it. Something was getting through. So as Sasha slashed again, making an X, he drew as much pain as he could out of the link and sent his own energy back through it. Come on, you bastard, he thought, not sure if he was talking to himself or the poison inside her. Come on!
For a moment, nothing happened. Then a shadow rose from the wound, a formless miasma of dark magic. Reese moaned and strained away from it, pushing back into him. “I’ve got you,” he said, over and over again, holding her tightly, the words becoming meaningless. “I’ve got you.”
“Repeat after me, both of you,” Sasha ordered. Her face was gray and drawn, and streaked with sweat.
Michael left the door to come up behind her and grip her shoulder, pouring his energy into her, the same as Dez was doing with Reese. Except it wasn’t the same, was it? Michael and Sasha were both magi and fully mated, bound together by the jun tan bond. Dez could offer Reese only a fraction of what the other two shared. He hoped to hell it would be enough. Damn it, he thought, he would make it be enough. He bore down and took more of the pain, gave her more of his power. They said the spell, all four of them, with Sasha leading, the others repeating.
The mist coalesced malevolently around Reese’s arm, flickering with arcs of luminous green. Dez gritted his teeth as pain came through the blood-link seemingly without end. He smelled blood and the foul, heavy stench of a makol’s evil, the two together overwhelming. Come on, Reese, he chanted inwardly, fight!
Then, unexpectedly, there was a wrenching jolt, and for a second he was inside her, seeing what she saw, feeling what she felt. He felt his own solid grip enfolding her from behind, the stubborn determination that tethered her to consciousness, and the tendrils of sick, evil darkness that had made it beyond the tourniquet to root the poison within her body, holding it there.
More, he sensed her strength fading. And he sensed, for a second, a flicker of green that whispered to her, urging her to let go and rest, not to fight anymore. She was so tired, after all. Everything would be okay if she just relaxed and let things happen.
Don’t, Reese, he projected urgently through the blood-link. It’s a lie!
But his words didn’t reach her. More, he felt the connection grow thinner as the makol’s darkness trickled through her bloodstream, an amorphous cancer of the soul that whispered over and over for her to relax, let go, let the darkness win. Panic kicked through him at the realization that she was losing ground. They both were.
“Take the tourniquet off,” he said to Sasha, and heard his own voice through Reese’s ears, creating a weird dissonance in his mind.
“But—”
“Take it off,” he insisted, then said, “Trust me.” Which was a hell of a thing to ask, because Sasha was one of the ones who still looked at him warily, not yet ready to believe he was reformed.
But she hesitated, traded a look with Michael, then nodded. “Okay.”
“On three, and no tricks this time.” They counted it down and she loosened the tourniquet.
Immediately, the dark mist raced back into Reese, flowing in through the gashes on her wrist. Going on instinct, Dez poured his energy into her, all of his reserves and more. Fight, he told her. Fight, damn it! Don’t you dare run away this time! It wasn’t until he said it that he recognized the truth of it, but the realization was quickly lost as his perceptions wrenched suddenly, and then he was back in his own head, his own body. He wasn’t connected to her anymore, though he still held her hand in a bloody clasp, still felt the buzz of the uplink. “Reese,” he shouted. “Godsdamn it, Reese!”
A long shudder ran through her body, and then she arched against him, trying to pull away from the blood- links. A deep, guttural moan tore from her throat and her eyes rolled back in her head.
“Gods!” Sasha gasped. The dark, wounded flesh rippled, runneling along her arm as though turbocharged worms were writhing beneath the skin, whipped into a frenzy by the poison. Michael’s eyes went silver as he channeled more energy into Sasha’s healing bond, but that didn’t seem to help. Through the last little bit of the uplink, Dez could feel Reese slipping away. Dying.
Panic lashing through him, he shouted “Do something! We’re losing her!”
“Call her,” Sasha said. “Make her come back. If she’s not conscious, she’s not fighting it!”
But he had been calling her, and it wasn’t working. He needed something better, something more. Something that would matter to her. He looked deep inside himself to the place where he normally kept the past locked away, but that had been breached the moment she lunged back into his life, wearing combat clothes and wielding an autopistol like she’d been born a warrior.
“Think about the dream,” he whispered alongside her temple, feeling the words rip from his chest. “Think about Montana, all those mountains, and the streams, and the big open sky. I bet you never went there, did you? So fight, damn it. Get your ass back here. If you do . . .” He paused, feeling the churn and burn in his gut, but went for it. “Wake the hell up and we’ll go there together.” His throat closed on the ache of guilt, sadness, and regret that washed through him as he turned his lips to her temple. “Please, baby. Don’t let it end like this.” Please gods.
A long shudder wracked her body and she twisted against him, nearly bowing herself double.
“Shit,” Sasha hissed. “Convulsion. Help me grab her and—”
Energy detonated soundlessly inside Dez, hollowing out his diaphragm and making him feel like his elevator had just hit bottom. At the same moment Sasha jolted, and Michael said, “What the fuck?”
Then Reese sagged, going utterly limp.
“Reese!” Dez surged out from behind her, rose over her with both hands wrapped in her shirt. “Reese, damn it!”
Sasha grabbed his shoulder. “Look!”
Dark mist was churning angrily from the weeping cuts, boiling out of Reese. It formed an angry, pulsing blob that went from black to green as it emerged.
Then poof. It disappeared.
He stared for a second, blinking at her arm. The X-marked cuts still bled and the bite was a dark, angry red. But the blackness was gone and the swelling was abating even as they watched. More, he could feel her breathing grow steady, her body temperature level off. And when he looked away from her wrist, he found her watching him with eyes that were blurry and unfocused, but held every ounce of now-Reese: a mix of the stupidly brave, crime- fighting girl he had known and the woman she had grown into, who dared him, challenged him, stood up to him.
She was back.
His throat closed on a hard, hot surge of emotion. “Hey.” It was all he could manage.
Her eyes fluttered shut, but she whispered, “Montana, huh?” And she drifted off with a smile on her lips.
He let his forehead drop to his hands, which were still clutched in her shirt. Despite what he’d been through with the Triad spell, he still wasn’t all that religious in the worshipping sense. Now, though, he sent a fervent thought-stream skyward: Thank you, gods. And he got, in return, a flare of heat that radiated through him, washing inward to his head and heart. He wasn’t sure if it came from magic, the exhaustion he felt bearing down on him freight train fast, or some celestial source. But it made him feel a little less alone.
Groaning, he dragged himself to his feet, then reached down and gathered Reese to his chest. He felt the pull of muscles as he lifted her, the ache of fatigue as he held her tightly. But neither Nate nor Michael offered to take her. They were mated magi; they knew better.
He fixed Nate with a look. “Is the mansion safe?” Part of him wanted to hit the road again, find some anonymous hotel where nobody would think to look for them. He was never truly comfortable at Skywatch.
But Nate nodded. “We know how they got in.”
“How?” Dez grated the word.
“A delivery van came through an hour ago and set off the ward. JT looked over the truck, didn’t see anything, and figured it was another false alarm, so he waved them through, then reset the system.”
“You’re kidding. He fucking waved Iago and a truckload of makol through the front door?”
Michael’s glower promised dire retribution. “Yeah. They crashed the system from the security hub to get out.”
“Shit.” Dez needed to get Reese someplace safe. But he also needed to crash. Another few minutes and he wasn’t going to be worth shit. He glanced toward the garage. “I need to—”
