The Blood Keeper (The Blood Journals)

by Gratton, Tessa

  Until I could rip him out of Will and scatter his soul to the four winds, we were trapped with each other.

  FIFTY-FIVE

  MAB

  An arrhythmic thumping woke me, vibrating up through the frame of my bed. If I stared at the scarves draped across my ceiling, I could just make out the very fine shiver. The whole house seemed to tremble.

  I pushed away my covers and got up carefully, listening to the rush of blood in my ears. My fingers and toes were cold, but I was no longer light-headed or overtired. Blue dawn crept in through my partially open window, along with a thick breeze that smelled of mud and roses.

  Wiping my hands over my eyes and then back through my hair, I went to the door. Through my bare feet, I could feel the thumping more clearly, a rough punch spreading from somewhere below.

  As I opened my bedroom door, Will emerged, too, from Arthur’s room at the end of the hall. My heart surged when I saw his hair tousled flat on one side, and the pillow marks pressed into his cheek. But the euphoria died in the moment of its birth, as Gabriel’s frown drained it away. “I should have turned him into a stool,” he muttered, seeing me.

  “Ben?” I’d forgotten about him entirely, and spun in place to go toward the stairs, before Gabriel’s hand was hot around my wrist.

  “I’ll take care of it.” He tugged me back, and my shoulder fell against his chest. I closed my eyes as my skin touched his and the tattoos flared softly red. Tilting up my head, I studied the blood flecks overwhelming the brown of Will’s eyes. They shone angrily. Would they ever fade now? As Gabriel filled the body out more firmly and completely, would the outward signs of trauma vanish?

  I wouldn’t let myself find out.

  “No, Gabriel. Let me. He knows me, and what would you say to him?”

  His smile only covered half his face. “Oh, I wasn’t thinking I’d say anything.”

  “We need him—you need him.” My imagination spun furiously, hunting for a convincing argument. “You only must convince him that you’re his brother, and he’ll be able to help you settle into life.”

  Gabriel’s fingers tightened around my wrist, and he leaned to hiss in my ear, “You don’t plan to let that happen yet. So you need something better to persuade me with, Mab.”

  I sighed sharply through my nose. “Fine. Well then, let me have him anyway. I …” Flattening my free hand against Will’s chest, I paused, struck by a moment of genius. Below, the thumping picked up again with a giant crash like breaking furniture. Ignoring it, I stroked my fingers down the center, gently as I could, then traced along one of the tattoos that curved around his ribs. “I am interested in what you did to Will’s body, even if I don’t intend to let you keep it. You know … you know I’ve been working with the crows as my familiar?” I glanced up at him with my chin low.

  His face softened just a fraction as he watched my eyes. “Yes.”

  “They used to be a boy, did you know that? Used to be a young man my mother cursed so that he’s trapped in the birds’ minds.”

  “Did she, now.”

  “Yes, and … I’ve always felt,” I looked down, hoping I seemed ashamed. “I’ve always felt guilty. Responsible, even. As if I should have stopped her. Let me have Ben, and see about doing to him what you did to Will.”

  Gabriel released me. He watched me with narrow eyes, and his head crooked curiously. Slowly, his mouth twitched into a smile, and then he laughed. It was a deep, amused chuckle, and I fought to keep my hands at my sides instead of wrapping them around myself. He was dark and sardonic and everything opposite of Will.

  “Mab, you’re good,” he said. “But I knew your mother, and you’re not as good as she was. Josephine never fooled me the way she fooled so many others. Try again. Third time’s a charm, they say.”

  Fury sparked in my stomach, and I shoved my fists onto my hips. “Just give him to me, Gabriel. Because I want him, because I’m asking you.” Stepping forward once, I reached up and touched his face, cupping one cheek in my hand. It was the same one I’d slapped, the one with the pillow creases. “As a sign of faith,” I added quietly.

  He regarded me, and we stood like that through a long string of thumps, hammering under our feet. Gabriel lifted a hand and covered mine with it, tenderly. “That’s all you had to do, Mab. Ask.”

  I withdrew my hand and turned away. We both knew that was a lie, too.

  Before I could slip back into my room to get dressed and brush my teeth, Gabriel said, “Don’t do anything stupid. I’ll know. Through Lukas I feel the whole of the blood land, Mab. So I’ll know if you work heavy magic, I’ll know if you pull just the slightest.”

  Pausing with my hand on the door frame and my back to him, wishing he’d let me go so that I could get to Ben before he hurt himself, I said, “I have to touch the magic. It’s who I am.”

  “I know.” He was just behind me, and I gasped. He put his hands on my bare shoulders, thumbs over the thin straps of my nightgown. “Just like Arthur.”

  His words made me shiver. I’d always wanted to be just like Arthur, but not because someone like Gabriel said so. “Let go,” I said.

  He did, but remained close enough that I could feel the heat coming off his body, like tingling magic. “I’ll be near, love. All day. Getting to know this land again, with my own two feet. Don’t call for help, don’t tell anyone what’s happening here. In a few days, we’ll break the news to the family. Until then, anyone else who steps foot on the land I will kill. And if you try to leave, I’ll have no reason to keep Lukas alive.”

  Instead of frightening me, his threats only offended me. “Save your threats for someone who’s afraid of you,” I said. Then I stepped into my bedroom and firmly shut the door. A spot of daylight warmed the rag rug, and I walked into it with my arms held open: the brightness soaked into my face, and I prayed the sun would keep me bold.

  Ben Sanger waited at the top step of the cellar, and the moment I opened the door he charged out. I touched his bare arm with my hand, gripping him tight so that the blood rune I’d drawn in my palm connected.

  And then I was both of us.

  Disorientation drove me to my knees—both my body and Ben’s.

  We did not move, and I spread my will through both minds, putting both of us down on our hands, and shifting my own body nearer so that my shoulder brushed his. Physical contact made it easier and faster to slip between us, to overwhelm him with my magic. Nausea clawed up both our throats, and I was twice as weak, but my mother had taught me to do this, to close my eyes and shift into two bodies: two heads, four hands, four feet, two hearts.

  As the rhythm of our blood moved into alignment, I focused on breathing, on opening Ben’s eyes. I didn’t need to know anything about him except how to get to his feet. I breathed in and out, walking up the porch in two bodies, going for the telephone. It was a simple thing to reach into his memory to dial his home number, to tell the woman who answered it—who he recognized in a distant echo as his mother—that me and Will had dropped everything for a spur-of-the-moment camping trip. I didn’t give her time to argue, only saying I was sorry with Ben’s voice, only saying I loved her and we’d be home soon.

  Then we went, both my body and Ben’s, two steps at a time down the dark hill to the workshop.

  I released him and fell to the ground beside him, shaking with exhaustion beside his unconscious body.

  After I don’t know how many minutes, I got to my feet and went outside into the meadow of red clover. There I collapsed again, rolled onto my back so that I could watch the sky for the first sign of crows.

  FIFTY-SIX

  MAB

  For lack of anything better, I used blood to coax roots up through the floor of the barn and into a cage to contain Ben Sanger.

  He woke from my possession and raged—at first trying to break through the bars with sheer strength. But my roots lived, and they were solid, hearty wood. Ben’s groans of effort and yelling and cursing filled the barn with noise I was certain it had never
before known. This was a place of beauty, of magic and peace and family, yet here I’d brought a prisoner to keep.

  When he accepted that brute force wouldn’t free him, Ben inspected everything carefully, paying particular attention to the base of the roots. He hopped up to grab two of the bars, then swung himself higher, pulling himself hand over hand toward the center. The branches bowed slightly under his weight but did not break. They wouldn’t, and even if they could, I’d only need to grow replacements.

  It was a losing battle, and that wasn’t something I believed Ben was used to at all.

  I watched from the far corner, mostly concealed by shadows and a green tractor so old I’d never seen it move in all my years. When Ben had been quietly standing in the center of his cage for quite some time, I slowly emerged.

  Instantly, he leapt to his feet, grabbed two of the bars, and demanded I tell him what the hell was going on, and where Will was.

  Holding my hands out, fingers splayed wide, I said I’d explain it all, if only he’d sit.

  We stared at each other for a moment, and Ben crouched. It wasn’t sitting, but the angle of his chin told me it was the best compromise I could possibly hope for. Backing away, I sat against the worktable, with my spine pressed into one of the legs. I hugged my knees against my chest and explained everything to Ben. He gripped the rough wooden bars of his cage and watched me so closely I hated to move. Every shift, every sigh, every flutter of my hands drew that sharp gaze.

  Ben said nothing, but I said everything. He had to understand. I told him about the blood magic and the Deacon, about the far-flung blood kin, about Eli and Faith, Gabriel and the crows and my mother and Silla. About Donna, Nick, and Lukas. About how I’d met Will and everything I knew that had happened to him.

  I talked until I was hoarse, until all I could manage was a whisper and my bottom was numb from sitting, my arms tight from how I held them so close around my knees. The sun lowered enough that it pierced straight through the hole in the southwestern corner of the barn roof, lighting up the rafters and showering us with golden motes of dust.

  There was silence for a long stretch after I finished. The quiet lasted so long I began to think he would never acknowledge me, never let go of the bars of his cage. I let my knees stretch out and sighed hard, rubbing the heels of my hands into my eyes.

  It would be better if only the crows would come, I thought. If only I had them near me, could hear the familiar swish of their feathers and the comforting barks of their play.

  Another minute slipped past, and I used the edge of the worktable to climb to my feet. Standing, I pressed my hips into the table and turned to Ben. His face was drawn, his knuckles white where he gripped the cage. Something desperate shone in his eyes, and I felt like I was walking a precipice on a thin strand of rope. When it snapped, he would either pull me to safety or watch me drown.

  I didn’t have any idea what else to tell him, though, because I’d said everything. All the truths laid out for him in the best words I knew. My confession. I needed him to believe me, the way Will had.

  But unlike Will, there was nothing welcoming or ready in Ben’s expression.

  Closing my eyes so that I would stop seeing his accusations, I grabbed a lancet from the coffee can under the table and went to the overflowing shelves of potions and boxes and knickknacks.

  I rummaged through them, hunting for the crayons I knew were hidden somewhere. I shuffled aside old bank documents; I moved a pile of river-bored stones; I tipped upside down a woven basket of seashells and twenty-year-old plastic Happy Meal toys. There it was—the crumbling box of crayons that had been tucked behind a ceramic piggy bank. Taking it and the lancet, I grabbed loose drawing paper from the worktable and knelt an arm’s length away from Ben’s cage.

  Without glancing up at him, I drew a colorful butterfly on the blank paper. I heard his breath hitch and then the shuffle of movement as he crouched to get a better look at what I was doing.

  When my blue and pink and yellow butterfly had antennae and a long swallowtail, I took my lancet and pricked my wrist. A long drop of blood slipped out, spilling onto the crayon butterfly. I bent down as if bowing deeply and breathed my mother’s favorite spell.

  “Become,” I whispered, channeling the tingling magic from my heart, through my blood, and into the drawing.

  The paper fluttered, and the butterfly snapped up and away, flapping its rainbow wings in dizzy spirals. It bounced toward Ben, and I leaned back onto my heels, watching him.

  His fingers uncurled and he reached to touch it. It skimmed along the back of his hand, and he turned it over to cup the little magic creature delicately.

  Then he began to shake his head, pulling his hand back, making a fist. I said, “Will would love that spell. He believed me.”

  Ben met my eyes, and finally he spoke. “He cared about you. I don’t.”

  Swallowing a surprising hurt, I said, “That isn’t why he believed me, though. He believed me because magic was the only answer that made sense. Not because he—he cared.”

  He laughed once, bitterly. “What does sense have to do with it? I’ve been places and seen things that didn’t make any sense at all. But that didn’t make them less true. Sense and logic and truth don’t have much to do with each other.” His low voice was as calm and certain as mine had ever been. “Just because I think I see that butterfly, or that—that fire, doesn’t make it more likely. Just because I don’t understand and you say you do … that isn’t how the world works.”

  My hands were limp in my lap. I’d never had to convince anyone of this before, who didn’t believe what they saw. “You don’t want to believe me.”

  “No shit.”

  “Why not?”

  “Are you kidding?” Ben gripped the bars again, shook them. “If I believe you, then there are people who have so much power and they’re sitting in Kansas gardening instead of using it, for starters.”

  I opened my mouth but wasn’t sure what to say.

  Ben kept going. “And worse, if I believe you, then my brother isn’t just on drugs but some other person stole his body. How is that something I’d want?”

  “Because I can fix that!” I leapt forward, grabbed the bars just below his hands. “I can save him, if it’s magic!”

  He moved his hands onto mine, crushing them into the wood.

  “You’re hurting me,” I said.

  “I know.” Ben put his face inches from mine. “Let me out of here.”

  I pulled back with all my weight, but he held tight. My fingers pinched, and I felt heat in my palms. “Stop, let go.”

  “Let me out and I will.” There wasn’t any emotion in Ben’s face. Just calm, hard certainty.

  “Please, Ben, Will believed me,” I gasped as he tightened his grip. “You said you trusted him.”

  “And then he punched you in the face.”

  “It wasn’t him, I told you.” Desperate, I put my feet against the bars, but Ben was that much stronger than I was, trapping me. “Please.” I closed my eyes and tried to relax. The bones of my hands crunched together.

  Crows dove down at us, cawing as loud as firecrackers. Their wings flapped between us, slapping the cage, batting at my face. One clawed at our hands.

  He let me go.

  I fell back, scrambled away, then curled my poor fingers into my stomach.

  The crows landed around me and around the cage. All remaining nine and relief blossomed cool and gentle in my chest. “Hi,” I whispered to them. One brushed my cheek with his wing. The tenderness sent a shiver through me, and I felt tears pinching my eyes. At least I still had someone.

  I bowed against the dirt, smelling the dusty barn floor, huddled there, drawing strength up through the earth just a little, but not enough that Gabriel might notice.

  “Mab.”

  Ben’s voice was so soft it took a moment for it to register that he’d said my name. I pushed up to sit, and one of the crows hopped onto my lap. His claws scratched my leg through th
e thin dress. I looked at Ben, and he was staring at the crows, who all nine cocked their heads at him in the exact same moment, in the exact same way.

  “Look.” He shut his eyes, and I saw the shudder pass down his body. “Look.” He pressed his hands flat to the dirt a few inches from the nearest bar of his cage. His eyes snapped open. “If you want me to trust you, you have to give me something. You have to let me out of this. So long as I’m your prisoner, I’m your enemy.”

  I watched him, studying his face, wishing I could read it. But he was solid and unflinching. How did I know he meant it at all? That he wasn’t lying to me in exactly the way I was lying to Gabriel?

  One of the crows hopped through the bars and into the cage next to Ben. He flapped up and landed on Ben’s shoulder, who leaned away and grimaced as the crow’s claws cut through his T-shirt until little pricks of blood seeped into the material. Ben turned his head and stared at the crow, and the crow stared back.

  I supposed that trust should be a mutual gift, and Ben was right that I needed to offer first.

  I reached forward and picked up the discarded lancet, cut my palm, and pressed it into the cage bar. Closing my eyes, I breathed through the magic, and the tingle of power spread into the cage. Two bars grew out, bowing until there was room for Ben to slip through.

  The crow on his shoulder pushed off him, flying out and up past me. The wind of its passing ruffled my hair, and the crow on my lap leapt up, too, until all nine spiraled over us in the air.

  Ben climbed out of the cage and stood, stretching tall. I looked up at him from the ground, waiting. The barn door was open, and he could get to his car, because I wouldn’t chase after him, wouldn’t stop him. He glanced at the wide-open doors, at the sunlight and the red clover, at the hint of green from the forest. His eyes narrowed as if he was seeing something he didn’t like, and he lifted a hand to the back of his neck.

  A heavy sigh settled his shoulders, and he dropped down to crouch in front of me. “All right. Tell me your plan.”