The Blood Alchemist (The Final Formula Series, Book 2) (27 page)

“I need some clothes,” I muttered, heading back to the bedroom.

“I found you some.” Rowan followed me back. “Or rather, a bunch of fabric you can cover yourself in.” He waved a hand at the plaid clothing atop the dresser. “They’re pajamas, but the pants have a drawstring.”

I picked up the shirt. It rivaled the blanket on the bed. “Dear God. I think I understand why you didn’t find anything his girlfriend left tucked in a drawer.”

“How do you know those don’t belong to a girlfriend?”

I snorted and looked up.

He cocked a brow.

I didn’t know how to respond, so I sat down on the edge of the bed to pull on the pants. It might as well have been a skirt for the amount of fabric involved. I had to work the excess on the pull cord to the back, otherwise I couldn’t draw it tight enough. It still sat low on my hips when I finished—and felt like an innertube. The top wasn’t much better, covering my hands and falling to mid-thigh.

I held out my arms to either side. “You know, I prefer your
flammable
shirt to this.” It had made me so angry when he’d given me a T-shirt with that word displayed across the front.

Rowan leaned against the dresser watching me, clearly trying not to laugh. “So do I.”

It was my turn to arch a brow.

“Now, put on the socks,” he said.

“Yes, Your Grace.” I climbed back on the bed to pull on the fuzzy green socks. They fit like knee socks, the heel halfway up my calf, but warm toes would be nice.

“Shoes?” I asked.

“Size eleven, men’s. I’ll pack you out to the truck.”

I opened my mouth.

“Don’t argue.”

“Okay.” I didn’t feel like arguing when he was in one of his controlling moods. “But can I clump out to the facilities in them?”

He sighed and turned toward the door. “Very well.”

Rowan was right about the boots. I could have fit both of my feet in them, end to end. It was a challenge just to make it to the outhouse, dragging my feet through the couple of inches of new snow that had fallen through the night. My thighs were aching by the time I got back to the porch.

Cold and anxious to get back inside, I followed the wrap-around porch to the front of the house, my boots pounding out an awkward beat on the boards as I shuffled along. Annoyed with my slow progress, I bent and tugged loose the laces. Not that I really needed to in order to step out of the boots, but it made it easier.

I straightened and came nose to nose with Henry, or rather, the business end of his pistol. I cried out in surprise and fell back. The giant boots tripped me up, and I landed on my butt, hard enough to bruise my tailbone.

“Clumsy little bitch, aren’t you?” His lip curled, but he kept the pistol trained on me.

I just stared at him. If Henry was here, then so were his brothers.

Chapter
21

“W
here are George and Brian?” I asked.

“Around, but you won’t see them.”

My heart thumped against my breastbone. Rowan. I had to get them away from Rowan. I untangled myself from the boots and got to my feet. I glanced toward the trees. If I took off running, was there any chance I could lead them away?

“You’d never make it,” Henry said, following my gaze. “I’d shoot you before you cleared the porch railing.” He took a step closer.

I pressed my oversized sleeve to my nose. He still reeked of vomit and shit.

“You’re going to pay, bitch.” He leveled the gun at my forehead. “Die by your own bullet.”

A male scream rent the air.

Henry’s focus shifted behind me. “Brian? No, James wouldn’t.”

I didn’t follow that, but decided to leave the mystery for later. Taking advantage of his inattention, I ducked low and ran past him.

He tried to catch my shoulder, but his fingers caught nothing but fabric. I hadn’t bothered to button the oversized top and let it slip away.

I sprinted for the front door, determined to warn Rowan before they got the jump on him.

No longer needing stealth, Henry’s boots thumped behind me, growing closer with each stride.

I rounded the final corner to the front of the house. The front door, my destination, was now in sight. I spared a glance over my shoulder and found Henry only three strides away. He raised the gun, but didn’t aim at me.

I jerked my attention forward. Rowan stood just outside the front door. His eyes kindled, focusing past me.

Henry’s footfalls halted. Did he know that Rowan was limited by distance? I glanced back to confirm it. Henry had stopped just past the corner of the house. He lifted his arm and aimed the gun.

“No!” I screamed and launched myself at Rowan. The gun fired. Pain exploded in my shoulder an instant before I collided with him.

Rowan’s arm came around me as the momentum of my leap slammed him back against the building. He grunted on impact, but kept us upright.

I wrapped my arms and legs around him, and pressed my face into his throat. If Henry fired again—

A snarl sounded behind me, and I lifted my head in time to watch James, in hellhound form, leap at Henry.

Henry fired, but the shot passed right through James. The bullet struck the porch rail in an explosion of wood chips

James didn’t flinch or alter his flight. He jumped
into
Henry as the hell portal opened behind his brother. Henry fell back and a clawed hand appeared from within the portal catching his shoulder. Henry screamed as the claws dug in. He was jerked backward with a force so great, his feet left the ground. The portal winked closed, taking Henry with it.

“What have you done?” Rowan whispered.

I turned my head toward him once more, gritting my teeth against the pain.

“Did it find you?” he asked.

I frowned. “What?”

“I lost the bullet. Did it hit you?”

“Oh. Yes.” I tried to shrug and regretted it. “Better me than you. I’m human.”

“Not if you’re immortal.”

If the Final Formula had made me immortal, had it also made me magical?

“Are you?” he whispered. Gold light surged through his orange irises like rolling flame.

“Your eyes are really beautiful like that, but I wish you’d release the power.”

He blinked and I almost laughed. Ah hell, if I was going to die…

I pressed my lips to his.

Rowan made a sound—a groan, a sob, something—and turned to press my back to the wall. I grunted as pain shot through my shoulder, but quickly forgot it with the intensity of his kiss. My arms and legs were still wrapped around him, and he slipped his hands beneath my thighs to support me.

I could think of nothing I’d rather be doing with my last few seconds of existence. I forgot about the pain and the cold, aware of his solid body pressing into mine. How depressing that I’d never get to prove to him that I was no longer the monster my past claimed me to be. This was it.

Or was it?

I pulled back to look into his flame-colored eyes. “I wasn’t paying attention, but I think ten seconds are up.”

His brow furled. “The Deacon’s grandson took a minute.”

“I am
not
a necromancer.” I emphasized each word.

The corner of his mouth twitched as he fought a smile. My eyes caught on his lips, and I wondered what he’d do if I kissed him again.

“I knew it,” a new voice said.

I gasped, looking back over Rowan’s shoulder. George stepped onto the porch with us, pistol in hand. Oddly, he was focused on me.

Rowan lowered me to the floor and turned to face him. I started to follow, but a wave of dizziness held me in place. Had the kissing left me lightheaded or was it some residual alchemy from the bullet?

George took a step closer, and his gun vanished in a flash of blue-white flame. He gasped and finally shifted his attention to Rowan.

“Try something,” Rowan said. “For James’s sake, I won’t kill you in cold blood, but I will defend myself, or her.”

“Until the slut spreads her legs for someone else.”

Rowan stood taller and gold shimmered through his eyes.

George laughed. “She cheated on my brother. What makes you think you’re the only one rutting between those thighs?”

Without warning, Rowan tackled him. The pair slammed into the porch railing. A loud crack, and the railing gave, sending them both tumbling into the snow-covered flowerbed.

I blinked. Not the reaction I expected from the always-in-control Lord of Flames.

The pair rolled to their feet and faced off in the front yard. Rowan moved with that easy confidence instilled by years of studying whatever martial art it was he practiced. George, shorter and much more heavily muscled, displayed an animal grace I’d seen before. My skin prickled just watching him. He reminded me of James.

They moved out of my line of sight, the fight punctuated by the occasional grunt or the sound of flesh striking flesh. I pushed off the wall to better see, and my vision doubled. God, I was dizzy. I fell back against the wall and cried out as my shoulder smacked the cedar siding. Black dots swam before my eyes, and I squeezed them shut, trying to regain control.

James snarled and my eyes snapped open. Rowan and George had shifted into view, James standing only feet away, his ebony fur such a contrast to the snow.

George shifted to face him, keeping Rowan in sight. “She’s cheating on you, little brother. I’m defending your honor since you will not.”

James lifted his lips, exposing plentiful razor-edged teeth. His growl stood my hair on end like it always did. A shimmer of darkness, and the portal opened behind George.

He glanced back before turning wide eyes on James. “You can’t. If you do—”

James sprang. I expected him to vanish into George as he had with Henry. Instead he slammed into him. George fell back and vanished into the portal. A pause, and James jumped in after him.

With George gone, I gave in and slid down the wall to sit at its base. My shoulder thumped off each cedar slat, and I whimpered my way to the deck.

Squeezing my eyes shut, I shook my head trying to dispel the dizziness.

“Addie?” Rowan’s warm fingers touched my cheek. “Talk to me.”

“I won’t be much of a conversationalist. I’m really dizzy.”

“There’s blood on the wall.”

“I was shot, remember?” I rubbed both hands over my face. A new thought occurred. “Is it bleeding very bad?” Would I be dizzy if I were bleeding out?

“It isn’t arterial flow,” James said, appearing beside us.

“How would you know?” I asked. He couldn’t see the injury; my back was against the wall.

His eyes held mine. “Scent.”

“That’s interesting.” I smiled, trying to reassure him.

His dark brows rose, his expression skeptical. He turned to Rowan. “You should ash the bullet before she heals over it.”

“I’ll be fine,” I said. Rowan had used enough fire already.

“They’ll have to cut it out,” James said. “Surgery and a hospital stay.”

Which I didn’t have time for. I exhaled. “Fine.” I met Rowan’s eyes. “You can do it?”

“No problem.”

“He ashed that pen you lodged in my heart,” James said.

“Thanks for reminding me.”

“It was a smart move.”

I grunted, not wanting to discuss anything about that day. “By the way, I have a potion for you—not that it’ll work.”

“What kind of potion?”

“Something like Extinguishing Dust, but for necromancers.”

“That’s why you stole that Ziploc bag from Xander.” Rowan’s lips twitched upward into a smile.

“Have you been worrying about what I was up to?”

“With necromancer blood? More curious than worried.” He braced a hand on the wall beside me. “Ready?”

“Light me up, Your Grace.”

Rowan closed his eyes, and his brows furled in concentration. A flash of warmth in my screaming shoulder pulled a gasp from me.

“Addie?” James prompted.

“I felt it.”

Rowan opened his eyes, the orange receding as I watched. “Did I hurt you?”

“No, surprised me.”

James scooped me up. “Let’s get her patched up and get out of here.” He carried me into the cabin.

“Where are your brothers?”

“Spending some quality time with Gavin.”

“All three of them?” That first scream must have been Brian. I leaned back to look James in the eye. “You left them there?”

“For now.”

I studied his expression, trying to understand the emotion I saw reflected there. Sadness? Resignation?

“I can’t kill them,” he said.

“I understand.”

“No, you don’t.” He set me down on the bed. “For the grim to exist, a male descendant must exist.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. Gavin said I will cease to be if my brothers die without any sons.”

I stared at him. That was the reason he’d stayed with his brothers? He was protecting them?

“I’m a coward, Addie.” He raised his head, staring off into a place I couldn’t see. “I don’t want to…die.”

A shimmer of darkness, and the hellhound took his place before he leapt through the wall.

I looked up, meeting Rowan’s eyes. “Good thing you didn’t ash the bastards.”

“I couldn’t.”

I grunted. “You’re a better person than me. I seriously considered giving them a permanent dirt nap instead of the explosive diarrhea.”

He lifted a dark brow.

“That really shouldn’t surprise you. I killed Emil without a second thought.”

“Only because you beat me to it.” He crossed to the dresser and began going through the drawers. “And you misunderstand me. I couldn’t kill James’s brothers because I couldn’t see in them. At least, I couldn’t see in George.”

I stared at him, stunned. “They’re like James?”

“To a degree. I had a vague impression. Maybe if he’d been closer…”

“You two were rolling around the front yard.”

“I was too distracted to look.” He found a white sheet and picked up a large pocketknife from the dresser top. “I’ll need to cut that shirt off you.”

“You’d think I’d be more excited.”

That pulled a smile from him. He laid his supplies at the end of the bed. “Let me find some kind of disinfectant and we’ll get started.” He turned toward the door.

“Hey, I’m immortal, remember? I’ll be fine.”

He hesitated in the doorway. “Your bullet proved that you’re still human enough. We’ll err on the side of caution.”

I groaned then caught a sound. I wasn’t certain, but I was pretty sure he chuckled.

I held the sheet to my chest, gritting my teeth against the pain.

“Almost done,” Rowan muttered from his place on the bed behind me. He pressed the wet cloth against my throbbing shoulder blade, dabbing more alcohol on the wound.

“Enough!” I balled the sheet in my fists and tried not to scream. Dear God, that hurt worse than being shot.

“Sorry.” Rowan rubbed my back just beneath the wound, his touch light and gentle.

I blinked my tearing eyes. “No more. I’ll take my chances with infection.”

“I think it’ll be all right.”

“Does that mean you’re done playing doctor?”

“We still need to bandage this.”

“Will that involve hot glue or roofing nails?”

He snorted. “No.”

“Okay. You may proceed.”

“I’d like to rub a little medicated salve on first to keep the bandage from sticking.”

I groaned.