Sokach maneuvered the car into the garage and killed the engine, the door dropping closed behind him. He sat for a moment in the dark silence.
His little brother had another jealousy – Sokach’s place in the family. Velimir might have been the first of her newborns, those created after abandoning the Underworld, but Sokach was the last of her firstborns. And the most trusted, the most powerful. Did Velimir think to cause a rift in that relationship by making Sokach choose Blue over Morana? If so, Sokach had fallen right into Velimir’s trap, given away his weakness. But lucky for him, their queen mother had more pressing issues on her mind.
Growling at his own stupidity, Sokach shoved open the car door, climbed out, and slammed it closed behind him. He walked into the side foyer, dropped his keys on the small table in the hallway, his suit jack on the chair, and went to the kitchen to pour himself a glass of wine.
He stood at the island in the dark, staring out the window above the sink. Night was in full force, the moon a sharp silver sickle in the charcoal sky. The pans and pots hanging from hooks above the island caught the paltry incoming light and glowed pewter against the looming shadows of the room. The tannins hit his tongue, tart and fruity. Quiet settled in all the corners of the house.
And then instinct blew its cold breath on his neck, raising the small hairs there.
He was not alone.
Someone had managed to get past the wards guarding his home.
With a whirling side step, he spun around.
A flash of silver swung downward, slicing the skin of his cheek open as he turned. The athame that would have buried itself in his neck had he not moved drove into the countertop instead, the arm behind it swinging with enough force to send a chip of granite flying.
The cut on his cheek sizzled and burning pain flared across his face.
The man was on him, bending Sokach backward, the edge of the counter digging into his lower back. One hand squeezed his throat with the strength of ten daemons; the other swung up, the blade glistening and ready for another strike.
Sokach freed one hand to catch the descending wrist, while with the other, he tugged and twisted at the hand cutting off his air.
Changing tactics, he let go of the vice at his neck, reached up, grabbed hold of the fry pan dangling above him and pulled with all his strength.
The screws pulled out of the ceiling with an audible tear and the metal rectangle rack came crashing down on to them, plaster and paint falling like hail. The assailant took the brunt of the hit, the cast iron fry pan landing squarely on his head.
The hand choking the air from Sokach’s lungs didn’t release its hold, but it did loosen, and that was all the opening Sokach needed.
He knocked it free, then, bracing his feet against the island for leverage, he pushed hard against the man’s weight, rocking to the right, enough to send them both crashing off the edge of the counter. They hit the tile floor with a thud. His assailant rolled free and into a crouch, the athame still in his hand.
He lunged in, moving faster than anyone Sokach had faced in a long time. Not since the angels. It was as though he’d been fed a six-pack of souls before the attack.
Sokach threw up an arm, stumbled back. Biting pain shot through his forearm as the blade cut deep.
Snatching up a hand towel from the oven, he used it like a rope to lasso the man’s wrist when it swung at him again. The attacker now the prisoner. With a hard yank, he slammed the captured arm against the counter’s edge. The athame clanged to the floor. He kicked at it, sent it clattering into the shadows.
The tiny victory was short-lived.
The man closed the space between them, brought his forehead down on Sokach’s with such force that the room momentarily dimmed at the edges of his vision. The cut on his arm burned hot, stealing strength from the limb. His grip loosened. The man spun about, going low, leg sweeping out. Sokach’s feet went out from under him. He’d barely hit the floor before a boot drove into his ribs, then his belly. He conjured fire, but his attacker stomped down hard, crushing his hand and its flame. Catching hold of an ankle on the next kick, Sokach flipped it up, tripping the man.
Sokach scrambled up, tried to pull his power about him to become a shadow, but agony tore through him as the magic started to flow. He dropped to a knee, cradling his cut arm. Something was not right.
Before his brain could register more, his attacker came at him, fists and feet flying. Sokach absorbed the blows, managed to fend off a few and get in some of his own. A furious upper cut sent the man stumbling back a few steps. Sokach caught his breath in the space it gave him, but the relief didn’t last.
A fireball came barreling at him.
He brought up his hands to deflect it, but only one limb complied. The injured arm hung useless at his side. He took the brunt of the strike, its power lifting him off his feet, sending him soaring backwards. Sliding across the island, dropping off its cliff, he landed on the tile with a thud, crashing into the cabinets. Cooking utensils clattered to the floor around him as they were knocked off the counter by the impact. With a moan, he rolled to his side and pulled himself up, his back supported by the wood.
A derisive chortle sounded, and the attacker came into view around the island, sauntering towards him, the walk of confidence. The kill-shot in his hand.
“You’re slowing down, old man.”
Did he have enough magic to shimmer? But if he ran now, he’d never find out who his assailant was or who hired him. That was precious information. Worth his life.
His hand brushed something on the floor.
Steak knives lay scattered around him, their block on its side nearby.
The killer paused at the island to wipe blood from his nose with a kerchief he pulled from a pant pocket.
Sokach needed to act quick. He grabbed one of the blades, his fist curling tight around the steel. Holding it against his thigh, he hid the quick flash of blue light as he murmured the spell.
Now he just needed the bastard to come close.
“You going to be a coward? Kill me from across the room?” he taunted.
“No, I’m going to cram this,” the man said, leaving the island, bouncing the spinning sphere of flame in his palm, “down your throat.”
As he grabbed Sokach by the front of the shirt, Sokach swung the stainless-steel blade with all his might, burying it to the hilt in the meat of the man’s foot, cutting through Italian leather and sole, into the tile.
The fireball winked out as the attacker howled.
Sokach rolled away, used the counter’s edge to haul himself to standing.
The killer bent down, yanked against the knife, but it wouldn’t budge. He jerked his leg, trying to tear his foot off the blade without success. Giving up, he attempted to conjure a fireball, but only managed a matchstick’s worth of flame. He looked at Sokach in dismay.
“The sigil burned into that blade is an ancient one.” Sokach answered his unspoken question with a nod at the protruding handle. “Old age has its perks, as they say. We used to use it on the angels. It will hold you and your magic there forever.”
Sokach straightened, aches in all his joints. He wrapped the dish towel around his forearm, squeezed it. He should be getting his breath back by then, but he wasn’t. His lungs continued to struggle for air.
“It doesn’t matter. You’ll be dead long before I am. Do you feel it?” the man asked, his grin goulish in the grey light. “Poison. It’s making its way through your body.”
Sokach did feel it. Like molten lava inching through his veins, moving toward his heart-center. He needed to get this interrogation over with, get to Morana for her to heal him.
“You’re one of Dragić’s, aren’t you?”
The man didn’t deign to give the obvious answer.
“Why come after me? Why not hit Morana?”
“Because he knows you’d burn down the world to get revenge if he takes her out before you. Better to get you out of the way now. Leave her defenseless.”<
br />
“He knows me well.”
The man snorted, a sly smile on his bloodied face. “Better than you can imagine.”
Sokach moved in, staying out of arm’s reach, but close enough to see the lightning bolt brand on the neck. He pointed to it. “Is that his mark? Does he brand all his dogs?”
In answer, his prisoner spat on the ground at his feet.
“Give him to me,” Sokach demanded. “I want Dragić!”
The devious smile returned. “That name belongs to a ghost.”
Without warning, the man tore open his shirt, revealing line after line of black markings across his chest like a text book. He slapped his hand to it and began to chant. The markings flared red, as though lit from inside.
Sokach stepped back. The sigil kept his attacker from using magic against him, but it didn’t prevent the man from using his powers on himself.
The light grew brighter, pouring out his eyes, his nose, his ears. It pulsed, slow at first, gaining momentum with each passing second.
Oh shit.
Sokach didn’t wait, sprinted for the French doors beside the kitchen, threw himself at the glass, hit the pavement just as the blast hit, sending him tumbling into the pool.
Water covered him. The ground around the pool quaked. Shock waves rocked through it. From its bottom, he watched a cloud of fire swell and curl over the pool. Then a rain storm of debris – shards of bricks, wood, metal – hit the surface, dropped to join him in the deep.
He swam to the far corner, surfaced with a gasp. He dragged himself out and collapsed on the pavement, lay there panting for several minutes, listening to the crackle of fire. When his breathing finally slowed, he sat up, watched the support beam that ran the length of his living room bend, snap in two.
Two attempts on his life in a matter of weeks, for it was clear that he was the target of the hit outside the club. Velimir would have just been collateral damage.
His mind racing, he started to shimmer, to go to Morana, but stopped as his thoughts tripped over the words of the assassin.
How better to hunt a ghost than to become one himself? Become invisible. And as of tonight, that’s what he would be if he let them think him a dead man. Lying low, telling no one he was alive would leave his queen alone, unprotected, and he had never abandoned his post before. But Dragić would expect him to run back to Morana. To gain the upper hand, he needed to do the exact opposite.
Sokach clutched at his chest as the heart muscle contracted in its cage. If he didn’t counteract the poison soon, stop its spreading long enough to consume a soul, he would be a ghost.
He needed help, couldn’t do it alone.
Only one place, one person came to mind.
Summoning the last of his strength, he shimmered to Blue’s living room.
She stood in the kitchen, a bowl cradled in the crook of one arm, her other hand mixing its creamy contents furiously with a whisk.
The bowl dropped from her grip with a dull thud.
White hot pain ripped through Sokach, tearing the breath from his lungs, dropping him to his knees.
In the next heartbeat, Blue was on the floor beside him, her hands touching down lightly like birds on his arm, his back, his side. “My God, are you all right? What happened?”
“Ambush,” he panted.
He felt rather than saw her tense.
“Are they coming here?” she asked.
He could only shake his head.
“I’ll call the restaurant. Get someone to come get you.”
She stood up. He grabbed her wrist, stopping her. Her pulse raced beneath his fingers. “No.” It was more grunt than word.
Her face wrinkled with confusion. “But you need help.”
“Cayenne, apple cider, garl—”
“You’re not making sense!” She started to pull away. “I need to get—”
He yanked on the wrist he still held, harder than he liked, but he needed her attention. She stumbled, dropped back down to him. He met her dark eyes. By the moons, she was beautiful. If he did die tonight, she would be a fine last vision. “Antidote.”
The word’s meaning registered in her face, her lips parting, opening in a silent O of terror.
“Cayenne, apple cider,” her face swam before him, “garlic, honey.” It needed to be raw honey, but the words wouldn’t come to his lips.
“Is that it? Are there any other ingredients?”
The grey fuzz that had been sitting at the edge of his vision billowed out.
“What do I do with them? Sokach, stay with me! How much of each? Sokach!”
Such terror in her voice. And it was the most beautiful sound he’d ever heard, because it wasn’t fear of him shaking in her tone, but fear for him.
There was something important he needed to tell her, but he couldn’t quite remember what.
And then the carpet rose up to meet him.
Chapter Twelve
Blue tried t o catch Sokach before he face-planted, but his weight was too much for her and he dropped forward, forehead to floor. His clothes were sopping wet and he shivered, yet his body burned hot. Even through the linen of his shirt she could feel the fever’s heat.
With a grunt, she shoved at his bulk, pushing him on to his back. She cringed at the thud of his hip hitting the carpet, but there wasn’t time for gentle and careful.
Rusty blood oozed from split and swollen lips, from his nose, bent at a strange angle. A long slash ran from ear to chin. The skin around the opening was discolored, browning, like rotten fruit. She tore open his shirt, sending buttons bouncing on to the carpet, searched for other cuts, but all she found were darkening red and purple bruises. A number of ribs were surely broken.
The shirt sleeve of his left arm was soaked with blood and looked torn. She folded the fabric back, revealing a deep knife cut nearly the length of his forearm. Branching out from the wound, the veins showed through his pale skin. Not the baby blue of veins carrying healthy blood to the lungs, but black. Like spilled ink inching upwards, across the hill of bicep, turning at the shoulder pass, on its way to his heart. A foul stench wafted up, making her nose wrinkle with disgust. That had to be the entry point of the poison. Same with the cut on his face.
Her mouth went dry, her tongue too large for her mouth.
He’d given her ingredients for an antidote, but what did she do with them? Mix them together? Apply them in a certain order?
Blue sprinted to the kitchen. She gave in to instinct, the way she did when she tried a new recipe for the first time. Measuring by feel, by taste, she added each ingredient to a bowl, mixed it into a poultice. She cleaned the wounds with water, then used a frosting spatula to apply the sticky mixture to the arm wound first.
Sokach groaned and writhed when it touched his skin.
She hesitated, unsure if she should continue.
What if she’d gotten the ingredients wrong? Or it was meant to be ingested, not topical?
Screw it. Either do something or do nothing. And she’d never be able to live with herself if she chose the latter.
Steeling herself against his pain, she covered the rest of the wound and the open slice on his cheek and jaw, then dug out some gauze from her bathroom cupboard and wrapped the arm and taped a patch over the face cut as best she could. Then for good measure, she scooped a finger full of paste and pushed it between his lips.
Hopefully, he wouldn’t choke on it.
Done, she sat back on her heels, surveyed his damaged body. That was all she could do. That, and pray she’d gotten the recipe right. It was a terribly helpless feeling. Tears welled in her eyes as the adrenaline wore off, blurring her vision.
She dashed them away. No. She wouldn’t go all weak and worthless now. Focus.
He’d come to her instead of going to his friends. That had to mean something.
Her mind tabbed through its very limited catalog about poisonings, mostly tidbits she remembered from high school cliff notes on Shakespeare’s plays; poison was a cowar
d’s tool, used by someone deceitful and too scared to face their opponent. And that usually meant it was someone close. Someone the victim knew.
Of its own volition, her hand reached out, caressed the skin of his perfect chest, sliding over the hard muscles with a feather-light touch. So much power, yet so vulnerable now.
She wouldn’t let them get him. And she would not let him die.
With resolve came calm. She tended his other wounds, washing them with water, applying a bit of antiseptic and ice packs. There was no way she would be able to move him, so he’d have to stay where he was on the floor. She put a throw pillow from the couch under his head and heaped blankets on his body even though the apartment was warm from the summer sun.
He filled her tiny living space. Truth be told, he filled more than that. He dominated most every waking thought, and all the unconscious ones too. With a hand that shook, she traced his rough cheek, her thumb sliding lightly over his full mouth.
Please don’t let him die.
The irony of it hit her then. The first man she’d let get to her since Jimmy wasn’t even a man.
Somewhere, some god was laughing at her idiocy.
Chapter Thirteen
Something tickled hi s face.
Sokach tried to raise a hand to swat whatever it was away but couldn’t. Something held his arm, pushed it back down.
He struggled against the restraint. His arm was on fire. His face too. The flame was spreading.
“Shhh,” a voice purred. “I’ve got you.”
A silhouette pantomimed before him. His attacker had him, helpless, pinned down.
Strike out. Kill. Get away.
He focused his power, summoning what little magic he could.
“Oh God.” The voice changed, menace replaced by a tremble of fear. “Open your eyes, Sokach. Look at me. Come on, you can do it.”
A feminine lilt to the cadence of words. Not authoritative. Not his queen. But still one he had to obey. He strained against the web of sleep and sickness sealing his eyelashes tight together.
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