The Blood Keeper (The Blood Journals) (18 page)

This time, part of me wondered if they’d find any new wings.

I spent most of Monday on the sofa with Ben, heels on the coffee table, watching a string of movies. He picked an old favorite:
Nightmare on Elm Street
, which made my skin crawl because of recent events. Halfway through, I shut it off. But he didn’t want to watch any action movies, either. He wouldn’t admit it, but I was pretty sure it was all the shooting that turned him off. By the time we’d settled on and made it through five episodes of a
South Park
marathon, Mom believed I was going to live. I hadn’t had a temperature all day or vomited since Sunday afternoon. To prove the vertigo was gone, I spun in a circle for her. And I didn’t mention the bruise on my chest. Or the slight headache rooted behind my eyeballs.

Convinced, she ran out for groceries, promising to be home by the time Dad got off work. Ben offered to go with her if they could stop at a video store to pick up something decent to watch. I told him that in the twenty-first century we stream movies through the Internet. He said they’d done that in Afghanistan, but he hadn’t been aware that Kansas was so caught up.

Before we devolved, Mom dragged him out the door and I was on my own.

I stood for a moment in the middle of the den. Quiet pervaded the house. Mom’s car rumbled to life, and I listened as they pulled down the driveway. I couldn’t hear anything.

My options were: turn on the TV, radio, or my iPod before the noiselessness got to me; call Matt; or go outside and crash around with the girls. I picked the last. Changed quickly into track pants and a T-shirt, then headed out back. I jogged across the yard to the kennel. “Hey, girls,” I called. Val barked back, her high-pitched happy bark. It took a second to knock back the lock, then fling open the door. Val’s tail whipped and her jaw hung open in a grin. I reached out to pet her. The muscles around my ribs pulled uncomfortably.

A growl stopped me.

Val’s tail drooped, and both she and I looked right, to where Havoc stood with her legs wide, her ears back, and her lips pulled up over her teeth. She growled again.

At me.

“Havoc.” It wasn’t a strong response, but my voice couldn’t push past the shock clogging my chest. “Hey, Havoc.”

She growled again, her fur bristling. Valkyrie whined.

“Havoc!” I snapped, lowering my voice and straightening my back. “Sit.” I chopped my hand down through the air.

Her growl only strengthened. I stared at her, remembering when Aaron and I had gone to pick the puppies up. All ears and tongues, they’d been rolling in this massive pile of brown and tan and black inside a playpen made for toddlers. Five of them, all females. Barking their tiny little barks, and one of them growling so high and cute it sounded like a bumblebee. Their mom lolled on the grass next to the pen, worn out but with her jaws open in a grin. Aaron had knocked his elbow into mine. “Dig your hands in, find out who bites.”

I’d knelt and reached into the pen for the growling puppy. Lifting her out with my hands around her ribs, I’d put her against my chest and stared down into those black eyes. Her growls tickled my palms.

“That one doesn’t like anybody,” the breeder was saying. “She just growls and growls, though surprisingly shows no other signs of—”

But Havoc-the-puppy suddenly stopped. Her ears popped up and she stretched her neck forward to sniff at my mouth. I laughed and blew gently at her. She shook all over, then curled up in my hands and fell asleep. I hadn’t put her down until we got home over an hour later.

Now she was full grown, a hulking, sprawling beast of a dog who’d never so much as considered disobeying me. Who’d leaned into my thigh the entire four hours of Aaron’s wake while Val huddled in a corner.

I knew I should grab her ruff and force her to the ground,
should push in and remind her who was pack leader here, but I couldn’t move.

Valkyrie hunkered down, head between her paws, and shifted her eyes from me to Havoc. “Val,” I said, slapping my thigh. “Come.”

Neither dog listened.

I tried again, but even I could hear the uncertainty in my voice. “Havoc?”

She jerked forward, barking. It was like a punch in the gut, and I fell back. Havoc followed me, her bark getting angrier. I got out of the kennel as she took a swipe at my hand, and skidded over the grass to grab the door and swing it shut. It clattered into place and I threw the lock, put my back against it. Her claws scratched the wood as she slammed herself up. The wall of the kennel shook, but was solid. I closed my eyes, gasping for breath. What was wrong with my dog?

Turning, I pressed myself to the fence and peered through the slit between two two-by-fours. Her front paws were up at chest height, and she barked hard again and again and again. “Havoc!” I yelled. Her voice hit me over and over, and Valkyrie joined in. I stepped away, slapped my hands over my ears. They sprinted back and forth inside the kennel, shadows flashing between the boards.

I spun on my toes and ran inside, slamming open the back door and not bothering to close it. I dashed into the ground floor bathroom. The adrenaline surge felt like a strike of lightning. My stomach twisted and I glanced at the toilet, but I wasn’t that bad. I wrenched the knob on the sink and filled
my cupped hands with water. I flung it on my face. The cold shocked me, and I choked in a lungful of air. Long, cool trails of water trickled down my neck, hung off my chin. I closed my eyes.
Havoc
.

Trying to get a grip on myself, I put my hands flat against the wall on either side of the mirror. I blew a long breath and leaned in, all my weight on my arms like I was coming down from a push-up against the mirror. When my face was inches away, I stared at my own eyes. They were brown, with a thin circle of gray at the edge of the iris.

At least, they were supposed to be.

I reached behind me and flipped on the lights. I winced away from the sudden glare but forced myself to lean in again.

Along the left border of my left iris was a very thin strip of bright red. Like my eye was bleeding.

“It could be natural,” I whispered to my reflection. My breath fogged the glass. It could have been just like a bruise on my eyeball. Once a kid in my eighth-grade class on the Marine base in Okinawa had been in a bad bike accident, and he’d come to school with the white of his eye bloodred. But the whole side of his face was a giant bruise, too. I didn’t have any injuries to my head.

This was too much. Something bad was happening to me, and it wasn’t some regular disease. What kind of virus made your devoted dog suddenly turn on you? All I knew was where this had all started.

I only took time to run upstairs for my keys and cell phone before getting in my car and driving west for the prairie.

It should have been a slow, meandering, peaceful summer; my thriving garden offered more than enough for me to do. And I began experimenting with teas and soap and candles, taking the chore from you because of how much fun it was finding the perfect scent combinations, boiling tallow and dipping wicks, and adding just a hint of magic so that when we went to sell and trade for milk and meat, our neighbors clamored for our wares. I loved having my patient work bring sustenance to the land and our table like that
.

As it grew warmer into June, I frequently spent afternoons with tea and a book in the shade of one of the oaks. The only problem was the forest cut most of the wind down, leaving me with only a feeble breeze to wick the sweat from my brow. I decided to plant a linden tree at the edge of my garden, something to give us fragrant blossoms in a few years and shade nearer to the house, where the wind reached
.

But one afternoon Gabriel came charging out of the house, the screen door slapping hard. “Arthur!” He yelled, casting his voice over the whole land with his magic
.

I was on my feet, stumbling in shock. My book fell to the ground and I ran up, demanding he tell me what was wrong. His dark eyes darted east again and again, then he sneered, not at me but at whatever emotion churned inside him. “Trouble’s coming. I can smell her from here.”

There was no other warning before we heard tires and the rumble of an engine making its way up the dirt road. We turned together to see a
sleek but snub-nosed car push its way up the hill. The woman driving barely stopped the car before flinging open the door and leaping out. She wore an obvious red hat and a white sleeveless dress with red flowers falling down the left hip. Her golden hair curled perfectly under her ears, making me hate her just a little bit, and she tossed her sunglasses into the driver’s seat, covering her mouth with a bright grin. “Hello, there!”

I don’t think I’d ever seen such a gorgeous, flamboyant woman outside a movie, or anyone less suited to our quiet hillside. There was nothing for me to say, and Gabriel kept to my side
.

She took two long steps toward us, strong and graceful as a lioness. “Is that you, Gabe?” Her smile shifted into something sharp, and I knew she didn’t like him any more than he liked her
.

How could this be a friend of Arthur’s?

I lifted my chin. “Introduce us, please, Gabriel.”

His fingers were tight on my elbow as he said, “Evie, this is Josephine Darly, a venomous, manic blood witch. Jo, this is Miss Evelyn Sonnenschein.”

“What?” Josephine’s blue eyes widened. “No epithets for the girl?” She winked at me. “He only doesn’t like me because Arthur prefers me.”

“Pities you, rather,” Gabriel snapped. His entire body was rigid
.

My horror at their bickering had no time to find a voice, for you came striding out of the forest, from the barn. You were behind her, but Josephine somehow sensed it, spinning on her toes like a little girl. “Deacon!” she chirped, which was a thing our neighbors called you, too, and then she dashed across the meadow, kicking off her red shoes and throwing her hat into the wind
.

You caught her hands with a charmed smile, and I saw something on your face I’d never seen before. Excitement. You were thrilled to have her, eager when she kissed both your cheeks, and you barely waved at us as she
tore you away, running and skipping toward the south, past my garden and over the spot I’d imagined for my linden tree. You took her careening down the hill to where the apple trees waited
.

I remained breathless and trapped in a sudden stupor. “Gabriel?” I managed to whisper
.

He rolled his eyes, shaking himself free of the same stupor. “They’ll be back when they’re finished.” He started back into the house, but I was frozen
.

“Finished what?”

From the porch step, Gabriel twisted around. “Devouring the world.”

While the living crows guarded Lukas as he slept, I brought the body of the dead crow down to the workshop, which was built like a barn, and maybe a hundred years ago had worked as one, too. Bits and pieces of refuge from the land crowded everywhere, piled and shelved and gathering dust. The hull of an old rowboat leaned against a stack of crates, and when I was little it had been my favorite place for watching Arthur create potions and sketch. Every year when we redid the runes on the outside of the barn, I’d drawn charms on the underside of the boat with leftover paint. Once, Arthur crawled inside with me, hunched over to fit his back against the curve of the boat. He’d brought a candle and said it was a good, safe spot. Together we buried a circle of silver wire around it, and sang blessing songs. We wove a mat of cattail leaves and soaked it in milk and blood and honey. “The only thing that would make you safer here,” Arthur said when we finished, “is if you had roots growing out of your knees.”

At the long table, I set the crow’s body carefully down, pinning the wings to the much-marred wood. I plucked out his breast feathers, laying them back in the cedar box for
safekeeping. With one of the knives from the butcher’s block, I sliced open the chest, glad his fellows had remained behind at the house. They would fly to me if Lukas needed me, and there was no need for them to watch as I carefully removed the long breastbone and cracked back the ribs.