The Blood Keeper (The Blood Journals) (35 page)

Blood slipped out instantly, hot red. Instead of dripping onto the porcelain, it wove itself darker and wound around my wrist again and again in tinier strings. Soaked back into the tattoos.

The razor clattered to the floor.

What could I do? I thought of Ben first, but he’d probably try to shoot me. And Dad and Mom … What would I say? I’m not a monster, I just have evil tattoos? What if they tried to take me to a hospital, where they’d only try surgery or some crazy chemo—it would cost thousands of bucks we didn’t have,
and I’d be ruined for soccer and miss all my finals and probably be screwed for life because this psycho disease would always be on my record.

And doctors and expensive tests couldn’t help me anyway. I had to go to Mab, right now. Crazy pain doubled me over, and I pushed my fists into my gut, crouched low to the bathroom tiles. This would kill Mom. Me disappearing, with no word—what would she do? Or think?

I couldn’t breathe.

“Will?”

It was Ben. Voice muffled through the wood of the door.

“No,” I said, leaning into it so that he couldn’t open it. He couldn’t come in.

“Will. Are you sick?”

I managed to climb up the wall and grab a robe from the hook next to the shower. I got it around me just as Ben pushed in. But I couldn’t stop hunching over. Couldn’t raise my eyes, because then he’d see the blood in them.

Ben grabbed my shoulders. “Jesus, Will, what’s wrong?”

“Just … puked,” I said. Head down. Pain rocketed out from my chest again. I shuddered. Eyes tightly shut.

Putting his arm around me, Ben helped me out into the hall. The light was off, so I looked at him. “Ben, don’t wake Mom and Dad. I just need …”

“You need to get to the hospital,” he hissed. “What’s wrong with you?” His frown pulled his whole face down. “Drugs? A reaction to those antibiotics?”

Nausea twisted up my throat. My knees shook. I had to lean on Ben.

“Sit down, I’m getting Mom.”

“No.” I gripped his wrist tight. I tugged him onto his knees with me. We faced each other in the dim, narrow hallway. The only light came out of his open bedroom, a yellow line pointing at me. I said, “I know what I need, and it isn’t doctors. I need to get to Mab.”

“She did this to you?” He angled his head, staring at my eyes. “I thought you were fine; you said—”

“You can’t do anything. Only she can.”

“What did she do to you?” Ben’s voice rose.

“Quiet,” I begged. “Please don’t wake them. Just let me go. It’s not that bad.”

“Are you insane?” His fingers bit into my forearms. I felt my hard heartbeat where he touched me. Pounding in my head. I really was gonna puke now.

“Ben, please.”

“What’s wrong with your eyes?”

I shut them. I took a long, deep breath. “Ben. It’s the magic. You have to trust me. You said you would.”

Silence. His hands didn’t loosen at all. I held on to him, too, as my head swam and I fought swaying there in the hallway. “Trust you,” he said, voice low.

“Yes. Let me go.”

“That is never going to happen, you stupid ass. Get up.” He struggled to his feet, dragging me with him.

“Ben, I won’t—”

He jerked me up and said straight into my face, “I’m driving.”

Gabriel explained as he painted how in three hundred years he’d had five bodies, possessing them completely, stealing them, according to his own fancy, or sometimes, yours
.

I cried, fearing you’d known all along, that you’d let me think you loved me when it was only this shell you wanted, this body of mine, but with Gabriel in it
.

The tears burned down my temples, and the ground shivered under me. All I knew was that I had to get away. I wouldn’t die like this, becoming a marionette for Gabriel to play with. But I’d only get one chance to escape, I knew. Gabriel was old and strong. If I didn’t surprise him, I was doomed
.

I focused on moving one hand in tiny increments, nearer and nearer to his bowl of ink as he painted around my ankle, tickling with his brush against the sole of my foot. I breathed slowly, gathering my little strength, and curled my fingers around the bowl. “Gabriel,” I whispered, and the moment he turned I flung the ink into his face
.

He yelled, and I scrambled away, into my roses. I clutched them, splitting my skin. My blood burned out, and he yanked my ankle, throwing me forward. A hundred tiny rose thorns slashed at my bare skin, and I jerked away from him. But Gabriel was too strong. He cried out a word, and my body caught fire from the tattoos. They tightened around me, and
I shrieked with the sudden pain. I dug my fingers into the ground, dragging and pulling, but he was there on top of me, shoving my head into the earth, scratching my face on the roses
.

The only thing that saved my life was an old trowel, the one I’d forgotten a month before when you surprised me with tickets to a traveling musical and we had to leave suddenly for Kansas City
.

I grasped it, and as Gabriel flipped me onto my back I stabbed it into his neck
.

Blood cascaded down onto me, choking me, and he reeled back. I scrambled after him, terror stealing away all my hesitations. I stabbed him again in the chest as he scrabbled at his throat. His eyes were wide, and his lips splattered red
.

I grabbed my roses, whispered to them, and with my blood dripping down their stems, they wrapped around Gabriel, piercing him a hundred times
.

Dawn brushed the car with gentle fingers as Lukas and I returned home from dropping Donna off at the bus station. We’d had to be up hours ago to make the 5:27 a.m. pickup, but that hadn’t been difficult, because my nightmares had brought Lukas running into my room to take his turn holding my hand and soothing me back into wakefulness.

Now I distracted both of us from heavy eyelids by telling him the story of how my mother had given me the silver bracelet I was charging for him. It had been an armoring bracelet, and her lover had created it for her with a drop of his blood and a drop of her own, in Paris in the 1930s. Lukas said his dad had armor like that, but made from leather and wood rings. We were so involved in discussing the relative strength of silver armor and wood that I didn’t notice the crows’ changed behavior until we were a hundred yards up the pebble road and the entire flock shot across our path with raucous shrieks.

I hit the brakes, and the station wagon skidded to a halt, nearly swerving off the road.

“Mab?” Lukas said, leaning forward to stare out the windshield and up at the frantically circling crows.

My palms tingled as I gripped the wheel and closed my eyes,
listening to the wind and the whisper of the trees. I pushed open the door and got out, crunching barefoot up the road. The door slammed behind me, and all the crows dove at and around me, their wings snapping at my hair and face.

Falling to my knees, I dug my fingers into the raw earth and felt nothing unusual. Everything was quiet.

Lukas ran around the car and gripped my arm. “What’s happening?”

“Are you all right? Do you feel anything strange?” I looked into his summer-green eyes for any sign of pain or magic.

He shook his head and his curls flounced. “Just tired. Kinda heavy.”

The crows batted at both of us, but more gently, and half of them took off up the hill, darting between branches straight for the Pink House.

I said, “All right. Let’s go see what they’re fussing about.”

Together we stepped off into the forest, following the crows. Through the soles of my feet, I felt the earth more firmly, felt the familiar hum of the blood land. It was charged and ready, but not crying out.

And as we came out of the woods onto the lawn, I saw Will’s brother Ben, in jeans and a dark T-shirt, leaning over the open passenger door of Will’s truck.

“Ben?” I called.

His shoulders flexed as he pushed away, turning sharply. “Get over here,” he yelled in a panic, but I heard Will say from inside the car, “Is that Mab?”

Releasing Lukas’s hand, I hurried forward, opening my mouth to ask what was wrong, then Ben jerked back from the
car, and Will crawled out. He fell to his knees, and Ben knelt instantly to help him, but Will shoved him back. He lifted his head; from halfway across the yard I saw his eyes.

Red as blood, through and through.

My heart expanded in shock, and I ran forward, sliding to a stop in a scatter of pebbles and collapsing next to him. “Oh my God, Will,” I breathed, pushing the collar of the bathrobe he wore off his neck.

His skin was dark, and rolling with red and brown blood marks.

“Holy shit,” Ben whispered.

The marks rose off his skin like long, boiling scars, like tree roots or rough vines wrapping his shoulder and trailing down to his chest under the robe. “Will.” I breathed his name, aware of a sensation washing through me I’d never known before, a gasping sort of half pain, half violent emptiness. “Will!” I gripped his shoulder so hard flakes of blood broke off and crumbled.

I tugged my hands back and said his name again.

His lips moved, and nothing but raspy air came out. The second time he tried I heard “Mab.” His eyes were flecked with a hundred shades of red.

“What did you do to him? What’s wrong with him?” Ben demanded, pushing my shoulder roughly away from Will. Anger painted his voice, and his teeth were bared.

I said, with the calm of a thorough lie, “Help me get him into the house, and I will help him.” But I had no idea what was doing this to Will, why he suddenly was twisting in pain when yesterday I’d cleansed him, yesterday he’d been fine!

“Tell me now!” Ben said. “He needs a doctor, and I don’t know what kind of drugs and bullshit you’re growing out here, what you fed my brother, what these abrasions are from, but you’re going to tell me now so when I call an ambulance I know what to tell the police, too.”

I smeared my fingers down Will’s shoulder, and new, fresh blood slipped out. It glinted scarlet on my skin.

“Trust me,” Will choked out, one hand grasping Ben’s T-shirt.

The sun lifted over the trees, beating down with the promise of a hot day, and Lukas held back tentatively but with one hand out toward me as if to align himself.

Will’s brother glared. “I promised I would, and that’s the only reason we’re here. His story is insane—everything he told me on the way over …” Ben trailed off, looking between me and Will and back again.

I flattened my hand on Will’s shoulder. The crows landed around us in a wide circle, and I said, “He’s cursed. It’s a curse, and you cannot call the police or hospital. They can’t help him.”

“Bullshit.”

The blood on my hand tingled with power. It was Will’s blood burning with magic, and I clapped my hands together.

Fire exploded in the air, knocking Ben back two feet to hit the ground. Will winced away, and Lukas cried in fear; the crows jumped as one back into the sky. And I knelt with a rainbow of brilliant fire balanced between my hands—the same trick I’d shown Will, but fueled now by drama and need. “See here,” I said, holding my bow of fire toward Ben. “This is my power, this is why Will is here, because I can help him. It’s
magic hurting him, and magic that can heal him. And I will not explain more until he’s in a bed, and resting.”

Sweat slicked down my neck, and the skin of my face tightened from the heat. My fingers ached, and any second now they’d burn, the skin would blacken, because my heartbeat was too erratic, my own blood was not in control. The curse in Will raged between my hands and all around us.

I snuffed the fire with a clap and glared at Ben, then ducked down and helped Will get his arm over my shoulders. My nose and mouth were overwhelmed by the scent of wet stones and rainy leaves and blood, and the hazy ozone smell of fire. I struggled to my feet with him beside me, leaning into me. Will’s breath rattled in his chest, and where my hands touched his waist he felt as hot as the silo’s orange tiles at the end of a long sunny day.

Then Ben was there, lifting Will from the other side. “I’ve got him,” Ben murmured as he took Will’s weight. Together we hobbled up the porch steps.