Blood's Shadow: The Lycanthropy Files, Book 3 (8 page)

After eating, I flipped through television channels but couldn’t find anything interesting. My cell phone ringing, which typically annoyed me, was a welcome distraction.

“Gabriel?” The quaver in Lonna’s voice was unusual enough to make me sit upright.

“What is it?”

“Something’s wrong with Max.”

“I’ll be right there.”

Chapter Nine

I arrived at their house in twenty minutes. The sun lay low on the horizon as a glowing orange ball, putting me in mind of videos showing sunset on the African savannah with the silhouettes of prey animals bounding to avoid predators. In our little world, we no longer knew who was the predator and who was the prey.

Lonna opened the door with Abby on her arm. The baby fussed and whimpered, no doubt picking up her mother’s distress.

“What happened?” I asked.

“He came back from the Institute today looking just awful, like he had a fever. I made him lie down, and when I went to check on him, he wasn’t breathing.” She took a deep shuddering breath. “But he was still alive and talking.”

I pushed by her into the house and darted to the stairs. “Why did you call me, not an ambulance?”

She followed me up. “He told me not to call the human doctors, only you.”

“When did he tell you? How could he if he wasn’t breathing?”

Tears ran down her cheeks, and she gestured to the closed door of one of the bedrooms. “It’s the blood magic. I can tell he used it.”

When I entered the room, Max sat on the edge of the bed. In the dim light from the bedside lamp, he looked deathly ill. At least he seemed to be breathing.

“What did you do?” I asked and stood what I hoped was a safe distance away. The world of wizards was a mystery to me, but I knew not to get too close to a wounded creature even if he was my friend.

He looked up at me and clutched his stomach. “I didn’t do anything. The blood did it to me.” He coughed, and a trickle of blood ran down his chin.

“What do you mean, it did it to you?”

“When we found LeConte. I had only worked with small quantities—that was going to be what I used in our method, just a few cc’s to guide the reverse vector—but the volume of it there, it pulled something from me.”

“That’s why you were using the light to look for the murderer’s footprints.”

He nodded. “I didn’t know what his blood did to me, and I felt normal soon after. Only Lonna could tell I was off.”

“That was yesterday. Then we found the security guards.”

“Yes, and it happened again, but not as much because they’d been bled out and moved. Then this evening, I found where they’d been killed, in the blood storage unit. There was blood everywhere, and it pulled the magic out of me, like a string attached to my gut.”

“We need to get you to a healing wizard, or call one.”

“No, they’ll pull me from the Institute!”

“If you die or turn into whatever the last wizard to use blood magic did, you’re not going to be of any help to anyone.”

“Fine.”

When I got out to the hallway, I found Lonna standing in front of a door behind which a very angry Abby vented her feelings about being locked away. “I put her down so I could help you. Is he okay?”

“Do you know any of his wizard friends?” I asked. “A healer would be preferable.”

“One step ahead of you,” she said. “I called Arnold. He said he’d send someone.”

“Arnold?”

She bit her lip. “He’s hard to explain. Kind of a wizard investigator, but internationally.”

The doorbell rang, and I moved toward the head of the stairs. Lonna tried to follow me, but I motioned her back.

“Calm the baby, I’ll get the door and help them attend to Max.”

“Thank you. You’re a good friend.”

I ran down the stairs and to the front hall. All I could see through the peephole was a wreath of mist. When I opened the door, the fog resolved into a mass of blonde curls so light they looked white. They framed a surprisingly young face with wide-set blue eyes.

“So you’re the one with the blood magic contamination?” she asked, sounding surprised.

“No, my colleague upstairs is.”

She sniffed. “Are you sure?”

“Yes. Please hurry.”

She shook her head and sailed past me. The train of her light blue dress undulated over the carpeted floor.

“You wolves are always in a hurry, chasing this or that or the other. Is that what got poor Maxie into trouble?”

“Maxie?” Lonna asked from the top of the stairs. She held Abby again, who cooed when she saw the lady.

The mysterious woman paused for a moment to look at her. “Oh, she’s just the image of her daddy, isn’t she?”

Lonna raised an eyebrow. “Max is in there.” She pointed to the bedroom I’d come out of. “You know him?”

The curls, which were all I could see, nodded. “We were in school together. Took different healing paths. I knew he’d need me someday. Now please wait downstairs. Not you, Wolf-man. I may need your help.”

Lonna’s face had an understandably skeptical expression, but she moved past her to descend the stairs. “Arnold vouched for you, so I’ll believe you,” she said over her shoulder. “Just please know, if you harm him, I will not be happy.”

“Right.” The woman’s laugh reminded me of wind chimes. “I’ve heard you’re a fan of evisceration.”

“How…?”

“Tut, tut, my dear. Down the stairs you go. I’ll answer all your questions after I attend to the patient.”

I followed her into the room. Max sat where I’d left him, still doubled over and clutching his stomach.

“Reine,” he said. “You still have the same aura.”

“Yes, you always said it was hell when you had a hangover.” She laughed again, and I relaxed a hair. Whatever she was—I knew she wasn’t human—she had that effect. That Arnold guy knew some interesting creatures. She cleared off a space on the dresser and arranged some objects on it. I tried to see, but her billowing hair and dress hid them from me.

“Stand behind the bed, Wolf-man,” she said.

“My name is—”

Max held up his hand. “Her kind doesn’t need to know names unless it’s absolutely necessary,” he said through gritted teeth. “I have an exception because we went to school together.”

She shook her head, and her curls seemed alive for a moment, like they had small fish darting through them. “You don’t ever let me have any fun, and he’s a handsome one. Are you ready for a cleansing?”

“What is your price?”

“Max,” I said, “money is no object. Whatever it costs, I’ll—”

He stopped me with a gesture again. “Shut the fuck up if you know what’s good for you.”

I shut up. Max was not a fan of cursing.

“Why is he even here?” he asked the woman.

“In case I needed some muscle. As for my price, you have a lovely wife and child. A life for a life?”

Her words spoken in a casual tone chilled me to my core. She spoke of lives as if they were Starbucks gift cards, and it finally got through my thick skull what she was—one of the Fey, possibly a changeling who’d been educated with the wizards and who had gone back to her realm after.

“Absolutely not! Your price is too high.” His entire body shivered, and the wheeze in his next breath made my lungs tighten in sympathy.

She ran a hand over his brow. “You don’t have much time. There was that opal necklace of your mother’s I always admired. It sparkled so with fire and love.”

“Fine,” he said. “You may have that in exchange for healing me and showing me how to prevent this from happening again.”

“Oh, that’s two things you want from me.” She shook her curls, and this time they seemed to hold a blizzard in them. “Are you sure about the baby? You know I’d bring you a good one in return. And your wife is young and healthy—you’ll have plenty more.”

“No, you may not have my child. You may have the earrings that go with the necklace.”

“All right, but only because I like you,” she said. “Now hold him still, Wolf-man.”

“How would you like me to do that, Mistress?”

“Grab his wrists and hold them behind him.”

“Do what she says,” Max told me and placed his hands behind him. Each small movement obviously pained him, and the cords stood out in his neck, but he remained silent when I grabbed and held his wrists.

With movement too fast for even my eyes, she shoved his head back and stuck a slick-looking black stick down his throat. His throat worked, and he struggled, but he didn’t cry out. No doubt he wanted to avoid upsetting Lonna, and jealousy stabbed through my anxiety for him. Not because he had Lonna—we would never have been more than friends—but that he had someone he loved enough he would stifle his basest urges to protect from emotional hurt. My father had been like that with my mother, but that also meant he’d kept secrets from her.

The lady dug around with the stick and finally said, “Aha! Got you, you little nasty.” She pulled out a dark blob that glowed with a sickly green light and put it in a leather satchel. Max coughed and fell backwards. I caught him and gently laid him on the bed.

“What was that?” I asked.

“Backlash booger,” she said, the concept sounding profane coming from her lips. “Yes, that’s what it’s called. When you’re untutored in powerful magic and you get caught in it, that can happen. It’s like a fast-growing tumor.”

Max’s color crept back, but he still struggled to breathe.

“Now I have to detoxify him from its energy,” she told me. “If I left him as he is, another would form. Hold him down and don’t let go no matter what you see or feel.”

“That sounds ominous.”

“All in a day’s work.”

I helped Max to a sitting position and once again held his hands behind him. She put a hand on his forehead, and—

A torrent of icy glacial water, can’t move or breathe or think, just hold hold hold.

I blinked, the after-echo of the water’s roar ringing in my ears, and the reverse image distorting my vision. Surprised not to be soaking wet, I looked down and saw I still held Max’s hands. He shivered, but he breathed more easily.

“And that should do it,” she said and moved backward. “You can let him go.”

“Your grip is like iron,” Max said, rubbing his wrists. “Are all of you that strong?”

I flexed my fingers, which felt stiff and cold like I’d been walking around in a blizzard without gloves while holding hands with an ice fairy, maybe Reine’s cousin. “I don’t know,” was the only answer I could manage. “Isn’t your wife?”

“She’s strong enough,” he said. “As for your hands and anything else you may feel, you’ll get your head straight in a few minutes. That kind of magic can throw you if you’re not used to it.”

I blew on my hands, which stung when the hot air hit them, and I flinched. “Seems like every kind of magic does something nasty.”

“Spoken like a true wolf-man,” the lady said. “Your kind has never trusted us. Probably for good reason.” The look she gave me simultaneously beckoned and warned.

“Thank you,” Max said. He stood and stumbled but found his balance back before I could grab him. “When can we start learning the precautions I need to use blood magic?”

“Why didn’t you learn them before?” I asked. “It seems stupid not to.”

He looked at the floor. “I didn’t have access to someone who could teach me, and as I said, I was only using small quantities of it and followed the rules and requirements, such as they are. I didn’t know that exposure to a lot of blood would pull the power out of me and corrupt me.”

“He speaks the truth,” the lady said. “It is a forbidden art for a reason. He knows the rules, but sometimes the spilled life force gets confused and bends or breaks them if the wizard doesn’t know the subtleties of the art. It happened to one recently.”

“That’s why it needs to be studied, not forbidden.” Max sat on the bed again. “Who knows how many others have been hurt by experimenting with this type of magic in what they thought were safe amounts?”

“Those politics belong to your kind, not mine.” The lady had packed her tools in hidden pockets in her dress. “We can start in a few days when you’ve recovered. Until then, take it easy, make lots of love to your beautiful wife, and absolutely no magic use.”

“That sounds like a reasonable prescription.”

“Now the opals?”

I stepped out of the room so Max and Reine could complete their exchange and make their arrangements. Lonna sat at the kitchen table with Abby in a high chair beside her and fed her some sort of pureed fruit. My nose told me apricots. When Lonna saw me, she stood.

“Is he…?”

“He’s fine, if a little weak. He’ll be down in a few minutes. They’re finishing up.”

She sank to the chair. “Thank goodness.”

I sat across the table from her so she wouldn’t see my legs shiver. I still had cold flashes, and I hoped they’d subside. “Whatever you do, don’t tell that woman your or Abby’s names. She’s not human.”

“I gathered. She puts off some interesting energy. Cold.”

“You have no idea.”

Footsteps on the stairs told me the strange woman helped Max descend. Lonna stood and hesitated.

“Go on,” I said. “I’ll keep an eye on Abby.”

“Thank you. She shouldn’t go anywhere, but you never know what babies will do if you leave them unattended. Especially that one.”

With that vague warning, she left the room, and I took her seat by the high chair. I picked up the spoon, and the baby bounced in her seat.

“Oh, so you want more?” I asked.

She looked at me with big green eyes. She had a couple of smears of orange stuff on her cheek and in her hair, which was reddish blonde like her father’s. I thought about feeding her, but had Lonna stopped because she felt the child had eaten enough? Having had no siblings and very little exposure to children, I didn’t know what the protocol was for giving food to small people.

A wave of protectiveness for this little family swept over me, and I exhaled slowly to let the pressure out of my chest.

“A wolf needs a pack, my boy,”
my father said. I couldn’t see him, but I knew he was there from the prickling at the back of my neck and the feeling that someone or something watched me over my shoulder.

Abby looked over my shoulder and giggled, reaching one small fist out and opening and closing it. An invisible force pried the spoon from my hand and dipped it in the jar of pureed apricot, then moved it to the baby’s mouth, scooping the dribble from her chin and into her smacking lips. The spoon then came to rest in the jar.

“I did that with you once upon a time. You make things too complicated,”
the voice said, and with a swirl of cold air, the presence disappeared.