Page 67 of Lost and Bound
Because Calder burst through, the barrier slurping off of him and twanging back into shape behind him. His eyes glowed, but crimson seeped down his face. His eyes were bleeding. His skin reddened and bubbled as I watched, flaking, crisping, his body disintegrating by the instant.
He forced himself forward and seized Scarecrow around the waist, claws piercing his torso, and then turned and flung the warlock back the way he’d come, straight into the barrier. Scarecrow flew through it from the force of Calder’s throw and let out an unearthly screech, a wail of pure physical agony, hitting the floor with a wet thump. He thrashed for a second, and blood pooled around him.
And he went still.
Calder turned to Curly, who stood frozen in abject terror, letting out little choking gurgles. Calder was limping, listing to the side, his breathing so raspy and labored it echoed through the room. But he didn’t hesitate, taking two steps until he stood over Curly, staring down at him. He took him by the shoulders and dragged him across the room. Curly started to beg, and Calder pushed him into the barrier, pinning him there, suspended inside the deadly magic of it.
He screamed, and he…smoldered and melted, and—I turned my face away, retching. Gods, he deserved it, but I couldn’t watch. The smell filled the room, and I choked, hanging in my chains. Calder was dying, he’d killed them, but he was dying—
Calder came back to me, moving more slowly, his face nearly unrecognizable for the horrors of what the magic had done to him. He took one manacle in his hands and ripped it open, the metal squealing and the magic of it sparking. It clattered to the ground. He tore the other off, and my arms fell down, so numb I couldn’t hold them up.
And Calder fell to his knees, breathing like a broken bellows, and started to topple over.
Numb or not, I lunged, and I caught him in my arms, choking on sobs, and managed to slow his fall enough that he ended up cradled against my chest, his head tipped back on my arm and my folded knees under him.
“Calder,” I whispered. And then stronger, because I couldn’t hold it in, “Why did you—fuck you, you fucking bastard, I’ll never forgive you! You killed yourself for me, you—” My chest heaved, and I gasped into silence.
He smiled at me, gums painted in bright red, the most gruesome sight of my life and the one I loved the most, because it was Calder, and he was smiling at me. Gazing up at me with those glowing eyes as if he didn’t need to see anything else before he died.
“You’re alive.” The words sounded like they had to scrape their way out of his throat. “Alive. That’s—” He stopped, convulsed, coughed up blood. “All that matters.”
I stroked his face, my fingertips barely making contact because his skin…oh, fuck, his skin, sloughing away. I bit my lip to keep from howling, tracing the contours of his cheekbone, of his distended jaw.
Only not so distended, now. His shift was fading away: the fangs shortening, his claws retracting, the fur vanishing. He felt lighter in my arms, his body contracting until I could hold him a little more easily.
And the glow faded too. For the first time, I saw his eyes without it. The palest, purest gray, they shone nearly as brightly as his alpha glow, even with the whites of his eyes completely swamped with blood. They were so fucking beautiful.
“Hang on,” I said, pointlessly. Every other cliché in the world rushed to my frantic mind.You can’t leave me. I’ve got you. You’ll be fine. And one other, that I at least knew was true, unlike the others. “I love you. I love you too much to let you go.”
It came out broken, nearly incoherent.
But he understood me, and his eyes widened. He shook his head. “No. That’s—the bond. Feelings, through it, fuck.” He coughed again, longer this time, wracked with it, and more blood dribbled from his mouth. “The bond, Jared. You’re feeling what I’m feeling.”
“I’m not, I can’t be, I’m not in any pain, and you have to be—”
“I’m blocking that as much as I can,” he said, with a little smile. “Promised not to hurt you. Remember? Also, physical. Easier to block. But that—you’re feeling what I feel. You won’t love me after the bond breaks.”
“It won’t break, it won’t break, because if it breaks, that means—don’t die for me,” I pleaded. “I love you.” And I did, so much that it felt like I might rip in half from the bitter joy of it, from the rending grief of impending loss.
And he loved me too, didn’t he? That’s what he meant. If he thought I was feeling what he was feeling—oh gods, he loved me. It burned, more than any other pain I’d ever felt.
“Worth it,” he said, and smiled up at me again. “My mouth’s—bloody. But will you kiss—”
“No,” I snarled, shaking him. “No! I’m not giving you a, a last kiss. Hold on. You called the pack?” He nodded, and started to talk again. “Shut up! No. Arik will be on his way. He’s a healer. A good one, amazing even.” I’d finally had the chance to hear what had happened with the pack while I’d been gone, and it sounded like Arik had saved nearly all of their lives at one point or another. “He’ll fix you. You just need tohang on.”
But Calder didn’t look like someone who could be fixed. His eyes had dimmed even more, and bloody froth formed at the corners of his mouth with every breath. It might have been funny, the irony of it, if I could’ve laughed. Those motherfuckers had done this to him. Taken an already extraordinary man and turned him into something truly superhuman—someone who could withstand instant death for long, agonizing minutes, while his body’s accelerated healing tried and failed to stem the tide of every cell in his body turning inside out.
“No,” he whispered, his lips barely moving. “No time. Just kiss me. Please.”
There wasn’t time. He was right.
But—my wrists hurt like hell, now that sensation had crept back in. I was healing slowly too, the hunger and thirst and magical fuckery having slowed me down to a near-human level of strength.
And they still bled. Sluggishly, but they bled.
My blood.
If the blood has the right type of magic in it…It’s the magic in it that can feed me when I need extra strength. I won’t need more. Not under normal circumstances.
