“So I gathered.” I lowered myself down to the ground.
In the middle of the alley, between a shower of light coming from the security lamps, Niko and Cyrus were in a clinch. Cyrus seemed to be doing all the talking, but there was too much distance between us to hear.
“What’s he saying?” I asked Christian.
“Feck if I know.”
I glared up at him. “I thought you could hear a gnat committing suicide in a windstorm?”
He folded his arms. “Aye, but a linguist I’m not.”
An engine revved as a car sped toward them from the other end of the alley, the high beams blinding me. It screeched to a halt just inches before hitting Niko and Cyrus, and the door swung open. One of the men dragged their unconscious friend into the car. Seconds later, Cyrus somersaulted over the hood and got in. The black sedan accelerated. Before I could punch the glass, Christian shoved me out of the way and jumped onto the hood. The car made a sudden sharp turn, propelling him off.
Christian rose to his feet, a side mirror in hand. It crumpled within his iron grip, and the broken pieces littered the ground.
Wyatt helped me up with a swift jerk of his arm. “I better go find Shep. Last I saw, he was picking a fight with a cheeseburger, so he won’t be our designated driver tonight. Viktor wants us home pronto. And you might want to tie that off or something,” he said, gesturing toward the hole in my leg. “It’s my week to mop, and bloodstains on the stone floors are a pain in the boogie to clean up.”
Wyatt always had a colorful way of phrasing things. I was certain he meant booty, but I let it go.
Christian shoved Wyatt toward the club. “Don’t worry, Cinderella. I’ll lick up the blood. Bring everyone outside, including Gem. Her date’s officially over, and if that gobshite has any complaints, send him out here. I could use a cocktail.”
“Will you shut up?” Wyatt snapped as he strode off.
But he wasn’t talking to Christian.
“I’m never going to get used him talking to thin air,” I murmured.
Christian put his arm around my waist and hoisted me off my feet. “You all right?”
I held on to his shoulders, grateful the pressure was off my leg from standing. My gaze never dragged away from Niko, who had cleaned off his blades and placed them back in their scabbards. His body sank from exhaustion, his shoulders slumped and gait slow. As he drew nearer, I sensed something was wrong.
Long strands of ebony hair were askew, his cheeks flushed. When he finally made it to us, he wiped the sweat from his brow and closed his eyes. There were rips in his clothes and spatters of blood on his hands.
“Are you hurt?” I asked.
“I’ll live.”
“Shep’s drunk,” I whispered to Christian. “He can’t sew up Niko’s wounds.”
“Shall I carry him instead?”
“Put me down.”
I grimaced when my feet touched the ground, the nerve endings in my leg excruciatingly painful. The arrow hadn’t severed a major artery, or I would have bled out already, but it was bleeding all the same.
“Niko, let me see.” I reached out and lifted the bottom of his shirt. “Oh shit. How deep is that?”
Blood trickled from a two-inch-long cut in his abdomen. When I peered around him, there was a similar mark on the other side. His pallor and blood-soaked shirt made me shudder. Niko was a Healer, but his ability to self-heal was like any other Mage. This guy needed sunlight, but I couldn’t stand to watch him suffer for hours.
When I grabbed his hands, he jerked them away.
“Now’s not the time,” I said. “You’ll bleed out before morning.”
“I won’t die,” he rasped.
“No, but Viktor called us home for a meeting or something. Do you want me to explain why you’re unconscious in the van with a hole in your gut?”
I took his hands, which were usually warm, and turned them over so our palms were touching. After a deep breath, I tapped into my core light and channeled the healing energy from it. When it reached my hands, the static tickled my palms as spidery webs of blue light threaded between us.
Christian glowered. It wasn’t my healing Niko that bothered him so much as the intimate nature of sharing light—something he’d never experience with me.
Before I finished, Niko broke the connection and touched the healed mark on his stomach. “You have my gratitude, but your light tells me you’re also injured. I can’t accept any more. You shouldn’t have given me what you need to heal yourself.”
“It’s just a scratch,” I said with a snort. In truth, my leg throbbed as if someone had shoved a hot iron through it. But I’d developed a high tolerance for pain, just not high enough to walk across the parking lot. “Christian, why don’t you bring the van around?”
After he whirled around and strode off, Niko removed his cloak and offered it to me. “You should have dressed for the weather. Shepherd remarked about your attire on the way here.”
“Shepherd has a lot of opinions he can keep to himself.” I slid my arms through the sleeves of the long coat. “We killed one of those men.”
A look I couldn’t discern flickered in his expression. “Do you know which one?”
“It wasn’t Kallisto.”
Niko’s voice became flat and cold. “Then I hope it was Plato.”
The Greek names gave me pause. “Are they your brothers?”
He looked off to the left. “We share the same light.”
Which meant they were from the same Creator. “That Cyrus guy, were you holding back? You took on two of his men last time. I’ve seen you fight.”
“Cyrus is very skilled with his weapon. He was once part of a nomadic tribe in Asia under the rule of Genghis Khan. If he ever approaches you when I’m not around—run. His blade is a force to be reckoned with, and it has been whetted with the souls of innocents.”
A bitter wind blew against my face, and I hugged my middle. “What does he want from you?”
“Something he will never have.” Niko reached out, and when he touched my shoulder, he put his arm around me and quieted his voice. “Speak of this to no one. Long ago, we were kept as slaves. It took many years, but Cyrus planned our escape after our Creator met his… untimely demise. You realize the implications.”
Niko didn’t need to spell it out. If Cyrus had planned and executed their Creator’s murder, and Niko was part of their group, then he was an accomplice in the eyes of our law.
“I won’t tell anyone.”
He stepped aside. “I spent many years in slavery because of that man. I refuse to become a prisoner for something I didn’t do.”