Blood and Wolf

by S. M. Gaither

  It towers over me.

  Then I suddenly remember the water demon in Ireland, the way it loomed above me, too—until it disappeared.

  Cursing myself for not thinking of it first, I retrieve the glowing key. Squinting in its light, I thrust it forward just as that creature tries to envelop me again.

  My fist, and the key in it, collides with its chest and slowly sinks in. It feels like it’s burning and peeling away the skin of my hand as it does. Tears sting my eyes, but I blink them away and fight to keep the key held steady.

  There’s no screeching from the demon this time; it’s more like a deep, mournful bellowing as its body begins to disintegrate the way it did before. Only this time, when the pieces of it peel back toward the host body, they don’t rejoin with that body—they dive instead through the spaces of my clenched fist and into the key within it.

  After several seconds of this flurrying dance of shadows, there’s no body left.

  It’s just me and the second key of Canath trembling with power in my outstretched hand.

  The glass shard is dark and seems to swirl with the absorbed shadows, and as I watch, that familiar mark of the otherworld begins to etch itself across the key’s surface.

  The last of its curves appears, and I feel that uneasy stirring in my stomach—the same strange pull that the first key caused when not under the neutralizing spell.

  I think of the lockbox that the other key is contained in, buried in one of our backpacks—bags which are where, now?

  Bag.

  There was that leather bag that the demon had this in. It’s all my mind can think about, suddenly.

  I have to contain this key, I have to find that bag, to find something, something…

  My head is pounding. The ground feels like it’s shifting as I crawl over it, lifting me and tossing me this way and that, turning me around so that I always end up back where I started.

  That key continues to pulse.

  My heart pulses with it, faster and faster, so hard that it feels like it might pulse its way right out of my chest. The beast inside me surges and claws for my attention. I try desperately to push it down.

  It’s no good; I can feel my bones start to twist and my mouth itching, fangs sprouting.

  No, no, no—

  I sense movement to my left, but I’m too far gone to do anything about it.

  Sixteen

  Reason and Fear

  My awareness returns in one swift, painful swoop.

  All at once I’m incredibly conscious of the pain in my back, in my shoulder, along all of the places that I’ve been ripped and torn apart. The overwhelming scent of blood is back in my nostrils.

  But there’s also a familiar voice back in my head.

  “Does that help?” Liam asks, and I sit partially up to see him yanking the drawstring of that leather bag, closing up the key.

  I can still feel its energy pulsing, trying to pull me toward it. But something about that container makes it bearable at least; I remember the shrine that the first key was in. And now I wonder if it was as much to protect the guardian from the key’s energy as it was to protect the key from outside forces.

  I’m speechless for a moment, thinking over these things and staring at Liam—studying his face for any lingering traces of darkness.

  “It’s me,” he says softly. “Only me.”

  I sit the rest of the way up, wincing as my melted clothing peels away from the burnt skin of my back. The pain makes my stomach heave, but somehow I keep myself from vomiting as I crawl my way across grass that’s blackened and dead—from that demon’s touch, I’m guessing—and I throw my arms around Liam.

  “So maybe in the future you should be a little more superstitious,” I mutter into his chest.

  He squeezes me tighter, and it hurts like hell against my bleeding and burnt and broken body, but I wouldn’t have even thought about letting go if I didn’t have to.

  But I have to, even though I’m afraid of what I’m going to see when I race to Soren’s side.

  I race to it anyway, despite my exhausted body’s protests. I drop to my knees beside him, into a puddle of wet earth and blood.

  His body flinches slightly at my nearness.

  It’s the only indication he gives that he’s aware of me at all. He’s breathing, at least, and somewhat evenly at that. But there’s too much blood. It’s hard to tell exactly how much, since the rain is still falling in sheets and dampening his shirt and making all the blood—old and new—appear fresh. But either way, it’s too much. And his face is far too pale.

  “Elle,” Liam begins, “I’m sorry, I—”

  “Go find Carys,” I say quietly. “Go make sure she’s still okay. I’m going to stay with him.”

  He hesitates, looking broken and horrified over the damage he technically caused. And I know that awful feeling of causing unintentional destruction far too well to be able to tell him don’t worry about it. I know better.

  Really, you can’t not worry about it, unless there’s something wrong with you.

  So instead, I give him the most sympathetic look I can muster through my tiredness, and I just say, “Hurry, please.”

  He drops the bagged key at my side, takes to his wolf form, and races off into the night.

  I look back to the stomach-turning sight beside me.

  All of Soren’s illusion magic has faded, and so it’s his actual, true form that I run my hands across, inspecting the bruises and claw marks and trying to figure out where he’s losing the most blood from.

  His shirt is already partially shredded, so I tear it the rest of the way open. I use the rain-dampened strips of it to clean the deepest wounds, which are the claw marks across his chest. The gashes are not as deep as I expected—but then, I was expecting the absolute worst, so that isn’t saying much. I continue to clean them as best I can, and then I take my own jacket off and use it to apply pressure, trying to stop the bleeding that’s still happening.

  I wish he would open his eyes.

  I wish I could let him borrow my supernatural healing abilities, somehow.

  His body isn’t like a normal human’s, at least. No creature that has magical ability—whether it’s shape-shifting, or blood magic, or both, or anything else— has all the limitations of a human body. Stronger lungs, extra hearts, cells that repair themselves at insanely fast rates; us ‘human-like’ supernaturals all have our slight modifications of those human bodies. And I don’t know the exact anatomy of his particular sorcerer lineage, but I do know, now, that he’s a true Blackwood.

  So he’s too powerful to die like this.

  Right?

  “You can’t die on me,” I say quietly, just in case he’s thinking about trying it.

  I think I see his eyelids flutter, as if he’s hearing me and trying to respond. But I can’t bring myself to keep talking. Each word I try to force out seems incomplete and inadequate, not matching the gravity of the situation, and each of those words brings a threat of choking and tears with it, too.

  So I keep my mouth shut.

  I focus on action instead of words. I slip the bag containing the key into my pocket, and then I pull Soren into my arms and stand up slowly, carefully.

  I trudge my way through the driving rain, through wind that whips leaves and limbs into my face, and I follow the few familiar scents that I can still pick out over the overwhelming aroma of blood.

  I finally make it back to where we left our bags, and I lay Soren down beneath a particularly leafy tree that provides some shelter from the rain, and then I dig my way through our medical bag—thankful, once again, that Carys insisted we pack it as full as possible.

  (Have you found her?) I think toward Liam, multitasking as I collect bandages and potions and salves.

  (Just did,) he replies quickly. (We’re okay. She’s resting still; we’re going to hang out in this little cave for a bit. It’s cozy.)

  I take a deep, relieved breath—he doesn’t sound like he’s afraid for he
r life, at least.

  So I set to work on Soren.

  He probably needs a hospital, really. His skin definitely isn’t pulling itself back together the way a shifter’s can.

  But human hospitals are always a tricky thing to navigate.

  We usually avoid them, because it saves the mess of having to explain, or somehow magic away, the aforementioned weird anatomy business of the supernatural existence. If Soren has something like two hearts going on under his skin, I don’t want to be the one to have to convince the doctor he’s seeing things.

  Besides, given the fact that we’re being followed—and that there’s no way Soren’s going to be able to hide us anytime soon—it doesn’t seem like a particularly bright idea to check into a hospital.

  Fueled by a surge of desperation at the thought of our earlier pursuers catching up with us, I dab a bit of a balm that smells like licorice underneath his nose. I’m not sure what’s in it, but I know Carys has used it on me before, when my attempts to control my shifter side ended with me passing out. It’s a terrible smell to wake up to.

  But it’s better than not waking up at all.

  It doesn’t seem to have much of an immediate effect on him, though.

  Undeterred, I reach for the next jar, and I slather pain-relieving ointment over his wounds. Then I wrap his chest as best I can, trying to be gentle, but inevitably being awkward— and then accidentally a bit rough as I try to lift him to get the bandages smoothed properly against his back. My grip on him fumbles as I attempt to gather the ends of the bandages and tie them off. I tighten my hold again, but not quickly enough to keep him from slipping and thumping hard against the ground with only my hands—hastily shoved underneath him—to break his fall.

  So I’m a freaking terrible nurse, basically.

  I struggle to push myself off of him without doing further bodily harm. It’s a slow, awkward struggle. And that fainting balm seems to be working, suddenly—so me awkwardly-straddled-on-top-of-him is the position he wakes up to find me in, of course.

  He blinks, several times, and then he says, in a weak voice, “There are easier ways to get me half-naked and underneath you, you know.”

  I don’t even care to make a snarky response back for once.

  All I can manage to do is breathe a sigh of relief.

  “You could have just asked, for example,” he says.

  I tumble off of him. “I’m so glad you’re awake,” I say, and I’m a little overwhelmed at how deeply I find myself feeling those words—and how panicky I start to feel when I think, what if I didn’t get to say them? What if he hadn’t woken up?

  I give my head a little shake to dispel those last thoughts, and I try to switch back to nurse mode. “Can you sit up?” I ask.

  He breathes in deeply, bracing himself for the motion.

  I offer him my arm. He squeezes it every time his face contorts in pain, so that by the time he’s properly upright, I can barely feel it anymore. He tries several additional deep breaths. Each one makes his eyes clench shut for a moment, and I find myself wincing in pain along with him, still wishing there was a way to use my healing abilities on him.

  He’s such a mess that he’s hard to look at. I find my gaze drifting between him and safer things like the rain-slicked leaves and the muddy toes of my boots.

  “Why’d you come after me?” I ask quietly.

  He slowly lets go of my arm. His fingers trail instead to tenderly feel along his bandaged chest, and he’s lost in thought for a moment before he says, “Because what else could I have done?”

  I look away again, scrubbing away some of the partially-dried blood on my arm with some help from the rainy mist that’s collected on my skin. “Liam is mortified about what he did.”

  “I didn’t think you’d be able to fight him. I wouldn’t have been able to, if I were you. That’s a more concrete reason for what I did, if you want it.”

  I nod, standing and pulling the key from my back pocket. Even through its container, its power pulses through my body like an electric current. I squeeze it tighter, and double-check that the drawstring of the bag is pulled completely closed.

  “It’s bothering you?” he guesses.

  “It isn’t incredibly pleasant, being around it, no.”

  “I can try to…”

  “Don’t even think about it,” I say, digging through our stuff until I find the bag with the lockbox that the first key is in. I pause with my hand on the lid, anticipating the power inside of it. “You’re way too weak to be dealing out any spells at the moment.”

  “At least let me be the one to lock it up. The two keys combined might be overwhelming for you.”

  I sigh, but relinquish my hold on the key and back away as he fiddles with the lockbox’s fastenings.

  “Was kind of hoping I might build up a tolerance to it by the time we found this second key,” I mutter. “I wonder what sort of power the third one’s going to have? It might just completely make me lose my mind, if this last round is any indication.”

  “If it wasn’t for you, they wouldn’t be giving off that power, and we probably never would have found them. So it’s a good thing you react to them they way you do, and vice versa.”

  “I’m just ready to feel in control.”

  “Well, only one more key left to collect for a stabilized you, right?”

  I nod, and offer him a half-hearted smile. I mean hey—if he can still keep an optimistic eye on the prize after nearly having his entire insides ripped out, then I guess I can too.

  I let him rest for a few more minutes while I pack up the medical supplies and wipe the rain from all of our bags. That rain has stopped, and it’s left a chill hanging in the air in its place. Kind of crisp and refreshing though; much more so than North Carolina rain, which is usually followed by lingering humidity so thick you can hardly breath in it.

  My breathing is labored, still, but not from the humidity.

  It’s from a stubborn, persistent fear that’s now eating at the back of my mind, despite my attempts to cling to Soren’s optimism. A fear over how our torn up group can possibly manage to battle whatever guardian creature from hell awaits us at that final key’s hiding spot— and a worry that we might not even make it to that spot, if we can’t outrun the things chasing us.

  “So, back to the States, right?” I ask, trying to keep my voice casual.

  He nods, eyes closed in a meditative sort of way.

  I already knew the answer was yes, of course; we decided in the beginning of all this that we’d save the key located near the Florida Everglades for last. It was the one location that he was certain of from the beginning, so there should be little tracking to do, at least.

  The idea behind leaving it until the end was to get out of America as fast as possible, in hopes that the ones trailing us after my prison break would have a harder time following if we jetted immediately overseas.

  Part of me was afraid, too, that if I was somewhere as close as Florida, my dad might try hunting me down himself, despite my mom technically giving me her blessing for this mission I set off on.

  But if I could finish said mission first, and then come back home after fixing the problem of me….

  Well, hopefully even Dad will understand why I left.

  And all of this will be worth it in the end.

  “We need to get to someplace safer than these woods,” I say. “Preferably someplace in the direction of an airport, if you think you’ll survive the trip?”

  “I’ll manage,” Soren says.

  I think the same message in Liam’s direction, and he hesitates for only a moment before replying that they’re on their way to us.

  I start shrugging bags onto my shoulder, and then I reach for Soren’s hand. I’m already wincing at the thought of his pain, of having to move him so quickly.

  But I know we have to.

  He knows it too, judging by the way he takes my hand and lets me pull him to his feet

  “One more key,” he sa
ys, his speech a bit slurred as he presses his forehead to mine. For support, I know; his head has to still be spinning from blood loss. So I let him rest against me for a moment, even though it makes my skin flush uncomfortably hot.

  “I’m sorry about earlier, by the way,” I say quietly.

  “Sorry?”

  “For getting mad. You still should have told me the truth about who you were but…. But I understand why you didn’t. Just…no more secrets, okay?”

  He leans back, and after some difficulty, he manages to focus his pain-filled eyes on me. His true, brilliantly green, pained eyes.

  Then he gives the slightest of nods.

  I want it to be enough to convince me that he doesn’t have any more secrets.

  But in the crisp after-rain air of the Romanian night, I think I see his lips twitch, fighting off a frown.

  And so I’m not entirely sure.

  Seventeen

  Lies and Leaving

  The plane ride back feels considerably different than the first one we all took together.

  The first was filled with cautious optimism, with Liam making dumb jokes and Soren playing dumber pranks and Carys rolling her eyes and trying to hide her amusement at it all, same as me.

  Neither of us is amused, now.

  I get up and pretend I need to use the restroom three times within the first hours of takeoff, just so I can check on my two best friends.

  Carys is passed out all three times, her complexion far too similar to a corpse and the scent of blood much too prominent on her.

  The first two times, Liam attempts to give me small smile. But I can’t focus on it past the awful, lingering shock in his eyes.

  The third time, he just stares blankly out the window, pretending he hasn’t noticed me when I know at least one of his senses must have.

  They’re wrecked. Exhausted. Horrified at the things they’ve done and seen.

  I am too.

  The only difference is that none of this was their idea.

  So by the time we’ve landed, I’ve made up my mind about something.