“Knox and I, we’re just trying to help you get well.” Bas started sweeping up the area around the cages, capturing bits of food that had fallen along with tufts of fur. He liked being back with the cats—the familiars were far less complicated than interacting with other people and their vibe wasn’t full of messy emotions. “If you’d allow her to treat you without the net, it wouldn’t be so bad. You wouldn’t feel all groggy from the magic overload. I know you cats hate that.”
Zeus continued to stare, his body rigid, his eyes barely flicking as Bas moved around the room.
“You should see the sanctuary she’s building for you.” Bas swept up the debris and dumped it into the garbage, then started to straighten up some of the equipment back there, organizing it in a way that would make it easier to get to some of the tools that he knew Mina would use more regularly. “If you behave yourself, maybe I can take you in there so you can see what her plans are. It’s really an amazing space. Trees to climb, flowers to rub against, and it’s going to get even better. I’m going to work on it, too. Build you cats some walkways and high resting spots, some shelters and a waterfall. There’s so much magic in there. Sweet stuff too, you’ll love it.”
A noise made Bas stop what he was doing and look up. Zeus had moved closer to the front of the cage, and was pacing back and forth. Not aggressively, but as if he was following Bas’s movements.
“Oh, so that seems interesting to you, huh? You understand me, don’t you?” Bas moved closer to the cage.
The cat rubbed himself against the bars, then stopped to look at Bas, his cat eyes wide. None of the hostility he’d shown earlier present, more like a curiosity that seemed fitting for a cat.
“That cage is too small for you. I bet you want out, don’t you?” Bas moved closer. “I bet that sanctuary sounds great to you, right? A place where you can be the king of the forest? Run your pack and suck up all the magic? No need to fear predators?”
Bas put down the gauze he was holding and took another step closer to the cage. No growling. Zeus stopped moving and sat in his regal pose again. Still no hostility there, just watchful, wary eyes.
“If you behave…” Bas lifted his hand to the bars, his fingers grazing the metal. Zeus didn’t flinch. He didn’t hiss. Bas took that as a sign to continue. “Nice kitty…” He suddenly wanted to touch that smoky fur more than anything else in the world. Just one stroke. He was locked into Zeus’s gaze, the cat’s eyes mesmerizing, diamond slits as black as midnight. “Good kitty…”
He sucked in a breath, then stuck his fingers into the cage, the tips fluttering against Zeus’s fur. It was softer than what Bas anticipated. The fur tickled his fingers and he stretched them in farther so he could get a better feel. As he dug his fingers into the cat’s fur, cooing quietly, a jolt of power zapped him, racing up his arm to tickle against his elbow. “Whoa, you’re a powerful thing aren’t you?”
Bas frowned. A heavy blanket of tension fell. The cat growled low and long, a sound that came from deep in its belly. Its eyes flicked from Bas eyes to his fingers.
Bas froze. “Zeus…” he warned. But he couldn’t get his fingers out fast enough.
Zeus’s fangs dug into Bas’s flesh with rabid ferocity, latching on so that Bas couldn’t move without risking tearing his fingers off.
“Motherfuck—” The pain made his legs tremble, threatening to crumble to the floor. If he fell, his fingers wouldn’t follow. The cat growled again and dug its fangs in deeper. Burning pain lashed up Bas’s arm.
“Healer Frank.” A calm voice drifted toward him and the Sin Eater moved quickly to his side. She didn’t hesitate—she stuck her whole hand into the cage, fearlessly gripping the back of the cat’s neck at the nape and clenching enough so that the cat snapped its furious glare her way. “Release the Healer now, feline.” Her voice was stern, unwavering. “Or I will ensure that you will never see that sanctuary space or outside of this cage for the rest of your life.”
Zeus narrowed his eyes, seeming to contemplate her threat. Her grip didn’t appear to loosen. Bas’s fingers felt like they were about to be torn off, the pain throbbing through him with such intensity that he couldn’t even think of a spell to get himself out of the cat’s grasp. Not that he would do anything to hurt the animal. He was at its mercy.
The Sin Eater leaned her face closer to the cage, brushing her hood back to reveal her face, her eyes locked on the cat’s, who seemed to be suddenly mesmerized by the Sin Eater’s appearance.
“Release. The. Healer,” she hissed.
The cat slowly unclenched its jaw, not making any sudden moves as its fangs slipped from Bas’s flesh with a painful glide.
“Holy shit!” Bas pulled his hand free of the cage and wrapped his fingers with the material of his scrubs. His hand was throbbing and felt like it was two sizes too big. Pulses of magic jolted up his arm, his muscles spasmed hard. A wave of dizziness washed through him and his eyesight blinked to black for a moment.
The Sin Eater was at his side once again, ushering him out of the back room and straight to the sink.
“We have to get this cleaned up before infection sets in.”
He didn’t fight her, just let her lead him out of the backroom. He couldn’t stop staring at her face. The skin, marred—no, not marred, marked—by fine lines, scars that looked like tattoos. Her hair was brown… No not, brown… Gold? Amber? Chestnut? So many colors. She wasn’t hideous, he realized. There was a beauty there. Not in the conventional sense but in a unique way. He could actually see her magic pulsing around her, like an aura of color, blues, pinks, violets. He blinked as his eyesight wavered again, feeling disembodied, his thoughts drifting.
“I think I’m going to pass out.” His body felt so damn heavy and his legs were trembling.
“Whoa there, Healer.”
He slumped into her. He felt nauseated. All energy draining from his body as if the very ground was sucking it away. “I don’t feel so good.”
“Mina!” Angel shouted, her voice reverberating against his skull. “I need you out here!”
9
Angel had been gone for mere minutes before her frantic shout sounded.
Mina stumbled out of her suite, trying to keep her heart from pounding out of her chest and her anxiety under control. When her emotions spiked, her powers became erratic, dangerous to everyone around her. “What’s wrong…oh…” Mina’s gaze fell on Bas, lying face up on the cot she’d put out for him. He seemed to be in a great deal of pain and only semi-conscious. “What happened to him?”
Angel was crouched next to him, her hood down and her hand fluttering to unclasp the rest of her cloak. “Zeus bit him.” She let the cloak fall behind her, already moving to show Mina Bas’s injury.
She unwrapped the gauze that was there to reveal a mess of injuries. His two first fingers on his right hand weren’t looking too great. Mina could see the streaks of black infection already spreading down to his hand with two puncture wounds that were mangled and swollen on the tops of his fingers.
“I’m not even going to ask.” Mina moved quickly, heading to her medical pantry where she kept the more potent tonics and herbs. “It’s too late for anti-venom. Are you able to siphon the bad magic there?” she said over her shoulder as she worked to add a few more ingredients to the base of an infection poultice.
“I have been trying to but the worst of this is not bad magic—it’s just the infection that’s so fierce. Just like the animal, I guess.”
Mina froze, looking over her shoulder with doubt. “Maybe we should get him to the ER. I’m no Healer—”
“You are a Healer and this is your realm of expertise. The Healers upstairs have likely never encountered a familiar bite. You have.” Angel urged her to keep moving. “His fever is spiking.”
Mina shook herself out of her head, pushing back the doubt she was feeling and shoving down the anxiety. She could work under pressure—that’s what she was good at, just as long as she focused on the problem. “Right.”
She had done this before. Many times. That’s why she had the poultice ingredients ready. Familiar bites were common and most witches reacted in the same way. Easily treatable if they got the anti-venom in quickly. Immediate infection complete with raging fever and blood poisoning was not so common. Bas was reacting to the bite in the most extreme way and while she hadn’t had to deal with it much, she did have experience warding off this kind of poisoning. Angel was right—the Healers upstairs wouldn’t have a clue. Anti-venom wouldn’t work but she knew a spell that might.
She knelt next to Bas, laid the bowl with the poultice on the floor and quickly assessed his vitals. With her hands on his chest, she closed her eyes and did an internal scan. The furious pounding of his heart told her that his body was fighting the cat bite, his breathing, while fast, was not labored. His pain…she winced… “Angel, I need you to manage his pain if you can. If you strip back the dark magic then the pain should subside to some degree. I’m going to have to cut him to give the infection somewhere to go.”
Angel nodded, then moved to the top of the cot where she could hover her hands over Bas’s head. He was murmuring and moaning, his eyes fluttering, a sheen of sweat on his face. Angel closed her eyes and Mina felt the surge of a Sin Eater’s calming powers wash over her, working to suppress the lingering jolts of her own anxiety at the same time.
Mina pulled her witch blade from the sheath she always wore on her hip. She cut her own palm quickly and cast a containment spell over Bas’s hand. Bas shuddered, then his whole body froze. Keeping the poison from moving any further would put a strain on his heart, so Mina hurried to open his wrist just below where the dark lines of infection had crawled, then cast another spell to try and minimize how much blood he would lose. It wasn’t foolproof but it would stem the flow to some degree. Mina immediately applied the poultice and then pulled back the containment spell so that the infection could flow again. Black blood started to drip from the wound.
Now was the tricky part. With a deep breath, she cast another spell to ramp his heart up once again, pushing him to the limits without giving him a heart attack. The faster his blood pumped that garbage out of his system, the sooner he’d feel better. It was a balancing act that most Healers wouldn’t even attempt, too risky. Mina had done it enough that she knew the cadence of the heart’s rhythm by muscle memory alone, an instinct that just seemed to be there for her whenever she had to use it.
Bas’s whole body shuddered as Mina urged his heart to pump harder, faster, to keep the black blood pouring, pooling into the bowl that she’d carried the poultice in. His face was red, his neck straining, and jaw clenched. The sounds coming out of his mouth were filled with anguish.
“Angel…” she whispered, but the Sin Eater was too lost to her spell that she didn’t pause, her lips moving silently.
The infection was bad. Zeus’s bite had been full of venom, the wild beast was all menace right now. Why Bas had gotten that close she could not understand. Maybe it wasn’t a good idea to have an intern down in the Dungeon with the injured animals—they just didn’t have the common sense to survive. As much as Bas was an asshat, she didn’t want him to get hurt working with her animals.
“This isn’t good,” Mina muttered more to herself than anyone else. She glanced up at Angel once again and did a double take. “Your hair,” she gasped.
There was a large streak of silver, a sharp contrast to the rich color of her hair, running down the front like it was bleeding from the roots to the tip.
Angel opened her eyes and they too were streaked with silver. “His heart is under too much stress, Mina.”
“I know.” She shook her head, then refocused her concentration. “I think I should call Mother Stone.”
“Mina…”
Mina clenched her eyes shut, trying to pull back her spell so that Bas’s heart wouldn’t burst. The spell wasn’t responding. “Just give me a minute.”
Something thudded against her leg, nearly knocking her off balance. She tumbled to the side, her hands flying out as she braced herself against the ground, knocking away her connection to Bas. “What the…”
Zeus was there, his big body on top of Bas’s legs, looking regal, assessing with a slow glide of his feline eyes.
“How did you escape your cage? Get out of here, beast!” Mina moved out of instinct, ready to trap the animal with a spell when he growled, fangs bared, back up and fur tufted.
Angel touched her shoulder. “Stay calm, Mina.”
But she couldn’t stay calm. Bas’s heart was racing and Mina had lost control over her spell somehow. Now there was a wild beast sitting on him, licking his lips like the familiar was going to take another bite.
“Watch the cat.” Angel’s whispered words floated in her head, sending a calming chill along her back to tamp her anxiety down.
Zeus’s fur had settled, his face no longer contorted with fury. He was moving up Bas’s body, precariously perched with each shudder and spasm that swept through the man’s muscles. And still the cat kept moving. Right up to Bas’s chest, growling a warning at Angel, whose hands were still hovering over Bas’s head. She pulled back. The cat settled against Bas’s chest, his paws out front, seated like a sphinx, staring straight at the Sin Eater. He blinked. Once, twice, and then lowered his head, closing his eyes as if to sleep.
“We can’t just sit here—”
“Mina, look.” Angel pointed to the rise and fall of Bas’s chest, at the calm that seemed to wash over his face.
Mina closed her eyes and focused on his vitals. His heart was beating at a regular, steady pace, the fever draining, the infection almost gone. “I don’t believe it.”
“The familiar appears to have chosen his witch,” Angel said, a smile in her voice.
Mina opened her eyes. The cat was watching her, and not in a friendly way. “Zeus doesn’t seem happy about it.”
“No, but sometimes these things just happen. Instinct, you know?” Angel sighed. “The cat is damaged still. The relationship is likely to be tumultuous. But at least we know that he doesn’t want Bas dead and clearly, Zeus is a very powerful creature.”
“But unpredictable.” And when it came to magical creatures, unpredictable was very bad, Mina knew that first hand.
“Bas’s mother was an extraordinary witch when it came to her spell mixing and potions.” Angel was watching the cat with apparent curiosity. “But also very damaged.”
“Was?” Mina started, feeling the familiar clench of sorrow. “She’s dead?”
Angel nodded.
“You knew her?” His personnel records didn’t give much detail on his background of linage, just that he’d come from the north and was a pure blooded witch.
“She hosted Mother Stone for a time.” Angel’s voice grew sad. “There were things beneath the surface of her hospitality. A falseness to her smile. But Maria wanted to help her. I didn’t work too closely with her, I was young still and she had a similar distrust of Sin Eaters as Bas does. I served on the periphery.”
“Did you know him?” She nodded toward Bas.
“No. He wasn’t there at the time. Staying with family, I believe. She didn’t want him to know of our visit.” Angel closed her eyes briefly, taking in a deep breath and then letting it out before opening them again. “His mother had a feline familiar, a large orange Tom cat.” She nodded toward Zeus. “Not unlike our cat here.”
“So you’re saying it may be part of his heritage that’s attracting Zeus to him.” Mina looked from Angel to the cat, studying it in a different way. The cat seemed unbothered, its eyes closed like it was asleep, but its ears moving this way and that, showing he was at least listening to the cadence of their voices. Or perhaps, because he was clearly so powerful, listening and understanding what they were saying.
“Perhaps.” Angel shook the cot slightly, rousing the cat to snap its eyes open and glare at her. “You will not harm the Healer,” Angel addressed the cat, narrowing her eyes just as his did. “I have you
word on that?”
Mina watched with awe. Silent communication no doubt happening between the Sin Eater and the familiar.
The cat grunted, but otherwise didn’t lift its head.
Angel gave one nod then pushed herself to her feet. “I’m afraid that took more out of me than I expected.” She seemed unsteady on her feet.
Mina moved in close to support her. “Your appearance has changed.”
Angel moved her gaze to the strands of hair that were now silver. “Its just part of the process.”
“The process of dying?” Mina regretted the words as soon as they left her mouth. “Sorry.” She helped Angel move toward the chair on the other side of the room. For a split second, she felt the lash of anger that maybe mirrored Bas’s…that Angel would continue to sacrifice herself despite her waning health.
“I need to be with the others right now,” Angel said wearily.
“The other Sin Eaters?”
Angel nodded.
“I’ll take you there.” Mina settled her in the chair then quickly retrieved her cloak.
“No, that’s not necessary.” She accepted Mina’s help draping the cloak over her shoulders, her fingers slow to clasp it on. “Mother Stone gave me this.” She withdrew a security card from the inside pocket of her cloak.
Feral Heart: A Witch Hospital Romance (The Witches of White Willow Book 2) Page 8
