Bound to Blackwood (6 page)

“Is he still bleeding?”

“Yes, that’s bad, isn’t it?”

“Bleeding a lot?”

“Yeah. I’m trying to put pressure on it, but the shaft is in the way. I can’t get to it properly.”

“Any chance you can pull the bolt out?”

“No way. I think it’s too close to his heart. It came straight out of his back and the end is barbed.” Lena heard Phoenix mumble something but she didn’t quite catch it. “What? What did you say?”

“Nothing. Can you see the entry wound clearly?”

“Yes, why?”

“I need you to feel inside…”

“You’re kidding, right? I’m not a fucking medic, Phoenix.”

“I know that, but I need you to check whether he’s started to heal. If he has, we’re in for a boatload of fucking trouble.”

Lena swallowed hard. She usually revelled in the sight of blood because she spilled it. Watching her friend, brother, and mentor bleed out was a completely different story.

“Come on Lena. Man up!” The strength of Kaden's order took her by surprise.

“I don’t want to hurt you,” she replied, the potency of her voice dwindling again.

“You’re insulting my prowess, Lena.” Goddess love him, he tried to smile, though the strain of talking showed in the hard lines around his mouth and the clench at his jaw.

“Okay.” She inhaled deeply to steady her nerves. “Don’t move.”

“I’m not going anywhere, Guardian.”

Of course, he wasn’t going anywhere. He's lying in the middle of a forest with a fucking arrow through his chest
. And it was all her fault.
Shit.
 

Lena put her left hand around the shaft of the arrow to brace herself. She gulped down air as she pointed one finger to the side of the wound. Kaden hissed when she pushed her finger down beside the arrow and into his chest. “Shit, I’m sorry, Kaden.”

“Just do it,” he whispered, the absolute pain in his voice bringing a tear to her eye. Her tears were as red as the blood still seeping out of Kaden’s chest. There was a sickening squelching noise as she pushed further into the wound. She swallowed hard again.
Jesus this was horrible.
 

“What am I feeling for?” She demanded of Phoenix.

“Is there any hardening of tissue? It’ll feel sinewy.”

“Sinewy?”

“Yeah you know, like a cheap cut of beef or something. Harder than normal flesh.”

“No, it feels soft. Wet and soft.”

“Okay. He’s not healing yet.”

“That’s good, right?”

Phoenix was silent for an eternity before he replied. “Yeah… It’s good. Just hold on, Lena. They’re on their way.” His voice did not quite match the conviction of his words.

Thorn and Mercury materialised beside them. The King ignored Lena, knelt down beside Kaden, and whispered in his ear, “I Thorn Blackwood, King of our race will keep you safe, Keeper of the Watch. You will not die this night.” Then he bit into his own wrist and forced the blood into Kaden’s mouth. Stronger than that of any other Vampire, the King’s blood would sustain Kaden until they got back to the mansion. Kaden’s pallor already looked better.

“I’ve called Soraya; she’ll meet us at the medical centre.” Thorn said. Soraya was his sister and a qualified doctor.

Lena let out a sigh of relief; she trusted Phoenix with her life, but she knew this kind of injury was way out of his league. Thorn’s voice showed little emotion and he still would not meet Lena’s gaze. She looked away in utter dismay. Mercury didn’t say anything either.

“To me, Guardians.”

Lena stood up and watched Thorn scoop Kaden into his strong arms. The Keeper of the Watch was not a small Vampire, but Thorn looked like he carried a child. Lena stood behind their King and placed a shaky, bloodstained hand on his immense shoulders. Mercury did the same. With their powers combined, all four dematerialised.

Chapter 4

Thorn perched on Soraya's office chair, carefully distributing his weight. The pink chair wasn't designed to support the average man, let alone Thorn's 6 foot 7 frame. It looked like it was made out of bubblegum and was a weird shape, like a ball with a square cut out of it to sit in. Thorn thought it ridiculous, but it suited Soraya.

He swivelled round to look at the equally impractical curved desk and the chair gave a groan of protest. He decided not to test its strength any longer and instead moved to the large armchair by the bookcase. It too was pink and was loaded up with pretty cushions.

Thorn leant forward with his elbows on his knees and held his head in his hands. He was Vampire enough to admit that the thought of losing Kaden scared the shit out of him. He pushed out a frustrated sigh and raked his hands through his hair. The waiting was enough to drive him mad.

His gaze wandered out into the hallway. With the exception of Phoenix, who was assisting Soraya, the whole Order was there. Skylar, Ryver and Mercury were all sitting on the couch someone had brought down from the conservatory. Well, sitting probably wasn't accurate; every so often one of them would swear and get up and pace around for a bit before returning to his seat.

Lena sat apart from the group. She was on the floor with her knees up and her arms wrapped around her shins. As she sat there, Thorn thought the headstrong woman looked like a frightened, little girl. Her beautiful blue-black hair was a mess, she had red tear-stains on her face and her normally lively midnight-blue eyes were wide with fear and worry. The other Guardians told her to go get cleaned up but she would not leave. She'd remained silent since they got back from Friarsfield.

Thorn stared at her for a long time before she raised her head to meet his gaze. Goddess, she looked wretched. At any other time, he might feel sorry for her. This time though, his blood boiled with fury. Forgiveness was the furthest thing from his mind.

If he was honest with himself, he always rather liked her strength of will, her ability to question things instead of accepting what she was told, her… feistiness, yes that was the word. Feistiness or not, if Lena cost him his Keeper of the Watch, he would see she paid for it.

When Soraya made her way out into the hall, all eyes shifted to the door and everyone sprang to their feet. Wearing blood-stained scrubs, and her delicate face etched with worry, she looked grim. Her pale-gold eyes blinked back the wash of tears as she met all the expectant faces and Thorn realised that everyone was holding their breath. Thorn braced himself.

“He's going to make it," Soraya said.

Thank the Holy Mother of Fae!
There was a collective sigh of relief and out of the corner of his eye, Thorn saw Lena sink back down to the floor. He looked carefully at his sister and knew she was holding something back. The lines around her mouth were tight with tension and her eye still held a look of… was it sorrow? He could not be sure. “Tell me, Soraya,” he demanded.
 

Soraya sighed and she reached up to rearrange her dark hair into a messy top-knot. “We nearly lost him twice. The bolt was fitted with an automatic syringe filled with some sort of anticoagulant. I've never seen anything like it, but it's why Lena couldn't stop the bleeding and why he wasn't healing.”

Everyone turned to look at Lena, but she just continued to look at the wall in front of her as if she was in some sort of trance.

“I've sent samples to the lab. It's nothing I have seen before so it had us stumped for a while. He had four transfusions before I could even look at getting the arrow out. The damned thing missed his heart by a matter of millimetres and it wasn't just the arrowhead that was barbed, the shaft was too. Phoenix had to push the whole thing through his body and out of his back. Whoever did this, knew exactly what they were doing.”

Fucking Hell!
Thorn was not surprised that Kaden had nearly died; he'd done the evac himself and seen what kind of state his Keeper was in. He
was
surprised about the technology the Fallen had utilised. He was hoping that this anticoagulant, or whatever it was, was not standard issue, but he was guessing that if it proved effective then it could soon very well be.
Shit.
 

“What now?” Skylar asked.

“Now he rests.” She narrowed her eyes at Thorn who inhaled deeply, then held his hands up in surrender. “I mean it Thorn. He hasn't regained consciousness from the surgery yet but when he does, I don't want any of you boys tempting him back to work. You know as well as I do that he'll be out of my care as soon as he can possibly manage it but I'm still not sure about the anticoagulant and I don't want to take any chances. I want him off active duty for at least a fortnight, a month if I can manage it.”

“It's that bad?” Thorn asked, even though his sister was not given to over exaggeration. A month was a long time for a Vampire to need to heal.

“This facility is
my
Command Centre Thorn. What I say goes.”
 

The statement was met with silence, but Thorn couldn't hide the tilt of his mouth, which was threatening to break into a full-blown grin. “Yes, Ma'am.” He added a salute and it got the reaction he was hoping for. It started with a snigger from Mercury, but soon everyone was sporting a relieved smile. There were even a few chuckles, from everyone except Lena. The tension lifted. “Come on, let’s get a drink. Fuck knows, I need one!”

Soraya and Phoenix went to clean up whilst the guys headed for the bar up in the main house. No one seemed to notice that Lena had stayed.

After everyone left, she snuck into the recovery room. Kaden looked a hell of a lot better than she'd thought he would. Soraya had done a good job cleaning him up. If it weren’t for all the equipment beeping at her and monitoring him, she'd have thought him asleep. In the normal “I'm tired” kind of way, not in the “I've just nearly died and I'm medicated up to my eyeballs” kind of way.

She finally let go of the breath she'd been holding since Soraya had come out of the operating room. Unsteady on her feet, Lena collapsed into the chair at Kaden's bedside and put a trembling hand on that of her Keeper. She slouched in the chair and closed her eyes for a moment.

Greene lay under the foot of a Fallen. He strained his neck to look at his
Amocinta
and his daughter. “RUN!” he screamed as his assailant readied his blade.

Lena didn't run though. Her feet were planted and she couldn't move. She looked down at her feet in confusion. They weren't the feet of a child.

They were the feet of a warrior clad in black military style boots, which reached midway up her calf. She saw the rest of her outfit and couldn't make sense of it. She was wearing her uniform; black boots, black combats, black utility vest over a black, scoop-necked t-shirt.

Baffled, she looked back at her father. Only, the man about to lose his life no longer wore the face of Greene, Squire to House Meadows.

Lena stood open mouthed as she gazed upon a face she knew as well as her own. It was her Keeper. It was Kaden. She
screamed.
 

“Lena! Lena! Wake up!”

She felt strong hands on her shoulders, shaking her. Still, she screamed. The hands moved to cradle her face, trying to sooth her. The voice she heard softened. “Come on, Guardian mine. That's it, open your eyes. You are safe, I promise.”

Safe?
It had just been a dream.
Oh God! Thank you!
She placed her smaller hand on the one still cradling her face and sighed. She cracked open an eye just to check and her breath raced out of her. Her eyes flew open to meet amber on gold eyes.
Oh. My. God. Thorn!
 

“W-what? What's going on?” Goddess, she sounded pathetic as she scrambled up the bed.

Bed?
Where the hell was she and more importantly, why was Thorn Blackwood waking her from a nightmare?
 

“When I went to do check on Kaden, I found you asleep in the chair. I couldn't very well let you stay there so I brought you up here. I didn't know you'd scream the place down though.”

Lena chose to ignore that. She looked around and saw she was safely ensconced in the guest-room that doubled as her quarters when she was required to stay at HQ. The super-king sized bed rose to around four foot from the ground. The quilts, pillows and cushions, all in functional beige, were no longer neatly arranged on the bed, but instead looked like they'd spent the night with a Tasmanian devil.

Lena gulped. “Erm, thanks?”

“You're welcome. Now, I'm going to hit the shower, and then you and I are going to talk. Got it?”

She couldn't speak. She couldn't form the words even if she knew what to say. She just nodded, clutching the duvet to her like a scared little girl. Thorn was going to have a shower. He wasn't going to use her bathroom, was he? Confusion clouding her mind, she glanced back at him and he shook his head. Panic rose in her chest. She hadn't said that out loud, had she?

“You are an enigma, Lena.” With that, he swept out into the corridor, taking his long legs and oh-so-perfect arse with him. Lena exhaled slowly. He really did have a perfect arse.