His eyes widened and he slid back against the wall. “The Blood of the Lost. That is what we are known by now?”
Shit, he was like me, the ones who’d created the veil. “I guess so. But what did we start out as? And how can I be the last if you’re here?”
His smile was pained. “If you do not know, you do not need to know. The Blood of the Lost is a fitting title. And you are the last, if that is true, because I am not really alive. I have been dead for a thousand years.”
Frustration made me bold, and I stalked to him, holding my sword out. “What. Am. I?”
“You are a being that has the ability to create as well as destroy. Your power is miniscule next to those of us who are of pureblood.” He shook his head from his position on the floor. “If your blood hadn’t been so diluted, I would have recognized you right away.”
“You’re not even going to try and be helpful, are you?”
A laugh trickled past the blood on his lips. “It isn’t a matter of being helpful. At some point you may discover the truth of your family history. But it doesn’t truly have any bearing on what you must do. You must stop the demons. So go and do what you were born to die for.”
I stepped back from him as my blood chilled for a second time. “I’m not going to die. Orion is.”
His smile slipped and I didn’t like what I saw on his face. “Yes, he will die. Of that you must be right, and I pray to the gods you are successful. Go. Before he knows you are here.”
A cry slid up the stairwell, one filled with pain. Milly. I didn’t look back at the man who may or may not have been my past, as I ran toward my friend. The doorway’s spell knocked me to my knees and I struggled to breathe as I hit the stone floor. Again, the snowflake burned, searing my chest. Milly had set it up so I would gain immunity from demons through the hoarfrost demon’s poison—though at the time I’d thought she’d just been trying to kill me. Apparently it was still working in my favor, helping my natural immunity keep me safe.
Book in my arms, sword in my hand, I ran down the stairwell to the level below and the small landing. Milly still leaned against the wall, but Talia was between her legs, hands on her knees.
The necromancer glanced up at me. “We only have minutes before he’s here.”
“Please tell me you mean the baby.”
Talia shook her head as Milly let out a cry and then bore down. Shit, this was not good timing.
I dropped to a crouch by Milly’s head, putting the book at her side. “Milly, you can do this. But you have to push the baby out now.”
Her green eyes were filled with tears as she blinked up at me. “You’ll take my baby with you. Protect him from Orion.”
I nodded, stroking her forehead. “I promised to, didn’t I?”
She bit her lower lip and a sob slipped out. No more words came from her, no more cries.
“I see the head,” Talia said, her voice soft.
Licking my lips, I did something I never wanted to do.
I Tracked Orion.
His threads blazed with darkness that circled around me and his voice whispered inside my head. You are here?
I didn’t answer him, just worked out how close he was. A hundred feet at best.
I shut down the threads to him with a deep shudder. “Hurry, Milly. You have to hurry.”
There was going to be no choice here. I stood and faced the stairs that curled up to us. Orion was coming and I was going to have to deal with him, at least long enough to get me and the kid out.
I pulled my whip loose, wishing I had my crossbow with me. A distance weapon would have been particularly nice. A cry shattered the air, the sound of a baby’s first bellow.
“Shit, your kid’s got lungs.” I made the mistake of looking over my shoulder, seeing the baby pressed against Milly’s chest, wrapped in a swath of her red dress. Something slammed into my upper body and drove me back. I tumbled ass over head until I was up against the stairs leading up to the top doorway.
Orion stood looking down on the three of us. He was as big as I remembered him, muscular, completely bald with red eyes that pierced me and made my blood chill. “Three little pigs, did you think you could escape the big bad wolf?”
From the corner of my eye, I saw Milly clutch the baby against her. “You can’t have him, he’s innocent.”
Orion threw back his head to laugh, a move I’d seen him do before. I took advantage of it. I snapped my whip out as I thought about Milly, about her love for her baby, about my desire to protect them. In that moment, I let the anger go, and embraced my heart and all it knew.
My whip curled around Orion’s left arm, just above the wrist. He let out a roar as the flesh curled and blackened, but he didn’t fight it. Nope, not that asshole. He grabbed the whip and jerked it out of my hands, stopping the connection. I stood and faced him, confidence filling me until I saw his hand.
The charred skin flaked and fell off, revealing an arm that was as unhurt as it had been only moments before.
“You didn’t think it would be that easy to take me on in my own realm, did you?” He smiled and took a step toward Milly, as if I were of no consequence. “The child is mine. You have always known that.”
With his back to me, I leapt toward him. I drove my sword forward, through his heart as I pulled my second blade and slashed it through his back, nearly severing his body in half. “Heal that, asshat.”
He glanced over his shoulder at me, a smile on his lips as his body healed around my weapons. “You truly think you can kill me, don’t you? You are a bigger fool than I’d thought. Stay there, Tracker, I will deal with you in a moment.”
Just like that, he dismissed me as if I were no longer a threat. Was I that weak?
Erik said hands on was best, that going through my weapons was a weaker version. For Milly, for the baby, I had to try and stop this monster now. If I didn’t, and he possessed the child, he’d be free to walk in the world.
With a scream, I leapt onto his back, wrapping my hands around his face. His head went up in a black flame that consumed my hands, but I didn’t let go. The heat sung along my nerve endings, a pain that tore at me, worse than any of the injuries I’d ever incurred, even putting them all together.
He tried to buck me off, his hands grabbing at my legs, his fingers digging into my flesh. “Will you fucking die already?” I yelled as the flames began to travel down his neck.
“Rylee, let go!” Milly screamed, and I wanted to, damn, how I wanted to. But I knew that the second I did, he’d heal again.
“Can’t.”
“You can’t kill him! It isn’t possible.”
That was Talia and my eyes found her next to the doorway on the landing. It was open and on the other side … shit, the other side opened up to my farm in North Dakota.
“HURRY!”
Timing was everything in a fight, and this one was no different. Gripping Orion’s face even harder, I drove my fingers deep into his skull through the fire softened flesh, and put my feet up into his lower back. With that leverage, I pulled as hard as I could, my jaw tight with the effort and the enormous pain writhing up my hands.
A scream slipped out of me, merging with Orion’s as his neck snapped backward and his howl of fury slid into bits and pieces of gurgling mess.
I rode his body to the ground. Talia grabbed me and jerked my hands from Orion’s burning flesh. I couldn’t look at them, could already feel muscles and tendons tightening into crippled digits that would be next to useless.
“Milly hasn’t the strength to heal you,” Talia said as she slipped the violet skinned book into my arms and then a small, mewling bundle wrapped in red silk. I could barely stand; the pain reverberating through my hands and arms was so bad.
“How long will he be out?” I whispered, though whispering hadn’t been my intention. I coughed. The smoke I’d inhaled had scorched my throat and lungs.
Talia guided me and I tried to see where Milly was. “I don’t know. If we’re lucky, days. Not
so lucky, hours, maybe minutes.”
My brain struggled to function around what had happened, how fast everything had come together. “Milly.”
The necromancer let out a heavy sigh. “She has to stay, you know that.”
“I want to see her.”
Talia moved to the side so I could see Milly slumped against the wall, her green eyes unseeing, a pool of blood blending into the red dress. So much blood.
“No.” I couldn’t see past the tears that filled my eyes. This wasn’t how it was supposed to end. Not with her like that, splayed out in a demon’s realm like a broken doll—dying as she gave birth.
“Go, you have to.” Talia gave me a push in the right direction, but her voice was thick and heavy with tears that slid down her face. She tucked my whip into my arms beside the baby. “She wanted you to save her child, above all else.”
I knew what Talia was saying was true, that Milly wanted her baby to be safe. “Goodbye, my friend,” I whispered as I backed through the doorway. The bite of the winter wind was a blessing against the burns arching from my hands almost to my elbows, but the relief was only physical. Talia stood in the doorway, and then shut it so I stared at nothing, not even an empty door. She would tell where she’d sent me the minute Orion questioned her.
A soft cry from the bundle in my arms drew my eyes downward. Brilliant spring-green eyes stared at me, one tiny hand reaching up as if he would touch me. I bit my lip and headed toward the barn, the only structure left intact on the farm. I had nothing to feed the little boy, and I couldn’t even touch him, my hands were so badly burned.
There was nothing to do but wait and pray. And hope this time, someone rescued me.
Chapter 7
LUCKY FOR ME, I had good friends who knew when I needed them. Well, at least one good friend.
“What the fecking hells is this?”
I rolled to the side, the baby asleep in my arms, for which I was grateful because if he’d been upset, there wouldn’t have been much I could have done. We were half buried in the hay, the insulating factor keeping the winter cold at bay. “Charlie? How did you know I was here?”
“Everyone’s looking for ya … what happened to yous hands?” He gasped as he limped toward me, his wooden leg obviously giving him grief. He held out his hands to me, but I couldn’t do the same. My skin had toughened, already to the point where moving anything made it crack and bleed.
“I need a healer. And food and clothes for this guy.” I awkwardly held up the bundle of baby wrapped in my jacket.
“Sweet mother of the gods, Rylee, that be a baby.” Charlie’s eyes were wide. “Is it yours?”
I barked out a bitter, pain-filled laugh. “No. Milly’s. We got him away from Orion.”
He stared at me, sadness and pain filling his eyes. More than any of my friends perhaps, he knew the loss of loved ones.
“Ah, lass, I see it in you. She’s gone, isn’t she?”
I nodded, my lip trembling as I fought the tears. Charlie made a face. “I’ll gets Pamela. She’ll heal you up right.”
He ran back toward the door and slipped through. I tipped my head back and watched the light filter in through the barn slats. We were only an hour or so from sunset, and then Frank would be trying to send Berget across the veil to me. How the hell was I going to take her head when my hands were so royally fucked up? Never mind the emotional toll I was looking at for finally becoming my sister’s murderer.
My family, adoptive mother in particular would finally be right. I would finally be the one to kill Berget. I wanted to vomit.
The how of it, with my hands as they were, weighed on me as I waited for Charlie. How was I going to fight Orion with messed up hands? Was Liam still alive? What was going on at Jack’s that things had fallen apart so fast?
Ten minutes, and a thousand questions in my head, later, Charlie was back with a bundle of cloth, a bottle, and a heavy wool blanket. Without asking, he took the baby from me, dressed him in the clothes that the bundle of cloth turned out to be, and popped the bottle into his mouth. The little guy latched on and sucked hard, and noisily.
It was easy for me to forget that Charlie had a family at one point, that they’d been killed. He rocked the little boy with a practiced ease while the kid sucked at the bottle greedily.
“Pamela be on hers way. I found thems already on their ways here. Shouldn’t be long now. You sleeps, I’ll be watching over yous both,” Charlie said and, feeling a little guilty, I Tracked him, Tracked demons and evil spirits just to be sure.
Charlie was clean, and there was nothing close by. I Tracked Pamela and felt her moving toward me at a good clip. “She’ll be here soon. No point in sleeping.”
The violet skinned book poked me in the thigh as I sat up. “So much death, Charlie. Is it worth it?” I stared at the book, unable to not see my hands. They looked like something from a horror movie, like a prop made to scare little kids. Blackened and charred, nausea rolled through me at the thought that perhaps I couldn’t be healed. Perhaps this was part of my destiny.
“The world might not be worth it,” he said as he rocked the little boy. “But there is enough good in the world that I thinks yous has to keep fighting.” Charlie handed the baby back to me, setting him carefully into my arms above the burns. “Whats yous going to be calling this little tyke?”
That was a good question. He needed a name, one strong enough to carry him through his whole life, however long it would be. I thought of those who’d passed, my friends who’d given their lives for the fight against Orion. Jack and Dox were at the top of the list. But Milly wouldn’t want her baby named for either of those two.
Dark lashes rested against milky skin as his lips puckered and he started to suck in his sleep. “Milly had a brother who died when she was very young. His name was Zane. I think she would like it if her baby was named for him.”
“Zane, good name fors him.” Charlie leaned over and touched the boy on the forehead. “Looks like his mammy.”
That he did; the resemblance was strong both in his coloring and the shape of his face, right down to his eyes which were already green. Unusual for a baby, at least from what I understood.
I leaned back in the hay, biting the groan of pain that bubbled up with the movement. Zane snuggled against me and I couldn’t help but love him. Shit, I was turning into a sappy mush. But Milly knew me well, better probably than anyone but Liam. She’d known I would protect Zane with my life, if need be. I let out a sigh and closed my eyes. Protecting him was all well and good, but only if Pamela could heal the mess of my hands.
I rode on Eve by myself as we flew for the farm. Erik and Alex rode Marco. I couldn’t stand to have anyone touch me. Anger and rage still flowed through me like hot lava, making my magic burn inside.
“Charlie said she’s hurt bad, but that there is a surprise too,” I said as Eve dipped low, avoiding a cloud.
“Surprises can be good, Pam,” Eve said.
I snorted, unable to keep the bite from my words. “Not usually in our world.”
Giselle’s words came back and swirled around in my head. “You will face darkness, and you will have to fight through it.”
At the time, I hadn’t understood what she’d meant. But now I was starting to see. I couldn’t stop the anger that flowered and grew within my heart. All I wanted was to wipe out those who would hurt us. I wanted to rip them apart, piece by piece, with no thought of what would come after. The darkness of those thoughts grew each moment and I worried I would turn into someone bad. Really bad.
I swallowed hard as Eve spiraled down to the farm. With only the barn left intact the place was a strange sight. The burned remains of the house had crumpled and were partially covered with snow, leaving bits and pieces sticking out like lumpy bones.
Eve landed lightly and I slid from her back, running toward the barn. I burst through the door, ready for an attack, for the surprise to be bad. So when I took in what I was seeing, I couldn’t understand it at firs
t.
Rylee was holding a … baby?
Then I saw her arms and hands and I couldn’t stop the gasp that slipped out. “Rylee.”
“Yeah, I look like shit. Don’t need a mirror to see it this time.”
Charlie took the baby from her arms. “Do yous stuff, young witch.”
Healing was not something I was good at and that normally only frustrated me. I’d been better at it when I first learned, and slowly, my skill with it had slipped, though I didn’t know why. I swallowed hard, then went and sat beside Rylee in the hay.
“I have to touch your hands.” I didn’t want to, not just because I didn’t want to hurt her, but they looked awful and smelled like burnt meat.
“It’s okay. Just do it.” She closed her eyes and I carefully wrapped my fingers around hers, the skin under mine flaking away. Rylee sucked in a sharp breath and I closed my eyes, focusing on the parts of the healing I needed.
Water, air, and earth blended to put the pieces back together, but fire was needed too and I was afraid to use it. Afraid I would somehow make the burns worse.
“What if I can’t, what if I make it hurt more instead of heal it?” I whispered.
“Then we’ll find someone else. You can’t make it worse, Pam.” She said those words with confidence, but I saw the sweat break out on her forehead.
Before I started, Alex and Erik came into the barn. Erik sucked in a sharp breath, but Alex was oblivious. He ran to Rylee’s side and curled up around her, hugging her tight and almost pulling her from me.
“Alex!” I snapped. “Not now.”
He cringed and his lower lip stuck out. “You is not the boss of me.”
I let go of Rylee and flicked my hand at him. He flipped over once in the air before adhering to the wall, like a fly to sticky paper. “I am right now. Now stay out of the way.”
Rylee stared at me, the three colors in her eyes swirling. “You okay?”
I didn’t really know how to answer without getting into the whole darkness thing, so I just nodded. “I’m fine. He’s just in the way.”
Wounded: Book 8 (A Rylee Adamson Novel) Page 8