The Blood Keeper (The Blood Journals) (38 page)

“You, Mab,” Gabriel said, his smile as smooth as a purr. “You were there, listening to me, coaxing me up through the roots with your smile and your power and your gentle hands. You tore my magic off the roses for it to work itself into this body. To prepare him for me.”

He put a hand over Will’s heart.

“You can’t have him.” I set my cold tea down onto the round sofa table. “His body is not for you, Gabriel. I am sorry for what Evie did to you, no matter how much of what you’re saying is or isn’t true. I am sorry you were cursed, and sorry you lost your life. But.” I stood up. “You cannot have Will. You must let him go. You must free Lukas.”

Gabriel spread his hands and said, “This body is mine now. There is no returning it. I have transformed him into a vessel of magic, down to the essence of his blood. This”—he stood, brushing his hands down his chest and then gesturing wide with his arms out—“this is Gabriel, not Will. That boy did not want it hard enough to hold on the slightest bit.”

Stepping nearer to me, Gabriel allowed sympathy to run
down Will’s face. “I am sorry for your loss, too, Mab. But
you
are the one who cannot have Will.”

He was wrong—I would fight that until I died; there had to be a way. I lowered my eyes, fluttered my lashes, and prayed he would think I fought tears instead of fury. It was not Arthur’s power I needed now, or Granny Lyn’s patience, or Donna’s practicality. I needed my mother.

And her lies.

I let my breath shake, which wasn’t difficult, and wrapped my arms around my ribs as if weaker than I was. My mother had done everything in her power to get what she wanted, and I had that in me, too.

“You’re tired,” Gabriel said.

It was oh so true, and I nodded, letting my eyes fall shut completely. There was nothing I could do tonight, not with my energy so low, not without understanding better what Gabriel had done. Those tattoos held him firmly in Will’s body. And so long as he had Lukas and the black candle rune to strengthen himself, I couldn’t simply overpower him.

“Gabriel,” I whispered, feeling him stand close to me, lean in.

“Yes?”

“Let Lukas go. He’s just a little boy who’s been abused his whole life.”

Gabriel sucked air in through his teeth. I peeked up at him, and saw regret twisting his mouth. “That I cannot do,” he said. “Yet,” he added quickly, when I began to protest. “I will, and I assure you the boy lives, but I need him.” Gabriel carved a smile into Will’s mouth. “I am no fool, Mab. I know how strong your
mother was. How strong the Deacon is. If I lost Lukas as my familiar, you might stand a chance against me.”

I made fists with both my hands, and hit them firmly into his chest just over Will’s heart, where the tattoos swirled together most intricately. Gabriel caught my wrists, and I didn’t struggle. I looked up at him, into those bright, brilliant red eyes that used to be Will’s. That I used to think were beautiful.

“Don’t make me bind you, little Deacon,” he said. “I don’t want this to be your prison as it was mine. This is a home—our home.”

“Home.” I stepped back, tugging away. As Gabriel let his hands fall to his sides, I slapped him as hard as I could. My hand burned with the contact, and Gabriel’s head knocked around. He slowly put a hand against the flare of red on his cheek.

We stood, staring across three feet at each other. I knew he would not leave, because of Lukas, because he thought he belonged here. And I knew I would not leave, because I was the Deacon. Because everything I loved was here.

Until I could rip him out of Will and scatter his soul to the four winds, we were trapped with each other.

An arrhythmic thumping woke me, vibrating up through the frame of my bed. If I stared at the scarves draped across my ceiling, I could just make out the very fine shiver. The whole house seemed to tremble.

I pushed away my covers and got up carefully, listening to the rush of blood in my ears. My fingers and toes were cold, but I was no longer light-headed or overtired. Blue dawn crept in through my partially open window, along with a thick breeze that smelled of mud and roses.

Wiping my hands over my eyes and then back through my hair, I went to the door. Through my bare feet, I could feel the thumping more clearly, a rough punch spreading from somewhere below.

As I opened my bedroom door, Will emerged, too, from Arthur’s room at the end of the hall. My heart surged when I saw his hair tousled flat on one side, and the pillow marks pressed into his cheek. But the euphoria died in the moment of its birth, as Gabriel’s frown drained it away. “I should have turned him into a stool,” he muttered, seeing me.

“Ben?” I’d forgotten about him entirely, and spun in place
to go toward the stairs, before Gabriel’s hand was hot around my wrist.

“I’ll take care of it.” He tugged me back, and my shoulder fell against his chest. I closed my eyes as my skin touched his and the tattoos flared softly red. Tilting up my head, I studied the blood flecks overwhelming the brown of Will’s eyes. They shone angrily. Would they ever fade now? As Gabriel filled the body out more firmly and completely, would the outward signs of trauma vanish?

I wouldn’t let myself find out.

“No, Gabriel. Let me. He knows me, and what would you say to him?”

His smile only covered half his face. “Oh, I wasn’t thinking I’d say anything.”

“We need him—you need him.” My imagination spun furiously, hunting for a convincing argument. “You only must convince him that you’re his brother, and he’ll be able to help you settle into life.”

Gabriel’s fingers tightened around my wrist, and he leaned to hiss in my ear, “You don’t plan to let that happen yet. So you need something better to persuade me with, Mab.”

I sighed sharply through my nose. “Fine. Well then, let me have him anyway. I …” Flattening my free hand against Will’s chest, I paused, struck by a moment of genius. Below, the thumping picked up again with a giant crash like breaking furniture. Ignoring it, I stroked my fingers down the center, gently as I could, then traced along one of the tattoos that curved around his ribs. “I am interested in what you did to Will’s body, even if I don’t intend to let you keep it. You
know … you know I’ve been working with the crows as my familiar?” I glanced up at him with my chin low.

His face softened just a fraction as he watched my eyes. “Yes.”

“They used to be a boy, did you know that? Used to be a young man my mother cursed so that he’s trapped in the birds’ minds.”

“Did she, now.”

“Yes, and … I’ve always felt,” I looked down, hoping I seemed ashamed. “I’ve always felt guilty. Responsible, even. As if I should have stopped her. Let me have Ben, and see about doing to him what you did to Will.”

Gabriel released me. He watched me with narrow eyes, and his head crooked curiously. Slowly, his mouth twitched into a smile, and then he laughed. It was a deep, amused chuckle, and I fought to keep my hands at my sides instead of wrapping them around myself. He was dark and sardonic and everything opposite of Will.

“Mab, you’re good,” he said. “But I knew your mother, and you’re not as good as she was. Josephine never fooled me the way she fooled so many others. Try again. Third time’s a charm, they say.”

Fury sparked in my stomach, and I shoved my fists onto my hips. “Just give him to me, Gabriel. Because I want him, because I’m asking you.” Stepping forward once, I reached up and touched his face, cupping one cheek in my hand. It was the same one I’d slapped, the one with the pillow creases. “As a sign of faith,” I added quietly.

He regarded me, and we stood like that through a long
string of thumps, hammering under our feet. Gabriel lifted a hand and covered mine with it, tenderly. “That’s all you had to do, Mab. Ask.”

I withdrew my hand and turned away. We both knew that was a lie, too.

Before I could slip back into my room to get dressed and brush my teeth, Gabriel said, “Don’t do anything stupid. I’ll know. Through Lukas I feel the whole of the blood land, Mab. So I’ll know if you work heavy magic, I’ll know if you pull just the slightest.”

Pausing with my hand on the door frame and my back to him, wishing he’d let me go so that I could get to Ben before he hurt himself, I said, “I have to touch the magic. It’s who I am.”

“I know.” He was just behind me, and I gasped. He put his hands on my bare shoulders, thumbs over the thin straps of my nightgown. “Just like Arthur.”

His words made me shiver. I’d always wanted to be just like Arthur, but not because someone like Gabriel said so. “Let go,” I said.

He did, but remained close enough that I could feel the heat coming off his body, like tingling magic. “I’ll be near, love. All day. Getting to know this land again, with my own two feet. Don’t call for help, don’t tell anyone what’s happening here. In a few days, we’ll break the news to the family. Until then, anyone else who steps foot on the land I will kill. And if you try to leave, I’ll have no reason to keep Lukas alive.”

Instead of frightening me, his threats only offended me. “Save your threats for someone who’s afraid of you,” I said. Then I stepped into my bedroom and firmly shut the door. A
spot of daylight warmed the rag rug, and I walked into it with my arms held open: the brightness soaked into my face, and I prayed the sun would keep me bold.

Ben Sanger waited at the top step of the cellar, and the moment I opened the door he charged out. I touched his bare arm with my hand, gripping him tight so that the blood rune I’d drawn in my palm connected.

And then I was both of us.

Disorientation drove me to my knees—both my body and Ben’s.

We did not move, and I spread my will through both minds, putting both of us down on our hands, and shifting my own body nearer so that my shoulder brushed his. Physical contact made it easier and faster to slip between us, to overwhelm him with my magic. Nausea clawed up both our throats, and I was twice as weak, but my mother had taught me to do this, to close my eyes and shift into two bodies: two heads, four hands, four feet, two hearts.

As the rhythm of our blood moved into alignment, I focused on breathing, on opening Ben’s eyes. I didn’t need to know anything about him except how to get to his feet. I breathed in and out, walking up the porch in two bodies, going for the telephone. It was a simple thing to reach into his memory to dial his home number, to tell the woman who answered it—who he recognized in a distant echo as his mother—that me and Will had dropped everything for a spur-of-the-moment camping trip. I didn’t give her time to argue, only saying I was sorry with Ben’s voice, only saying I loved her and we’d be home soon.

Then we went, both my body and Ben’s, two steps at a time down the dark hill to the workshop.

I released him and fell to the ground beside him, shaking with exhaustion beside his unconscious body.

After I don’t know how many minutes, I got to my feet and went outside into the meadow of red clover. There I collapsed again, rolled onto my back so that I could watch the sky for the first sign of crows.

For lack of anything better, I used blood to coax roots up through the floor of the barn and into a cage to contain Ben Sanger.