The Blood Keeper (The Blood Journals) (45 page)

We met, the three of us, as the rising sun bathed the oak circle and the Pink House in soft golden light. Ben dropped down out of one of the far trees and loped over to the rosebush.

“He hasn’t moved at all,” he said quietly.

I scanned the rune-work they’d done, nodding my approval. It was quite good. Taking the knife that had been stabbed into the ground and waiting, I pricked my wrist. “Ben, I need your bare chest.”

He hesitated, frowned at Will, but then quickly stripped off his shirt.

With my blood I painted a rune over Ben’s heart. “To hold your body firm against Gabriel’s possession,” I said.

“That’s really pretty nasty.”

Will smiled. “You get used to it.”

Ben touched my wrist, smeared the last drop of blood there. “Are your tattoos like his?”

“Yes. Blood tattoos, runes worked into my skin as permanent magic … Oh.” All the air rushed out of my lungs. This countercurse would strip my tattoos out of my flesh, the tattoos Arthur had given me, that we’d painstakingly diagrammed and spent long mornings under the sun pricking into place.

I’d always believed I’d have that piece of him forever. Indelibly marked into my skin.

Tears washed my eyes, but I ground my teeth, pushed my tongue against the roof of my mouth, and sucked in air through my nose. Will touched my cheek, his thumb on my lips. I nodded against his palm and blew out a harsh, strengthening sigh. Ben touched my shoulder, though I could see in his face that he didn’t understand. He didn’t waste time with questions, either.

I said, “Will, when you stab the knife in, I’ll feel it, and I’ll immediately begin pulling on your power to disconnect Lukas.”

“I know.”

“And then you just concentrate on your body.” I took his feathered hand in both of mine and gazed up. The sunlight turned his skin oily, a blue and violet and golden sheen through the feathers. It was beautiful, especially with the turquoise eyes peering down at me. “This one will fall to pieces, and you must hold on to your body. Want it more than anything.”

He brushed stray curls off my face, and I wished my hair could just stay where I put it sometimes. “I know, Mab. I know what to do.”

“We both do.” Ben stepped in to make us three points in a small triangle.

“You remember Faith’s number and address?” I flicked my eyes at him, unable to stop fretting, unable to move on with this last act of magic.

“Yes.” Ben rattled off the information, and I had to nod. If things went wrong, if Will was injured, or I was, or even Lukas needed healing, he would go for Faith. I wouldn’t be able to help.

Ben squeezed my arm and backed off, while Will glanced over his wide shoulder toward the house. He looked back at me, and I only stared at him for a long moment, reveling in the colors and crow remnants. There was nothing left for me to say, and Will gave my hair a final little tug before going with Ben.

I watched them approach the porch, then turned around to kneel at the unfinished edge of the salt circle.

Ben and I paused on the porch. He set his closed fist against my shoulder. I nodded. Our plan was simple. He was the distraction. I would come up behind my body and jam the dagger in. Hopefully missing all major organs. Since it was my own body. That I was about to mutilate.

Better not to think about it.

My brother gripped the door, popped it open, and strode inside.

I counted one-Mississippi-two-Mississippi up to twenty, with my forehead pressed into the door frame. Listened for his voice. For any yell for help.

Then in I went.

The windows had all been opened, and the temperature in the house matched the outside. A little humid. A little breezy. No lights were on, and everything was grayish and lit with the morning sun. I heard my voice from the right, and crept slowly forward.

My body had its back to me, hands on my hips, and he was saying to Ben, “…  letting you get out too much.”

Ben stood near the open window, having maneuvered so that there was a sofa between him and my body. A curtain flapped against his elbow.

It was this easy.

I stepped forward, out of the hallway and into the den.

Gabriel stood loosely, hip cocked. It was so not like how I imagined myself. Even from behind. He was shirtless, wearing slept-in pants. The blood tattoos had mellowed into a rusty, dim shadow of what they’d been before. Old. Like they were totally a part of him. Of me.

“I called the police,” Ben said, edging nearer to the window.

“I cut the phone cord two days ago. Stand still, or I’ll turn you into topiary.” But Gabriel didn’t sound at all concerned.

It was impossible to move. That was my body. My skin. I clenched the dagger in my hand that I was supposed to drive into it. My mind whirled. I tried to recite the magic words to myself. Tried to use them to force my feet forward.

“If you’re gonna do anything,” Ben said to Gabriel, but his eyes flicked back to me, “
then do it
, damn it.”

I leapt forward and drove the dagger into my own shoulder.

The shock of Will’s spell burned in the center of the black candle rune over my spine. I sliced open both of my palms and placed them at either end of the broken line of salt, completing the circuit with my body. “Unmake,” I said, “your power severed. Your blood unbound. The mark of his strength on your flesh, shattered. The mirror cracked, this
reflection sundered. The mark of his strength on your flesh, shattered.”

The words were the reverse of the black candle binding.

Beneath me the earth trembled.

Gabriel jerked and cried out. He staggered, but caught himself on the back of an armchair. Turning, he tried to reach around to pull out the dagger. But he faltered as his knees gave out. He fell hard, and blood streamed down his back in a fresh assault. From his knees, he glanced up at me, horror dawning on his face. My face. “The bird boy,” he whispered.

I stepped close again. Reached to touch his blood, to start the spell. But he grabbed my wrist. “Don’t. I’ll make you so much more powerful than she has.”

Ben clocked Gabriel in the head with his elbow. He toppled to the side, and I jumped with him. Landed on my knees, and as Gabriel groaned I smeared the blood from the dagger into a circle and said, “By his blood, cleanse this curse.”

“Mab!” Gabriel screeched. The tattoos on his skin flared as red-hot as fire. He dove forward and hit me with both hands. We collapsed back. My body slammed on top of me. Its blood dripped hot onto my chest.

The rune on my back exploded in power.

A strangled cry burst out of my mouth. Gabriel gritted his teeth—my teeth!—and said, “She can take Lukas from me, but this body is mine now.”

“No, it’s mine,” I managed. It was like looking up into a mirror, only with no expression I’d ever make.

“William!” He laughed, hard and ugly. My hands slid in the blood as I pushed at him. All his muscles trembled and shook, and the skin was on fire. His face flushed, his lips almost purple.

He rolled off me. My chest was falling to pieces again. All the skin sloughing around, the feathers shaking. I couldn’t breathe. I was dying.

Ben stood over us both, and he used his foot to knock Gabriel back onto the floor as he tried to get up. Gabriel coughed, and I straddled him, pinned him down.

The ground bucked under us.

Gabriel choked on his own cries, writhing. I held on to his shoulders, spread my weight down onto him. “Stop!” he screamed. “Stop, I don’t deserve this!”

“It’s my body.”

“This curse will destroy you, too!”

“I know.” I ground my fingers into his shoulders. Felt my own blood slick under my hands. And the burning magic breaking me down. Tearing through this crow body. Spinning in a ball of fire, a supernova, in my heart. I closed my eyes and thought of myself. Gabriel screamed, and I screamed, too.

Ben yelled my name.

I refused to let go, even as his blood tattoos turned to acid, even as the body around me tore apart.

This was mine. Mine. My body. My life.

Mine.

My familiar exploded in a flare of magic so bright my vision whited out and it was all I could do to channel it into this unbinding.

Fire tore through the black candle rune, burning my throat, shaking my bones so high and fast it felt like they shattered into a million pieces. I dug my fingers into the circle, focused, focused, focused while I burned from the inside out.

The inferno raged, louder than anything, roaring until I couldn’t hear my own screams.

And it vanished, sucking into the earth as the salt circle held.

The roses had turned to ash, and Lukas lay prone in a bed of it, everything burned away but his body.

Struggling, I crawled forward, shook him. His skin burned me, but I shook harder. “Lukas!”

He opened his eyes and sat up. “Mab.” His voice sounded weak and dry.

I smiled, my lips cracking painfully. “Go. Get out of this circle,” I ordered.

“But Mab.” His eyes were sunken into his face, his cheeks hollow. But he lived.

“No, go. I am … not finished.”

The earth had not stopped trembling.

“Get out of the circle, Lukas!”

He tripped to his feet, falling over himself, but managed it. The burn of the countercurse tingled my feet as I stood, too—I had to, or this magic would tear everywhere, destroy
everything, including Lukas, including the whole blood ground. Everything.

Grasping my knife, I held out my hand and put the dagger’s tip to the tattoo on my wrist. I pricked it deeply, letting the pain become a sound on my tongue, and I walked to the nearest of the nine spirals. “By my blood, cleanse this curse!”

I was nothing but fire.

And my name.
Will
.

Wind tore through my feathers, I couldn’t control it. I couldn’t fly. I was falling. I was—

Will.

The first drop of blood fell. I felt the ripple as it awakened my rune.

The second drop at the second spiral sent a shiver of pleasure up from my toes.
Ah, magic!

The third tore at my heart.

I dug the point of the dagger back into my wrist. The fourth and fifth drops of blood weakened my knees. The sixth clogged my throat, and the seventh brought tears to my eyes.

The eighth cracked my bones.

The ninth hit the rune, and the immediate magic flung me to the ground.

I landed on my hip and bleeding wrist, cried out at the snap of pain that whipped up my arm. “Cleanse this curse,” I
commanded. “By my blood, from his blood. Cleanse this curse. Cleanse this curse.”

Wind screamed, whipping the circle of oak trees, tearing at the roof of the Pink House. Lukas yelled something but kept back.

The nine spirals glowed, and I stepped into the center of them.

Sudden, eerie silence permeated the hill. Sunspots danced in my vision as for one moment the wind froze, and everything was still.

I opened my eyes. My head pounded, my heartbeat slamming my ribs. Ben bent over me. “Will?”

Slowly sitting up, I spread my hands on my chest—my chest! Even my bones hurt.

Black feathers floated everywhere, dancing in the wild wind that shot in through the window.

“Ben!”

He grabbed my hands, and said, “Will?”

“Semper freaking fi,” I said and he dragged me to my feet.

Together we stumbled outside into a storm of leaves and ashes.

I held up my arm to shield my face. There was Mab, standing where the center of the rose garden had been. And Lukas crouched next to a box of some flowers that snapped hard in the wind. He was totally naked, but his eyes were wide and alert.

Mab screamed.

She stood there, in a glowing circle, the nine points flaring silver and shooting out light straight up to the sky, and straight into the center. Into Mab.

I ran for her.

It began in my fingers and toes, but quickly swirled into my palms and the soles of my feet, spinning, burning, sucking at my magic. I ground my teeth and let my head fall back, spreading my arms out, welcoming the sweep of magic for the last time.

A shock of fire hit my middle, doubling me over. I screamed, clutching my stomach, and my knees hit the ground.

Oh, the fire! It gnawed at my liver and chewed through my intestines and lungs, turning my breath to jagged needles.

Then someone wrapped around me, saying my name again and again.

As the magic was flayed from my bones and boiled from my blood, he huddled over my curled, shaking body as if he could protect me from the pieces of the falling sky.