I forgot about the empty grave behind me until my second roll met nothing but empty air.
“Aaagh.” The bright glow of the diamond blinked out when I hit.
From above me, I heard a whimper and then a groan.
Chapter 41
The absence of any light coated me in deep darkness. The smell of the earth was that of damp desert sand. I did not like the idea of damp, but in the dark, I wasn’t sure whether I was face down or face up. Do not think about the grave. I sat up so suddenly, shooting pain at the back of my head caused stars to float across my blinking eyeballs.
The hard ground beneath me trembled, little whispers of dirt shifting. I stilled, willing Mother Earth not to bury me here and now. Had the dead person who owned this grave been eaten by the ghoul? What if there were body parts left over?
“And this is why I tol‘ you I am going to stop hanging with witches,” Lynx said from somewhere above me. “Can you even believe this shit?!?”
“Adriel?” White Feather sounded calmer than Lynx.
“‘Trick, are you gonna die? Because if you are, what are we supposed to do with a dead vamp?” Lynx demanded.
I forced myself to my knees. Given Lynx’s litany of complaints, and a lack of one about a ghoul, maybe we’d live after all.
“Is it gone?” I whispered.
White Feather’s arms had hold of mine before I even knew I was being lifted. He had the advantage of finding me with his talent, while I fumbled about in the dark before remembering to scan for people by way of silver.
White Feather was obvious; my soul had known he was intact because his ring still breathed with our connection. Had I searched for gold, I might have found Lynx before finding the other packet, but my quick skim stopped short when I recognized my own magic in the silver shards that rested next to an amethyst and red garnet.
“Birthstones,” I murmured. Roberto was the client who had ordered the matched packets. Since his hobbies included socializing in graveyards, maybe he wanted the packet so that he could be located easily if something went wrong. Or smarter yet, maybe he left the other half outside the graveyard so he could find his way out.
White Feather held me close while I shivered. “Okay?” he asked.
“Okay,” I breathed against his shirt. He smelled of scorched leather. “You?”
“Good thing I knew you were planning to use fire,” he said. “Although, I wasn’t expecting that laser flare you threw.”
“Me either.”
We separated. There were bits and pieces of ghoul still burning along the ground. Two larger chunks smoldered, but the pile was eating away at itself, dissolving.
Roberto apparently carried a flashlight and decided to use it. The light wasn’t as bright as the one from my ring, but I was far too tired to light the way. On top of that, I was done linking until we high-tailed it out of this place.
Lynx beckoned us over. “‘Trick is hurt.”
I stumbled forward on leaden legs.
Patrick rested against a gravestone as though he might meld with it at any moment. He was quite possibly the most pathetic gargoyle I’d ever seen, although my sightings of such were very limited.
There wasn’t even a glimmer of glamour about him and his skin, which had been leathery before, was stretched now as if the supple muscle underneath had disintegrated. Rather than death and decay, he was more like instant petrification. Without some kind of help, he was headed for fossil land.
“Can we assume that blood would help?” I asked.
Instead of speaking, he emitted a weak groan. It was several seconds before he managed to grate out, “Don’t know. Never been here before.”
Surveying the leather that was his skin, I said, “Hooking you up to an IV would be impossible. How did you find us?”
“Followed you.”
“Didn’t you say you were rounding up help?” My skin crawled at the thought of other vamps hanging at our back, but Patrick had been the only one who had taken a stab at the ghoul.
Patrick closed heavy eyes. “It was determined...that it was my problem to solve.”
None of us said anything for thirty seconds. White Feather finally growled, “And if you failed, I guess then it would be someone else’s problem?”
He had no answer.
We did the only thing we could. Lynx volunteered to escort Roberto back to the school. We called Mat, and luckily, she had returned home.
“Gordon twisted his ankle. We didn’t even make it halfway up the canyon. Never found Martin. I’ll meet you at the back door of the hospital. I can get the blood easier than he can.”
I didn’t want to know how.
We delivered Patrick to his own help ward. Near as I could tell, he wasn’t bleeding. His arm was shrunken as if it had burned and failed to heal. There was a spot on his chest that had been splashed with ghoul blood and that wound did everything but continue to smoke. Something in ghoul blood was lethal to vamps. Or gargoyles. Or was that...I squeezed my head with both hands to keep my head from exploding.
Did the injuries mean that Patrick had been infected with what had been Zandy’s blood?
He showed no signs of manic hunger. He barely kept his head up. Even though the ichor from the ghoul had burned through the leathery skin, the areas looked scarred and...dead.
He would not allow any of us to touch him. It was one hell of a limping crawl to the jeep.
Mat met us at the back door of the hospital with the key and four pints of blood. She held one of the bags over Patrick’s lips in order for him to drink, but he barely accepted two swallows.
Whatever injuries he had sustained had not turned him rogue or feral—yet.
He shifted his feet carefully out of the car and rested on the edge for the longest time before standing. White Feather offered a hand again, but Patrick grunted him off. In slow motion, he stumbled to the open door.
How many vamps had Patrick helped? How many shifters?
And now, here he was, the caretaker with no one. Our motley crew of two witches and a warlock was hardly worth counting. Not a one of us knew how to help, and I wasn’t even sure we were supposed to.
We were three steps down when White Feather stopped. “Vamp.”
I swallowed hard and raised my silver crucifix, letting my remaining stock of hardware dance in front of me. I was so not in the mood. Any vamp who dared to attack us now had better be prepared to eat every silver ball I owned.
Patrick called out, “Who has welcomed you here?”
Technically it wasn’t his home, but it could certainly pass as his lab. But whoever was here was already here, so what was the point in asking about being welcomed?
Vamps and their crazy rules.
The lights in the hallway slowly illuminated. A female vamp stood near the open doorway, a concrete doorway I was very tired of seeing.
“You did.” She was short, slim and beautiful except for the shimmer that revealed something with impossibly long ears, leathery wings and fangs. Her human form wore business casual, khakis and a silk tee.
“Tina,” Patrick acknowledged. “You shouldn’t have come. It’s been made perfectly clear I am persona non grata.”
She hissed. I aimed. Patrick held up his hand. “Wait. If she comes to harm any of us, she is not welcome here.”
“Oh, save it, Patrick,” she snarled. “You’ve forgotten your manners. Welcome me and let me help. Perhaps you can even offer to share your dinner.”
“They are friends. Not dinner.” Patrick leaned heavily against the wall.
She rolled her eyes, showing all white instead of black pits. “I meant the blood the little witch carries.” Tina kept her hands up and showed no teeth. Unfortunately for her, my witch sight honed in on her otherness.
Slowly, hugging the wall, Patrick eased down the steps. His clawed feet scraped the concrete, rasping in the silence. Balancing precariously, he tottered forward. One wing dragged, but he kept moving.
Tina was a full vampire with no
injuries. She was no more than a blur when she flitted halfway to him.
Patrick snapped, “No!” bringing her to an instant, motionless halt. She could take Patrick out in one swipe and reach us. White Feather could keep her back long enough for me to stuff silver down her throat, but while vampires avoided silver, it wasn’t all that deadly for them unless attached to a stake or used to cut their heads off. My silver crucifix was my best missile, but I only carried the one tonight. Only one of the silver balls rotating in front of us contained a lethal explosive packet. The collection might or might not be enough.
Tina smiled and raised empty hands. “Here to help.”
“My friends...are leaving now. They are not the cure. Set the blood down, if you will.” His politeness was for Mat. “If I cannot use it, Tina can claim it in payment for offering to help me against what was, no doubt, the wishes of every other self-vested vampire in the area.”
“Every other selfish, arrogant, and stupid vampire,” Tina corrected.
Mat complied, setting the bags on the steps.
I kept the beads and crucifix hovering protectively in the air and backed up, one step at a time. White Feather stayed right beside me, his wind forming a protective vortex between us and them.
From one blink to the next, the lady called Tina carried Patrick down the hall away from us. The bags remained on the steps, but she could retrieve them after we were gone.
Mat locked the door on the way out.
Chapter 42
Four days later, Lynx and I agreed on payments, and I signed the papers to sell the house to him. If it hadn’t been for Patrick and the possibility that he could still enter uninvited, I’d have made Lynx rent it from me until I was sure it was the right thing to do or until I turned eighty, whichever came first. Even though I was ready to move in with White Feather, it was still difficult to sell my home.
Of course, even though Patrick had acknowledged the rescinded invitation, and he was probably trustworthy, what if he got really, really hungry? What if he went rogue from his injuries?
That was assuming he made it through his injuries at all.
Ah, well. It was time to move on. Ready or not.
After all the signing was done, I showed Lynx the hidden space in the fireplace. It was empty now, but he could store the paperwork in there.
“You really should apply for a birth certificate,” I told him. “Things like buying a house would be easier.”
“I don’t like papers or being traceable. You don’t use your real name,” he pointed out.
I knew he was referring to my birth name, the witch one gifted to me by my parents. Names were powerful tools. No way did a witch flaunt her name. The wrong entities with dangerous knowledge could attempt to capture a witch’s magic or her soul. “I use one of my birth names. Just not necessarily my spirit name. It’s not needed for something like this.”
He fiddled with the pen. “What if Bob is my real name?”
As usual with Lynx, personal questions came out of nowhere. And as usual with Lynx, I had little idea of where he was headed with his question. Names were a risky discussion to have with a witch who might know how to use your name against you. Knowing a birth name or spirit name could mean the difference between a spell—or curse—succeeding or failing. “You think Bob might be your birth name?”
“The one you witches never tell anyone. Maybe my mother gave me that name.”
The kid read too many books. If I didn’t know better, I’d say he read too many of my books, but since mine were spelled and set to me, it wasn’t likely. “What makes you think you have a birth name?”
He dropped the pen as though I had slapped him. Puzzled at his shock, I said, “There’s a lot of people not given the type of name you’re talking about.”
“You mean shit kids that are good enough to hire, but you think—” his voice shifted from a high-pitched snarl to a nasty hiss, but my hands went up, waving frantically.
“No! I mean anyone who doesn’t...anyone who isn’t a witch!” I sat back as far from his glare as possible. “Geez, Lynx. Not that many people know about the power of names and even for those who do, not everyone knows to guard against their use. Normals just get names. Most of the time it isn’t even the right one, so it holds little or no power. Sometimes they end up with a spirit name during Baptism because it’s one of the ceremonies when the magic can be imparted.”
From his heavy breathing and slit-eyes, I was pretty sure this was new information to him. That, or he was too angry about my perceived insult to have heard me. “Seriously, Lynx. When have I ever had an issue with your birth? Yeah, you take some jobs you shouldn’t touch, but that has nothing to do with your name, your parents or even the phase of the moon. I don’t care that you’re a shifter, and you could have come from Mars. Makes no difference to me at all.”
He snapped his hand into a fist, withdrawing claws that he hadn’t purposely revealed. “It’s not the one on the birth certificate?”
“No, birth names aren’t usually the one on the certificate. Quite the opposite under normal circumstances. It’s way more complicated. Sure, people get,” I searched for a non-witch term. “Soul names. Spirit names.”
He pivoted again, a happier spark of understanding in his eyes. “Like the Indians. They get their name after they’re older.”
“Exactly. There was—still is sometimes—a ritual. The birth name can be the right one or it can be temporary until they earn the right name. A nasty witch might try to use a spirit name in a binding spell or to drain away power, so we protect that name. It can be used to call a person back from death or to save them from a bad spirit taking over. But that kind of name is,” I floundered. “Some people are who they are right at birth. Most of us aren’t that way. But my parents are both witches. They knew how to gift a name that could be used to help me. I don’t use that name very often, but the longer I use my current name, the more it binds to me anyway.”
“Is it the name on your certificate?”
“Adriel is on my certificate, not the gift name, the one that held the hope, the blessings and the spirit gifts they wanted to bestow on me.”
He scratched the back of his ear. “So if someone like ‘Trick knew my birth certificate name, it might not matter?”
I pushed my chair back from the table. “Whoa. What are you saying?” He stopped my flow of words with his cheeky cat grin.
“I thought my birth name, the one on the paper, might be important. But I don’t know if I was born in a hospital and thought ‘Trick could find out because he works there. But I ain’t gonna hire him if he can use it against me.”
“How do you even know if Patrick is still around? Have you heard?”
Lynx cocked his head as if listening, which meant he was deciding how much to tell me. “He’s around. Lost an arm. I didn’t know a vamp could lose an arm.”
“He lost his arm?”
Lynx nodded. “Tina said he’d make it. I figured he’ll be returning to his hospital shifts soon. He could check for a birth certificate.”
“Lynx, arm or no, do not end up owing any vampire anything. It would not be good to have a vamp have any kind of hold on you. Although it might be worse if a witch knew. I don’t think Patrick’s witch knowledge is all that deep, even considering he’s been around a generation or two.”
“You witches hold a real grudge against vamps.”
“With good reason,” I defended myself.
He gave a serious nod. “Mostly they are nothing but bad news. But if he did find out for me, it wouldn’t be a big deal, right? My mother wasn’t a witch. She didn’t give me any blessings either.”
There was a long silence. I took a deep breath and plunged ahead. “Was she the cat?”
He didn’t even hesitate. “Nah. Musta been someone she whored.”
The simple statement made my guts clench so hard, they hurt worse than the time I tried to do sit-ups last year. Lynx, for better or worse, was my friend. “The birth certif
icate probably won’t have anything to do with your spirit. If she wasn’t a cat, she may very well have gone to a hospital. There would be a name on the certificate, but...didn’t she call you something? Don’t you remember what it was?” I didn’t know why I was pleading with him, but I wanted a spark of hope that she wasn’t all bad, that she had had some smidgeon of kindness, some motherly instincts that meant he had not been completely alone since the day he was born.
Lynx shrugged. “Do curse words count? Can those end up birth names?”
He killed my hope so easily, so calmly. I sighed. “Not really. She could have literally cursed you if she had any power, but that wouldn’t necessarily be tied to any of your names. It’s like a stranger on the street. Some can throw a decent curse, but most don’t know enough about you to make it stick more than a second or two even if they have some latent power.”
“She knew me. Enough to know what I am.” He scratched his ear again.
“Why do you want to know what was on the birth certificate?”
He avoided my eyes, letting them roam. “When Tara called me,” he glanced at my face, “Bob. There was this dread. Chills. I started wondering if she had guessed the name. If that was the name my mom put on the certificate.”
I lent out a pent up breath, my relief palpable. “Tara is a witch. She used Bob as a curse. And a taunt because she had figured out what you are. Only Tara doesn’t—didn’t know how to throw a curse then. Although, with her healing ability, she has a talent for imparting magic on people that is physical.” I shrugged. “Was it kind of like someone walking over your grave?”
He snorted. “How would I know? I ain’t dead yet!”
I laughed. “Well, yeah. But I doubt she guessed your birth name even if your mother had the luck to have gifted you with one. And at the time, Tara’s anger might have made a curse stick while she was standing there with you, but she didn’t have the ability for anything much longer than that.”
“What if she got lucky?”
“You aren’t feeling sick or anything, are you?”
Under Witch Curse (Moon Shadow Series) Page 24
