Boundary Born (Boundary Magic Book 3) (7 page)

Then I remembered how good—how
right
—it had felt when I used boundary magic, and I shivered. Or was
I
the monster?

It’s just a symbol, Lex
, I reminded myself. Symbols only have the significance that we bring to them.

Right?

C
hapter 10

I fought the commuter traffic so I could get home and take care of the herd, who were as glad to see me as ever. When they all stopped trying to scale my clothes and settled down to their dinners, I slipped into the bedroom to change for date night.

It was only then that I realized I had no idea where we were going. I wasn’t really a movie person, unless there was a theater playing
Singin’ in the Rain
or
Mr. Smith Goes to Washington
. Maybe a night hike? Then I probably shouldn’t dress up, right? But it was a date . . . ?

I sighed. I hated girl problems.

In the end, I settled on my newest jeans and a short-sleeved silk blouse, sapphire blue to set off my eyes, and a cream-colored linen jacket to hide my tattoos and the shredder I strapped to my right forearm. I half-assed some makeup and spent a couple of minutes straightening my flyaway hair, and that was as primped as I got.

When I was ready, I checked the clock and realized I still had an hour to kill before sunset, when I would meet Quinn at Magic Beans. For once, I didn’t feel like being alone, knowing I would just start to obsess over Emil’s visit again. My first impulse was to stop at John’s house to visit him and Charlie, but they were in Orlando, and besides, John didn’t want to see me.

On a whim, I decided to swing by the Basement of Dr. Moreau to check on Simon. It had been ages since we’d just hung out.

Simon’s lab was a converted two-bedroom apartment off Longbow in the same building where several of the Boulder vampires lived. Because it was one of Maven’s properties, the building had been renovated so that the basement dwellers had a separate entrance from the humans who lived aboveground. By mutual agreement, everyone in the building left their neighbors the hell alone.

I had a key to the outer door that led to the basement, in case there was ever a security concern. When I knocked on Simon’s door, he opened it just wide enough to stick his face out. Tall and lean with a nerdy-surfer thing going on, Simon was probably the crush of every undergraduate girl at CU . . . most of the time. Tonight, he looked exhausted and distracted, and he was wearing a blood-spattered lab coat and I-just-murdered-someone leather gloves. “Hey, Lex,” he said wearily. “What’s going on?”

“Um . . . hi. Can I come in?”

“Oh. Right.” He opened the door, ushering me in quickly. It was a little pointless, given Maven’s total control over the building, but it never hurt to be cautious. Inside, the apartment had been refitted with lab gear, including several enormous machines that I couldn’t have identified if my life depended on it. If it had been anyone else, I might have suspected the gear was just for show, but I was pretty sure Simon used every bit of equipment in there. There was even an enormous aquarium against the back wall, which contained skin beetles that spent their lives eating the flesh off Unktehila bones. I purposely didn’t look at it. I’d made that mistake before.

As usual, the air smelled like formaldehyde, Simon’s cologne and a bunch of other scents I had no interest in identifying. “How’s teaching?” I asked him. “Don’t you have finals soon?”

He blanched for a moment, then shook his head. “Class is over, and my exams are already written, so there’s not much going on this week.”

I nodded. So much for the theory that school was making him look like that. “Have you learned anything new about the sandworm?” I asked tentatively. Six months was a long time to spend examining one dead body—even one as massive as the Unktehila—but Simon was working around a full-time job and his responsibilities for the witch clan. I knew his progress had been a lot slower than he wanted.

He opened his mouth to answer, stopped, and shook his head, looking frustrated. “I’ve managed to confirm a lot of what we suspected about the Unktehila’s evolutionary ties to other species. It has no direct genetic connection to any of the human-evolved magic species, which is interesting. But I still have no idea why magic bonded with only certain creatures, or why the Unktehila was apparently immortal.” His shoulders slumped. “And I’ve mostly run out of things to test.”

“What were you hoping to find?”

“It’s not that I had a specific goal like that, just . . .” he blew out a breath and removed one of his gloves to scrub a palm through his hair.

“What?”

“Generally, when I—or any other scientist—have an experiment, I can consult hundreds of years’ worth of older tests. But this is the Old World, where everyone just writes everything off as ‘magic’ and goes on with their day,” he grouched. If there were rocks nearby, he probably would have kicked at them.

I looked around for a second, and then dragged a metal lab stool over to where he was leaning on a counter. There
was
an actual kitchen table meant for the consumption of food, but I’d never seen Simon use it for anything but paper storage. “Aren’t there some things that can only be explained with magic?”

I could tell from his face that this was the wrong question. “Maybe, but maybe not. How will we ever know for sure unless we look for answers? But I can’t get any help, and if anyone else in the history of mankind has ever looked into these questions, there’s no way to know.”

“What about the internet?”

He gave me a look like I’d just walked into his class twenty minutes late. “Lex, there are hundreds of thousands of people online claiming to be witches. Even more claiming to use or study magic. How could I begin to weed out the real from the crazies without violating the law about never telling humans about the Old World? And any other actual witches would be bound by the same law, so they wouldn’t be forthcoming either.” He sighed. “It’s impossible. There could be a dozen other Simons out there asking the same questions I am, but there’s no way of finding them or talking to them.”

I studied my friend. All these months of round-the-clock work, and he hadn’t found the answers he wanted so badly. He looked so forlorn that my Luther family reflexes kicked in, and I impulsively stepped forward to give him a hug. “Trust me,” I said over his shoulder. “There are no other Simons out there.”

I didn’t really expect him to reciprocate, but Simon’s arms went tight around me, and he craned his head to bury his face in my neck. “Oh, hey,” I said, surprised. Awkwardly, I rested my hand on his upper back. He was so warm, compared to Quinn, who only maintained as much body heat as he needed to pass for human. “It’s okay, Simon.”

I’m not a psychologist—if you can fail at therapy, I definitely flunked my VA sessions when I returned from Iraq—but even I could see whatever was bothering Simon wasn’t just about the Unktehila experiments. So I held onto him, feeling the exhaustion in his body. He’d been pushing too hard. If he’d really run out of things to test with the Unktehila remains, what was he still doing in this depressing basement? Simon may not have had a wife and kids, but he had two jobs and a family, same as me. Something else was going on.

“Have you heard from Tracy?” I ventured. He and his longtime girlfriend had broken up months ago, but she was a witch, too. They still had to see each other.

Simon stepped back, looking away. “We don’t really talk, no. The whole clan’s been . . . disrupted. We didn’t even celebrate Beltane this year, for the first time since I can remember. I barely feel like a witch these days.”

I winced. I’d worried about how the Pellars were handling Morgan’s betrayal, but I hadn’t stopped to think about how it must be affecting the other witches in Boulder. Morgan was supposed to have been their next leader. And now she was gone, and the remaining Pellars were distressed and off-balance. Of course that would have ripple effects in the clan.

Simon stepped back a little and looked at me, realizing for the first time that I didn’t look like all my clothes came out of a Goodwill store. “Hey, you look beautiful. Quinn’s a lucky guy.”

I blushed and looked away, mumbling a thank-you. I never did learn to take a compliment, but in this case I was especially embarrassed. Simon and Tracy’s breakup was still fairly recent, for one thing, and I didn’t want to rub my relationship in his face. But if I was being really honest with myself, it wasn’t just that. I’d felt a little spark of
something
between us ever since I’d used my boundary magic to save Simon’s life—or, rather, bring him
back
to life. I wasn’t sure if it was a real attraction, or if all boundary witches felt that way about people they’d brought back. I had long since decided not to find out.

Simon, perhaps picking up on my thoughts, took another, more awkward step away from me. “How is Quinn?”

“He’s good,” I said. “He says you owe him a call about playing . . . um . . . Border . . . Redemption? Something like that.” Simon and Quinn had been friends for years, though for appearances’ sake they often pretended they couldn’t stand each other. Until I started sleeping over at Quinn’s, I hadn’t known that they played video games in secret, like a weird online bromance affair. A vampire and a witch being friends wasn’t forbidden or anything, but it was a little weird. Then again, I was a witch
sleeping with
a vampire, so I was even weirder.

“Right. Yeah, I’ll do that soon,” Simon promised. “And you guys are good?”

Were we? Well, probably as good as a witch-vampire relationship could be. “Yeah. But, Simon—”

“Listen, I should probably get back to it,” he broke in. “Some of these tests are time-sensitive.”

I studied his face for a long moment. He wasn’t ready to talk. I wished I could cheer him up somehow, and then with a mental head-slap I remembered that I could.

“Hey, do you want to meet my father?”

He raised his eyebrows in confusion. “Like, to get a discount on shoes?”

“No. Well, yeah, I can set that up, but I don’t mean my actual dad. My biological father came by this morning and introduced himself. He says he has boundary blood, and I bet I could talk him into a blood test.”

Simon’s face lit up.

Of course, introducing Simon to Emil meant that I’d actually need to call Emil. I hadn’t really thought that part through, but I decided it could wait until the next morning. By then it was time for me to meet Quinn at Magic Beans. He would need to check in with Maven for the night before we could go out.

I expected the coffee shop to be crowded with students cramming for finals, but to my surprise, the “Closed for Private Party” sign was hanging on the door when I pulled up, and there were no cars parked in front. I frowned. Maven doesn’t actually rent out the space for private parties; that sign only goes up when there’s an Old World crisis—but no one had called me. I turned off the ignition and pulled out my cell phone. Nope. No calls. I tried the coffee shop line. When no one answered, I dialed Quinn’s cell, but he didn’t pick up either.

Not good. I drew the shredder out of the bands on my arm, climbed out of the car as quietly as possible, and stalked around the side of the building, keeping my steps soft. I was going to feel really silly if Maven and Quinn were just running late to work, but no, that couldn’t be right. Magic Beans was open twenty-four hours a day. If it was dark like this, someone had cleared out the customers and sent home the daytime staff. Only Maven, and maybe Quinn, had the authority to do that.

When I reached the end of the brick building, I paused and peeked around the corner to look at the tiny lot behind the building. The lighting was bad back there—just a single dim bulb that buzzed and occasionally flickered. But as far as I could tell, it looked the same as ever. One of those exit doors with no exterior handle, a Dumpster, and a few bits of trash that had blown in from the alley. You could fit a couple of cars back there, and sure enough I saw Maven’s Jeep, washed and looking as good as new. As far as I could tell, no one was inside it.

I was about to go knock on the back door of the building when I heard a muted metallic “thump” from behind the Dumpster, like someone was hiding back there and had bumped into the side. Shit. I held the shredder at shoulder height and crept forward as quietly as possible. When I reached the Dumpster, I carefully circled the first corner and then stopped again, intending to peek around it to see the trespasser.

Before I could do more than shift my weight, though, something unnaturally fast came up behind me and clutched at my upper right arm, grabbing me hard enough to knock me into the Dumpster. For a moment my face pressed against the metal, and I felt warm liquid spatter my hand. I looked down, trying to regain my balance, and realized that the hand clutching me was covered in blood.

C
hapter 11

This was probably the moment when most people would scream. Instead, I pushed off the Dumpster, got my balance, and swung my left hand with the shredder in a fantastic roundhouse that would definitely have done catastrophic damage if Quinn hadn’t ducked just in time.

“Shit!” I yelled as the stake hit the Dumpster and splintered, the impact shooting up my arm. I dropped the ruined stake and shook out my hand. “Quinn, what the hell—”

“Sorry.” He was bending over, clutching one bloody wrist. More blood had run down his clothes and all over both hands. I didn’t see any wound other than the wrist, but he was alabaster-pale, and his eyes burned like he had a fever. “Help her,” he said weakly. “Maven.”

“Where?”

“Keep going,” he said, and I stepped around the Dumpster and looked down, my heart thudding in my chest.

Maven, the cardinal vampire of all of Colorado, was lying still on her back with her hair fanned out around her, like a princess in a fairy tale. Except usually the princess’s hair isn’t orange, and she’s not wearing bag-lady clothes, with blood splashed all over her mouth, neck and face. Her eyes were closed, and she wasn’t breathing, although vampires didn’t technically need to.

I looked back at Quinn. “What—”

“Belladonna.”

I cursed and darted forward, ignoring the blood that was pooled on either side of her head as I crouched down. Behind me, Quinn stumbled forward and dropped gracelessly to his knees on the other side of her. “How could this happen?” I asked.

In answer, Quinn stuck out the arm that wasn’t bleeding and opened his hand, revealing two small, clear-glass cylinders, each with a needle on one end and fins on the other, like a pool dart. A dart gun. Someone had shot her with a dart gun. Dammit, I should have thought of that.

“I tried to give her my blood,” Quinn continued, looking woozy. “Had to keep opening the vein . . .” He trailed off.

“Can vampires even drink vampire blood?”

“For a quick fix, not long-term,” he mumbled. “Worked for a bit, but she started choking. Spit it out . . .” His eyes lost focus, and I knew he’d given too much blood. I didn’t think it would kill him anytime soon, but he’d be weak until he fed again.

“Sit down,” I ordered. Quinn sort of half-nodded and leaned back against the Dumpster. “You have a knife?” Vampire teeth are sharp enough to cut through skin, but most of them prefer to use a blade. Easier to explain the wounds later.

He pointed to Maven’s body, and I leaned forward to see a large Swiss Army knife tucked against her arm where he’d dropped it. I picked it up and, trying to not give myself enough time to get grossed out, made a cut on the back of my right hand, like I’d seen Simon do once.

“Drink,” I told Quinn, starting to move my hand toward him.

“No!” He lurched to his feet, slower than usual but still faster than most humans. “I can’t.” He pointed at Maven. “Help her. She’s dying.”

“Quinn—” I was planning to argue with him, but then I glanced down at Maven, just for a second, and realized something was seriously wrong. Her face seemed to be . . . not aging, exactly, but her skin was going gray and papery, like . . .

Like it was beginning to decay. Which happens when vampires die. Panic jolting through me, I slapped the back of my hand over her open mouth, praying she could drink it. Vampires
can
feed off witchblood, but if she couldn’t swallow Quinn’s . . .

Blood dribbled into her mouth, and for a long moment she remained completely motionless. The decay didn’t progress, but it didn’t reverse, either.

I cursed under my breath. It wasn’t working. I looked to Quinn for help, but his eyes had drifted shut again. “If you’re wrong about this, Nellie, so help me . . .” Wincing, I turned one of Maven’s wrists over and used the knife to make a deep slash down the main vein. It was clumsy and I had no idea if I’d gone to the right depth, but blood erupted out of the cut like it was evacuating her body, spraying straight up. That didn’t seem normal, but then again, what did I know about vampire baselines?

I reared my head back and managed to avoid most of the spray, but some of it got into my hair and jeans. A voice in the back of my mind started chanting
ew-ew-ew
, but I didn’t have time to listen. I clamped down on Maven’s cut with my left hand and positioned my bleeding wound back over her mouth. “Come on,” I urged. “Please,
please
drink.”

Maven didn’t stir during the cut or the gushing of blood, and she didn’t stir now. But after only a few seconds I saw her throat work, once, twice. I blew out a relieved breath.

Slowly—agonizingly slowly—her skin lost the papery cast and looked . . . well, it was still whiter than was humanly possible, but at least it looked like skin. “It’s working.” I dared to lift my left hand a little, and saw that the cut on Maven’s wrist wasn’t bleeding anymore. Thank goodness. I pushed back a strand of hair from my eyes, not caring that I was probably smearing more blood on my forehead.

I looked up at Quinn, but he had slumped sideways against the Dumpster, his eyes closed. “Quinn!” I yelled, and to my immense relief, he straightened up a little and looked at me. “Did your wound close?” I said, trying to keep my voice low and calm.

He looked down. “Yeah.” He sighed, and his eyelids began to flutter.

“Hey! Quinn!”

When he was looking at me again, I said, “We need help. And blood. Who do you trust?”

He gave me a slow blink. “Don’t know. If anyone finds out . . .”

He didn’t finish, but he didn’t have to. Maven controlled supernatural activity in the whole state. If anything happened to her, it would break the peace between vampires and witches and leave the state wide open for werewolf activity—or for Morgan to come back and stir up trouble all over again. And then there were all the other powerful supernatural creatures who would be interested in coming in to take the state for their own. Nature abhors a power vacuum.

And without Maven’s protection, Charlie would be fair game.

This was not good.

Besides Quinn, there were only two people in the Old World whom I fully trusted—but pulling Simon and Lily into this would put them in the very awkward position of keeping a powerful secret from their own mother. Again. Hazel Pellar was the most powerful witch in the state, but she had strong feelings about helping the vampires. Her loyalty to Maven was iffy at best: although they had a bargain in place, it didn’t exactly favor the witches. It limited them. Besides, if something were to happen to Maven, Hazel’s eldest daughter would be able to return to Colorado to be with her children. Not to mention Hazel herself could have a go at ruling the state.

At the same time, though, what choice did I have? If I didn’t get some help, Maven was gonna die, and possibly Quinn, too.

Still feeding Maven with one hand, I pulled out my phone with the other.