by Karen Leabo
“Go after him!” Tess cried, barely able to get the words out through the pain in her arm. She clamped her other hand over the cut and hugged her arm against her, trying to stanch the flow of blood. “I’m okay. Don’t let him leave with the Cat.”
After a moment of indecision Nate took off after Solca. He was both bigger and faster than the other man, and it took him only a few seconds to overtake the Gypsy and tackle him, like an all-pro linebacker. Solca fumbled the statue. It went flying while the two men hit the ground.
“Nate!” Tess ran to where the two men grappled with each other. Solca still had the knife, but Nate had a firm grip around the man’s wrist. The blade was inches from Nate’s neck.
Tess dropped to her knees, grabbed Solca’s arm, and bit him. He screamed and dropped the knife, which she promptly recovered and flung out into the darkness where it couldn’t hurt anyone.
Without his weapon, Solca was helpless. He stopped struggling and, to Tess’s horror, began sobbing. “My Cat … my Cat.”
Nate stood up and brushed himself off. The other man lay on the ground curled into the fetal position. “What should we do with him now?”
“We could tie him up, or lock him in the trunk of the car,” Tess suggested. “Just until we finish the spell. Whatever we do, we have to hurry. Midnight’s coming fast.”
“The trunk will have to do, I guess.” Nate dragged Solca onto his feet.
All at once the little man came alive. He gave Nate a vicious punch in the gut, shook himself free, and took off into the darkness.
“Nate! Nate, are you all right?”
“I’m not … worried … about me,” he said, trying to straighten up. “I’m … worried about … you. You’re bleeding like a …” He couldn’t finish. He leaned against a tree, trying to catch his breath.
“I was going to have to cut myself anyway,” Tess said. “Solca just saved me the trouble. Let’s just do the spell before he works up his nerve and comes back with something worse than a knife.”
Nate nodded. “You’re sure you aren’t bleeding to death?”
“The bleeding is slowing down,” she fibbed. If she didn’t, he would run her straight to a hospital.
Something caught her eye. It was the Crimson Cat peeking at her from the grass where it had fallen, its golden gemstone eyes glowing with a light all their own.
“I’ll get it.” Nate had seen the eyes too. He took off his belt, hooked it around the Cat’s neck. Then he looked up at her. “Jeez, Tess, the blood …” He looked a little pale himself.
“I’m okay, really. Just go, hurry. We don’t have much time.”
Looking doubtful, Nate shrugged and dragged the statue across the ground toward the cemetery.
Tess followed, feeling a little light-headed—whether from the fright she’d just had, or the loss of blood, she didn’t know. There was a lot of blood on the front of her sweater, but it was hard for her to judge how much she’d really lost. The arm was still bleeding, though. She could feel the warmth seeping between her fingers as she applied pressure with her other hand.
With Nate’s help, Tess managed to clamber over the wrought-iron gate. He handed her the tools and ingredients for the spell. When it came time to transfer the Cat, he unceremoniously heaved it over the fence. It landed with a thunk on the soft ground.
“I can’t believe I ever thought that thing was striking,” he grumbled as he vaulted over the fence himself, apparently recovered from Solca’s sucker punch.
Abruptly Nate froze, and Tess remembered his aversion to cemeteries. “Nate?”
“Mmm?” He was breathing hard, as if he’d just run a couple of miles.
“You don’t have to do this, you know. I can cast the spell by myself.”
“Now, what kind of wuss would I be if I let you do that, hmm?” He grabbed up three of the bags, leaving the fourth for her, and started gamely toward the interior of the cemetery. “Which way?”
Tess picked up the remaining bag and set out after him, her heart swelling. How could she not love a man who would face his demons for her? Oh, Lord, she did love him. A surge of confidence coursed through her veins. The spell was going to work. It had to.
Nate tried to block out the sights around him and focus solely on his objective, which was to reach the grave of the poor, ill-fated girl Tess had chosen without losing his dinner. There’s nothing here that can hurt you, he told himself over and over. But phobias did not respond well to logic, he discovered. Besides, there was something there that could hurt him. The Crimson Cat thump-thumped along at his heel. He half expected it to take a bite out of his ankle.
Tess wandered around a bit until she found the grave marker with the bow on top. “There it is!” she shouted triumphantly when she spotted it. She picked up her step, holding her canvas bags with one hand, her injured arm clutched against her chest.
The sight of all that blood scared him more than the leering gravestones did. Was she really all right? He’d considered bundling her up and heading for a hospital, but he knew that if he did, she would never forgive him for messing up their one and only chance to cast the spell. He could have argued that they always had next month, but by then it might be too late for Judy, and possibly too late for them.
That fear overrode everything else. He couldn’t escape the certainty that if they didn’t get this spell-casting thing right the first time, nothing would ever be right again.
“Stand here,” Tess directed. Instantly there was an otherworldliness about her that he hadn’t seen before, an air of supernatural authority, as if she’d suddenly found her element. He stood where she indicated, at the foot of the grave, and stared in awe as he realized he really was in love with a witch.
“I’m going to cast a circle of protection,” she said. “No matter what happens, don’t step outside of it.” Then she set some incense alight in her little censer and stood it atop the gravestone, where it gently smoked. She poured some water in her cup, added a few pinches of various powders, then dipped her athame into the concoction and walked a wide circle around him and the grave, the knife pointed to the ground.
She spoke some ritual words, but with the wind blowing and the quietness of her voice, he caught only a few words now and again. She seemed to be asking for help from archangels.
He’d read nothing about archangels in that Book of Shadows, so he could only assume that she was drawing on long-suppressed memories of Morganna’s teachings—or maybe it was just raw instinct. The sight of her working so purposefully, her face infused with serious intent, made him shiver. He felt the faint stirrings of desire for her rearing its ugly head, so he ruthlessly suppressed them. It didn’t seem appropriate to bring sexual desire into this high—almost sacred—ritual.
Whatever his personal feelings for her, at that moment he believed in magic with all his heart and soul, and he felt her power. If anyone could pull off this spell, it was Tess.
When she completed the circle of protection, Nate’s ears began to ring. From the corner of his eye, the circle she’d drawn seemed to glow with a faint blue fire, though when he looked at it directly, the flames disappeared.
Next, Tess wiped out the cup with a white cloth. She poured wine into the chalice, then stepped over to Nate, her eyes overly bright. “Drink.”
“Is this part of the spell?” he asked, positive he hadn’t read anything about drinking the wine.
“No. I just figured you could use a slug. I know I could.” He obliged by taking a sip of the cheap wine, and she did the same. It brought a little color to her overly pale face. “Besides, drinking from the same cup should bind our energies. I think.”
She stepped away and returned to the tedium of the ritual of adding various ingredients to the cup of wine. When she crushed the ash leaves in her hand and dropped them into the brew, thunder rumbled menacingly around them, and the wind whistling through the surrounding tombstones sounded like the wailing of a hundred lost souls. The patter of rain, in earnest this time, fell all
around them.
“Now be gone this hex,” she said, her voice loud and clear. Then she slowly poured the wine mixture onto the ground at her feet. “May the innocence of this lost one, the purity of her soul, threefold reverse the evil power embodied by the Crimson Cat.”
Lightning flashed, and thunder cracked again, louder this time. Nate rubbed at his eyes. When he opened them again, he looked down at the statue, which he’d abandoned a couple of feet from where he stood. The gold eyes were definitely glowing.
Then it moved.
The tail switched, the teeth were bared, the ears flattened against its head.
“No!” The strangled denial came from deep in his throat.
Tess focused her otherworldly gaze on him, obviously alarmed.
He had to fight the urge to grab Tess and run for the fence, for surely his sanity could be regained on the outside. “It’s moving,” he said, pointing down at the statue. But when he looked at it again, it was once more inanimate red stone.
“It’s playing with your mind,” Tess said, raising her voice against the ever-louder roar of the wind. “Don’t leave the circle!”
He nodded, wanting to close his eyes, but he couldn’t tear his gaze away from Tess, his beautiful, wondrous Tess as she continued with the ritual.
She seemed to be getting weaker—or was that his imagination too? Was that deathly pallor a trick of the moonlight, or was her injury more severe than she’d led him to believe? The bloodstain on the front of her shirt had definitely grown.
Suddenly she dropped the chalice, staring at him with alarm. “Nate!”
“What?”
Then she shook her head and looked at him again. “There was something behind you, like a demon … but it’s gone now.”
“It’s not real. Finish the spell. It’s about one minute till midnight.”
“Bring me the Cat,” she said, new steel in her voice.
He dragged the statue to the place she indicated, then removed the belt. Her voice battled the wind again:
“By the virgin’s lifeblood and the purity of her love,
and by the power of the words here spoken,
the four elements of the universe unite under
the goddess moon, the evil spell be broken!”
With that she extended her arm toward the Crimson Cat. Her blood flowed freely from the cut, and for the first time Nate got a good look at how deeply she’d been wounded.
“Tess, my God!”
Her blood dripped onto the statue. Each drop sizzled when it made contact, as if it had hit a hot griddle. In Tess’s other hand was the lock she’d snipped from Nate’s head. She held it aloft, opened her hand, and let the wind scatter the hair to the four corners.
“Almost done,” she said. “One more thing.” She bent down and tried to pick up the statue, but her strength was spent.
Nate picked it up for her. It was warm to the touch, but it didn’t burn him, as if perhaps its power was already waning. “What do you want me to do with it?”
“Hold it up to the sky.” She placed her hands on the statue also, and they stood with it overhead, chest to chest. The smell of electricity filled the air, and her hair stood on end as she spoke one last time. “May the power of this curse be channeled to good, may the evil be undone, an’ it harm none, so mote it be!”
The final word of the spell had barely cleared her lips when an earsplitting crack rent the air. A bolt of lightning struck the statue. Nate felt the charge go through his arms, his body, and out his feet. He staggered, dropped, and the world went black.
When he awoke, it was to a gentle rain falling. A clock somewhere nearby was chiming midnight, so he couldn’t have been out for long. He shook his head, trying to regain his senses. Had he just survived a direct hit by lightning?
Then he saw Tess. She lay crumpled on the ground, pale, unmoving. By her side was a pile of red dust—all that was left of the Crimson Cat.
TWELVE
Nate said a few words that should not have been uttered on consecrated ground. What the hell were they doing fooling around in a graveyard when Tess was bleeding? He scooped her up and, leaving everything else behind, ran toward the fence. Later he wasn’t sure how he did it, but he kicked the gate open, breaking the lock.
“Please be all right, Tess.” He deposited her gently into the passenger seat of her car, then took the extra time to fasten the shoulder harness around her. Her blood was everywhere—on her, on him. He’d never been so scared in his life.
Lurking in a corner of the parking lot, Nate thought he saw the shadow of a man—Tristan Solca. But the pathetic creature was too timid now even to approach. Nate felt a pang of pity for the poor man, forever stripped of the power he’d come to depend on, to hope for.
Nate jumped in the car, started it up, then couldn’t decide where to go. A local hospital? He didn’t even know where one was. Rather than waste time asking someone, he decided to drive straight to Mass General. At this hour of the night he could make it in twenty minutes.
He kept up a monologue through the next few minutes, a pep talk aimed at Tess but intended for himself. “You can’t die on me, Tess,” he admonished. “Not when I just figured out I love you. We’re bonded, remember? We drank the wine. I made love to you in your mind. Not many guys can claim that, I bet.”
She was frighteningly still and quiet.
“C’mon, Tess, just hold on. Another few minutes and you’ll have the finest medical care in the country.” He thought he heard her sigh. Was that good or bad? It meant she was breathing, at least.
“N-Nate?”
Yes! “I’m here, sweetheart. You’re hurt. I’m taking you to the hospital. Can you hold on for me?”
“Yes. For you.”
Gradually Tess’s senses returned. She knew she was in her car, and that Nate was driving incredibly fast. Then she remembered. “The spell?”
“Yeah.”
“Did we finish?”
“I think so. The same lightning bolt that knocked us down for the count turned the Crimson Cat into a pile of sand. I’d say that was a definite sign you did something right.”
That sounded promising. But they wouldn’t know for sure that they’d succeeded until they found out about Judy.
“I’m tired,” Tess said, her eyes drooping.
“I’m not surprised. Curse busting is exhausting work, and draining a couple of quarts of your own blood probably didn’t do much for your energy level.”
She closed her eyes, secure in the knowledge that Nate would take care of her.
When she woke a little later, she was in a hospital treatment room with a medical team bustling around her. Needles stabbed her arms and a mask covered her face.
“There she is,” a doctor-looking person said, peering at her from over his own mask. “It’s okay, Tess, you’re going to be fine. Just relax.” As he said this he flashed a small penlight in first one eye, then the other.
“Nate?”
“He’s in the waiting room,” a nurse piped up. “He’s fine too. We’ll let you see him as soon as we get a little more blood pumped into you.”
Tess winced as another needle pierced her arm.
“That’s just the anesthetic, honey. We’re getting ready to stitch you up.”
She decided she’d just as soon sleep through this part, but she remained maddeningly alert, more so by the minute. The frenzy around her had settled down now that she’d shown the medical team she wasn’t going to die on them.
“Judy!” she said suddenly. “Has anyone checked on her? Judy Cosgrove. She’s in ICU.”
The doctor and nurse working on Tess looked at each other and shrugged. The nurse addressed Tess. “Let’s get you fixed up first. Then we’ll check on Julie.”
“Judy, not Julie!” With her free hand, though it had a lot of tubes connected to it, Tess pulled off her oxygen mask. “Get Nate in here right now. I mean it. Now, or I’m refusing any further treatment.”
“Sheesh,” the nurse
muttered, “she gets a little blood in her and she gets all uppity. Serena,” she called to one of the other nurses who was just peeling off her rubber gloves, “go get her guy and bring him back here.” The nurse put a firm hand on Tess’s shoulder. “You lie still and let the doctor stitch.”
Nate appeared mere seconds later. He looked like holy hell, all covered with blood—her blood, she realized—but he was a welcome sight all the same. He was walking and talking—and smiling, just for her.
“Nate.”
“Look at you,” he said, stroking her cheek. “Back with the living. Don’t ever scare me like that again.”
His touch was warm and reassuring and … something else. She pressed her face against his palm. “Nate, think of something.”
“What?”
“Anything. Think of a number from one to ten.”
“Uh, okay.”
She closed her eyes. “Seven?”
“Three.”
They looked at each other, eyes wide. “I can’t read your mind! Look, look,” Tess said, gesturing toward the medical people working on her stitches, “these people are touching the hell out of me, and I’m not getting anything—no vibrations, no thought forms, nothing. Maybe that bolt of lightning rearranged my electrons or something.”
The doctor and nurse glanced over at her briefly, then returned to their task. She supposed they’d heard more bizarre utterings in the ER.
“Is this a good thing?” Nate asked cautiously.
“Well, yeah. I mean, I never wanted to be psychic in the first place. Now apparently I’m not.” But it was kind of weird. She’d taken her gift for granted for so long, she never realized what it would feel like if it were suddenly gone.
“You don’t look happy.”
“Oh, never mind about that,” she said abruptly. “What about Judy?”
“I tried to check on her, but since I wasn’t family, they wouldn’t give me any information.”
That didn’t bode well, Tess thought, deflating. The hospital had never denied either of them information before. “Let’s go up to her room and check.” She turned to the doctor. “Are you about done with those stitches?”
