Blood Heir (Aurelia Ryder, #1)(85)

“Push.”

The girl gasped. Dark blood poured out of her.

“Good,” he told her. “Push harder.”

More blood, thick like tar.

The girl’s feet drummed the ground. She shuddered and went still.

We’d lost her. We’d lost her, and she’d died right here in my arms.

It felt like I’d fallen off a cliff. I was falling and falling and couldn’t find the bottom.

Derek gripped the girl’s sides. I felt magic move and slid into my sensate vision. Derek’s hands glowed with mint green.

“You need to breathe for her,” he told me. “Start CPR.”

I put my hands on her bloody chest and pushed. More blood poured out, drenching my fingers. I counted to thirty and breathed two slow breaths into her mouth.

She didn’t move. Nothing. The mint green wrapped her whole body now.

One, two, three, four… Thirty.

Two more breaths.

The girl jerked. Blood spilled out of her chest wounds, black, then grey, then red. She sucked in a deep breath and coughed, spraying grey blood on my face. Awareness came back into her eyes. She saw Derek and smiled. Her voice was a soft whisper.

“Did I make it?”

“Yes.” Derek let go of her.

“Oh good. I’m so happy right now.”

Her eyes closed. Shit.

I shook her. Derek caught my wrist.

“It’s fine now. Let her sleep.”

He’d saved her. She was going to die right here, in my hands, and he’d saved her.

I sat on my ass and looked at my hands, stained with dark blood. It smelled like rust. Across from me, Derek wiped his knife on the shreds of the girl’s shirt. He looked haggard, as if he’d packed an entire rough night into the last five minutes.

Shapeshifters didn’t do magic. They were magic. The few exceptions I’d met had magic abilities because of their origin, like Dali Shrapshire, the Beast Lord’s mate, who was a mystical white tiger.

I pointed to the girl. “What was that?”

“An acute case of silver dust poisoning.”

“I know that…”

He shrugged, his face impassive. “Congratulations, Ms. Ryder. She was dying, and you saved her life through the wonder of CPR.”

What?

Derek straightened.

From the corner of my eye, I saw a shadow move in the hallway, a crossbow in their hands. I swiped Dakkan off the floor and hurled it. The spear punched the shadow in the chest. The crossbow bolt went wide, sinking into the wall three feet to Derek’s right. A woman. Her crossbow clattered to the ground.

“Look at you. Two for two. Saving lives left and right.” Derek turned and walked deeper into the house.

“Where are you going?”

“To wash my hands. They itch.”

Thirty seconds later he was back, and ten seconds after that I was in the bathroom lathering up my fingers with lavender-scented soap. My brain finally processed what I’d seen and decided it made no sense. I wiped my hands on a towel and went back into the hallway.

Derek had the girl in his arms and was waiting for me by the door. We walked out of the house. He strode down the driveway, carrying her like she weighed less than a feather pillow. His jaw muscles were locked. Derek was pissed off.

“You didn’t wait for me,” he said, his voice casual. “We had a deal.”

“Douglas had a stroke. He might not make it.”

“I’m sorry.”

He sounded like he really was. We walked down in silence.

He had magic. It was mint green.

“This one will make it,” Derek said.

No thanks to me.

We reached the end of the driveway. The gate was open, and Ponytail sprawled on the ground. A hoof-sized hole gaped in his skull, and black flies crawled on his bloody hair. Next to him Tulip waited with a docile expression, looking like the picture of equine innocence.

Derek raised his eyebrows.

Tulip saw us and started forward.

“We both know it wasn’t CPR,” I said.

He ignored me and loaded the girl onto Tulip’s saddle.

“Did you get anything useful from Rudolph?” he asked.

“Yes. He—”

Rudolph’s house exploded. A ball of fire bulged and roared upward, blooming like a mushroom cloud. Heat smashed us with a scorching fist. A meteor shower of burning debris shot into the air and rained down all around us.

Derek snarled.

I yanked Dakkan out.

Zahar leaped out of the tree to the right and dropped by Derek.

A chunk of the roof landed in front of me, sending sparks skittering over the pavement. Fire shot out of it and snapped into a familiar tattered wraith. The ma’avir spread his hands, tipped with fiery claws.

The sound of ritual drums echoed through my mind, faint and weaker than before, when the high priest came to me in Professor Walton’s office. The enticing scent of the sacrificial smoke was a mere hint. This was a messenger, a lesser.

“We know where you have been.” His voice was like the hissing of wet wood in a fire. “We know where you are going. Nothing you do is secret from us. We could have burned you inside that dwelling, yet we have spared you to remind you that he is waiting. Cease your pitiful attempts to prevent the inevitable. Accept your fate. Go to him now and all will be forgiven…”