Chapter 40 #2
Giving up on freeing herself, Isobel shot a panicked blast of Luster from her hand. The weak stream of magic evaporated in seconds.
The creature chuckled. It withdrew its own firearm, aiming carelessly their way. “Are you scared, pretty girl?”
David jerked Bel’s arm so hard, it probably hurt. His voice thundered with coercion. “Isobel, go!” He shoved her away, and she tripped backward, falling onto her bottom.
Another gunshot rent the air, and fire ripped through David’s chest. He looked at the new hole decorating his shirt, a blossoming stain of crimson.
And just like that, he was dying.
Fucking perfect.
Sean grabbed the woman who’d shot him. With a violent twist, her neck snapped, ending her life.
The creature within, however, could simply find another host. Sean seemed to realize it at the same time as David.
He threw Luster into the human’s body, killing the creature before it found someone new to possess.
David gripped his chest, his hand coming away warm and sticky. Breathing transformed to agony. Each heartbeat pumped acid through his chest. He stumbled for the gun as it skittered across the floor.
Images flashed before his eyes, like one of those children’s viewfinder toys.
Click. His father introducing him as a prince of death.
Click. His skull breaking against a granite countertop.
Click. Sean Archer, cutting his arm so David would feel the pain.
Click. His mother, golden and perfect, whispering fear for his safety.
Click. Anna’s tearstained face. Can I ask why?
The firearm fit like an old friend in his hand, still warm.
His raised his arm. Click. Boom.
The dead woman’s partner fell to the ground at Sean’s feet. Sean killed that Indy, too. He took a stuttered breath, grabbing his chest where David was shot, but he started back toward the fight in the lobby.
“Sean!” David coughed out the word with a spatter of blood.
Sean turned.
Trying to remain on his feet, David threw him the gun. Sean snatched it from the air.
“Hide her,” Sean said. “Now.” He turned back toward the fight. The pixies held their own against the remaining creatures, but numbers weren’t on their side.
David wiped the blood from his mouth.
Behind him, Isobel had regained her feet. She stared wide-eyed at Sean’s departure, restrained by David’s magic.
“Let me go!” she gritted through her teeth.
“No,” he coughed out.
“He can’t go alone!” She raked her hands through her curls. “What if he’s hurt?”
David choked again, struggling to get air. Damn powerful, that blood oath magic. All she could see was Sean, in danger, putting his life at risk. It wasn’t her fault, but he was pissed anyway. They fucking shot him. While he was protecting her.
Flames lanced through David’s torso.
The world spun.
Her gaze finally landed on him, and she sucked in a breath at his injury.
In a blink, gentle hands touched the blooming stain of blood on his shirt.
Black spots crept into his vision, specks of silver at the edges.
His legs gave out, and he fetched up against the side of a desk, sliding to the floor.
Nothingness loomed on the other side of a veil, and David stepped toward it. He welcomed it. He wanted it.
But he paused as a blurry vision rose from the depths—a woman with bloodred lips smiled his way, her sharp-nailed fingers cupping Anna’s shoulders.
The image collapsed as his name echoed from a long way away, and the darkness finally won.
Sky blue flickered deep in his subconscious. He should have told her he loved her. Instead, he’d broken her.
Determined lips touched his.
Wait. Why—
Magic spiraled through his body like golden, healing glitter.
Isobel.
Isobel’s lips.
Isobel’s magic.
He’d forgotten…
It twirled around the bullet hole and sewed it back together. It soaked into his vessels and replaced the lost blood. It fixed everything.
Everything.
Even his shattered ice walls.
When it was done, and he found himself sitting on a dirty floor, kissing Isobel Faywood, he couldn’t elicit the wherewithal to stop.
It felt too good, this magic, this pain-free existence.
Her power peaked, and when it shifted to agony, instead of breaking the kiss, he shoved away her magic and pulled the woman closer like she belonged to him.
Because she did, didn’t she?
She was ruinous and complicated, but she was his.
Luxurious, bewitching lips molded to his. He dove his hand into her hair, and silken curls slithered over his fingers like they had hundreds of times before.
She didn’t retreat…not when he angled her head to kiss her properly, not when he tugged on her waist to draw her flush against his chest, not even when he opened her lips to taste her tongue. If anything, she raked fingernails into his flesh to get closer.
The gouges healed as soon as she made them, and he took a fistful of her hair, wrenching tight enough that it surely hurt.
She urged him on with tiny sighs, ringing her arms around his neck, and he dropped his mouth to her throat, kissing and sucking and biting hard enough to leave marks that disappeared before he could make more.
And then his lips brushed over a chain at her neck.
A chain that represented his life.
No. Sean’s life.
Sean…
Sean, who was so deep in David’s soul that David had forgotten they were separate.
David jolted back to his body. He gripped her shoulders and shoved her away. Isobel blinked hazed eyes before reality set in, and her gaze sharpened.
With a vicious slide away from him, she rested her back on the desk opposite.
They stared, silent, hidden from the fight in the lobby by the dozen or so desks surrounding them.
David drew his knees up and set both elbows on them, resting his forehead on his fingers.
What the actual fuck had he just done?
“Let me go to him,” she hissed.
“No.”
Her emerald eyes blazed. “You cannot keep me here against my will!”
David lifted a brow. He could and would do exactly that. She cared about Sean’s safety to the detriment of herself, and Sean would maim him if anything happened to her.
He threaded spiked honey into his voice as he gazed deep into her eyes. “You will sit here and wait for him. You will not expose yourself to the Indies. You will keep yourself and your child out of danger.”
A muscle near her mouth twitched as she fought and lost against the compulsion.
“He’s safe,” David said, ignoring a phantom pain in his jaw. “I’d know if something happened to him.”
Her shoulders relaxed at that. “That’s true.”
“Just chill. He’ll be back soon.”