and I wrapped my hands around the rod, took a deep steadying breath-and yanked.
Tyler’s back arched, and he thrashed against us, his jaw set and teeth clenched tight in obvious agony. Dimitri came around the bed with stacks of sterile gauze and rolls of tape, slapping the absorbent pads against the wound before wrapping his wrist with the tape. Anya shifted, secured Tyler’s other hand, and we repeated the process. We allowed Ty a moment to catch his breath, everyone in the room staring at the spike in his chest like a group of kids standing around an arcade game.
I laid my hand against his cheek, my fingers creeping up into his hair and brushing the sweat-dampened, coppery curls from his face. “Are you ready?” I asked.
Tyler tensed beneath me, and Anya shifted, placing her weight squarely on both of his shoulders. “Ready.”
Without steeling myself against the pain I was about to inflict, I pulled-hard-on the stake, and I felt the sickening resistance as it fought to hold on inside his body. Tyler lurched once, and I yanked the stake free. Tyler’s body went slack, sweat beading on his brow, and he lost consciousness.
I reached for my dagger, ready and willing to do for Tyler what I’d already done for him once before. “What do you think you’re doing?” Raif asked, grabbing my hand before I could cut my own wrist.
“Helping Ty! My blood can heal him.”
“Gods, girl.” Raif shook his head, jerking the dagger from my hand. “You needn’t do anything quite so rash. Give him a little time. Now that the iron has been removed, he’ll be fine. His magic will heal him.”
Dimitri had begun to dress the wound, so instead I unwound the tape from the first wrist we’d worked on. Still ugly, still oozing, but, strangely enough, it did look smaller than it had when we removed the spike. “Why hadn’t he healed from the Enphigmale attack then?” I asked, rewrapping his wrist.
“Your guess is as good as mine,” Raif answered. “Why does Lyhtan venom affect us? Who knows these things?”
Who indeed. Fuck it all, I was exhausted. “Thank you, Anya,” I said while still looking at Raif. If I had to make eye contact with her while expressing my gratitude, I might’ve still taken the dagger to my wrist for a completely different reason. “You too, Dimitri. Thank you for going after him.”
Anya snorted in response, and Dimitri shrugged as if to say,
Raif laid a hand to my shoulder. “I’ll set a guard outside the building, just in case.”
“No.” I didn’t want to be beholden to Xander for anything else.
“You forget an attempt was made on your life as well. You’re one of mine. And I take care of mine.”
Damn Raif for making me feel all mushy when I’d been going for tough bitch. “Fine,” I said against the thickness in my throat. “I still think it’s a waste of time, though.”
“Obviously,” Raif said as he headed for the door, “I don’t care what you think is a waste of time. Call me if you need anything.”
I nodded my head, swallowing the emotion that threatened to leak from my eyes. When I heard the elevator doors slide shut in the foyer, I managed to exhale the breath I’d been holding. I reexamined Tyler’s wounds. Already the bleeding had slowed, barely showing through the gauze. Tyler’s eyes fluttered, and I sat on the bed, tracing patterns on his fingers as I waited for him to come to.
“Thanks for staying,” Tyler said lazily. “I’m going to need help getting out of my clothes, and I sure as hell didn’t want Raif doing it.”
I bit back a laugh and squeezed his fingers. “I can help you with that,” I said. “Gladly.”
Chapter 9
I’d shucked my boots and pants and lain on the bed, stripped of its bloody linens, with my arm draped carefully across Tyler’s muscled abs. He twirled the silver ring on my thumb as he spoke, as if it bore the memories of a thousand years.
“I’m not used to being the one who needs to be rescued,” he whispered against my hair. “I can’t say I like it very much.”
“Well, you owe me only once.” I caressed his silky hair, the strands slipping through my fingers. “You’ll have to settle up with Raif for this one.”
Tyler laughed, and then his body jerked in pain. The wound on his chest had yet to heal completely. I’d changed the dressings twice, and finally the bleeding had slowed. His wrists were much better, the injuries appearing to be weeks old rather than merely hours. I had no idea he could heal so fast.
“Raif is a good man,” he said, surprising me. The previous night he’d been ready to throw down with the guy for spending too much time with me. Now, he was extolling his virtues?
“He is,” I agreed. “Like family. I’d do anything for him.”
“I think he’d do the same for you,” Tyler said, his tone growing dark. “But I’m glad for that. It’s nice to know someone else has your back.”
“Do you have family, Ty?” I’d always wondered but never asked. Perhaps the conversation would take his mind off the pain.
“Not really.” Tyler slid my ring up and down my thumb between my knuckles. “I didn’t grow from infancy. Nor do I remember a childhood. Jinn are born from magic. No mother, no father. Just a moment of self-realization and conscious thought”-he shrugged his shoulders-“and I existed.”
Shit. That beat my story a millionfold. Granted, I too was a creature created from sheer will. But I’d been a human first-a real person, born and raised. I’d had a mother, a father, a pretty normal existence. It was years later that Fate, or whatever you want to call it, had done a number on me, and I’d been transformed into something more than human. I’d evolved into what I was-not just a force of magic brought to life. “How did you know what you were? How to live?”
“We are never alone.” Tyler kissed my temple, and I sensed he’d become lost in his memories. His voice grew thick, and his words were weighed carefully, accented with the remnants of a language no longer spoken. Near- death experiences have a way of rocketing you into the past, to the beginnings of your life as you’ve come to know it. Ty wasn’t here with me anymore; he was back there-in that place. “I was found by another like me as she traveled through the desert one day. Adira. She took me in, taught me what I needed to know… It’s been this way since the beginning of time. We can sense the magic in our kind, and we’re naturally drawn to it.
“I’m not going to say that my first days were easy ones. Confusion is a given when you seem to manifest out of nowhere. I could speak, but there was no one to talk to. I hungered, yet the desert held no food. I had a want of things I could not describe nor seek solace for, and I wandered the harsh, lifeless land for days before I was found. At the first sight of another soul, I cried out in relief. I understood her words, and she gave me water, which I drank until it made me sick. She took me to her home, a small village inhabited to my surprise by creatures that looked similar to me, but I sensed the mundane in them. Adira had bound herself to the chieftain’s wife, and she watched over their people. I lived with Adira for a century or more, learning the ways of the Jinn from her. One day, while walking the desert, just as I imagine Adira had, I came across a confused and wandering soul, and I gave him water and food. I delivered the Jinn to Adira, and she cared for him. I decided to leave not long after that. I’d learned everything I needed to know, and I was restless to see the world beyond. I have not seen that place since the day I left.”
I realized, as I listened to the soft cadence of Tyler’s voice, that I didn’t know anything about his life-his real life. I knew he was a good man, and loving, and overprotective in a way that made me want to kiss him and rip his arms out of their sockets at the same time. But I had no knowledge of his history, upbringing, or existence.
“Xander said your people come from Europe or the Middle East. Is that true?”
“Africa,” he said almost dreamily. “Egypt. Sudan. Desert regions.”
“You don’t look African,” I teased.
Tyler raised a curious brow. “I’m not,” he said. “I am Jinn.”
My voice turned serious, “How many others have you bound yourself to?”
Tyler shifted in bed to look down on me, one corner of his mouth curving into a crooked smile. “Jealous?” He smoothed the tangles of curls from my face. When I didn’t answer, he said, “I hope so. I’ve only bound myself to someone once before you. And I don’t plan to ever do it again.”
