I struggled with my key, but I got the door open. I picked up Artie, who was waiting for me at the door. I’d expected him to be mad and give me the silent treatment, but he purred when I gathered him to my chest. His warm, healing magic flowed over me, giving me the strength to get to the bedroom. I saw the spectrum of colors behind my eyelids as his magic enveloped us, moving from pale blue to purple to white and back again. I nuzzled his neck, and he meowed, curling into me, his claws flexing in and out of his tiny paws. I smiled for the first time all night, or day, or whatever.
I only had the strength to step out of my shoes before I tumbled into bed. I didn’t even care that I smelled like campfire smoke and the smell would get into my sheets and all the laundry that would mean. Curled around Artemis, my eyes closed and my mind was blessedly quiet. I didn’t even have it in me to get under the covers. I simply fell into a deep abyss.
Chapter 19
I was woken by an insistent pounding on my front door. I’d never been so happy to have fallen asleep in my clothes, because I was so damn groggy that I stumbled through my apartment and answered the door without thinking. If I’d been in my birthday suit, I don’t think I would’ve been alert enough to cover up.
I gripped the door for support, squinting at the mass of bodies pressed into the narrow hallway. There were humans, witches, wizards, fairies, elves, a troll, and some others I couldn’t pinpoint other than knowing they were other. It was a motley crew if I’d ever seen one, and the only thing that brought them together as a group was the overwhelming scent of blood. Everyone in my hallway was injured in some way.
“Matilda Kavanagh?” the man up front said.
I squinted at him. He towered over me and was probably the thinnest man I’d ever seen. His hair cascaded down his back in a black wave, and his pale, pointy ears cut through the curtain. His eyes were as black as his hair and so dark I couldn’t make out his pupils. I knew if the elf let his magic flow, the first thing to change would be his eyes. I wondered what color they would be. He cleared his throat, pulling me from my thoughts.
“Yes,” I managed. I pressed my thumb and forefinger into my eyes and rubbed, trying to clear my vision and shake off the fingers of sleep.
“We’ve come for your help.” He lifted his chin and flicked his hair over his shoulder, exposing his long, lean neck. Three ragged gashes curved around it, blood oozing out of them and staining his blue silk shirt.
“All of you?” I looked past the elected spokesman.
Many heads nodded, but the group in the back avoided eye contact with me. They were all dressed in gray, black, and white, and they were very obviously human. Of the group, they were the most battered. Blood splattered their clothing, which was ripped and nearly shredded. Their faces were bruised and swollen, and many of them were leaning on someone else for support. As a group, they’d put space between them and the supernaturals.
After everything they’d put me through, I couldn’t believe that P.E.A.C.E. members had the audacity to show up at my door and ask me for help.
The elf man followed my gaze, twisting at the waist to see what I was staring at. When his eyes landed on the humans, he nodded once and sniffed loudly. “We did not bring them with us.”
“Then why are they here? With you?”
“The hospitals are overrun,” the elf man explained. “There was no telling how much longer we would have to wait, and some of us don’t have that much time.”
Now that my sleep weary eyes were clear. I realized that I did recognize quite a few faces among the supernaturals. None of them were regular customers, but many had come to see me from time to time. I looked back at the human group and felt a twist of anger in my belly. I did not want to let those people into my home. They deserved their injuries as far as I was concerned, and they could bleed out for all I cared. The self-righteous bastards couldn’t even look me in the face, but they wanted my help? Toad scum.
“Come in,” I said with a heavy sigh, waving the crowd in as I stepped back, holding the door open.
“Many thanks,” the elf man said as he stepped inside.
When all of the supernaturals had crossed my threshold, none of my wards blocking them since they didn’t mean me harm, I stepped in the doorway and blocked the humans. I crossed my arms and tilted my head, daring them to look at me. They stopped abruptly, their eyes darting to mine and away again just as quickly. The twist of anger in my belly tightened. I felt heat rushing up my neck to color my face. They still couldn’t look at me? Seriously?
“What do you want?” I demanded. I had decided, without realizing it, that I was going to make them ask for help. They were going to say “please” and “thank you” and look me in the damn eye before I let them in.
They exchanged looks, mouths opening and closing without words coming out, but they still didn’t look at me. I looked at each of them, taking in the details and making note of unique characteristics in case I needed to make a police report later. I was also making sure little Miss Jane wasn’t hiding among them. In the back of the pack, one little boy was staring right at me.
He looked entirely too young to have been out in the middle of the night protesting. If I’d had to guess, I would say he wasn’t a day older than thirteen. He had a wide, open face with large brown eyes. His chin had broken out, and he had a habit of picking at his pimples, making them redder than they already were. His mousy brown hair was mussed, and his shirt was ripped open, exposing the claw marks that ran down his torso. As I held his gaze, his eyes filled with tears, making them shimmer in the hallway lights.
“I’d like your help, Ms. Kavanagh,” he warbled. When his voice broke, he lifted his chin, his bottom lip jutting out slightly.
“Then you are welcome here,” I said with a nod.
The boy shouldered his way to the front of the group, but the girl standing in front of me refused to move.
“Move, Dani,” the kid said, putting his hands on her and shoving with all his strength.
Dani stumbled to the side. Only the body of the boy next to her stopped her from falling. “God!” she said.
“Take it easy, Nathaniel,” the boy who had caught Dani said, helping her get her feet under her.
“No! You shut up!” Nathaniel shouted at the boy.
Dani tried to step in front of Nathaniel again, but he was ready for her. I had to cover my mouth to keep from laughing when Nathaniel hip-checked Dani, sending her to the ground before he darted over my threshold and hid behind me.
“You guys suck!” he yelled from behind the security of my body.
“Nathaniel, calm down!” someone yelled back while Dani cursed him from the floor.
“You calm down!” Nathaniel shot back.
“Nathaniel—” Dani started once she was on her feet again.
I stopped her with a hand in the air. “Enough.”
The ten pairs of eyes still in the hallway blinked at me. They were finally looking at me.
“Ma’am,” another boy said, stepping forward from the back of the group.
I tried not to visibly cringe at that stupid word.
“I need your help, please.” His left arm was in a sling across his stomach, and the blue fabric was already stained with the wet blood from his open wound.
When I looked at his face again I realized just how pale he was. He needed to stop the bleeding. Fast.
“Don’t call me ma’am again, and you can come in.” I waved him in, and he nodded his thanks before stepping around me to join Nathaniel.
“So you’re going to make us beg?” the boy who’d helped Dani to her feet asked at little too heatedly.
“James, calm down,” Dani said, touching his shoulder, making him hiss and jerk away from her. “Sorry, sorry, I’m sorry!”
James pointed into my apartment at the supernaturals crowded inside. “You just let them in, but we have to beg? What the hell?”
There were a few gasps in the hallway. They were clearly scandalized by his swearing.
“No,” I said calmly, “you don’t have to beg. But you do have to ask. One of your members tried to kill me a couple of nights ago, then a bunch of you tried to firebomb an entire encampment of people, once again, almost killing me. Now you’re here looking for my help, expecting a witch to help you, and you’re not even going to show me the courtesy of asking? I don’t think so. If you can’t figure out how to ask politely and act civilized, then you can just go.”
“We’ll die,” James said, his voice losing some of its heat.
“Yes, you probably will.”
“You’d let us die?”
“No,” I said with a shake of my head. “You would.”
“God, you guys!” Nathaniel said. “Just ask! Why do you guys always have to be such assholes?”
I fought not to laugh. I really just wanted to turn around and give Nathaniel a hug and a plate of cookies. How the hell had he gotten mixed up with these people? He seemed so normal.
“Please excuse our behavior,” Dani said, but she couldn’t manage to keep the attitude out of her voice.
I raised an eyebrow at her in warning.
She coughed and tucked her hair behind her ears and tried again, this time sounding genuine. “I’m sorry. We need your help. Would you please help us?”
A chorus of “pleases” went up around Dani, and everyone looked me in the eye and leaned toward me. With a nod, I stepped back and allowed them entrance into my home.
I quickly separated the members of P.E.A.C.E. from everyone else in the apartment. There were other humans there, but they weren’t members of the hate group. I assumed they’d gone to the festival to join in our celebration, so I let them stay in the kitchen with the supernaturals. The others were in the living room. It wasn’t far, but it was far enough. Nathaniel stood behind my couch, one foot on the tiled dining room floor, as if he was trying to distance himself from the others.
After a cursory count, I realized there were about thirty people in my house, which was too many to manage on my own. I called Ronnie, waking her up, and told her I needed her and Joey to come help me. Looking as exhausted as I felt and in their own rumpled clothes, Ronnie and Joey were in my apartment within ten minutes.
I was extremely happy I’d taken time to restock my stores of healing potions and pain amulets. Joey took the pain amulets and passed them around to those who weren’t bleeding profusely. We concentrated on helping the ones who were bleeding out first.
I got two spell pots on the stove to start some fresh healing potions before Ronnie and I waded into the crowd to administer the premade potions to the most extreme cases. I let Ronnie stay with the supernatural group while I helped the gray -clad humans in my living room. The boy with his arm in a sling got my help first. By the time I got to him, his face was as white as a sheet, and the blood had dripped from his arm to stain his jeans. I had to hold the bottle to his lips and cradle his head with my other hand so that he could drink.
He was bleeding so profusely that I gave him a double dose, which I had never done with a human before. I stood there, my breath held, and watched him. His eyes fluttered open after a few tense moments, and when he looked at me, it was with surprise.
“Better?” I asked.
“A little,” he said, his voice weak. Then he groaned, and the hand of his injured arm spasmed.
With quick fingers, I loosened his sling and carefully peeled the fabric from his arm. He had been wearing a long-sleeved, button-down shirt, but when he was attacked, he’d lost the sleeve from his bicep down.
“Oh my God,” a girl whispered.
I felt the press of the humans leaning over to stare at his arm. They weren’t shocked by his injury but by the effect of the potion. His wounds were knitting closed. I watched, brow pinched in concentration, as his skin came together. The boy made a noise of pain, and I saw his muscles jump.
“Hold him down,” I said.
The girl next to him hesitated, but Nathaniel ran up behind the couch and put his hands on the boy’s shoulders just as the boy’s back bowed and a howl of pain ripped from him.
“Hold him down!” I shouted, surprising the girl into action. I gripped his injured arm, holding it still and letting him squeeze my hand hard enough to hurt.
The girl took his other arm and put her weight into it, pressing him into the couch. He screamed as the muscles under his shredded skin came together, the potion swirling through his veins now.
“It’s okay,” the girl at his side whispered. “It’s okay, it’s okay. You’re going to be fine, Collin.”
“Why does it hurt?” Nathaniel asked. There was panic in his voice. He would have to drink the potion too, and when I looked into his eyes, I saw that he was scared.
“Have you ever had stitches?” I asked. When I’d learned that humans actually sewed their skin when they were injured, I’d nearly fainted.
“Yeah, when I was a kid,” he said as if he wasn’t a kid still.
“Did it hurt?”
“Yeah.”
“Well?”
“Oh.” Understanding dawned on his face. He looked down at Collin, who was fighting against the weight of three people.
Collin’s ragged skin was finally folding over the freshly healed muscles. He would have a scar, there wasn’t anything I could do about that, but he would be okay. That was all that mattered. It only took ten minutes for Collin’s arm to heal completely, but by then, my fingers were numb. I massaged my hand as the blood rushed back into it. Collin opened his eyes, and they were clearer than they had been when he came in.
“Stay still for a while,” I said. “Just stay where you are while we work on everyone else. You lost a lot of blood. If you try to move too fast before the potion finishes its work, you might faint.”
“Does he need a transfusion?” Dani asked from behind me.
I turned to look at her, feeling my brows coming together. “A what?”
“A blood transfusion?”
“What is that?”
“Seriously?”
I saw the heads of the teenagers around me turning, and they all gave each other confused looks.
“What?” I asked. “Hi, I’m a witch. We don’t do the same things you guys do.”
“A blood transfusion is when you hook someone up to a needle and put blood into them,” Dani explained.
“Seriously? That sounds… barbaric.” A shudder went through me at the thought of foreign blood being injected into me as though I was a vampire.
The humans looked at me as if I was the crazy one.
I shook my head and headed back to the kitchen for more potions. “No, he doesn’t need that. The potion will fix him up.”
Ronnie and Joey were moving through the supernaturals much faster than I was with the humans because most of their injuries weren’t as bad. With their magical abilities, they’d been better equipped to defend themselves and get away without becoming seriously injured. I directed Joey and Ronnie to hurry things along and get the supernaturals and non-members of P.E.A.C.E. out of my apartment first. Joey was careful to collect money for the treatments and potions. I smiled gratefully at her, making a mental note to give her a percentage of the money for her help.
“Are we going to turn into werewolves?” Nathaniel asked as I handed him his dose of healing potion.
“Of course not,” I said with a small laugh, stringing a pain amulet over his head.
“How do you know? I mean, we’re humans,” Dani said, coming around the couch and into the now-empty dining room where Nathaniel and I were. Dani was tall and lithe. Her yellow-blond hair was shot through with white highlights and hung to the tops of her narrow shoulders. She had a nasty bruise on her cheek that was split in the middle, but it didn’t take away from her looks. She had a kind face when she wasn’t sneering.
When I looked at her, I saw a ballerina, and I wanted to put her into something other than that gray -raincloud uniform. “But what attacked you weren’t Weres.” I motioned to Nathaniel to keep
drinking until every last drop was gone.
“I don’t understand,” Dani said.
Looking out into the living room, I saw I had a captive audience. Fear and curiosity were waging war over their faces.
“It’s kinda hard to explain,” I said, glancing at Ronnie for help, but she ran into the kitchen. Coward, I thought at her.
I didn’t want to tell them that a rogue pack of werewolves had been kidnapping humans and feeding them some strange potion to turn them into monsters when the full moon rose on Samhain. The last thing those people needed was more reason to hate supernaturals.
“Please try,” Collin said in his weak voice.
“Um, well…” I glanced around and finally took a seat at the kitchen table.
Ronnie and Joey were passing out cups of hot chocolate, and Ronnie pressed a warm ceramic mug into my hands.
“So you know how you guys hate supernaturals?” I paused. I wanted them to really think about the word “hate,” but only a few of them looked uncomfortable. Most just looked normal. My shoulders fell. “Well, because so many humans hate our kind, many of us feel oppressed, and some supernaturals aren’t willing to wait for things to change, so they lash out. So this one small group of people decided they didn’t want to follow the human laws that have been put on us and didn’t want to be treated like second-class citizens anymore, and they lashed out.”
“Who was it?” one of the girls whose name I didn’t know asked.
“That’s not important right now. Suffice it to say, the monsters that attacked last night were not Weres, so you won’t become Weres.” I took a breath. “Okay?”
“Good,” Nathaniel said for everyone. “Right?”
I took a sip of my hot chocolate and smiled when I realized Ronnie had doctored it with a little Irish cream. When I caught her eye, she winked at me from her perch on the counter. I held up my mug in a silent toast before taking another, larger swallow.
Samhain (Matilda Kavanagh Book 2) Page 22
