I fiddled some more, moving the magic around, playing with something in the blade.
"Yeah, I don't think I can fix it." I shrugged and pushed one last time with my magic.
Yelping, I tossed the knife away from us as magic flared. Ed threw himself across my lap, pinning me to Allan, who was also trying to protect me. Doc had jumped in front of us and held his hands up, the air shimmering with a shield, one of the handful of spells he knew how to cast with borrowed magical energy. In this case, my magic.
Doc swore.
I tried to free myself from the tangle of werewolves and peek around Doc, but Ed was still convinced we were under attack.
"Ed, Allan, let her up. I think it's safe."
Doc dropped the shield, and I finally managed to crawl free of the wolves. I came over next to Doc and couldn't resist putting my arm around his bare waist, but the body on the floor had most of my attention.
"What the hell?"
None of us spoke after that, studying the person that had materialized out of the knife, however that was possible.
The body was definitely male, had olive toned skin and shoulder length dark hair. I couldn't see much more than that, though his features didn't seem to be Caucasian. He wore some kind of long, divided, brocade coat thing lined in fur. His boots were leather and of a style I didn't even recognize. If it wasn't for the large bloodstain on the back above his kidney, the jacket would have been really nice. The stain looked fresh.
"Is he still alive?" I managed to say around the shock.
That got the guys moving. Doc knelt next to him. "Barely. Sofia, come here, see if you can help me heal him."
"Me?"
"I know the basics. I just usually don't have enough magic stored up to do more than take care of a stubbed toe."
"You sure you're not a mage?"
"Just been around a while," Doc muttered, clearly distracted as he rolled our guest onto his side.
I sank down next to him and offered him my wrist. Doc glanced at me and smiled. "Let's see if I can guide your magic first."
"Okay."
"Just put your hands on him and call on your magic and see if you can follow what I'm doing."
"Sure." I hoped I wouldn't cause whoever this was to die, because I had no idea what I was doing.
I put my hands on the stranger's arm and called on my magic. I poured it into the guy. Lavender sparked across him, and blue sparkles rose to join them. I nearly lost my concentration in surprise.
"He's a mage," Allan exclaimed.
"Looks like it," Doc replied tightly. He put his hands on top of mine, and I let him direct my magic. We sank deeper into the unconscious man's body. The wound pricked at me, as if leaching energy from anything that touched it. Not only had he been stabbed, but he'd been poisoned, too. Doc showed me how to use my magic to repair the wound, and then he withdrew from the connection.
"He's going to need more than that to recover," Doc said. "That poison is nasty, whatever it was."
"Are you going to save him?" Allan sank down next to us.
Doc sighed and pulled one of the beaded bracelets off of his arm. He wore identical wide bracelets on each wrist. They stored a little magical energy, giving him an extra edge against mages in combat. Not that the half-vampire normally needed much help unless he was also defending others. They had been his mother's, a Navajo vampire hunter at the turn of the last century.
"Suppose we should try."
Doc's energy changed as he let his vampire half take over, and he bit down on his wrist. Vampire blood had a lot of nifty qualities, one of them being that it could help heal the poor sod on our floor. It wasn't well known, and vampires preferred it that way. They were one of the more powerful supernatural beings, and one of the more reclusive.
Blood welled on Doc's wrist, and Ed rolled the guy over and tilted his head back.
Though the wound was slowly healing, the guy's life force faded as the poison worked.
The moment Doc's blood hit the guy's system, a jolt ran through my entire body, transmitted from the injured guy. He sucked in a breath, shuddering as Doc's blood helped me combat the poison, though he remained unconscious.
For a few moments, I wasn't sure it was going to be enough, that we were too late. I poured more magic into him, determined to save him, though I had no idea who he even was. My hold on my magic weakened. It was only in the last couple of weeks that I'd even tried to do anything on purpose other than fix my hair, and I still really didn't know what I was doing.
I lost my grasp on the lavender motes of magic and collapsed across the newcomer, trembling with exertion.
Doc pulled me into his arms, and I shivered. "Were we too late?"
"No, I don't think so," Doc replied. "Ed, Allan, see if you can get him into my room."
Doc helped me to my feet and brushed a strand of my short hair out of my face. It stuck to my face, and my shirt clung to my body. Everything was soaked, as if I'd run a marathon in the Nebraska summer. Exhaustion tugged at me.
Protesting when Doc swept me off my feet earned me a kiss on the forehead.
"You're beat, let me carry you. We'll get our guest cleaned up, and you can rest."
I rested against Doc's shoulder and enjoyed being held in his strong arms. "So, does this happen often? Strange men appearing in your living room?"
Doc laughed. "No. Unless I'm forgetting something, this is certainly a first for me."
"How, exactly, was he in the knife?"
"Hopefully, we'll be able to ask that question soon." Doc put me down on his king-sized bed. When
