by Unknown
Before she could do so, two hands grabbed her arms and dragged her off her knees, pulling her farther away from Amber. At the same time, the other vampire raced past her and grappled Amber.
“No!” Sam cried.
Her attacker quickly clamped a hand over her mouth as he bit down on her neck.
Sam used their contact to take more of his magic, giving her the strength to tear herself free from his grasp. His sharp canines ripped through the flesh of her neck, leaving a gaping wound. It hurt, but the vampiric magic flowing through her went straight to work on the wound.
Sam’s gift, free to do as it would, immediately began taking from the nearest vampire as her body used up the magic, leaving room for yet more magic to flow through her. Sam reveled in the feeling of her gift working without any effort on her part. It was simple, elegant.
But before she could get to Amber and free her of the man drinking from her, the other vampire got his hands on her again, dragging her back by her dislocated shoulder.
Sam screamed again as pain shot through her shoulder and into her neck. The vampire, still strong despite the magic she had taken from him, grabbed the collar of her jacket and hoisted her up so that he could look her in the eye.
“What do you want?” she growled.
“Heywood must know we mean business,” he said.
Her mind and her gift went into shock with his statement.
Shit, she thought. A bloody dominance fight.
They were the new vampires who came in with Jason, and all they wanted was to show Heywood they were serious. They wanted the gang leader to know they weren’t to be messed with, and if he needed more muscle he’d have to prove himself to them. It was a testosterone competition and she was the measuring stick.
The vampire lifted her up a little higher before flinging her across the courtyard.
Sam flew a few meters in a graceful arch before landing on the ground and sliding another meter. She felt the crack of a few ribs and gasped as one punctured a lung. Sam coughed, struggling to take a deep breath. Though the stolen magic of the vampires was working to heal her it could only do so much. After all, it wasn’t her magic.
The vampire had followed her and was already dragging her back up, preparing to throw her again. Slowly, Sam realized he had no intention to drain her, but rather to leave her as a message for Heywood.
Sam reached out to take hold of the vampire’s button up shirt, tearing it open as though they were lovers in the throes of passion. The vamp glanced down before looking up at her with a half-smile, as though her unusual movement amused him. Sam glared at him as she pushed both her hands, palms flat, on his chest just over his heart.
She worked her magic, not just releasing her gift, but actually encouraging it to take all it could as fast as it could. On top of that, she trained her mind on her lungs, funneling the magic into her damaged organs, willing it to heal her battered body as her breath continued wheeze in and out past her blue lips.
The vampire froze, staring at her in shock as she worked. Whether he felt what she was doing and it hurt him, or if he was too confused to move, she never knew, but he never got a chance to hurt her again. In less than a few seconds, the vampire fell to his knees, dropping her to the ground.
Sam cringed as the fall broke her ankle, but kept herself from crying out again, mostly due to a lack of air.
Something was wrong. She was full of vampiric magic, bursting with it even, but it wasn’t healing her. Had it not been for Amber, she would have laid there, focusing on her battered body and the energies coursing through her body. Instead, she rolled onto her stomach and began dragging herself with her good arm toward the vampire who was still working against the struggling Amber. Granted, Amber’s movements were getting downright feeble.
Sam poured all her stolen magic into the healing of her body as she reached out her hand and sucked on the vampire, just as he was sucking on Amber. The vampire wilted, releasing Amber and falling away from her limp body.
Sam continued to crawl towards Amber as fast as she could, half her mind wondering why the magic wasn’t healing her as fast as it had in the past. It was flowing through her as it had before. She could funnel it towards the injury and it would pass through, leaving her, but the end result was not a healed ankle or a non-punctured lung.
Finally, when she thought she couldn’t drag herself another foot, she reached Amber. With her good arm, she checked Amber’s pulse, it was soft, but stable. Sam wrapped herself around Amber’s body, trying to keep her warm. Surely someone would find them soon.
And sure enough, someone did. It was just the wrong someone.
Chapter Thirteen
“Help,” Sam croaked, her breath still coming in shallow, crackling gasps.
The body stopped just beyond her field of vision, no doubt eyeing the carnage. Hesitantly, it stepped into the pool of light provided by the street light. Sam felt her new-found hope fade away.
Her brother Ryan glared down at her. His eyes danced from one dead body to her ankle, back to another dead vamp, on to the blood flowing down the side of her head, to the third dead vampire, and finally resting on Amber’s limp body. Disgust gradually took the place of confusion across his features as he examined her handiwork.
Finally, after he had gotten a good look at all her wounds and heard the crackle of her labored breathing, he turned away.
“Wait,” she called as loud as her one working lung could manage. “Ryan, wait. Amber is inn…”
Sam stopped to cough, a little blood coming up as her breathing grew more labored.
“I’m not. I know. Just heal her.” Sam took another labored breath. “She lost a lot… Just her.”
Ryan turned back, kneeling in front of Amber. He placed his hand on the bite wound and closed his eyes. Sam rolled away, relaxing with the relief of knowing Amber would be all right. Sam allowed her eyes to half close as her brother worked. His magic was a far more powerful healing agent than even the vampires. It would make Amber even healthier than she was before the attack, not just fix what they had broken.
Ryan began to climb to his feet, his work done when a hand flashed out, catching his wrist. Sam opened her eyes and carefully turned her head to see Amber glaring up at Ryan, her hand wrapped tightly around his wrist.
“Amber?” he asked as he lowered himself back down into a squatting position. “You still hurting?”
“Heal her?”
Ryan let out a sigh, refusing to look at Sam.
“She got herself into this. She never should have been working for Heywood in the first place.”
“You don’t know the whole story. And regardless, she saved my life. Heal her. You know I can make you want to, but I’m choosing not to. Do it because you know it’s the right thing to do. Do it because she is your sister.”
Ryan’s eyes flickered over to where Sam lay, her breath growing shallower.
“I can’t do it here. She’s too badly hurt.”
“Take me to Heywood,” Sam gasped.
“What is going on?” came another voice. “Amber?”
“I’m okay,” Amber said as she got up and went to Jason’s side. “But Sam is badly hurt.”
“I need to get her somewhere safe to heal her,” Ryan said.
“This is Ryan, Sam’s older brother,” Amber explained. “Ryan, this Jason, the new mage. Sam saved me from these three vampires.”
Sam forced her eyes open as far as they would go—one of them didn’t seem to be working quite right—and saw Jason glaring down at the various bodies. He gave a grunt that shifted his muscular chest.
“Need to teach you some spells, girl,” he said with another grunt. “Right, let me carry her.”
Sam tried not to cry out when the mage lifted her up into his arms. But her efforts were pointless. A gargling gasp of pain passed her lips, putting everyone on edge.
Her head rolled to the side as he adjusted his grip and, out of the corner of her eyes, Sam spotted the worried eyes of a
man dressed in a long wool trench coat, the collar popped to keep his neck warm. Covering his shaved head, he wore a felt fedora. Had he been among the normal Reservation crowd, he would have stood out.
Sam used a conservative gesture to warn him off.
Roman caught the movement and stepped back into the shadows, though the look of worry never left his face and it warmed her heart. She gave him a quick thumbs up with the hand dangling downward, wishing she could express more before Jason began to make his way towards Heywood’s house, Ryan and Amber in tow.
Roman watched until they were out of sight.
The short journey was agony to Sam’s battered body, despite Jason’s low chanting.
“Man Dzīvot,” he repeated over and over again as he walked on nimble feet.
Had she not been counting the seconds with each stabbing breath of pain, she might have asked him what he had been saying, or at least what language he had been speaking. Instead, she was too focused on the pain in her chest, her ankle, and her shoulder to care.
Finally, when her vision was beginning to fade in on itself, Amber rushed ahead of Jason and flung the door open, nearly losing her head as a result. Breena rushed forward with a growl, barely realizing the situation in time to check her attack.
“What happened?” the werewolf asked before calling for Heywood.
“What?” snapped the vampire from the landing on the second floor. “Sam!”
Heywood met them halfway up the stairwell, where Sam passed out.
Sam woke to a searing pain in her chest and a screeching sound in her ear.
Sometime later she would realize the sound had been her own scream.
Ryan stood over her, his hands on her chest, his eyes closed, and his mouth working in a healing chant. Glancing down toward the foot of the bed, she discovered Jason holding her legs down, avoiding her broken ankle, and adding his own power into the mix.
She had never heard of a mage and a fae working together to heal a body, and she wasn’t sure she liked the results.
Her entire body burned, the fire building to greater depths at their hands. She jerked from side to side, working to free herself from their grasp. Heywood came to their rescue, clamping his usually cold hands on the sides of her face and using his iron strength to subdue her, but even this was not enough to keep her from lurching to and fro. Finally, when her own body’s strength wasn’t enough, she called upon her unusually-dormant gift.
It groggily came to her call and began taking from their various powers, as though it wasn’t much interested in consuming their magic. This made her panic more than the fire raging through her body. Never in her short life had her gift not been ready to consume another mystic body and soul. She had spent every waking moment of her life battling to control her gift, and now she had to coax it back to life.
Was she dying?
“Sam!” snapped Heywood, pinning her with his ageless glare. “You’re not dying.”
Had she said that outloud?
“You’re fae gift is exhausted,” Jason said from his position by her legs. “Let it rest. You’re not helping us heal you.”
She jerked her eyes onto the mage.
“Let us heal you,” he said, pushing his magic into the request that was just shy of an order.
“Samantha,” whispered Ryan from her side.
Sam’s eyes jerked to her brother’s face.
“You were right, Sam. You were right about everything. I should have protected you.”
Tears began to well up in her brother’s dark eyes and rolled down his flushed cheeks.
“Now look at you. This is all my fault. Had I just stood up to Dad maybe this wouldn’t have happened. Sam, can you hear me?”
Sam stopped fighting their grasp, the fire coursing through her veins momentarily forgotten. Was she hearing her brother correctly?
She felt her bottom lip begin to tremble, and she clamped her teeth down on it, refusing to cry for her brother who had watched Dave beat her for missing a question on a quiz at school.
“Sam?” he asked. “Sam!”
The fire grew in intensity and Sam focused on it, taking it in, welcoming it as a distraction from the pain of the memories her brother had called forth. She lost herself in the white-hot pain of her body healing itself through their magic.
And slowly, the fire receded, leaving her floating in a glowing nothingness that reminded her of the hallway in Solitary, where she couldn’t see any details because her eyes were too blinded by the light after being too long shrouded in darkness.
She had spent too much time in pain, and now the relief of being without it had left her feeling a pleasant numbness. She was nothing, and being nothing was perfection.
But the return to reality came as a rather uncomfortable thud.
Sam blinked, suddenly finding herself back in her lavender and purple room. Ryan sat on the edge of her bed, her hand clasped in his. Heywood perched at the head of her bed in a chair. Jason and Amber slumped on the floor, fingers interlocked. Amber looked as though she had fallen asleep and, strangely enough, Jason stared at Sam, more intent on her than the woman sleeping on his shoulder.
“Sam?” Ryan asked as he saw her eyes flutter open.
“Yeah,” she said, tearing her eyes away from Jason. “I’m okay.”
Ryan let out a long sigh of relief. “Let’s not do that again.”
“Deal,” she said.
“Yeah. I’d like to not lose you,” Heywood said, patting her on the shoulder affectionately.
“Good to know, boss.”
Sam glanced at Ryan. He looked angry, but wisely kept his mouth shut.
“So you got the bad guys,” Amber said as she climbed to her feet and stretched.
“You think those vamps were the murderers?” asked Heywood.
“Of course they were,” replied Amber.
“They might have been,” Sam said as she sat up, brushing off Ryan’s worried hands.
She felt perfectly fine.
“I can’t be certain yet,” she continued. “What time is it?”
“’Bout nine p.m.” replied Heywood.
“Wait. What?” she asked.
“You nearly slept the clock around,” said Jason
“So they’re dust?”
“And FMB has the crime scene from yesterday,” added Amber.
“Awesome,” sighed Sam as she slumped back onto the edge of her bed and ruffed up her white hair. “Does anyone else know I’ve been wounded?”
“I…uh…”
“Well…”
The group stammered, looking at each other.
“Let’s try to keep this under wraps if we can,” suggested Sam.
“I’ll go spread the word,” said Heywood, slipping out of the room.
Sam glanced up at Jason, finding him eyeing her in a speculative way once again. It unnerved her, but she wasn’t about to confront him—not in front of his girlfriend and her brother.
“Thank you, Ryan, but you better get back to Mom and Dad before they start to worry,” Sam said, rising back to her feet.
He nodded, stared at her for a second, and left. Sam thought back to his confession. Had she just dreamt that? She wouldn’t know until they spoke again, if they spoke again. Sam tried to push her own issue to the back of her mind.
She turned to Amber and held out her hand. “Thank you, Amber, for speaking out for me with Ryan. You saved my life.”
Amber hesitated a moment before taking Sam’s hand. “I get it now. Why you do what you do. I don’t always like it, but I get it.”
“You guys probably want to get out of here before someone sees you hanging around vamp territory,” suggested Sam.
Amber hung all over Jason, as though she could cover him with her own scent and claim him as her own. He seemed to ignore her as he stared at Sam.
“You and I need to talk, little Void.”
Sam frowned at him. “Sure. Later.”
He nodded once and led Amber out of Sam’s
room. Sam shook her head, wondering what had gotten into the new mage.
She let out a long sigh. Now all she had to do was find Roman and all would be right with the world… or at least a little less wrong.
Chapter Fourteen
Sam breathed a sigh of relief as they all traipsed out of her room. Ryan had wanted to hang around her through the night, worried that her ankle hadn’t set right or that her lung would magically collapse again. Considering it had been magically healed, maybe his concern wasn’t so ill-placed after all, but she couldn’t stand his hovering. Besides, she had places to be.
Of course, she hadn’t told her brother she was going to creep all over the Reservation, but what he didn’t know wouldn’t kill him. He would be safely watching over his parents, keeping them from knowing the truth about her life. It was better that way.
Sam let out another sigh. She changed out of her bloodstained clothing into something less visibly dirty. She needed to do laundry. Maybe later. Like her hair cut, it would just have to wait.
Freshly dressed, she crammed her wayward hair under her black beanie, zipped up her leather jacket, and stomped into her boots, tucking the laces inside rather than tying them.
“Where are you going?” Heywood asked when she appeared in the second-story hallway.
“Out.”
“Thought you were going to rest.”
Sam shrugged.
The vampire didn’t respond as he watched her hop down the stairs, her boots thudding loudly against the worn steps. She burst out into the streets, shuddering in the frozen wind.
Sam walked down to the port, her hands stuffed in the pockets of her leather jacket. She quickly spotted Roman walking through the maze of workers behind his boss along with a few other suit-clad men. They pointed and discussed, a few taking notes on their modern devices. Sam watched from a safe distance, not wanting to interrupt.
The cold seeped in, reminding her of the magically-healed wounds splattered across her body. She wasn’t as well as she had thought. She was just about to turn away when she caught the mage’s eye.
