The Blood Keeper (The Blood Journals) (4 page)

The light dappled his skin.

He was my age, with hair cut short against his skull, and he held himself easily, even in the midst of his confusion. A typical summer farmer’s tan darkened his elbows and forearms, even though it was only half into May.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

I drew a long breath, examining the way it passed through my body. My limbs felt heavy, running with thick, tired blood. The tiredness melted my flesh, and I looked down at the remains of the doll. The moment it ran off the blood ground, it had begun its slow deterioration from so-near-human back into this ruin. My vision narrowed in to it, graying with fatigue. Because the circle had been broken, I’d expended too much energy without taking any back; I needed food and my own land for healing. “I only need to get home,” I said. “It’s just south of here.”

Will’s hand found the small of my back and pressed there,
a grounding heat. He’d somehow known to remove the antler from the doll, and he knew just where to support me. He said, “You sure? I can call somebody, or drive you or take you to …” He paused as though he were unsure of himself, yet he kept his arm around me, like a piece of warm wind and sunlight.

“Please let me go,” I said again, wondering if I’d need to ask a third time, if Will was subject to rules like that.

But he said, “Okay, Mab.”

“Thank you.” I smiled, imagining the way Arthur drew people into his confidence easily, with just a relaxed gesture.

“Can you stand on your own?” he asked, hand still on my back.

I drew in another long breath and pushed off his hand. “I think so. It’s been a trying morning.” One of his dogs nosed at my fingers and I scratched behind her ears where the fur was thin and soft.

“That’s Valkyrie,” he said, letting me go and holding out his hand to the second dog. “Here’s Havoc.”

“Did he hurt her?” I had not been directly behind the doll because I’d had to change into proper forest-hunting clothes and grab extra salt. And so I’d run out of the trees just in time to see the doll slam into Will.

His face darkened, and he crouched down, ruffling both hands in the dog’s heavy fur. “I think she’s all right.”

“She will be with you, I’m sure.”

Something strange flitted across Will’s expression before he offered me a smile.

“I should go,” I said.

“Me too.” He glanced at the remains of the doll and spat on
the ground. I recalled the taste of its breath, when I’d kissed it into life.

He opened his mouth as if to ask me again what it was, but instead he tilted his face up to the sky, where the crows spiraled slowly as vultures. He shook his head and laughed softly. “It’s impossible.”

The crucial moment had swung around again: Would he let this go, believe me that it was nothing? Or would it be caught in his memory like a match, sparking again and again in his dreams? I pulled him to his feet, heaving with the strength I had left. We faced one another, and I touched his shoulder with a hand that was sticky with blood and mud and had already left streaks staining his bare chest. “It is impossible,” I said softly but firmly. Spreading my fingers out, I pressed a nearly perfect handprint into his skin. “And not important. You don’t need to think about it; it won’t hurt you or anyone. It’s gone. Fading like it never existed.”

The sun was behind him, shining all around his head so that his hair turned into an auburn halo and his face was only shadows. For a split second he seemed exactly like the doll, muddy muscles and formed-wax grin. But then he shook his head, dispelling the illusion, and said, “Right. Impossible.”

I took the few steps toward where my magic bag lay under the sweeping willow branches. As I tucked the bag over my shoulder, I glanced at Will again. “Thank you, Will. I owe you. Remember this: my home is two miles south off the county road there.”

“Two miles. Got it.”

“If you ever need anything.”

“Yeah.” He was staring at me, tracking my every movement with his eyes.

All the goodbyes I knew were formal and full of God and blessings and charms, and I wasn’t certain he’d even remember me. People were so good at dismissing anything that didn’t make sense, and I was positive I did not fit into Will’s world. So I merely said, “Go with grace, Will.”

I turned my back to him, focused on walking in a straight, steady line. Crow shadows scattered across the grass as the birds flew after me.

I grabbed drive-through doughnuts on my way home.

The plan had been to go out to the lake and get rid of my bad dreams, be back in time for church before Mom had to nag. Maybe even catch a nap before Ben got home.

Turned out I was covered in mud and blood, about fifteen minutes later than I meant to be, and instead of my nightmares going away I was probably going to be dreaming about strange girls in goggles and monsters who wanted to eat my dogs.

Total FUBAR.

I pushed the gas pedal, eyes peeled for cops.

Hopefully, Dad would be close enough to a good mood because of Ben that the doughnuts would push him over the edge. And Mom liked them enough she might not mind missing church. My truck filled up with the smell of sugar instead of mud, and the alt station I’d been listening to went to commercial. I flipped over to classical, turning it as loud as it could go. I’d left the prairie and river valley mostly behind. Newly built houses popped up in identical cul-de-sacs on both sides of the road.

Our neighborhood was the color of a wasps’ nest, and just
as uniform. Every house was one of five basic designs, with differences that didn’t go beyond certain paint colors and allowable yard art. Clean. Sterilized. Not the kind of place I could even think about a mud monster. Or a very, very weird girl. Who’d put her bloody hand on my chest and said,
It’s not important
.

The more I thought about it, the less it seemed to matter. Like they say: out of sight, out of mind.

I turned the music even louder. Everybody on our block was used to me bringing the bass, but not on a Sunday morning. I didn’t cut the sound down until I rolled into the driveway. The front door opened the second I turned off the car anyway, as if Mom had been stalking at the window.

She waited for me on the small porch, in pressed slacks and a violet blouse.

All I could smell was mud and sugar, sticking to my sweaty face. I plastered on a smile, hoping to charm her so that I didn’t have to lie.

“Hey, Mama!” I said as I opened the door, and I charged at her, arms spread as if I’d grab her up in a great big, filthy bear hug.

Her eyes widened and she held out her hands. “Oh no you don’t! William Sanger, stop!”

I froze with my hands up and curled into claws. Slowly, I lowered my arms and tilted my chin down so that, from the height of the front steps, all she could see were my big brown eyes.

Mom rolled hers. “Oh, Will, what have you been doing?” She glanced over me at the truck.

“Out getting doughnuts?” I offered. “They’re fresh and hot.”

“Did you have to ford a river?”

“To the land of King Donutus, where Val and Havoc fought valiantly against the … um … Evil Lord Food Pyramid.”

Laughter slipped out of her, and I relaxed. If she laughed five times a day, I was winning. Today, my goal would be ten, one for every month Aaron had been gone.

She said, “Well, Sir William, get yourself cleaned up.”

“Yes, ma’am.” I jogged back to the car and dragged out the flimsy pink doughnut box. “I need to take the dogs around back and hose them down.”

As I gave the doughnuts to Mom, she carefully avoided the mud smears my hands left. Her eyelashes fluttered, and she glanced down at the cartoon doughnut printed on the box before drawing herself up and smiling. “Oh, Will. I suppose we have time for doughnuts, too, if you hurry yourself up with the dogs. Church starts in forty minutes.”

“I thought it started ten minutes ago?”

“We’re going across to Reformation instead, since you’re so late.”

“Why bother?” I glanced at the house like it might tell me what was going on.

She put a fist on her hip. “To thank God your brother’s home safe.”