Нора Робертс - Blood Magick

“When? When will I have more? When will I have Sorcha?”

“Spill it, take it, taste it. Blood from your blood. Into the cup, through your lips. Into the cauldron. Prove you are worthy!”

All warmth had drained from Fin’s hand. Branna pressed it between hers, gave him what she could.

“I am worthy.” Cabhan set the bowl down, rose to take up a cup. He turned.

For the first time Branna saw the woman in the shadows. An old woman, shackled and shivering in the bitter cold.

He walked to her, taking the cup.

“Have mercy. On me, on yourself. You damn yourself. He lies. He lies to you, lies to all. He has chained you with lies as you have chained me with iron. Release me, Cabhan. Save me, save yourself.”

“You are only a woman, now old, your puny powers leaking. And of no value but this.”

“I am your mother.”

“I am already born,” he said, and slit her throat.

Branna cried out in shock and horror, but the sound drowned in the rising roar. Power swam in the air now, black as pitch, heavy as death.

He filled the cup, drank, filled it again. This he carried to the cauldron, poured through the smoke. And the smoke turned red as the blood.

“Now the sire’s with it,” Fin said, and Cabhan went to a bottle, poured its contents into the cauldron.

“Say the words.” Fin’s fingers, icy in Branna’s, flexed, unflexed. “Say the words, make the binding.”

“Blood unto blood I take so the hunger I will slake and the power here we make. From the dam and from the ram mix and smoke and call dark forces to invoke my name, my power, my destiny. Grant to me life eternal and sanctuary through this portal. I am become both god and demon and reign hereby over woman and man. Through my blood and by my power, I will take the Dark Witch unto me. I am Cabhan, mortal no more, and by these words my humanity I abjure.”

He reached through the smoke, into the cauldron, and with his bare hand, pulled out the amulet and its bloodred stone.

“In this hour by dark power I am sworn.”

He lifted the amulet over his head, laid the glowing stone on his chest.

The wind whirled into a roar as Cabhan, his eyes glowing as red as the stone, lifted his arms high. “And I am born!”

From the altar leaped the wolf, black and fierce. It sprang toward Cabhan, sprang into him with a deafening scream of thunder.

Something howled in triumph, and even the stones trembled.

He turned his head. Through the dark, through the shadows, his eyes, still glowing, met Branna’s.

She lifted a hand when his arms shot out toward her, prepared to block whatever magicks he hurled. But Fin spun her around, wrapped around her. Something crashed, something burned.

And he broke the spell.

Too fast, too unsteady. Branna clung to Fin as much to warm him—his body burned so cold—as to keep herself from spinning away.

She heard the voices first—Connor’s steady as a rock and calm as a summer lake—guiding her. Then Iona’s joining his.

Don’t be letting go now, Connor said inside her head. We’ve got you. We’ve got both of you. Nearly home now. Nearly there.

Then she was, dizzy and weak-limbed, but home in the warmth and the light.

Even as she drew a breath, Fin slipped out of her grip, went down to his knees.

“He’s hurt.” Branna went down on her own. “Let me see. Let me see you.” She took his face, pushed back his hair.

“Just knocked the wind out of me.”

“The back of his sweater’s smoking,” Boyle said, moving in and quickly. “Like Connor’s shirt that time.”

Before Branna could do so herself, Boyle pulled the sweater up and off. “He’s burned. Not so deep as Connor’s, but near the whole of his back.”

“Get him down, face-first,” Branna began.

“I’m not after sprawling down on the floor like a—”

“Have a nap.” With that snapped order, Branna laid a hand on his head, put him under. “Face-first,” she repeated, and had Connor and Boyle laying him out on the workshop floor.

She passed her hands over the scorching burns covering his back. “Not deep, no, and the poison can’t mix with his blood. Just the cold, the heat, the pain. I’ll need—”

“This?” Mary Kate offered her a jar of salve. “Healing was my strongest art.”

“That’s it exactly, thanks. We’ll be quick. It hasn’t had time to dig into him. Iona, would you take some? I’ve a bit of a burn on my left arm. It’s nothing, but we’ll want to keep it nothing. You know what to do.”

“Yes.” Iona shoved up Branna’s sleeve. “It’s small, but it looks angry.”

But it cooled the moment Iona soothed on the salve. The faint dizziness passed as well as her cousin added her own healing arts. Steadier, she could focus fully on Fin.

“That’s better, isn’t it? Sure that’s better. We could do with a whiskey, if you don’t mind. We went a little faster than I’d calculated, and coming back was like tumbling off a building.”

“I’ve already got it,” Meara told her. “He looks all clear again.”

“We’ll just be making sure.” With her hands on him, Branna searched for any deeper injury, any pocket of dark. “He’ll do.” Relief stung the back of her throat, rasped through her voice. “He’s fine.” She laid her hand on his head again, lingered just a moment. “Wake up, Fin.”

His eyes opened, looked straight into hers. “Fuck it,” he said as he pushed up to sit.

“I’m sorry for it, as it’s rude to give sleep without permission, but I wasn’t in the mood to argue.”

“She was burned, too,” Iona said, knowing it would shift Fin’s temper. “On her left arm.”

“What? Where?” He’d already grabbed Branna’s arm, shoved her sleeve up.

“Iona saw to it. It was barely there at all, as you shoved me behind you, covered over me as if I wasn’t capable of blocking an attack.”

“You couldn’t have, not that one. Not with the new power so full and young, and him flying on it like an addict on too much of a hard drug. He had more in that moment than he has now, or I think ever since. And he hungers for that wild high again.”

Connor crouched down. “I’ll say this. Thank you for looking after my sister.”

“Now I’m ungracious.” Branna sighed. “I’m sorry for that as well. I’m still turned around. I do thank you, Fin, for sparing me.”

She took the whiskeys from Meara, handed him one.

“He took you for Sorcha. In the dark, near to hallucinating, he felt you—when the power came full, he felt you, but took you for Sorcha. He meant to . . .”

“Drink some of that.”

“So I will.” Fin tapped his glass to hers, drank. “He meant to disfigure you if he could, so no one would see your beauty, so your husband, he thought, would turn from you. I saw his mind in that moment, and the madness in it.”

“A man would have to be mad to slit his own mother’s throat, then drink her blood.”

“That’s purely disgusting,” Meara decided. “And still if we’re going to hear about it, I’d rather hear all at once, and when we’re all sitting down.”

“That’s the way. Fin, put on your sweater now so you can sit at the table like a civilized man.” Mary Kate handed him the sweater. “I’ll just look around the kitchen, Branna, see what you might have I can put together, as I’ll bet everyone could do with a bit of food.”

While Mary Kate put together a wealth of leftovers from the Christmas feast, Branna sat—relieved not to be doing the fixing—so she and Fin could tell the story.

“His own mother.” Shaking his head, Boyle picked up one of the pretty sandwiches Mary Kate put together.

“Just a woman, and old, so he said. He had no feelings for her. There was nothing in him for her. There was nothing in him,” Fin continued, “but the black.”