Red said the foreign words even as she choked on the smoke. Her gaze narrowed on him. Even if his body was long gone, his spirit was still too powerful.
Nevaeh looked to the warlock. “What is she doing?”
“A death curse, but it’s no matter. The fool thinks she has power. I shrugged off Juniper’s. I can seal that mouth too.” Maxwell twirled his fingers, eyes flashing with malevolent joy as purple orbs flew to Red.
Pain threaded through her mouth like an invisible tailor pulled the stitch tight. Blood gushed over the sealed lips. The new agony dueled with the pain rushing up her legs as flames inched higher. She fought through the stitching to aim a rigor mortis smile at him. He might have shut her up, but she’d still gotten the last part of the death curse out. It wouldn’t matter if he killed her now or later. When she died, he’d suffer.
Panting, chin dipped to her chest, Red couldn’t find the breath to scream. Coughing, the smoke smothered her even without solid lungs. If only she could see a friendly face again. She couldn't remember much of her twenty-five years on this earth yet despite it all, she still had people who had cared for her. She tried to think of her friends before the pain and fire stole the ability to do more than choke.
“Now, I will finally be a true widower.” Fire illuminated the warlock’s anticipation.
Nevaeh laughed. “You should get on Tinder. I can make your profile. Single warlock seeks same. DTF.”
Red glowered at them, head hanging down.
Appearing behind the fiends, Basil wavered on bare heels, the hem of his hospital gown trembling. Fingers spread out as his hands jerked up. He pushed past Maxwell and Nevaeh, elbowing them in the face, before he reached out at the foot of the fire. “Come with me, wish yourself.”
Red didn't know if it was the power of her intention or his, but she fell from the stake.
Basil wrapped his arms around her.
She buried her face his neck as they teleported. The stitching dissolved on her face. Clinging each other, they reappeared. The bright moonlight made the hospital room sparkle after the gloomy terror at the watch tower. She breathed a shuddering sigh, shaking in his arms, until Vic’s voice broke through the relief.
“We’re losing her!”
18
December 23rd, 12:17AM, Dreamland, St. Brigid’s Hospital, Los Angeles
“Oh, sh—” Red covered her mouth, stepping to her blindfolded body on the hospital bed.
Unburnt pants had been cut away at the knee. Her clothing had no marks, but her body… The red blisters covered her shins and calves while pus and blackened skin dotted the burns. Scorch marks tarnished the battered golden protection still over her physical body.
The mage doctor sprayed ointment on the burns from a green pentagram-embossed metal can. He whispered directions to the nurse who rolled the pant legs farther up.
“It goes up her thighs, doctor.” The nurse broke into panic. “Now, her arms are burning!”
Vic sat at the bedside, fists clenched. He looked to Quinn. “I don't know what to do! What's happening to her in that dream?”
Basil nudged her toward the door. “You don’t need to watch this.”
Red walked into the hallway, turning around to lean her forehead against the wall. She cursed when she went through it. The flurry of grisly medical activity around her body popped into view. Sighing, she pulled back. “Thanks for getting me out of there.”
“I don’t know how I even got there.” Basil raised his eyebrows, shrugging. “That warlock sent me to the top of the Great Ferris Wheel in London. I was sitting bare arsed on a Welsh pensioner’s lap.”
“That sounds nice. He sent you on vacation and you made a friend.”
“I'm not in the same shape that you are, that’s for sure, but they aren’t going after me, they’re going after you.” He wrapped his arms around himself, eyes darting to the open doorway of the hospital room as the nurse walked out. “How do we stop them? What’s their weakness? There has to be a way.”
“I don’t have any answers.” Mind buzzing, ghost nerves still rattled, Red dropped her head. Her spectral body didn’t feel the burn pain anymore, but the phantom flames still ravaged her physical skin, impact delayed in the weird passage of dream time. They’d almost had her. It was more than intense—she had cast a death curse. “I need a second. Just watch me. Well, my body. Yell if something else happens.”
“We need to run!”
“Where? I just got burnt at the stake. My literal feet in the fire. I’ve got to take a beat or I’m going to scream loud enough for them to hear it on the other side.” Her chest tightened and her vision blurred from the tears she refused to let fall.
“They could come for you again.”
“They will come for me again, and they could come for me anywhere.” She wiped her eyes. “At least here I have friends. Just take watch.”
Basil nodded before leaning on the threshold of the doorway. Peeking into the hospital room, he cringed. “Ghastly.”
Lost in her grim thoughts, she walked down the hallway, hands in her pockets, passing a stairwell door.
“What’s happening up there, Lucas?” The growled words drifted through the cracked-open door. It was Kristoff.
Red had wondered where he had gone. She followed the sound of grumbling vampires and stepped into a stairwell. The two men clustered by an open window at the foot of a nearby lower landing. She trotted down the steps wondering if she was going to have to watch them wrestle it out like boys in the schoolyard until Quinn broke it up again.
Lucas shook his head as he pulled a cigarette out of his pocket. “Can’t believe they kicked us out.”
She wrinkled her nose and pointed to the no smoking sign. Rolling her eyes at their expected lack of response, she sat down on the steps. Their problems were a distraction from her own. The only benefit to being a spirit was all the eavesdropping. She had been so worried about Vic’s privacy when Basil offered to read his soul, now she was ready to make some popcorn and settle into the show.
When all you could do was watch, it was hard to feel guilty about it.
“I thought you quit?” Kristoff crossed his arms, legs tense, ready to spring up the stairs to return to the action.
“Who are you, my mother?” Lucas asked, without any malice in his tone. He puffed quickly, blowing the smoke out the window, barely inhaling as he stared up the stairwell. “Or Quinn?”
“He's trying to burn her again.” Kristoff regarded the stairwell door to the patient hallway as if wishing his dark gift had been x-ray vision.
“She’s not Juniper.” Immortal pallor ashen from worry, Lucas pointed his cigarette. The glowing ember traced smoke warnings.
“How much of a difference does it make to a warlock?”
Red leaned back on her elbows on the stairs, ankles crossed. She cupped a hand to her mouth and called out to the vampires who couldn’t hear her. “Spoiler. Not much.”
“Bloody hell, I don’t know.” Lucas rubbed his chin. “It’s been over a century, that skeleton should be dead and long buried in the closet.”
“That’s where he has us. He’s getting his revenge from the grave. We walked out of ours.”
Rapping his head back against the wall, Lucas cursed and curled his fist. He puffed harshly on his cigarette. The smoke coated his frustrated words. “And the damn Brotherhood is beyond useless.”
“Of course, they are. That warlock is one of those secrets they don’t air out.” Kristoff clenched his jaw, the cleft deepening in his chin. “I doubt that Iron Jack, crafty as the old Bard was, even entered the dark tale into their lore. I should have tortured his son after all. Might have gotten the full truth then.”
Red sat up.
Jack Constantine had been the head of the Brotherhood in Juniper’s day. Had he known Maxwell Baldacci? She had tried to look up the warlock on the Bard Net, but nothing had come up. The entry on the Stonetree Monastery had been classified yet it had been listed. Scholars were pack rats and
for all the might of the more militant branches, the Bards were scholars. They never threw anything away. What if Kristoff was right and the warlock was never recorded? Or had he been hidden?
“What the bloody fuck are you going on about?” Lucas asked.
Kristoff tilted his head, disdain flattening his lips. “Even after all this time, you still don’t know much about the woman you spent nearly eight years with. What do you think I was doing with her in London?”
His sire scowled. “I could use a good fight if you’re starting one, mate.”
“Not that.” Kristoff smirked but then grew somber. “Juniper hired me to run recon. The warlock was after her to tie up a loose end—a job gone wrong. He wasn’t working alone. What does an asylum mean to you?”
“Now, that was a dark day even in a dark decade.” Lucas leaned his head back against the wall and took a drag off the cigarette. He blew out the smoke as if trying to release the bitter memories with it. “It was before our… contract. She ran, told the wrong person the truth, and was labeled a nutter. Ended up locked up in a blasted asylum in Scotland. There was a Doctor…shit, they called him Doctor B. Baldacci, no doubt.” He looked away, tension deepening the hollows of his high cheek bones. “Those are the times that I don’t like to remember.”
“No, you like to remember all the times you played the hero. Forget the blood that you spilled.” Kristoff pushed away from the wall with his foot, arms stiffening at his sides. Amber glowed in the depths of his blue irises. “Juniper had a limp. Do you even remember? Slight, but whenever it got too cold and damp…Who gave it to her? Doctor B or you?”
Holding her breath, Red glanced between the two vampires. Was this when the fistfight would begin?
Chin jutting out and top lip curling, Lucas’s fangs glided from his gums over his canines. He snapped his head to the side, retracting his fangs, and glared at his progeny. “That wasn’t me. I busted her out, then I busted heads.”
“Freed her from the hellhole you drove her to. So heroic.” Kristoff bared his teeth, canines growing before he pushed them back up with a rough palm and turned away. “You didn’t even get the bastard. Never could hold up your end of a deal.”
“I tracked down a few orderlies, but the warlock escaped.” A soul-deep conflict flickered in Lucas’s expression. “Delilah was impatient to leave. Caused a bit of a ruckus in the search, and after the last time they were in Scotland… We headed quick to the continent.”
“You never deserved her.”
Lucas glanced down, the fight slumping out of his shoulders. “No.”
She jumped when Basil leaned over to touch her arm. “Jeez, make a sound before you ghost up on me. Has something else happened?”
“You’re still bubbling on the bed.” Mouth pursed, Basil glanced between her and the vampires. “Stop eavesdropping on your boyfriend and whatever tall, blond, and undead is to you.”
Nerves raw, Red knew she was being sensitive, but she couldn’t help it. She pulled her arm away, scowling. “You know, I don’t need your sass right now. I nearly died!”
“Well, you’re nearly dying again!”
The annoyed set to her jaw quaked. “Already knew that.”
Hand on his hip, he asked smugly. “Did you know that a medium just showed up?”
“The talk to spirits kind? Finally!” Bouncing up from the step, she trotted towards the hallway door. She might have been on fire, but she wasn’t cooked yet if she could just talk to the guys.
Kristoff looked straight through her. His brow furrowed. Hope surged when his gaze locked on hers. Clouds gathering on his expression, he walked up the stairs.
Gesturing for Basil, Red followed the vampire, cursing her deluded hope that he had heard her. The only one with a chance to hear her was the medium. She hoped they spoke fluent Dreamland. “Let’s see how good he is.”
“Hey, Novak, I thought we were having a shitty conversation here?” Lucas asked before putting out his cigarette and tossing it through the open window.
Kristoff didn’t look back. “I can rub your sins in your face anytime.”
Red blinked and wished herself into the hospital room with Basil. She couldn’t focus on anything but her half barbecued body on the bed. Even in spirit form, the smell of burning flesh on her legs was overwhelming. The energetic connection pulsed between her and the shining dome over her body. Sucking desperately at her magic, the protection spell struggled to maintain itself.
The mage doctor left a huddle with Vic in the corner, walking through her to exit the room.
Red shook off his passing to stand at the bedside and stare down at her tormented body. It didn’t stare back. A bandage had been placed over the non-blinking eyes. She felt like she had arrived early to her own wake.
Lucas and Kristoff arrived, bumping shoulders as they tried to enter the door at the same time.
“Great, the wonder boys are back just when Quinn leaves.” Vic flipped them off, heavy brow and dark circles under his eyes punctuating the gesture. He motored over to the bed, grumbling. “Thought I kicked you two out.”
“Where’d he go?” Lucas asked.
“Made a call.” Grim faced and laconic, Vic examined her intact face and burned legs covered in a blue foam. Blisters peeked from the bubbles.
“It’d better not be to that psychopath seer,” Kristoff warned as he strode to the medical bed. He loomed like a bodyguard at the bedside.
Vic shot back snidely. “Don’t know. I’m not his secretary.”
“Hi, I’m Terry, the medium. Can the family come out here?” A short Hispanic man in hospital scrubs leaned into the room. Nose suddenly bleeding, he pressed tissues to it, grumbling to himself. “Not again!”
“Hiya, Terry. I’d say it’s nice to meet you but this night sucks ass. Tell me you can make it better.” Vic scooted in his wheelchair out into the hallway. “Give me the medium minutiae.”
Kristoff turned to follow.
“Family.” Lucas blocked the other vampire. “That doesn’t include the help.” He walked away with a warning glare.
“Oh god, they’re going to fight again.” Red said to Basil, but he had already disappeared and reappeared behind the medium in the hall.
Kristoff wrinkled his nose as if deciding his sire wasn’t worth it before turning away.
Lucas paused at the threshold to look back at the woman in the hospital bed, his pale fingers dented the metal doorframe. Expression crumbling, he stalked out.
Red clapped her hands. “Good. Everyone go to different corners.”
“Get out here. This medium is useless,” Basil called out. “Hello, Terry? Ghosts on line one.”
Red went to the doorway, touching the indentations in the frame. Lucas had done this because of her. He could bend metal, but that brute strength couldn’t help her in the Dreamland.
Kristoff walked to her body on the bed. Gaze softening, he visually examined the scorched flesh on her shins and then her forearms. He leaned down to whisper in her sleeping ear. Sneaking a glance out at the door, he unbuttoned his wrist cuff.
“You pissant!” Basil boomed. “Spirits here.”
“Basil, be nice!” Head whipping around, she stomped to the soulmancer, sighing. “Even if he can’t hear you.”
He waved his hands in front of the medium’s face, hospital gown fluttering in agitation. “Do I need to pull down your pants?”
Terry the medium put two fingers to his temple. “I sense the dark power. It is cloaking itself. There is an aura of protection around her, but I do not know how long it will hold against the darkness. There is a lesser spirit after her. Not long in the grave.”
“And?” Lucas rolled his hand for the man to continue. “Look at your crystal ball again. We already know that it’s a warlock’s ghost and the spirit of a blond bint chasing her.”
Terry glared at him. “She is in limbo. If she were a ghost, I’d know more. I am not a soulmancer.” He blanched when he realized he’d said the word aloud. “I am not,
I swear. Scout’s honor!”
“You’d be more helpful if you were.” Kristoff leaned against the open door, a small smile twitching at his lips. A tinge of new wetness shined on the dried vampire blood on his unbuttoned shirt cuff. The peeved air from being commanded by his sire gone. Only a quiet satisfaction remained.
Red frowned at Kristoff. “What are you up too?”
Vic whistled for attention. “The medium can’t hear the dead if you two are yapping over them! Red could be trying to communicate with us now.”
“I am!” Heart skipping in nervous excitement, she hollered through cupped hands. “Maxwell nearly burned me at the stake, he thinks I’m Juniper 2.0, and Nevaeh is learning new tricks from him. Figure something out!”
“She isn’t.” Terry said, without opening his eyes. “There is no spirit in her body.”
Basil groaned. “Where did they get this guy? The bus depot?”
“Can you find out more?” Vic asked.
“I will try. The energy in the room is too strong for me to penetrate.” The medium backed away, head bobbing, neck dripping sweat. “I’ll let the doctor know what I can determine. The female spirit, she is furious. Unstable. I fear them both, but her rage is fresh. Keep using the sanctified oil and prepare a new ring of salt. Add more cold iron. Once you think you’ve put down enough, put down some more.”
Vic nodded and thanked Terry before spinning around and going into the room. Hooting in relief, he called out through the doorway. “At least that potion worked on her legs. She doesn’t look like we pulled her out of a burning car anymore.”
The vampires followed him.
Red crossed her arms. “They aren’t going to figure it out.”
“Yeah, the Scooby Gang has really gone downhill.” Basil huffed and looked down, hands on his hospital-gown-covered hips. “Maxwell has us on the outs. He’s probably watching from somewhere, laughing at us.”
“What do you know about Nevaeh? Did Ari tell you anything?”
Long Witch Night: A New Adult Urban Fantasy (Red Witch Chronicles 2) Page 17
