Chapter 9 #3
Val and Quinn flinched back, hands flying to their ears. The enhanced human hit the fence in a single jump, using a chipped angel statue as a foothold, and vaulted over, vanishing into the darkness beyond.
Coward after all.
Two bodies lay still near us. Three more scattered among the graves. The other was gone.
“Let him go,” Con rasped. “We have bigger problems.”
Raven.
I dropped to my knees beside her. She was hunched forward, one hand braced in the grass, the other pressed against her side. Blood seeped through her fingers in a steady flow.
“Raven, let me see,” I said, trying to keep my voice calm.
She shook her head once, jaw clenched. “I’m fine.”
“You’re bleeding,” I replied.
“So are you,” she countered.
I glanced down. A shallow slice marked my forearm, likely from the first attacker’s wild swing. I hadn’t even felt it in the adrenaline rush. Already, the skin was knitting together, the edges closing.
Raven’s wasn’t.
I gently pulled her hand away from the wound.
The cut was nasty. Deep, running from the curve of her ribs toward her back. It should have started to close, even with her magic weakened. Her hybrid nature gave her some regenerative advantage.
But the edges of the wound were dark. Not just bloody, shadowed, as if something burned inside the flesh, eating at it from within.
It stayed open, crimson welling up stubbornly, refusing to slow.
My stomach clenched. “It’s not healing.”
Raven’s face had gone even paler. She swayed, catching herself on my shoulder. “Give it a minute,” she muttered.
“It’s not going to heal,” Con said, voice clipped.
He crouched on her other side, eyes scanning the wound with a warrior’s detachment and a friend’s fury.
Val and Quinn closed in, weapons still ready, eyes darting around in case there were more. Two of the other clan members dragged one of the enhanced bodies away from the open path.
“Something’s wrong with that cut,” Val said.
“You think?” Quinn snapped, panic sharpening his tone.
“Back up,” Con ordered. “Give her air.”
They obeyed, but only a step.
I pressed my hand above the wound, trying to slow the bleeding. The skin under my palm felt too warm. Her pulse fluttered, fast and uneven.
“Raven,” I said quietly, “can you call on your power?”
She tried.
I felt her reach through the bond, pushing for what used to be an endless well of magic. It sputtered under her grip like a dry pump. Fragments of energy flickered, then vanished, swallowed by something thick and dark.
She sucked in a breath and squeezed her eyes shut. “It’s not… responding.”
“Stop forcing it,” I said quickly. “You’ll make it worse.”
“But Rene—”
“Rene needs you alive, not drained.”
Raven sagged against me, sweat beading at her temples despite the cold. Her hands trembled, fingers slick with her own blood.
Con reached out, touching the skin at the edge of the wound with the tip of one gloved finger. He lifted it to his nose, eyes narrowing.
“Don’t,” I snapped. “You don’t know what—”
He ignored me and inhaled.
His expression darkened.
“It’s poison,” he said. “Applied to the blade.”
Raven’s fingers dug into my arm. “Of course it is,” she whispered, voice unsteady. “Why make anything simple?”
“Can you taste what kind?” I asked Con.
He shook his head. “It’s not anything common. Not wolfsbane, not nightshade, not any of the usual compounds. There’s something… metallic to it. Synthetic.”
“Military maybe,” Val muttered. “Figures.”
Raven tried to shift, winced, and stopped moving. “We don’t have time for this. Get me upstairs.”
“You can barely stay conscious,” I said.
“I’ve been worse.”
She hadn’t.
“We need to flush the poison,” Con said. “Or slow it down.”
“How?” Quinn demanded. “We don’t even know what it is.”
I bit my lip, thinking.
Magic prickled under my skin, restless. It didn’t like whatever was eating at Raven. The bond vibrated uncomfortably, like a string tuned too tight.
“I can try to pull some of it out,” I said.
Raven shook her head quickly. “No. If it travels through the bond, it could reach you. Or Rene.”
“Not if I block it right,” I protested.
“You don’t know that,” she shot back.
“She’s right,” Con added. “You’re already drained from earlier.”
Everyone stared at me.
Wind stirred the grass. Dawn crept a fraction higher, pale light washing over the gravestones and the blood on Raven’s side.
“We can’t stand out here arguing,” I said through gritted teeth. “We get her to Rene. He might be weak, but he knows more about poison than any of us.”
Raven gave a weak huff that might have been a laugh. “Now you’re listening to him?”
“He’s not wrong,” I said. “For once.”
Con’s gaze met mine across Raven’s bowed head. His eyes held anger, fear, and a kind of savage focus that I had only seen when he thought he was in danger of losing someone he couldn’t afford to lose.
“Move,” he said.
Con picked up Raven in his arms as if she weighed nothing.
I leaned toward her. “Stay with me.”
She tried to smirk. “You say that like I have anywhere better to be.”
Her voice wavered.
Her blood was still flowing.
And whatever was in that wound was weakening her further.