, now.”
“No. It’s all breaking down again.”
Winter’s eyes widened just for a moment. The energy potion. It pervaded her system, her bloodstream, her cells, and would continue to kill her. But she had had no idea his ability was so sensitive. Maybe it was because he had continued to be, for lack of a better term, plugged in to her. “Yes, you were able to heal the damage, but the cause remains. Cian, sometimes in medicine that’s all we can do. Sometimes we can only buy a little more time.” Her throat tightened. “You’ve given me an amazing gift. You’ve given me time to do what I need to do for the people I love. I’ll never be able to thank you…”
Cian lifted his head and looked at her from inches away. “I don’t understand.”
She stroked his cheek. “Sweetie, some things just can’t be fixed.”
His leaf-green eyes flickered back and forth as he thought hard. Then they fired with determination. “I can fix this.” His arm tightened around her back and his hand pressed against her belly.
“Wait… I don’t know how you can…”
“I know I can.” And he increased the stream of his magic, again pouring it into her body.
Winter gasped. He had healed her, but with her guidance. She didn’t know how to begin to lead the way through something like this. But this time he wasn’t waiting for her to take him by the hand. His power swept through her, now more pleasure than pain, at first centered on her core and then it expanded outward to her extremities. Her fingertips and cheeks tingled and a small moan escaped.
But it occurred to her that his magic was just continuing to fill her – and without an apparent purpose it was quickly becoming too much. Her cheeks were reddening, her breathing was becoming labored, and the sensation was crossing from pleasure completely to pain. This wasn’t good. “Cian, you have to stop.”
His brows knit together in concentration and he shook his head. Instead he amplified the flow even further.
Her mouth stretched open in a silent cry. It was all she could do to breathe. Drag in air. Feel the pressure force it out. And then again. His magic and his sidhe strength held her pinioned and helpless. Beads of sweat rose and rolled down her face. Her whole body was becoming soaked in it, her clothes clinging to her under her coat. Her heart felt like an insane bird battering itself against the bars to escape too small a cage. What was he doing? How much more could she take? Winter glanced down at her hand in Cian’s hair. Maybe if she could poke him in the eye, she could… And she froze.
Tiny droplets of a poisonous green color dotted her skin. As she watched several coalesced and rolled off, to be replaced by new ones welling up from her pores. Was… was that the potion? Her heart beat even harder, if that was at all possible, and she drew fast, shallow breaths. He was doing it! He was really do- A pain noise escaped. Her every cell felt like it was being wrung out; it hurt worse than dying had. Her vision began to darken from the pressure behind her eyes.
“Winter?”
“Don’t stop.” She wasn’t sure if she actually said the words or just breathed the hope of them. “Don’t stop.” Her heartbeat was so loud. Maybe she hadn’t heard Cian speak at all. She wanted to rest her face against his hair again, but her head fell backwards and she seemed to fall with it.
“Winter? Winter?”
“Don’t stop.” Her voice was raspy. Something was rubbing over her face. It was cold and it felt good.
“It’s all right. Wake up, little girl.”
Winter opened her eyes. Erik smiled down at her and stroked a wet, white washcloth over her forehead. She noticed that it was tinted with green stains. She tried to talk and coughed instead.
“Here.” Etienne brought a cup with a straw and Erik helped her sit upright to sip what turned out to be ice water.
Winter realized she was lying on towels on the kitchen table and pushed herself up to a sitting position, which was easier said than done because her hip-length hair was everywhere. Her eyebrows shot up once she was able to take stock of her situation. “Gentlemen, where are my clothes?”
She sat with her long, bare, skinny legs dangling off the edge of the table, her green-stained hair tangled around her right arm, dressed only in her camisole and panties. But she felt good. Her skin was sticky, and her underwear was wet and green, but inside she felt clean. The energy potion still pulled at her. She was still addicted – having it cleaned out of her system wouldn’t change that. But like no longe
r screamed out for like; she no longer had a biological urge to maintain the level of potion in her body, so she felt perhaps she could resist. She took the thought and compartmentalized it for the time being. She would take it back out, later.
At her question Erik only chuckled and Etienne made himself busy taking the cup to the sink.
Lana snorted, pulling Winter’s attention to the succubus. “You were covered in that green shit and your clothes were soaked with it. We figured it would be best to get you out of them and at least sponged off.” She unfurled the bath sheet she was carrying and smirked. “Etienne wanted to get you down to your skin, but cooler heads prevailed.”
Etienne turned around, angry. “Stop that. You’ll embarrass her.”
Lana raised an ebony eyebrow. “Embarrass who?” She slid her eyes towards Winter as she offered the towel. “I couldn’t tell if he was being very sidhe about not thinking of nudity as exclusively sexual, or if he was acting like a dirty-minded human male.” Her facial expression was innocent speculation, but her intonation was anything but.
The faerie knight shot Lana a venomous glare.
Winter’s cheeks warmed. She wasn’t sure why. She had been dodging sexual advances from men and some women since she was a teen. She normally took them in stride. This was just Lana teasing Etienne about her. She took the towel and wrapped it around her body, tucking it under her arms, and decided to ignore the whole thing. “Where’s Cian?”
“He’s taking a nap in the living room,” Erik answered.
“Is he all right?”
“Oh, he’s fine,” Lana said, dropping into a kitchen chair. “When you passed out he got a bit scared. I was there, though – followed the magic – and talked him through the rest. But he stopped pulling power towards the end and tuckered himself out. Nothing a couple hours of sleep won’t fix.”
Winter let out a small sigh of relief.
Erik brushed his big hand over her hair. “Why don’t you get cleaned up and get some sleep, too? Let me handle things.”
She didn’t need to ask what “things” he would handle. Erik knew who to call to make the funeral arrangements as well as she did. Her mind was still wrapped in an insulating layer of numbness that would let her function in the wake of her father’s death. For a little while, at least. She would need time to process, to mourn. She knew, intimately, the stages of grief. And she knew that every time was just a little different. She had no time to waste. “Thank you, Erik. I need to go get cleaned up, but I’m the Mulcahy, now.” She reached up and touched his hand. “We need to talk when I come back downstairs.”
Winter turned towards the kitchen staircase. It was the 29th. She might need time, but it was running out – for all of them.
“What now?” Aodhán’s hand still burned from tearing a hole in that damn conversion van. He flexed his fingers and tried to keep from checking, yet again, to see how much the redness had faded. Looking at it just made it hurt more.
Midir had his attention riveted on the multiple monitors that had sprouted like mushrooms across his desk. “We’ve done what we can in that direction. Now we focus on Samhain.”
“You don’t think it’s care…” Aodhán stopped himself, shocked at his indiscretion. He was only in minor pain. Had losing to children this morning turned him stupid?
Midir’s intense, ice blue gaze snapped to Aodhán’s face. “Careless? To leave loose ends? Yes. And I despise it.” He focused again on his monitors. “Samhain is tomorrow, at midnight. There are too many details that need my control and I need you here to supervise those things that I can’t.” He tensed his jaw. “It is a gamble. But I have no other choice. I am out of time.”
Aodhán sat, brushing the pad of his thumb over his burned skin, and considered the face of a prince who would decimate a city.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
“I don’t understand. What happened?”
Jessie’s voice, pitched high with distress, carried upstairs as Winter emerged from her bedroom, barefoot with her wet hair in a long, heavy braid down her back. She came to her father’s door on the way down the hall and stopped, her fingers pressed to the wood. Erik had laid his body in there on his bed. It was the first time Colin had been in the room he had once shared with his wife in six months. Winter let her hand fall. She was so full of emotions behind the muffling numbness she didn’t know which one to feel first – and right now she didn’t have time for any of them.
Would she ever have the luxury to properly mourn?
Winter found Erik alone in the kitchen on his phone. He raised his sea-blue eyes to her and gave her a smile. “Hey, do something for me,” he was saying. “Pack up and take Michael and the baby on the next plane to Rome.” Winter could hear Katherine’s faint voice. “Good news travels fast, doesn’t it? No… no… Well, no shit, you need to take Giovanni.” He looked at his phone in exasperation. “What good is he to me here without you? I want Giovanni in Rome annoying Marco. Why? Because one of these days my brother’s going to make good on his promise to take a kingship of his own and steal you from me, so I’ll take every remaining chance to screw with him I can get.” Erik grinned at Winter, who just shook her head. His rivalry with Marco over Katherine – or, more importantly to Erik, which of them would sire her prince – had lasted for the past five centuries. “And tell… did I just hear Michael? Why are you at the Theatre?” He listened, scowling. “Dammit, woman, why are we even having this conversation? Just make the fucking flight on time.” He tapped the call off. “I miss slamming down the phone.”
Winter raised her brows. “You used to break the phone every time you did that.”
“So? It felt good.”
“Katherine’s already a few hours ahead of you, isn’t she?”
He sighed and roughed his fingers through his short black hair. Then he looked down. “I won’t tell her about Colin until this is over with Midir. I can’t risk her trying to stay to be with you.”
Winter nodded. She hadn’t thought about that. She hadn’t thought about anything past making it though the next hour, and then the next. She needed to think past her grief. She was the Mulcahy, now. “I agree. Katherine needs to be in Rome with your father Marcus and with Marco. If this goes badly, they’ll be able to protect her and Little Mike.” The little vampire prince couldn’t survive without his mother’s blood and milk, so sending him away without her wasn’t possible.
A trio of large shopping bags sat on the floor next to the kitchen table. They hadn’t been there before. The logo on the sides advertised that they came from The Painted Warrior. “What are those?” Winter asked.
“Not a clue. Jessie brought them with her.”
It probably had something to do with the reason Jessie had wanted her car and her credit card. “Where did she go? She sounded upset.”
Erik jerked his head toward the sliding glass door. “She went outside to call her parents.”
Winter looked out. Jessie was pacing around the garden courtyard, talking on her phone in an agitated fashion. Her face was flushed and her eyes were red. Winter watched, feeling helpless. This was a familiar pattern and she knew where it was going. When Jessie became seriously distressed she looked to her parents for comfort. Coming out to the House to be met with the news of Colin’s death must have been a shock. Seeing a friend lose a parent would make her reach for her own. Jessie’s pacing came to an abrupt halt and she stared wide-eyed at her phone. Then she looked for a moment like she was going to throw it before stuffing it in her pocket and storming off deeper into the garden.
On cue the House phone rang. Winter stayed where she was.
“Do you want me to answer that?” asked Erik.
She shook her head. She did not want to speak with Darryl or Joanie St. James. Not today.
The voice mail answered in its robotic tones. There had been a time when they had recorded their own messages, but again and again the recordings had become the voices of the dead, so they had stopped. And then Darryl St. James’ grav
elly voice burst into her kitchen. “What shit are you trying to pull this time, bitch?”
Erik had the phone in hand before Jessie’s father could draw breath to continue. “What the hell is wrong with you? This family is in mourning!” He carried the phone with him into the butler’s pantry, where he continued to yell behind the closed door.
Winter sat down at the kitchen table and ran her fingers over the scuffs and dents that were so familiar. Marks that had been made by her, her sisters, her cousins… She wasn’t sure exactly how old the big, sturdy table was; just that it had always been there for as long as she could remember. She wasn’t dying anymore. That took some getting used to. If they lived through this plot of Midir’s, if she lived through it, she had to face life alone in this House that had once been so full of love and family.
What a lonely thought.
The wineglass made a little noise as it was set down in front of her. Winter blinked and looked up to find Etienne standing at her elbow, two wine bottles in one hand and in the act of setting down a second glass. “Lana wants to move into your wine cellar.”
A smile pulled at the corners of her mouth. “It’s a nice collection.”
Etienne snorted as he set down one of the bottles. “That’s rather an understatement. Cian got lost down there.”
“Only for a few minutes.” Cian came up behind him carrying more glasses. His straight hair was tucked behind his ears and hung down loose past his shoulders. He gave Winter a smile as he set the glasses out on the table.
Winter felt her cheeks warm, remembering – and remembering. She returned his smile with a small one of her own, feeling strange and conflicted. He had somehow awakened a part of her that she hadn’t known was even there, but with his past she couldn’t help but feel as if she had wronged him. “How do you feel?”
He looked to the side as he seemed to search for the correct English words. “I’m a little tired, but I did not want to sleep any longer.” He looked down at her and reached for her hand. “I wanted to see that you are better.”