A family trait. I swallowed. This was a legacy that originated in my mother’s blood. It explained how she knew to run when she fell pregnant with me. It might also explain why she accepted the disownment rather than turn me over to her mother.
The Marchands owned a goddess-touched artifact. What else might they have in their arsenal? What knowledge might they possess about my condition? Did they know how to sever the thread binding me to Amelie? And would they ever share that information with me without shackling me to their will first?
“Let me save him,” I bargained. “Let me heal Linus, and I’ll go with you.”
“We don’t have time.” Heloise searched the darkened yard. “Your pets will return soon enough.”
“You can’t let him die.” My voice went hoarse. “Please.”
A gunshot pierced the night, and the sharp pressure at my spine vanished.
I whirled as my cousin collapsed on the grass, her mouth gaping in mute surprise. A red dot smudged her left temple, but the right side of her face was missing.
Heart pounding in my ears, I searched for the shooter and found Taz limping toward me, dragging one leg, leaving a trail of blood shimmering wetly on the grass behind her.
“Sorry I’m late,” she grunted. “I was tracking the vamp when I triggered a circle.” Her eyes blazed when they fell on Heloise’s crumpled form, a wildness in them screaming she wished the deathblow had been dealt by her hands and not her weapon. “I would have still been trapped if she hadn’t also shot me in the thigh and left me to bleed out. Took a while, but the blood erased her sigils, and the ward fell.”
The parallels between what happened to her tonight and her brother’s fate so long ago made me heartsick. Heloise had been family—blood—and she was a monster.
One halting step was all I managed before figures dressed in black fatigues bled from the shadows.
The cavalry had arrived, and the Elite sentinels swarming the night were armed to the teeth.
No familiar platinum-blond head towered over them. No chocolate-caramel eyes sought mine. No Boaz materialized to lead the charge.
“Freeze,” the man in front barked at her, clearly not recognizing Taz, a mistake that might prove deadly. For him. “Put your gun down.”
“Fair warning,” Taz growled, lowering her weapon. “Shoot me, and I’ll shoot back.”
With Taz disarmed, he set his sights on me. “Step away from the van, ma’am.”
A split-second decision had me putting my thin acting skills to the test. Dropping to my knees beside the body, I feigned shock. “My cousin.” As I bent to check Heloise’s pulse, I leaned over her corpse, using the motion for cover as I pried the goddess-touched artifact from her clenched fist. There was no time for an examination before secreting it away, but I got the impression of age-worn wood with a tapered end. “She’s dead.”
“Step away from the body,” he barked. “Move away from the van.”
Wiping my bone-dry cheeks with a hand I trembled for effect, I did as I was ordered, turning just enough to hide the movement as I slipped the artifact in my pocket.
Sadly, my theatrics had exposed Linus, and the sentinel bristled in response, his finger on the trigger.
“Sir,” he boomed, “I’m going to have to ask you to exit the vehicle.”
“Are you serious? He’s unconscious. He can’t exit the vehicle. He can barely breathe.” Huffing out a laugh that bordered on deranged, I reached up and scratched the scabs at my throat until fresh blood trickled down my neck, then wet my fingers. “I don’t have time for this.”
“Ma’am,” the Elite tried again. “We got a call—”
“Let me tell you who you can call.” I stepped aside and gave them a good, long look at who reclined in the seat. “This is Linus Lawson, Scion Lawson. Dial up the Grande Dame and ask her how she feels about her niece being held at gunpoint while her only son and heir dies from poisoning.”
The man lowered his weapon, his cheeks paling as the blood drained from them.
“Note to self,” I muttered. “Name-dropping is the new Kevlar.”
With two fingers, I drew a double-lined healing rune that stretched from Linus’s collarbones to his navel. Bright crimson whirls smeared over the art covering his torso. Eyes crushed shut, I listened to that inner voice and followed its instructions to the letter. Instinct guided me, calling for more blood, more pain, more sacrifice to bring him back.
Please, bring him back.
I sent up a prayer to Hecate as I closed the final loop with a flourish.
Magic, rich and potent, coated him from head to toe in a shimmering veil of incandescence. His entire length jolted hard once, and then again, and then again.
The spell was working as a defibrillator, jump-starting his heart with magic.
The sheen beading his forehead gave me hope the poison was being expelled.
“Come on,” I chanted. “Come on.”
One last blast illuminated his skin before the glow seeped into his pores. In the stillness that followed, the impossibly long seconds where nothing happened and I was certain I had failed him, his eyelids started twitching in what appeared to be restless sleep.
A kinder woman might have given him a moment to recover. I was not that woman.
“Linus.” I grabbed him by the shoulders and shook him. “Wake up. Let me see your eyes.”
Cletus materialized in the driver seat, almost giving me a heart attack.
Well, that explained why the wraith had been absent. Linus had been so close to death their bond must have faded until he did too.
“Can you hear me?” I rechecked his pulse. Steady. His lungs were expanding fully, so that was good. But was it enough? “Linus?”
“In all the…stories,” he rasped, eyes slitting open, “the prince…is awakened…with a kiss.”
“Linus Andreas Lawson, are you flirting with me? Maybe I zapped you too hard.” I pinned him in his seat while his limbs spasmed. “Besides, you’ve got it wrong. It’s the princess who gets kissed. Didn’t your mother ever read you storybooks when you were a kid?”
“No.” His teeth started chattering. “What…happened?”
“The vampire who helped Volkov kidnap me got an acolyte into Strophalos. The guy who cut you used a poisoned blade. Since I’m an idiot, I didn’t realize you weren’t sleeping and left you out here until you almost died.”
“Not your…fault.”
That’s not how it felt. “I ditched you to go say hello to my house.”
Heavy footfalls yanked my attention to a commotion across the yard.
A second unit, more heavily armed than this one, jogged in from the direction the watchmen had gone. Two men peeled off toward the driveway with a mangled body strung between them. The others melded into the group facing us down, and a man stepped from the middle of them.
“What the hell happened to that vampire?”
Stomach roiling over the carnage, I didn’t register the speaker’s identity at first. When I did, a new type of sickness uncoiled through me, and I almost wished I had kept my focus on the maimed vampire.
Boaz might have looked good enough to eat, but he acted mad enough to spit nails.
“Security…team,” Linus panted. “Don’t harm…the…pack.”
“The pack?” Boaz flexed his bloodied hands at his sides. “There are no warg packs in Savannah.”
“They’re not wargs.” And I was under no obligation to tell them more than that. Boaz maybe. This gaggle of gun-toting zealots with itchy trigger fingers, not so much. “I appreciate the assistance, but your presence isn’t necessary.” I folded my arms across my chest. “I’ve got things handled here. You can run along back to wherever you’ve actually been the last few weeks.”
A slow whistle rose from the back of the crowd, and I spotted Becky wincing like she wished a hole would open up and swallow Boaz before I buried him in front of his men. When she noticed me, she waggled her fingers in a weak hello, but I was done playing nice.
“You heard the lady,” he called over the murmurs. “Clear out.”
Neither of us budged until the yard was empty except for the three of us, and I was pretty sure Linus had fallen back asleep. Actual sleep this time.
“Amelie called.” He glared down at Heloise’s corpse like what would happen next was all its fault.