Gifts of the Blood (27 page)

Still nothing.

Underneath the curtain of my hair, I felt tears forming. My world was falling apart. I was being consumed by Shadows, Ethan’s mortal life was pain-filled and confusing, and I had come to a deserted park for three nights in a row to beg a mad fallen angel for help. I didn’t bother to wipe at the tears. At least Logan had found some peace; his recovery was going well, Amberlyn adored him, and he had his old job back.

“Flowers will grow there, in the spring. Silver ones, like your eyes.”

The voice was hesitant, even shy; it came from behind me. I would have recognized it anywhere. I froze, prey sensing a predator. It was my automatic reaction to him.

“What do you mean?” I finally asked when he didn’t elaborate.

“Your tears,” he said in the same soft tone, as if he’d explained himself fully. Then, with an edge: “Why are you crying?”

There it was. A hint of the unpredictable anger that made him so dangerous. I wrapped my arms around myself and hoped I didn’t erupt into Shadows. “I’ve been looking for you. For three days.”

Before I finished speaking, I found myself staring straight into a pair of burning diamond eyes. Rough stone hands gripped me on either side of my ribcage, lifting me so that my feet dangled several inches from the ground and my arms flailed in the night air. He stared at me like a fisherman who’d caught a water-breathing mammal. I stared right back: soot black hair, ghost-white skin, and a mad, cutting beauty that would haunt me until I died.

Asheroth.

“What has happened, that you would seek me so, Caspia?” he demanded, the pressure on my ribs increasing with his agitation. His bright eyes narrowed to slits although his voice stayed soft as mist. “You do not appear injured. Are you endangered in some other way?”

“It’s… Ethan,” I gasped out. My ribs were screaming at me. “Please put me down.”

“No,” he suddenly snarled. “Tell me what he has done.”

“Nothing,” I growled back. As I struggled against his bruising hold, I felt cold electric darkness pooling in my palms. My fingers flexed automatically. “You’re hurting me,” I warned.

“You play dangerous games,” he said, and dropped me, disgusted.

“I don’t mean to. I only want your help.” But the Shadows were out now, racing across my fingers. Asheroth eyed them, and his look of disgust grew more severe.

I ignored the electric cold creeping across my hands as best I could. “Yes, but not today. I need help with Ethan. He’s hurting. Being mortal… it’s agony, Asheroth. I didn’t know. I don’t think he knew, either.” I felt the tears forming as Asheroth stood watching me, still and unreadable. “Watching him… I can’t bear knowing he’s in that much pain because of me. I came to ask if there was anything to be done, either to make mortality easier on him, or...” I closed the distance until I stood almost nose-to-nose with the Dark Nephilim. “Or turn him back.”

“Make mortality easier on him. Turn him back. E’than’i’el,” he echoed flatly. “Not to teach you or train you. Not to keep you safe. He is the reason you creep through the night while evil hunts you.”

“Please.” I found myself leaning into him, both palms flat against the front of his red leather jacket. Shadows crackled and flared where I touched him. “Please,” I repeated, softer this time.

He stared at my hands. “No mortal woman has touched me since she died.” He covered my Shadow-pulsing hands with his own cold white ones. In a whisper: “I forget. You’re not mortal, and neither was she. Not entirely. But close enough. Enough to be warm.” Suddenly his hands were manacles around mine, his eyes so bright they burned. “Enough to die.”

Before I could ask him what was wrong, he clapped one rough hand over my mouth and the other around my waist. Blind Springs Park vanished around us.

***

I’d forgotten how truly disorienting the abrupt spatial displacement could be. It had been months since I’d travelled this way.

I didn’t miss it one bit.

Asheroth held me firmly. I sagged against him as I found myself staring at the front door of my apartment, sick and dizzy. His voice against my ear came fast as bullets and just as merciless. “You must learn to protect yourself, Caspia Chastain. Ethan cannot do it for you anymore. You will not accomplish that by chasing lost mad Nephilim in the dark and off the path.” He shook me so hard my teeth rattled. “I know you do not see it, but there are dark things roaming Whitfield. Powerful, ancient evils that would love a soft new thing to play with. Those Shadows you wear like cheap jewelry only call to them. You must be careful. If you let Ethan’i’el tempt you into dangerous stupidity one more time I will kill him myself. Do you understand?”

When he let go of my mouth, I hissed at him. “If you touch him, I’ll end you.”

His hold on my waist remained steady. “When you can harm me, I’ll worry about you much less.” He beat on the door, three booming knocks I was sure would wake the entire apartment.

Asheroth worried about me? Right. “What the hell are you doing?” I hissed again. “You’ll wake everybody up!”

“Your dwelling is too well warded for me to enter. Yet another reason why I’d prefer you were inside it this night. And yes, I am rather counting on waking everyone. I think your brother and the other one should know what you’ve been up to. They don’t, do they?” I pulled uselessly on his arm. Shadows crackled and flared against his jacket. “I rather thought not.” He pounded on the door again, even more energetically this time. In fact, he seemed downright cheerful.

Stupid, insane Dark Nephilim.

The door flew open. Logan stood there wearing ratty sweats with a Futurebirds t-shirt hanging loosely from one arm. He’d tried to put it on and given up on the way. His hair had grown just enough to stick up wildly. Dark stubble covered a long red crease mark down the right side of his face. As he blinked rapidly in the bright hall light, his mouth fell open in surprise. “Cas? What the hell?” But then he took in my wild hair, tear-stained face, and the owner of the red leather-clad arm that held me, and surprise melted quickly into anger. He slowly twined the t-shirt around his fist. “Seriously? What. The. Hell.” Logan shook off the last bit of sleep. “Let her go.”

I love my brother. Only he would try to use an Indie rock t-shirt as a weapon against an angry immortal being.

“I don’t want her,” Asheroth said haughtily, but I swear he sounded amused. “I found her wandering the park. I am merely returning her to you.” But he still hadn’t let go of my waist. I knew better than to hit him, but I was so mad I didn’t care. I elbowed him in the ribs and yelped at the shooting pain that was my immediate reward.

“Then why haven’t you released her yet, Asheroth?” Ethan asked coldly as Logan angled himself sideways to make room. He looked pale in the bright hall light. His blue green eyes were fever-sharp, but he held himself steady. “She doesn’t appear to want you either.”

“She is right here and quite capable of speaking for herself, thanks,” I snapped as Shadows continued to pulse harmlessly from my hands against Asheroth’s jacket. Logan and Ethan stared; exactly how out-of-control my Shadow-summoning had grown was yet another secret I’d tried to keep. Damn Asheroth, damn him!

“I was waiting for you, Ethan’i’el. You look every bit as terrible as she said you did. I am so glad. Since you are the reason our Caspia decided it was a good idea to go creeping about deserted parks in the middle of the night, begging assistance from madmen like me, I thought I had better see the extent of the damage for myself.” He pulled me even tighter against him, pushing out all my air. “You were right, dear,” he whispered theatrically. I could feel myself turning red. “Mortality looks quite painful. How terrible to know he did it because he loves you. Perhaps you were right; maybe this really is your fault,” he purred.

Son of a bitch, I thought. I couldn’t breathe.

“Son of a bitch,” Logan said, and rushed us. I felt his warm human fingers close over mine. I wanted to tell him no, to warn him about the Shadows, but I couldn’t find words. My vision was graying out. Bare seconds after he grabbed my hands, the electric cold between us flared so intensely it seemed to burn, and Logan wasn’t holding onto me anymore.

Then Ethan was there, cradling my face between his hands. Pale and feverish, he stared straight into my panicked eyes. “It’s going to be fine, Cas,” he promised. “Asheroth. End this now. I won’t ask again.”

“How do you plan to do that, Ethan’i’el? As much as I would enjoy destroying you, I think it might distress her.”

Ethan never took his eyes off mine. He spoke two words I didn’t know, two words in a language so full of liquid sibilance it was difficult to tell where one word ended and the other began. I didn’t think the human tongue could produce such sounds. I knew instinctively I was listening to the Nephilim language. The effect on Asheroth was electric; he released me immediately, practically throwing me at Ethan with an inhuman snarl.

As Ethan’s warm, strong, human arms opened to catch me, I had time to wonder just what two words had such power over mad fallen angels. I gave myself roughly three seconds to catch my balance before rounding on Asheroth and demanding answers.

There was no sign of him. The hallway was empty except for the three of us. Logan leaned against the wall right next to our apartment door, looking winded and shaky. He waved me off when I started for him. Ethan held me gently by the arm instead. “Caspia,” he said before I could ask about Asheroth. The warning was plain. “Did he speak the truth? Have you been wandering the park by yourself, trying to find help? For me?”

My brother ran a hand through his spiky hair. He shook his head in disgust. “I’m going back to bed.” From inside our darkened apartment, he shouted, “You. Trouble. Morning.” His door slammed shut.

Ethan didn’t say anything. I still couldn’t look at him.

“I can’t stand to see you hurting,” I told the empty doorframe. “You don’t say anything, but I know you are. And when I think about what you gave up…” I didn’t realize I was crying until I felt a warm hand, not my own, brush my cheek. I half-spun on the ball of one foot until I could tuck my head underneath his chin. “You cry out for your… wings. In your sleep. It’s too much. Asheroth only said what I was thinking. It’s all my fault.”

Cocooned in his arms, I felt the bass of his reply through my bones. “It was a gift. Like the jacket you wear. I was glad to give it. I would do it again.”

“Not like a jacket,” I sighed, letting myself rest against his soft t-shirt. “How can you say that?”

“It was a selfish gift, then. I had a lot to gain. You.” He pulled me into the darkened apartment. “Come to bed, Caspia. There’s trouble to be in tomorrow.”

***

“Seriously, though. Don’t you miss it? Being immortal?” I sat cross-legged on the edge of my bed, towel-drying my hair.

“I couldn’t feel you before, in my old immortal skin,” Ethan answered, lying on his back. One arm lay folded underneath his neck. The other inched idly towards me, finding the edges of my sleep shirt, pulling me down. “I didn’t know, about skin. How… knowable… it is.” He frowned and a corner of his upper lip disappeared into his teeth.

“Knowable?” I prompted.

“It’s like suddenly having an extra sense.” The pads of his fingers settled against the curve of my waist and flexed there, pulsing, fluttering, like a butterfly tasting its environment. “I didn‘t know,” he repeated. “I knew how breakable you were. How easily hurt.” His hand stilled, flat against me. “But not how sensitive skin is.” The warm human hand against my waist was gone, and before I could protest the loss, he swept my hair to one side and breathed his words across my neck. “I was so prepared to lose things. Senses, strength; but this…” He blew. I shivered, arched, and he caught me, folding me against his chest. “How could I prepare for being open to the wind, the rain, even the bitter cold?”

“Cold and rain that almost killed you.” I shivered again, with fear this time, remembering his torn hands and feet, the hypothermia that could have killed him.

The shape of his smile against my neck had not changed. He had promised me, again and again since returning to me, that it never would. “Being immortal meant strength, but it also meant barriers. To the elements, yes. But also, this.”

I felt his teeth nip me right at the base of my throat. It was just hard enough to drive what little air I’d managed to siphon right back out of my lungs in a single electric shock.

“This,” he murmured against the skin of my throat. “I couldn’t do this. For fear of hurting you.”

“Um.” My hands were in his hair. When did that happen? “Ethan.” It was hard to speak when air was so precious all of a sudden. He had kissed his way up to my jaw.

“Mmm?”

“I’m glad I’m not breakable,” I managed to whisper. “Because then I couldn’t do this.” I wrapped my arms around him and pulled, bringing all the weight of a normal human male right down on top of me. Not the mass of a granite statue, not the killing crushing power of an immortal guardian, but the clumsy collapse of mortal Ethan.