I followed her gaze to where my mother and her mystic stood at the bottom of the front porch. Check had his arms still raised in the air, that strange arcing purple conduit snapping between his fingers. One of his crew sat on the steps, drumming out a soft rhythm. It lifted into the air and wafted over to us.
"A barrier," I said, feeling the hum of magic all around me. A purple haze of it wavered around the boundaries of the community. "You think he put up a barrier? With magic?"
"I know he did." Without another word, she crossed over the grass toward him.
I heard Franco trying to collect himself into some sort of manly presentation and failing quite miserably. He obviously wasn't strong enough yet to shift and heal the rest of the damage. I reached out to him and he gripped me by the elbow as I yanked him to his feet.
He leaned heavily on me as we made our way toward the front step. The rhythm of the drums seemed to match our own striding rhythm, and before long it felt almost as though it was part of my own heartbeat. Alma's pace ahead of us was a plodding sort of hitching walk. The blood from the huntsman that she had killed was running down between her shoulder blades and congealing at the base of her spine. She seemed unaware or impervious to the feel of it trickling down her skin. I watched as she nearly stumbled once or twice, that foot of hers seeming to have a mind of its own. I wondered briefly why the silver in the hunter's blood wasn't making her retch in pain.
It was tough to see several of my own wolves lying dead or dying, but I forced myself to look at them, burning their miseries into my mind. Others were attending to the wounded. Those who plodded along the grass, were already making short work of the huntsman who still lived. Check stood in front of the steps with his arms still raised and my mother sat at his feet in a gypsy type skirt spread out around her at his feet like a disciple. I should have felt grateful, but I wanted to hurl. Every miserable face kept flashing in front of my vision, threatening to make me sick.
"I suppose we have you to thank for repelling the attack?" I said to Check.
He levelled me with a direct stare but said nothing. The tattoos on his face were outlined again in red. I couldn't help but wonder if those tattoos were the source of his power. They had looked the same when he had attacked me earlier.
"I told you he was powerful." Artemis pushed herself to her feet and stood in front of me. For some ungodly reason, she looked incredibly refreshed. As though she hadn't so much as growled at any one of the attackers. "He put a force field around the grounds too," she said. "He assures me it will hold."
I looked at Check. "Is that so?" I said. "Will it hold?" I wanted desperately for it to be true and yet something bothered me about the whole affair. It felt too contrived.
He nodded and lowered his hands to his sides. The drumming immediately ceased. Rather than having a relieving effect on me, my skin prickled in anxiety.
"It's a supernatural barrier," Artemis explained. "A small one, just around the manse and its immediate property. Meant to keep humans from crossing. If they attempt it, the magic will drain them of energy. It won't be a pleasant death. Any of us may do so without trouble."
"So we're safe?" I said, forcing her to answer.
"Yes," she said. "For now."
"Good," I said. "We have time to tend to the wounded." This time I couldn't scan the grounds. I couldn't bring myself to see the agony that waited. "Thank you," I blurted out, and meant it. If I could just shake the feeling of unease, I might have been able to sound as though I did.
I watched as some of my pack gathered themselves, the unhurt helping the injured. A few came forward, limping and dragging friends, heading for respite or a place to shift in private. Many of them sent sidelong glances at my mother and Check, nodding gratefully while they avoided my eye. Some of them were murmuring to themselves. I thought I could hear something about the old blood and my stomach flipped. I grit my teeth as I looked at her again. She was stealing their loyalty without so much as lifting a finger and here my pack had done all the hard fighting, suffering, dying, even.
"I think we should go in," I said because I couldn't bear to be near her any longer, not with the way my pack were staring at her in something akin to adoration. "I need to check on Lynden."
"Of course," she said. "The boy will wonder if his sister still lives."
I was about to make a comment about sisters, but I heard someone cry out from the woods. I knew the sound of the voice. I knew it all too well.
Jeb. A human man out past the barrier. I had seen what the mere throwing up of the barrier had done to the huntsmen, what it did to the shifted wolves within it. I didn't need further explanation to know what had happened to Jeb. All I knew was that Alma's words came rushing back: he's going to die, and I was rushing headlong across the property to the source of his cries. Jeb didn't cry out. Ever. If he was doing so now, he was in dire straits. I could barely swallow for the fear lodged in my throat.
He wasn't dead yet, but I feared that if I didn't reach him soon, he most certainly would be.
CLOSING A CIRCUIT
Everything in my world tunneled down to one small pinprick of light. I knew someone was following me. I could hear their footsteps as they ran behind me, but I didn't care. There was no stealth to the pace, no purpose. It was a headlong and irregular pace, not a focused soldierly advance, so I knew it wasn't a hunter. By the time I reached the garden of rhododendrons and magnolia trees, I had long outpaced the assailant. Probably just one the rogue females anyway, terrified by the gunfire and rushing headlong from one of the cottages out toward the forest because long ingrained sense of self-preservation bid her do so. Reflex and conditioning did horrible things to a psyche, but I'd round her up later, once Jeb was safe. If any other frightening thing waited behind trees or bushes, I didn't care. All I could think of was reaching Jeb before what was left of his voice revealed there was nothing left of his breath. Whatever came after that, I would face then.
I wasn't sure what I expected to find. I only imagined all sorts of things as I tore for the woods. Lacerations, open wounds. Fractures and bleeding noses. Cracked skulls. Even as I thought of all of those things, I knew none of them would be enough to make a man like him cry out, not while we were under attack, not while crying out could mean the death of him or someone he loved. Not that man. He'd served in in Guantánamo Bay, learned to understand pain. He'd once let Caleb's jailer peel away a strip of flesh from his arm without making a sound because to cry out meant to show weakness. A soldier like Jeb never showed weakness when strength was the thing needed. The fact that he cried out in pain and kept letting that keening sound carry on the wind with threats all about the property, twisted through my gut as I ran. Each time another bloodcurdling scream rent the air, his cries grew ever weaker. He was losing it. I had to get there fast.
I had made the treeline by the time I caught sight of him. As I expected, he was on the wrong side of the purple haze. That twitching, hulk of a form of his lay several yards away from the barrier and I fancied just before I launched myself through it that he looked at me. He was begging me for help with those crystalline eyes of his, clear and blue even in the shadows of the trees as though lit from inside and reaching out to me. A strange thing, to see him so clearly when he was couched in shade, but my own senses were so electric, I might as well have been feeding him my own energy as he lay there. The twitching spasms had already begun to subside and he had begun to sag from the loss of muscle tone.
I believed I'd feel pain as I breeched the barrier, and when I felt nothing, I thought the shock of it all merely dulled my senses. No matter. I was there. He was there. I'd made it.
I thought three lunges forward would do it and I was already sprinting at him when I heard a twig crackle off to my left. I froze, coming up short in the detritus and making a pine needle throw itself up from the forest floor onto my lips. I tasted the balsam so clearly I felt as though time had halted with me. I took a longing look at Jeb and then rolled my eyes sideways, never so much
as moving a muscle of my neck or shoulders.
Two of them stepping out from the underbrush. Neither was masked and the fleur-di-lis stood out on their cheeks with the painful precision of clarity that a critical moment allows an onlooker. They thought I hadn't heard them and were still creeping forward with rifles raised. I couldn't figure out why they weren't shooting but I was grateful.
I waited, pretending to be cautiously inspecting the surroundings on the other side of Jeb. Every hair on my body raised in alert, feeling out for vibrations. I wished I was naked. I would shift and surprise the hell out of them. As it was, I didn't dare do anything except ready myself to launch sideways at them. Waiting for the moment when they would be close enough for me to attack.
My moment came when one of them stepped on a branch hard enough to make it screech against his boots. We all knew in that moment that he had given themselves away and I launched myself toward the sound, hoping all the while that I would connect with his knees and tumble him before he had a chance to squeeze the trigger. No such luck. The sound of the report unhinged a nightmarish sort of chaos. I could hear the bullets thudding into the trees and into the ground. I prayed as my shoulder connected his legs that none of them had struck Jeb.
Apparently I had taken them both by such surprise that the second one had to adjust his stance. I managed to roll over, pulling his partner on top of me and even before I fully flipped onto my back, I heard the partner's rifle discharge. Blood from my quarry spilled out onto my face. That same stink of silver and sulfered magic stung my nose. Before I could think twice, I snaked my hand out from underneath of him and gripped his partner's ankle. I pulled, knowing that the man would either fall or I would yank myself free. My skin was burning from the colloidal silver in the man's blood and I was growing dizzy with the miasma of magic. I wasn't sure how I managed to down the fellow, but down him I did. He lay squirming in the glass try to reclaim his dropped rifle. I crawled my way onto him, using my fingers to find purchase on any part of his body that would allow it, and I stared down into his tattooed face. It was deadpan. Like a zombie. There was no intelligence nor sanity in the gaze that peered back at me.
Didn't matter. Intelligent or not, he was my enemy. I leaned into his neck and opened my mouth wide.
The prickle of transformation tried to make it through the stinging of silver that was even now leaking down onto my collarbone. Fully human and impotent to change, I bit down anyway. I heard him shriek into my ear as I sawed through his jugular with my human incisors. The taste of silver and the horrible agony of the silver in his blood made the insides of my cheeks sizzle. I kept on anyway. I kept on until his cries died in my ears and his body went limp beneath me.
I vomited up pools of the already coagulating and viscous fluid. It burned like a bitch and made me dizzy and lightheaded. How I managed to struggle over to Jeb, I would never remember. I only knew that through a haze of pain and fear, my only thought was to get to him, to get him out of there. By the time I reached him, he was already unconscious. I hung over him like a vulture, inspecting the flesh beneath my hands for life. He was as a whole and healthy looking as a newborn baby. A groan escaped me, seeing him lying so limp and helpless. Not Jeb. Not the man I believed to be the only match for my wolf. Never in all my days had I submitted, even to a shifter. I'd had lovers, yes, but none made my wolf want to lay bare its belly and trust. Not even Caleb who forced the alpha bond and the heat on me. Now this human man made me more afraid than I'd ever felt, more bereft. I felt as if the walls of my lungs were being sucked together under a vacuum's pressure.
I was aware as I fell to a crouch next to him that I was muttering but nothing coherent was coming out. I ran my hands down his body, checking for broken bones and when I found none, I began stripping him of his clothing right there. I didn't see any blood, but I wanted to know if there were wounds that would make moving him more of a danger than staying put.
As always, the sight of his naked body made me gasp. This time, however, it wasn't in lust-soaked desire. Every muscle of his body was tight and well honed, the small bit of peach fuzz between his pectorals trailed down to the treasure trail around his hips. It was perfect. Not a spot on him. There was no yellowish bruise no red markings, nothing to indicate any contact. Still, he was out cold.
I slipped my fingers behind his occipital bone, tilting his chin upward so that I could listen for his breath. Thank the Lord, he was breathing. But it was a thready, gasping sound that I could barely make out unless my ear was pressed against his nose. I tested for a pulse. That too was sporadic and weak. Despite the pain that laced itself all the way from my mouth to my stomach, doing its best to steal my consciousness, I ran my hand down the length of his body to his femoral artery and laid my fingertips against it. I focused. Steeling myself against the agony that demanded immediate attention. It was a greedy lover, this pain. It fought against my concentration in a way that had me weaving over top of Jeb, one moment conscious, the other moment dizzy with the desire to pass out.
Even so, I managed to count the beats. This one pulse was stronger, but still not as robust as it should be. I squeezed my eyes closed, thinking. I needed to get him out of the woods. I needed to get him somewhere safe. God knew how many huntsmen were still out in the woods watching us, maybe taking aim right then. My only hope was that he was just beyond consciousness and would come around enough that I could drag them to the mansion. Then I remembered. I couldn't take him to the manse. I couldn't get him back through the barrier without killing him. I didn't think I could so much as lift him without passing out.
"It's alright, Jeb," I said. I had the feeling he couldn't hear me, but I wanted to talk to him. I needed to find some way to make contact. "I'm here. You're safe." I vaguely remembered saying the same things to Alma and my eyes burned with the sting of tears that wanted out.
If this man actually did die, I was going to take my vengeance in spades.
"It was the barrier," came a small voice.
I looked up to see Alma standing with her hands pinned over her heart. The fingers were twisting within each other. She was on the other side of the barrier and looked like there was a film of purple over her skin. It gave her a ghastly caste.
"What do I do?" I said.
"You can't bring him back through," she said. "I can feel from here that he won't make it."
"You can feel?" I said, realizing in the instant I said it, this girl owned the power she claimed to. She had envisioned his death. "Is it now, his death? Tell me. Is it today?"
"I want to help," she said. She took a step closer, timid. As though she thought I would turn her away. The foolish thing, with my lover lying there beneath my hands, already slipping away, the only way I would send her away was if she could do nothing.
"Then help me," I said.
At that, she stepped through the gauzy electrical buzz and onto my side of the barrier. Half a dozen hitching steps, and she had crouched next to me, running her hands over his flesh. I looked sideways at her, taking in the blush that crept up her shoulders to her face. She had never seen a naked man before obviously. She'd have no way of knowing that I too sometimes blushed at sight of Jeb's body, even here, with fear in my throat like ice shards and the clinical need to find his ailment, he was still beautiful to me. Despite my pain, my dizziness, my own longing was so acute it was the only thing keeping me aware. No less so for her, I imagined. But there was something else pulsing beneath her features. Something that reminded me of the connection she had made with Franco earlier. I weaved back and forth, her face blurring in and out.
"Can you do anything?" I asked her again. I didn't care what it took. I wanted him fixed.
"The barrier is potent," she said. "Meant to ward the property against humans and protect the supernaturals within."
"That doesn't answer my question."
"He's dying," she said and then she sent a sidelong glance at me. I watched her face for a long moment, trying to assess how she felt about that. I kne
w how I felt, but did she care enough to do what it took?
"That still doesn't answer my question."
"It will take a lot of power. A lot of magic. I might be able to help, but I'm going to need something from you to boost it."
I had visions of her slicing my wrist so my blood could fall onto his nude skin. I almost staggered backward as my vision greyed out but fought the pain. I didn't care what it took. I didn't care if I lived through it.
"Whatever it is, you have it."
The girl made no sound as she reached for a tiny pocket knife she had secreted into her bra. She sliced across her palm, bringing blood welling to the surface. She stared at it for a long moment before she did the same to the other hand and looked at me. I gave her my hand without hesitation and she jabbed the point of it into my palm, much like pricking for a test. I smiled at that. She didn't want to hurt me. I gripped the hand that held the blade, fully intending to force it to slice through my palm but she shook her head. It was enough.
She dipped one finger into the droplet of blood on my palm, and mingled it with her own, then she murmured a few foreign syllables and placed my palm over the tattoo on her neck.
"Hold fast," she said. "Move with me if I move. Don't let go."
I nodded and watched her grip behind Jeb's head, cradling it in her right palm as she cupped his face with the other. The circuit was connected, and I felt it hum run all the way down my spine and into my ankles.
I gasped, and then everything changed.
ALL THINGS BEING EQUAL
I knew Jeb pretty well by now. I knew every inch of his body, every place where he was sensitive to being so ticklish, he would reflexively kick you if you dared touch them. I knew the way he snored when he slept on his back and the way he didn't want anyone to know he had a scar on the top of his head where Olanna had struck him with a bottle when they were playing bartender as kids. But knowing a man intimately from the outside in is not the same as knowing a man from the soul out. When Alma touched the two of us and sent a current of her magic through the film of sweat that rested on our skin, I felt as though our spirits had joined and not just our bodies. It was a far more intimate contact than I had ever encountered and the delirium of pleasure that coursed through me made me feel as though I were soaring like a feather in a tornado. I had no control.
Rogue Breed (Rogue Huntress Chronicles Book 2) Page 15