Chapter 6
Chapter six
Vidar
“I’m not a blood mage,” Kai blurts.
“Obviously not. Blood mages stink of rotting flesh. Like their disgusting spellbooks.” Carefully, I reach to grab what Kai tried to hide. Like if he couldn’t see it, it wasn’t there.
But the moment my fingers graze the wrinkled leather-bound cover, searing pain, like dripping acid, has me reeling back.
“Shit.” I snap, blisters bubbling my skin.
“Vidar?” Kai closes the small distance to reach me. “What happened?”
They heal quickly, but leave behind an unpleasant tingle. For now, his question is ignored so I can grab a hoodie hanging from a hook and toss it over the spellbook to pick the foul thing up without damaging myself. But even through the thick material it burns hot like a tray pulled from the oven.
“Can you touch this cursed thing?” I ask, dropping the bed I’ve been holding up to land with a loud crash. Kai jumps at the sound, then shoots a glare at me when the neighbours downstairs shout for us to keep it down.
“Er, yeah. You can’t?”
“Kai, tell me why you have this.” The stink wafting from it could curdle milk. Thankfully, Kai can’t smell it as his human nose is not able to detect magical senses.
He shifts. “Lucero told you about Jace kidnapping us?”
I nod.
“When they came to rescue us, the warehouse we were in was burning. Emma told Jace to throw her the book, but I guess he had two and accidentally threw one to me. Jace was…hurt, disoriented. Scared? Dying, I guess. I hated him for so long, but seeing that…” He shakes the thought away.
“Doesn’t matter. I planned on giving the spellbook to Lucero, but then the warehouse was coming down and Golden… he d—”
It takes a moment for Kai to collect himself. I’ve stared death down countless times. But Kai? This experience left visible cracks—cracks I watch him struggle to shore up.
It makes me wonder about the ones he keeps hidden.
“Golden died,” he whispers, so quietly I barely catch it. He finds his voice soon enough, however, and continues, “Then him turning into a vampire was a whole big fucking nightmare. There really wasn’t ever a good time to hand it over.”
All the tension in his body leaves him.
“Honestly, I’m relieved you’ve found it, Vidar. You can take it now.”
When he looks at me, face open and clear as a cloudless day, something with thorns takes root in my gut that I have to tell him the truth. “I can’t.”
“Wait, why? No. Vidar. I don’t want it, take it away.” He steps towards me, begging without words for me to help him and those thorns dig deeper. My protective instincts surge forward, and in this moment, if I could, I would suffer the burning for eternity.
If only the spellbook’s cursed magic worked like that.
“Because…” I glance down at the large tome, not heavy in weight but in power. I’m not sure how old it is, but it's been drenched in enough blood to drown a man. “It’s bound to you now, Kai. The previous master, no matter if he intended to or not, handed ownership to you.”
“He meant to throw it to Emma!” He takes a step back, shaking his head. “No way, Vidar. Take it away from me.”
Inwardly, I curse. Even in the worst of my apathy, I never had this crushing sense of weakness—my soulmate is pleading with me to help. Every instinct tells me to provide. Chieftain. Warrior. Ancient vampire.
Yet none of those titles helps me when it matters most.
“Kai,” I say gently to soothe the news I have to deliver. “Even if I got rid of this, it’d find its way back to you.”
He pales. “Like…not literally, right?”
“It’s a flesh book. Made by skinning someone alive and imbuing it with magic. Magic, that is now tied to you and because of that, it’ll crawl itself to you.”
His face turns a queasy green, and I drop the spellbook with a thud to steer Kai by the shoulders to the small kitchen opposite his bed just as vomit spews past his lips.
He clings to the edge like a lifeline as he continues to heave, and I collect his braids to keep them clean, rubbing his back with my other hand.
“Let it out.”
“This is so fucked up,” Kai spits, then shoves himself away—sucking down sharp lungfuls of air as he visibly shakes. “This is fucking mental.”
“It’ll be okay, try to calm down.”
“CALM DOWN? Since meeting you vampires, I almost died in a car accident, was attacked by blood mages and vampires, held hostage, watched my friend die, and now I have a shitting spellbook made from someone's skin crawling to me, and you’re telling me to calm down?!”
The person below slams something on their ceiling. ‘Shut the fuck up!’ they shout, muffled by their flooring.
Kai stamps his foot down hard once, twice, three times. “YOU SHUT THE FUCK UP!”
I lay my hands on his shoulders. “Kai—SHIT!” Searing pain licks up my hands and arms as purple flames erupt from the painted symbols on Kai’s jacket.
He cries out, fire still waving off his jacket, and I shove away the pain to tear the thing from Kai. Flinging it away where it lands, on fire, on the neatly made bed.
Quickly, the purple flames become crimson as they race across the thin sheets.
“Are you hurt?!” I pull Kai back, the burnt skin on my hands crisping away like burnt chicken skin to reveal raw, but healed flesh underneath.
Fire alarms begin to scream as the sprinklers rain cool water over the flames, and drench us as I stare at Kai—who I thought was very human—yet doesn’t have a single scorch mark on him.
“Oh…yeah,” Kai calls over the shrieking. “There’s… probably something else I should tell you.”