by Naima Simone
“Go,” Sinéad tilted her head toward the bedroom door. “Please. I don’t want you to see me do this.”
Dipping his chin in acquiescence, Bastien retraced his steps around the bed and then paused next to her. She appeared so alone standing there, her shoulders tense, braced for what she needed to carry out, her fingers clenched around the hilt of her sword. He touched her, grazed the backs of his fingers down her arm until he brushed the soft skin of her hand. A shudder ran through her and he almost demanded she hand over the sword. But then her gaze jerked up, met his.
“Bastien.”
“I’ll be downstairs. Waiting for you.”
Her nod was slow, a bit uncertain. Bastien returned the gesture and, needing to touch her again at least one more time, tangled his fingers with hers and squeezed. Then left the room.
He loped down the stairs and entered the living room. Sadness burrowed in his heart and settled around his neck like an albatross. He scanned the comfy, slightly battered couch, the recliner with the furrow in the middle of the cushion, the scuffed coffee table and fifty-two-inch plasma screen television. A wooden shelf crammed with DVD cases stood off to the side. This room would never see its owner again. The chair would never have her settle in for a night of movies, the coffee table would never have feet propped on it, helping to relieve the tension of the day.
Useless, senseless death. And the blame could be placed squarely on the shoulders of the Cardei vampire colony. He’d read between the wendigo’s accusation when it’d first seen Sinéad. The vampires were pimping the Blood Cross. Monsters like the wendigo were paying the Cardeis something in exchange for the cruxim’s non-interference—or maybe even their assistance. And the blood of innocents was the currency for these deals drenched in violence and betrayal.
The minutes ambled by in utter silence. Time scraped across his nerve endings like nails on a chalkboard. He threw glances at the staircase, hoping to see her boots come into view. Damn this. With a growl, Bastien pivoted on his heel and stalked toward the stairs. He’d drag Sinéad down if necessary.
It wasn’t.
As he gripped the end of the banister, she appeared at the top of the landing. Expression strained, she edged down the steps as if every bone in her body ached. A palm against the wall steadied her while the other arm circled her waist. When she neared the bottom, she stumbled. Her knees buckled and she folded. Muttering a curse, he launched forward, clasped her upper arms and pulled her to his chest.
“Bastien,” she rasped, clutching his shoulders. Her lashes shuddered then lowered. She went limp against him. Stark terror stabbed him, the fear unlike any he’d experienced.
“Sinéad,” he shouted, shook her. That’s when he noticed the blood smearing her palm.
And pouring from the deep cut across her abdomen.
* * * * *
“Cyra!” Bastien pounded on the front door of the cruxim’s home, not giving a damn if her neighbors heard his shouting. Every second that passed, Sinéad crept closer to death…or worse. Already her breathing grew more shallow, her complexion paler… Shit. “Cyra, open the door, damn it!”
The door swung open and the female filled the entrance, a frown darkening her expression. “What’s the—” Her gaze locked on Sinéad, unconscious in his arms, then shifted to him. Crimson flashed in her eyes, and for a second he glimpsed hell and the promise of pain in the fiery depths. “Come in.”
He rushed past her, hurried to the living room where he gently laid Sinéad on the couch. Kneeling on the floor, he tore open her jacket and ripped her shirt down the middle.
“Bastien,” Cyra growled from behind him.
“Quiet,” he ordered and poured all his focus on the comatose woman before him. He examined the slice across her belly. The very edges of the wound were ragged and blackened as if burned. The skin around the wound had assumed a grayish hue and the odor… His heart plummeted toward his gut even as his soul howled in denial.
Fuck this. No. He wouldn’t lose her. Not like this.
“Wendigo fever,” Cyra breathed over his shoulder. “Sweet Lady, no.”
He spread his hands wide, fingers splayed over the damaged flesh. He called his magic to him, demanded its compliance. Immediately, it surged to his command, swirling up from the pit of his stomach, welling in his chest to envelop his spine, streaming into his brain stem and flooding his mind. Instantly, information from his palms transmitted to his brain like data uploaded to a computer. Images of the wound, the torn muscle, decaying flesh and bacteria flashed across the monitor in his cerebral lobes.
With grim determination, he gathered his power, aimed it with the precision of a laser and poured his magic into Sinéad’s body. Even as he guided the current of pure heat, cleansing and cauterizing her flesh from the inside out, he was aware of her breathing, of her heartbeat and organs. Healing her, a human—Sinéad—was different from working on an immortal. Her anatomy was more delicate, more complicated. While it challenged the physician in him, it terrified the man who feared losing her to a mistake.
Minutes—hours—later, he pulled back out of her body, recalling his magic and allowing it to simmer and settle in his soul until he would require it once more. His ass hit the floor with a thump and he rested his forearms on his raised knees. Coarse huffs of air whistled out of his heaving chest and a fine tremble set up in his limbs and muscles. It had been close, so fucking close.
He shook his head, but stopped as a wave of nausea pitched and rolled in his gut. Swallowing hard, he examined his handiwork. The newly healed wound was pink and a little swollen, but the six-inch scar appeared as if it had been there for a couple of weeks rather than minutes. No sign of the gray tinge, rotted skin or deathly stench remained. Healthy flesh greeted his eyes. He studied the steady rise and fall of her chest before lifting his inspection to her face, lax in a deep, healing sleep.
When had she become so damn important? This tight clench in his chest and gut was more than desire—although greed for her seemed to dog his every step. Relief had flooded him when he’d believed she escaped the house and wendigo, but fear had gripped him when he realized she returned with the fire. And the need to wrap her in bubble wrap as she stood over the fevered woman, preparing to end her life—those were feelings that exceeded physical hunger.
The thought of losing her to the wendigo fever…or having to end her life before she became the predator she’d destroyed… Arm shaking, he reached out to her, laced his fingers through the long tail of dark hair spilling over the edge of the couch cushion. He felt safe touching her while she slept. She couldn’t flinch from his touch and he luxuriated in the joy of freely caressing her.
His arm dropped to his side.
They had a common goal—they shared nothing else. He’d best keep that objective in mind or he’d end up running away across the globe again. As if the last time had worked out so damn well for him.
“Amazing,” Cyra murmured and Bastien tilted his head back to see the cruxim regarding Sinéad with something close to wonder. Her gaze had reverted to its cruxim silver, the flames extinguished. “I didn’t know you were a healer, hippogryph.”
He nodded, but as he pushed up from the floor the world slanted, swayed. The queasiness chose that moment to pay a visit to the back of his throat and Bastien gagged, rolling over to all fours.
“Bathroom,” he croaked.
“Upstairs, first door on the right,” Cyra shot back.
He bolted up the flight of stairs, charged into the restroom and got real up-close-and-personal with the Tidy Bowl Man. The jerking spasms seemed to last forever, tearing at his stomach like a machete scraping his insides raw. With a loud groan, he fell against the side of the tub. When had his throat become a gravel pit and his gut The Rock’s punching bag?
His reaction had been unusual. Unusual, hell, it had never occurred before. But in his hundreds of years of healing, he hadn’t encountered the evil that had permeated Sinéad’s wound. While working inside her body, he’d fough
t not to be consumed by the vile taint. When he’d withdrawn, the stink had coated his mouth, esophagus, organs… his flesh. The wendigo’s pollution had sickened him—literally.
Shoving to his feet, he staggered to the sink and twisted the faucet. As the cold water gushed out, he invaded Cyra’s privacy by opening the medicine cabinet and foraging through its contents. He searched for something to obliterate the taste in his mouth. Because, right now, it seemed as if a furry rodent had crawled in his mouth and died.
After locating the mouthwash, he rinsed every trace of the wendigo’s stain away then splashed the cool water over his face. Blinking away the lingering drops, he stared into the mirror above the sink, studying his weary features. Exhaustion pulled at him and the dull eyes, drawn skin and grooves bracketing his mouth revealed it.
Yet Sinéad was alive.
In spite of his fatigue, joy cascaded through his system, invigorating him like a full eight hours of sleep never could.
He returned to the living room minutes later to find Cyra seated on the arm of the couch, watching her sister. She glanced up as he neared the sofa.
“What happened?” she asked.
Bastien gave her an abridged version of the events after he and Sinéad had left her house. Cyra listened in silence, not appearing surprised her sister had raced into a house to defend an unfamiliar woman from a demon at the expense to her own safety.
Come to think of it, he wasn’t surprised either. After all, hadn’t Sinéad done the same for him? He was a freak now, but he was a living freak.
“She destroyed it with fire,” Bastien said, asking the question plaguing him since they’d faced down the demon. “Why fire?”
“Wendigos are creatures of ice, composed of the fear they feed on,” Cyra explained. “Though not widely known, the only way to defeat it is with fire.”
“Got it.” He nodded and tried not to ruminate on how they had come by that particular bit of knowledge. It made his gut swan dive to his feet. And he didn’t want to have another embrace with the porcelain god. “We won’t be able to leave tonight,” he said, keeping his voice low, although nothing short of a nuclear bomb would probably waken Sinéad. “Do you have a room we can sleep in?”
“Of course.” The cruxim rose gracefully to her feet and headed toward the entrance. Careful, as if handling a precious, invaluable package, he bent, slid his hands and arms under Sinéad’s negligible weight and straightened with her in his embrace. Cradling her close, he followed Cyra back up the stairs to the second level. She passed by several rooms and paused in front of one at the far end of the hall.
She swung the door open and backed away several steps, allowing Bastien to enter with Sinéad. Murmuring soft assurances to her though she couldn’t hear him, he placed her gently on top of the bedspread. If possible, she seemed even younger and more fragile in sleep. His fingers trembled as he stroked her hair, brushed a caress over her elegant cheekbones and traced her delicate jaw. Inhaling, he withdrew his hand, fisted it next to his thigh.
“I can bring you blankets if you need them.” Cyra’s offer came from the bedroom entrance and Bastien peered over his shoulder at her.
“Thanks.” He gave her a small smile. “That would be great and appreciated.”
Cyra ducked her head and disappeared from the doorway.
With a tired sigh, he sank into a chair next to the bed. He crossed his arms, stretched out his legs and lowered his chin to his collarbone.
And waited.
* * * * *
Once, a hundred years ago, she’d been captured by a vampire. The bastard’s idea of fun had been to lock her in a coffin, essentially burying her alive. It had taken four days, but she’d escaped from her confinement. She’d clawed through feet of mud and soil and emerged dirty, winded and royally pissed off. And then she’d returned the favor to the piece of sadistic shit by cutting off the hands he’d entombed her with before liquefying him limb by limb. Revenge had been sweet and satisfying, but she’d never forgotten the slow strangulation of her lungs breath by excruciating breath. As an immortal, the burial wouldn’t have killed her. But in that coffin, interred under mounds of earth, panic and claustrophobia had trumped reason.
As she scrabbled her way from the darkness toward a hazy, distant light, Sinéad experienced that smothering sensation of asphyxiation once again. Her heart pounded against her ribs in a primitive rhythm. With a last, desperate effort, she lunged toward the surface and freedom, aware on some subconscious level this panic only existed in her head. She wasn’t trapped beneath the mire and loam again.
She jackknifed from the cloying obsidian sea of unconsciousness and the rough panting of her overworked lungs roared dully in her ears. She scanned her immediate area, taking in the firm mattress beneath her, the cherrywood dresser across the room…and the large hippogryph sitting in the wingback chair beside the bed.
Bastien’s long legs sprawled out before him in careless abandon, his arms crossed over his massive chest. Even in sleep, the thick muscles delineated under his jeans and shirt exuded power and strength. Blunt fingertips rested on his bulging biceps, and it amazed her how a healer could have the body of a god…
Healer. Shit!
She scrambled for the hem of her shirt. Jerking the top up, she gaped at the scar bisecting her stomach inches above her navel. Hesitant, she rubbed a fingertip over the pink, raised flesh. Sweet Nef. The fiery-cold kiss of the wendigo’s claws had razed her flesh before Bastien had knocked his arm away. Yet she’d gritted her teeth, determined to die fighting. No one had ever come back from the psychosis caused by the poison of a wendigo. Especially a human. But that hadn’t meant she couldn’t take the damn thing with her. Seeing it go up in flames had brought her satisfaction, but the unnecessary loss of the woman’s life and Sinéad’s mercy killing had twisted the knife of grief deeper into her mortal soul. And the last thing she remembered was the burden of that sorrow as she fell into Bastien’s arms.
Her eyes cut toward the hippogryph and she instantly became ensnared by his jeweled gaze. Though his head remained lowered, chin nearly grazing his chest, he stared at her from under ridiculously long, thick lashes. The two of them remained frozen, engaged in one of those Western high-noon showdowns. All they needed was tumbleweed to roll between them across the floor.
Bastien was the first to break their match. He closed his eyes and raised his arms above his head in a groaning stretch. The breath whistled from her lips as her heart started a slippery slide and tumble toward her gut. The sensual rumble he emitted resonated pleasure and the air hitched in her throat. Sweet Lady, even the man’s jaw-cracking yawn made her entertain hedonistic thoughts. Like slowly running her tongue up the strong, golden column of his neck. Straddling his thighs and tangling her mouth with his, stroking her fingers through his pale curls.
She’d never been kissed before, had never desired to know the taste of another being. The times she’d seen males and females engage in the act, it appeared messy, wet and sloppy. Not to mention unsanitary with all the swapping of spit. But with Bastien…she cocked her head to the side, studied the full curve of his lips. Even though she would have to battle the tumultuous reaction his gift set off, she wanted to know his kiss. Wanted to explore that wide, solemn mouth and discover if he had a particular flavor. She wanted to swap spit with him.
“What are you thinking?” he murmured, dropping his arms to his lap.
He really shouldn’t speak to her in such a soft voice. Or look at her with his emerald eyes hooded and exuding a secret sensuality. Like he knew and understood why her heart battered her rib cage. Or why her stomach executed death-defying dives. Or why the blood in her veins scalded her so it seemed she smoldered like a cinder from the inside out. Sinéad trembled and edged toward the far side of the bed. Like a coward. Screw it. She could deal with cowardice. What she couldn’t handle was the ghost of a smile on Bastien’s lips, inviting her to come and find out for herself the knowledge he possessed.
“Noth
ing,” she lied, scooting to the end of the mattress and swinging her legs over. She pushed to her feet, tensing her muscles in preparation for the residual ache from her injury. Huh. She took internal inventory of her body. Nothing. No pain. No pulling. She glanced at him over her shoulder. He may be using her to get to the Blood Cross. He may blame her for his altered state of existence. But he was a miracle worker—and he’d saved her life.
“How’re you feeling?” he asked, rising from the chair and reaching her in two strides. He didn’t wait for her response, but knelt and pinched the hem of her shirt between his fingers. “Let me see.” Once more he didn’t wait for her agreement. The cool air of the room brushed the exposed skin of her abdomen as he lifted the top and examined the healed wound.
Gently, he prodded the scar. One big palm pressed against her back, his long, elegant fingers splayed wide across her spine, holding her steady. Warm puffs of breath moistened her stomach where he inspected his handiwork, his mouth inches from her bare flesh. She closed her eyes briefly before opening them and peering down at the crown of his blond head. If she didn’t know any better, she would’ve suspected a fever had taken up residence in her body. Except she did know better. This flushing heat had nothing to do with her injury and everything to do with the healer kneeling before her.
His head jerked back. His eyes narrowed. Nostrils flared.
She gasped as he surged to his full six-feet-plus height and captured her head between both hands. His face hovered above hers, green fire smoldering in his eyes. The air stuttered and petered out in her lungs. Oh Lady…
“Could you kindly remove your knife from my balls?” he asked, the calm tone belying the raging storm in his gaze. “I want to kiss you, not kill you.”
