The Blood Keeper Read online

  Leaning in, I carefully examined my chest. Ran my fingers over it, looking for a cut. It wasn’t like I could get a staph infection from a bruise.

  That I knew of.

  Maybe it was time for more Internet research. Either that or telling Mom, which seemed like a crap idea. She’d get all upset. Take me to the hospital.

  What I wanted to do was call Mab.

  Which seemed kind of dumb. What was she going to do? Kiss it and make it better?

  Before I could stop it, that’s exactly what I imagined.

  Mab, standing in front of me, leaning down and kissing my bare, messed-up chest.

  I shut my eyes again. And got out of the bathroom.

  MAB

  In my dream, it had rained for three days, but there was finally a break in the storm, and so the crows and I raced outside to enjoy it. Water splashed up my calves as I dashed around the front yard, arms out, laughing with them. The sun shone on a million droplets of water, clinging to blades of grass and leaves, to the flower petals, to the roof—even to the air itself. The drops glittered and winked. I caught them up on my fingers and set them on my tongue, tasting the magic. Crows batted through the trees, splattering their wings, drawing out more glistening drops that sparkled like black diamonds.

  But only ten crows darted overhead. Considering the one I’d sacrificed for the doll, there should still have remained eleven. I turned in a circle, hunting for the missing bird. “Where have you flown to?” I called.

  As if in response, the entire flock took off down the road, flying swiftly toward the front gates. I ran after them.

  The land rose up around me, reaching fingers of magic to caress my face and out-flung hands. I closed my eyes and let the trees guide me, relaxing into their embrace and trusting completely that they would never let me fall.

  Mab. The whisper came from all around me.

  I was soaked to the skin, my dress plastered against me, mud and grass splattered up my legs. Trees bent around me, my feet never touched the ground, and I flew as genuinely as the crows. Wings made of flowers and leaves spread away from my shoulders.

  Mab.

  It was the forest, calling my name in the voice of the roses.

  I was wild and wonderful, and when the doll strode out from between two elm trees I opened my arms. It embraced me and kissed me. I clung to it, mouth wide and welcoming. Vines and roses wrapped around me, weaving us together, as the doll lowered me down to the wet, warm earth. I laughed and kissed it. I wrapped my arms and legs around its strong body.

  As it kissed my neck, I whispered magical words, cleansing words, and the vines and earth fell away until all that was left was Will. Whole, fresh, and naked as if he’d been reborn.

  And I woke up, alone in my bed, pain in my shoulder from a crow perched there, cutting deep into my skin with his claw.

  I panted, hands flat against the mattress, body reeling. The other crows stared at me from a circle, perched on my shelves, on the windowsill, on the foot of my bed. My tongue tasted like the forest, and my heart had wings. Moonlight played across the dry black feathers of the crows. I swiftly counted: only ten. That part of my dream was true.

  Tossing off the thin sheet, I darted out of my room and nearly tripped over the shattered body of the eleventh crow. Its beak was open wide and its feet mangled. I cried out, floating down to my knees as if still dreaming. Through tears I saw feathers spreading out in a trail behind it on the hardwood floor.

  And Lukas, sprawled half in Arthur’s bedroom, half out, his face squeezed in pain and blood seeping through the back of his white T-shirt.

  I threw myself to my feet and scrambled to him, hitting the ground again hard. “Lukas,” I said sharply, touching his face with my hand. His cheek was alive with heat, and the smell of burning skin suddenly overwhelmed me.

  Lukas’s hands were smoldering.

  I yelled for Donna.

  Little lines of orange fire played over the boy’s fingers, flaring in a familiar pattern. The palm of his hand was a mirror image of the edge of the black candle rune, and I suddenly understood why there were so many burn scars on his hands: Lukas had tried to fight the magic with his own. His father’s spell powered up, and Lukas tried to burn it away.

  From his own body.

  Donna ran up the stairs. “Mab?”

  “Bring blessed water, and a knife.”

  She pushed past me and the circle of silent, watching crows to the bathroom, while I spat into Lukas’s palm and rubbed my saliva in a spiral. “Be cool as the rain,” I murmured, biting my teeth together as the spit steamed off his skin and the tip of my finger burned.

  I grasped his other hand, sweat pricking along my backbone. We had to stop the burning before I could even turn to the rune in his back. Donna fell to her knees on the other side of him, a bowl of blessed water sloshing as she set it down.

  Before I could take the knife from her other hand, Donna slashed the back of her wrist too deeply, and dripped blood into the already blessed water, to make it more potent. Shocked at her decision, I unrolled the thin strips of bandages she’d brought, laying them out and ready.

  If we could have turned him over, it would have helped, but his T-shirt was sticking to the small of his back now, and his breath was ragged. I couldn’t wait.

  Donna realized it the same moment I did, and said, “I can do this part.”

  I tore back to my room and pulled Mother’s box out from under the bed. Heavy and unwieldy, it kept me from having the dexterity to dance around the mingling crows with it in my arms, and I yelled at them to move, knocking two of them out of my way. The box was sealed with wax, and I grabbed Donna’s knife to break through.

  The lid opened with a puff of cinnamon-smelling air. I grabbed the vial of vesta powder, a black and red ribbon braided with a long piece of my own hair, and a sharp scalpel. I whispered the chant for holding down the heavy magic I kept locked in this box, letting it fall shut as soon as I could.

  Cutting away the bottom of Lukas’s shirt, I lifted it off the bleeding black candle rune. He whimpered, and Donna took up a lullaby as she wrapped his hands in blessed water. I let his blood flow more freely, and with the scalpel swiftly cut a binding rune into his skin just above the spidering candle rune. I scattered vesta powder into my palm and cut open my tattooed wrist, knowing how much it would sting later, although this scalpel was too sharp to feel now. I mixed my blood into the fine white powder, then drew it over the bleeding rune I’d marked on Lukas’s back. He struggled, and I pressed him down. Donna held his wrists while I wound the braid of ribbon and hair around his belly, then tied it off with a triple knot. I cut myself again, hard enough to make a heavy flow, smeared the blood between my hands, and clapped both bloody palms onto him, marking my fingers and my blood in a red shadow over the top of the black candle rune. “I bind you by blood, by earth, by knots. I bind you in my hands, I bind you,” I whispered.

  Lukas sucked in a huge breath and then stilled.

  The hallway was dark and silent, with only the rustle of crow wings and Donna’s humming to mar it. I sank back against the wall, my insides atwist and my tongue still burning with the spell.

  TWENTY

  As the earth warmed that year, I paid attention to your magic, and Gabriel’s, more closely than I had before. I saw that you used it constantly. More than just breathing it, you touched the trees in the morning, and their branches bent in, as if they wished to share it with you. Gabriel listened to them, and closed his eyes throughout the day—before, I’d thought he was only pensive or privately laughing. But no, he was hearing the voices of the trees. He saw me catch him at it and said, “They know more about dreaming than you or I.”

  I glanced out the kitchen window on a warm afternoon, when the front meadow was pale green and yellow with dandelions. A streak of red caught my attention, and I realized Gabriel lay prone in the middle of a patch of clover. Dropping my dough, I rushed out, falling to my knees beside him. “Gabriel?” I touched his shou
lder, and then his forehead. His face was still as death—as when you spent all day in your bedroom. It was not sleep, nor death. I leaned down and put my cheek to his chest. His heart beat but slowly, and he breathed once for every twelve of mine.

  Fear scoured through me, and I rocked back, hugging my knees against my chest. The sun behind me turned my shoulders hot, and sweat gathered under the heavy knot of my hair. But I didn’t move. I had no idea where you were, and struggled between running to find you and not wanting to abandon him. “Gabriel?” I whispered again.

  The hill’s oaken crown shook, bright green leaves whispering back at me. Overhead, the sky was blue with a hundred thick white clouds, pressing down, the lovely afternoon suddenly ominous, watching me and listening to my every breath.

  I touched Gabriel’s forehead, but he was cool, his face relaxed and youthful. Quite handsome without the slick, wary smile.

  His eyelashes twitched, and he turned his face into my palm. “Evie,” he said, his hand coming up to grasp my wrist. “Are you crying?”

  Not knowing I had been, I reached up and caught the drops of water on my cheek. “I was afraid. Are you well? What happened, Gabriel?” I leaned over him and slid my hand beneath his neck to help him sit.

  A small laugh spilled out of him. “I am fine, Evie! I was only out of my body.”

  And then you were there, rushing out of the forest and coming to sit beside me. You put your hand on my back, and between the two of you I felt suddenly safer and yet caught in the middle of a maelstrom. There was no room for me.

  Together you tried to teach me to leave my body behind, to fling myself up into the clouds and fly as a hawk, or to chase in spirit the deer who grazed in our most western meadow.

  Gently, you unbuttoned the collar of my dress. I barely breathed, with Gabriel near behind me and you, so careful not to touch my skin. I focused on your eyes, though they remained low on my collar. The short curve of your pale lashes teased me. Oh, Arthur, how I wished we were alone in that moment, that you would look up at me, or lean in to kiss my neck.

  Gabriel said, “Breathe, Evie,” a quiet chuckle behind his voice. He was bold enough to put his fingers on the small strip of my bare shoulder.

  I released the breath I’d been holding as you pushed aside only the very top of my dress and said, “There is nothing to fear.”

  You cut your finger and drew a spiral over my heart with your blood. It was hot and thrilling, a tether from my spirit to my body, a spiral path to follow up and again back down. I could do it, I could let go and slip up with you, could dance beside you and Gabriel, all of us crows playing between the low clouds. You led us from body to body, and Gabriel then drew us into the trees. The earth was quieter and stranger, with no mind of its own but only broad feelings, interconnected lines of power.

  I drew us safely, softly back into our own bodies. You laughed breathlessly and Gabriel clutched at our hands, while I lay, nausea spinning in my belly. You said that would fade as I became used to the changes, as my body learned. But I said, “No, I don’t think I want to do it again.”

  Gabriel leaned up on one elbow, and you sat up, cross-legged like a boy, frowning sadly. “Why ever not?” Gabriel asked.

  I gazed past both of you, up at the blue sky, and remembered the thrill of flight, the peace of the trees. “Because I can feel those things from here.” I rubbed my hand over your spiral of blood, dry and cracked against my skin, and put that hand to the earth. Magic gathered in my palm and diffused into the dirt. The grass trembled and turned golden all around me, the wind swept my hair across my face, and I heard the planet turning, creaking, breaking, and changing, as it did every moment of every day. “I belong in this body; I was born into it. I’m part of the wild just as I am.”

  I looked at you both, and Gabriel smiled his patronizing half smile, then smoothed back his hair with both his hands. You watched me, the frown fallen away, but I could not discern your thoughts. You were, then, such a mystery to me. Maybe you were thinking back to our earlier conversation, when I said the magic was a tool and you told me I was missing the beauty. So I touched your knee and said, “I do not have to be a cloud in the sky to see all the colors of the sunrise. My eyes, my heart, my mind—they appreciate much a crow cannot.”

  TWENTY-ONE

  MAB

  I slept through all of the morning, exhausted from the binding spell I’d performed on Lukas. By the time I did wake, it was late in the afternoon, and I was famished. Downstairs, Donna had hot tea ready for me. I sank down and breathed in the fumes, glad for the willow and ginseng and basil I smelled. They would rejuvenate me, filtering through my body with light energy to make up for the long night. Maybe I’d be able to heal the stinging cuts on my wrist that pulled every time I shifted my hand.

  Donna put cold chicken and cheese and oat crackers in front of me, and I ate voraciously. She sat beside me and asked, “Do you know what happened?”

  Through crumbs, I said, “Only that his father must’ve pulled on whatever dark spell he attached to Lukas. I don’t know why the crow …” My eyes trailed to the cedar box sitting on the counter beside the coffeepot. “I should try to find out. Have you seen the rest of them?”

  She pointed at the ceiling. “They’re holding vigil on the roof, most of them right over Arthur’s room.”

  “Good.” I felt mightily better with food and tea heating my insides. “I looked in on Lukas, and I think he’s all right for now. Sleeping. The binding held, but binding is only temporary.”

  “It doesn’t have to be.” She leveled me with a mother’s look.

  “It does. Binding that spell bound his own magic, too, and even if he doesn’t want it now, which we don’t know is the case, he might one day. There must be a better solution.”

  “Plenty of people get on every day without this blood, Mab.”

  I sipped my tea and stared at her over the rim but said nothing. Donna sighed, shaking her head, and pushed to her feet. She dumped her own tea into the sink and said, “I’m going to go into town and get some pills for him. He’s got a fever, and we’re out.”

  Frowning, I tried to think of an argument against it, but there weren’t any. The magic holding down that black candle rune was complicated, and we couldn’t afford to distract the flow of his blood with our usual healing remedies. Medicine would have to do. “Just no blood thinners.”

  “They might not be a bad thing,” she said as she rummaged through the fridge and pantry. “I’ll stop and get some beef, too, for a good stew. Enough so we don’t have to go out again soon.”

  I stood up and tugged on her long sleeve. “Thank you,” I said.

  Donna straightened up, a nearly empty box of cereal in hand. “For?”

  “Last night. Your magic.”

  Her breath eased out of her, melting her stiff shoulders. “Can’t ignore my feet if I want to get across the street, now, can I?”

  I laughed just a little, and she touched my shoulder. “You figure out what we can do for that boy, and I’ll help you when I can.” And Donna squeezed me before heading toward the hall. I heard her lift the station wagon’s keys off the peg near the front door and head out.

  Nibbling on a strip of chicken breast, I went and placed my free hand on top of the dead crow’s box. The wood was warm, tingling ever so slightly with power.

  That was two crows dead in just over a week: more than in the whole year before. I rubbed a circle against the wood. They died sometimes. Of fighting with blue jays, or once, in a storm, one of them broke his wings trying to fly inside. We’d burned the poor battered bodies, and I’d scattered the ashes from the top of my silo. And yet Reese had always found replacements, additional crows to fill out his flock.

  A tiny pinched feeling in my stomach made me set the chicken down and clutch up the box instead.

  This time, part of me wondered if they’d find any new wings.

  WILL

  I spent most of Monday on the sofa with Ben, heels on the coffee table, wa
tching a string of movies. He picked an old favorite: Nightmare on Elm Street, which made my skin crawl because of recent events. Halfway through, I shut it off. But he didn’t want to watch any action movies, either. He wouldn’t admit it, but I was pretty sure it was all the shooting that turned him off. By the time we’d settled on and made it through five episodes of a South Park marathon, Mom believed I was going to live. I hadn’t had a temperature all day or vomited since Sunday afternoon. To prove the vertigo was gone, I spun in a circle for her. And I didn’t mention the bruise on my chest. Or the slight headache rooted behind my eyeballs.

  Convinced, she ran out for groceries, promising to be home by the time Dad got off work. Ben offered to go with her if they could stop at a video store to pick up something decent to watch. I told him that in the twenty-first century we stream movies through the Internet. He said they’d done that in Afghanistan, but he hadn’t been aware that Kansas was so caught up.

  Before we devolved, Mom dragged him out the door and I was on my own.

  I stood for a moment in the middle of the den. Quiet pervaded the house. Mom’s car rumbled to life, and I listened as they pulled down the driveway. I couldn’t hear anything.

  My options were: turn on the TV, radio, or my iPod before the noiselessness got to me; call Matt; or go outside and crash around with the girls. I picked the last. Changed quickly into track pants and a T-shirt, then headed out back. I jogged across the yard to the kennel. “Hey, girls,” I called. Val barked back, her high-pitched happy bark. It took a second to knock back the lock, then fling open the door. Val’s tail whipped and her jaw hung open in a grin. I reached out to pet her. The muscles around my ribs pulled uncomfortably.

  A growl stopped me.

  Val’s tail drooped, and both she and I looked right, to where Havoc stood with her legs wide, her ears back, and her lips pulled up over her teeth. She growled again.