My Wicked Enemy (16 page)

“Someone you shouldn’t piss off,” Nikodemus said. That made two things that didn’t add up. Blood-twins who didn’t share a response to someone they met, and now Fen asking him what he was. She freaking ought to know. She ought to have known what Nikodemus was the minute he got in the door, if not sooner.

“Warlord,” Harsh said. Playing the diplomat so Fen wouldn’t blunder into some serious hurt. How warm and fuzzy for Harsh to be protecting the psycho he loved.

He felt sorry for Harsh. Seeing the two of them reminded him that being in love was nothing but physical and mental misery. Coming home after a long time away and finding out everything, including the love of your life, had changed for the worse, sucked. This bullshit was exactly why Nikodemus had told himself he’d never fall in love ever again. You just ended up making excuses for someone. Excusing the inexcusable. Love plain made you stupid. The problem was, he was worried he was looking at his own case of stupid coming on. He wasn’t exactly making excuses for Carson, but it was damn close. She’d behaved courageously the entire time he’d known her—not what you expected from one of the magekind. This whole thing had him fucked up bad. Get her fixed and get him cured. Right. Then they could get on with their separate and incompatible lives.

The male, Iskander, went on staring at Carson like he’d never seen a woman in real life. Ridiculous. His sister was about as hot as any female got. They were blood-twins. Of course Iskander was doing his sister. So why, when his sister was telegraphing emotion, was Iskander not reacting in like fashion? He should be. The two of them should be reacting as one. He checked Harsh. “You said they were blood-twins,” Nikodemus said.

“They are.” Harsh reached up to smooth back the hair he didn’t have anymore, stopped, then crossed his arms over his chest.

Carson’s magic was spinning out of control again, one minute nerve-shredding, ball-shrinking mage, the next eerily like one of the kin. “I thought mageheld fiends had short hair,” she said. She took a step toward Iskander but looked back at Nikodemus. “Don’t they?”

“He isn’t mageheld, Carson,” he replied. But it sure as hell freaked him out that she had the same mistaken thought about Iskander that he’d had about Fen. He could feel them, though. They weren’t mageheld. They were just freaks.

Fen’s pale blue eyes jittered like tectonic plates were meeting back there and producing a nine point nine on the Richter. Then the tremor stopped, and Nikodemus felt her power spread toward him. She might be skanky as hell, but she had some serious mojo going on. This time, he let her magic touch him. The creepiest thing was the way Iskander didn’t react. Not even a flinch when his sister pulled all that power. “Keep her away from my brother, Warlord.”

Nikodemus drew Carson back, tucking her against his side while Harsh sat across from Iskander. He stretched out a hand and touched the other twin’s hand. “Iskander?”

At last, Iskander looked away from Carson, but his expression was dead. His eyes were the same color as his sister’s, sky-blue, but there was no spirit behind them, no anima. He was empty inside. If Nikodemus had passed him on the street, he would have taken him for a human with an interesting choice of tribal tat.

“How long has he been this way?” Harsh stroked Fen’s arm.

“Since you left.” Fen sat down hard, elbows on the table, hands clasping the back of her bowed head. The stripes around her forearms turned coppery red. After a silence, she lifted her head. “Some days are better than others. He’ll say a few words. He dresses himself. Keeps things neat. Most days he’s like this. Doesn’t talk. Hardly even moves.”

Harsh’s hand slid down her arm. “I’m sorry.”

Fuck. It was all Nikodemus could do to keep himself from swearing out loud. “Are you telling me they’re broken?” Broken blood-twins weren’t going to fix anything.

Iskander’s head jerked up. His blank blue eyes flashed, and for a moment, he looked whole. A burst of magic came from him, effervescent and scalding hot. Psychotic. Totally out of control.

Beside him, Harsh stiffened. Iskander looked straight at Carson, his eyes alive. Knowing. Carson shook off Nikodemus’s arm and walked toward Iskander, palm out. The male half of this fucked-up set of blood-twins waited calmly. His eyes started to glow, deepening in color from sky-blue to cobalt. The air crackled with magic.

“Don’t touch him, witch!” Fen jumped from her chair and her hand shot out, fastening around Carson’s gauze-wrapped wrist just as Carson was about to touch Iskander’s chest.

Things happened so fast Nikodemus couldn’t block the pain that crashed over them both. Carson fell to her knees, eyes wild with agony, but Fen kept squeezing. Nikodemus fronted Carson, got her pain down to a dull roar for her and a searing burn for him. He pulled magic and, through his link with Carson, got a dose of her magic, deep and vibrating. Fiend and mage. A fucking rush. Fen twisted Carson’s wrist, and they all caught the scent of her blood when her stitches tore. The level of tension rocketed to the moon. Nikodemus roared. He had Fen cut off before she finished calling Carson names.

“Let go of her, right now,” Nikodemus said through gritted teeth. His body thrummed with Carson’s pain and the hunger for blood, fresh and hot, streaming down the back of his throat. Harsh froze on his chair, nostrils flaring. Like Nikodemus, he was hyped to the max. The only one who didn’t move was Iskander. “Trust me, fiend,” Nikodemus said in a low voice. “You don’t want me pissed off.”

“She tried to touch us.” Fen kept her grip on Carson’s wrist and pulled more magic. Nothing happened. Nikodemus smiled at her. Fen hissed. “The witch tried to touch my brother.”

Nikodemus cut off her air. Fen’s eyes bulged. “I said, let go.”

The tats on Fen’s forearms glowed hot red, but she released Carson’s wrist. The pain backed down a notch, and Nikodemus replied by giving Fen enough air to keep living. She tried to pull free of Nikodemus’s block, but no way was he letting her go that easy. As far as he was concerned, she could fry in her own backwash. He made sure Fen understood he could crush her like a bug and that he was considering doing it. Freaking blood-twins. They were crazy, all of them. Even the fucked-up ones were a goddamned menace. The room sizzled with magic. But it wasn’t coming from Fen. He had the sister locked down tight, and that ought to mean Iskander was, too. It sure as hell wasn’t Carson. She was on her feet again, cradling her wrist across her chest and panting, at total low tide.

Harsh jumped up. His chair clattered to the floor. “Iskander?”

Nikodemus shot a glance at Iskander and saw his eyes alive and fixed on Carson. She stared back at Iskander with fever-bright eyes. She took a step toward him, reaching again. Bright red stained the gauze around her wrist. Her foot caught in Harsh’s overturned chair or she might actually have made it to him, and, well, Fen probably would have tried to kill her with her bare hands. As it was, Nikodemus grabbed Carson by the shoulder and hauled her back.

Whatever the hell was wrong with these two fiends, Nikodemus no longer doubted they were real-deal blood-twins. He could feel the twinned power in his bones, shivering along his spine and through his head. Then somebody turned off the tap and the magic cut off. The life in Iskander’s eyes faded away.

“Let go of me, Warlord.” Fen bowed her head and touched the tips of her first three fingers to her forehead. “I’m good now.”

“The witch is under my protection, fiend.” Hell, but he was turned on, full of desire for Carson. “You understand that now?”

“Yeah,” she said. “Message received.” The tats on her arms were fading, but Nikodemus didn’t let go until the glow died out.

Carson’s magic flipped on, and all four of them felt it. High tide on the mage side but fluctuating with a fiend’s magic. Just totally fucked up. His balls got tight and full. Just as fast, the magic shut off. The skin on the back of his neck rippled. He caught her just in time to keep her from collapsing to the floor.

“Upstairs,” Harsh said. “First door on the left.”

While Harsh ran outside for the first-aid kit, Nikodemus got Carson into an upstairs bedroom with an attached bathroom. The blood-twins stayed downstairs. Someone had done some remodeling here. Houses this old weren’t naturally convenient like that. On the bed, Carson curled into a ball and shivered. He sat beside her just as someone tapped on the door.

Harsh came in with Nikodemus’s duffel and the first-aid kit. Carson’s magic flooded the room. If she’d had any focus, she’d have killed somebody. She sat up, hands clawing at the black line circling her throat.

“I can’t breathe,” she rasped.

He didn’t know how the fuck this had happened to him, going as psycho as Iskander over Magellan’s witch. But here he was, looking at his total devastation. Well, right now, Carson was alive, and he was going to cling to every second that passed until he couldn’t anymore. Carson lurched and hugged the toilet. He felt her ribs contract, but she didn’t throw up.

His link with her kept going in and out. One minute he could swear she was kin, and the next he got pure mage. Other times he was right there in her head like nothing was wrong, and then, wham, all he got from her was her physical state. Then emotion, a mental shriek, and the now-familiar mix of fiend and mage. And sometimes, like now, their connection just fizzled out until he got nothing, and he’d smother under a tidal wave of panic that she was gone for good.

“You care for her, don’t you?” Harsh asked. He was wearing his own clothes now, and it seemed he was a clothes hound like Durian had been. Olive cashmere sweater. Silk-blend pants. Shiny shoes. Everything fancy and expensive.

“If it weren’t for her, Magellan would have succeeded.” He turned his head and glared at Harsh. Harsh’s attention was on him, but not judgmental, which made things easier. Nobody liked a judgmental stranger watching them crack up.

“She’s the one for you, isn’t she?”

“Yeah,” he said, because he was too tired to deny it. Somewhere along the line, he’d totally clicked with Carson. Spend some quality time in a girl’s head and watch her pull your ass out of a raging fire or two, and you could fall pretty damn hard. Nikodemus looked at Carson again. With her head down, her hair bared her nape. The spot where the black streak was gathering was darkening and condensing. “If it wasn’t for her,” Nikodemus said softly, “we’d be facing a mage who could take a warlord without breaking a sweat.”

Harsh didn’t say anything for a long time. The line was disappearing at a faster rate. Nikodemus slid onto the floor next to her. She was falling apart physically. Psychically she was a category-five hurricane. He pulled her into the crook of his arm, and she collapsed against him with a moan. She was so small, and most of her life she’d never had anyone to watch over her or care what happened to her. Just a goddamned mage, using her up. He couldn’t even remember the last time he wanted to protect someone with his life. The moment was here, and he was powerless to save her.

“I don’t know what to do for her,” he said. “If she were one of us, sure, but she’s not. She’s not made the way we are.” He let his head fall back against the bathroom wall. He didn’t want to think about her dying.

Harsh chewed on his lower lip for a while. Just when Nikodemus was going to tell him to contemplate his navel someplace else, he hunkered down next to her. He grabbed her wrist, not the one Magellan had tried to slice through, and concentrated. “Look,” Harsh said, “what if the problem isn’t the magic?”

“Meaning?”

“Maybe the problem is her body. She’s not a fiend. Her physiology is human.”

“Thank you for that news flash,” Nikodemus said. He touched the gathering circle of black on Carson’s nape. Energy flowed back to him; nothing but fiend.

Harsh must have felt it, too, because he sucked in a breath and let it out. “If she were a fiend, this would be a mild flu for her instead of bubonic plague. Her body isn’t made like ours, and that’s what’s killing her.”

“Point?”

“There’s a hospital in Olompali. It’s small, but they might be able to do something for her symptoms. You’ve done all you can for her psychic condition. Now we need to treat her physical symptoms.”

“She can’t go to the hospital.” He caught Harsh’s wrist. “Don’t you think I’d have taken her if that were possible? You know what we are and what happened to her. She can
not
go to the hospital. She’d die there for sure.”

“I understand that.” Harsh’s brown eyes were so calm Nikodemus could hardly stand to look in them. “But what if the hospital comes to her?” he asked.

“What are you talking about?” He reached for Harsh’s thoughts, prepared to tear through them without permission or remorse, except Harsh reared back, stopped only by Nikodemus’s iron grip on his wrist. The other fiend threw up a clumsy but effective block. He could rip through without effort, but he waited, out of respect, an inch and a half from being goddamned impolite. This wasn’t the first time he’d gotten the feeling Harsh wasn’t what he seemed. Not a warlord. Not a blood-twin psycho himself. He’d know if Harsh were that. But not just any old fiend, either. Your average fiend didn’t hang with blood-twins. Nikodemus held Carson tighter and wondered if Harsh could be trusted. “What gives with you, pharmacy boy?”

Harsh sighed. “I’m on staff at UCSF. At least I was before I got taken.”

“On staff.” He had to think a minute before he remembered how that worked among humans. “The University of California at San Francisco? The Medical Center?”

Harsh nodded.

“You’re a doctor?”

“An oncologist. Specializing in cancer disorders of the blood.”

“You treat humans with cancer?” Fiends weren’t supposed to have human jobs. Mixing with humans got you exposed or taken. Fiends blended in with humans when they had to. But they lived on the edges of their society, like urban wildlife that went unnoticed, only with their own banking system—until someone saw a coyote eat the family cat. The kin passed for human, but they weren’t and never would be. Humans were a source of psychic energy, an ancient and traditional prey.

“I’m not an ER doc, Warlord.”

“But you went to a human school. Medical school.” His heart about leapt out of his chest, punching enough emotion that Carson stirred. He waved a hand. “Never mind how you managed that, given what you are. You’re a human doc.” He squeezed Harsh’s wrist until his eyes reacted to the pain. And he did it on purpose. “Go to the hospital and get what you need to save her.”

Harsh swallowed hard. “I’m not that good.”

“Not that good a doc?”

“No, not that good a thief.” Harsh jerked his arm toward his solar plexus, but Nikodemus didn’t release him until it was plain Harsh wasn’t getting free without his consent.

“You’re a fiend. Explain to me why not. Slowly, so I understand.”

“Until I was twenty-five, I didn’t know what I was. Nobody did. Including my parents.”

“You grew up with humans?”

He nodded. “It wasn’t until I met Fen that I knew what was going on with me. She was the first of the kin I ever met. Iskander was the second.”

Nikodemus’s head rang like he’d been whacked by a two-by-four. A fiend raised by humans. As a human. “No wonder you’re messed up.”

“There’s a lot of things you take for granted, Warlord, that I never learned. A lot of things I’m not good at.”

“No wonder you got taken.”

Harsh didn’t answer right away. Uh-huh. There was a universe in his silence. Starting with an excuse for a redheaded sociopath? “I’ll give you a list of what I need.”

“Right. You do that.”

Nikodemus finished at the hospital about three o’clock, having had to close off his link with Carson in order to concentrate on ripping off the place without anyone seeing or remembering he’d been there. With a trunk full of stolen supplies, Nikodemus headed back to the blood-twins’ home. He was lucky the Sonoma County Sheriff’s Department wasn’t patrolling this section of the county roads. After he left the city limits, he never let the needle fall below sixty. He reached for his connection with Carson the minute the farmhouse came into sight. Not even a glimmer of feedback. The back end of the Mercedes shuddered at sixty-five but leveled out at eighty.

Fen was on the front porch when he revved the car around the last corner and then jammed on the brakes. She jogged down the steps.
Yeah,
he thought,
she’s gorgeous, but she ain’t Carson.
“The mage is still alive,” she said like it was killing her to give him the news. “I’m here to help you carry the stuff.” She lifted her arms in a graceful ballerina pose. So far, Nikodemus hadn’t seen her do anything that wasn’t elegant. “That’s all.”

On the way up the stairs, he got a blast of fucked-up magic from Carson, and then their link settled into a stream of what felt normal for her. Thank God. He wasn’t too late. He and Fen unloaded the gear in the bedroom.

“Hey!” Harsh said when Fen dropped the box she was carrying from waist height to the floor. “Watch it. Some of that’s fragile.”

Nikodemus couldn’t get over the fact that Harsh had been raised by humans. Talk about a dysfunctional childhood. Fen bent her knees and dropped the next box pretty much the same way. Nikodemus reached over and grabbed the rest from her. “If any of this is broken,” he said, “you go back for more.”

She headed for the door without another word. Typical behavior for a blood-twin, but knowing that didn’t make her easier to deal with. Nikodemus really didn’t like her, and she was the one who introduced Harsh to his people? It was a miracle Harsh wasn’t a full-blown sociopath. Fen stopped at the doorway and watched Harsh tearing through the jumble of supplies. Her bracelets jingled softly. “Human medicine isn’t going to help her survive this. Let her go, Warlord. Why prolong the inevitable?”

“Get lost,” Nikodemus said.

“There’s a lake.” Her bracelets jangled some more. “You can dump her body there.”

Harsh grabbed a plastic bag of clear liquid with “Ringer’s lactate” written across the front, along with a bunch of measurement marks and fine print. “Fen, you’re not helping. Nikodemus, did you remember the blood pressure cuff?”

“Thanks for the tip,” Nikodemus said at the same time, only he was looking directly at Fen. “Now get the fuck out. If you put it on the list, Harsh, it’s in there.” He pointed to one of the boxes. “Look in that one.”

Harsh set up an IV, took Carson’s blood pressure, looked into her eyes, and down her throat. And whatever other crap a human doc did to find out what was wrong with his patient. And then he drugged her up with something he said would keep her from barfing and help relax her out.

Nikodemus sat on the edge of the bed, opposite from where the IV hung off the curtain rod. The black line was gone but for a dime-sized circle of jet an inch or so above the nape of her neck. He held her hand and did his own examination. Her mental state was not good. Magically speaking, she was closer than ever to total chaos.

From the bed, Carson moaned and scratched the spot where the IV needle went into her hand, but Harsh had anticipated that and used enough tape to cement it in for a year. So he let her dig at it for a while. After a bit, her eyes closed. But she kept breathing, and Nikodemus didn’t lose their connection. She wasn’t asleep, she was just concentrating like holy hell. He helped when he could.

Harsh checked her eyes and her pulse again. “And now, all we can do is wait.”

They settled in. Harsh checked the IV a couple of times, but mostly he sat on the floor organizing the gear Nikodemus had heisted for him. Syringes. Needles. Triplicate-form drugs. Ringer’s solution. Pills of various shapes and colors. Gizmos for looking inside her head. He hoped some of this stuff would help her.

Carson slept. Or maybe just went under the drugs, and that gave Nikodemus a respite from her chaotic state. Harsh took the opportunity to unbandage her wrist and stitch it back up with a different needle and real sutures. She must have been under, because she didn’t even flinch, and he got only the faintest sense that she knew what was going on. Harsh took her pulse. Then he got the pressure cuff on her again and started pumping.

“So?” Nikodemus said when Harsh took the stethoscope out of his ears.

“So, now she has low blood pressure instead of sky-high pressure.”

“Is that good?”

He watched Harsh search for the right words. “Let’s just say it’s not a disaster.”

Nikodemus lay his hand on her temple and concentrated the way Harsh had done with the BP cuff. “She’s hunkered down inside herself.”

Harsh was back on the floor organizing his pills, fingers moving quickly as he sorted bottles and boxes. “I’ll leave the magic to you, Warlord.”

“I’ve seen fiends who didn’t last this long,” Nikodemus said.

That got Harsh to look up. “You’ve seen this before?”

“With fiends. Not humans. It’s the only way to save a fiend who’s been imprisoned like that. Mages used to do it to us all the time. They’d separate a fiend from his magic and bottle it up. The container confers power on whoever possesses it.”

“Like a genie in a bottle?” Harsh asked.

“There’s no three wishes. Just permanent magic. The mages started playing around and found out they could absorb the fiend into their bodies. Fen and Iskander taught you about that kind of indwell, right?” Harsh nodded. “In Carson’s case, the indwell was forced. For fiends, if we’re strong enough, we survive. Same with the mages. Only a few can these days. Magellan. Rasmus. Dharma in Indonesia. A few others.” He studied Harsh. “We live longer than humans. A mage who takes on a fiend like that gets the magic and the longevity.” Nikodemus sighed. “Most of the knowledge was lost during the human Dark Ages. But then the troubles broke out, and a few mages got motivated to rediscover their glorious past of oppression and murder without any of the restraint of their ancestors. Talismans show up every now and then, but making them these days is considered old-fashioned. Today’s mage prefers to mainline. We just try to keep the talismans away from the magekind.”