“I think I prefer the imp high.” Ash headed over to Warwick, pouring himself a drink. “Since when does my life consist of arguing with an imp and needing to hide my vacuum from a brownie?”
“When she entered your life.” Warwick flicked his chin at me, taking the bottle from Ash, pouring a healthy amount of liquid.
“Hey now.” I twisted my palm. “When did this become my fault?”
Both guys looked at me with their eyebrows raised. I looked over at Opie, who was back to fixing his cotton shorts, which looked like diapers, a gauze crop top, and his feet in fresh puffs.
“Yeah… okay…” I curled my hand for Warwick to bring me a drink. He pushed off the table, handing me his glass. It was silly, but I liked that he automatically shared with me instead of getting me my own.
The burn of extremely potent Pálinka watered my eyes. I watched his attention dart to the object on the table, brows furrowing.
“What the fuck is this?” he snapped at Ash.
“Right…” Ash cringed. “Look, man, I was going through it for you when she woke up… and…”
“And what?” Warwick sucked in, spine going rigid.
“I thought why not let her try to read it.”
“Are you kidding me? You let her touch a fae book? Especially this one.”
“She’s fine.”
“Fine?” Warwick barreled over to Ash. I squeaked, jumping up as he grabbed Ash’s throat. A small cry of pain bent me forward, but I moved over to them.
“Warwick, stop. I’m all right.”
He shoved into Ash, ignoring me. “You know what that book is capable of.”
“I didn’t let her do it alone. I held her hand, but Warwick, I’ve never seen the book respond this way. It took to her instantly, shoved me out instead.”
Warwick’s mouth pinched. “It blocked you?”
“Yeah.” He nodded in shock. “I could feel it. It wanted her. As though it had been waiting for her or something.”
Warwick let go of Ash, whirling to me, staring at me like I was some mystery.
“What?” I stepped back. “Was it not supposed to? I thought you said it couldn’t hurt me.”
“Not physically, but if you are weak or have nefarious plans for it, it has been known to make people go crazy or to hold them prisoner.”
“Prisoner?”
“It has the power to trap your mind in it, not letting you out.”
“And you let me touch that thing?” I yelled at Ash, motioning back to it.
“The book only protects itself. You have to have ill will toward it. You do not. It was a gut feeling. I just felt the need for you to touch it… like it was asking me to.”
“What did it show you?” Warwick leaned into me.
I stared up into the very eyes I saw look upon me on the battlefield.
“You,” I whispered.
His jaw rolled, but he didn’t respond.
“It showed me Ash and Ms. Kitty, I mean Janos…”
Warwick inhaled when I said the name, stepping back, running his hand over his face as he started to pace.
“Yeah, I had the same response,” Ash said.
“Why?” I looked between them.
“No one else knows that name but the three of us. Kitty said Janos died that night in the war. She has never allowed us to mention the name or acknowledge him again. To her, he did die. There’s no way you’d know it unless…” Ash trailed off.
“I was really there,” I filled in.
“What else?” Warwick demanded.
“I watched them find you…” My legs started wobbling from fatigue, and I lowered myself onto the bench. “Dead.”
He didn’t react, but his shoulders strained against his dark shirt.
“You-you were…” The images of him dead had me shaking my head, my throat tightening with nausea. “What they did to you.”
“Yeah, I know what they did,” he grumbled. “That was it?”
“Yeah,” I lied, scared to admit he woke up and saw me. I could feel it in my bones, his gaze embedding into me. But it was ridiculous. There could be no way I was actually there at that moment. The book replayed what had already passed, so I couldn’t interact with it.
Warwick’s eyes went back and forth between mine, sensing there was more. I hiked up my walls, keeping my face emotionless and not letting him in.
We stared at each other; the pressure of him trying to push in thumped at my skin. He had always been able to just invade me, take what he wanted, see and feel my emotions.
“No!” My shoulders rose defensively, and I could feel myself pushing back, trying to not let him in.
He jerked his head, his chest rising in huffs of fury, but he eased back.
Holy shit, I had never done that before. I could block him out like he had me.
“Szent szar,” Ash muttered, his head wagging in disbelief. “You two…”
Warwick snarled over at him. “There is no us.”
“You can lie to yourself all you want.” Ash poured more liquid into his glass, drinking it down in a gulp. “But I can practically feel colors sparking off your auras.”
“I don’t have one,” both Warwick and I said in unison.
Ash’s regard lingered on me. “How do you know you don’t have one?”
“Tad…” I swallowed nervously. “He told me I didn’t have one.”
Both guys stared at me, a memory tickling at the back of my head from the night of the attack.
“She has no aura; I don’t sense anything there. Like you.”
“Don’t.”
“Don’t what. I’m simply stating facts. Seems odd neither of you have auras…”
I nipped my lip. “Tad said it was most likely because I got good at blocking…” Though I was starting to doubt that.
“Tad? Who’s Tad?” Ash asked.
“Tadhgan.” Warwick rubbed at his scruff.
“The Druid, Tadhgan?” Ash’s mouth parted.
“Yeah, why?”
“I thought he was dead. I mean, that guy is probably the same age as the book.” Ash motioned to the ancient item on the table.
“He was in Halálház,” Warwick added. “They kind of became friends.”
Ash pinched the bridge of his nose, tilting his head to me. “You and the oldest Druid known to exist just happened to become prison buddies?”
“Yeah.” I looked to Warwick and back to Ash. “Why?”
“Seems odd out of all people, the Druid gravitates toward you… And what the fuck was he doing in there anyway?” Ash set down his glass.
“I didn’t ask.” I shrugged.
“No, I mean, Druids’ magic is different from fae. As powerful as Tadhgan is, he could have probably walked out any time he wanted.”
I had learned Druids were different from fae. At one time, they were normal human witches who did favors for fae gods when fae had ruled Earth. The fae gods were so taken by them, they gave a few clans gifts of true magic, long lives, and extraordinary powers. They lived for many centuries and could heal similar to fae as well. Their magic had first been coveted by the fae leaders, working as healers, future tellers, and spirit guides, until they became more powerful than the fae. The jealous old Seelie queen in the Otherworld had almost obliterated them from existence, except those who went into hiding. It was why they were so rare now.
“Who gives a shit why he was there?” Warwick turned to me. “He said you had no aura? Saw nothing there?”
“Yes.” I nodded, peering at Warwick through my lashes. “Like you.”
In frustration, Warwick dragged a hand over his face.
“The coincidences finally making you wonder, old friend?” Ash smirked into his glass. “I could sense them, but a Druid can see them. Or the lack of them.”
“Fuck off,” Warwick grunted, pacing the room. The room grew silent, tension growing as Warwick moved around the space, finally growling, “Fine, let’s say there is a reason we both don’t have one, and we have this s
trange connection. What does that mean, and how can we break it?”
“I need to learn why and how it happened before I could possibly start trying to figure out how to cut the link,” Ash responded.
My mind went to the image of me leaning over Warwick’s dead body, my palm touching his skin, a whoosh of magic slamming through me… the feel of death. Of life… The book had taken me there for a reason.
I already knew the answer to Warwick’s question. It felt like it had been waiting for me to acknowledge it… I just didn’t want to. But I also couldn’t deny what I saw. What I felt. What I knew in my soul.
“Then do it!” Warwick’s voice ordered his friend.
Perched on the edge of the bench, I stared at my toes. I could feel the buzz of the book from across the table, still rolling through my system, the moments replaying over and over. Fear clotted my throat, and I wrapped my arms around my body.
“I know why.” I spoke too softly for them to hear me. So I cleared my throat, picked my head up, and said louder, “I know why.”
Ash and Warwick stopped, all attention pointed at me.
“Know what?” Warwick rumbled.
“Why we are connected.”
Both men stared at me, tension saturating the air.
“It was me.”
“What was you?” Warwick’s deep voice prickled against my skin with the anxiety of running too fast at a cliff’s edge to stop.
My eyes looked straight into his, the same ones that opened on me the night on the field.
“I think I was the one who brought you back to life that night.”
Chapter 24
Silence exploded and flourished in the room like smoke, expanding and sucking out all the air. Heat stomped down my spine, leaving beads of perspiration over my skin.
Warwick’s burning eyes stayed on me, his nose flaring.
“What do you mean you brought him back to life?” Ash cut through the tension, his tone eerily detached.
My eyes didn’t leave Warwick’s. His jaw gritted together, but he didn’t speak.
“You saw me there, didn’t you?” Every syllable was choppy and terrified.
He went still.
“Didn’t you?”
His head started moving back and forth, his throat darting up and down. “No,” he muttered so low I barely heard it. “No.” He turned away, his feet retreating from me. I automatically reached out for him in my head, projecting myself over to him, my hand pressing into his back.
Warwick jerked at my touch. He swung around, glaring at me. “Don’t.” I backed off, pulling back into myself, but my physical body took a step toward him.
“Look at me,” I demanded.
Warwick’s gaze darted all around, not landing on me.
“I said, look at me,” I ordered. As if he couldn’t ignore my request, his fury-filled eyes snapped onto me. “I was there that night, wasn’t I?”
“No.” He scoured his neck. “This can’t be possible. I dreamed it… a hallucination.”
“It wasn’t.” I had no idea where my assurance came from, but it sat in my gut, identical to truth.
“How is it possible? You weren’t even born yet.” Warwick tossed up an arm, his agitation rising.
Technically, I was, barely, but I got what he meant. I couldn’t have been there. My mother was at our home giving birth to me. I was nowhere near the war. And was a newborn.
“Wait… wait.” Ash held up his hands, strolling in the middle of us. “What the hell is going on?”
“I don’t know, but when I was in the book, I wasn’t simply viewing events passively. I could feel the magic, smell the grass and blood, see the barrier between the world falling… felt it… like I was there.”
Ash jerked, his eyes opening wide.
“Is that not normal?”
“The book shows you what previously happened. You view it like a movie, history that has already passed. Yes, it can feel like you’re right there, but you aren’t. You can’t touch or smell anything and certainly can’t interact with it,” Ash said firmly.
My muscles constricted around my throat and lungs, making it hard for me to breathe.
I recalled how it felt when the dirt rained down on me, the taps on my skin, the mud and guts squishing between my toes. The feel of Warwick’s burnt skin against my fingers.
“When I asked you if you saw anything else, you lied.” Warwick’s rumble cut my attention to him like a magnet.
I nodded, my throat struggling to swallow.
“You saw me come back to life.” A nerve in his jaw jumped.
“And you saw me.”
He inhaled sharply, turning away.
I was right.
“Szent fasz!” Holy fuck! Ash whirled to Warwick. “This is sötét démonom?” Your dark demon.
“Dark demon?” I repeated it in English. The saying felt familiar, my brain rolling back trying to recall why it did.
A memory of the night we escaped from Halálház, hiding at Kitty’s, came back to me. He started to tell me a little about his past. He had uttered those very words.
“It was the night of the Fae War. Right before the final barrier fell, I was jumped by many enemies at once. A hunting party.” He stared out of the window, taking another drink.
“How is it possible?”
“Sötét démonom.”
My dark demon.
“How the fuck do you know about that?” Warwick’s chest puffed with fury, his shoulders rolling toward Ash.
“A few times when you were here healing after the war, you muttered about a dark demon saving you, her eyes and hair black as night.” Ash peered at me, stopping on those features, exactly the color of night. “I thought it was because you were fevered and imagining shit.”
“I was,” Warwick declared, but it fell flat, splatting on the floor, heavy with denial. He started to pace again. “I had just fuckin’ come back to life. I wasn’t exactly in a coherent state of mind.”
“Gods, listen to yourself.” Ash chuckled dryly. “You have no problem accepting you came back from the dead, like dead dead, but it’s too much to think that she was there?”
“And you can believe she was?”
“I’m not saying this isn’t all crazy as shit. None of it should be possible. The only people who can bring people back from the dead are the highest-tier Druids dabbling in black magic, and necromancers. And neither can bring someone truly back. They are basically the walking dead. A shell of themselves, tortured and trapped—begging to die.”
“Do I fuckin’ look or act like a zombie?” Warwick moved over by the fireplace, putting more distance between us.
“No, you act like a full living bastard,” Ash shot at him.
“Exactly!”
“Warwick.” I tucked hair behind my ear, my bare feet padding toward him. He shifted on his legs, his eyes darting all over again. I stopped in front of him, my neck craning back to look up at him.
“Warwick.”
His regard finally came to me, his eyes tracking mine for a long time before he uttered, “Dark. So black, they felt bottomless. Like they could save me and destroy me.”
“What was?”
“Her eyes.” His hand reached up, his thumb skating under my lashes. “Your eyes.”
The moment he touched me, energy crackled between us, and I once again saw that moment where I’d leaned over him, his figure jolting with life violently, our eyes connecting. I saw myself through his eyes: The girl leaning over him, pale, with cuts and bruises on her face. Her dark hair tangled and wild, only wearing a man’s dark green T-shirt.
Exactly what I was wearing now.
“Fuck.” Warwick lurched away as if he had been electrocuted, his chest heaving, and I knew he had seen the same thing. The dark demon who saved him twenty years ago was the exact girl in front of him now, down to the shirt I was wearing. Even though it was long ago, tonight, I had saved him.
We stared at each other for a long time. The sound of t
he clock ticking built up anxiety until it sounded like someone shouting.
“This can’t be possible,” Warwick blew out. But we both knew it was. “It was you.” His heavy gaze dragged down my body, taking in my shirt. “You were wearing that. How?”
I shook my head, having no clue.
“Wait.” Ash held up his hand, traveling to us. “What are you saying? What do you mean she was wearing that?” Ash pushed his palms into his head like it was going to explode. “Are you saying the vision you had twenty years ago was Brexley from tonight?”
Veins along Warwick’s neck throbbed and strained.
“That isn’t fucking possible!” Ash’s arms flew out, his voice bouncing off the walls. “The book records history; it doesn’t alter it.”
“I know,” Warwick snapped, his fingers skating back over the seam of the T-shirt, near my shoulder. “But even this little hole… She was wearing this shirt.” Warwick’s fingers pinched at the shirt, tugging at the hole, his other hand moving to my face, his thumb sliding over my cheek. “This bruise. The cut on her lip. I remember it all.”
A hiss of swear words came from Ash as he bent over his legs, taking deep breaths. “How the hell is this possible?”
“You tell me, tree fairy,” Warwick barked, backing away. “Fuck…”
I stood there. Numb.
“Fuck!” Warwick bellowed, whirling away from me. “This is… Fuck… I can’t…” He growled, pacing for a moment before striding for the exit.
“W-where are you going?”
Warwick didn’t respond as he stomped out, the door slamming shut behind him, leaving palpable silence in his wake.
I stared at where he exited, lost, scared, and overwhelmed.
It took several moments for Ash to stand up, centering himself.
“He needs a moment to calm down, gather his thoughts. He’ll be back.”
I nodded, slumping forward, feeling fatigued and heavy, plus extremely sweaty, dirty, and gross. My mind and emotions were a mess. This was all too much.
I could feel myself shutting down. I needed to do something so I wouldn’t lose it.
“I’m gonna go take a shower,” I said formally, no emotion in my voice. My head was overloaded, and my body was exhausted.
“Right now? Don’t you want to figure this out? I need every detai—
Wild Lands (Savage Lands Book 2) Page 28
