My Wicked Enemy (14 page)

Like hell he couldn’t.

Her injured arm was pressed between them, near her chest, hand fisted tight. Her body quivered relentlessly. “I don’t feel good,” she whispered against his torso.

Nikodemus stroked her hair with one hand and with the other fished in his front jeans pocket for the Copa. Damn. Harsh had the stuff. He was holding the first-aid kit, too. “Harsh.”

“Warlord?” He was standing right there, and Nikodemus had been too lost in what was going on with Carson to notice. The other fiend bent in a respectful bow that didn’t seem natural to him. He didn’t know what the hell Harsh was, but he wasn’t a low-ranking fiend, he was certain of that.

“Copa.” Nikodemus held out a hand. Carson’s condition was scaring him.

“I’m not sure that’s wise.”

He waggled his fingers and kept a pleasant expression, though he was on the edge of making a point about Doing It Right Now. Goddamn it. “Don’t make me come and get it from you.”

“It’s poison.”

“And she’s a witch.” He snapped his fingers. “The magekind take this crap all the time to get their magic ramped up. She needs to be ramped up. Trust me.” He wriggled his fingers again. Her magic was sputtering out, and something else that just didn’t feel right was cycling up, and it scared the hell out of him. “Feel that, Harsh?” Harsh nodded. “Magellan hit her with something nasty. Whatever it is, it’s riding her hard. She needs her magic or that shit’s going to kill her.” He held out a hand for the Copa again, but Harsh didn’t hand it over. “You have a better idea?”

“Yes.” He tapped the first-aid kit. “Clean her wound, stitches if she needs them, then shoot her up with a full-spectrum antibiotic to kill whatever bug is spiking her temp. I’d give her morphine if I had it, but right now I’d settle for five hundred milligrams of ibuprofen and something to help her sleep.”

“Thank you, Dr. Harsh,” Nikodemus said. Fuck no was Harsh some low-ranking fiend. “Let’s just do that while she dies from the magic that’s killing her right now. Maybe the antibiotic fairies will bring me a syringe full of that full-spectrum crap you want her to have. Hell, maybe they’ll bring the opium fairies with them.” He sliced a hand through the air. “Do I look like a goddamned human doc to you?”

Harsh remained calm. His eyes were hooded. “In fact, Warlord, you do not.”

“I got the first-aid kit, didn’t I? In five minutes, if she’s still alive, we can start using it on her. Now,” he said in a low voice, “give me the fucking Copa, or I’ll rip off your arms and stuff them where the sun don’t shine.” Harsh handed over the pills without another word. “Thank you.”

He bowed. Damn low. But no fingers to his forehead to signify respect. Nikodemus’s instinct to exact obedience from a fiend flared up. “Warlord.”

Carson’s head tilted back on her neck, exposing the length of her throat to him, like a supplicant female of his own species, a thought that made him feel like a pervert. She wasn’t a fiend. It was just the strain of the moment that made him think she felt like one. “It’s okay,” he whispered. His oath to keep her safe worked him hard. “I’ve got you.”

And he did. He wasn’t in control of her or anything extreme, no indwell going on, not that he didn’t want to, but he was there. Her breath warmed the lower portion of his sternum while he popped the lid and shook the Copa onto his hand.

“Here.” He handed her the dark yellow wedge, but her mouth went stubborn and her eyes were definitely suspicious. Right. Shit, he was an idiot. Magellan had been feeding her poison for years. No wonder she didn’t want to take anything. “It’s Copa,” he said. “Fiends take it to get high. Mages take it for the boost it gives their magic. It’ll stabilize your magic so we can concentrate on your physical injuries, all right?” He waited until she processed that and decided whether to believe him. “Tastes like chicken, I swear.”

She dry-swallowed the wedge like a pro.

The minute the Copa hit her stomach, he felt the drug surge out of her and wash back along his link with her. Black and perverted. Whatever had happened to her magic back there, he’d never felt anything like what he was getting from her now. The crazy-wild fluctuations slowed.

She lifted her head, and he got a full-on look into her wide-open eyes, along with a shot of her twisted magic. The Copa was already turning her eyes a dense, otherworldly green. Like the deep bottom of a cold, cold lake. He wanted to swim there a long time. A natural reaction that he shut down hard.

Elsewhere in the house, the imps reacted to Carson’s magic and his jacked-up state. Her mental energy sizzled, unfocused and reeking of fear, exhaustion, and pure-D chaos. She was heading for a systems crash. Stood to reason, considering everything she’d been through tonight. He needed to get her someplace where he could uncouple their connection, fix her arm, and, like Harsh advised, let her sleep off the effects. He hoped there wasn’t going to be any permanent deficit for her. That happened sometimes. Some humans just never recovered.

Her magic amped him hard. Inevitable, really, but he had himself under control. Purple shadows surrounded her eyes, and her skin was too pale, even for him, someone who liked pale-skinned humans a lot. Not that he didn’t sample widely. He did and enjoyed the hell out of himself every time. Pale skin did it for him. An opposites-attract kind of thing, in a manner of speaking. Her magic evened out, twisting up with the other crap swirling around in her. His belly got taut.

Wouldn’t he like to do her that way? Him all dark and not-human and her pale as ivory, and this time with poisoned magic seeping out of her and her wide Copatainted eyes crazy with passion. He reined himself back, but Jesus shit, he could smell blood, and her scent, and it about drove him out of his mind. The zing of her magic crackling back to life ramped him even higher. She felt more like a witch than ever, and he responded like a fiend. Blood lust and body lust. He wanted what she had.

“She’s crashing, Warlord.”

“I know that.” Whoa. She looked really, really pale. Her knees buckled, and he caught her up. The imps chittered in his head. He ignored them to get a hand behind her knees and sweep her into his arms before she fell. “Upstairs. Bring the first-aid kit.”

He took the steps two at a time because she was out cold before he’d turned around with her in his arms. Harsh was right behind him with the first-aid kit. What a good boy scout. Her eyes fluttered open when Nikodemus got her settled on his bed. Harsh cracked open the kit and started rummaging through it, muttering to himself.

Through her socks, her feet were ice-cold. He had blankets somewhere. In case he ever had human guests. But that hadn’t been for a while, and he wasn’t sure where he’d put his stash. He found a blanket stuffed in a drawer and yanked it out. Nikodemus lay the blanket over Carson’s lower body, tucking the ends under her feet. Harsh had her wrist exposed now, and they both reacted to the pungent scent of fresh blood. Two fiends smelling blood. Never a good thing. But Harsh got himself under control, and Nikodemus had been under control for longer than Harsh had been alive.

Harsh dumped the contents of the first-aid kit on the mattress. “Primitive crap.” He rummaged through the stuff with a deep frown. He was all business now. “There’s nothing here. I’m supposed to fix this with a few bandages and some gauze?”

“Work with the first-aid kit you have, pharmacy boy. Not the first-aid kit you want.” Nikodemus kept his connection going with her. He didn’t dare cut off from her until she was psychically stable, and right now she wasn’t.

Harsh sat on the bed and pulled Carson’s hand onto his lap. He turned on the bedside lamp, angling it to get the beam directed where he wanted it. The wound gaped. Her eyes opened, and she just looked like she was too small and too delicate to make it through what was happening to her. She hadn’t complained yet. Her shoulders were up around her neck, and her jaw was clenched tight. Not even a whimper.

“Can you do something for her pain, Warlord?”

Nikodemus went into Carson’s head. She was one massive raw-ended nerve. He got her into a mental place where he could put himself between her and the pain. Her physical state flowed through him now, and he ground his teeth just to keep from screaming. How had she lasted this long?

Harsh looked up. “Thanks.” His attention went back to Carson. Already her shoulders were relaxed. Nikodemus felt like his arm was going to come off. Shit. Her wrist looked bad. Much worse than he expected. Her sliced wrist oozed blood. Dried and drying blood coated her fist and wrist. Harsh turned her arm toward the light. “Can you move your fingers?”

She shook her head.

“We’re lucky he was going at her from the side. Otherwise he’d have cut through tendon.” Harsh glanced at him. “She needs a plastic surgeon.”

“No docs. You know that.”

“This is going to leave a scar no matter what I do.” He used his teeth to rip open a packet from the first-aid kit.

“How far do you need her out?” Nikodemus asked.

“Under. I don’t want her to flinch. Can you do that?”

“Yes.”

Harsh threaded a needle from the package in the sewing kit. “I can’t believe I’m doing this. It’s medieval, for God’s sake. Shit. Whatever happened to her burned her, too.”

He prepared himself. This wasn’t the way things were supposed to work. In the old days before there were taboos, when a fiend messed with a human, he let the human take the pain. This time, the white-hot torment was his. Because whatever the hell she turned out to be, a permanently broken witch or a mage who could pull magic, he didn’t want her to die. He was so amazingly fucked. Twice over. It wasn’t like he didn’t have his own defenses against the magekind. There was a reason he’d been around this long without getting taken. He wasn’t all that worried about Carson taking him down, and besides, he just didn’t believe she’d try it with him. By accident, maybe. But even if he could work out some kind of cold-war-like détente and keep Carson in his life, he’d have to give up his hopes for drawing the other warlords into an alliance.

A fiend with a witch for a lover wasn’t going to be seen as very trustworthy, but so the fuck what? He’d find another way. He was getting ahead of himself, though. First, she had to live through this.

One day at a time, he told himself. Maybe even one minute at a time. He pressed his back hard to the wall while Harsh took tiny stitches that felt like hot metal in his body. He ground his teeth and just fucking held on.

After what felt like a hundred years, Harsh snipped the last knot and inspected his work before he applied several adhesive strips in a nice little Frankenstein pattern over skin that was now yellow with the substance from the wipe in another foil-wrapped packet. Harsh gooped her up with more antiseptic and wrapped her wrist with gauze, using the crappy first-aid-kit scissors to cut the gauze. He sifted through the packets on the mattress, tore open two more, and shook out pills. “What I wouldn’t give for some Demerol.”

Nikodemus kept his arms crossed tight over his chest. “Still waiting on the drug fairies.”

Harsh ignored him and dropped the pills onto Carson’s good hand. “Take these. They’ll take the edge off.” She swallowed them without water. Harsh dug in his pocket and pulled out the other prescription bottle. “Penicillin next.” She dry swallowed them, too. Like a champ. Now that her wrist was fixed up, Harsh examined Carson’s clenched fingers. “Can you move them yet?” he asked.

Carson nodded. Nikodemus came closer. He wanted the talisman safe. No matter how fucked things were for her right now, he didn’t regret going to Rasmus’s. Because of Carson, Magellan and Rasmus weren’t able to crack the talisman. She deserved a medal for that. She really did. She looked at him. “I got it back for you,” she said.

Slowly, she leaned toward Nikodemus and held out her hand, still fisted, fingers down, until he stuck out his hand, palm up. Totally worth it. As if her fingers were rusted at the joints, she pried open her fist. She grimaced.

Black sand and a fine crystalline grit rained onto his palm. Light refracted off the mound on his hand, scattering into tiny rainbows. His entire being clenched on him, a vise crushing the life out of him. He felt sick, actually, deep inside his body.

Harsh bent for a look. What is it?”

Nikodemus said, “A disaster. A fucking disaster.”

Why the hell weren’t they all dead or mageheld?