“You sound like a vampire.”
He shook his head. “I don’t want to drink it. It bothers me. Without your powers you seem breakable.”
Breakable. My chest ached to have my old powers back.
Chilly wind rushed in through the windows, bringing the rain with it. I still didn’t want to pull off my dress in front of him. He couldn’t see me naked. And it wasn’t just modesty. I really didn’t want him to see the demon names carved into my stomach. “There’s got to be another way to do this.”
He quirked an eyebrow. “Your modesty borders on neurosis.”
“I just need to keep my guard up around you. You seem like you could be unhinged.”
“I seem unhinged?”
“Your whole death god thing. The moving tattoos. The exploding hearts. The claws.”
Shadows danced around him, like darkness was trying to claim him. “In the Ankou state, my primitive side takes over a little. But I can keep it under control.”
I pointed at him. “I knew it. Unhinged.”
I felt a magnetic pull between us that bothered me.
For a moment, I wondered what his primitive side would do when he had a woman lying naked before him, and my thoughts filled with base desires that were foreign to me.
Then, I pushed the thought away again, keeping a death grip on the hilt of my knife. Wolves, Aenor.
Chapter 21
My pulse started to race as I tried to resist the strange pull between us. “Before you heal me, we should protect ourselves against the fuath. At any moment, spirits could come flying in here, and there’s nothing to guard us from them. There’s a protection against the curse.”
“And you know it?” he asked.
“I might be able to remember it.” With my shoulders against the concrete wall, I closed my eyes, trying to remember how it looked in the ancient curse book. It was a fae rune… I tried to imagine the shop vividly—how it smelled of dried herbs, the sound of Elvis on the crackling record player, Gina sitting on the countertop eating Pop-Tarts. I’d sit by the bookshelves and pore over the curse book, looking for something good…
On the page about the fuath, someone had drawn an image of a human eating another person to illustrate possession. Blood dripped down the man’s chin. It was one of those weird medieval drawings where people had really calm, bored facial expressions while something horrific was happening.
On the opposite page, there were instructions about protecting your loved ones with your blood. The picture—now I could see it so vividly in my mind’s eye. It looked like a sort of sharp flower with triangular petals.
I opened my eyes. “I’ve got it,” I said. “Once we do this, the fuath won’t be able to possess our bodies. But this is about to get a little weird. And you need to take off your shirt.”
He did as he was told, dropping his T-shirt on the floor. My gaze swept over his muscled, warrior’s body, glistening from the rainwater.
Now, that tug between us felt even stronger.
“We need blood from each of us.” I pricked my fingertip with the tip of the dagger, then handed the blade to him. Droplets of blood pooled on my finger.
Then, I painted on his chest. His skin was silky smooth, with steel underneath. I stroked the symbol over his chest—around the blackened bullet hole—the dark heart of the sun.
When I’d finished, he looked down at it.
Was this perhaps a sign of trust? He’d just let me mark him with my blood, using a magical symbol that could be anything.
I pulled the neckline of my dress open. “Now you need to do the same thing with your blood. See? I told you it was weird.”
Lyr jabbed himself with the dagger—probably harder than he needed to, his body beaming with gold for a moment. He painted me with his blood, and it dripped down my chest. He copied the symbol, and as he did, magic shivered over my skin.
I wasn’t entirely clear about the logistics beyond this. If the blood washed off, did we have to reapply, or did this last forever? The ancient texts often left out helpful details like that.
Lyr finished with a precise swoop of red, then his eyes met mine. “What other curses do you know about?”
I shrugged. “I memorized a whole book of them. So, you’ll have to be more specific. Some of them had to do with blighting crops, drying up cow’s milk, causing venereal diseases. Exactly what kind of curse are you dealing with?”
“I can’t always control the Ankou state as well as I once could. It comes and goes when I don’t want it to.”
“Because someone put a curse on you?”
The wind whistled through the open windows down the hall, toying with his hair. “I did something I should not have done, and now the Ankou appears when it should not.”
Curiosity roared. “What did you do?”
His gaze shuttered. “It doesn’t matter right now.” He nodded at my blood-soaked dress. “Let me get the glass out of your skin. Take off your clothes.”
“Can you turn around while I get undressed?”
He turned in the other direction, crossing his arms.
I pulled up the hem, and I unhooked the sheath around my thigh. Tight as it was, it had left deep, red marks in my skin, and an imprint where the buckle was. It was a relief to have it off.
Then, I pulled off the gown, which was disgusting at this point. I had no underwear on, since Lyr had never given me any.
Cold and naked, I felt acutely aware of every inch of my exposed skin.
With a twinge of shame, I looked down at the names carved into my body with iron long ago. The writing was so messy I could hardly read the demon names, but I still remembered them. Abrax, Morloch, Bilial…
Whatever else Lyr saw, I didn’t need him seeing where demons had branded me. It occurred to me at this point that I could simply keep the dress on and pull it up to my waist. So I pulled it on again, then lay flat on the chilly floor. I pulled the dress up past my bottom, which frankly probably looked more obscene than just being totally naked, because my backside was out there for all the world to see.
Not a big deal, I told myself. I was covered in blood and glass, and it was just healing. Like a medical situation.
We were both just trying to find a magic knife. And if finding the athame meant sticking my rear out in the air while Death Man plucked glass from it, then I guess this was the story fate had written for me.
“I’m lying down,” I said from the floor. The concrete chilled my body, and goosebumps had risen all over my exposed skin.
I closed my eyes, turning my head away from Lyr.
Then, I felt the sharp pricks in my thighs as he started to pull the glass out.
“Do you have tweezers?” I asked.
“I’m using my fingertips,” he said. “When we were still in Acre, you could have escaped, you know. Without your help, they likely would have torn me down and thrown me into prison in iron chains.”
“Maybe I just wanted some answers.” I grimaced as he pulled a large chunk out of my upper thigh.
“Hold on.” A ripple of his healing magic washed over my body, and a tendril of heat snaked through my core. Reflexively, my hips shifted forward, thighs clenching together.
“Stop moving.”
“I wasn’t moving.” My nipples had gone hard against the cold concrete, and my breath started coming faster. “Stop it,” I rasped, my voice breathy. “What’s that magic you’re using?”