The Sharpest Blade (17 page)

My heart bangs in my chest. I need to get out of here before people leave their apartments to check on the noise, and definitely before the cops arrive, but I don’t know what the
elari
will do when I go. Will they try to follow me? Will they kill any humans they find? Will they—

Shit.
Will they stay long enough for Kyol to fissure here? I have his complete attention now, and I’ve shattered his control so much that I can feel every ounce of his worry.

Stay away!
I try to scream at him. Then I draw in as deep and calming a breath as I can manage and slam down the gas pedal.

Nimael fissures out of the way, no problem.

I check my rearview mirror. The three
elari
are there. They’re not pursuing us, though. They’re watching me drive away.

Beside me, Lorn murmurs something in Fae. He’s awkwardly wedged between the dash and the passenger seat. He needs help. He needs a healer. My thoughts turn back to Kyol. He must be in the Inner City. If he weren’t, he would have fissured to my apartment already.

But he’s moving. He’s trying to get outside the silver walls.

Think happy thoughts, McKenzie,
I order myself. Rainbows. Ponies.
Kimkis.
I don’t want him to fissure to my apartment just yet. In ten minutes, maybe. Surely the
elari
won’t hang around that long.

I look again at Lorn. He’s hurt and bleeding and saying things I don’t understand in a feverish murmur. His chaos lusters are crawling across his skin. That’s not normal. They should be quick and frenzied from being in my car.

My apartment complex vanishes from my rearview mirror when I take a left at the first intersection. I have no idea where I’m going. I can’t take Lorn to a hospital, not even to a clinic or doctor’s office. I don’t know anyone in the city, and . . .

No, that’s not entirely true. I do know someone in the city, someone who’s familiar with fae.

I
SLAM ON
my
brakes outside Kynlee’s house. Kyol’s at my apartment. I hold my breath, willing him to be careful and praying that Nimael and the other two
elari
have already left.

Beside me, Lorn shifts. His eyes are shut, and he’s still awkwardly sitting on the floor, not in the passenger seat.

“Lena.” His voice is so weak, I barely make out the name.

“I’ll get her here as quickly as I can,” I tell him. Then, under my breath, I murmur, “Get away from my apartment, Kyol.”

The
elari
must not have hung around, though. His heart isn’t pounding like he’s fighting for his life, but he’s moving, following the pull of the life-bond in my direction. It took me fifteen minutes to drive here. He might make the trip in half an hour.

I turn off the car then look at Lorn, at his bruised and swollen face and his blood-soaked clothing. He’s not going to be able to walk up the sidewalk on his own, but I don’t want to leave him in the car. His
edarratae
are worrying me. He needs to get away from the tech
now
. Besides, if I somehow manage to drag him to the front porch, the presence of a half-dead fae might make it harder for Kynlee’s dad to slam the door in my face.

I climb out of the car, then open the passenger-side door.

“Come on, Lorn.”

His head turns toward my voice, and he lifts an arm, but that’s all the help I get. I’m not strong enough to lift his limp body over my shoulder, so I pull him out of the car and onto the pavement. Hooking my arms under his, I back up one step at a time, dragging him across the cement.

I’m sweating by the time I prop Lorn against the porch wall, and I lean against it for a moment, too, catching my breath and looking back down the sidewalk. Lorn’s left a line of blood all the way from my car. A normal human won’t see the crimson trail, but one who has the Sight will. Kynlee and her dad will.

Nothing I can do about it now.

I ring the bell and pound on the door. Wait half a minute then knock and ring the bell again.

Still nothing, not even when I bang on the window to the right of the door. Both Kynlee and her dad must sleep like the dead. I’m considering the possibility that I might have to break in when the door finally opens.

I expect Kynlee’s dad to be pissed; I don’t expect him to shove the barrel of a shotgun into my chest.

“What the fuck are you doing at my house?” he demands.

I retreat a step. He presses forward.

“He needs help,” I say, heart pounding as I hold my hands out to my sides. I remember reading his profile in the library database. His name is Nick. “Please, Ni—”

“Get out of here!” he yells. “I’ll call the cops. I’ll have you arrested for harassment, or so help me I’ll kill you.”

“Dad?”

Nick stiffens, and I say a quick, silent prayer of thanks. No way in hell is he going to shoot me in front of his daughter.

“Holy shit, Dad!” Kynlee squats in front of Lorn. “What happened?”

Nick curses quietly, then lowers the shotgun.

“Go back to bed,” he says, propping the gun behind the door.

“But, Dad—”

“Go!”

Damn. So much for Kynlee softening her dad up. She retreats to a hallway.

Nick’s gaze returns to me. “You’re not welcome here. Drag him back to your car and leave.”

I draw in a breath, bracing myself. “I can’t. I don’t have anywhere else I can take him.”

“I don’t give a goddamn—”

“Look,” I cut him off. “Just let us in. Someone will be here to help him soon. After he’s recovered, we’ll leave. I’ll leave Vegas even.”

Nick’s chest expands with each angry breath he takes. He’s shirtless, wearing only a pair of jeans that he hasn’t taken the time to button. I’ve offered him a decent deal, though. He wants me to stay away from his daughter. I’ll stay away from the whole city if he’ll help us now.

But my offer must not be tempting enough. He starts to shake his head.

Quickly, I nod toward Lorn, trying another tactic before Nick slams the door in my face. “He’s visible.” I’m pretty sure that’s a lie, but a Sighted human has no way of knowing that without paying attention to the reactions of normal humans. “Are your neighbors nosy?”

“I told you—”

“He needs help,” I say. “And we’re not leaving your front porch until you let us in.”

“He’ll leave if he enters the ether,” Nick threatens. He reaches for the shotgun again.

I pretend not to care, stand my ground, and meet his glare. His jaw works, clenching and relaxing, then clenching again.

Finally, he curses. He looks down at Lorn then says, “One hour. Then you’re gone.”

Thank God.

“Just help me get him inside,” I say.

I slip under Lorn’s right arm while Nick mutters something under his breath and slips under his left. Lorn’s head lolls to the side, but he’s semiconscious. His feet move, though not very usefully.

Nick kicks the front door shut as soon as we’re over the threshold. The
bam
echoes in the high-ceilinged entryway.

“Go to the garage,” Nick barks. “Turn off the breakers.”

At first, I think he’s talking to me. Then I see Kynlee peeking around the corner. She looks chagrined for only the briefest moment before she nods and rushes off. We continue half carrying, half dragging Lorn into the house. Nick grumbles about the carpet as we make our way through the living room, leaving a trail of Lorn’s blood behind us.

“In here,” Nick says gruffly, leading the way into a sunroom at the back of the house. The full moon shines across the wooden floors and a wicker sofa with white cushions. I start to lower Lorn onto the sofa, but he slips from my grasp when Nick all but throws him to the floor.

Lorn rolls to his back. Groans. From somewhere above us, there’s a click. I feel the air-conditioning unit shut down, and Lorn’s chaos lusters lose a little of their jaggedness. They’re still sluggish, though. Being in my world as weak as he is isn’t good for him.

I press my hand to his forehead, checking for a fever.

Stupidly
checking for a fever. Fae are always hot when I touch them. His chaos lusters heat my skin, and I pull my hand back. I think he does have a fever, though. Sweat mixes with the blood caking his temple, and, even in the moonlight, his pale face looks flushed.

“Will this help?” Kynlee’s voice comes from behind me.

I look over my shoulder. She’s standing in the sunroom’s doorway, holding something that looks like a glass of milk.

“Yeah,” Nick says. He rises to take the glass from her, then he hands it to me. “She drinks it when she gets migraines. Prop his head up.”

He throws a decorative pillow on the floor. I pick it up, then slide it under Lorn’s head. Before I give him the drink, I sniff it. Um, definitely not milk.

“Hey,” I say, gently. “I need you to drink this.”

I place the brim of the glass on his busted bottom lip and tilt it back. Pretty much all the liquid trickles down his chin.

“You need to drink,” I tell him. This time, he murmurs something—Lena’s name again?—and I use the opportunity to pour the liquid into his mouth. He chokes on it, coughing and wincing and, eventually, opening his eyes to glare at me.

“Poison?” he asks.

Smiling, I say, “I hope not. Here.”

I make him drink more. After a few sips, he shoves my hand away. I take that as a good sign. A few minutes ago, I don’t think he had the strength to lift a finger.

He closes his eyes in a wince as a wave of pain passes over him. “Should have gone straight to Lena.”

“I’m surprised you didn’t,” I say.

“If the false-blood killed you, I wouldn’t get my revenge.”

“He sounds like he’s worth saving,” Nick mutters, grabbing Lorn’s wrist to lift his hand away from his stomach wound.

Lorn hisses in a breath and starts to curl to the side, but I hold his shoulder down, keeping him in place.

“What else can I do?” Kynlee asks from the doorway.

“Scissors. Towels,” her dad says.

Kynlee nods, starts to leave.

“The whole medicine cabinet.”

She stops, frowns. “Really? Everything?”

Nick’s jaw tightens. “Just the hydrogen peroxide and any gauze or bandages we might have.”

“Need a healer,” Lorn says. “Not human medicine.” His voice is raspy, like he has liquid in his lungs, but he’s alive. I think he’d be dead by now if some really crucial organ were injured. It’s him bleeding to death we need to worry about.

“Stop talking, Lorn.”

Suddenly, Nick’s gaze snaps to me. “Lorn? As in . . .
the
Lorn?”

I think I see a tiny smile bend one corner of Lorn’s mouth. If Nick hasn’t been to the Realm since Kynlee was a baby, Lorn’s been around a long time.

“That’s his name,” is all I say.

Nick drops Lorn’s hand.

“How, exactly, did you come in possession of a
tor’um
?” Lorn asks. I’m surprised he’s cognizant enough to ask the question.

Nick goes still, then, after a handful of heartbeats, he presses the heel of his hand into the fae’s wound. Lorn cries out.

“Hey!” I say, trying to shove Nick away.

“She’s my daughter, asshole,” Nick says, leaning toward Lorn’s face. “Not a possession or something for you to condescend to.”

“Nick, stop!” He’s not listening. I ram my shoulder into him and manage to knock him off Lorn. He falls onto his back, but he looks ready to kill.

“I have the stuff,” Kynlee says. Perfect timing.

Nick doesn’t acknowledge her, so I do, motioning her in. She drops her armful of towels down beside me. The small pile is topped by a pair of scissors, hydrogen peroxide, and . . . a box of Disney Princess Band-Aids.

I pick up the latter, raise an eyebrow.

“It was all I could find,” she says.

Yeah, so not going to help.

I set the Band-Aids aside and grab a towel. I use it to wipe some of the blood off Lorn’s face. Most of it is from a cut on his forehead, but his cheekbone is swollen to twice its normal size, and his lip is bleeding from more than one cut.

“Is he dead?” Kynlee asks. Lorn hasn’t moved since I shoved Nick off him.

“No,” I say, finally getting Lorn to uncurl from his fetal position. “Fae disappear when they die.”

“Disappear?”

The mix of fear and curiosity in Kynlee’s voice makes me look up.

“We’ll talk later, Kynlee,” Nick says gruffly. “Go to bed now.”

“We learned first aid in my health class,” she says. “I can help.”

“Go,” he repeats.

A chaos luster jumps across Lorn’s face. Weakly, he says, “You haven’t taught her anything, have you—”

“Lorn, let’s not antagonize our host.”

“—Nick Johnson?”

Nick Johnson? I frown at Nick. His last name is supposed to be Walker, but the way Lorn meets his gaze makes it clear he knows the human.

Nick is as still as glass.

“I’ve kept her safe,” Nick finally says in a cold whisper.

“Lorn,” I say, not taking my eyes off Nick. “Just in case you die”—or Nick kills him—“why don’t you tell me what you know about the false-blood?”

Lorn’s gaze swivels to me. “You’re becoming quite mercenary, McKenzie. Good for—” His last words are lost in a cough that makes him grow pale.

I take Lorn’s hand—the one not holding his stomach—and squeeze it. Despite my misgivings about his character and his involvement in this war, I have a soft spot for Lorn. I
want
him to be a good person. I definitely don’t want to see him in this much pain.

“Kyol is almost here,” I tell him.

“Kyol, the son of Taltrayn?” Nick asks.

When I say yes, Nick shoots to his feet.

“He knows you’re here?” he demands. “Who else knows?”

“No one,” I say.

“If Taltrayn knows, the king knows.”

“No one knows,” I say quickly. Then, when he takes a step toward the living room, I add, “The king is dead.”

He stops, looks over his shoulder. “Dead?”

I nod.

“And Taltrayn’s alive?”

I nod again.

“And Taltrayn hasn’t told anyone else where I live? That’s bullshit.”

“Oh, no,” Lorn says, a smile in his voice. “Not bullshit at all. I imagine it’s quite an interesting story, actually.”

I slap a damp cloth hard against the cut on Lorn’s forehead. When Nick looks at me, I just say, “It’s complicated.”

Lorn’s chuckle turns into a cough. Serves him right. He makes himself extremely difficult to like sometimes.

 • • • 

I
wait on the Walkers’—or the
Johnsons’
—front porch for Kyol. It doesn’t take him long to find me. He does it in close to the same amount of time as it took me to drive here. Since he can fissure within line of sight, he can travel incredibly fast, faster than I was able to find him in Corrist. But the pull of the life-bond is the same, basically shining a beacon of light down on my location.

When he fissures one last time, exiting the In-Between a few feet in front of me, I say, “I’m sorry. I didn’t want to pull you away from what you were doing.”

“What’s happened?” he asks.

“It’s Lorn,” I say, my gaze scanning the street for any other slashes of light or sparks of blue chaos lusters darting across someone’s skin. “He gave my location to the false-blood.”