Kick The Candle (Knight Games) (29 page)

The detective looked at me with pity. “About a mile that way.” He pointed into the trees.

Just as I thought. We were near Avery’s cottage in the woods behind Rick’s place. Using every ounce of strength I had left, I gripped Rick against my chest and prodded Poe forward, praying for the first time to my goddess mother for help.

* * * * *

B
y the time I reached Rick’s house, my arms and legs burned. I was exhausted, mentally, physically, emotionally. But I refused to give up. This man in my arms who had always seemed larger than life, now so human, so fragile, was suddenly more important to me than anything—even the
Book of Flesh and Bone
. I still couldn’t believe I’d left the tome under Soleil’s watch. If you added up all of the minutes I’d been in the same room as the fae, it wouldn’t equal a day. Maybe not the smartest thing I’d ever done, but necessary.

The door to Rick’s cottage was hanging open. But then Silas’s werewolf probably didn’t have good door closing skills. I thanked Poe, and half carried, half dragged Rick inside. A ring of skulls glowed from behind the couch. At the center, the three-inch thick, purple candle I’d seen before with the scarab beetle imprint had burned down to its last inch of wax. A tiny blue flame struggled at the top of a pool of wax.

“Rick? How do I stop this?” I jostled him carefully in my arms.

His eyelids fluttered. “Out the flame.”

“Put out the flame before it burns down? And you’ll get your power back?”

His head listed to the side, in what I interpreted as a nod.

Carefully lowering him to the floor beside me, I licked my fingers and shot my hand out to snuff the candle. Bad idea. My fist bounced off the barrier of the skulls and a magic zap landed me on my ass.

“Rick?” I shook his shoulder. “How do I get to the candle?”

He opened his eyes and looked up at me, the ghost of a smile crossing his lips, a deep breath of air escaping through his nose. “You don’t.” His gray eyes were wet.

“Bullshit. There has to be a way.”

“Only I can do it.”

“Then do it! You’ll die if you don’t.”

He shook his head. “I do not want to live this way. I’ve loved you too long to spend a lifetime watching you love someone else.”

I lowered my head until my mouth was almost touching his bloodied face. “You won’t have to. I promise you, I am yours. Only yours.”

“You are saying this to save me. I don’t want your pity. I want your heart.”

I lifted his hand and placed it on my chest, my eyes searched each of his as tears welled and spilled from my face. “You have it. How can I prove it to you, Rick? I am yours.” It wasn’t enough. If I was going to give myself to him, I had to give it all. “I… love you. I love you. Not the memory of you, not what you do for me, but
you
. I think I always have. I was just confused because everything happened so fast. I didn’t want to get hurt again. Everyone I’ve ever thought I’ve loved, I’ve lost. My mother, Gary, a dozen boyfriends, even my father has pulled away from me. I just couldn’t open myself up to it. You suffer enough pain and the walls come up. It’s a protective instinct. But I’m opening up now. Fuck, I am wide open. I’ve painted a bull’s eye on my chest, okay. I love you. I do. Please don’t hurt me again.” The last part came out on a whisper that cracked in the middle like a brittle bone. With my whole self, I begged him to stay with me, tears falling, lips hovering over his, and my body tensed as if one heavy word from him would break me. My muscles shivered with the strain of waiting for his answer.

He swallowed hard, closed his eyes, then opened them again. “On one condition.”

“Anything.”

“Marry me.”

I froze. Warring empires collided within me; fear of commitment battled a love that was ancient, although new to me. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the candle flicker. There wasn’t time for logic, only feeling, only intuition.

“Yes,” I said, breathless. “Yes, I will marry you.”

Our eyes locked and a current of magic traveled through me. I wasn’t sure what it meant but I suspected my promise was binding. His fingers reached out, knocking one of the skulls aside, breaking the protective ring. I did not hesitate. I threw myself into the candle, snuffing it out and knocking it to the floor. The hot wax splashed over my fingers, burning me, but the candle was out.

I turned back toward Rick but he looked the same, weak, in pain. “Did it work?”

“Yes,
mi cielo
, it did. But it will take me some time to recover.” He held up a hand. “For now, I am…human.”

I knew what he meant. From his hair to the way he stretched on the floor, was as mundane as it could be. While the candle burned down over the last day, he had transformed into a normal man, and although I’d stopped the magic in time, it would take just as long for him to transform back. Unless I helped him recover.

Glancing down at myself, I noticed I was covered in blood, mud, and other unidentifiable but grotesque things. I stood, then helped him to his feet, half dragging him into the bathroom, where I situated him on the floor.

“Rest here for a minute.”

Eyes already closed, he dipped his chin in response.

“I’m going to give you a bath.”

Rick’s eyes popped open, and he raised an eyebrow, a smile breaking through the exhausted expression on his face.

I winked at him and started the water to warm it up. While I was waiting, I started peeling off bloody clothes, leaving them in a pile next to the toilet. Thankfully, most of the blood wasn’t mine. The last thing I removed was Nightshade. I leaned her against the wall near the cabinets.

“We got our caretaker back,” I whispered to her, glancing at Rick, who’d fallen asleep against the wall. The hum that came from her thin bone edge seemed to say she understood.

R
ick had fallen asleep against the wall. I sensed he needed the rest and took the opportunity to shower. Blood washed off me in maroon waves, and the deep grooves the ropes had left in my wrists filled in minute by minute. The bumps and bruises, as well as the sore muscles, were well on their way to recovery. Part of the healing was due to my advanced regenerative abilities as a Hecate, but the speed of my cell repair was also thanks to Rick. He’d given me so much blood after my last run in with Bathory, it was still in my system. Now it was time for me to return the favor.

After drying off, and brushing out my hair, I dug in his drawer for a candle, a fat red one I’d seen in there before. I placed it on the side of the sink. Although I couldn’t find any matches, I’d learned I didn’t need any. Placing my hand behind the candle, I blew across the wick, picturing a flame in my mind. The air curved against my palm, circled the candle top, then ignited, blazing a good three inches before settling into a more even burn.

“You are learning,
mi cielo
.” Rick’s eyes were open again.

I straddled his body and lowered myself to a squat over him, not even worrying that I was naked and exposed. I wanted to be at his level to talk to him and there was nothing he hadn’t seen before. “I’m not so much learning as remembering. Some things I know from copying into my database. Others just pop into my head when I least expect them.”

“You were amazing tonight. Strong. Intelligent.”

“I thought you were unconscious.”

“I was in and out, but I saw enough.”

I sighed. “I got lucky. If Julius hadn’t shown up to challenge Bathory, I’d probably be a heart lighter.” I rubbed the spot on my chest where the vampire had dug in her nails.

“Judging by the storm you called, I’m not sure you needed Julius at all.”

“I couldn’t hold it for long.”

“Not everyone would have thought to use Soleil as you did, especially after she’d been compromised by the nightmare. How did you know the mud’s effect wasn’t more than skin deep?”

“I didn’t. I just knew I couldn’t take them all out on my own and hoped for the best.”

He nodded, eyes traveling down the length of my arm as if he’d just noticed I was naked.

“I left the
Book of Flesh and Bone
with Soleil and Silas. Do you think that was a mistake?”

“No. I’ve known Soleil for over one hundred years. She’ll guard it with her life. And I believe Silas is as trustworthy.”

“Me too.”

In the silence that followed, the fluorescent bathroom light suddenly became annoying, competing with the gentle glow of the candle. On a whim, I raised a hand and blew a strong breath, willing the lights off. I meant to throw the switch. Instead the bulb exploded in a shower of sparks. “Whoops.”

“I never liked that bulb anyway.”

I watched him for a second, his gray eyes twinkling crisp and clear in the candlelight, more human than usual. His lips twitched, and I broke into laughter.

“I’m going to clean you up.” I nodded toward the full tub and tugged at the bottom edge of his shredded sweater. “This needs to come off.”

He obliged, sitting up a little so I could peel it over his head. The shirt snagged on his wounds, dried to the skin with so much blood, and he cried out as I pulled it off.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’ll be more careful.”

I removed his shoes and socks, then helped him stand and stripped off his jeans. Slowly, I helped him lower himself into the warm water. He winced as the liquid hit the lacerations. I climbed in behind him so that he was leaning against my chest, his waist between my thighs. The tub was large, but still he had to bend his knees to fit.

With a washcloth, I started with his face, removing the layers of blood, sweat, and what I thought might be tears. He allowed me to do it, didn’t even try to pry the cloth from my hands. I was thankful for that. I wanted to do it.

I soaped up the cloth and moved to his right hand, scrubbed each finger, circled his palm, up the inside of his wrist to the elbow and back down his forearm before lowering the trail of lather into the water to rinse away. I started on his other hand.

“There’s something I want to say to you,” I began. I needed to get this off my chest, to begin with a clean slate.

“I am listening.”

“The
Book of Light
showed me some things about our first lifetime together, the day you became my caretaker. When I go back into my memories, I don’t just see what happened, I
feel
as I did that day. I don’t just remember events, I experience them.”

He nodded.

“Rick, I think I pressured you into becoming my caretaker. Clearly you didn’t know exactly what I was or what committing yourself to me entailed. I trapped you, in a way.”

At my coaxing, he leaned forward so I could wash his back. While I did, I waited for his response. One breath, two breaths, the guilt weighed down my chest.

“I knew enough,” he finally said. He flopped back down against me as if the effort of sitting was too much for him.

To give us both a moment, I resumed washing his chest, careful around his wounds, and tried to reposition to reach his legs. He felt what I was trying to do and pivoted, settling across the tub from me, so that we were face to face.

“You couldn’t have known I would make you my caretaker or how painful it would be,” I said.

He swallowed, closed his eyes. “There was not a day in my life with you that I thought you were normal. I call you my sky because I’ve always considered you above me, something beyond my understanding.”

“Hmm. Strange, considering you seem to understand me better than I understand myself most of the time.” I started washing his foot, rubbing my thumb over the arch, moving the soapy rag up his ankle and calf.

“After your father and your people were killed, you moved to the colony. One afternoon, I met you behind my parents’ barn. You told me your mother had visited you, your real mother, and you tried to explain to me who she was. I didn’t believe you. I hushed your words, fearful you would be charged with blasphemy. You showed me. You picked up a stone from the ground and set it on fire in your palm, then in the blink of an eye made that flame fly away, a bright red butterfly.”

“I could do that?”

“You did. I knew you were a witch,
mi cielo
, even if I didn’t understand who Hecate was. While I didn’t know you were binding me all of those times we were together, and caretaker wasn’t a word in my vocabulary, I knew you were different and if anyone in Monk’s parish found out, both of us would hang or burn. I accepted that most certain fate because the idea of living without you was…unbearable.”

“Do you regret it? Do you wish I would have allowed the candle to burn down?”

“Are you sure about marrying me?”

I locked eyes with him. “As sure as a person can be about a thing.”

“I don’t regret it.”

I washed up his inner thigh. A hiss escaped his lips as I reached the length between his legs. Wounded or not, this part of him was responding normally and a warm current rushed through me at the feel of him through the washcloth. I made sure he was clean, stroking his length, around his base, between his legs, until I was so worked up I could hardly think. I tossed the cloth into the corner of the tub. He groaned at the absence of my hand.