“Hood.” I flexed my fingers. “This is no time to be squeamish.”
The gwyllgi didn’t look thrilled about it, but he pricked the center of my palm with a single claw.
“Thank you.” Dipping my finger in the crimson pool, I drew a sigil pulled from the recesses of my mind onto the compressed wall of air. I added another and then another and then another. “That ought to do it.”
“What are you doing?” the second vampire demanded. “What do those symbols mean?”
“They mean you shouldn’t mess with my friends.” I slapped my palms together, smearing blood over each, then smacked them against the symbols, one after another. Each touch ignited a sigil, and a wave of power blasted out with flawless precision to knock the vampires off their feet.
Linus hit his knees and toppled forward onto his palms.
“Sorry about this, Hood.” I erased a six-inch section of the circle, darted through the opening, then inked it back before the magic fell. Hood slammed into it seconds later, bouncing off the inside of the bubble. “Stay put. I’ll be right back.”
The furious baying noise shredding his throat caused my hindbrain to sprint away like a startled rabbit.
Cletus, fingertips lengthening into claws, swooped in low circles around me, running interference.
Low on ink, I dug a fingernail into the wound and drew protective sigils on me as I ran for Linus. I hooked an arm around his middle then wedged my shoulder under his as I hauled him to his feet. While we shuffled for safety, I spread healing and protective sigils over his cheeks.
“I got you,” I soothed when he tried to speak. “You’re going to be okay.”
“No.”
“Yes, you are.”
“No,” he said, frustrated. “Told you…no.”
“Oh. That.”
“Yes,” he hissed, his strength returning. “That.”
“Remember when Maud used to say Make no apologies for surviving?”
“Yes.”
“I took that to heart, so you can suck it. I’m not apologizing.”
A pathetic excuse for a laugh moved through him that gave me the boost I needed to reach the circle I was shocked to find intact and not a ring of magical residue on the asphalt.
“I can’t breach it from this side.” Not with Linus in my arms and vampires snapping at our heels. “Hood?”
Growling the whole time, Hood smudged the line and brought the magic crashing down around him.
“Thanks,” I panted, gunning for the van. “Now grow thumbs. We need a driver.”
While Hood shifted in a wash of red energy, I tugged the side door open and dumped Linus on the floorboard. He was so tall, I had to grab his ankles and tuck his legs in before I could join him. Even then, I was straddling him, my head bumping the ceiling.
“Sorry about this.” I sat on his lap to give me leverage for throwing my weight into closing the door. As I sealed us inside, Hood slid into the driver’s seat, and the engine roared to life. “Go, go, go.” I pressed my nose to the glass. “They’re starting to twitch.”
“They aren’t…the only ones.” Linus trembled beneath me. “They…drugged me.”
“Let me—” I rocked forward to stand and smacked my head against the window when Hood made a hard right. “Ouch.”
Cool hands bracketed my hips, holding me steady as I rubbed the tender spot, and he whispered, “Stay…with me.”
Once the ache dulled, I twisted around to check on him. “Where else would I go?”
But his grip had slackened, and his face had too. Linus was dozing. Or was he?
Last time I almost lost him during what I mistakenly assumed was a nap.
“Wake up.” I gripped his shoulders and shook him. “Eyes on me.”
“I’m…okay.” Dark-blue eyes cracked open and held mine. “Just tired.”
“Forgive me if I don’t believe you.” I fisted both halves of his shirt and ripped, sending buttons pinging around the interior. Dried blood streaked his chest. I smoothed a hand down the tattoos decorating his torso, and his abs clenched. Chills pebbled his skin in the wake of my fingers, and his nipples tightened under my palm when I braced it on his left pectoral, over the tattooed seal of the city of Atlanta. “None of the blood is yours.”
“No,” he breathed softly.
“In that case, I’m sorry I groped you.” I indicated the ruined fabric with my chin. “You can also bill me for the shirt. This is the second one of yours I’ve debuttoned in a panic.”
“Don’t mind.” He wrapped a palm around my wrist, holding it steady over his heart, and I was grateful he couldn’t feel mine galloping. “More shirts where those came from.”
Taking the out I was given, I checked on our driver. “Hood, you okay up there?”
“You spat on my honor when you left me behind,” he gritted from between clenched teeth. “You could have been killed or taken, and I would have had to stand there and watch.”
The charge echoed Amelie and Boaz so closely, my throat squeezed, but I had bigger problems.
“Wait.” I paused his rant. “You broke the circle to let me in, so why didn’t you break it to follow me?”
“It obeyed you,” he snarled. “It kept me contained until you gave me permission to erase the line.”
“I had no idea I could do that.” I slumped against the nearest wall. “I figured it would slow you down long enough for me to reach Linus, but I didn’t realize you couldn’t get out. I didn’t mean to trap you in there.”
Hood didn’t acknowledge my semi-apology, and I deserved the silent treatment for what I had done.
That didn’t change the fact I would do it again in a heartbeat. Amelie, and now Hood, had no trouble expecting Linus to fend for himself. Clearly, as his sprint toward danger proved, he was used to working alone. Maybe he even preferred the solitude. Or, perhaps, he didn’t know any other way.
The guy experimented on himself, so he couldn’t be trusted to value his life any more than they did.
Guess that left it up to me to haul his butt out of whatever trouble he got into on my account.
Hood didn’t forgive me in the time it took to drive home. He barely held on to his skin long enough to get out of the van before shifting and ditching me to care for my patient alone. With that attitude, I didn’t mind watching him go. We would have to make up eventually, but I wasn’t in any mood to tuck my tail for the sake of his honor.
Woolly, picking up on my emotions, flickered the porch light at me in question.
“We had a fight,” I told her as I climbed out. “I’ll make it up to him later.”
Her curtains rustled in affront that I would have to apologize, but she was Team Grier all the way. She didn’t have to know what I had done to be on my side. Even when I was in the wrong, she was right there with me. Yet another reason why I couldn’t have loved her more if she were flesh and bone.
After helping Linus sit up, I placed his feet in the cool grass. “Can you walk?”
“I think so.” He smoothed a hand down his torso, over the flaking sigils. “You patched me up well.”
“I had a good teacher.” I tucked my shoulder under his arm and helped him stand. “Take your time.”
Once he regained his balance, he took his first wobbling step. “Vertigo.”
Tucking myself tighter against his side, I searched his face. “I can get Midas or Lethe…”
“I can manage if we go slow.” He steadied more with each step, the exercise clearing his head. “How did you know you could manipulate sigils that way?”
Tension radiated through me, wringing my gut dry until I almost heaved. Trust. This was all about trust. Anything I told him might get repeated to his mother one day, and that was dangerous. But he hadn’t let me down so far.
“I figured it out the night we came home from Atlanta,” I admitted. “You were unconscious. I had to get you help, but the vampire kept coming, and I…just knew.” I eased him down onto the bottommost step for a short break before we tackled the stairs. “It feels like I’m remembering when it happens, but it’s nothing I’ve ever been taught.”
“Genetic memory.”
“That was my first thought, yes.”
Necromancers had a predisposition toward being born with an innate understanding of their talent. Not as in we were in danger of experiencing an epidemic of vampires raised by toddlers, but some practitioners exhibited keen insight into the craft from an early age, before proper training commenced.
Linus was one of those precocious youths. Now it appeared I might be another.
“I can show you sometime,” I offered in the space where his accusation of Why didn’t you tell me fit. Guilt, pure and simple, motivated me, but it didn’t stop his eyes from brightening. “I’ll even let you film it. That way we can reverse engineer the sigil I’ve been using.”
“I’d like that,” he said, and I heard understanding between the words, his acceptance for why I might keep secrets. Even from him. Maybe especially from him.
A door creaked open some distance away, and Amelie called softly, “Is everything okay out here?”
“We’re fine.” I rubbed the base of my neck. “Sorry we disturbed you.”
“I don’t mind,” she rushed out in a single breath. “I wanted to—”
“Not tonight,” I said, exhausted by the frantic evening and the sound of her hope.
“It’s just,” she pressed on, “I found that skeleton key, the one Boaz and I used to lock the trunks we took from Woolworth House. I never noticed, but it reeks of blood magic. I thought you might want to…”
“…remove temptation,” I finished. “I’ll be right there.”
“I can manage.” Linus leaned against the railing, and the old house creaked beneath him, worried. “Woolly can keep an eye on me.”