Page 67 of A Cursed Heart
The gun went off with a deafening bang. The pain I expected didn’t come. One moment I was on my knees, the next I was on my back, Mal covering me.
“Mal?” I grabbed him. My hand came away sticky with dark red blood. “Mal?”
“Ry—” He passed out. Just passed out. He couldn’t be dead. He was just badly hurt.
“Fucking useless demon.” Scythe stood, gun at his side. “Get up!” he barked at me. “This isn’t over. Once he belongs to me, I can fix him.”
No, Mal couldn’t belong to him. There had to be a way out of this.
Mal’s tail whipped out, striking Scythe on the arm. He fell, clipping his head against the island. The gun clattered to the floor.
On top of me, I felt Mal go lax. Completely passed out this time.
“He’s fine,” I whispered to myself, secretly knowing everything was far from fine.
It took me a moment to get out from under Mal, his dead weight and my injuries making everything harder. I didn’t knowhow long Scythe would be out. It could be minutes or just seconds.
I needed to get the gun. My fingers just closed on it when I saw Scythe twitch. He was coming around.
All I had was a second to make that choice.
I shot him in the head.
He couldn’t hurt us anymore. Maybe it made me a bad person, but I was relieved he was gone.
Shuffling over to him, I turned Mal onto his back. “Please wake up!” I pressed my head to his chest next to the hole still sluggishly pumping blood. I tried to stop the bleeding. It just wouldn’t stop.
“Please!” I cried, tears running down my face. “Wake up, Mal, please! You’ve got to heal yourself.”
“Magic is gone,” he whispered, his mouth barely moving. “Spell stole my magic.”
“No!” I needed to get him more magic somehow. I had to do something, or I was going to lose him. “Hold on, please, Mal. Stay with me.”
“Ry—” Mal’s breath shuddered in his lungs. Fuck, I was losing him.
“Shit!” I punched the floor in my grief. I felt so useless.
The gem fell to the floor beside me. The heart ruby. Mal’s prison for centuries. A magical gem.
I grabbed it and laid it over the wound instinctively. “Please,” I prayed. “Work, c’mon, heal him!”
Slowly, I noticed the gem’s color leeching away, going from ruby red and black to gray. Then Mal’s tail began to disintegrate. Before my eyes, both the demon that I loved and the gem I hated changed until all of his demon side was gone and the gem was no longer a ruby. It looked like a lump of silver-gray crystal.
Then the bond went slack and disappeared completely.
Was that it? Was Mal dead? My tears ran freely. I couldn’t even see from them, they clouded my eyes.
Mal took a gasping breath just as the crystal splintered into shards, no longer resembling a heart. “Ryan?”
“Oh fuck! Oh shit! Mal!”
His hand reached for me. “Are you okay?”
“Am I okay?” I gave a watery chuckle. “Fucking hell! I think you died for a minute. Jesus!”
“FBI!” A team of people swarmed my kitchen. “Weapons on the floor!”
“We’re unarmed!” I held Mal still. “We’re hurt.”
“There’s a body over here. It’s our target. We’re going to need medical for these two.”
“It’s over,” I whispered to Mal.
He squeezed my hand and managed the sweetest smile. “Yeah. You freed me, Ryan. I… Thank you. I love you. I always will.”
“You saved me first, Mal. I just had to return the favor.” Leaning down, I brushed some hair that had come loose from his braid off his face and kissed him. There had been a minute there that I thought I’d never get to do that again. That I’d never get to tell him how I felt about him. “I love you, too.”
