Witch Interrupted (32 page)

“Not yet. Give me space.” June rubbed herbs between her palms, littering his motionless chest with green and brown. Tears slid down Katie’s cheeks. She brought death to everyone she loved.

She should have disappeared last night. She should have gone. She was a self-indulgent, weak person who’d made this happen.

“Goddess, give me strength and steady hands,” June prayed. She leaned over Marcus and pressed her hands over his heart, as if she were going to start compressions. She drew in a deep breath. “Here goes.”

Magic exploded from the small woman so forcefully a wave of heat blasted Katie. Marcus’s body stiffened, arching off the bed. Choking sounds issued from his mouth. Light flared around June’s fingers on his chest. Her body curled into a painful twist, and she shrieked.

Katie leaped between them, breaking the contact between the witch and her patient. Marcus flopped onto the mattress with a grunt.

A grunt meant he was alive—right?

June nearly crumpled. Katie caught her by the arms. “June, are you okay?”

“I’ll be fine. Check him.”

She set June on the other bed and quickly pressed an unsteady hand to Marcus’s pulse.

Nothing.

Nothing.

There! His heart thumped. Blood flowed.

After several beats, Marcus inhaled as if he’d simply been holding his breath this whole time. His body shuddered.

June coughed. “Is he…”

“He’s alive.” Both women fell silent as the miraculous intake and exhale of his lungs echoed through the room. Katie felt like throwing up but continued to assess his pulse.

Steady. Strong. “I think it worked.”

On the other bed, June squeezed her temples. “Holy moly, it was like he was sucking the magic right out of me. Once the spell started, I couldn’t cap it off. We’d better add some calming mix. I think he’s…”

Marcus woke with a cough and sat straight up in bed.

Then he screamed.

Pain.

Redness, blood, torture, brutal agony.

A thesaurus of suffering.

Marcus had gone through all the entries and run out of language.

He tried to swim through the scarlet ocean of hurt, but he had no strength left. He’d struggled for hours to stay afloat. He’d thought about sex. Thought about Katie. Thought about the periodic table. Thought about all the people he could save.

Thought about dying.

When a new pain lanced through him like a chainsaw cutting him in two, he knew he was finished. He’d failed. He couldn’t—nobody could survive this.

At last the blackness of death descended and he knew no m—

Wait.

That fucking
hurt
.

Marcus’s throat fucking hurt.

He jolted awake and realized he was screaming at the top of his lungs. Hands patted him, pushed him down, grappled with his flailing arms and legs. Someone was—holding him.

“Marcus. Marcus, baby, wake up. Oh Goddess, Marcus, please be okay.”

He quit yelling.

“Katie?”

He opened his eyes. Everything in the hotel room was unnaturally sharp and glaring. Katie held him, her arms like firebrands. She was crying. Behind her, June’s shaking hands clenched an assortment of herbs.

“I love you.” Katie rained kisses on his face. Her lips, like her arms, were fiery hot. Her tears were made of cayenne. He’d been burned to a crisp and was so damned sore he didn’t want to move. “I thought you were dying. I love you so much. Jesus, I did this to you. Your heart stopped. We had to… This was a bad idea. We should never have done this. What can I do? I have to make this go away. You can’t suffer like this.”

He loved her too. Hearing her confirm his affections was a great pleasure.

Not for long, though, because he tried to answer.

“I love…” Knives jabbed his throat when he spoke. “Water.”

June produced a bottle, and Katie held it to his mouth. He gulped.

The water hurt his throat.

When he coughed, it hurt him…everywhere. “Fuck.”

This was, quite frankly, the worst suffering of his life. He’d thought losing his sister had hurt. He’d thought the five years with the council had been torturous. He’d thought his initial transformation to a wolf had been the depths of possible pain.

He’d been wrong.

He hazed back out of consciousness. The agony sloshed over his head and he lost the ability to feel Katie. Then the wave ebbed again, and she was still holding him.

“Do we have more heal-all?” Katie begged June. “We can’t let him suffer like this.”

Marcus couldn’t see much. The world looked red and blurry. June responded in a sorrowful voice. “We have the gel, but I don’t think it will help. He has no external injuries.”

“What about willow bark? We have to do something.”

Herbs that could heal weren’t rare, but like June had said, the pain Marcus felt wasn’t due to overt injury. It was the cayenne. It had infiltrated his nervous system, and he burned. Everything burned. His eyes boiled so hot he was afraid they’d pop out of the sockets, so he had to close them.

The next time he opened his eyes, Harry was sniffing him.

“He doesn’t smell coppery. I don’t think he’s bleeding inside.”

“We should use valerian and hops,” Katie said. “Maybe he can sleep through the worst of it.”

“No,” Marcus croaked. She adjusted her hold on him, wriggling so her back was to the headboard.

He groaned. The shaking bed was like apes jumping on his sore body. Hands jounced him. Katie held the water to his lips again.

He managed to get the rest down. Or was it another bottle? It tasted funny. Bitter. He closed his eyes.

When he opened them for the seventy-eighth time, he remembered that he’d been thirsty after both permabrands. They’d need to note that on the charts.

After a moment—since he was able to think about charts—he concluded his pain levels had receded. The hotel room no longer looked like an active volcano, and his companions no longer looked like they were attending a funeral.

“How long?” he asked.

Harry checked his watch. “Eighteen hours, man. Nine for the tattoo, nine to do something about your screaming. Luckily there aren’t many other people on this floor to hear.”

“Sorry,” Marcus said, though he knew Harry was ribbing him. The man looked worried. They’d begun the brand at six in the morning, as soon as Katie had been able. No one had wanted to wait—one of the few decisions that hadn’t been a compromise of some sort.

Eighteen hours. That meant it was 3:00 a.m. Where was the clock? His gaze fell on the tattoo machine on the bedside table, and he flinched.

Never.

Again.

Katie helped him sit up but kept a firm grip on one of his hands. The air felt clammy and cold against his fevered skin.

“What happened?” With some reluctance, since it was extremely sensitive, Marcus tapped the tattooed skin of his bare chest. From his perspective, the giant brand was a snarl of reddish and dark ink that resembled a spastic molecular model.

“You died.” Her hand tightened on his, as if by her doggedness she could keep him in the land of the living. “Probably just once.”

“I see.” Slowly, his arms hating him, he covered her hand with his free one. “And when you say died…”

“Your heart quit beating and you weren’t breathing.” June’s purse appeared to have vomited its contents on the opposite bed. She quit repacking it to answer his questions. “I used gingko and hawthorn to restart blood flow.”

“Use of that combination is dodgy at best.” Did she say his heart had stopped? Surely not. He wouldn’t have lost enough blood to cause heart failure, and it wasn’t as if they’d shoved the tattoo gun into his internal organs. “Was that necessary?”

Katie caught his chin. “Look at me. Your. Heart. Stopped. Do you think we’re too inept to diagnose when somebody isn’t breathing? June saved your life.” Her lips thinned, and her eyes glistened. “After I nearly took it.”

Marcus’s companions radiated tension, fatigue, fear. He could smell it on them, just as he could smell cayenne, heal-all, peppermint, lavender, ginkgo, hawthorn—such a cornucopia of scents it gave him a twinge in his sinuses.

The impact struck him like a bowling ball to the gut. He’d always known if the keepers got their hands on him again, he could wind up dead—or enslaved and wishing he were dead. He hadn’t expected his own experiments to send him there. “You did what I asked you to. The procedure appears to have some bumps, but it’s not your fault.”

June and Harry exchanged a tired glance. Not merely tired—even Harry looked exhausted. As an alpha wolf, he should have three times the energy as the witches in the room.

Katie sighed. Some of the strain left her expression. “Don’t mind him, June. I’m sure Doctor Frankenstein appreciates the fact you saved his life with your dodgy spellwork.”

“Thank you, June,” Marcus said, realizing his oversight. “Apparently I’d be dead without you.”

“You would at that,” June agreed with a twinkle of humor. “All your systems appear to be normal now. You’re out of the woods. Is the pain manageable?”

“I’m not sure yet. It comes and goes.”

“You’ve got calming mix taking the edge off right now,” Katie said. “We made a chart.”

June handed him a stack of papers with notes, responses, chronology, amounts and herbs scribbled all over it. They told the tale of his procedure from start to what had almost been his finish. As the horror of his near-death experience crept over him, he realized his friends would also not have enjoyed the prior eighteen hours.

“Thank you,” he said again. He needed to analyze and input this data as well as get an updated lattice reading. Except for his sensitized skin and rollers of pain, he felt normal. His senses seemed wolf-keen—with none of the numbness that had characterized previous witch states—yet he could detect magic inside him.

This might be it.

This might have raised him to dual state.

Marcus knew it to be true but didn’t experience a surge of triumph. He was literally death warmed over. He stood to lose so much more now, and rescuing Katie’s family, making her happy, had superseded beating the cancer and taking down the keepers who had killed Elisa.

Katie had become more important to him than anything in his entire life. His sister’s memory, which had driven him for years, was second place. The experiment wasn’t a success if it didn’t sway the region elders to their cause. The permabrand had certain drawbacks.

That much unrelenting torture wasn’t something he’d recommend. To anyone. For any reason. Especially considering it might kill you.

“This procedure might not be repeatable,” he announced.

“No fu— Excuse me, June. No freaking kidding,” Katie said.

“If I had known…” Would he have done it? June had restarted his heart. The pain might be manageable. He didn’t feel like screaming at the moment. It had only been eighteen hours. Of torture. Which might not be over.

And he’d died.

If this wasn’t enough to convertthe region elders, he was devoid of other ideas to rescue Katie’s family. Their agreement had been that they were going to the elders after this, no matter what. Why did success taste like failure?

“If I had known, I would have refused,” Katie said.

Harry paced to the other side of the room. Marcus was pleased to note he could see that far—in natural colors. “I wanted to get June out of here before dark, Delgado, not dawn the next day. Could you speed up the recovery, buddy?”

“Why are you still in Ohio?” Marcus asked. Harry had been—rightly—anxious to get his pregnant wife to safety, yet here he was. “After the hawthorn, I’m sure Katie could have—”

“Don’t be silly.” June rested a chilly hand against his forehead. “We couldn’t leave you and Katie in…in dire straits.”

“Thank you,” Marcus said for the third time. Dire straits indeed.

“But you two need to go.” Katie stood and awkwardly adjusted her T-shirt. “The keepers are gunning for us.”

“The wards on the room will last three more hours,” June said. “They can’t find you here. I wouldn’t even be able to find you if I didn’t know the room number.”

She gave Katie a huge hug, which surprised Marcus. They must have bonded over his deathbed. Surprising him even more, Harry hugged her too—and Marcus didn’t feel the tiniest bit jealous.

Katie loved him. Marcus sure as hell hadn’t earned it, hadn’t treated her respectfully, hadn’t been a good friend to her. But she loved him.

It was time to get serious about saving her family.

* * *

Intense morning sunlight reflected off the rearview mirror and into Marcus’s eyes. Because he felt like shit, his body scalded and achy, he’d let Katie drive. His clothing bothered him. His bones felt swollen, pushing the wrong way. His muscles protested everything he did. His face hurt when he squinted. He couldn’t remain under the influence of calming mix, since it dulled him mentally, but his increase in soreness now that it had worn off was undeniable.

If this was what dual state felt like, it further convinced him his experiment had flopped. He’d never persuade other witches the risks and pain were preferable to radiation and chemotherapy, much less permanent wolf transformation.

There were joys to being a wolf. The chance you might die and be in the worst pain imaginable was the opposite of joy.

Despite feeling like death, he was increasingly confident the brand had worked. The science behind the theory was sound. Magic was a science of sorts. It wasn’t fickle or lacking in consistency. Though there were unknowns, it could be plotted and calculated and behaved according to certain laws, like chemical reactions. Magical surprises were generally wrought by the person casting.

Not precisely
human
error, but close enough.

Once Katie cast true eye—or he cast it on himself for the first time in over a year—confirmation he’d reached a dual state would decide his next course of action. The first matter of business would be convincing Katie not to leave. He didn’t doubt she loved him but had no illusions about her intentions. If she thought she could protect him by leaving him and also have a shot at helping her family, she’d jump out of the car into traffic and take off.

He loved her for that. He loved her for everything. But he didn’t want to be protected if it meant losing her. If she left, he’d follow.

He didn’t know what he could do against Lars without the region elders as reinforcements, but he’d follow.

Ignoring the scream of a thousand internal bruises, he lifted his arm and shaded his eyes from the sun’s glare. Katie glanced nervously into the rearview mirror.

“Do we have a tail?” she asked. Not for the first time.

“I don’t believe so.” They were in the thick of morning rush hour and headed through suburbs. Cars behind them hardly indicated pursuers. And Katie’s driving, he had to admit, wasn’t as unskilled in Tonya’s vehicle as it had been in the stolen truck. “How long before you anticipate having enough magic for a chi spell?”

“I probably have enough.” Katie’s combat bonus didn’t trickle magic at a steady rate. The larger portion of the refill occurred during sleep, and she’d only napped for two hours.

The factory didn’t have June’s wards. They’d have to work fast and then dash.

Today everything would change, one way or another.

Would it be for the better? When all this was over, Marcus hoped to make proper love to Katie. Their first time outside blackmail or a dark, dirty factory would be miraculous.

He looked forward to sex without heart monitors, true eye spells, biometric measurements and his godforsaken charts.

He looked forward to sex without arguments.

He looked forward to sex.

In order to have the sex, he had to convince her not to leave. But he wouldn’t lie about the probability that the region elders wouldn’t be swayed by his ill-advised solution to wolf transformation and cancer. Could he convince her Lars wouldn’t release her family unless they both offered themselves?

Was there any way, any way at all, to outsmart the man?