Bastian nodded.
“So, I’m not crazy? All that stuff really happened with the guns and the fighting and the walking dead?”
A half smile curved the corner of his mouth. The sentiment looked rusty, a little out of practice. She liked it. “Since I don’t know you, I can’t say if you’re crazy or not. Were you seeing things? No. Are you dreaming? No. You’ve had a really shitty night. I can attest to that.”
“Shitty,” she repeated in agreement. Using her chin and trying to move as little as possible, she motioned to his hand. “Your palm glowed, before, when you healed. How?”
“Magic. Energy. Whatever you want to call it. Necromancers generally only have power over the dead, but we can do a few spells derived from death that affect the living. We call what Ronan did to Rory—the rapid aging—the Withering Touch. I can do a version of it on a smaller scale to heal instead of harm. I speed the aging process, use it to mend affected areas. I’ll need to touch you, skin on skin, for it to work, though. I know you’ve been through a lot. Are you going to be able to tolerate someone touching you?”
Magic? Energy? Necromancer? Power over the dead? She wasn’t crazy but… The questions circling in her head gave her the spins.
“The other night you called me a necromancer. Is that what I am? What you are?” she asked.
He looked away from her. “About the other night… I wasn’t at my finest. You aren’t the only one Ronan was after. As for being a necromancer, yes, you have power over the dead. I’ll guess since you were adopted, you never knew your parents, or at least you don’t remember them. If raised with other necromancers to guide you, you would have grown up knowing your abilities and how to control them.”
Her eyes narrowed. “How did you know I was adopted? Better yet, how did you know where I lived? That I even needed help?”
“Nolan hacked into your records. All of them. We saw your connection to Ronan and decided to find out what you knew. My brothers and I have a vested interest in Ronan and anyone he associates with. Now about that healing,” he said, cutting off the topic. “Is it okay if I touch you?”
“Shower,” she said, still processing the half information he’d given her.
He blinked. “What?”
“If I’m not going to die anytime soon, I want a shower, as hot as I can stand it. All I can smell is oleander blooms.” She met Bastian’s gaze. For the first time since she could remember, she didn’t censor the hatred, the agony, the terror she felt. She let him see it all. “I feel him on my skin, inside me. I want him gone.”
Bastian never dropped her gaze. “There’s some bruising, bite marks, on your inner thighs. I’ve got to ask only so I know how much damage there is.” His jaw hardened. “Did he rape you?”
Darkness swam. Memories flooded in, spilled over until she was back in her apartment, tied to the floor and naked. Pain, so much pain. His body on hers. Cold. Hard. Hands touching, seeking, twisting. Mouth scraping, biting, laughing.
“You’ll learn your lesson one way or another.”
“No,” she said slowly. “He didn’t, ah…” Her gaze slid to a battered copy of Pet Sematary by Stephen King on the floor. She stared at the creepy cat with the glowing green eyes on the cover, and continued to speak without looking at him. “This may sound crazy, but what he did to me might have been worse than rape. I think I might have been able to…endure…that.” She shook her head and wished she’d kept her mouth shut. “That’s a stupid thing to say, I know.”
Out the corner of her eye she saw Bastian reach for her hand. He pulled away at the last moment. “It’s not crazy or stupid, Morgan. Trust me. I know better than anyone what Ronan is capable of. If you want a shower, then we’ll start there. You aren’t going to be able to do it on your own, though. Let me call someone, another woman to help you.”
Morgan met his eyes. There was no pity behind them, only understanding.
“You’re a cop. You probably see this kind of thing all the time. I trust you, and I don’t want anyone else involved. If you don’t mind helping, I’d just as soon you do it. You’ve already seen me naked and at my worst. I want Ronan off me and don’t really care how I achieve that. Boiling water, a vat of bleach—hell, I’d even be willing to pour acid on my skin if I thought it would help.”
Bastian’s head cocked to one side as he studied her. “How’d you know I was law enforcement?”
Should she tell him she was his anonymous informant? She pulled her lower lip between her teeth. “Newspapers?”
He crossed his arms over his chest and gave her the look. The cop look. “Try again, and this time don’t make your answer sound like a question.”
She decided to lay it all out. “Dead people talk to me.” He didn’t even so much as blink. Taking that as a good sign, she continued. “Sometimes they tell me really specific things, about how and where they died. When that happens…”
Recognition lit his eyes, and one of those smiles she thought might be reserved solely for her appeared. “You’re my informant, the one who refused to tell me your name or meet me. It all makes sense now.”
“Are you going to arrest me?” she asked.
His smile went slack. “Did you kill any of those people? Were you an accomplice? Did you withhold information on purpose?”
She shook her head to each question.
“Well, then I won’t arrest you. Now, do you need me to carry you into the bathroom, or can you walk?”
Pride lifted her chin. “I can walk.”
With help she pretended she wasn’t getting, Morgan rose from the bed. Her knees wobbled and her stomach pitched, but she remained upright. Bastian’s leather jacket fell to the middle of her thighs, and she held the material around her as best she could. The coat smelled of death, fire, and blood. The thing needed burning when this was through.
Together—mostly him supporting her—they hobbled to the sliver of light she’d seen earlier. He used a sweeping foot to clear a path and muttered, “I wasn’t expecting company.”
The gray and black tiled bathroom was small and relatively tidy in comparison to the bedroom. Only one towel lay on the ground, and a few articles of clothing were shoved between the glass shower stall and the narrow toilet.
Her gaze moved to the clutter on the granite counter before she looked up at the mirror over the sink. Holy shit! Gasping, she pressed a hand to the black-and-blue imprint of Ronan’s hand circling her throat like a necklace.
Bastian turned her away from the mirror. He used a finger under her chin and lifted her head until she looked into his eyes. “You don’t need to see. When I’m done with the healing, it’ll be like nothing happened. On the outside at least.”
Pretty words, but it was too late. She’d already seen, and seeing made it hurt.
The lumpy and swollen mass of her face changed her into someone she didn’t recognize. Shades of purple and blue colored her skin, made her alien. Both eyes were bloodshot and ringed in dark, puffy bruises. The split in her lower lip oozed.
Bastian slid open the glass shower door and adjusted the knobs inside until the heavy spray of water thundered. He fussed with the temperature before he turned to her in the rising billow of steam.
“Ready?” he asked.
When she dropped her shoulder, the heavy coat slid off her arm. She tried not to cry out when Bastian carefully guided her arm from the other sleeve. Her ribs were broken, but it felt like the entire right side of her body was shattered.
The cool air of the bathroom moved over her skin, tightened her nipples. A new pain flashed where the abused flesh pebbled. She closed her eyes. Breath after breath, she fought tears. Maybe once she had the camouflage of running water, she’d give up the fight and cry her eyes out. Bastian averted his gaze and pushed at the side of her panties she couldn’t reach.
She tried not to flinch and failed miserably.
He stilled instantly. “Fuck, I’m sorry.” Regret, pain, and anger rolled the three-worded sentence into something she f
elt rather than heard. “You can them leave on.”
“No, I can’t,” she said through gritted teeth. “He…” Touched them. The words refused to come out of her mouth. “I’m going to burn them.”
With some awkward fumbling, her pushing the fabric on one side, Bastian on the other trying not to actually touch her skin, they managed to get her underwear far enough down her legs so she could step out of them. She walked into the shower and hissed. Hot jets of water hammered her from the front and back, a dual showerhead she hadn’t noticed until now. Her entire body was one big bruise. When she swayed, Bastian was there, his arm a steadying band around her waist.
“Thanks,” she mumbled.
His monosyllabic response was equally as muffled and uncomfortable.
Determined not to think about it, she took the slippery bar of soap he pressed into her palm. Steam billowed around them and clung to her hair. Heat from the water beaded sweat along her hairline. She made quick work of lathering the parts of her body she could reach, the parts Ronan had tainted with his evil. The soap helped, but she knew nothing would eliminate him from her skin.
She leaned her forehead against the slick wall, closed her eyes, and let the water rinse her clean. The high temperature numbed the pain and eased the cold knot in the pit of her stomach. One-handed and more than a little awkward, Bastian did his best to wash the soot from her snarled hair. The spicy tea-tree scent of his shampoo made her nose tingle and helped ease her breathing.
His long fingers moved through her hair, untangling the strands as he soaped. Every so often he’d jerk through a gnarled clump and yank her head back. The murmur of his curses and apologies might have made her smile if she weren’t so tired. He massaged her scalp with strong strokes, lulling her. Darkness swam in front of her eyes, and the falling sensation of sleep hovered on the horizon.
“Morgan, you gotta wake up.”
Bastian’s voice jarred her awake, and she straightened. Too fast. The sudden movement shifted her ribs. Bolts of agony shot throughout her body. The water disappeared, telling her she’d dozed long enough for Bastian to rinse out her hair. He left her for only a second, propped against a wall, before returning with a gray towel. He draped it around her shoulders and pulled the sides together. Using one of the edges from the thick cotton, he gently dried the water from her face.
She stared into his eyes, intimacy be damned, and felt tears gathering in her own. The sentiment made her all squishy inside. She’d never had anyone take care of her before. She’d better not get used to it.
They shuffled back to the bedroom, silent. The slow foot-to-foot routine reminded her of the zombies she’d raised. Bastian set her on the edge of the bed, the mattress surprisingly small in the large bedroom. She wondered if his feet hung off the end, if he slept on his side, legs curled to his stomach. Maybe on his back? How often did he have overnight guests?
At the dresser, Bastian pulled out a white T and a pair of black boxers. He looked at her, assessed, threw the shirt back in the drawer, and walked to the closet. She tracked his every move. His once-upon-a-time white shirt was soaked and clung to the muscles in his chest and arms. Black soot bled across the fabric, dark fingers spreading down the thighs of his jeans. The denim was equally as wet as the shirt and adhered to long, lean legs. Where he walked, imprints of bare feet moistened the carpet. Hangers clinked together before he came out with a button-down, long-sleeved shirt gripped in his hand.
“Why are you helping me?” she blurted, hating the cynicism but unable to stop it. Nothing in life was free. “If you’re looking for sex, I’m not up for it.”
Bastian stopped in front of her. Anger simmered in his bright blue eyes. He crouched before putting a hand on either side of her.
She didn’t pull away, didn’t break his hostile gaze.
“Unlike Ronan, battered women don’t turn me on. I know you probably haven’t had the easiest life, but not everyone wants something from you. Ronan is my father, and he hurt you. Still wants to hurt you. It’s my responsibility to protect you and to stop him from doing it again. Here with my brothers and me is the safest place you can be.”
His breath feathered along her skin with every word. Where the air should have been warm, it was cool.
Ronan was his father. That was going to take a lot to process.
“Can you protect me?” she finally asked. “I don’t want to sound ungrateful. I owe you my life, but Ronan kicked your asses with one hand behind his back. It was three on one. You had guns. I’m not going to lie. That man terrifies me.”
A muscle twitched in Bastian’s cheek. She felt like a bitch for insulting him. He didn’t deserve it. He rose, ran a hand through his hair, and paced in front of her. “Let me explain something to you. Ronan is a necromancer. With age comes power. He’s centuries older than me and my brothers.”
She blinked. Centuries? Maybe he confused the term with decades? While she sat in stupefied silence, Bastian put the button-up shirt over her shoulders and held the front closed but didn’t fasten it. Where the material gapped, he tugged on the towel and pulled it free. As if she were a child, he toweled off her hair. The entire time he was careful not to touch her skin.
“Exactly how old is Ronan?” she asked, looking up at him. “He looks thirty, which I know can’t be right because you look thirty.”
One button at a time, he did up the shirt. He didn’t meet her eyes. “He’s a little over six hundred years old. His mother was a necromancer, his father a dark sorcerer—a scary combination. His knowledge of the occult blends with his magic. They don’t call him the devil because he likes black.”
Docile, Morgan lifted one leg and then the other as Bastian threaded her feet through the boxers. He pulled the shorts up. With a hand on his sturdy shoulder, she lifted enough for him to push the material over her hips.
Six hundred. The concept baffled. “That would make you…how old?”
Bastian tossed the towel to the ground, further cluttering up the room. The man needed a hamper. He shoved pillows out of the way and didn’t seem to care about the mess they made when they collided with an especially high stack of books. He patted the bed. “Around two hundred. It’s going to hurt, but I need you to lie down.”
She didn’t move. “How is it possible? I don’t understand.”
He crouched in front of her, lifted strands of her wet crimson hair, and brought them in front of her face to see. As if she could have forgotten they was there.
“We aren’t human. We don’t have mortal life spans. We are quicker, stronger, more agile, and have so much magic running through our veins it saturates the hair. Every necromancer has a unique color, a certain smell. The shades may look similar, but up close you can tell the difference. Your magic is darker than Ronan’s and smells of cinnamon. If you know what to look for, you can pick a necromancer out in a crowd of thousands. Aside from the multicolored hair, we tend to be pale and have abnormally bright eyes. We are tall and lean. The magic leaves a frost in the air—it’s why you’re always cold. It’s how the ghosts find you.”
Before she could stop herself, she reached out to finger one of the streaks of midnight in his hair. He flinched back, and she immediately dropped her hand. Apparently he didn’t like to be touched.
“This is insane,” she said.
He stood and let out a hollow laugh. “Is it any crazier than raising zombies and seeing ghosts everywhere? We have an affinity for the dead, and you, Morgan, attract them in droves. Now lie down; you can barely breathe.”
Scooting back, she did her best to lie flat on the mattress. The moment she went horizontal, pain stole her breath. Frantically she tried to draw in another gulping lungful. More pain. More gasping. The cycle was vicious.
“I’m going to undo the shirt so I have access to bare skin; the healing will work best this way.” Bastian held her gaze prisoner and unbuttoned the material. Warm air poured from a vent overhead, and she was grateful for the heat washing over her. The silk fabric flutte
red open, tickling her sides. She blew out a wheezing breath. The steely determination in his eyes comforted. His confidence gave her the strength she needed to regulate her oxygen intake.
“What would Ronan have done to me if you hadn’t shown up?” she asked.
His hand hovered over her stomach. His eyes darkened. “He would have killed you, raped you, perhaps in that order. When you were dead, he would have forced a twisted version of your soul back into your body, fed you his blood, and turned you into a zombie slave. Slaves are his specialty. The torture would begin anew. Necromancers raised from the dead are impossible to control, so he would have needed to keep you chained up. A perverse pet of sorts.”
Le diable.
Swallowing back her discomfort, she forced herself to ask her next question. Bastian had been entirely too specific. “How do you know that?”
He looked away and stared blindly at the bathroom. His jaw tensed, and despite the heat, a chill stole into the room. Blue ice dripped from his hands. He turned to her and then waited until their gazes connected. He didn’t mask his emotion, didn’t try to hide the revulsion. “Because it’s what he did to my mother.”
Ronan was a low-life pile of shit. Anger filled her at what that other woman must have gone through. Spurred on by the icy torrents of Bastian’s sapphire frost dancing in the air, her magic sputtered weakly to life. There were no ghosts in the room, an oddity she hadn’t thought of until now.
She looked at him through a haze of magic. Through the veil, Bastian looked different, sharper somehow. His scent moved over her—sandalwood and, just under the surface, something sweet. Fragrant like death. Realization hit. She didn’t want to ask, but she needed to know.
Bastian felt…unusual. Alive but, at the same time, dead. An impossibility. Was it any crazier than six-hundred-year life spans? Eternal youth? The ability to reanimate a corpse? How many times had she raised the dead accidentally? There was the kitten in the dumpster when she was four. And after her adoption, there had been dozens of freshly buried pets in the neighborhood scratching at her door.
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