The Blood Keeper (The Blood Journals) (36 page)

“Lukas,” I called, “tear up three of the coneflowers down by the well, and bring me their roots as soon as you can.” The boy only grunted, and I heard his feet shuffling fast through the tall grasses.

Inside, I told Ben to get Will up to the second floor, the first door to the right. He obeyed, and I ran into the kitchen for a wide bowl to fill with water. I sprinkled in willow bark and wished I had time to dig up fresh acorns to grind, but first I had to get Will cool, had to get this fever down that was eating him from the inside, wrapping itself around his bones and heart. I grabbed an envelope of boneset powder from the pantry and
stirred it into the water, then I cut my wrist with the fleam and let three drops of blood spill in, all the while whispering a song for cool cleansing, for peace and gentle rain. Then I tucked the fleam into my bra and gathered the bowl against my stomach.

I had to balance the bowl carefully up the stairs, and it gave me time to center my energy, to calm myself on the outside. Even if my insides were a raging summer storm.

In the bedroom, Ben was stripping the robe off of Will, jaw set fiercely, hands moving quick and certain. He did not look at me as I entered. I pushed a cluster of dried butterflies off the bedside table, smearing pollen and flecks of their wings everywhere. I put the bowl down and sat on the bed, edging Ben away. He leaned over me, breath hard and uneven, but he didn’t say anything.

“Will?” I brushed his hair with my fingers. Sweat glistened on his temple, and his eyelids parted.

“Mab.”

“I’m here. I’m going to try to cool you down.” I wetted one of the cloths and wrung it out. The cold drops of water splattered onto his skin, and I scattered the water down his chest. Will shivered, and I dripped it out over his ribs, over his heart and up to his shoulders. But the blood marks twisted all around his body, raised against his skin like huge, dark welts. I’d never seen anything like them. My fingers moved over them, rubbing in the boneset.

Ben paced behind me, slow and steady from one end of my bedroom to the other. His footsteps lent a rhythm to my heart, and to the motion of my hands as I covered Will with cool, soothing magic.

When the water had all been transferred from my bowl, I pricked my wrist with the fleam and drew a rune for balance as best I could over the uneven surface of Will’s chest. Ben stopped me with a strangled noise, and I said, “Wait outside, Ben Sanger,” hoping the invocation of his full name would compel him.

Helplessness cut through his dark brown eyes, so like Will’s had once been. Sorrow was thick in my throat as I saw the battle in him, as I remembered the way Will had listened to me and decided to believe what I was telling him about my homunculus. This man would not be so quick to choose my side, with his narrow pressed mouth and hard cheekbones. He was at once the same as Will and oh so different. I held his gaze, willing him to go, to let me do my job so that I could get Will to rest and then have a moment to
think
, to figure out what had happened.

Ben looked past me to his brother, to Will’s slow but finally measured breathing, and I saw the moment he let himself take in the blood roots, the intricate patterns of them, so unlike anything remotely natural. His face loosened as I watched, falling into a distant expression like nothing I’d ever seen: haunted, remote. Filled with helplessness. “You have fifteen minutes,” Ben whispered. “Then I’m taking him to the hospital, no matter what.”

I nodded, though I knew I’d have to think of some way to delay that again, to convince him to listen to me. For now, though, it was enough that he was leaving me alone with Will.

After a long, despairing look, Ben slipped out of the room and shut the door.

There was no moment of relief for me. I leaned over my rune and whispered against it, asking Will’s body to remember what it was, to know its strength and power. “Will,” I whispered.
Will
. A name, and so much more than that.

His hand found mine, and I gripped it. I held it up against my heart.

Everything was warm, and I felt like I was melting, but Mab’s voice never faltered.

I came to on a mattress, a cool washcloth on my head. Mab was there. She rubbed my chest. Made me drink water that tasted like she’d soaked pennies in it. I cracked my eyes, slowly falling back into my body from wherever I’d been. Long rainbow-colored scarves were pinned to the ceiling. It was like a circus tent. Cluttered shelves lined all the walls, closing in on me.

Mab’s hair tickled my side and my left arm. Tilting my head, I saw her, kneeling on the floor with her arms folded on the bed and her head down against them. Her words were quiet, but the sound of them was familiar. A rhythm I knew. I opened my mouth. Pulled my tongue from the roof, where it was sticking. “Are you—” I asked. “Are you praying?”

She raised her head instantly. “Will. Are you feeling any better?”

“Sure. I can see. And I can move without it hurting.” I closed my eyes. I felt empty, drained, and sore, as if I’d spent a hundred years puking my guts up and slept hunched between
the toilet and the cold tile of the bathroom floor. I took a deep breath. My throat was thick, as if the same branches winding outside my body wound inside, too. Air rushed out of me, and I coughed.

Mab got up and sat on the bed, one hand on my chest. What was left of my chest. Her lips pulled down, and her whole face screamed worry.

I cleared my throat. It hurt. “Where’s Ben?”

“Pacing in the hallway.”

“Is he okay?”

“Oh, Will.” A tiny smile flashed on her mouth. “Don’t worry about him.”

I tried a smile, too. It stretched my face painfully.

There was silence. My insides were hard as rocks. My skin was on fire. My head pounded, and even just the light from her window shot through my eyes like ray guns. I was in deep trouble. And I wasn’t sure she could help me.

All my fear must’ve been playing on my face, because Mab shut her eyes tight and a tear fell out of each corner.

“Hey, stop.” I caught her hands. “I’ll be fine. You’ll fix me up.”

Mab pulled her hands free and wiped them across her cheeks. Then she pressed her palms to my heart. Compared to me, her hands were frozen. “Will, I don’t know what’s wrong, so I can’t fix it. If you had a cold, I could force it from your lungs. If your bones were broken, I could knit them back together. If you only had bruises or the flu or anything I understand, I could change it. I could remind your body what it’s supposed to
be. But this …” Her hands were a cold weight against my heart. “I don’t understand it. I’ve never seen anything like it before. I know it’s in your blood, but it’s too deep, because the cleanse didn’t work. It only …” Mab’s eyes widened, and she glanced at the window. “Oh no.”

Struggling to sit, I followed her gaze. The window was full of light, and on the sill a shallow bowl of water glinted. Something silver rested at the bottom. “What? What?”

Mab gently pushed me back down. “I have an idea why this got worse so quickly. You rest, Will. I’m going to go outside and get help. I will be back very soon.”

My tiredness pinned me to the bed. I grasped at her hair, caught a curl in my fingers. I tugged gently. “Promise.”

“I promise,” she whispered. And then she was gone.

My shoulders knocked into the wall, I hurried so fast, ignoring Ben’s call. I barely touched the stairs, flew down the hall, and fell out the door and down the porch steps. I landed on my hands and knees in the grass, gasping for breath.

It was my fault ten times over. I’d cleansed Will, but the magic that consumed him had been so deep, so much already united with his blood, that all I did was clear the path. Just as I’d set Mother’s bracelet out to purify under the moon, so that I could draw the power freshly to the surface, so I’d prepared Will.

I’d leapt at the first solution, instead of exploring deeply enough, gathering all the knowledge and whispers. I’d shoved forward, as if there were a race or a prize to win. And now if
I didn’t discover a means of rescue, Will would die! He was changing, transforming before my eyes. Becoming the forest.

I pushed to my feet, wiping dirt from my hands and knees. Donna had warned me to be careful with Will, but I hadn’t listened. I’d thought I was too strong, too powerful, too much a natural part of magic to make such mistakes. I didn’t deserve this power.

The crows circled overhead, spiraling down to land around me, and I wished they could talk to me, wished they could help me figure this out.

And I realized there were nine of them.

Only nine.

It was too quiet. Quiet like dawn. Quiet like a cemetery. Quiet like the beat right when you answer the phone before anybody says anything.

The worst kinds of quiet.

Until I heard my name.

Will
.

From the air itself. The wind blowing in through the window.

Will
.

I ran forward, calling to the crows, and Ben was right behind me, grasping my elbow tightly. He spun me around. “What are you doing? I want real answers right now.”

I spread my hands as dread piled around me, weighing me
down. I opened my mouth to say something, anything, but a scream shocked through me, high and hard, coursing up from the dirt and clenching its fist around my gut.

It sounded like Lukas.

“What?” Ben shook me, and I clasped my hands over my ears, but he couldn’t hear the scream, even as the prairie wind snapped into a fever, throwing the oak trees into disarray.

Lukas’s scream bellowed up from the earth.

Tearing free of Ben, I ran toward the well, around the west side of the house where the garden was, and when I came around the corner, I flung myself back.

He was there. Lukas. Held high in the center of the swarm of roses, their vines holding his wrists and ankles firmly. Blood dripped down his arms and legs, and the roses shook with it, the scarlet painting their leaves with power.

“Lukas,” I yelled, running toward him, as Ben cussed behind me, running after.

The scream cut off, and Lukas’s body fell slack.

Will called my name from the front porch. His voice strong and clear.

I froze, and Ben said, “Will?”

Will stood on the porch, shoulders back and head high. His bare chest was smooth and free of the blood roots but marked with dark red tattoos. Pajama pants hung off his hips, and he grinned so widely it was a crack in the world.

“Mab!” he called again, laughter in his voice.

Confused, I stepped forward to meet him. He put a hand on the porch rail and, easy as cake, swung over it. His bare feet hit the grass, and he crouched, then stood tall and strong. The
change in him was complete, with no sign of sickness or weakness, only power.

I could not move, and Ben cursed again, standing so close behind me I could feel the pressure of his energy against my own.

Will jogged to us, ignoring Ben entirely. He crashed into me and gathered me up into an ecstatic embrace. He lifted my feet off the earth. Gasping, I clutched his shoulders, dizzy and stunned, and he set me back down. Before I could do anything but think his name, he tightened his grip on my shoulders and kissed me.

It was wild and hungry, and I dug my fingers into the muscles of his back to stay afloat. He pushed open my mouth and I shoved him away, falling back against Ben.

“What the hell?” Ben asked, catching me. “Will, what is your
problem
? Are you okay?”

Will continued ignoring his brother and licked his teeth strangely, then tilted his head in thought. “That taste of mint and blood, is it my mouth or yours?” he asked.

Cold weight settled around my ribs, compressing them until I couldn’t draw in breath. Dappled shadows danced over Will’s face as the oak trees bent in the wind. I clutched my hands to my chest when I realized there was no light reflecting in his ruby-red eyes.

“Who are you?” I whispered.

His smile curved in a way I’d never seen before, because it was not Will. The voice was the same, though, and it cut gouges into my skin as he said, “Your humble servant, little Deacon.”

“You were in the roses,” I whispered.

Ben’s hands tightened on my shoulders. “Cut it out,” he said, moving around me. Will snapped something in another language, pulling his hand into a sudden fist, and Ben blanched, doubling over and coughing onto the ground.

I dropped with him, hands on his face, trying to tell him to breathe, frantically trying to understand how the
thing
in Will used magic without blood, who he was, what he’d done to Will—but then he was there, shoving Ben and me apart. He flung Ben onto his back with easy strength, and roots burst up through the lawn to wrap around Ben’s arms and legs.

Lukas screamed again, his pain echoing up through the soles of my feet.

That was where the power came from. I’d offered the power of Lukas’s black candle rune to the earth where this curse waited!

I spun and ran for the roses, ran for Lukas. Grabbing rose stems, I pulled, but they broke open my hands and Lukas groaned aloud. I couldn’t tear him free without hurting him more, without ripping my hands to shreds.

Bending, I began to draw a rune of release into the earth with my bloody finger.

“None of that, little girl,” Will said from right behind me.

I did not stop, and he reached down, grabbed my hair, and jerked me back.

“You should behave yourself,” he said. “You freed me, after all. Everything you’ve done helped me a little bit more.”

I clutched at his hand, trying to drag it away, and saw the exaggerated pout spread over his face. It was the opposite of everything Will. “No,” I said. “Let him go.”

And I dropped Will’s wrist, bringing my hands around. I clapped them together and opened my mouth to yell a word that would send him flying back.

But he hit me across the face.

My head burst, and heat wrapped around my eyes as I fell back, onto my hip, retching and unable to look, to move. The world was sharp knives, shoving at me and turning in fast circles.

“None of that,” the thing inside Will said.