Gifts of the Blood (25 page)

He took the bowl from her.

“Mmph,” Logan said, through a mouth full of soup.

I wondered if there were any spells on the soup. If so, were they Light or Dark? Was there a Neutral setting? Did I even care? Mrs. Alice looked up suddenly and winked at me. I smiled weakly back.

“Tired, dear?” she asked. I shrugged, deliberately not answering.

Truthfully, I was exhausted. I had actually fallen asleep leaning against the elevator yesterday.
While it was moving.
Dylan the intern found me and quietly but firmly herded me back to good old room 213 and threatened to sedate me again if I didn’t get some sleep. “I already know you fight dirty,” he’d teased. “I have five older sisters and I have no problem hitting girls if it’s in self-defense.
Or
,” he shrugged, grinning. “You could just come quietly and get some sleep.”

I went quietly with Dylan. I slept. For what felt like five minutes.

“You should go rest, Cas,” Logan said quietly. “You know everything’s ok here.”

He was right. One of the reasons for Mr. Markov and Mrs. Alice’s visits had been to place layer after layer of wards on room 213. It was now impervious to attacks of all kinds, and even some casual visits. I’d discovered it kept out at least some Nephilim when Asheroth appeared in the threshold one day, furious but unable to enter. He beat his fists against an invisible barrier before resorting to pacing back and forth, giving me dark looks and muttering to himself. Eventually he realized this meant we were both safe and went away. Unfortunately, the wards were so good we also hadn’t been able to hear him. Only later did we realize he hadn’t been muttering at all. Asheroth’s aborted attempt to get into Logan’s room had been accompanied by a full force screaming fit. Some of the staff was still scandalized about the strange man with the horrible language who’d come to visit. It might have been funny if I wasn’t so exhausted from being terrified all the time.

“Maybe,” I conceded. I could call out for Asheroth if I felt threatened between here and home, which was warded even tighter than the hospital. He might come, and he might or might not still be mad about the wards on Logan's room. Either way, I had the shadows. I had Ethan’s jacket.

Ethan.

His name finally broke me. Almost two weeks had passed since Asheroth first delivered the news in the garden. I had done a good job not thinking about him. But suddenly I felt his loss like an intense physical pain. I made my hands into fists and dug my nails into the soft flesh of my palms, hard. I could feel the sharp bite holding the tears back. I wondered how long it would last, this temporary reprieve from my long overdue nervous breakdown.

I shot up out of my chair and practically lunged for my knapsack. I avoided looking at anyone while I dug around for the essentials: keys, wallet, and phone. “Right. So. I’m going to go grab a nap.” I slung the bag over one shoulder and hugged Logan tightly but carefully around his neck. “You be careful,” I whispered. “I don’t care what you say. It
is
some kind of miracle. It has to be.”

He pulled me even tighter to him. We clung to each other like that for several long moments. “Natural remission,” he insisted stubbornly. His words came out thick, coated with the shared but silent understanding between siblings. “The cancer is still there. Just because it’s going away on its own, without the drugs and treatment, doesn’t mean it’s a miracle. Just because the doctors can’t explain it doesn’t make it a miracle.” He meant:
I don’t want to get my hopes up, or yours, only to have them snatched away.
“My body still has to fight it. It’s going to take time and work to make me healthy again, Cas.” His dark eyes were serious, so serious, but they were all Logan and no imminent death. I felt the tears building. I wasn’t going to make it out without breaking down.

“But you’re not going to die,” I whispered against his scratchy cheek. He needed to shave. He needed to shave because he had hair again. He had hair again because he wasn’t being pumped full of cancer killing chemicals. I sobbed and rubbed my cheek against his, hoping his rough face would rub mine raw.

He laughed, short and fierce, pushing me away so he could hold me at arm’s length. “Caspia.” He gave me his wonderful crooked big-brother smile that proclaimed my utter stupidity even as it told the world nobody could pick on me but him. A ragged animal sound got caught in my throat. I really had to get the hell out of room 213 before I lost it and cried like a grown man at his daughter’s wedding. “Cas,” he repeated. “Of course I’m dying. Everybody is. Death is a life sentence. Didn’t you know?” He kept his voice light, teasing me, but the warning traveled between us as surely as if we shared synapses.

A temporary reprieve is all any of us ever have. So don’t waste it, dumbass.

“Nap,” I mumbled, and ran like the coward I am.

***

Inside a sterile environment like a hospital, even with occasional forays to gardens and corner markets, things like weather often pass unnoticed. I felt like most of my autumn had been stolen from me. Somehow, the weather had skipped straight to winter. And winter in the Deep South is usually miserable. It rarely snows; instead, we have a kind of dismal gray rain that feels like ice but isn’t. Nope. Ice would at least give us a chance of some school closings, or maybe sledding down a hill. Instead, we have a kind of foggy damp chill that settles across the entire landscape and even manages to sink into the bone.

I was completely unprepared for the weather. The rain poured down in a steady icy stream. My hair clung to my face and neck, sending frozen rivulets down my back, soaking me to the skin. My jeans and tennis shoes were completely waterlogged. I had nothing but my indestructible leather jacket and the largest cup of coffee I could find at my work. I wrapped my frozen fingers around it, Amelie’s effusive greetings still ringing in my ears, wanting desperately to drink it down to drive the chill from my bones as I sprinted from the Coffee Shop to my apartment. I didn’t dare, though. Drinking it would drain precious warmth desperately needed by my frozen fingers. If I couldn’t unfreeze my fingers I wouldn’t be able to unlock my front door and I would freeze to death in my own stairwell.

I sniffed. Hazelnut. A tiny sip wouldn’t rob my fingers of too much warmth.

I ducked into the alley that ran perpendicular to the hardware store and my apartment above it, plastering myself flat against the wall while I drank. Precious caffeinated sunshine made it past my lips, promising life and warmth.

That was when I saw it.

I hated to call it an it, but I couldn’t determine its gender, hunched over as it was in a corner of the alley. It didn’t move. Homeless people in Whitfield were rare. I had never met any. I clutched my hot coffee and wondered what the protocol was. Call the police? Some kind of charity? But which one?

The huddled figure shivered violently and I silently cursed myself. How long had the person been there, in this weather? Maybe I’d better call an ambulance instead. I started towards the person but checked my steps at the last moment as an ugly thought occurred to me.

What if it was some kind of trap?

My apartment was warded. Logan was safe in a warded hospital room. Yet here was a helpless looking person right outside my door. Where I was completely alone. I inched slowly backwards. The huddled figure shivered again, more violently this time. I felt terrible. If this was a trap, it was a really cruel one. “Asheroth,” I whispered. Nothing happened. “Asheroth,” I hissed, a little more loudly. I didn’t know what else to do. My insane Nephilim tormentor hadn’t given me any guidelines for how to reach him in an emergency. Meanwhile, the possible homeless person slumped forward across its knees, shaking. Was it moaning, too?

Bloody hell.

I waited, getting steadily colder, realizing I would have to ditch the coffee completely if I was attacked and had to pull shadows. I waited some more. When nothing happened, I darted down the alley to the huddled figure in the corner. I could just make out a patch of wet dark hair through arms crossed protectively over its head. It wore a large green and black flannel shirt and jeans. I realized, to my mounting horror, that he was barefoot. He was just too angular to be anything but male. I held out my coffee and prepared to run, wondering if Asheroth would come, and if he would help or hinder.

“I really hope he doesn’t show up here. Say his name three times and he might,” said the wet lump of humanity through blue-tinged, shaking lips. His skin looked pasty pale. His feet, when I looked more closely, were bruised and scraped, as were his hands. Several nails were torn and blackened. His clothes didn’t fit at all. The shirt was huge and missing buttons. The jeans were ripped and looked as if they were much too short. His entire body trembled, with the occasional violent quake. He looked worse than terrible, but he lifted his head and tried to smile.

It was a fragile, painful,
human
smile.

His eyes were the same blue green glow that walked out of my sketch book months and lifetimes ago; that found mine in countless darknesses; that kept me from falling apart more times than I knew. They locked on me now, clear and searing and
mine
.

“
Ethan,”
I said, his name temporarily sucking all air from the universe.

“Yes,” he agreed, smiling hugely, as if he were not simultaneously freezing to death right in front of me.

“But you’re… you’re supposed to be dead,” I said stupidly, still staring, as if he were a product of my fevered imagination.

“Yes,” he said again, happily. He nodded towards my coffee. I gave it to him. His fingers refused to close around the cup. He shook so badly hot liquid splashed all over his hands. He winced. “I made a trade. My immortality for your brother’s natural life span. I wasn’t sure they would, at first, but they did it. They made me human. I’m going to die. Isn’t it wonderful?”

It will take Light to bring your brother back,
he’d said that night. The words were etched forever inside me.
Take mine
. And I had.

I stared at him. He looked like hell. Logan’s words echoed in my head:
Death is a life sentence.
I stared at Ethan until I remembered I had forgotten to breathe again and that an immortal creature had sacrificed forever for someone I loved.

He was also exhibiting signs of insanity and hypothermia.

That jerked me out of my stupor. “Not yet you’re not. Come on.” I stripped off my black leather jacket and slipped it around his shoulders. He tried to protest. “Shut up,” I snapped. “I’ll take it back once we get inside. What the hell happened to you?”

“You’re mad,” Ethan said dreamily. His skin was freezing cold and slick, like a catfish fresh from the river’s deepest bottom. I struggled to haul him up the stairs. “I don’t understand why. I’ve solved a number of problems.”

“God you’re heavy,” I panted. I leaned with him against the wall on the second floor landing. He started to slide; I grappled for his arm, slinging it once again across my shoulder. “You have to hang on. Until we get you home.” Ethan didn’t respond. Head against my shoulder, he seemed to be falling asleep. I debated about calling 911 then and there, but my apartment was only one flight of stairs away. If he needed the emergency room, we could wait for the paramedics in warmth and comfort instead of on the cold stairwell.

When he did not respond to gentle shaking, I slapped him.

“I thought being human would help me understand you,” he complained as we began another climb. “You're clearly angry. You
hit
me. And yet I did everything you wanted.”

I made sure I propped him right up against my front door. If he fell, it would be into a warm apartment. I fumbled for my keys. Cold and shock made my movements wooden. I was having a hard time seeing, too.

I realized why when a trembling wet finger reached for my face. “You’re crying,” Ethan said, horrified. “Why, Caspia?”

“Because you’re dying!” I rammed the key in with a vicious shove.

“You don’t want me because I’m a human,” he said flatly, cold creeping inside his voice and eyes where before, he had always been light and warmth. “Because I’m going to grow older and die one day. That’s why you’re crying, and mad.”

The door gave way as I twisted the handle; I didn’t bother warning him. I didn’t know if the wards would accept him anyway. We tumbled backwards across the threshold, proving beyond a shadow of a doubt both his benign intentions and his utter mortality. I tried to spare his neck and head by wrapping my arms around them. In the end, I jammed one elbow badly enough to bring even more tears to my eyes, but managed to cushion Ethan’s head against the worst of the impact. I lay half sprawled across him, my arms tight around his chest, a leg thrown across his while one hip dug into my inner thigh.

“You idiot,” I said at last as warm air streamed over us both and my trembling increased to rival his. “I’m crying because I’m afraid you’re dying
right now
, and I’m mad because you don’t have enough sense to come in out of the rain.”

He didn’t say anything. He just pulled me closer and nudged the door shut with his toe.

***

What they say is true: the best way to share body heat is skin to skin. With one of us shaking violently, suffering from hypothermia and countless other small injuries, and the other one of us completely terrified, getting warm as fast as possible was truly the only thing on my mind. Unable to stand up on his own, Ethan looked as lost as I felt.

I thought it would be easy with him, to strip off the cold clammy things that made us shake and tremble, and cling to each other for warmth. This was
Ethan
, after all. My Ethan. We'd faced death and madness and despair side by side. We belonged together. I’d stand on the square and declare it to the world. I’d steal all his best t-shirts and refuse to give them back. I’d fight demons and pull shadows for him.