New Blood (10 page)

The magic burbled merrily through his veins, seeming almost to burst into song, now he'd recognized it for what it was. It poked into all his corners, polishing away all the dust and rust, putting things into proper order again. Jax shook himself, feeling the bindings settle into place, like harness around a plow horse after a winter's snooze in the barn.

Except he didn't feel much like a plow horse. This magic was different. He felt more as if—as if
armor
were fastening around him, like some knight's fine destrier being prepared for battle. Or . . . could it be possible? . . . as if he were the knight himself, arming in preparation for some noble quest.

Could this be how Miss Whitcomb saw him? Not as some living tool or a beast of burden, but as a—a man. A protector.

Jax scarcely dared think it. He knew the magic held the mark, the flavor of the one who wielded it. This was likely why Yvaine had wanted her apprentice to ride his blood as soon as possible, so that his binding could shift from the old master to the new. But such a change—

He had to remind himself to stoop and shuffle as he dipped the heated water into Miss Whitcomb's ewer. His spine kept wanting to straighten with . . .
pride.
He thought he'd forgotten how it felt, but here it came, creeping back again. Would this sorceress think it as dangerous as the last one had?

Jax carried the water into the tent and set it on the table he'd moved inside, Crow walking in behind him to caw a good-morning to his mistress. Jax left again to collect breakfast while Miss Whitcomb performed her own morning ablutions. When he returned with her porridge—he'd wolfed his own by the outlaws' fire to maintain his idiot's illusion—he began tidying the tiny canvas residence, rolling up his tarpaulin from the spot before the entrance.

As he bent to stow his bedroll out of the way beneath Miss Whitcomb's cot, he paused. The space was filled with rows of bottles and jars. All the things Miss Whitcomb had brought in her box of medicaments.

“Hand me another jar of the wound salve, will you?” She spoke from behind him.

“Certainly.” Jax did as she asked. She
asked.
The thought made him smile and gave him the daring to ask. “Why is the salve under your cot and not in the box?”

“I needed the box for something else.” She hesitated at the doorway, seeming to consider before reaching a decision. “Take a look and see if you know what it is.”

“Yes, Miss Whitcomb.” He bobbed his head and watched her go, Crow hopping behind her, begging
for bread. Morning sick call would come after she saw to the man in the hospital shelter. He would have time to do her bidding and still be at her side when the sick and the malingering gathered.

Jax quickly finished tidying the small space and lifted the box onto the cot for a better look. Inside, he saw a bizarre metal contraption. The metal sheen of its central globe was pitted with a rusty-black corrosion, but despite its degraded appearance, the thing made his skin crawl.

Swallowing down revulsion, he reached past the rayed spokes on either side with care and touched it. Instantly, his finger burned like ice, then went numb. With a yelp, he jerked it back and popped it instinctively into his mouth. His lips and tongue went cold, then numb, and he yanked his finger out again.

Miss Whitcomb came bursting into the tent. “What happened?”

“I touched it.” Somehow he managed to speak understandably, even with frozen lips and tongue. He frowned. “How did you know?”

“I felt it.” Now she frowned. “I thought I called my blood back from you.” She lifted his hand, studying the damaged finger.

It was blistered at the tip where he'd touched the metal monstrosity. White and dead-looking, then red and inflamed down to the first knuckle, and pale until it joined his hand where he could feel again.

“You did. It's the nagic.” Jax tried again. “N-nagic.” An “m” was apparently harder to say with numb lips than other sounds.

Miss Whitcomb turned his face toward her, squeezing
his cheeks to purse his lips. “At least your lips don't look blistered. Let me see your tongue.”

Obediently, he put it out to show her. Yvaine would never have bothered. It felt strange, having Miss Whitcomb look so intently at his mouth.

“I don't understand.” She sank back on her heels, kneeling on the flattened grass flooring the tent. “How can I feel what you do? I called my blood back. And why did the machine thing freeze you? I touched it. I held it against my stomach. It made me queasy, but it didn't make blisters.”

She raised up to flip the box closed and latch it. “Where's the lancet? I want to lock this thing away, put a protective seal around it.”

“Here.” Jax dragged her carpetbag from beneath the cot and found the lancet for her.

He marveled as, this time, the new sorceress lanced her own finger and spoke new words, changing those used to weave protection around their tent to ward against the evil of the thing in the box and hide it from the unwary.

“Now,” she said. “Explain.”

Jax blinked, eyelids fluttering without his conscious volition as he tried to find a way to do as she demanded. He felt magic welling up from the crumbled ruins of his memory to grip his thoughts.

“No.”
Miss Whitcomb's nails dug into his arm, her hand gripped his face as she shook him. “I want answers from
Jax,
not Yvaine. I do not want to hear Yvaine speak. Not unless I ask for her knowledge specifically. Do you understand, you old besom?”

His blinking slowed as the surge of magic ebbed. He hiccuped, feeling light-headed and a bit fizzy in
his belly region. “I nay not ve avle to exblain everything,” he ventured.

“Tell me what you know, what you suspect, and we'll figure out the rest, as much as we can.” She got off the grass to sit on the cot, patting the space beside her.

“Szabo's men will wonder what we do in here so long.” Jax sat where she indicated, feeling strange at this semblance of equality between them. They were not equal.

“Let them wonder. They would wonder more at our conversation.”

He dipped his head at the truth of her words.

“Why did I feel it when your hand was hurt?” She began her questioning.

“Nagic.” The numbness was wearing off a bit, making his lips tingle and burn. “Vecause I an your vlood servant. The nagic-n-m-magic is different. I am vound to you.”

He gasped as his finger began to burn fiercely. Miss Whitcomb's gasp echoed his. She captured his hand, enclosing his injured digit in the hollow between her palms, but when that didn't help, lifted it toward her mouth.

“No.”
Jax jerked his hand free. “Zat's how ny nouth went numb.”

“But it hurts.”

“It shouldn't.” He shook his head. “I mean, it shouldn't hurt you. I was vound closely to Yvaine and she never suffered like this. You should ve able to block the pain, if not the awareness. Gather your nagic, the nagic vetween us, the magic that binds me.”

“It's not
my
magic. It's Yvaine's magic that binds you.”

Did she still protest the truth—that she was already blood sorceress? Even after accepting the mantle and riding his blood?

“It's yours now,” he said. “Your blood brought your magic to my bindings.” His lips burned. Not as ferociously as his finger, but bad enough. Still, the fact that he could feel them made it easier to talk. He spoke faster, anxious to stop the pain Miss Whitcomb so obviously felt. She panted, her eyes wide with fear and pain.

“Do you have it?” He touched her arm with his uninjured hand to get her attention.

She nodded, swallowing hard. “I think so.”

“Only part of the magic lets the pain through. Separate out that part and cut it off.”

Jax watched her internal struggle play out in her eyes, in squints and gasps and tensing of this muscle or that, and he wished he could help her. He wished he understood the magic better so he could give more specific instructions. It was part of the binding, he knew, to care about his mistress's well being. But her kindness gave it something extra. He didn't want to cause her pain.

“I can't—cut it off,” she panted finally. “But I think I can—” Her whole face and body screwed tight with effort and abruptly she relaxed, slumping against him, her head falling limp onto his shoulder.

Alarm skittered through Jax. “M-miss Whitcomb?”

“I'm fine, Jax.” She stayed where she was another moment, a warm weight against his side, before pushing herself upright. “I couldn't cut the magic
off, but I could squeeze it down so that almost nothing gets through. It hurts so much. How can you bear it?” Her eyes swam with compassionate tears.

Jax shrugged. His whole hand felt inflamed, throbbing agony with each beat of his heart. What else could he do but bear it?

His sorceress cupped his wounded finger again. He didn't think to stop her before she closed her hand around it. “Whatever happened to your finger, it's not spreading to me,” she observed.

“Why not?” Jax opened her hand with his other, looking for burns, but it was pale and perfect—well, it was rough and callused with work, but perfect for her.

Miss Whitcomb shook her head. “I don't know.”

This time, when she carried his finger to her mouth, he didn't jerk away, though he watched anxiously. She put out her tongue and touched just the pointed tip of it to the blister. It was the most erotic thing Jax had seen in—in as long as he couldn't remember, past the holes in his ruined mind. He was as certain of that as he was of the stirring in his long-dormant body, stirring he fought to stifle. She might feel it with him, and know he hadn't been precisely truthful about everything.

Yvaine hadn't quite rendered him eunuch. She hadn't minded his arousal. But it had been so long since anything had tempted Jax to such a state . . .

“No.” Miss Whitcomb's voice broke into his thoughts, went shuddering through him. “My tongue doesn't feel affected either.”

Jax slammed his eyes shut and squeezed them tight as she closed her mouth over the tip of his finger.
She'd done his thumb the same way last night when reclaiming her blood, but it had been different in the dark. Worse. And better. Being able to see her made it different. More arousing. Much more. Hugely, tremendously more.

“Am I hurting you?”

“No.” Jax choked the word out, easing his damp finger from her grip. “On the contrary. It feels much better.”

He opened his eyes to examine his injury. The blister looked the same size, but older. Almost ready to slough off the dead skin. He rubbed the dampness across his lips, easing the burn there. “Thank you.”

“Why didn't it burn me?” she asked, turning on the cot to face him more fully, folding one foot beneath her.

“I don't know. You said the thing made you queasy?”

She nodded, looking thoughtful. “The outlaws seemed to handle it without it affecting them at all. But it did. The thing sucked at their life . . .” She frowned, an adorable crease forming between her brows. “No. That sounds as if it fed on their life energy and it didn't. It . . . ate away their life. Killed them by inches, like—like floodwaters on a riverbank, cutting the earth away. But a river carries the earth downstream to deposit elsewhere. That thing . . . destroyed what it touched. More like fire consumes. But slowly.”

She looked up at Jax. “Does that make any sense at all to you?”

“The burn felt more like ice than fire.” He couldn't think what else to say. “You should let Yvaine speak. I don't remember things.” And it frustrated him.

“No. Not here.” Miss Whitcomb was thinking again, chewing on her lower lip as she frowned. “It's too dangerous to have you out of commission. The thing was . . . anti-life. And anti-magic as well. The opposite of magic. But . . .
I'm
the sorceress, aren't I? I'm the one with the magic.”

“You're the one with the power,” Jax said, beginning to make a bit more sense of it. “I'm little more than a bag of bones tied together with magical strings. Your strings. It's your power in the magic that binds me.”

“So it was . . . trying to burn the magic out of you?” She gave him a worried look. “I agree that we want to—to clip your strings, but I don't think this is the proper way to do it.”

“Nor I.”

“Oi!” A shout came from outside the tent in the language Miss Whitcomb said was Romanian, a rush of irritated words.

“Maybe you need to learn a little patience, Nicu,” she shouted back, rolling her eyes at Jax, sharing her opinion. “I'll be there when I'm ready.”

More words followed, along with raucous and probably lewd laughter. Jax could understand the intent, if not the words. He wanted to go out and pound a few heads. But there were many more heads than a few out there, and if he got pounded back, or knifed, or shot, he couldn't look out for Miss Whitcomb.

She grabbed him by the hand and hauled him out of the tent behind her, displaying his still-inflamed finger to the shouters. “My servant burned himself,” she said. “I was treating
his
injury.”

Teo, the brute who'd led the party that dragged Miss Whitcomb to the camp, shouted something.

“But
I
care,” she retorted. “Jax is
my
servant, and I most certainly do care more about him than about you. About
any
of you. Now, if you want me to treat your scratches, get back over to the hospital and line up. I'm not treating a rowdy mob.”

Teo reached for her, but Miss Whitcomb skipped out of his reach. One of the others shoved him back, talking fast in a joking tone, apparently hoping to keep the thug from taking offense. Jax could feel her trembling through her grip on his arm, but nothing showed where anyone else could see it. Gradually, the outlaws faded away and she let go of him.