Redemption of Blood

by Michel Prince

  I couldn’t help smiling at the thought that Gabriel actually knew the "put the lime in the coconut" song. He was always one to surprise me. The morphine started to wear off and I dug my fingers into Gabriel’s muscular forearm. He didn’t flinch. Instead he let me ride out the pain panting like I was giving birth.

  Nye hadn’t left the room and was quick to move to give me a second dose of meds. Gabriel shook his head no, just turned and nodded to Lars to hurry. For some reason Gabriel hated any synthetic drug, but morphine being all-natural he usually allowed. Why was he holding back?

  With Lars and Zarmina off on their mission and the room now empty Gabriel looked to me.

  “I’m sorry, James, I wish it were more like the normal fatal wounds. Those I could heal, but Nye said you were stabbed by a male. I fear even removing your padding.”

  “How are you going to treat me then?”

  “Is the pain killer working?”

  “I feel like I went through a meat grinder and I’m a little woozy…you tell me.”

  Gabriel covered my eyes with his hand, then pulled back the thick gauze covering my wound. The batting stuck to the oozing blood and my skin. It tore away a fresh layer of flesh.

  “Why is my skin black?”

  “Gangrene.”

  “I was stabbed less than thirty minutes ago. How is my flesh dying? More importantly how do I live without a stomach?”

  Gabriel leaned down and inhaled over the rotten flesh.

  “She is a quick learner,” he said,

  “Who is?”

  “LaDressa.” Gabriel smiled. “Just like her mother.”

  “Right, she comes from a family of geniuses.”

  Gabriel gave me a sly smile. “You’re going to lose that six-pack of yours.”

  “I was joking about living without a stomach. I can’t really fight cut in half or with a hole in the middle of me.”

  “I know. I’m calling a surgeon. We are going to have to set up a drainage system and inject each of your organs that were touched by the blade.”

  “I will be unconscious for that, right?”

  “If I knock you out, you might not wake again. She used a poison I haven’t seen in centuries.”

  “No,” Trish stood in the door way with her hand over her mouth. Tears streamed down her cheeks. “Not again. I can’t again.”

  “James,” Gabriel asked softly as he let out a long breath of air.

  Well…shit.

  * * * *

  Kiriana Kladshon George

  “Kiri, wait,” Nye called as I started to head up to where we’d hidden Trisha.

  “Nye, I need to make sure Trisha stays put,” I said, not turning my head as I rested my hand on the railing.

  “You’re right. I can’t fight any more. It’s too dangerous for you…and the baby.”

  “No matter whom the father is?”

  “The baby’s mine. It was stupid of me to suggest otherwise.”

  “Stupid…” I shook my head while trying to swallow the lump of pain in my neck. “Stupid wasn’t the first word that came to mind when you accused me of sleeping with Schmitty.”

  Nye approached me. His large hands rested on my shoulders, then slid down my arm. I winced when he went over my bandaged arm.

  “What was the first word,” Nye whispered in my ear. His breath was warm on my neck, tickling the soft flesh, sending a signal to my core I tried to suppress but couldn’t. His smell, his heat, his body, and his voice melted me.

  “Hurt,” I croaked. “You hurt me.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  He led me away from the staircase into the living room and sat me down. Kneeling at my feet, he placed his hands on mine.

  “I messed up. I know that. I was just as scared as you.”

  Running my hands over his tense face I rested them on his neck.

  “I snapped,” Nye confessed. “I never wanted to be a father, because getting a girl knocked just meant I was creating more chattel for the masser. I was wrong. I know that. The last woman I saw pregnant was Louise.”

  “And she wasn’t carrying your child.”

  “No.”

  My hands slid down Nye’s back and I could feel the lashes through his skin-tight shirt. The lashes he’d earned because he refused to get women on his plantation pregnant.

  “This is our baby. Yours and mine.”

  “I know that now. Gabriel said we get to keep it.”

  “You actually thought Gabriel would take it away?”

  Nye hung his head in shame.

  “Oh, baby…you underestimated me if you think Gabriel could take my child away from me.”

  “I want to sleep next to you again.”

  “Nye…”

  “I won’t come to the room until I’m invited.”

  His obsidian eyes pulled me in and the pain was dissipating. I wanted his arms around me. I needed his love…his unconditional love, but I also needed his trust.

  “No!” A scream tore through the compound.

  “Shit.” I jumped up, knocking Nye back on his ass. “Trisha.”

  “Not again.”

  I heard her sobs. Running I got there just in time to pull her back and catch Gabriel’s death glare.

  “Come on, Trisha,” I pleaded as I brought her away from the doorway. “It’s worse than it looks.”

  “He said…he said…” her voice was catching on the tears. “He said…he may not wake up.”

  “He was awake.”

  “No…if he knocks him out he won’t wake. Colin didn’t wake…if they…” Trisha began hyperventilating.

  Nye and I exchanged glances and he rushed into the room with Gabriel, making sure to close the door after. A few minutes later Nye ran to his office and came back with a man I’d never seen before.

  It took everything inside me to not rush into the room too, but Trisha was on the verge of a nervous breakdown. She’d begun mumbling about death and Schmitty and before I knew what had happened she was on the floor.

  “It’s not easier,” she cried. “It’s not. Oh my God, if it really comes in threes…who else will I kill?”

  “Hey,” I said grasping her face in my hands. “He’s not dead.”

  Okay…so he was, but she didn’t know that.

  “He’s going to be okay. Gabriel won’t let him…die.”

  “Why did you pause? You paused. Why did you pause?”

  “Fuck it. Schmitty’s not alive, really. He killed himself in the fifties.”

  If nothing else I got her mind to jump track.

  “What? He’s a soldier, you both are.”

  “I’m not a soldier. Slept with a few, but it’s not like you become a soldier by injection.”

  “You’re his partner.”

  “I am.”

  “Then how are you not a soldier?”

  “Remember how I said I couldn’t tell you things and it was James’ job to do that?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m a bit of a rule breaker.”

  I pulled Trisha off the floor and we wandered into Nye’s office because I was sure no one would interrupt us. She took the news well, considering the fact that she found out there were demons living in her town and the nineteen-year-old she’d been sleeping with was really almost eighty. There was a whole zombie discussion that sidetracked us for a bit, but otherwise it went well.

  “You’re dead? But you’re having a baby?”

  “Um…that’s kind of a weird little turn of events. We’re still trying to figure that all out. What can I say, I’m a freak.”

  “What’s going to happen with Jimmy?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “What about Colin?”

  “Colin?”

  “My son.”

  “Oh, I don’t know. It’s not like he committed suicide so I’m not really sure what happens there. I’m sure he’s up in Heaven.”

  “Eating ice cream o
n a cloud.”

  “I wouldn’t know. Maybe Gabriel…on second thought, yep eating ice cream on a cloud.”

  “He tried to tell me,” she said absently. “He kept telling me he was eighty. I thought he was just trying to get drinks from me.”

  “He does love to drink.”

  “Does he have a problem?”

  “Um…I’d say yes. I haven’t gotten the whole story about why he killed himself.”

  “Is it because of the woman he killed?”

  “I don’t know about that. I’m the therapist here, but Schmitty just gives me bits and pieces of stories. Did he give you her name?”

  “He didn’t know it, she just wandered too close to his post in Korea…oh my God, was that in the Korean War? I wondered why I hadn’t heard about a soldier killing a woman and her newborn.”

  “He killed a baby?”

  “It was wrapped tight to her chest. Jimmy said he called to have her stop. She didn’t and he shot. He didn’t know about the baby.”

  “Maybe. Like I said he hasn’t told me yet.”

  “Why did you…commit suicide?”

  “I didn’t, really. When I married Nye I had to slip between life and death to marry him. In a way I’m dead.” I placed my hand on my belly. “Yet very much alive.”

  Trisha and I sat together comforting the other as we heard screams from the healing room. She bristled with every agonizing call. I tried to move her to the greenhouse or somewhere…anywhere so she wouldn’t have to hear Schmitty’s screams, but she refused.

  “The screams tell me he’s still alive. I just wish I could hold his hand. Shouldn’t he go to a doctor?”

  “We really can’t go to an ER.”

  “What’s that smell?” Trisha scrunched her nose and looked at me.

  Self-consciously I pulled my shirt enough to stick my nose down it and inhale. What the hell? I smelled like death. Pulling my sleeve up I saw my bandage was soaked through. When I tried to unwrap it my skin came off with the gauze.

  Chapter 12

  Her Royal Holiness, Princess LaDressa, Daughter of Lucifer the IV

  “NEMISIO is resting,” Mother informed me. “Pivane was successful. Better than successful, he also managed to slice the mate of your cousin.”

  My head stayed bowed as I tried to focus on what she was saying without letting my emotions overtake me. Nemesio’s face and body would take forever to heal. She still may be scarred by the attack.

  “It was not your fault. Wings are angelic. They are for destroying evil.”

  “How long before they turn on me?” I asked softly. “I’m the daughter of Lucifer. Spawn of the Devil. I am evil incarnate.”

  “They are yours. Your blood flows through the marrow. Soon they will adapt and you will be able to attack the Frozen as you did Nemesio.”

  “Will she live?”

  “I do not know. The blood loss was great. She never was a fighter,” Mother said passively.

  My wings perked up and began to tremble. Stop. Stop. Stop. I prayed to them and instead of unfurling they constricted. Letting out a cleansing breath I focused on my mother’s first report.

  “He stabbed the mate…what does that mean?”

  “He sliced at him. Not stabbed. He stabbed the one you instructed him to, but he just sliced the mate. The Frozen share a soul and a body basically. You cut one, you cut both.”

  I turned quickly to look at her.

  “I can damage her through her spouse?”

  “Did you not know that?”

  “No. That is why she said he’d be there to save her when I smacked her face? He felt it too.”

  “He should have. Yes.”

  “What else do you know of the Frozen?”

  “The knives they carry can kill us. They are souls that my brother saves before they fall into Hell.”

  “Why would he do that?”

  “They are damned to Hell for killing themselves. Some Gabriel takes pity on.”

  “Damarion spoke of taking his own life. He did not speak of Gabriel.”

  “Gabriel must have seen no need or strength in your love then. For he would have offered him salvation if he did.”

  “They are slaves? Like Damarion was? Working off a debt?”

  “I suppose.”

  “And my cousin should be infected as is her mate?” I asked with a smile broader than the sky. My wings unfurled and filled the small room.

  “Yes.” Mother stepped back to the doorway. With her hand on the jamb I could see a fire building in her eyes. “Can you feel her yet?”

  “Feel her?”

  “Yes, her blood and yours?”

  “No.” As I said the words my skin burned again as the tattoo became brighter.

  “It’s there, on your skin. The trail to her.”

  “This will show me how to find her?”

  “When she is not protected by her compound. She must be ready to travel the city. You will be able to follow her.”

  “Damarion’s ashes shall be mine before the day is out.” A silent prayer of thanks went to my father. “There is no way she’ll protect his ashes over three lives.”

  * * * *

  Kiriana Kladshon George

  “Gabriel,” I screamed as I entered the healing room, only to stop dead in my tracks.

  Schmitty lay supine, strapped to the table, awake. His face beaded with sweat and a bright red even shown through his short hair. His belly was but a crater with exposed muscle and colon. A perfect oval extended from the stab in his gut. At least the demon hadn’t spun the blade before retracting it.

  “Why is there so much gone?” I asked.

  “We had to remove all of the infected tissue to try to minimize the damage,” the unknown man said. He donned scrubs and a surgeon’s mask.

  “Kiriana, this is Dr. Ashworth, he’ll be staying here to care for James and you.”

  “What about Nye? Isn’t his arm just as damaged?”

  “Arm?” Gabriel queried. “What’s wrong with your arm?”

  He crossed the room and held my hands, then started waving my arms up and down.

  “Luckily for you it’s not broken,” I snapped and pulled my arm back. “But Nye was cut in the field.”

  I pulled my sleeve up to show the gauze I’d rewrapped to keep the natural bandage of my skin in place.

  “Where’s Nye?”

  “I don’t know. I thought he was in here with you.” I panicked more from Gabriel’s tone than immediate fear.

  “Help me,” Lars called from the hallway, and Gabriel and I rushed to see him dragging Nye. Nye’s good arm was wrapped around Lars’ shoulder and Gabriel went to the others side, scooping all six feet six of Nye as if he were a child’s teddy bear.

  “Kiriana, when Dr. Ashworth is done in the healing room tell him we have a second emergency in the arrivals room.”

  “Why am I not doubled over?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “How do you not know?” I balked. “You know everything.”

  “I didn’t know Frozen could get someone pregnant. There are a few holes in my knowledge.”

  “But—”

  “Kiriana, how about we focus on the fact your Other is dying?”

  I may not be sharing in Nye’s condition, but that didn’t stop the crushing pain in my chest from Gabriel’s admission. I stormed up to Kiyoshi’s room and pounded on the door.

  “Rude knocking…could it be…” Dilana sighed as she opened the door. “It is, KK. Shocking.”

  “I don’t have time,” I growled at Dilana. “I need Kiyoshi.”

  “He’s in the shower, come back later.”

  Shoving past Dilana I rushed into their bathroom. She was screaming something at me, but I couldn’t make it out.

  “Kiyoshi,” I called into the steamed up room. I could make out his long lean figure in the fogged up glass.

  “KK, my Other’s naked in there…get y
our ass out.”

  “My Other’s dying downstairs.”

  “He can’t be if you’re not.”

  “Gabriel’s with him. He got cut. Maybe it’s delayed on me, but Gabriel had to carry Nye into the arrivals chamber because Schmitty’s getting carved up like a turkey in the healing chamber.” I looked at Dilana and Kiyoshi who’d wiped enough of the condensation from the shower door to peer out. “Did you not hear his screams?”

  “Let’s just say our room was soundproofed for all involved. You might want to invest in the upgrade yourself.”

  “Right…well, right now we have two Frozen about to die.” I turned from Dilana to Kiyoshi and pleaded, “I need to know all the places you think the coven has set up shop.”

  * * * *

  Trisha O’Driscoll

  “So…um…you really are eighty.” I tried to tease as I sat by Jimmy’s side and held his hand.

  “Don’t look a day over forty-three,” he groaned while keeping his eyes shut.

  “Don’t talk. You need your strength.”

  “Guess that means I’m not getting a blowjob.”

  “How can you even joke?”

  “There’s lots of things I can still do.” His thumb brushed against my breast, causing it to perk and flame.

  “With a hole in your stomach you still can proposition me.”

  “A real nineteen-year-old would be crying right now.” He opened his eyes a crack; the blue from his eyes seemed dimmed. “Who told?”

  “KK.”

  “Hmm…Gabriel. Has he been in here lately?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did he talk to you?” Jimmy asked.

  “No.”

  “I don’t know if that’s good or bad. Then again I’m a bit confused about a lot lately.”

  “The drugs will do that.”

  “No pain killers for me.”

  “Are you crazy? You just had major surgery.”

  “Not my choice,” he grumbled and I noticed his other hand was clenched into a fist.

  “About your choices…”

  A knock interrupted us and a woman that looked extremely familiar walked into the room. She was stick-thin with long blonde hair and wore a Burberry newsboy hat to the side.

  “Um, Schmitty,” she said with a nasal voice.

  “Yes, Berlin.”

  “I feel bad and all about you getting hurt.”

  “Do you?” Jimmy grumbled. “Can you tell me what you were doing?”