The Blood Keeper (The Blood Journals) (37 page)

I rolled, crawled away, but my quivering, reeling stomach took charge of the rest of my body and nothing worked, I couldn’t even think past the swirling nausea.

The last thing I knew was his hand twisting in my hair again, and my helplessness as Lukas’s scream ripped through the hill.

Gabriel died quickly
.

Numb and weak, I got to my feet. Thunder tore across the prairie, and I stood over his body
.

I used the roses to bury him. They twined around him like a shroud and drew him into the earth. I put salt around the whole of them, flicked my blood in benediction, and bound him there forever
.

By the time the rain came, there was no sign of Gabriel, of the thing he’d tried to do. I waited through the thunderstorm, standing in the middle of the yard, and let God do the work of cleansing me
.

Darkness pressed all around when I opened my eyes. My head throbbed, ears ringing as if surrounded by a thousand tiny bells. When I breathed, pain cut up my side, and tears prickled in my eyes. Through the smear of water, I stared up at the sky: orange and pink at the western edges, making fiery silhouettes of the oak trees. A bright planet poked through the twilight, a single beacon high overhead. I focused on it, smoothing my breath, drawing up cool energy from the hill below my back.

Wind churned the trees, brushing my face with warmth. I slowly sat up, alone in the yard of the Pink House.

Yellow light spilled out from all the first-story windows, and jazz piano, slick as syrup, flowed gently on the air. It had to be the thing in Will. But there was no sign of Ben. None of Lukas, either, or his screams.

But the roses were there. I had to find Lukas first, no matter how I wished to go to Will, to tear that thing out of him. Lukas was my charge, and he needed me.

I crawled to my feet, breathing in through my nose, out through my mouth with every step. Evidence of my attention to the roses spread about: a discarded blue glove, a dirt-caked trowel, a pile of uprooted rose stems. None of the salt circle
from two weeks ago, none of the runes I’d gouged into the earth. Rain had taken care of that.

I knelt before the wild roses and raked the earth with my fingers. “Lukas,” I whispered. The ground tingled with power, burning the tiny cuts on my palms from when I’d torn at the roses earlier.

“Lukas,” I whispered again.

The roses trembled.

A sob shook free and I let it out, gasping at the pain in my ribs, one arm wrapping protectively around myself. I closed my eyes against the throb of blood through the left side of my face. It was hot and swollen.

And this was all my fault.

Why didn’t Arthur tell me
why
? Why I was supposed to destroy them? He should have known me well enough to know I’d choose otherwise—choose to explore! How could he not have known?

I pushed forward on my knees. My forearms tangled in the rose vines, and I gripped one, tore it free with all the weight of my body. Pain shot up my arms as my palms and wrists were shredded against the tiny thorns.

I took that pain and fed it back into the roses, my blood connecting us. Long cuts bloomed up my forearms, just like Donna’s scars. Then, dripping blood, I went for the trowel. I stabbed at the base of a rose plant, the blade hacking in, ringing off the hard wood. I cut at it again and again, mindless of the shaking roses. They vibrated and danced, and the more I disturbed them, the harder they thrashed. Their stems whipped my shoulders, gouging me. Every prick like a sharp kiss.

I bled from a thousand tiny wounds and let it flow into the earth. I forced my will, hissing that the roses should wither and rot.

Slowly, some blackened. I tore them free. Petals cracked, turned to ash.

In the center was a cocoon of vines and round red blossoms.

Peering through the tightly wound vines, I saw a coppery curl. And his brown skin there—a finger, a brush of his thigh. With my blood, I parted these vines carefully, until I found his face. His lips were cracked, but air moved over them, fluttering the leaves hanging just against his cheeks.

He was held by the roses, a foot off the earth, and a half dozen vines crawled up and into the black candle rune, sucking power from it, from him.

“Lukas?” I whispered.

There was no response. Not a flicker of his eyes under closed lids, not a hint in his breath that he’d heard me.

Bloody footprints marked my path up the porch stairs and into the Pink House. Pain and anger, all my spirit, seeped out through my skin as blood dribbled from the myriad of cuts on my body. I was left with numbness, as though everything inside had crystalized. Quartz was hard and cold, one of the most abundant minerals on earth. Best for magnifying power and clarity. My vision was clear: rip this thing out of Will’s body, free Lukas. I was the Deacon, I could do it.

He was in the kitchen, frying a grilled cheese sandwich. His hands moved deftly with the spatula, and he’d cut a tomato and
butter with one of the butcher knives. A small smile tilted his mouth as he hummed along with an old record of Granny Lyn’s.

I sighed loudly enough for him to hear over the sizzle of butter in the frying pan and the jazz.

Will’s body turned smoothly, a ready smile showing his teeth, and he said, “You know this was her favorite …” His ruby-red eyes widened into circles. “My God, what have you done?”

Blood dripped off my finger and splashed onto the kitchen tiles. I didn’t answer but only stared. He wore an old shirt of Arthur’s, unbuttoned because his shoulders were that much broader, and a pair of ritual pants like the ones I’d cleansed him in. It was Will’s hands and face and hair but nothing of Will in the carriage and movements. I’d never noticed how uncertain Will had been, until I watched this new creature stride over, calm and confident, a frown of concern aging his face.

He stopped before me, and I put my bloody hands on his chest. With all my pent-up fury and power, I said,
“I banish thee from this body.”

My magic surged hot as a geyser, pushing into him with all the strength of my heart.

I saw it flare in his tattoos: the red lines turned orange as melting iron, shimmering with heat.

But Will closed his eyes and sighed as if my power were a kiss. He put his hands on my shoulders and said, “You’ll not be rid of me so easily, Mab.”

I tried again, pushing this time, but nothing happened. My hands slipped against his bare chest, my injured ribs sliced into my breath and I couldn’t speak. The third time I only hissed
“Banish …,”
and the thing in Will shook his head slowly, gathered up my hands in his, led me to a kitchen chair, and sat me down. My thighs squished against the wood because of all the blood. He knelt before me and drew healing runes onto my knees, into the palms of my hands, and onto my forehead. He muttered to himself, working his mouth as though he tasted something unpleasant. I understood: the blood smell filled my mouth and nose, as well.

A tremor of magic traveled from the crown of my head to my toes, and he asked me to whisper healing words with him. I did, barely moving my lips, and the flash of power that mended my wounds was so strong and hot I fainted.

It must have only been a moment, for I came to still in the chair, and he was saying, “You silly, wild thing.”

I sat up, stared at him. My ribs ached only dully, and my face didn’t hurt when I opened my mouth. “I will destroy you,” I said.

“You’ll forgive me,” he said, trying to put an earnest expression on Will’s face.

I laughed at the sheer ridiculousness of that sentiment. I thought of Arthur laughing as rain poured in through a leak in the roof. Of Donna laughing at a TV movie. Of Mother laughing for no reason but being alive. And of Will laughing, giddy on top of my silo.

All their laughs clogged my throat now, and I covered my face with my sticky, bloody hands.

“As mad as your mother,” he muttered, pushing away from me to return to the oven. I seethed behind my hands, and all he did was flip over the burned cheese sandwich. The acrid smell
drew a smile back to my lips. I stared at his back, at the tight, angry jerks his hands made as he created a new sandwich. The record buzzed between tracks, and I knew this song, too, because Granny used to sing it: “Our Love Is Here to Stay.”

“Tell me who you are,” I said as I smoothed my torn and bloody dress over my thighs.

He spun smoothly and bowed his head. “I am Gabriel Desmarais, and I have lived in and on this land longer than you can imagine, little Deacon. If you go clean yourself up, and allow, perhaps, a brief truce, I shall tell you quite the story.”

I huddled in Arthur’s preferred wing-back armchair in the parlor while Gabriel leaned Will’s body lazily back on the rug beside the fire. The tea went cold in my hands as he spoke, and I searched for signs that Will was still in there, was still aware of me, looking out through his own eyes.

But there was nothing. I only had faith on my side that Will himself survived.

I hardly listened to Gabriel tell of generations of his life: from a beginning in Paris nearly four hundred years ago to meeting a boy named Arthur in New York. He spoke of traveling through the Old West, of the Civil War, of the first railroad, and all of it with Arthur. He told me about settling in Missouri together and of children they’d shared, and even through Will’s voice I felt the truth of Gabriel’s love.

He told me about the first time he met my mother, and about the last time, coyly complimenting me on taking after her in looks. I didn’t give him all my attention until he finally offered his version of how he’d become trapped in the roses.

Granny had hated him, Gabriel said, for being the focus of Arthur’s love. She’d attacked him, easily bested him because
he’d never suspected her of ire, never thought for a moment she was jealous enough to curse him.

Yet curse him she had. She’d planted him in the roses, and twisted their roots and their magic so firmly he could not even get whispers free to warn Arthur.

Eventually she died, and her magic began to weaken. Gabriel, who had lived in an endless dream state, knowing but not knowing where or who he was, slowly woke. He could not reach Arthur, who was caught in his own grief, and then I was there.