Something Wanton (Mystics & Mayhem) (36 page)

I started moving in the direction I thought I had come from, my hands held out in front of me protectively.  I hadn’t taken ten steps when I stumbled over something soft and mushy.  My glowing body illuminated a scorched body on the ground, and I immediately backed away, covering my nose against the gagging odor of electrified dead guy.

Too scared to move anymore, I started looking for the source of the power that was making my nerve ends tingle.  My mouth fell open and refused to close again when I saw Blake’s figure coming toward me through the blinding snow.  At least…I
think
it was Blake.  My friend looked like a
god
!  His dark hair blew in the wind that howled around him, his muscular body was practically glowing, and I swear I saw the lightning overhead crackling in his eyes!

It was absolutely, positively, the most amazing thing I had ever seen!  And, coming from me, that’s really saying something!

“Turn it off,” he commanded in a deep, echoing voice. 

“E-excuse me?” I stammered out, my voice barely a whisper.

“Turn it off,” he repeated, rolling his still flashing eyes as he shrugged out of his coat.  “Put it out, turn it off, whatever.  You’re standing there butt naked, you little dingbat.”

I looked down at myself with a gasp only to discover he was right.  My sheet was gone,
and I was standing there as naked as the day I was born.  I immediately started trying to cover all the really important stuff, but it turns out I didn’t have enough hands for that.  The only good thing about finding myself naked in a blizzard, though, was that it snapped me out of my anger and my glowing, white-hot skin went back to normal.

The second I stopped glowing, Blake threw his coat around my shoulders and then pulled me into a bone-crushing hug.  It was like being hugged by an electric eel, and I immediately went rigid, but Blake didn’t even let up on his hold.

“Thank you,” he whispered against my hair.  “I know how hard that was for you.  Thank you so much, Em.”

“It wasn’t hard at all,” I whispered back, hugging him tight.  “But, you’re electrocuting me, Blake.”

“Oh!  Sorry!” he said with a tearful-sounding laugh as he let me go and took a step back.  “I guess I was so worried about talking you into not baking me that I forgot to turn mine off, too.”

I watched as the wind died around us, as the lightning stopped crashing.  It was only then that I saw the true extent of the devastation around me.  I counted at
least ten fried corpses before I stopped.  The earth around us was cracked and buckled and a ten-foot-wide crack had formed between where the stake was still burning bright and where my family and friends had been as I’d walked forward to save Kim. 

“What happened while I was in that fire?” I
muttered, amazed. 

“Um, I kind of lost it,” Blake muttered, rubbing a hand over the back of his neck in a gesture of embarrassment I knew well.  When he saw the way I was looking at him, his cheeks started to get red.  “What?  My two best girls were burning at the stake!”

“And what about their fearless leader?” I asked, turning to survey the damage again to hide my smile.  “Did you fry Hamilton, too?”

“Actually, that part gets a little weird,” Blake said.  I looked over at him just in time to see his expression go as dark as night.  “A kid teleported him out of here.”

“A kid?” I repeated, arching an eyebrow.  “What kid?”

“We don’t know,” he said, a little flicker of lightning in his eyes once more.  “The little coward was wearing a cloak with a hood.  But it had to be a kid, and a pretty young one at that
.  Seriously, whoever it was, they were shorter than
you
, Em.”

I gave him
the look
for mentioning my less than regal stature, and then turned back to the bodies littering the ground in front of me.  A kid.  A little kid was the mastermind behind the hunters arriving in Moonlight.  Somehow, I just couldn’t make myself buy that.  The plan was just too well thought out.  Besides, I didn’t really
know
any little kids, and whoever was helping Hamilton knew
me
well enough to be able to anticipate where I would be and when.

“We can talk about it later, Em,” Blake said softly, wrapping his arm around my shoulder and turning me back toward Skippy’s house when I started shivering—more from the icy dread in my stomach than the temperature.  “Let’s go get you warm and check on Kim, then we’ll all sit down and figure out what to do next.”

I nodded, but there wasn’t anything left to talk about.  By hurting someone I loved, Hamilton had declared war.

A war he didn’t have a chance of winning.

I was bordering on full-fledged crazy when Nathan finally showed up an hour and a half later to take me to Kim.  I had wanted to go straight to her when Blake and I had entered the house, but Skippy had stopped me before I even made it to the stairs.  If it hadn’t been for Blake, I probably would have had to start all over making friends with the little bloodsucking pain in the butt, but I finally agreed to let Grams heal Kim before I saw her.  Appeased, Skippy led me to a really gorgeous gold and cream decorated bedroom on the second floor and went to find me something warm to wear.

“Those are really hot
, baby.”

I stopped pacing back and forth and threw Nathan a disgruntled look.  He wasn’t looking at my face, however, but at my feet, which were snugly ensconced in a pair of bunny slippers—which Skippy had blushingly refused to admit were his when I asked. 
His eyes drifted up from there, over the fluffy pink robe that completed my ensemble, and I saw his lips start twitching.

“It took you long enough,” I snapped, marching over to stand in front of him so my glare would be even more intimidating.  “Do you know how long I’ve been stuck here waiting for—?”

He leaned down and stopped my ranting with a soft, sweet kiss that made me feel like I’d been drugged.  When he finally drew away, I was clinging to his shirt just to stay on my feet.

“Are you all right?” he asked, brushing my hair away from my cheeks.  “When I saw you jump into those flames…”

His voice trailed off and a positively agonized shadow crossed his eyes.  I felt about half an inch tall.  I had been so busy trying to save Kim that I hadn’t even thought about what watching me jump into a fire might do to the other people who loved me. 

“I’m sorry,” I whispered, standing on tiptoe to press another soft kiss to his lips. 

“No, you’re not,” he sighed with a strained smile, “but I forgive you, anyway.  Now, why don’t I take you to see your friend?  She’s dying to tell you what
she
thought of that stunt.”

I swallowed hard, remembering the fury in Kim’s eyes as we’d stood together in that fire.  Somehow, I didn’t think I was going to get the tearful ‘thank you for saving my ass’ speech that I should have received.

“After you,” Nathan said with an evil little grin, throwing open the door and waving me ahead of him.  “You don’t want to keep Kim waiting, do you?”

Grimacing in preparation of the ass-chewing I was about to receive, I let him lead me from the room and down the hall to the stairs.  The whole way down to the elevator, I was coming up with a reasonable way to explain to Kim why I hadn’t been able to stand there as she was flame-broiled.  By the time we stepped out of the elevator on the hospital floor of the basement, I hadn’t come up with anything more brilliant than the ‘You would have done the same for me’ defense.

I didn’t even notice we had stopped walking until I looked up to find Nathan staring down at me in concern. 
Nathan knew how much the girl behind that door meant to me.  If she died… No, I couldn’t think like that.  I would totally lose it and we really would be in trouble if I let my mind wander down that path.

Pulling myself together, I nodded to Nathan and he threw the door open.  Grams and Mrs. Val immediately turned, both tensed and looking ready to battle to the death.  Mrs. Val was covered in soot, her beautiful face pale and drawn.  When Nathan moved to the side and she saw me standing there, she choked on a sob and ran forward to grab
me up in a tight hug.  Her arms wrapped around me was almost my undoing.  I hugged her back, thanking any higher power that was listening for letting her still be there, for keeping her safe.

I only had a second to breathe when she let me go before Grams was there, hugging me so tight I could feel the tendons in her arms trembling.  Warm tears slid down my
neck and soaked into my robe as she whispered “my baby,” over and over, saying her own silent prayers of thanks to her Goddess.

A sound drew my attention to a curtained partition just as Blake stepped through the gap and turned to pull it shut.  Our eyes met and he froze mid-motion, his eyes filling with tears he couldn’t blink back.
  Patting Grams’ back, I pulled away from her and took a few steps toward him slowly, like I was approaching a wounded animal.  As soon as I was within reach, he grabbed me up in yet another hug.  His arms shivered around me and his body shook with silent sobs.

I could have handled Grams falling apart, or even Mrs. Val, but watching Blake break down scared the hell out of me.  The flame of panic that had flared to life when Nathan had explained—or , should I say,
not
explained—about Kim became a raging wildfire as I held Blake’s trembling form and waited for the storm to pass.

“You okay?” I asked gently when Blake let go of me and tried to pull himself back together.

“She went back for her damn phone, Em.  A
phone
.  That’s how he caught her.”  He shook his head angrily, wiping his face on the hem of his filthy, soot-covered, shirt.  “Hamilton’s people had set the house on fire.  By the time I got there, it was literally an inferno.  She was out, they all were.  They were safe.  I don’t understand, Em.  Why would she do something so
stupid
?”

He had me there.  Like any self-respecting teenager, I can’t function without my phone.  I eat with it, sleep with
it, spend most of my waking moments on it.  Still, I wouldn’t have gone back inside a burning house to get it.  And Kim wouldn’t have, either.  She might have given everyone else that lame ass-story, but I knew her better than that.  Kim wasn’t stupid.  Whatever she’d gone back for, it was a lot more important than a phone.

“Can I see her?” I asked, turning to Grams and Mrs. Val for permission.

“If you tell her no, I swear I will curse the next person who comes through that fugly-ass curtain!  No joke!  One of the lasting kind, Mom!”

It was weak, a little hoarse, and a long way from happy, but Kim’s voice was more beautiful to me than any other sound in the world in that moment.  It was proof, no matter how bad her injuries were, that she was alive.  I couldn’t lose Kim.  She was my anchor, my conscience.  Without her, I wouldn’t know what to do.

“Go ahead, Em,” Mrs. Val said, looking like she was trying not to laugh at her daughter’s unpleasant attitude.

“Prepare yourself,” Blake said, leaning to wh
isper the words against my ear.  “They did what they could, but the damage is pretty bad.”

I nodded, more prepared than he could ever imagine.  I didn’t care if she looked like she had been fried extra crispy.  All I cared about was that she was still alive.

I stepped through the gap in the curtain and stopped when I saw Kim in a true-to-goodness hospital bed, propped up by a mound of pillows.  She turned to give me a nice long glare, and I felt my heart break into a million pieces.  The left side of her face was a mass of hideous burns and most of her hair was gone on that side.  As she moved, trying for a more comfortable position, I saw the bandages that covered her neck, her shoulder, and her arm.  The blankets covering her to the waist kept my examination from going any further.  I’m not ashamed to admit I was grateful for that.  I had seen enough already.

“If you wanted a makeover, all you had to do was ask, Kim,” I told her, rolling my eyes and pasting a grin onto my face to hide how much seeing her like that hurt me.  That was just the way we were.  When things got too serious, we made jokes about it.  It worked most of the time.

For a second she laughed.  Then she started to cry.  I knew what I had to do.  I rushed forward and, very carefully, lifted her up and into my arms.  I held her as she cried, my mind frantically searching for a way to help her.

When I found myself thinking of the IV bag of angel blood in the other room, though, I knew I had the answer.  It had healed
me
, a member of the undead.  If it could do that, it could heal Kim, too.  I just knew it.

“I didn’t go back for my phone,” Kim whispered against my shoulder, interrupting my plotting on her behalf.

“I never thought you did,” I whispered back, easing her back down on the pillows behind her.  “I knew that was bullshit the second Blake said it. What did you go back for, Kimmy?”

I hadn’t called her that in years and her expression went all soft and sentimental.  As kids we had told everyone our names were Kimmy and Emmy, so we could pretend we were twins.  Kim’s older brother,
Riley, had called us Ember and Kimber, because he swore we
were
twins, separated at birth because it would take a saint to raise both of us without ending up in an asylum somewhere.

Through another flood of tears, she held out the object in her hand and I suddenly understood.  I recognized the gold, oval-shaped locket immediately.  Kim never went anywhere without it.  If she wasn’t wearing it, she had it on her somewhere.  It had been a gift from her dad a few weeks before he died when a drunk driver hit his car head
on.  It had still been crazy for her to risk her life to go back for it, but it was at least a little easier to understand her reasoning.  Seeing my expression, Kim shook her head and opened it before holding it up again.

“I went back to get
you,
Em.”

I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry as I stared at the pictures of Kim and I, frozen forever at the awkward age of ten, that gazed back up at me.  There were two locks of braided hair inside as well.  One of my red curls wrapped around Kim’s picture, below the little sliver of glass that covered it, while hers wrapped around mine.

“Dad put those pictures inside, but he wasn’t a witch so at first it was just a locket.  Mom charmed it when she added the locks of our hair that summer she gave us haircuts.  Do you remember that?”  How could I forget?  That had been my worst haircut ever.  “When she charmed it, Mom told me that as long as I had that locket I would never lose you…and I wouldn’t let you lose yourself.  I couldn’t lose you, Em.”

I nodded, trying to swallow past the lump in my throat that felt like I’d been trying to choke down
a softball.  It explained so much, the way Kim always seemed to show up just when I needed her most, the strength of the bond we had to one another.  It was because she carried part of me with her all the time.

When I lifted my head and looked at her again, I didn’t see the burns.  I didn’t see anything but my friend.  The girl I had admired, laughed with, fought with, and cried with.  Kim wasn’t beautiful because of her face or her form.  She was beautiful because of her heart.  The outside just reflected what was already there, on the inside.

And I was going to give that back to her—whether she liked it or not.

“Do you trust me, Kim?” I whispered, not wanting Nathan to hear me, already tearing at the tape holding my IV needle in place.

“Of course I do,” she whispered back, frowning in confusion as she watched my frantic movements.

“Good.”  I smiled, finally succeeding in freeing the tape from my arm.  It took most of the fine hairs on my arm with it, but I hardly even noticed.  “All right, we’re going to test your trust.  I need you to look at me, Kim, look right in my eyes, and don’t look away.”

She shrugged, totally confused, but did as I asked.  It was low, but I couldn’t have her fighting me.  First off, I was going to be giving my first IV.  Second, I still had to find some way to get the rest of the angel blood from the morgue—at least, I
hoped
it was still in the morgue—without being caught.  Somehow, I didn’t think what I was about to do was going to go over real well with Mrs. Val and Grams.  It was better if they found out
after
the damage was already done.

As soon as I was sure she was completely mesmerized, I removed the needle from my hand and bit my lip as I tried to remember how the nurses had done it on TV.  Then, saying a silent prayer that I wouldn’t kill my best friend, I began to insert it into the vein in Kim’s hand.  It was a lot easier than I thought it would be.  I only missed the vein once—okay, maybe twice, but who’s counting.

That done, I just sat and watched her for a few minutes.  When she remained calm and didn’t start having a seizure or anything, I took my first deep breath.  Step one of my mission was complete.  All that was left to do was figure out how to get the blood from down the hall without being seen.

“You teleport, dumbass,” I muttered to myself when I realized the solution to my problem was simple.  That was good,
since I’m really not all that creative.

I shivered when I materialized in the morgue.  What?  The place gave me the heebie jeebies on a monster scale!  To my surprise, the quarter bag of angel blood was hanging right where Tyler had left it next to the autopsy
table.  I didn’t stop to wonder why Skippy hadn’t taken it, just grabbed it and teleported back to Kim’s bedside.

With my mission of mercy nearly complete, I found myself hesitating.  Tyler had said a small amount wouldn’t make her immortal, but he hadn’t said how much a ‘small amount’ was.  It wasn’t a life I wanted for Kim.  It hadn’t been a life I wanted for myself.

Shaking off my depressing thoughts, I hooked the bag up to the IV in Kim’s hand and then held my breath and turned the little wheel that controlled the blood flow through the line.  I bit back a shout of triumph when the blood didn’t start to pool under her skin or clog up in the tube.  I had done it.  I
never
wanted to do it again, but I had actually done it!