Magic to the Bone (9 page)

“You going werewolf on me now?” I said with a laugh.

“At home, in the forests, sometimes the moon is all
I would have for light. I know it well.”

“I’m sorry I left you,” I said softly. “I had to.”

“I know,” he said. “You fight your way. I am just glad you came back to me, Jade Crow.” He tucked his head down beside mine, pressing his cheek against my cheek. I breathed in the warm musk of him, summer sunlight and vanilla spice. He was everything good in the world packaged up just for me.

“If I hadn’t
come back right when I did, you would have died. Harper would have died. Maybe the twins, too,” I murmured. I hated to even think about it.

“But you did come back,” Alek said. “What worries me is that Samir left, as though he knew we would come. That trap was for us, I think.”

I felt as disturbed and confused as Alek sounded. It wasn’t quite a Samir thing to do. My ex seemed overly attached
to the idea of wrecking my life and killing my friends as a way of tearing me apart before he killed me himself. For him to leave a trap he didn’t even know would get sprung meant things were in motion, meant he likely had to move on with his other plans.

It meant we were running out of time.
Time’s up, let’s do this
went through my mind. Only Samir would damn well be Leeroy.

“Whatever he is
doing, it is soon,” Alek added, echoing my thoughts.

“I won’t run again,” I said. “It ends. Tomorrow I’m going to track him down.”

“Alone?” Alek said, his voice a murmur of damp fog over my skin.

“No,” I said. “Not alone.”

I twisted around and hugged myself into his warmth, pressing my face to his chest. I had turned back time for this moment, for all the moments I would have after this. I
could kill Samir to keep them safe. To help remove the shadows and pain from Harper’s eyes. To alleviate my own guilt. For Max and Tess and Steve and Todd and Sophie and Kayla and Ji-Hoon.

The people I loved who had died because of Samir was a list that was burned into my heart. I wouldn’t add to it. Not ever again.

Even if that meant breaking the Seal and letting magic back into the world.
If it came down to a choice between that and letting those I loved die?

I would choose Samir’s death. Every. Damn. Time.

“It’s like living in your own freezer,” Levi said brightly as he dragged a side of bacon out of the snow piled up behind the druid’s grove.

“Complete with lack of showers,” Harper said as she brushed off a round of wood to sit on.

The day was clear, if cold, so we were gathered around outside. Rose had brought the camp stove out and was making coffee. I wasn’t normally a coffee person, but
I’d been outvoted and drinking battery acid was small payment to see my friends smiling, alive and well enough. Junebug and Ezee had gone to look around. The druid wasn’t back yet, which had us all worried. I’d made them promise to stay away from Samir’s former camp and to stay away from town.

Once I was fed, I was going to Wylde myself. No more hiding. It was time to be the hunter. I rubbed
at my talisman, feeling the divot in the silver. It was a constant reminder of what I had almost lost.

“You smell like sunshine and flowers,” Levi told Harper. “Like… azaleas!”

“You smell like old bacon,” she said.

“That’s why Junebug loves me.”

“She’s a vegetarian.”

“Both of you stop or we won’t have any bacon. Bring that here,” Rose said, cutting them off before it could end in fists flying
and someone being tossed in the snow.

Bacon was soon sizzling, making my stomach growl almost as loud as Alek’s. I held my metal plate in anticipation, breathing in the hot scent of cooking fat.

The screech of an owl broke the relative peace of the clearing. Junebug’s huge white owl form swept down into the grove. She shifted even as she landed, dropping into a superhero landing pose in the
snow at the edge of the cleared space around the dome.

“Jade, come, please,” she cried out. Her hands had blood on them.

I dropped my plate and ran toward her. “What is it? Ezee?”

“No, Yosemite,” she said. “I think he’s dying.”

We ran. Junebug flew ahead of us, dodging trees. I used my magic to push myself up and stay light on the snow, running like freaking Legolas to keep up with the shadow
of wings ahead of me. Alek had shifted to tiger and stayed even with us. Levi and Harper were dark streaks of speed in among the underbrush and evergreen boughs.

Not too far from the camp we came to a huge spreading oak. A druid’s tree if ever there was one. It reminded me of the one in the first camp, in Iollan’s first grove where the fight had gone so poorly. This wasn’t the same place—however,
it was deeper into the wilderness and the ground beneath the oak was piled with rocks that, strangely, had no snow on them.

Iollan lay prone under the oak, half propped on its giant roots. Blood spilled out his mouth with every agonizing breath, turning his red beard almost black. Ezee knelt beside his lover, pressing what had been his own shirt onto a wound I couldn’t see on Iollan’s chest.
Ezee looked up at me with wild black eyes as I ran toward them.

“Save him,” he commanded.

It was Max all over again. Time blurred for me and I saw Harper’s face instead of Ezee’s, her green eyes screaming at me to save her brother. I had failed Max.

I’m a sorceress, not a doctor
, I wanted to say. But no. It didn’t matter. I would not fail again.

I knelt next to the druid. He was cold to the
touch, but still breathing. His eyes were closed but his pupils were responsive to light when I pried one open. That was good, right?

“Move the shirt,” I said. “I have to see the wound.”

Ezee complied, spawning a fresh gush of blood as he removed the pressure. Blood pulsed from three neat holes in Iollan’s broad chest. They looked like such tiny openings, but clearly they went deep. His swirling
blue tattoos glowed faintly.

“Do the wounds go through?” I asked.

“No,” Ezee said. “I checked beneath him when I got here. The bullets must be still inside. But he’s not healing.”

“He’s unconscious,” I pointed out. “Can he heal like that?”

Ezee gave me a helpless look and shook his head. He didn’t know.

With the amount of blood he was losing, I was surprised Iollan was still alive. But he
was cold, which I recalled might be a good thing. Didn’t paramedics have a saying that someone isn’t dead until they are warm and dead? I summoned magic and used it the way I had with Alek when he was poisoned. I tried to look inside. Maybe I could see the bullets and somehow coax them out. Magical surgery. First time for everything.

I found three small, round metal objects. They looked like
dark obstructions to my magic. Iollan’s magic was fighting them. I felt his power as a foreign thing, twisting in his body like vines pushing through bricks in a time-lapse video. His magic wasn’t around the bullets; they existed in a strange void inside him, sending out a pulse of rusty-feeling magic themselves. No, not magic, more like anti-magic. The druidic magic was unfamiliar to my powers and
it tried to fight me, too. His magic shoved on mine, driving the tendrils I’d extended into the wounds out.

“There’re bullets in him. They are like musket balls or something,” I said. “His magic doesn’t want me poking around. I think the bullets are magic— or impeding his magic?”

“Cold iron,” Ezee said instantly, nodding. “Get them out?” He laid a hand on Iollan’s forehead. “His breathing is
getting worse. Now, Jade.”

I closed my eyes. The druidic power didn’t want me there, but fuck it. I was stronger than it. I sent tendrils of power back into his body, using his wounds as my openings both physically and metaphysically. The vines writhed and twisted, growing thorns and attacking my magic, but I sheared through them.

“Careful,” Ezee said as Iollan moaned in pain.

I gritted my
teeth. There was no choice but to cause more pain. Two of the balls had taken fairly straight courses into his body and lodged next to bone. The third, however, had bounced around and was buried far off course in muscles that were likely his diaphragm or something. I wished I’d paid more attention to those crazy anatomy charts in health class back in high school. That was a long-ass time ago, so it
probably wouldn’t have mattered anyway.

Grabbing the first iron ball, I yanked on it, visualizing my magic as though it were surgeon’s tools instead of raw power. It popped clear of the wound with a gross sucking sound. I let it drop and reached for the second. That one came out more easily as the druidic magic inside him changed its course and began flooding the now iron-free wound.

The third
one had no clear channel to pull it through. I wrapped my power around it but wasn’t sure how to draw it out. Iollan’s insides were a mess of blood, and even using magical X-ray vision, I wasn’t sure how to do this without more damage. The ball wasn’t that far away from the surface. Just a layer of fat and muscle stood in its way. No organs or bone blocking it.

“The way out is through,” I muttered.
Praying to whatever powers might protect a druid, I yanked hard on the ball and ripped it straight out of him in a gush of warm blood that spilled over my hands where they rested on his chest.

“Goddamnit, Jade,” Ezee said.

I opened my eyes. “The iron is out,” I said. “Sorry.”

Ezee pressed his shirt back to the wound as I moved my fingers. “It’s still bleeding.”

“I’m not a healer,” I said.
“His magic is working on him now. Anything I try to do to stop the bleeding might make it worse. His power and mine don’t play very nicely.”

“Move your hands, Ezekiel,” Alek said from behind me.

I rocked back on my heels and looked up. Alek had a giant snowball in his arms.

Ezee moved and Alek started packing snow around the druid’s chest.

“Is making him cold a good idea?” Harper asked.

“It’ll slow the bleeding.” Levi came up behind his twin and laid a hand on Ezee’s shoulder.

Alek packed the druid around with a pile of fresh snow. The snow turned pink but not red. I wiped my bloody hands off in more snow as best I could.

“It’s working,” Ezee said softly.

I came back under the tree and saw that his magic had kicked in fully. Thick green vines sprouted from the frozen earth,
shoving aside rock and dirt as they unfurled and wrapped Iollan in their grip. Within a minute he was covered from chin to ankle in thick greenery. His rough breathing slowed and no more blood sprayed from his mouth. His features relaxed into sleep.

There was nothing to do but wait. So we found seats on the rocks and waited to see if the druid would live.

Iollan opened his eyes after an interminable couple of hours. The vines slid away from him, leaving bloody but unbroken skin behind. His tattoos were just faded blue ink again, the animal patterns and dots and knotwork no longer glowing. His ruined shirt hung off his shoulders as he sat upright.

“I thought you were dying,” Ezee said. He took the druid’s hand and pressed the back of it to
his lips.

“Not so easy to kill,” Iollan said as he laid a huge hand along Ezee’s cheek. “How did you get the iron out?”

“Jade did it with her magic,” Ezee said.

“Hi,” I said with an awkward wave as I came to stand by his feet. “I’m back.”

“Who shot you?” Ezee asked, not taking his eyes off Iollan’s tired face.

“Mercenaries. I’ll explain but I’m freezing.” He shivered—for effect, most likely,
but he did look chilled.

“Can you walk?” I asked.

“Only one way to know,” he said.

Iollan got to his feet with Ezee’s help. It turned out he could walk, but it was slow going. I used my magic to wrap us in warmth. Maybe I’d call this spell Mordenkainen’s Space Heater? I was burning power like it was going out of style. Fighting Samir might have to wait a day or three for me to sleep and freshen
up, but it was worth it to keep my friends alive.

Junebug had flown back to camp to warn Rose what was happening, then flown back to us to wait. She went ahead again and there was a sleeping bag for Iollan to fall into. Coffee, camp toast, and reheated bacon waited for the rest of us.