“What, Lana?” he said over his shoulder.
“I owe you another debt.” He’d saved my life. Again.
“You owe me nothing.”
But I did. That’s how my kind worked. We repaid kindness with kindness, mercy with mercy. Only mates weren’t required to repay debts, but that was only because they were bound by a bond far stronger than a blood debt.
I doubted that was what Asher was suggesting. He was just being . . . selfless.
“You are the best kind of human,” I said.
He bowed his head, like my words weighed him down. “Get some sleep. I’ll be back soon.” With that, he left.
It took a full day for the antibiotics to really begin to work. By the time we were back in Asher’s car, I felt weak but better. My arm was still swollen and tender, but I could move it a little without hurting.
But most importantly, it was sunny out, the sky was bright blue, the ocean gleamed like a jewel, and for once I didn’t even mind being in the car.
Because I was alive.
Alive, thanks to the killer next to me.
I wiggled my toes, practically bouncing in my seat. “How much longer?” I asked.
“You are such a kid,” Asher grumbled.
“It’s called enthusiasm. It’s a human word, so I know you know of it.”
His hard look only deepened. “We’ll get there tonight . . . stay in the villa . . . we’ll destroy the portal tomorrow.”
“You mean go through it?” I threw my head back against the seat rest. “The one time I would’ve appreciated a human lie you tell me the truth.”
Even that couldn’t bring down my mood for long. I tucked my feet under my thighs and began rolling the beads of my various necklaces together. They were especially beautiful in the sunlight. Everything was beautiful in this earthly light.
“Thank you for saving my life,” I said. It was unprecedented for one of our kind to survive the sickness of this world.
“Lana, you don’t need to keep saying that,” Asher said, rubbing his jaw.
He glanced over at me, and butterflies blossomed in my stomach. I remembered being cradled in those arms, cared for by those hands.
“My life is yours,” I said.
“Stop it. Stop saying shit like that.” He scrubbed that hand over his face. “I don’t want you to give up your life. Not for me or anyone else.”
“But my life is yours. You healed me.” I reached for the vial of Asher’s blood, my hand groping through the many ropes of necklaces for it.
“Just please don’t cut yourself again.”
I dropped my hand when I didn’t feel the vial.
Having come this close to death, I doubted I’d be cutting myself again anytime soon. The urge was gone, in fact, which I suspected had everything to do with Asher taking care of me . . . with me trusting him. Those first few days around him, I’d been a complete wreck. He’d brought out all my nervous habits.
But now he . . . didn’t.
Now I felt safe around him, cared for. Somehow, he made me less neurotic.
I peeked at him before looking down at my lap, suddenly feeling shy. “I won’t,” I said softly.
“What’d you do it with?” he asked.
“A razor.”
“Do you still have it?”
Reluctantly I removed it from my pocket and handed it over.
When Asher saw it, he whistled. “No wonder it got infected,” he said, holding it up to the light. He shook his head, then pocketed it.
“You’re keeping it?” I asked.
“No,” he said, “I’m just not giving it back to you.”
My hands twisted together at that. But I would be okay.
“Why did you do it?” he asked a minute later.
I pressed my lips together. I didn’t want to answer this. Not when he was starting to look at me like he actually cared.
But if he wouldn’t let me pledge him my life, I could at least answer his questions.
“I was testing out the sharpness of the blade,” I answered honestly.
“And you were doing that because . . . ?”
“When it’s been awhile since I’ve culled . . . I get urges.” I glanced down at my hands, afraid to meet his eyes. “I need blood—if I don’t want to hurt someone else, then I have to hurt myself.” I furrowed my brows. “But it’s better now . . . around you.”
When I finally did look at him, I saw such conflict in his eyes.
I reached for Asher’s vial again, like it was a talisman. And again, my fingers didn’t close over the glass. I glanced down at my chest, peeling necklaces apart one by one as I looked for Asher’s blood.
I sucked in a breath when I didn’t find it. “The vial,” I said.
“What about it?”
“It’s gone.”
Chapter 17
Lana
“Gone?” Asher took his eyes off the road to stare at me. “What do you mean gone?”
“I mean it’s not here.”
“You mean you lost it?”
Golden skinned Asher went pale at that, and the look in his eye . . . moon-touched. A muscle in his cheek feathered. I could see the anger building up, his muscles taut with it.
My fault. “Asher, I—”
“Don’t.”
“But—”
“Just . . . don’t.” He looked like he was barely keeping it together.
I chewed on my lower lip. “It could’ve just fallen somewhere.”
“It didn’t,” he all but growled. “You and I both know exactly where it went.”
Into Aecora’s possession. I unwittingly managed to screw over the very person I owed my life to.
I decided then that silence was probably the best.
Next to me Asher seethed. I could sense his fury, feel it building up beneath his skin. Like an Infernarus who’s taken in too much magic, he needed to release it.
He wasn’t releasing it. And I was trapped in the car with him.
I waited for it. For him to curse, to yell, to rage.
Instead, Asher began to laugh.
Laugh.
Definitely moon-touched.
“Wh—why are you laughing?” I was almost afraid to ask.
He shook his head. “Now that Aecora has my blood, you might just get the opportunity to repay your debt after all.”
The next several hours were tense. The thing about misfortunate magic is that you can’t always tell when it is responsible for bad luck. Sometimes unfortunate events happen without the aid of curses. And then sometimes you endure the aftereffects of dark magic and never fully realize that the skirmish you lost or the food poisoning you acquired were not chance events at all.
But if Aecora did indeed have Asher’s blood, she would use it, and the curse would be strong enough for us to know.
“I’m really sorry,” I said quietly, staring out the window.
“Stop apologizing,” Asher said, aggravated.
“You don’t want me to apologize, you don’t want me to save your life—what do you want from me?” I asked.
“Nothing,” Asher said. “I want nothing from you.”
I flashed him a strange look.
He tore his gaze away from the road to search my face. “Has anyone ever not wanted anything from you?”
“All Infernari are indebted to one another from birth. We owe each other allegiance. The only ones not indebted to each other are mates—”
Before I could finish the thought, a dark creature flashed in my peripheries, darting across the road. I swiveled my head in time to see a furry animal cross in front of the car.
“Asher!” I cried, my eyes widening.
His head snappe
d back to the road.
He didn’t even have time to curse before he jerked the wheel. The car swerved violently off the highway. It bounced as it left the paved road, driving over rock and underbrush.
My eyes were peeled to the sight in front of us. We careened toward a small guardrail mere feet away. Beyond it . . . the land dropped off, and I couldn’t tell how deep the gully beyond it was.
We were far too close to stop our momentum.
Asher laid on the brakes, our tires squealing. It wasn’t enough. Not nearly. Our vehicle smashed into the guardrail, which groaned and bent, and then we were moving over it. I didn’t have time to scream before the vehicle careened over the edge. There was nothing beneath us but empty air.
I gripped the door handle and the center console as I stared at the ground far below. Far, far below.
The edge of the car connected with the walls of the gully. Metal groaned as it met resistance, and then the world was flipping.
Mother above, save us.
Asher’s side of the car slammed into the sloping side of the gully again, the frame of the car making a shrieking noise as it crunched together. My body whipped about at the impact, my hair scattering. Next to me, I heard Asher grunt, and then the vehicle was rolling again, the metal banging into the sides of the mountain, and all that wondrous human technology we sat inside was now nothing more than a cheap parlor trick to the force of nature.
The window in front of us cracked, then shattered completely, hundreds of little bits of glass raining all over me.
I screamed as my side of the vehicle smashed into the mountainside, the window splintering into a web of cracks, the door denting inwards. The force of it threw my neck back.
The vehicle tipped over once more before landing awkwardly on its tires and coming to rest.
For several moments, I sat there, catching my breath.
“You . . . okay?” Asher wheezed next to me.
My eyes closed. He was alive. I was alive. We’d survived.
I swallowed and nodded. My stomach churned violently. I yanked on the door handle. When the door didn’t budge, I gave it up and scrambled out the shattered front window and slid off the hood of the car.
I barely made it to the ground before I vomited.
Just when I thought I might be over my car sickness.
I leaned over my legs, swallowing deep gulps of dusty air.
Aside from a bit of lingering nausea and sore muscles, I had escaped the crash unscathed.
Straightening, I headed over to the driver side door.
Asher watched me, a sheen of sweat on his forehead as he leaned back in his seat.
He hadn’t left the car. Unease pooled low in my belly. Why hadn’t he left the car?
Now it was my turn to ask, “Are . . . are you okay?” My heart beat madly.
“Fine . . .” A thread of pain slipped into his voice. Between that and his pinched expression, I didn’t believe him.
“You’re not, are you?” I was getting better at seeing through his lies.
“It’s just a cut,” he said, grimacing. He adjusted himself in his seat, but he wasn’t moving much.
Considering what my cut had done to me, this was not reassuring.
I was beginning to panic.
I yanked on the door handle. Metal groaned, and it gave a little, but it wouldn’t open. I tried again. This time it shifted even less.
I let go. “Can you move?” I asked him.
“My leg’s pinned,” he admitted.
The thought of him stuck and injured left me anxious. Desperate.
My hair snapped about my face.
Resolve settled over my shoulders. I would be getting Asher out.
Tucking my still tender arm close to my side, I scrambled back up the hood of the car and inside once more. The space was cramped, all sides of the vehicle had collapsed inward, especially toward the back of the car. There the frame had almost completely collapsed in on itself. Praise the Mother that it was the back end of the car that sustained the most damage. Stashed back there, Asher’s precious supplies were beyond retrieving—his weapons, his ammunition, his machines—all crushed. Everything except the gun on his hip.
I squeezed myself onto the center console, so close to Asher that my side brushed up against his.
I ignored the frantic tap of my heart, and I ignored my own fatigue. All I focused on was the way Asher’s thigh was trapped beneath the door. That part of the car had crushed inwards into the hunter, and I could smell his blood.
Bad injury.
It was an effort not to convert his blood to magic so that I could shift into something bigger, stronger. I could get him out of here if I was a giant.
But dark magic had undoubtedly been behind the crash. Best not tempt misfortune twice.
Instead I reached across him and slid my hands over his pinned thigh, shifting into my role as healer.
I felt the muscles of his leg go rigid at my touch.
“I’m feeling for your injury,” I explained.
He made an affirming noise. Or maybe it was just a grunt of pain.
I probed around the injury, hearing hisses every now and then from Asher. My fingers traced the shape of the metal that dug into his thigh, metal that appeared to be attached to the door.
Heal him. Heal him. Heal him.
The urge rode me even though I had no magic and no way of connecting with him.
I removed my hands, my eyes moving to the door.
It needed to open.
I grabbed the driver-side door handle, my body stretched across Asher’s. His hands came up, loosely bracing me by the waist. It was embarrassingly distracting, and a stab of guilt sliced through me. The man was injured and my mind drifted there.
Metal groaned as the door gave a little. It came to a halt. I pushed again. It gave just a smidgen more.
Leaning my shoulder into door, I shoved against it. Now it hung open the span of a knuckle.
All I needed was a little more leverage.
“I have an idea.”
“Lord save us,” Asher mumbled. I swear I felt his hands squeeze my sides a little tighter though, silent encouragement.
I repositioned myself on Asher’s lap, trying to jostle him as little as possible. I saw him grit his teeth anyway.
“Didn’t realize you were any good at lap dances,” he commented.
“I don’t know what a lap dance is, Asher,” I said, distracted, “but if this is it—” I swiveled my body so that my feet pressed against the door, and my arms were braced against the center console, “then I maintain that you humans are strange.”
I pulled my foot back. “Oh, and this might hurt.” I slammed the heel of my shoe into the door.
Asher groaned along with the car as the door opened the span of another knuckle, the metal digging into his skin as it slowly withdrew its hold. I kicked the door again, and again, and again, each blow opening it a bit further. All the while, I avoided looking at Asher, who was panting through his clenched teeth.
My arm throbbed in protest, but icy determination overrode the pain.
On the seventh kick, I heard Asher’s breath leave him.
“It’s off me,” he said. “I can move.”
“Can you climb through the window?”
“I’ll be fine.”
I’d heard that line so many times. Famous Infernarus pride. It took me a moment to realize Jame wasn’t an Infernarus.
Just one more way we’re not nearly so different as we’d imagined.
He refused to let me help him exit the vehicle—again, a trait I was familiar with—his leg bleeding all over the car as he dragged himself out.
After several agonizing minutes, Asher dropped to the ground
outside the vehicle. He slung his arms over his knees as he panted.
I crouched down next to him, his cool breath tickling the side of my cheek as I probed his wound.
It ran the span of a palm, and it looked deep and angry. My hands shook with the need to lay them on the gash and heal it.
Won’t work, I reminded myself. That restless energy wouldn’t leave me. And now I felt as helpless as Asher had been only minutes ago. I had no ability to heal him.
I sat on my haunches and looked on hopelessly.
“I’m fine, Lana,” he said.
That didn’t reassure me.
He huffed out a pained laugh and shook his head. “Well, now we know one thing for sure.”
I waited for him to continue.
“Someone made good use of my fucking blood.”
Asher
Several hours and a shit ton of disappointments later, we continued in a rusted, beat-up rented Kia Picanto. Driving over potholes, my head thumped against the low ceiling, forcing me to scrunch forward. On any incline whatsoever—or even in a gentle breeze—the gutless three-cylinder, sixty-horsepower engine revved up like an angry fruit fly pissing around your ear.
The gash in my leg throbbed like a bitch, so I drove with teeth gritted, hunched over like Cruella Deville.
A weaponless Jame Asher with a bad leg driving up in a golf cart, just the thing to strike fear into every demon’s heart.
This day could suck it.
“You just had to wear it around your neck,” I muttered darkly. “Couldn’t have hidden it in your pocket, or in a purse, or in your shoe . . . no, you had to flaunt it around so every bloodthirsty demon could be like, ‘Oh, look, there’s Jame Asher’s blood . . . let’s get some of that and curse him.’”
“That was wretched of Aecora to steal it,” Lana said sadly, touching the empty spot around her neck. “But at least it wasn’t enough to kill you.”
“No, but there’s still the blood Grandmaddox stole, which she’s clearly saving—and I have a feeling whatever she curses me with will be worse than death.” I shifted my leg, cringing as the scab reopened. I needed stitches.
Blood and Sin (The Infernari Book 1) Page 23