My Wicked Enemy (17 page)

Nikodemus turned back to Carson. She lay on the mattress, arms around her head, barely breathing. He drew her hair away from her face and neck and braided it so it would stop sticking to her skin. Strands slid across his fingers like silk. When he finished, he wiped her face with a towel. And then he settled himself next to her on the mattress. He massaged the knots in her shoulders and thighs, but there wasn’t much relief he could give her. The assimilation was inexorable. He’d known fiends who’d taken on an imprisoned fiend and didn’t survive as long as she had so far. He kept telling himself that. She wasn’t dead.

Harsh had his gizmos and pills all organized and laid out on a dresser. He looked over his shoulder at Nikodemus. “I can feel her, Nikodemus. Better give her more Copa.”

He got up and dug the bottle out of his pocket. He pried it open. Damn childproof caps. “Carson,” he whispered. He put a knee on the bed and leaned over her, daring a stronger link with her, a tendril of a connection, wispy as mist, that slid right in. She reacted to his voice, and to the link, too. “Take this.”

She did. Dry swallowed it just like a fiend. Or a mage. Whatever the hell she was. He was jumpy with the desire to do something. Anything. He needed to do something. But there wasn’t anything he dared try with her in this state. He hated that. He looked at Harsh. “Want some?”

The fiend propped his hands high up on either side of the doorway. Raised by humans. And introduced to his heritage by a pair of blood-twins. The poor fuck. “No, thank you.”

He looked at Carson, lying on the bed, pale and sweaty. Barely breathing. “Can’t you give her something else? Isn’t there something in all that crap that will keep her alive?

“I can’t give her any more opiates,” Harsh said. “Not yet.”

“We’re going to lose her, aren’t we?”

“In my opinion, if she’s going to die, it’ll be soon.” He lowered his voice. “If,” he said. “I said if.”

He squeezed the bottle of Copa. “If she was a normal human, how long?”

“An hour. Maybe less.”

Get the fuck out if you can’t be helpful.

Someone leaned over her, breath warm against her cheek. Soft lips pressed against her forehead.

I need you, Carson. Please. Don’t leave me.

She tried to open her eyes, but nothing happened.

“Carson?”

God, she had to work at lifting her lids, and when she did, her sense of perspective got lost in a jumble of lines and angles that refused to resolve into shapes she understood. She blinked. Someone was leaning over her. She fought to bring the face into focus.

Nikodemus brushed away the hair on her forehead. “I need you to wake up, Carson. Can you do that for me?” His voice dropped low and plaintive. “Please?”

She lifted her hand and touched his chest with her good arm. How strange, she thought. Nothing happened. There wasn’t any flow of energy from her to him, no roaring heat in her veins. Why not? Nikodemus put a hand over hers. “It doesn’t do any good with you,” she murmured. “You aren’t mageheld.”

“Carson?”

Her brain came slowly alert. Everything processed in slow motion, as if her mind didn’t want to give up the place she’d been. And then she was here. Present. Now. With Nikodemus. Elsewhere in the house, Harsh was sitting on a bed, holding his head in his hands. She felt Iskander, and as she recalled his face to mind, she could swear she felt stripes down her face, too. Her body ached. Every breath hurt. Her thoughts scattered.

Nikodemus dug in his pocket and pulled out a brown prescription bottle. He popped the cap and shook a small triangular pill onto his hand. “Here.” The earthy smell reminded her of his headache-remedy tea. He held the tiny pill to her lips. She tried to take it from him, but her hand shook too hard. The material started to crumble.

She opened her mouth, and he slid the pill onto her tongue. She shivered at the sharp, pungent taste. Nikodemus sat on the edge of the bed, one leg on the mattress, the other on the ground. She felt as if she were in a foreign country and had just recognized Nikodemus as someone from home. He was kin. Where on earth had that thought come from? Her skin was dry and hot.

“You’re very sick, Carson. You know that, don’t you?”

“Yes.” Her heart tensed up. She was dying. Because of Magellan.

He smoothed her hair behind her ear, and his finger lingered there. “The talisman you took from Magellan cracked open, and everything inside it went into you. Do you remember that?”

She nodded. Her head was a boulder on the pillow.

“Harsh thinks you’re dying.” He stretched out her injured arm, unfolding her fingers so he could touch her palm. A faint grayish-black spot was all that remained of the mark the talisman had left on her hand. “He thinks you’re not going to make it.”

“But Magellan didn’t get the talisman.” She turned her trembling hand over, palm up, palm down. Pain incinerated her, and for a while all she could do was wait for the burn to subside. She lay her head against the pillow. Her body was empty. Whatever magic was consuming her had taken just about all there was of her. “It was worth it,” she whispered.

“Carson,” he said. “I think there’s a way to keep you alive.”

She had to be careful where she looked. Her depth perception kept wigging out on her. There was something wrong with her inner ear, too, because if she moved her head, she got dizzy. His gaze fixed on her, but she lost his eyes in a haze of gray and blue and charcoal shadows. A thread of fear worked its way through her.

“Listen to me,” he said. “Just listen, okay?” He put his mouth by her ear. “I don’t want you to die. You can’t die on me, Carson. Do you get that? Nod or something if you get that.”

Her head moved on the pillow, and it took about all her strength.

“I feel you as kin now, and if you’re kin, you can swear fealty to me. We’ll have a permanent connection that I think will stop the talisman’s magic from killing you.” He spoke in a low, quick voice. “If it works, you’ll be my creature afterward, sharing a part of me. There’s always a risk things won’t work the way they would if you were really kin. But I don’t think that’s what will happen.” He clenched his teeth. “You need to understand it’s not a one-way thing like we had going when we were at Rasmus’s. This thing puts an obligation on us both. There’s no going back from this. It’s permanent.”

Her vision started going out again. She blinked hard and got his face back into focus. His eyes were hard. Chips of blue-gray slate. She nodded.

“One last thing. This is taboo.You may feel like kin, but you’re magekind, Carson, and totally fucked up, excuse my French. I don’t think anyone’s going to approve of this.” He gripped her hand. “Just nod if you’re okay with that. If you can’t nod, then squeeze my hand.”

She swallowed. “When?” she whispered past a desert-dry throat.

“Now. There’s no time to wait.” He took in a long breath, and with a hand on her chin, he pushed her head to one side to expose the side of her throat to him. “Say this, Carson; or just think it really hard. Either works.
I promise on my blood that I will be faithful to you, the warlord Nikodemus. I will never cause you harm and will observe homage to you against all who oppose you, in good faith and without deceit
.”

With each syllable came a pulse in her head, a deeper awareness of Nikodemus. Her sense of him grew larger in her mind. Denser with each word.

When she finished, his fingers tightened on her chin. “Well done, Carson Philips,” he said. He helped her sit up in the bed, and she wasn’t wracked with pain. His strength flowed into her. Nikodemus traced a line on her throat with the side of his fingernail.

At first she didn’t feel anything but his contact with her and a tingle in her skin. Then a cold pain rose up. She flinched as the sensation got bigger in her head. He held her immobile, one arm around her waist, the other cupping the back of her head. He was strong. Much stronger than she expected. She fought to stay calm. He overwhelmed her. Nikodemus bowed his head and inhaled. Blood trickled down her collarbone, a slow streak of heat on her skin. His hand on the back of her head tightened, pulling back to stretch her neck taut. He whispered, “Let me in, Carson.”

At first, she didn’t know how, but she remembered the first time he was in her head and how she’d relaxed her mind. She tried that now. She was caught off guard by the abrupt sense of him coming to her. He pushed his magic into her, a trickle at first, then more. His head bent, breath warming her, and he touched his mouth to the cut he’d made. His tongue moved, tracing, moving away, back into his mouth. She knew the moment he tasted her blood because a spark of shimmering heat rolled through her. He moved downward, mouth following the trail of her blood, tasting, closer to her collarbone, and then he kissed her there, right where her blood was pooling, tongue touching, lapping. The zing of the contact rocketed through her. Pressure built in her head. His teeth scraped her, nicked her skin, even. The energy he sent into her worked its way into all the interstices of her body.

She moaned, a sound of sensual longing. She wanted him to sate himself on the taste of her blood. His body along hers felt good. Warm and alive.

He let up the pressure on her chin, and Carson turned her face back to his. She felt light-headed, shaky. His chest expanded slowly, then contracted as he let out the breath he’d taken. With his hand still holding her chin, he turned his head to the side, too, and scored his neck until a line of red appeared, then brought her to his neck. The scent of his blood rose in her nose as she lowered her mouth. Her stomach roiled, and she had to fight to keep down the bile.

“Finish this,” he whispered. “Finish this or it’s no good.” He held her close, intimately, as if they were lovers. The heat of his body spread into her; the scent of him shook her to her bones. Her palms pressed against the muscled wall of his torso. She trusted him. More than once he’d saved her life.

She held her breath and pressed her mouth to his throat, hands on his chest, trying to keep her balance. His hand on her head pressed down. She opened her mouth and touched his skin. His blood spread over her tongue, hot and tart, too everything. Too hot, too bitter. Too sweet for her to bear. He blossomed inside her, and then it was like they were mortise and tenon, a perfect fit.

Her world changed. She connected with Nikodemus, mentally and physically. Heat rocketed through her, and she felt a twist in her body that echoed back from him. His neck arched, giving her better access. Her body stopped hurting, and the taste of his blood wasn’t abhorrent anymore. One of his hands stroked her back, pressing her against him until she relaxed and slid her arms around his shoulders to hold on.

“Yes,” he said in a low, drawn-out whisper. His hand on the back of her head pulled back, turning her head away. Carson thought he meant to take more blood from her and exposed her throat to him again. He slid his hand underneath her hair to the back of her head and, with spread fingers, turned her head back to his.

She gazed into his face, into his blue eyes backlit with a glow of silver. The moment stopped being about her fealty to him or the steps that had given them a permanent connection and started being about something else.

He brought her head closer with a light enough pressure that they could pretend there wasn’t any at all. But his head moved toward her until his mouth hovered over hers. He was letting her choose what happened next. She closed the distance between them and pressed her mouth to his. Blood mingled on their tongues, his and hers. He shifted on the mattress, and their bodies were closer yet not close enough.

His mouth was tender over hers, and at the same time he kissed her, his magic flowed over the connection between them, taut as a wire on the verge of snapping. His fingers wrapped around her throat, gently holding, then sliding down, over the curves of her breasts, along her stomach, to her ratty blue jeans. He wasn’t retreating. He was kissing her, gently, sweetly. Actually kissing her, parting her lips, moving his tongue into her mouth.

Nikodemus pulled back. The moment he let her go, she lost her hold on where she was. The extra dimension was there again. More of everything. More color, shape, sound, overwhelming her. She swayed, and Nikodemus caught her before—before what? His touch soothed her, helped her focus the additional sensations.

“I’m not saying no,” she said. He got up anyway. “Don’t go,” she said.

“Never.” He pulled the Copa out of his pocket, shook out three more pills, and put the bottle on the table beside the bed. He sat and touched a finger to her neck, and she caught his wrist and tugged him toward her. “You sure you want to do this?” he asked.

Carson nodded. “Yes.”

“All right, then.” He gave one of the pills to her and took the other two himself.