Parker started to shout and jumped forward, Fenwick called out sharply that the fight was over, and the Kimballs leapt forward to pull Parker back. Ian was cheering and jogging forward to congratulate Matthew.
But all of it was background noise to me as I stared at Matthew, who’d gone white as a sheet and was slowly, painfully collapsing onto his knees. He kept his eyes on me the whole time, and I couldn’t look away. He looked like he was dying. He probably was dying, if I knew Parker; that asshole wouldn’t use half-measures.
And Matthew wasn’t disappointed, he wasn’t angry.
He thought it was worth it.
He thought I was worth it.
I ran to him. Not away and into the woods, or around the whole milling crowd of angry weres and into one of the SUVs, but to Matthew, weaving around Ian and skidding to a stop by Matthew’s side. I dropped onto my knees next to him, just in time to catch some of his weight as he listed over.
He was breathing heavily and his skin had gone ashy gray.
“You were faking it, gods dammit!” I shook him. “Snap out of it!”
His lips quirked. It wasn’t much of a smile. Lines of pain were etching into his face as I watched. “I was half faking it, and now I’m not faking it at all,” he muttered. “Something — on his claws.” Ian’s hands landed on me, roughly tugging me away, but Matthew looked up and said, “No, dammit, let him stay. Do your job and get — them — out of here.”
Ian snarled and disappeared, and then there was more background noise: Ian shouting at Parker that they’d cheated, that this wasn’t a fair fight and Ian was going to rip him to pieces, Parker shouting back that if Matthew died the fight hadn’t been settled and I was his to take, Fenwick chiming in, Jennifer and Paul saying — something. I didn’t care.
“You’re not healing,” I said. Blood poured out of his wounds, faster than it should have even without a werewolf’s healing abilities. “Can you focus? Do you know how to control it?” Some alphas could do that, and — gods, couldn’t Matthew be one of them, for fuck’s sake? Some little piece of good luck —
“No,” Matthew gasped, and he fell over.
I lurched after him, trying to ease him down to the ground, but he was so heavy it was more me falling with him. Nate landed on his knees on Matthew’s other side, his eyes wild. Our eyes locked over Matthew’s body.
“He’s not healing,” Nate said.
“Yes, you’ve been exceptionally on-point with stating the obvious today,” I shot back. “So fucking heal him, warlock.”
“I can’t unless I know what they did!” Nate protested, his voice going up an octave. “And maybe not then. I’m not much of a healer to begin with! I do — energy flow.” He sketched his hands in the air frantically. “Forces, wards, objects — not healing.”
“Healing is energy flow!” Was he that untrained? That fucking useless? I’d been knocked out of the fight the other night by someone who couldn’t even do this? “Find the source of the infection, or the toxin, whatever it is, separate it out from the natural processes. Its energy is different. You’ll see it. Eliminate it. Use a flow of fucking energy to do it, but now, Hawthorne, or I think —” I looked down at Matthew, my chest clenching. His eyes were shut and his breaths rasped in and out of his throat. “I think he’ll die.”
And I’ll die too, when your mate kills me.
Somehow, without noticing, I’d clasped Matthew’s hand in mine. His fingers were cold and limp. I flashed back to lying on his bed with him, his warmth surrounding me, his body burning so much hotter than mine. He’d threatened me, told me he’d take me whether I wanted him or not if it was what was best for his pack.
And then he’d fought for me. He might be dying for me.
Too many thoughts, too many feelings, all battling in my overwhelmed mind, trying to coalesce into something clear. An entropic system seeking temporary order before it spiraled into total decay.
Nate closed his eyes, laid his hands on Matthew’s chest, and went very still. I couldn’t see what he was doing because I was still blind. My fingers twitched with the need to take over and do it myself, because nothing was happening.
“Hawthorne?” Nothing. “Nate?”
He shook his head and his eyes popped open. “I can’t find it,” he said, and now he sounded on the verge of tears. “I can’t do it. Ian!” he called out desperately. “Ian, come here, right now! Dor, I need you too!”
I started; I’d almost forgotten anyone else was there. Everyone was still shouting, but the Kimballs were shoving Parker into one of the cars. Dor was standing in front of Fenwick with his sword raised, still looking like all he needed was a cup of coffee in his other hand to be completely at his ease.
Ian, Jennifer, Paul, and Ian’s two muscled clones were prowling in a half-circle, chivvying the Kimballs and Parker’s group into the SUVs. Someone must have convinced Ian to fight another day. I noticed that Jennifer was right in Ian’s space, probably making sure he didn’t change his mind and charge the retreating enemy.
At Nate’s shout, though, Ian broke off and loped back to us. With a choking cloud of dust and a spattering of gravel, the SUVs reversed and shot backwards out of the access road, their tires squealing as they turned to burn rubber down the highway. Dor sheathed his sword and followed Ian, and both of them knelt down by Matthew’s head.
It was getting really fucking crowded.
“What’s wrong with him?” Ian demanded. And then looked at me, of fucking course. “What’s happening to him?”
“I might be able to tell you if I wasn’t cut off from using any magic,” I snapped. All my limbs were growing cold too. My head spun. Was I going to die with Matthew a lot more directly than I thought if I couldn’t use my magic to cut myself off from my spell’s effects? I squeezed his hand, hard. He didn’t even stir. “Why don’t you ask one of the two mages sitting right here not fucking doing anything?”
Ian and Nate both went bright red and started to talk over each other, worrying and speculating and arguing, but I focused on Dor. He was frowning down at Matthew, his head cocked to the side.
“I can see there’s something wrong, but I can’t do anything about it,” he said. “I’m sorry. Healing isn’t really in my wheelhouse, at least for this type of being.”
“Healing is just energy,” I protested for — only the second time? Panic was starting to set in. Matthew had bought me a reprieve from Parker, but what the fuck good was that if he died on me and left me at the mercy of everyone who’d blame me for it? “You can figure it out.”
“Nope,” Dor said with a sigh. “Not so much. Wrong kind of energy. I’m more…” He twiddled his fingers in the air. “Subatomic, I suppose you’d call it. If I try to heal him, he’s a lot more likely to glow in the dark than he is to survive.”
“Sub what?” Ian demanded, breaking off his argument with Nate. His eyes were huge in his pale face, and all his freckles were standing out like dirt in milk. “Dor, Nate can’t do it alone. The two of you need to —”
“I’m sorry,” Dor repeated. “Not happening. I would if I could, believe me.”
“You’re telling me he’s going to die? Because he fought for this — for this —” Ian broke off with a wordless, miserable little moan, jumped to his feet, and stalked away, covering his face with his hands.
A long time ago, I’d lost someone I considered an older brother. He hadn’t died — though I’d have been surprised if he was still alive now. But I’d watched him walk away, going somewhere he’d probably get killed, and known I’d never see him again. That was the last time I’d cared about anyone enough to feel that gut-wrenching, lung-twisting agony when they were gone.
Ian was feeling that now. And for a moment, I felt it with him, visceral and nauseating.
I let go of Matthew’s hand and held out both of my own. They shook visibly, tremors running all the way up my arms.
“I can do it,” I said, looking at Dor and only Dor. Nate didn’t have the authority to make t
he decision. Ian might agree, but his posturing and freaking out and threats would take too long. Matthew was slipping away; that was obvious even without being able to feel his life force. His chest was barely rising and falling. If he wasn’t an alpha, he’d have been dead before we even started to fight about what to do to save him.
“No,” Nate said. His voice shook nearly as much as my hands. “He’s lying. Or he isn’t lying — I believe he can do it. But he won’t.”
Dor stared at me. His eyes — speaking of subatomic. There was something about his eyes that sucked me in, down and down, like a whirlpool that led somewhere horrifically creepy and seductive that would never let you out.
“Yes, he will,” Dor said, and reached for the cuffs.
“Don’t! Matthew wouldn’t want you to!”
Dor shrugged. “They’re my manacles.” He paused with his hands wrapped around them. The touch of his skin made my flesh crawl. It wasn’t even necessarily a bad flesh-crawling, but…I wanted him to stop. I couldn’t explain it. The panic welled up again, bubbling through my chest like air pockets in gelatin, slow and heavy and viscous. “And he will. What he does afterward is up to all of you to sort out.”
Dor twisted his hands oddly, his fingers working some pattern on the cuffs I couldn’t begin to follow, and they fell away.
Sensation rushed back in. The trees around me, solid pillars of ancient life, flowing dark-green so slowly the human mind couldn’t encompass their motion. Bright sparks dotting the forest in all directions, tiny bursts of life-force so delicate they could be snuffed with little more than a thought: squirrels, birds, rabbits, mice, and the pinpricks of insects of every variety. Nate, a glowing bundle of energy in a tangle of conflicting currents. Ian, with his deep-red alpha strength throwing out heat, and the other weres, weaker but similar, each with their own flavor. Fenwick and Dor were voids in my senses, present by their absence. I shied away from them instinctively, like a mosquito blown off course by the swat of a giant hand.
And Matthew. Matthew, who was guttering like a candle, his life force reduced to the smallest burgundy ember. I could feel him most of all, tugging on me, trying to pull my life into his through the spell that bound us.
I could stop it. Easily. The spell was mine, and I could control it — with the fucking manacles gone, I could cut him off like closing a window, escape the effects the spell was having on me, and let him die instantly.
Instead I dived in, chasing that faint glow, wrapping my magic around it like a shield and feeding it the slightest trickle of energy. It was like blowing a tiny stream of air into a dying fire, giving it stronger temporary life and praying for a bit of kindling to fall into place. I held that, and I stretched my senses through his body, finding the source of his imminent death.
I’d expected poison of some kind, but this was worse: it was magical in nature, and it had been created by a shaman. And not just any shaman. The same one who’d watched while Parker brutalized me. I’d have known the oily feeling of his magic anywhere, and I flinched back, the touch of it against my own magic almost more repellent than the touch of his body would have been.
But I couldn’t remove it without touching it, since magical tweezers weren’t a thing. I braced myself and reached out, feeling the contours of it. It was an insidious little spell, bound to a physical compound that must’ve been coating Tyler’s claws. I made a mental note to dissect him later, if Parker hadn’t thought to carry off the body.
I grasped one particle of the magical filth and poured power through it, calling out to all the similar energies in Matthew’s body. They coalesced, slowly at first, and then rushing through Matthew’s veins in clotting, black clumps that gathered around my magical touch like tar. I pulled, and pulled, and finally it was all there.
One last pull, one violent yank, and poison oozed visibly from the wound in Matthew’s shoulder, flowing over his arm like a venomous snake.
“What the fuck is that?” Nate whispered. “It looks — it looks like death.”
“Get it off him and incinerate it.” I kept pulling. Nate made an exaggerated moue of disgust that might have made me laugh if I hadn’t needed to concentrate so hard, focused his own power, and started to gather up the goo and compress it into a levitating ball that hovered over Matthew’s chest.
At last it was all out, all together, and Nate swooped it away, dropping it onto the dirt a few yards away with a splat.
I felt a rush of power and heat. He was doing what I’d told him, thank the gods.
I closed my eyes again and dipped back into Matthew’s energy. That ember of life was still glowing, and now I could feed it and let his body take over. My strength poured into him as I opened the floodgates and gave him what he needed.
The magic hit him like a wrecking ball, and he arched off the ground, his mouth open in a silent scream. His head rolled on the ground, dust all over his skin and redwood needles tangling in his hair. But it was working, and his wounds were closing, shrinking so quickly I could see the skin knitting together with my eyes as well as with my magical senses.
I slumped back, sitting on my feet and drawing what felt like my first breath since I’d started. What was with this overwhelming relief that made all my limbs loose and weak? Parker was gone for now, and I wasn’t dying with Matthew, bound in manacles that cut me off from the ability to save myself — but my situation wasn’t much better than it had been. Dor was still hovering nearby, poised to incapacitate me — or possibly make me glow in the dark — if I tried anything. Ian was ready to kill me. The next step would probably be trying to force me to lift the spell on Matthew, and between Dor and Nate and Ian, they might be able to.
The spell. That reminded me. I reached out along the conduit of magic binding me to Matthew and adjusted the balance of it, carefully and subtly so as not to attract Nate’s attention. When I was done, I was completely free of the effects of it: I didn’t need to be in Matthew’s proximity anymore.
But I left it so that he had to be near me. Because I was pretty sure that if we were separated, it wasn’t going to work out so well for me, starting with Ian being able to threaten me without Matthew’s interference and ending with being locked in that fucking basement again.
I lessened the effects on him, too, though. I didn’t need more near-misses with being mated to brighten up my life.
When I opened my eyes, Matthew’s were starting to flutter open too. Ian had dropped down on his knees by Matthew’s head and was gripping his shoulder so hard his knuckles were white, the look on his face painfully naked, relief and love in his eyes and the set of his mouth.
But Matthew’s hazy gaze found me first. His lips stretched in a wonky sort of grin, and he blinked up at me loopily. “Anyone ever tell you how beautiful you are?” he slurred.
“What the fuck?” Ian’s lip curled in disgust. “Did you scramble his brains even more?” He glared at me accusingly, and he was turning a dangerous shade of red.
“I had to channel most of my magic into him to save his life, and yes, it’s temporarily scrambling his brains even more,” I said, slurring a bit myself. Shit. I’d really drained myself. He’d been so close to death…I shuddered a little. The result of being low on magic, no doubt. “You’re fucking welcome.”
To my shock, Ian’s anger seemed to fade away a little. He looked down at Matthew, and then back up at me. “I still think you’re fucking scum. But thank you.”
I couldn’t help it; I started to laugh, dropping down cross-legged next to Matthew and resting my elbows on my knees and my head in my hands. It was both the best and the worst expression of gratitude I’d ever gotten, since honestly? I couldn’t remember another time someone had thanked me for anything for years and years. Maybe I hadn’t done anything worth being thanked for.
I laughed harder, and it started coming out more like sobs. The skin of my face buzzed and tingled, my fingers were numb, and I couldn’t stop laughing.
“We need to get them both to the house. He’s
used too much magic, and Matthew’s still out of it.” Was that Nate’s voice? Maybe. It stretched and throbbed, like the funhouse-mirror version of sound.
Hands pulled me up, whose hands I didn’t know, and then someone pushed me through one of Dor’s weird void-spaces. I emerged in Matthew’s bedroom and someone else shoved me onto the bed, where I landed next to Matthew like a felled tree.
Chapter 9
Down the Drain
It was quite a while later, going by the dark window and the glow of the lamp on the nightstand, when I crawled out of a groggy sleep to the sound of quiet voices. Long practice with waking up in strange places had given me the ability to come to consciousness without stirring or making a sound, so I lay there perfectly still, figuring out who was there before I let them know I was awake.
“…saved my life,” Matthew was saying. “He’s a little shit, but he’s obviously not a total psycho.”
Ah, they were talking about me. How nice. I’d have gotten that just from the ‘little shit’ descriptor, but good to know I wasn’t the worst person Matthew had ever met.
That was probably Jonathan Hawthorne. Jonathan Hawthorne had probably been the worst person anyone who’d met him had ever met. Not for the first time, I wondered if Nate had actually had it worse than I had, growing up with that for a father. I mean, I’d been totally without parents — my long-lost adoptive brother, only an adolescent himself at the time, had found me hiding behind a dumpster when I was a kitten, and I’d never known what happened to them — and I’d always thought maybe parents were more trouble than they were worth. Meeting Nate and his sire had only reinforced that opinion.
Speaking of Nate. “He wanted those manacles off. He would’ve done anything to get free, even something decent. I wouldn’t give him too much credit.” Nate didn’t sound completely sold, though; there was a little hesitation there, a touch of doubt. Solidarity among magic-users? Possible. Also possible: he was kind of a soft touch, and I ought to use it against him.
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