Page 154 of Kick the Candle (Knight Games 2)
I was battered and bleeding. And then, like a far off memory, Rick's words came back to me, "An entire universe of magic is at your fingertips." He was wrong. It wasn't at my fingertips. It was in the air I was breathing, the night air that surrounded us. Night air that was the source of my power.
The magic slammed into me like a tidal wave when I called, the air thickening to the density of pea soup. The power yanked me from under those vamps with windy tendrils that circled the camp, casting the undead aside in a wintry hurricane. The vamps covered their eyes against the blowing snow.
I used muscle and the mounting storm to reach Soleil. "Come on. You've got to flame out now!" I yelled. My power was already draining. The vamps were pushing through the wind to get to us. I couldn't hold them back forever.
"I can't," she yelled. "I tried. The mud's effect lingers."
Bathory and Julius reached for me, leaning into the wind and snow. "Sorry, Soleil, but desperate times call for desperate measures."
"What?"
"I yanked her into my arms. Holding her, screaming, in front of the vamps, I used Nightshade to slice a shallow cut across her chest, shoulder to shoulder. She screamed, but the cut paid off. Sunlight bled from the wound, and then the sun rose. Far from the dingy gray of a winter's morning, a blazing hot ball of orange swept through the clearing. Vampires burst into flame. Bathory wrapped one dying vamp around her like a coat and fled into the darkness of the woods, Julius right behind her. All of the vamps scattered or burned in the sunlight. When all were gone, I released Soleil, spinning her around to check her wound.
"I am fine!" she said, clutching the cut. "The vampires are gone. We are saved!"
"Sorry I had to do that."
Gradually, she began to pull her light back inside and heal herself. "It is nothing. I should have thought of it sooner." Her rose colored lips pressed together.
I nodded, turning in a circle to assess our surroundings in Soleil's fading light. A few vamps lay burning near the fire. All the others had made for the shelter of darkness. My eyes swept across the trees, looking for any stragglers that thought they might try to return for the Book of Flesh and Bone. I raised Nightshade when I saw a man stagger from the woods. Only, it was Silas, human again, naked and shivering. Soleil's light had broken the moon's hold on him. She opened her arms and he ran into them. The embrace was desperate, therapeutic. How long had Silas been possessed? Soleil captured? Seeing them together was a beautiful thing.
The romantic scene in front of me brought my eyes up to the cage where Poe was nudging Rick with his head and beak. "He will not wake," Poe said, worriedly. "I cannot cut him down like this. I might kill him."
I nodded, sheathing Nightshade and rushing to the place the rope was tied to a nearby tree. I worked the knot free, then carefully lowered the cage. When Rick was at my level, I could see how bad he'd been hurt. His fight with the nekomata had left him with an arm bent at an awkward angle, probably broken, and long shredded wounds, still oozing blood. I swung open the door and he collapsed into my arms. With two fingers I felt for his pulse. Weak. He was barely alive. I positioned myself to feed him my blood, then stopped. Was he human? Did the candle burn all the way down? If it had, my blood could make him sick. I had to find out.
"I need to get him home." I looked from Soleil to Silas to Poe.
It was Poe that came to my aid. "I can not deny a witch who knows what she wants." He rolled into a ball, stretched and gathered himself, morphing into a beautiful black stallion.
"I love you, Poe," I said.
"I know," he answered.
Calling on my witchy strength, I slid Rick's body over Poe's shoulders and pulled myself up behind him.
"Can I trust you two to protect the book?" I looked at Silas and Soleil.
Soleil spread her arms to display the gash across her collarbone. "There is no place safer than with me. I will keep it for you. Save your caretaker."
I nodded. "Silas, which way to Rick's cottage?"
The detective looked at me with pity. "About a mile that way." He pointed into the trees.
Just as I thought. We were near Avery's cottage in the woods behind Rick's place. Using every ounce of strength I had left, I gripped Rick against my chest and prodded Poe forward, praying for the first time to my goddess mother for help.
* * * * *
By the time I reached Rick's house, my arms and legs burned. I was exhausted, mentally, physically, emotionally. But I refused to give up. This man in my arms who had always seemed larger than life, now so human, so fragile, was suddenly more important to me than anything-even the Book of Flesh and Bone. I still couldn't believe I'd left the tome under Soleil's watch. If you added up all of the minutes I'd been in the same room as the fae, it wouldn't equal a day. Maybe not the smartest thing I'd ever done, but necessary.
The door to Rick's cottage was hanging open. But then Silas's werewolf probably didn't have good door closing skills. I thanked Poe, and half carried, half dragged Rick inside. A ring of skulls glowed from behind the couch. At the center, the three-inch thick, purple candle I'd seen before with the scarab beetle imprint had burned down to its last inch of wax. A tiny blue flame struggled at the top of a pool of wax.
"Rick? How do I stop this?" I jostled him carefully in my arms.
His eyelids fluttered. "Out the flame."
"Put out the flame before it burns down? And you'll get your power back?"
His head listed to the side, in what I interpreted as a nod.
