She was so still, so quiet. He couldn’t hear her breathing. The crystalline call, the thread of musk that had led him through the cold slanting rain and successive waves of upir, was fading, as if she had moved.
He didn’t dare glance over his shoulder. Not with the enemies drawing so near. He growled at them again.
A mass of them surged toward him, the female who seemed to be in charge screaming in a high piping voice, her white head-fur rising and falling in thick tendrils, hellfire dripping from her eyes.
He killed two with one sweep and the red rage took him. They surged forward, champing and slavering, and he knew he was going to die. It didn’t matter. What mattered was standing fast, keeping them away from his mate as long as possible.
There were too many; he went down under the weight, clawing desperately, a last roar of pure defiance shattering what remained of the human in him. The useless weakness. It vanished, and nothing was left but the pain as their claws tore at him—
—and the world stopped.
The enemy scattered like quicksilver as Tribe poured into the bolt hole, Changing and leaping, their howls and cries cleaner than the twisting groans of the bloodsuckers. Confusion reigned. He lay on the floor, trying to rise, his skin running with crimson pain that spurred him even as it drained his will.
The upir died. Shrieking, cursing, howling, running or standing to fight, they died. One of the Tribe—a Bear, his hulking shoulders hunched—halted behind him. He lay on the floor, knowing the Bear was near his mate.
She belonged to him. He would keep everything and everyone away from her. He had to. It was what he had set himself to do, and he was Carcajou.
But his body would not hold him up. The rage intensified, beating inside his brain. The rage would keep going until his heart gave out or his brain burst. He knew it—and struggled harder.
Ice and moonlight filled his nose, a soothing smell. “He’s far gone.” The words meant nothing, but the female who said them was Tribe. “Ilona! Help me!”
The smell reached back into memory, tinged with smoke and terrible grief. He had stopped someone else from plunging into the flames to save that smell, because the cold determination of animal survival told him to.
The human in him, all but buried under a landslide of rage, gave one powerful, agonized scream—and vanished again.
He struggled, but they were too strong. Fingers like vises, the cold drugging smell like chloroform, and he was dragged under a breaker of darkness. Still struggling. Still trying to scream a name that had lost all meaning but still had to be repeated, over and over again, the name that had been beating under his heart since he had slipped the chain and gone running into the cold night. Even as his muzzle was clamped shut and hands smoothed along his flayed sides, the name gonged in his head, over and over again.
Sophie!
Chapter 25
Warmth. And softness.
She lay in the dark, cradled by the spirits. They spoke to her, in reedy little voices, no longer cricketlike but the soft murmur of a whispered secret. They told her things.
We are the majir, they whispered. And you are one of us. Let us heal you.
They drew the hurt out of her body while she rested, unthinking, in the darkness. This was a forgiving darkness, like the small closet in the cellar where—
Don’t think on that, they said. Not yet.
It was right. That was an Unpleasant Thing, and she’d had enough Unpleasant Things to last a lifetime.
But something did nag at her. Something she needed to remember. Something important.
Someone.
Was it Lucy? No, Lucy was dead. When the tears came, they were a balm. Her grief leaked out, made the pillow wet, and the voices whispered her into a sleeplike trance while they worked, insubstantial fingers plucking at her flesh.
Gradually, other voices became audible. She listened from the darkness.
“She’ll be all right.” A big, gruff voice, a man somehow familiar. He smelled like fur and honey, ice and silver light. “Don’t worry. The majir say she’ll be just fine.”
“She’d better be.” Julia, her teeth snapping in every word. “She’s our shaman.”
“Nobody’s disputing that.” Cullen, that was his name. She could see him now, standing near a window, rain-washed light coming through. The feathers in his hair fluttered. His breath fogged the glass.
Julia was next to a bed where a small pale shape lay. It was odd, but Sophie could see the tangled mop of dark, limp curls, and she knew they were hers. It was as if she was standing at the foot of the single bed, watching the gray light play across a quilt covering her slowly rising and falling chest.
The face under the limp, unwashed hair was thin and terribly bruised. The majir covered it in a fine network of ghostly silver light, their faces turned in, long, insubstantial fingers stroking. The fingers were coaxing out something from inside the body, a kind of light and heat, encouraging it to grow across the skin and bind everything together.
A shadow fell across the door, and Julia glanced up. She looked worried, dark rings under her eyes and the pale streak in her hair glaring. “How is he?”
“Hard to tell.” Eric hunched his shoulders, touching the door frame with two fingers. He looked worried, too. “He doesn’t shift back, even while tranquilized. It takes two shamans and Brun to hold him down. Brun’s the only one he won’t kill.”
“I wish she’d wake up.” Julia sighed. “She could bring him out.”
“I dunno.” Eric scratched at his cheek. “I haven’t seen anything go through upir like that since…”
“Since Dad.” Julia’s tone softened. “He still thinks it’s his fault.”
“It’s Zach. Of course he does.” Eric’s gaze rose, touched Cullen’s broad back. “How much longer?”
“As long as it takes.” The other shaman turned away from the window. “She had six broken ribs, a broken arm, a concussion, skull fracture—should I go on? She’s shaman, so the majir are healing her directly. It takes time.”
“He doesn’t have much time left.” But Eric sighed, his shoulders slumping.
Itching spread along Sophie’s not-body. She was standing outside herself, and she realized she should be faintly alarmed by this.
“I know.” Cullen’s broad face set itself, the feathers in his hair fluttering slightly. “But if it comes down to losing him or losing a shaman…”
“God.” Julia hunched. She touched Sophie’s fingers, and the not-Sophie standing at the end of the bed felt a faint tingling warmth in her not-fingers. “Just get better, Sophie. We need you.”
“They’re doing all they can.” Eric turned. “I’m going back down. Maybe if I cook something, he’ll eat.”
Sophie watched as the bruising on her slack, unconscious face retreated, the swelling easing as if by magic.
Maybe it was magic, she thought, slowly. With werewolves, vampires, spirits, shamans—magic couldn’t be far behind, could it?
Zach. They were talking about Zach. Something had happened to him. She strained to remember, the room going fuzzy and distant.
It was an Unpleasant Thing. She waited for the majir to tell her she didn’t want to see, waited for her own brain to shiver away from a bad memory.
It didn’t happen.
Zach. He’d found her somehow. And she remembered him—it was funny, the memory kept slipping and sliding inside her, as if it hadn’t found its proper place yet—crouching in front of the rest of the vampires, hunching down defensively. It probably hadn’t occurred to him to leave her to Mark’s tender mercies.