Rowan waited, not replying as she pressed the dagger harder against Izzy’s throat.
Nosh crashed down to his knees, holding up both palms. His tomahawk already rested in one hand, and the second tomahawk suddenly appeared in the other, both blades crackling with a steady blue glow. He held them out to Rowan. “Let her go. Please. Let your choice show her that your claim is true. That you aren’t as evil as the High Priestess led the world to believe. And…she doesn’t need to see what comes next. Not if you meant any word of your story.”
Rowan handed the dagger back to the witch guarding Izzy, and slowly approached Nosh, looking wary of an attack. Nosh remained motionless, staring down at the ground. Rowan carefully accepted the blades, and the crackling blue light winked out. I momentarily panicked, but the row of witches behind her gasped collectively, practically quivering with anticipation. Was the blue power associated only with Nosh? Just like the tomahawk had been red in my control?
Come on, Nero, I thought to myself. Now, while everyone is distracted.
Rowan shuddered at the power and control of wielding the tomahawks. She slowly inspected them, holding them up to the light. They looked just as they had on the mantle above the fireplace in the Griffins’ Penthouse.
She lowered one of the tomahawks to her side but lifted the other to press against Nosh’s scalp, right at the hairline. I began to panic, realizing that I was the only one able to put a stop to this—even if I felt sluggish and drained. I hugged the wall, drifting closer to Izzy in hopes that I could kill her captors and at least shove her to safety so that Nosh could reclaim the blades with his magic.
Unless…it was already too late for him to do that. Had he already given them up, or did some ritual need to take place? Like the one Rowan looked ready to start upon his scalp. Nosh had mentioned not wanting Izzy to see what came next, which implied there was a process to passing on the blades. Probably a very bloody process, judging by Rowan’s first use of the blade.
I drifted closer, careful not to move fast enough that I drew the attention of the other witches. I was only ten feet from Izzy when Rowan smiled sadly at Nosh.
A lone drop of blood rolled down his forehead, and I abruptly felt a weakened, but white-hot, fire blazing within my heart. My son was bleeding.
“I don’t think so, shaman,” Rowan said. “We can’t afford any witnesses or any mistakes. We’re already on the verge of failure. There are barely any of us left. I’m sorry, but I just can’t take the chance.”
And I actually believed her.
Nosh’s eyes widened in fear.
37
Out of nowhere, a wolf leapt up onto the opposite side of the stage, barking wildly and drawing everyone’s attention. I solidified, ready to destroy the guards in one fell swoop. Instead, I abruptly crashed to my knees as the strain of maintaining my mist form for so long hit me all at once. I felt dizzy and alarmingly weak. My hands shook violently, and I knew I didn’t have the strength to do more than wrestle—and even that seemed like a dubious attack plan in my current state. At least the barking wolf had masked the sound of me heroically collapsing onto the stage.
So, I did the unexpected. I dove in front of Izzy, landing on my knees as I reached for the rusted dagger the witch guard had been holding a few inches away from her throat. Luckily, I moved faster than she could react. Unluckily, I grabbed it by the blade. With no other option but to proceed, I wrapped my fingers over the sharp edge so that even if the witch pulled against my puny strength, all she would accomplish would be to press my knuckles into Izzy’s throat.
And potentially slice off my fingers, of course.
I stared into Izzy’s bewildered eyes as the witch violently tugged against my grip, causing her blade to bite deep into my flesh. I gritted my teeth, focusing on the older wound in my side to ignore the fresh new pains on my fingers. Hot blood dripped over my knuckles, making my grip slippery. I squeezed tighter, panting in both desperation and agony. “Think of the tomahawk in your hand!” I hissed at Izzy, trying to keep both her guard and Rowan in my peripheral vision.
Rowan began sliding the tomahawk across Nosh’s scalp, sensing that her time for conversation was at an end. Blood spilled from his hairline, and the air suddenly pulsed with heavy magic, making my teeth rattle.
I saw furry shapes zipping about the edges of the stage, dodging exploding potions, but I ignored them. I wasn’t sure which tomahawk Rowan was currently using—Izzy’s or Nosh’s—but it was all I could think to do without relying on the wolves and Nero. Potions continued exploding in the air and I sensed more vampires and werewolves battling it out, filling the air with the sharp tang of witch’s blood and the agonized screams as some of my soldiers burned from a thrown potion.
“Now, Izzy!” I snapped, swallowing the pain from my bleeding fingers.
The tomahawk against Nosh’s scalp abruptly winked out of existence and appeared in Izzy’s bound hands. Rowan cursed, lifting the other tomahawk to resume her work on Nosh. Izzy spun, swinging the tomahawk at her captor. The witch guard was agile enough to jump back a step—
And right into a pair of werewolves. They tore her in half before she could even scream, striking from two different directions at two different heights to liberally shower Izzy in blood.
I let out a breath of relief, clutching my lacerated fingers to my chest, wondering if I would ever use them again. I definitely couldn’t bend them at the moment. I couldn’t even feel them. I did my best to position myself between Izzy and any threats, even though I was utterly useless at the moment. I couldn’t even call up my cloak, I felt so drained of power. I felt hollow.
“She’s safe, Nosh!” I shouted weakly, checking on him amidst the chaos.
Upon hearing my words, Nosh snarled and the tomahawk in Rowan’s hand disappeared, making her stumble in alarm as her momentum caused her to slow-punch Nosh in the bloody forehead—which was understandably slick, so she almost fell to the ground.
Nosh exploded up from his kneeling position to grab a fistful of hair on the top of Rowan’s head. He sliced his tomahawk across her throat in one swift motion, the blazing blue fire of his skinwalker blade instantly cauterizing the wound as he separated her head from her neck. He held her severed head before him, screaming and chanting at it as his own forehead painted his face in a sheet of blood that looked like war paint. Nosh dove towards us, seeming to hang horizontal in the air as his spirit bear exploded out from beneath the stage, sending shrapnel and planks of wood in every direction.
The bear’s arrival knocked down a tight grouping of witches who seemed to be causing the most harm. The bear roared, lunging forward and…
Well, he bit the tits off one witch. That caught me entirely off guard. Not more than her, of course. Then it began playing dirty, swiping a massive paw at any witch who tried to run away.
Nosh landed before me with a grunt, ignoring the still-falling pieces of the destroyed stage. He quickly climbed to his feet, panting heavily. His blood-soaked face was nightmarish.
He looked like the shaman of death.
Apparently, he felt he needed to live up to that image. Both tomahawks appeared in his hands, and he began hurling them at any potion flipping through the air. Except they didn’t explode upon contact; they simply evaporated, along with his tomahawk. Then the blades were suddenly back in his hands before he threw them at more airborne potions, nullifying the threats.
Vampires and werewolves darted through the battle, and I saw two vampires drinking deeply from the same witch while a werewolf gnawed on her leg.
One witch hurled a potion toward the spirit bear’s back.
Lucian appeared through a cloud of smoke about ten feet above the shattered stage, sailing towards the bear. He struck the spirit bear’s shoulders with all four paws hard enough to knock him clear of the thrown potion before he rebounded with perfect precision to strike the witch’s stomach with his open jaws.
He clamped them shut, crushing the witch’s waist in a spray of blood.
And then he flung his head back and forth, relishing in the witch’s dying screams as I heard her flesh tear and bone snap. Lucian flung the broken witch into the front wall of the stage, knocking one of the tied curtains free so that it swung closed over half of the stage.
The spirit bear appraised the blood-drenched werewolf king, and the two beasts dipped their heads in a silent acknowledgment of respect before resuming their individual battles.
“Come on, Sorin. Let’s get away while they’re all distracted,” Nosh urged, grabbing me from under my armpits and hoisting me to my feet. Then he gently shoved me after Izzy towards the steps that led down to the seating area of the theater. I nodded woozily, trying not to listen to the death screams behind me as I focused on placing one foot in front of the other.
I made the first step without issue, but the second one broke under my weight. I tumbled into Izzy, sending us both crashing down the stairs as I silently cursed the spirit bear for breaking the steps. I cracked my head on something hard on the way, but I wasn’t lucky enough to fall unconscious.
“What the hell did he trip over?” Nosh demanded, rolling me onto my side and off Izzy.
“There was nothing to trip over. The stairs aren’t damaged. I think he’s just exhausted.”
One of them helped me to my feet, not listening to my incoherent mumblings about the bear breaking the steps.
I heard Izzy gasp, but I couldn’t see her face clearly. “Nosh. He needs help. And who the hell is throwing silver around in here?” she hissed. I felt her shove a fire poker into my wound and I dropped like a dead weight, dragging her down with me.
This time, she fell atop me, straddling my hips and staring into my eyes with a look of panic. Her gag hung around her neck, but her face was still caked with dried blood.
“Hey, you,” I murmured, squinting my eyes at the attractive, red-headed blur. “I really should have listened to Aphrodite…” I mumbled.
The room tilted on me and suddenly Nosh was hauling me to my feet again, staring into my eyes. “Where is Nero?” he demanded. “We need to get him back to the museum. Now!”
“What did he mean about Aphrodite?” Izzy asked, sounding flustered. “Did she do this to him?” Then she hissed. “Good god! Look at his fingers! That one is barely even attached! He saved my life!”
“Go!” I heard Renfield shout from somewhere nearby. “I’ll wrap up this mess and meet you back at the museum.”
“Hey, Sorin. I’ve got you,” Nero said, slipping under my arm to support my weight, and making me feel like we were all wrapped up in one big tangle since I could only make out voices, not faces. Everything was moving so fast that it was just a blur. I felt a large furry presence press up against my thigh, supporting my weight from the other side with a nervous whine. “Hold on, everyone,” Nero shouted.
The theater winked out of existence, but the screams of the last surviving member of the Cauldron came along with us, echoing into the void of nothingness like the sweetest lullaby.
38
I woke up in my bedchambers, tucked under my silk sheets and feeling vaguely alive. I managed to prop myself up into the next best thing to a seated position, leaning back against my headboard as I groaned at the wave of various pains that rolled throughout my body as my wounds reintroduced me to the land of the living with their sadistic cheers. I waited a moment for them to subside, and then I took a shaky breath. “Who’s the lucky guy?” I murmured out loud, realizing that I wasn’t wearing a stitch of clothes beneath the sheets.
Someone fell off the couch with a grunt. Izzy popped up a moment later, a blanket wrapped around her shoulders and her hair a damp, tangled mess. “That would be me,” she said, blushing. “Everyone else was busy.”
I grunted, shifting my weight slightly. “They just didn’t want to be embarrassed by my epic manliness—” I yelped in pain as I tried to grip my sheets with my fingers, feeling like I’d just torn half of them off my hand.
“Right,” Izzy said, sarcastically. “Epic. Don’t use your fingers yet, Mr. Macho.”
I nodded, taking a look at my wounded fingers. They were red and swollen, but at least they were attached rather than hanging by strips of flesh. The wound in my side felt better—if I was comparing it to having an exploratory, white-hot, fire poker scraping it clean.
I glanced down to see that my sheets were drenched with blood from where the bandage had soaked through. Izzy was now sitting on the bed beside me, leaning over to frown familiarly at the sodden bandage. “I’ll need to replace it. Again. While I work, you can tell me why it’s not healing, and why you didn’t tell anyone how bad it really was.” She leaned back upright and stared at me with an accusatory frown. “And don’t give me any bullshit about how it must have happened at the theater. You left an alarmingly thick trail of blood everywhere you went, and the bandage I first replaced had plenty of dried blood. As did your jacket and shirt. And your pantleg. Your shoe was even filled with blood. Nothing that would have happened from five minutes of exertion.”
My mouth clicked shut. “Where is Nero? He gives lollipops with his heaping judgments.”
Izzy laughed, folding her arms. “Nero is a shit doctor and almost got you killed. Lollipops are bad for your health.”
“Preach, sister,” Nero said, walking into the room.
Izzy’s face clouded over at the word sister and I winced.
Nero paused, seeming to realize what he’d done. “Sorry, Izzy. I didn’t mean it like that.” She nodded stiffly, masking a tear rolling down her cheeks by keeping her back to him. “I brought fresh bandages. And lollipops,” he said lamely.
I waved at him over her shoulder. “Thanks, Nero. Could you give us a few minutes?”
“Of course. Lucian won’t let anyone else besides Nosh inside the room, but most everyone is sleeping anyway. It’s the middle of the afternoon.”
I stiffened in panic and Izzy placed a palm on my chest, pinning me down with alarming ease. “Thank you, Nero,” she said in a polite tone that was clearly a dismissal.
I heard the door close and Izzy pressed down on my chest harder, using me to assist her to her feet. She made her way over to the supplies Nero had set on the table, and I noticed how stiffly and lethargically she moved. I hadn’t considered how tired she must be after being held captive and…whatever that had entailed. It was also a measure of how weak I currently was that she had so easily restrained me.
I licked my lips, realizing that I was ridiculously thirsty. I hadn’t even expected to survive, let alone wake up feeling better. Izzy must have taken incredible care of me to bring me back from the brink without risking my bloodlust. When I was as injured as I had obviously been, my appetite could be positively fatal to anyone within a mile of me.
To everyone within a mile of me.
“Are you okay?” I asked her. “Nero brought lollipops if you’re hurt,” I reminded her.
She nodded. “I’m fine. They slapped me around a little, but nothing major. Nosh came just in time. As did you. Your intended martyrdom really cinched the deal.” I could tell she was frustrated at me for putting myself in danger, and she wasn’t wrong to feel that way, so I didn’t try to defend myself. She let out a breath. “That being said, I would be dead right now if not for you. I don’t think they would have waited until the ritual was over to kill me. So…thank you, Sorin.”
I shrugged. “It’s what heroes do,” I said with false bravado, smiling to show her that I was mocking myself in an attempt to downplay my actions.
She smiled, carrying Nero’s supplies over. She had one of his lollipops in her mouth, but she didn’t carry one over for me. I scowled unhappily. She pretended not to notice.
“I had to start turning down blood donors after we hit fifty,” she said, shrugging off the blanket from around her shoulders and sitting back down on the bed beside me. “They all wanted to help—every single vampire, every werewolf not on patrol, and even the Nephilim. It would be easier to count how many didn’t want to offer you
a drink—which was zero.”
“I’m the most popular girl at the bar.”
She laughed, peeling off the tape over my bandage with extreme caution. I lifted my arms above my head, lacing my fingers—very carefully—behind my neck so as to give her more room to work.
“Is everyone okay? I didn’t kill anyone in my bloodlust, did I?”
She shook her head. “I kept you pinned down. You were as weak as a kitten—and just as angry,” she murmured despite the lollipop in her mouth, leaning close enough for me to both feel her breath and almost taste the candy as she peeled the stuck bandage away. I didn’t even need to look down at it. I could feel how bad it looked—even better than if I had physically looked at it.
Rather than getting defensive about her comment, I let out a sigh of relief to hear that no one had died trying to feed me while I had been in such a blood-crazed state. “Just imagine how much better I’d feel with a lollipop,” I said wistfully.
She smiled, fixing her attention on my wound even though her face was mere inches away. The fact that I didn’t instinctively want to take a drink from her neck spoke volumes about my condition. She really had brought me back from the brink. I hadn’t even thought about biting her neck until I’d thought about the fact that I hadn’t thought about it.
She leaned back and bit the lollipop off, tossing the stick onto the pile of soiled bandages. Then she began dabbing around my wound with a damp cloth. “So. What am I looking at here? Nero grows suspiciously silent whenever I ask, and Lucian pretends to be asleep anytime I look at him. I know it’s a silver wound, but none of the typical silver treatment seems to be having an effect. I can’t figure out what else it is on top of the poisonous metal. That mystery is preventing me from healing you completely.”
Devil’s Blood: Shade of Devil Book 3 Page 24