Bitten by Ecstasy: 2 (Dark Judgment) (12 page)

“Bastien!” As if his thought had conjured her, Sinéad rushed back into the room. He growled and redoubled his efforts with the wendigo. Damn it! He should’ve known she wouldn’t have left. This woman—cruxim or not—would never run away from a fight. “Quick! Over here!”

He didn’t question. He lifted his leg, kicked and caught the creature in its thigh bone. The contact reverberated up Bastien’s calf, leg and vibrated in his hip. Cursing, he spun on his heel and bounded over the bed. Landing in a crouch, one knee and hand on the floor, he glanced up as Sinéad hurled a flaming piece of paper across the room. The demon emitted a furious shriek as it tried in vain to dodge the makeshift torch.

Fire exploded over its body, racing down its legs, up its torso and shooting down along its arms. The shrieks elevated to piercing screams and howls of pain and rage. The greedy blaze ate at the demon and great plumes of white and gray smoke spiraled to the bedroom ceiling. Straightening, Bastien stared, awed, as the fiery blaze consumed the wendigo, touching nothing else in the room but the demon. It slowly melted, its body shrinking until nothing but a huge puddle remained on the floor. The flames dissipated, eventually flickering then extinguishing completely.

Silence hung in the room along with the lingering wisps of smoke. He turned his gaze to Sinéad whose chest rose and fell on quiet, heavy breaths. Sweat darkened the hair around her forehead and temples to nearly black, rolled down the tired lines of her face and dripped from her chin. She glanced at him, her silver gaze running down his body as if checking him for injury. When their eyes met again, she gave him a small nod before heading across the room toward the bed.

The female. He strode around the foot of the mattress, skirting the wide pool of water—all that remained of the wendigo—and stood on the other side of the bed. Both of them stared down at the unconscious woman. Her pale skin had taken on a grayish tint, the flesh over her cheekbones so thin and tight Bastien glimpsed the white cast of bone beneath. His inspection flicked to her arm and he barely stifled a flinch. The area where the demon had gnawed had blackened. The edges peeled back from pink, rapidly decaying tissue, the radius bone clearly visible. Blood, disease, wounds—they didn’t bother him. But this…this tragedy struck him in the heart like a ham-sized fist. What had once been a young, vibrant woman was wasting away before his eyes.

“Wendigo fever,” Sinéad murmured.

“You’ve seen this before?” Bastien asked. Again, he’d heard of the disease a wendigo’s infectious bite had on a body—had read about it—but had never witnessed the effects.

Sinéad nodded, her lovely features grave.

“She’s already turning into one of them. There’s no saving her.” Her eyes lifted to him and sorrow and anger lit them like furious lightning strikes. “I wasn’t in time.”

“Sinéad,” Bastien whispered. He wasn’t an empath, but her pain called out to him, rubbed him and his beast raw. Both man and hippogryph wanted to go to her, pull her close and soothe the grief creasing her face. “Sweetheart, from what I’ve read about these demons, we were too late before we arrived in Las Vegas.”

Wendigos spent hours with their victims, poisoning them before sending them into coma-like states where the creatures fed off the fear and pain induced by nightmares their prey couldn’t wake from. Only after hours of torture did the demons begin to eat their victims’ flesh.

She didn’t refute or concur with his opinion. Instead she leaned down, stretched her arm out over the woman who hovered on the verge of living death. Already a noxious odor seeped from her decaying skin, polluting the air. Still Sinéad threaded her fingers through the limp, graying hair on the pillow. When she drew her hand back, several strands clung to her skin. Clenching her fist tight around the brittle wisps, Sinéad shut her eyes, her lashes like dark fans across her cheekbones.

Say something
, a voice cried in his head.
Do something
, his beast roared. His throat worked, thoughts and words tumbled in his brain, searching for anything capable of easing her of this burden she’d unjustly taken on as her own. He came up empty-handed. Helplessness crashed through him.

“I’ll need to,” she opened her eyes, met his, “finish this.” A soft whisk cut through the still, rapidly fouling air as she reached behind her and withdrew her sword. “Before she becomes more wendigo than human.”

“I’ll do it,” Bastien said, holding his palm up, the fingers curled, mutely requesting her weapon. But Sinéad shook her head, shifting the blade behind her.

“No. You’re a healer,” she reminded him. Again she shook her head, harder, more vehemently. “You give life. Preserve it, not take it. I won’t allow you to bear that mark on your soul and conscience.”

His throat closed, his breath blocked by a heavy ball of wonder and a fierce reverence. For months he’d considered himself a monster, but in one moment she treated him as a male of honor, a male of worth. The man he used to see when he peered in the mirror. Coming from this female who would sacrifice a piece of her spirit so his would remain intact… She humbled him.

“Go,” Sinéad tilted her head toward the bedroom door. “Please. I don’t want you to see me do this.”

Dipping his chin in acquiescence, Bastien retraced his steps around the bed and then paused next to her. She appeared so alone standing there, her shoulders tense, braced for what she needed to carry out, her fingers clenched around the hilt of her sword. He touched her, grazed the backs of his fingers down her arm until he brushed the soft skin of her hand. A shudder ran through her and he almost demanded she hand over the sword. But then her gaze jerked up, met his.

“Bastien.”

“I’ll be downstairs. Waiting for you.”

Her nod was slow, a bit uncertain. Bastien returned the gesture and, needing to touch her again at least one more time, tangled his fingers with hers and squeezed. Then left the room.

He loped down the stairs and entered the living room. Sadness burrowed in his heart and settled around his neck like an albatross. He scanned the comfy, slightly battered couch, the recliner with the furrow in the middle of the cushion, the scuffed coffee table and fifty-two-inch plasma screen television. A wooden shelf crammed with DVD cases stood off to the side. This room would never see its owner again. The chair would never have her settle in for a night of movies, the coffee table would never have feet propped on it, helping to relieve the tension of the day.

Useless, senseless death. And the blame could be placed squarely on the shoulders of the Cardei vampire colony. He’d read between the wendigo’s accusation when it’d first seen Sinéad. The vampires were pimping the Blood Cross. Monsters like the wendigo were paying the Cardeis something in exchange for the cruxim’s non-interference—or maybe even their assistance. And the blood of innocents was the currency for these deals drenched in violence and betrayal.

The minutes ambled by in utter silence. Time scraped across his nerve endings like nails on a chalkboard. He threw glances at the staircase, hoping to see her boots come into view. Damn this. With a growl, Bastien pivoted on his heel and stalked toward the stairs. He’d drag Sinéad down if necessary.

It wasn’t.

As he gripped the end of the banister, she appeared at the top of the landing. Expression strained, she edged down the steps as if every bone in her body ached. A palm against the wall steadied her while the other arm circled her waist. When she neared the bottom, she stumbled. Her knees buckled and she folded. Muttering a curse, he launched forward, clasped her upper arms and pulled her to his chest.

“Bastien,” she rasped, clutching his shoulders. Her lashes shuddered then lowered. She went limp against him. Stark terror stabbed him, the fear unlike any he’d experienced.

“Sinéad,” he shouted, shook her. That’s when he noticed the blood smearing her palm.

And pouring from the deep cut across her abdomen.

* * * * *

“Cyra!” Bastien pounded on the front door of the cruxim’s home, not giving a damn if her neighbors heard his shouting. Every second that passed, Sinéad crept closer to death…or worse. Already her breathing grew more shallow, her complexion paler…
Shit
.
“Cyra, open the door, damn it!”

The door swung open and the female filled the entrance, a frown darkening her expression. “What’s the—” Her gaze locked on Sinéad, unconscious in his arms, then shifted to him. Crimson flashed in her eyes, and for a second he glimpsed hell and the promise of pain in the fiery depths. “Come in.”

He rushed past her, hurried to the living room where he gently laid Sinéad on the couch. Kneeling on the floor, he tore open her jacket and ripped her shirt down the middle.

“Bastien,” Cyra growled from behind him.

“Quiet,” he ordered and poured all his focus on the comatose woman before him. He examined the slice across her belly. The very edges of the wound were ragged and blackened as if burned. The skin around the wound had assumed a grayish hue and the odor… His heart plummeted toward his gut even as his soul howled in denial.

Fuck this.
No. He wouldn’t lose her. Not like this.

“Wendigo fever,” Cyra breathed over his shoulder. “
Sweet Lady, no.
”

He spread his hands wide, fingers splayed over the damaged flesh. He called his magic to him, demanded its compliance. Immediately, it surged to his command, swirling up from the pit of his stomach, welling in his chest to envelop his spine, streaming into his brain stem and flooding his mind. Instantly, information from his palms transmitted to his brain like data uploaded to a computer. Images of the wound, the torn muscle, decaying flesh and bacteria flashed across the monitor in his cerebral lobes.

With grim determination, he gathered his power, aimed it with the precision of a laser and poured his magic into Sinéad’s body. Even as he guided the current of pure heat, cleansing and cauterizing her flesh from the inside out, he was aware of her breathing, of her heartbeat and organs. Healing her, a human—
Sinéad
—was different from working on an immortal. Her anatomy was more delicate, more complicated. While it challenged the physician in him, it terrified the man who feared losing her to a mistake.

Minutes—hours—later, he pulled back out of her body, recalling his magic and allowing it to simmer and settle in his soul until he would require it once more. His ass hit the floor with a thump and he rested his forearms on his raised knees. Coarse huffs of air whistled out of his heaving chest and a fine tremble set up in his limbs and muscles.
It had been close, so fucking close.

He shook his head, but stopped as a wave of nausea pitched and rolled in his gut. Swallowing hard, he examined his handiwork. The newly healed wound was pink and a little swollen, but the six-inch scar appeared as if it had been there for a couple of weeks rather than minutes. No sign of the gray tinge, rotted skin or deathly stench remained. Healthy flesh greeted his eyes. He studied the steady rise and fall of her chest before lifting his inspection to her face, lax in a deep, healing sleep.

When had she become so damn important? This tight clench in his chest and gut was more than desire—although greed for her seemed to dog his every step. Relief had flooded him when he’d believed she escaped the house and wendigo, but fear had gripped him when he realized she returned with the fire. And the need to wrap her in bubble wrap as she stood over the fevered woman, preparing to end her life—those were feelings that exceeded physical hunger.

The thought of losing her to the wendigo fever…or having to end her life before she became the predator she’d destroyed… Arm shaking, he reached out to her, laced his fingers through the long tail of dark hair spilling over the edge of the couch cushion. He felt safe touching her while she slept. She couldn’t flinch from his touch and he luxuriated in the joy of freely caressing her.

His arm dropped to his side.

They had a common goal—they shared nothing else. He’d best keep that objective in mind or he’d end up running away across the globe again. As if the last time had worked out so damn well for him.

“Amazing,” Cyra murmured and Bastien tilted his head back to see the cruxim regarding Sinéad with something close to wonder. Her gaze had reverted to its cruxim silver, the flames extinguished. “I didn’t know you were a healer, hippogryph.”

He nodded, but as he pushed up from the floor the world slanted, swayed. The queasiness chose that moment to pay a visit to the back of his throat and Bastien gagged, rolling over to all fours.

“Bathroom,” he croaked.

“Upstairs, first door on the right,” Cyra shot back.

He bolted up the flight of stairs, charged into the restroom and got real up-close-and-personal with the Tidy Bowl Man. The jerking spasms seemed to last forever, tearing at his stomach like a machete scraping his insides raw. With a loud groan, he fell against the side of the tub. When had his throat become a gravel pit and his gut The Rock’s punching bag?

His reaction had been unusual. Unusual, hell, it had never occurred before. But in his hundreds of years of healing, he hadn’t encountered the
evil
that had permeated Sinéad’s wound. While working inside her body, he’d fought not to be consumed by the vile taint. When he’d withdrawn, the stink had coated his mouth, esophagus, organs… his flesh. The wendigo’s pollution had sickened him—literally.