by Melissa Marr
“Killing you would more than hurt.” Eli tore his gaze away from the sword between us. “It would destroy me.”
“You understand then. I cannot be something that kills people. I can’t become like that, Eli, and no one else I know is strong enough to stop me.” I’d begun to shake. The few moments without ice was too long. I couldn’t live in bed under ice for the rest of my however-many-decades-or-centuries of life, and I couldn’t become a worse perversion of life than I already was. I grabbed the ice and piled it on my skin again, and with shaky hands, he helped.
“Geneviève . . . what you ask . . .”
I hated the way Eli was looking at me. If this got worse, there weren’t many choices left. I needed him to agree before we tried to cut the venom out.
“I guess the guillotine purchase wasn’t as bad of an idea as I’d thought. If my plan fails . . . don’t warehouse me. I don’t want to be that.”
Eli met my gaze.
“If I turn, will you kill me? Please, Eli, I know it’s a lot to ask, but . . .?”
The moments dragged, but finally, Eli gave one nod, took a steadying breath, and shifted to a businesslike demeanor. I was grateful for it, for him. The familiar light tone in his voice was a total lie, but I was still glad to hear it when he asked, “What is your plan to avoid changing?”
“It’s a terrible plan,” I warned Eli as I lifted the heated knife.
“I would expect no less of you.” He was clearly trying to continue to sound light hearted, but he watched me warily. I guess asking someone to kill you is awkward.
“Sanitize that?” I nodded at my belly as I took the bag of ice off my skin.
The skin was red with splotches of white. I wasn’t sure what was from the ice and what was from the poison. All I knew for sure was that the venom wouldn’t stay in this knot. Whether the broken needle or the ice had bought me this much time, I didn’t know. The amount in the first injection was more than enough to scare me. More wasn’t an option. It had to come out.
“I’m going to cut it out.”
“You’re going to . . .” He stopped himself and tried to match my calm. “Would you like me to . . . do that?”
“Not really.” I braced myself for the pain. “I will need you to stitch me after I do this. For now, put your hands here and pull the skin taut.”
I directed his hands to my bare skin. It was not how I wanted him to touch me the first time we were in my bedroom, but I couldn’t imagine trusting anyone else to be at my side for this. I loved my friends, but only Eli could be here. His strength. His willingness to let me control my fate. I asked a hard thing of him—I knew that. My job was to accept that very request: behead people’s loved ones. It was different when it was someone you loved, and while I didn’t think he loved me, he certainly had feelings.
I couldn’t say all of that. I simply said, “Thank you.”
Then I let my eyes slide toward grave sight, so I could see better. I had to find the edges of the poison so I could excise it like a cancer. I couldn’t carve away what I couldn’t see.
“Geneviève . . .?”
“I’m here. Need different vision.” I stared at my skin and the pulsing emerald under the surface.
It was wider than before. Something—whether the failed injection, my body, or the ice—had enclosed it a capsule. I could see it writhing, though. The venom was fleeing in little trickles.
“The venom they injected is more than even I can process. The shot in my arm might still change me. If this was injected carefully, I’d be—” I shook my head, stopping my own words, not wanting to think about the certain death I’d narrowly missed. If it was properly injected. If my friends hadn’t come. If they hadn’t thought to use ice. If this home surgery of mine didn’t work. . .
I had to cut it out.
I had to succeed.
Or Eli would have to behead me.
I let myself think about what to do next. I’d either give up or I’d be too late. I took a deep breath, and then I jabbed the knife into my skin. Despite best efforts, I made a noise. I might be okay with pain and have more experience with it than anyone should need, but I was not impervious to it.
In my anxiety over getting it done, the tip of the knife went in a bit further than I wanted. I wasn’t exactly skilled in self-surgery. I twisted the blade so it slid under the ball of venom that we’d effectively frozen. A whimper escaped my lips, and I felt more than saw Eli glance at me.
He didn’t speak.
I couldn’t speak.
Parting my lips would let out cries of pain, rage, and fear.
My hand wasn’t unsteady in a dangerous way yet, so I tried diligently not to think about the fact that this was my body I was stabbing. Okay, it was a little unsteady. I gouged out a bit more flesh than maybe I needed—but I wasn’t sure I could stab myself twice.
I pulled the blade out, trying not to look at the blobby thing I’d cut out. It looked like a clutch of frozen frog eggs. My hand hovered in the air, not sure what exactly to do with the lump I’d carved out of my body.
Then I felt Eli’s hand on my wrist. “I am here, Geneviève. Let me stitch this.”
I let him take my knife, watched it drop onto a rag on the floor, and closed my eyes. I felt tears slip through my closed eyes as Eli cleaned blood away, stitched, cleaned, stitched. There was something soothing about it. I sucked at letting people take care of me most of the time, but over the last year, I’d let more than Jesse, Sera, and Christy in. I’d let Eli in.
“Still with me?”
“Thinking,” I said. I counted stitches, seven so far, and concentrated on the rhythmic tying together of my flesh. Another wipe, another stitch. The needle pierced my skin. I hated when he had to do this. I knew that Eli could manage steel in the way that true fae couldn’t, but it wasn’t exactly pleasant for him.
“Thinking about?” he prompted.
“You,” I admitted.
He paused for a flicker of a moment, but then he wiped my skin again and stitched again. “Oh?”
“I trust you.”
“Good . . .”
“No, I mean, I really trust you. When I was hurt, my thought was that I needed you, and when I think about keeping my friends safe, I need you to protect them. And when I think about being put down—”
“’Put down?’ You are not a rabid animal, Geneviève.” Eli wiped again and looked at his work. “And I thought I was counted among your friends.”
“Fair.” I scooted up slightly. “My point, Eli, was that I don’t trust easily. I’ve known Jesse my whole life, Sera and Christy for almost a decade. It’s a short list.”
He gave one of those half-shrugs that shouldn’t be charming but was and said, “I waited you out.”
Then he grinned at me.
My tension slipped away as I watched him look less calm, more agitated, more emotional. It was a peculiar thing to know that his calm visage was probably the most obvious signal that he was upset. Seeing him less reserved, less controlled was how I knew that we were both thinking that things were probably going to be fine.
I opened my mouth to reply and felt elongated teeth drop down from my gums. I reached up with one finger and felt them. Fangs. I had fangs.
Eli reached out to me. “Geneviève?”
“Fangs!” I clamped a hand over my mouth and grasped my sword with the other. I had failed. There wasn’t any way to stay safe, to keep my family or friends safe. I jumbled with the sword until I had the point under my chin. I held it there with one hand, and then I took the one that was over my mouth and made a slamming gesture at Eli.
“No,” he said in the calmest voice ever. “I will not shove you onto the sword blade. You’re panicking. Are you still coherent?”
I gave a slight nod.
He pushed the sword away from my throat. “Do you want to bite me?”
I tilted my head, and then shook it. I didn’t. Maybe I just wasn’t hungry. Although I could feel my heart thudding in my ears, I still
reached down and checked my pulse.
“Alive?”
Live people didn’t have fangs. I had a pulse—and fangs. I had not had them before, though, and I really didn’t want them now. Passing for human was hard enough with often reptilian eyes and the ability to flow. If people knew I was inhuman . . . I blinked tears. I wasn’t sure what was going on, and I stared at Eli and wondered if he had answers. Ideas. Something.
He took my hand in his, unfolding my fingers so I released the sword. He shoved it away and sat close beside me on the bed. He pulled me against him, holding me, trusting me, and stroked my back and arm. “We need answers, love.”
I waited. It was that or uncover my mouth, and that sounded like a lousy plan.
“The only solution I see is to seek the ones who might know,” he murmured. “Beatrice seems to like you—or at the least, want you to like her. Could you reach out to her?”
I watched him warily. This was turning into an awful day, or maybe it was way past that. I’d figured out who the murderer was by accident, been left for dead, and now I had fangs.
“She is the last idea I have,” Eli said. “But if the alternative is losing you, bring the dead, crème brûlée. Call for her because there must be a solution that doesn’t involve your death.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
Eli’s suggestion was not one I liked, but my magic felt like it was choking me. There was a ball in my throat, like I had the physical need to vomit but the will to stop it. I wanted to release my call to the dead. My magic pushed out, no longer able to be held back.
“Can you call Beatrice specifically?” Eli urged.
“Maybe . . .?”
I closed my eyes and . . . let go of my restraints. It was a relief to let my magic free, as if too-tight trousers, pinching shoes, underwire bra, and a bitchy neighbor were all removed in one glorious moment. Although I was trying to concentrate on Beatrice, on the unique traits that were her, my magic rolled from New Orleans to the Outs. I could see fields, trees, and for a split moment, I could smell the scents that were home to me. Beatrice wasn’t there. Instead, I could see home and my mother.
“Darius?” Mama Lauren’s voice had a thread of girlish hope. She looked up from her herb-strewn table and seemed to see me. She smiled beatifically. “Baby girl?”
I watched my mother, who was staring into the darkness of her work room and smiling. At me. She was smiling at me, and I had zero idea how.
“Look at you,” she said in a teary voice. “I knew you’d become something sacred. I knew it. Just look at you.”
Beatrice.
I jerked away, followed the flow of the land, let myself ripple across the air as if the land was too limiting. Air. I was a creature of air and land, of water, of fire. I was Witch. The fire of life and death was in my veins, and I could end a life or create one from the ashes of death. Small dead creatures rested in the soil. The bones of a wolf scattered on the ground as flowers pushed their blossoms between dried remnants of its ribs. The hunter had become the food. His meat had fed the soil, and seeds had sprouted. I could bring wolf and prey to life again.
I jerked away. My magic usually only sought humanity’s dead. Not creatures. I didn’t want to uproot bone or flowers that grew there.
Beatrice.
My attention slid to a river, and my magic rolled over current and stone. This was not where death was. The dead did not belong in water that gave life to land and animal. I pulled away again. I felt my magic seeking the dead, and the dead that looked back at me were waiting for the spark of life I carried.
Eli’s voice carried all around me, an echo over land and water as he urged, “Geneviève, focus. I need you.”
Eli. Eli was a shelter, a strong rock under which I could find rest and peace. If I found the dead creature I sought, I could return to Eli. My partner. My tether. Peace to my violence. Balance. A thread of truth there called me. Balance was my source. Life and death. My nature-bound mother and the dead thing that fathered me.
I needed a specific dead, not one I called to speak from ash-made lips. I needed one who was dead, but again-walking.
Draugr.
Beatrice.
The thought of her name again, the third call to her, was enough to send me hurtling toward her. She stood in a room I couldn’t see, surrounded by people. Seven. Eight. There were others watching her. These seven were the ones I should see. Another time I would ask, study, understand. Today, I simply wanted to live.
“Leave me.” Beatrice pressed her lips together.
I knew she didn’t mean me. She was sending them away. She offered me privacy.
The bodies left. Doors closed.
“Stop trying to see beyond me, Geneviève.” Even without being beside her, I could tell she was exasperated again.
“You are beside me.”
My magic surged. She was here. In my home. With Eli. Was Eli safe?
I felt her sigh echo in the chambers of my mind, a warm strong breeze. It rushed around, battering at the fog that seemed to be filling my mind. I didn’t like the fog.
“You’re not in my home, nor am I in yours. Yet. I gather you are grievously injured then?” Beatrice was moving, footsteps on marble. Her floor was marble. I saw a glimpse of heavy drapes as she passed them. Red brocade.
“Burgundy,” she corrected as she left the building.
I stayed next to her as she walked. I could smell grass, wet earth. This was not within the city of New Orleans. The Outs? My mother—
“Lauren is fine.” Beatrice sighed again. “I would never harm your mother. None of mine would unless they’d like to find their second death.”
I shook my head, and I felt Eli there next to me. He was in the room where I was in physical space. The part of me that was drifting along on magic was far away, but my body was with Eli.
He was stroking my face. “Geneviève? Come back to me, love. Find the woman and return. I can’t get your fever down this time. Geneviève? Please, I could not bear to lose you.” He was weeping. Tears sizzled on my flesh. “Please.”
At that, I felt myself return to my body. I stared up at him, but I could not speak. I could not move. My body was motionless, but I heard my pulse.
Come, I called, with every sliver of my magic.
I could not untie myself from this form or place. I’d never projected before, at least not that I was aware of doing. I’d send my magic out in waves, but not my very self. Somehow, tonight, I’d sought out my mother, and I’d found Beatrice. My astral body was tied to my physical self, but I was able to explore. A trickle of fear suggested that this was a result of my impending death. Apparently, it wasn’t only feats of great strength that were possible in times of peril, but feats of new magic.
I’d pulled myself away from where I was in the world to seek help. I had no idea if it would work. Did Beatrice know where I was? Could she hear my summons and find me?
If not, there was no time left to give her that information. I shivered in the cold I felt but could not see. Eli must have added more ice, covering me, and as my temperature lowered again, I felt caught, like some sticky fibrous mass was wrapped around my body, melding me to the flesh, the space, the moment where I was. I could not leave my building to find Beatrice, and I wasn’t entirely convinced that her aid was something I wanted.
But I didn’t want to die.
Again, I sent the word out on the pulse of my magic: Come. Then for good measure, I added, Beatrice, please come.
She didn’t answer, and I was unable to untether myself from my body again. When I heard the pounding on the door, I wanted to tell Eli it wasn’t her. They were human. I could feel them, but I could neither move nor speak.
“Let me see if that is our knight in an elegant gown,” he murmured as he kissed my forehead. Only then did he release my wrist. Eli wasn’t beheading me, despite my requests to him, but in his defense, I wasn’t technically dead either.
“I need to see Miss Crowe,” an angry voice insisted.
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br /> “She is unwell,” Eli rebutted.
“Well, the whole fucking lawn and the parking lot are filling up with zombies again. That’s her doing.” The man’s voice grew louder as he yelled, “Crowe! Stop whatever hocus pocus you’re doing. I ordered take-away, and the delivery man is quivering in his car.”
“Could you walk to his car?” another voice asked.
“Sure, right. I’ll just march through a herd of zombies. Great idea, Martha.”
And then, no one spoke.
I felt Beatrice arrive. The air and the space that had been vibrating with anger was suddenly still. Terror rippled through the air. No one would have doubt as to what she was.
“Lady Beatrice,” Eli said warmly.
“I come for Geneviève. Do I need to kill these people to reach the door?” Beatrice’s voice was loud enough to carry.
“No,” Eli said drolly. “They noticed that Geneviève was dying and came to speak to her.”
“Indeed.” Beatrice sounded amused. “Shall I disperse those worrying in the lot?”
“If you wouldn’t mind,” my neighbor, Rosemary, said cheerily. I’d always liked her. No nonsense. No fear. If I lived long enough to grow old, I wanted to be like her.
If I could laugh, I might.
“It’s a temporary solution, unless Geneviève dies or recovers. Currently, her magic is…summoning the dead,” Beatrice said lightly. “Including draugr.”
My neighbors’ replies were too muffled to hear, but whatever their opinions, they weren’t arguing with the scary dead woman in the doorway to my home.
I heard the others leave, as well as a cheerful voice from Rosemary, “Well, she seems nice, doesn’t she?”
Nice? I doubted that Beatrice was nice by anyone’s standards, but she was efficient. Right now, I was grateful for it. If I recovered, I suspected I’d need to figure out why she was so interested in me, but not today.
I can hear you, Beatrice whispered in my mind. She sounded like she was amused.
Really?
Did you think you were the only one who can read minds? she asked.
