Baehrly Alive (12 page)

Ice and snow surrounded us, but I could see nothing, feel nothing but the green, bright pine-y scent of Earth Magic.

It felt like coming home.

The power scorched through me with unrelenting green flames. I could feel it tear at my scars, cracking open the wounds, snagging on the places where my soul had frayed.

I must have screamed, but when my mouth opened all that came out was a flood of more power.

I slid bonelessly to the stones beneath my feet as the power—as abruptly as it had come—left me. I whimpered weakly—every part of my body and soul felt pummeled, destroyed. The Earth Magic had swept through and taken everything.

I was so exhausted I marveled that I could even breathe.

Around me, the snow settled like volcanic ash—the last flakes floating down gently, undirected, unguided.

The shades were gone. I could see little piles of dust where they had been—and a pile of skins and ancient jewelry marking the place where the Guardian had fallen.

And the pouch she had worn around her neck.

“Donovan,” I croaked, peering through the last of the snow. I tried again, louder this time. “Donovan!”

“Here.” His muffled cry came from behind me—over the edge of the cliff. I dragged myself toward that sound and looked down.

Donovan was clinging to the stones of the cliff edge, his face stark and pale with cold and fear. “Is it over?”

I nodded weakly. “Can you get back up here? I’m not sure I have the energy to help you.”

Donovan pulled himself up the distance between us and sat back in the snow, shivering and staring around us as if expecting to see an army of Shades still standing there, waiting to devour us.

“Well, I feel unnecessary,” he said. He looped an arm around my shoulders. “How about you? Are you going to be all right?”

I let out a shuddering breath. “I’m fine. Just tired.” Even saying the words drained me. I nodded my head toward the pouch—our bounty.

Donovan immediately understood what I was asking and went over to the pile that had been the Guardian. He picked the skin bag up gingerly, blowing dust off of it and frowning slightly. He brought it back to me and set it at my feet, brushing his fingers against his jeans as if they felt dirtied.

I couldn’t blame him. I didn’t want to touch the thing, either. It felt like… riffling through Nefertiti’s underwear drawer—overly intimate for a creature we had just destroyed.

The pouch could wait. We could not. The snow had stopped falling, but we were both chilled to the bone. We needed to find shelter and build a fire.

And all of that needed to be as far from this place as I could drag my sorry carcass—I would never be able to rest in the shadow of this hill.

But, first, I had to manage to climb down the cliff face without killing myself.

“Next time, let’s just get dinner and a movie,” I suggested, as I pulled myself onto my feet. I closed my eyes for a second, wincing as I took in the state of my soul—and my bear. She looked a little wind-blown and worse for the wear, but my soul… the Earth Magic had tried to make room for itself without touching the vampire-tainted bits. This had left gaping holes where my soul hadn’t been able to stretch enough to hold all of that power—weakened as it already was.

The vampire-poison was already trying to encroach on these weakened areas. I tried to throw up some shields, but I literally had no power left.

At the moment, Donovan was more Magical than I was. I didn’t even have that spark that every Ordinary carried with them. My reserves were completely drained.

It was going to take some time for them to build up again.

Which meant that I had to be careful climbing down that cliff. There would be no last-minute soft landings or swift healings of twisted or broken anything.

“Actually,” Donovan said, startling me into opening my eyes again. “I was thinking, for our next date, we could just stay in.”

“Good idea,” I agreed. “Leaving the house is far too dangerous.”

I sighed, knowing that I could put this off no longer. I scooted toward the edge of the cliff and felt for a toehold in the stone.

One down. About a million to go. At least, that’s what it felt like.

At least we were climbing down this time. Climbing down had its own challenges, but at least gravity was on my side.

As long as it didn’t get too eager to ‘assist’ me down.

I had a hunch, that when this climb was over, I was never going to think of climbing as ‘fun’ ever again.

Chapter Nine

We made it halfway down the mountain before my adrenaline completely wore off and I literally collapsed as I was trying to climb over a fallen log.

I knew I should have gone under that one. I had been overly ambitious, thinking that I could just hop over it.

“This looks like a good place to camp,” I announced, leaning back against the log. We were at a spot where three different fallen logs had made a sort of shelter—all we needed were a few layers on the ground and a layer over the top and we’d be nice and cozy.

We just needed to get a fire going.

‘We’, of course, meant Donovan.

He didn’t seem to mind at all. He used his camping knife to find dry branches to sheer off of our fallen tree-comrades and started piling together some dry tinder, from under the logs where the rain hadn’t drenched them.

I liked watching him build the fire. Like everything in his life, Donovan was quietly efficient at this. He didn’t make a fuss or bother about it; he just put together a fire with no fanfare or stress.

That was Donovan—never drawing attention to himself, never taking credit when it was due. He was that person on the team who secretly pulled everything together while the flashier people always got the credit.

It seemed he liked it that way, for some reason. He didn’t have to wear understated clothes and hairstyles that minimized his charms—he did all these things on purpose, knowing he could make himself forgettable.

Invisible, almost.

But out here, he wasn’t that person—his hair stood on end, mussed from camping and running his fingers through it whenever he was thinking about something. He looked sinfully good in his jeans and long-sleeved shirt.

But there was nothing flamboyant or loud about his charm.

Maybe that’s why I loved him so much. He was a closed book—one that I could only read piece-by-piece, a line here, and a line there. He didn’t wear his heart on his sleeve.

But he didn’t have it locked away, either.

He was just…

Donovan.

“You’re staring at me,” he teased, crawling into our makeshift shelter to huddle under a blanket with me. His hands were so cold that I had to stifle a yelp when they touched mine.

“That’s because you are very handsome,” I told him. “I find you making a fire to be very sexy.”

Donovan kissed me quickly on the lips. Even that small touched warmed me up inside. “I’ll have to remember that for the future,” he teased, digging into his pack. “Do you want some jerky?”

I made a face, but took the piece he offered me. I knew we both needed to eat something—we’d been working hard all day and I, in particular, had used up enough calories to feed a small country.

For once, I just didn’t have much of an appetite. I was too tired to work my way through the tough-chewiness of the homemade jerky. I just wanted to curl up next to Donovan and sleep.

Before I knew it, that’s exactly what I was doing.

My dreams were strange and jumbled together. When I awoke, hours later, I was still confused, clearing my head of images of wild animals, curses, and women with long, blond hair and ice-pale eyes. I didn’t know where I was, and, for a frightening moment, who I was.

Next to me Donovan sat up, his eyes on my face. “Are you all right?”

I laughed shakily. He seemed to ask me that a lot. “Yeah, fine. I just had a really weird dream and it threw me off.” I frowned, wondering why I felt like I was supposed to remember something from my dream. Instead of stressing about it, I dug out my half-eaten jerky and started gnawing on it—of course, I would have nightmares when I was sleeping on an empty stomach—my brain had probably just been trying to wake me up so I would feed it.

“I can’t wait to get home,” I told Donovan. He had lain back in the blankets again and watched me in a relaxed way, his arms behind his head and his fingers laced together. I paused to admire his blue eyes—they were the truest blue I had ever seen—they made me think of midsummer skies and days canoeing on freezing glacial lakes. Those eyes of his were his tell—the sparkle he couldn’t force into hiding by pretending to be plain and boring. No one, having seen those eyes, would be able to forget them.

“It would be nice to sleep on a real bed,” Donovan agreed, yawning hugely.

I wiggled deeper into our zipped-together sleeping bags and leaned my head against his chest. The warm lub-lub beat of his heart beat underneath my ear. “On the other hand, I could stay like this forever.”

Donovan chuckled, one hand reaching out to stroke my hair. It was such a gentle, intimate kind of gesture—possessive and tender. I felt warmth spread through my chest, knowing that he cared for me like this—not just passion or attraction, but these moments of perfect… quiet.

I protested as he sat up and started to climb out of our nest. “Where are you going?”

Donovan kissed the tip of my nose. “I’ve got to get more wood, or we’re going to have no fire for the rest of the night. You just wait here and rest.”

“Okay,” I murmured, reluctantly. I knew that we needed a fire, but it had been so nice in our nest—I hated that Donovan had to go get more wood.

I grinned to myself. I was acting like a sappy young girl in love.

Well, I guessed I was—I was certainly in love!

With my husband.

I wriggled in anticipation. Donovan might be gone for the moment, but I had the rest of the night with him, and I was feeling a little better from my nap. We could make up for lost time.

How long did it take to gather wood, anyway?

Images of wolves and bears and all kinds of critters filled my head. What if something attacked Donovan? I should never have let him wander off alone—even if he stayed near camp, being out of eyesight could be dangerous.

I struggled out of my blankets.

I knew I was being ridiculous. Donovan would laugh at me when he heard how worried I had been. I’d probably just tell him that I’d needed to pee, and I had just found him by accident.

That way he wouldn’t know what a silly worrywart I was.

The woods were strangely quiet, which was actually reassuring. If there were any wolves around, they’d be probably making some kind of noise. I wasn’t sure if the same would be true of a bear—I’d been startled before by how stealthily they could move at times.

Now that I was standing up, I discovered that I really did need to pee, anyway. I found myself a bush and went through the whole cursing men in general for having it easy with the whole peeing outside process—no matter how many times I had to ‘go potty’ in the wild in my lifetime, I still found it to be frustrating and nearly impossible.

No wonder women wore skirts for so many centuries.

I wandered a little further from camp, trying to remember which direction I had seen Donovan go. I didn’t want to shout for him—at worst I’d scare him into cutting himself; at best, he’d tease me for freaking out over nothing.

I huffed out a sigh of relief as I caught sight of him—he was standing on the other side of another fallen log. I could only see his face and the hand he had leaning against another tree trunk. He had the strangest expression on his face… almost bemused. When he saw me, his expression shifted—his cop mask slid into face.

“Goldie,” he said quietly.

“What is it?” I asked. “Do you see a bear or something? Because, if it’s a bear, you’re supposed to be loud.”

“It’s not a bear,” Donovan said, his voice even and quiet. “I need you to not freak out, all right? How’s your Magic feeling right now, honey?”

I frowned at him, puzzled. “My Magic?” I couldn’t understand why he would want to know something like that. I looked with my other sight and shrugged. “I have next to none. Why?”

“I need you to go back to camp and get the spring water,” Donovan said evenly. “You’re going to need to hurry.”

“What?” I felt panic rise up in my throat. “Why? Donovan, what’s going on? You’re not making any sense.”

“Just do it,” Donovan said. “Please. I’ll explain later.”

I scrambled back to camp and my pack. I fumbled through the clothes and snacks, searching for the diamond vial. I almost shouted in triumph when my fingers brushed against the smooth surface. I raced back to Donovan, sliding and slipping in the dried leaves. He reached over the log for the vial.

That’s when I saw it.

His camping blade was wedged deeply into the inside of his thigh.

I snapped my lips down around my moan. I was a trained healer—I knew enough about the body to know that this was a serious wound.